[SPEAKER_02]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_02]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm best selling author Bianca Marie, and I'm joined by C.C.
[SPEAKER_02]: Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi everyone, today's guest is an internationally bestselling author whose novels have been translated into more than 30 languages.
[SPEAKER_02]: Her debut, the flat chair, sold over a million copies and changed her life completely.
[SPEAKER_02]: All five of her subsequent novels, the switch, the road trip, the no-show, the wake-up call and swept away have been instant Sunday-time spes sellers.
[SPEAKER_02]: She writes her books in the English countryside with a very barely behaved golden retriever for company.
[SPEAKER_02]: If she's not in a writing shed, you'll probably find her chasing a toddler with a strong coffee in hand.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's my pleasure to welcome back Beth O'Leary.
[SPEAKER_02]: Beth, welcome back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, thank you for having me again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and thank you for joining us.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know it's late in the evening there and I know that pre-pub everything is so busy so I'm sure you've had a really busy day and you're still joining us so we appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well,
[SPEAKER_02]: So four aliciners who are not watching on YouTube and you really should watch on YouTube because we have some really funny moments that you see on camera that you don't necessarily here or we'll see on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: What I'm holding up here is Beth's book.
[SPEAKER_02]: The name game lovely lovely cover.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks a bit better.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really I'm starting to realize that I'm quite rough on books.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I say the same, but other authors freak out.
[SPEAKER_02]: So really lovely cover.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me give you some of the flat copy and then we're going to dive in.
[SPEAKER_02]: So a man and a woman with the same name are looking for a first start only to discover they've landed the same job in this charming new romance by bestselling author Beth O'Leary.
[SPEAKER_02]: Charlie couldn't be happier to take the job of farm shop manager on the remote wild aisle of armor.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's grieving a little last and in desperate need of a fresh start.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jones has come out of a difficult breakup and is looking forward to some piece away from the noise of his city life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Moving to armor couldn't have come at a better time.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when Charlie Jones and Charlie Jones both turned up at almost one in only farm shop
[SPEAKER_02]: everyone is baffled.
[SPEAKER_02]: How could this have happened?
[SPEAKER_02]: And just who is the real Charlie Jones?
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't, don't, don't, don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so this is going to be such a tough book to talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what, this is one of my first interviews about it and I'm so worried I'm going to say something I shouldn't because
[SPEAKER_00]: yes there's some surprises in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am worried as an interviewer because for me it's important to protect the sanctity of, you know, no reveals.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but for our listeners,
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to be careful with my phrasing and best, get a bit careful with her phrasing, and just to show you how interesting a romance novel this is on the jacket copy, we've got a blur by Jillian McAllister, who writes psychological thrillers, and she said surprising and hot stopping.
[SPEAKER_02]: So firstly, you're not expecting and all the like Jillian McAllister to be blurbing a romance novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: So speak a bit about that for us, please.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, I am actually very lucky to know, Julie.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is one of those things that I think if you're not in the publishing world is an interesting thing to know about blurbs is that sometimes they happen because, you know, I can hand it to and say, please could you read and so I feel very lucky in that respect, but also there are surprises in this book and I think the reason my publisher were interested in
[SPEAKER_00]: getting that quote was because it is a way of sort of saying isn't it, you know, there's a little bit more sort of surprise and mystery to this romance than you might than you might otherwise expect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, as an author as well, I have friends who write in different genres and I'm not an author who can stick to one genre.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I will approach one author friend, please, to blur, you know, one book and another one, to blur another because I wouldn't have them doing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is a great way to signal that this is something a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, okay, inspiration.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I don't wanna give away the twist what came to you first or did the start of a something else and it evolved?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so it was much more and actually this is always how I start really is with that hook with that question with an unusual situation that either brings people together or connect people because I want to write about human relationships and so it's kind of trying to find a
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of, I would await what sort of question is where I start.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with my debut, the flat share that was two people share a one bed flat, but don't meet because one of them works nights.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's that kind of what if and then what I work to do is really ground that sort of
[SPEAKER_00]: unusual concept in something that feels like, okay, well, what would actually really happen if you were in that situation?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started with a two people with the same name and a woman with the same name, and that was the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really did like,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like us when we embark on this story, I too had no idea why there were two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Charlie Jones is turning off on the island of warfare.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was unsurprisingly a big journey for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I always start with that with that kind of big concept, and then I ask myself who are these people and what might be a really interesting way to answer that question that I've sort of posed, I guess, in this case, why are they both there?
[SPEAKER_00]: As well as all the other things that are kind of happening in that story
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the two of them getting to know each other, determine not to fall in love.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love that you do it that way, because I think for a lot of writers, they write the book and then afterwards, they're trying to find the hook, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: They like, oh, I wanted to tell the story about this and that and then when someone goes, yeah, but what's the hook, then they really struggle.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's really smart to start with that, what if a net hook and then take it from there, because it makes it much easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'd actually never thought about it that way, but I suppose it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like leading with the part that you're gonna lead with when you explain the book to people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So something that I wanna discuss is intentionality when it comes to structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of emerging authors will go, oh, I'm gonna write third person close because that's what I feel comfortable with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm just gonna write first person because that's what I feel comfortable with.
[SPEAKER_02]: this book, there is so much intentionality in terms of each thing that was chosen.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I'm going to be careful here because it's part of Passellery novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have sort of diary entries, we have emails as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we have sort of multiple POV third person close when it comes to backstory.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the diaries and the emails are in the present day timeline.
[SPEAKER_02]: So
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, was that something that started off that way or was it as you were coming to grips with this concept, you were going, okay, this is how I'm going to need to handle it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so the decision to, I've always wanted to write diaries.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love reading them and I just, I like voiciness in my first person narrators.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I like to really lean on kind of,
[SPEAKER_00]: making you feel like whenever you're in one of their chapters, you really know you are and so diary is almost like an extension of that in some ways, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just having a little bit more voice on the page in some ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've wanted to do it for a while, I wanted to email us for a while, so that kind of definitely sparked my interest and the other thing that it
[SPEAKER_00]: It also allowed me to do some other things that were useful plot-wise and interesting plot-wise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought very hard about the decision to use those to have those kind of past stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was one of those things where I really just had to try it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really didn't know how it would feel.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, sometimes you can plan and you can figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just thought that that was one of those things that I needed to feel, whether it felt disjointed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, I hope it really works.
[SPEAKER_00]: that and in terms of kind of using first and third and you know these are things it's funny I actually I said to my husband when I was talking through all these decisions with him he was like I don't think I know what your other books are written in and it's really odd isn't it because you know he's read those books many times but I think when you're a reader who doesn't kind of have a right his head
[SPEAKER_00]: You're so caught up in the story, you're not necessarily thinking about it, but of course, those decisions are often very intentional.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd say I'm most comfortable writing in first person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I only tried writing in third with my fourth book, and I remember how, so I get it if people are nervous about it because I remember that feeling almost feels like trying on someone else's shoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, this is weird, you know, like
[SPEAKER_00]: this is kind of like writing that I'm doing it in a different, it almost changes your voice, I think, when you, you're writing voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do get it, but yeah, I was having a field day playing around with it here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, it's really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I don't want to give too much way, but you'll read and you'll get to like the twist and then when you come back and read again, it makes so much more sense things that you weren't really paying attention to.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why I speak about that intentionality because there was so much intentionality here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for listeners who are struggling with, should I do this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Should I do that, you know, definitely pick up the spot to see how the structure really aids the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: Something important, especially when it comes to first person narratives, especially in diary entries and in emails, is really differentiating the two characters' voices.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know, you know, I've watched some of your Instagrams and stuff and you've said that when it comes to editing you will look at different things in different edits so for one thing you might edit just for tension and pacing another time you'll come and look at it just for characterization so is that something you come to at one point to really make sure that those voices sound unique and different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there will always be multiple kind of voice slash character edits, so I am just I'm like trying not to get distracted by line by line kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: fiddling or all the other things that I want to fix and just trying to make sure that their character sings out wherever it can.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one trick I always use, I mean, this isn't a very clever trick, but there are always certain words, phrases, even types of punctuation that each narrator, and this is not necessarily exclusive to when I'm writing like diary, like in this book, you know, I'll do this if I'm just using a first person.
[SPEAKER_00]: narrator is they will have a few maybe no more than three or four but just distinctively then turns of phrase little things and I hope that they almost pass you by you know because they're they're very subtle but I think they do something in terms of really just having a repeated it might be just that one character says
[SPEAKER_00]: Ugh, and they are if they're frustrated and the other one says, ah, you know, something like as small as that, but I think all those things little things are little signals to you that add up that you're with this person, not with that person because that is really important to me, I think it's it's I mean it's a chance to
[SPEAKER_00]: give like there's a chance in every line to give more character if you're using voice in that way and you want every opportunity to help your reader know your character as deeply as possible so like why miss a trick, you know, just pilot everything you can to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, in this quick, so someone, you know, one character might use contractions or they may not use subject, verb object, they may just, you know, so again, for Alison is a great way to see how to differentiate voice one from another and to consistently apply that and it's, you know, like you said earlier that the reader won't really pay attention to point of view, and they won't really pay attention to this and that because,
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're a good writer and you're doing your job, you draw them so much into the story that they're not even focusing on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, to become such a good writer, you have to know your craft.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you make it look so easy, but it isn't easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why we sort of pick the supports on the podcast to go, okay, read this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: You immerse yourself in it, and you go, switch away the by the story about how did that author do that?
[SPEAKER_02]: What were the little things that they did?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think the dream is that you make it look effortless, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I am certainly not a writer who writes effortlessly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I delete tens of not hundreds of thousands of words for every book that I write.
[SPEAKER_00]: Partly because I am a writer who learns through writing, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: this frustrates me about myself and I've had to sort of come to accept it that I can't always go in knowing what I'm doing and sometimes it's better not to try because I'm just wasting time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes I have to, it's that really hard decision isn't it, of when am I ready to start?
[SPEAKER_00]: And most of my books have at least one quite major fall start, so I will
[SPEAKER_00]: really think I've got it and I'll be like yeah and I'll make you write somewhere between five and 20,000 words before I'm like, I'm way off like the world is I'm in the wrong place.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wrong people are involved like I'm talking about that wrong and there are a million other wrongs along the way so yeah I think it's definitely a case of just honing and honing and honing and honing and knowing as
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sometimes it can feel like it's going to show, you know, like people are going to see that I struggled so much with this book and it's not going to feel the same as the one that I wrote in three months in a beautiful creative burst, you know, because some books are like that and some books aren't at least for me and I would say like it doesn't show if anything often I think those books that have been crafted and crafted and have beaten you and you can't
[SPEAKER_00]: you feel like you can't do it and then you do it again and those books sometimes can be the most sort of accomplished because you've shined them, you know, you made them as perfect as you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of, you know, if I look at my backlist of titles, some of my very most beloved books that I'm most often here from readers about are ones that I remember thinking,
[SPEAKER_00]: will people feel it in here like all they be reading this and healing the effort that I put into it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some books it feels like you have to wrestle them to the ground you know it's like and not to piss it's like oh my god I've got to get all these hands and I've got to really struggle with this when there's plenty to tell you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like that and why you know I really wish a maybe
[SPEAKER_00]: with experience, you develop this skill, but I wish I could tell when I come up with the idea whether it's going to be one of those because I always think it's going to be a nice, easy one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I'm like, wow, this is going to be really straightforward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I can't see any problems here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'll figure it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because just as well, you don't because then you may not actually dive into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I knew, then maybe I'd never do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the false starts and deleting that work.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's so important because, yeah, I think a lot of emerging writers just write the first draft and they're like, that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing and I'm sending it off to an agent.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they don't see how many words do get deleted and how much feels like it's wasted, but it's never wasted because you would never get to the point where it feels right if you hadn't gone through all the false starts and all the words that had to be deleted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, one of my sort of major pieces of writing advice is always finish their first draft because so much of the work of crafting the actual novel happens after you've done the first draft and I mean that to be sort of like empowering rather than like
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh god, because it feels like I'm saying everything all the work starts now, but what I mean is sort of just let yourself have a bad first draft because you cannot have a novel until you've got an end to at least start reshaping and and for me I often don't know what the book is until I read you know on some level at least
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm often a little surprised by my first draft.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll kind of particularly, you know, tonally or paste or something like that, I'll read it through and I'll be like, oh, this is like, a lot faster than I expected or this is, you know, this is a more thoughtful novel than I thought it was going to be or it's things like that kind of come to you because there's something very organic about first draft and that is beautiful and important.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the second draft is really for me when the book becomes the book that probably resembles
[SPEAKER_00]: something like what you're going to read, you know, because the first draft is for raw material and like you can't shape something out of nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've got to, you've got to get the words down and I know how hard it is, like finishing a novel is a massive achievement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think continuing and having the self-belief to keep going for a hundred thousand words and then letting the story carry there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I, you know, it's not to say that it's easy, but
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah and it also I think it takes the pressure off of that first draft because the first draft should really be play time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It should be let me try this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me try that, you know, because the further along you go with each decision you make you are cutting off options for yourself in terms of storytelling.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whereas that first draft, it could be anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: You could go anywhere and it really is a delight to play with the story that way as opposed to putting so much pressure
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think you can do some of your best work by giving yourself that mentality as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I certainly find that saying to myself, like, even writing something and thinking, oh my god, I would never let anyone read that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, you know, that's, I know that's clumsy, or that's tonally like, I'm trying to be too literary, or doing things where I push myself, like that's cringy, or, you know, I do that in a first draft, because
[SPEAKER_00]: No one's watching.
[SPEAKER_00]: you've already gone a little bit further than you maybe would if you were kind of thinking about it too much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, completely.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in terms of having almost dual timeline narratives or multiple timeline narratives, we always say that
[SPEAKER_02]: you can have a present day to online and then you're going to have the past.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you have to be so careful when you go back to the past because the past cannot drag the reader back.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you put the past in the story, it needs to further the plot of the modern day story.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it needs to be that you planted curiosity seeds in the modern day, the readers super curious about them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you go back to the
[SPEAKER_02]: payoffs for the seeds that you planted originally.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it really is a balancing act to make sure that you get their balance right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So is there something again that you play around with or is it because, you know, you've written so many books you kind of feel that instinctively?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I think a lot of it is instinct and actually has always been possibly
[SPEAKER_00]: was more so at the beginning, I probably think about these things hard and now in some ways than I used to.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I totally agree with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the challenge with a flashback or a back timeline.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or really anything where you're pulling a reader, you're asking a reader to pause the story that currently embroiled in.
[SPEAKER_00]: to do something else will be somewhere else or with someone else is making it worth their while like you just need to feel like the ideal is that they're kind of delighted to be wherever they are not like it's another that chapter and because I play mostly right multiple points of view in my books I am quite used to the challenge of hopping and for me often that hop can actually be very good for the energy of the novel because
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you don't stay in one head too long.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're like falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling
[SPEAKER_02]: Where is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: I did this to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, with holding as much as you can for as long as you can to keep the reader turning pages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and also just telling less.
[SPEAKER_00]: in general, like my, I think it's very telling that the first draft are the first manuscript of my debut, The Flatshare, which was a book that got me my book, but my first book deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: That went out to agents and only one agent was interested in reading beyond the first three chapters.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when it went out to publishers, it went in a preempt and all around the world, people were, I mean, it was absolutely the wildest and most of
[SPEAKER_00]: the difference what had happened between those two things was that the first three chapters had stopped like the first three chapters one place entered to agents where his loads of sort of everybody's day you know hero who these people are and what I have since learned and what I worked on it with my agent before it went out on submission what we took out the huge amount of content from the first like six chapters and I am now
[SPEAKER_00]: in it, don't really tell them anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't need to be told anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're right there with you, like just let them learn who the people are by seeing them dealing with whatever it is you're throwing them right into at the start of the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's starting immediately with the inciting incident as opposed to build up before the inciting incident and these days people's attention spans are really not great.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now more than ever you need to grab the reader, whereas before I think writers at the luxury of being, this is a usual day, La La La Birds chirping and then in the heavens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's just like you have to get to pasta.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, can we speak about the world building?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because again, people think world building just pertains to fantasy novels.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this was such a lovely setting.
[SPEAKER_02]: So quaint, it felt so real, the supporting characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, each of them could have been the main character in their own novel, because you just love everybody so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can you speak a bit about
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, now that was really important to me with this book in particular swept away, which is the novel I wrote before the name game, is about two strangers who end up lost at sea together after a one-light stand on a houseboat that is swept out to the ocean.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is two people.
[SPEAKER_00]: in one set with open sea all around them and it was an amazing challenge to write and I'm so proud of that book.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my goodness when I finished it I was like give me some space and people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was longing to write you know a wonderful, lovely cast of characters again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is definitely what you get in the name game and yeah I think also swept away, taught me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much about setting because I was forced to use everything I had on that houseboat and and the sea Like using, you know, they had an unchanging scenery in some senses But of course the sea and the sky are ever changing but they was just really not I didn't have the The opportunity to have another character walk in to provide variety or you know that there was so much limitation That I looked a lot more for what I could do and I think it showed me like
[SPEAKER_00]: how much setting can bring, like, to a novel in a way that I possibly hadn't explored as much before.
[SPEAKER_00]: So bringing the Isle of Orma, which is my fictional island that I got to invent, to which was just, I mean, getting to invent a whole island after being one tiny boat, I was like having so much fun kind of being like, and then there could be this here and, you know, filling,
[SPEAKER_00]: creating my own world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really about making sure that I was coming back all the time to vibe really because I think actually with setting that is more important than the stuff that's there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, how does it evoke the feeling that you want people to feel in this place?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not really what it looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's for me the island needed to be kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: earthy and stripped back and you know it's I quite consciously kind of don't have much tech like they're not well the island has no cars or street lights but also I mean like day to day they're not posting on Instagram they're not living the kind of life that we actually all are where we're constantly sort of googling stuff and I wanted to use that to kind of create you know that's part of the setting really is that is the disconnectedness of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: but for it to kind of always have warmth and a sense of home and belonging.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all those, so I would always come back to vibe and then it would be like when you're naming the pub, how are you bringing the vibe?
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're, you know, when you're describing this speech, like how does it come back to that sense that you want the person to have when they feel like they're standing there?
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I so enjoyed exploring setting with this one.
[SPEAKER_02]: and sitting really helps a lot with sort of character development and character arc because when you're speaking about a book that's on a has boat that's a very claustrophobic sort of field.
[SPEAKER_02]: Two people hugely claustrophobic, whereas with this book you're giving your characters space,
[SPEAKER_02]: and room to breathe because they both arrived kind of damaged and they, you know, they need to they need to like sort of exhale and and find themselves and they're allows them to find each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: So sitting is more than just backdrop, it really helps in terms of character development as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you actually write and what they needed was sort of fresh air and that's kind of what I wanted the setting to to be and actually inspect away what they needed was to not be able to get away from each other, you know, they need and so you can you can you're right, like you can use that setting to really you can lean on it in the same way that you might tweak your characters to sort of how can this bring more to my plot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and let me think of the chicks, they used to be the dixie chicks, there's the lyric, she needed wide open spaces room to make big mistakes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I love this so much, Beth.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm holding it up again.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are going to link to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you buy the book, they use support in independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: get this book to learn so much about the craft of writing, but also to just really enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And gossip when you get to the twist.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like be in touch with me and tell me when you get to them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much, Beth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been so great to share.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi everyone, welcome to today's author interview.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our guest today is the best selling author of three novels.
[SPEAKER_02]: The whole in the middle, just like family and better luck next time.
[SPEAKER_02]: She is also the co-author with Elizabeth Reigns 80 of the Colin Packet Mystery series.
[SPEAKER_02]: When not writing, she maintains an active psychotherapy practice,
[SPEAKER_02]: working with individuals and couples.
[SPEAKER_02]: She has a particular interest in personal reinvention and life transitions.
[SPEAKER_02]: She has had prior careers in law, university, administration, and major gift fundraising.
[SPEAKER_02]: She lives in Toronto with her family as my pleasure to
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Bianca.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always so nice to see you.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always so lovely to see you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, you have to go watch because Kate's glasses are just incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: As you know, I think it's a brace.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for those of you who missing out on the visuals, go and take a look.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: as well, I am holding up the book cover.
[SPEAKER_02]: City of the Muse and this is an arc so an advanced reader copy it is exquisite so you know that the actual book itself is going to be stunning.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay Kate will you please read us that flap copy for us?
[SPEAKER_02]: I would love to.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right here we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Egypt 1903.
[SPEAKER_01]: When renowned papyrologist Helen Gardner arrives at an excavation site in the ancient city of Caliopolis, she learns that she has been given the job because her predecessor has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
[SPEAKER_01]: Only one of the women on the dig, Helen, tasked with restoring and cataloging the thousands of papyrus fragments recovered at the site, soon discovers that
[SPEAKER_01]: The archaeologists saw the dead, mostly men, all have not only their towering egos, but their own agendas, including secrets they might kill each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: Toronto, 2019.
[SPEAKER_01]: Archivist Maddie Sloan is at a dead end.
[SPEAKER_01]: She feels like her academic career has stalled, and she's still healing for her recent breakup with her former partner Ben.
[SPEAKER_01]: To make matters worse, Ben still works with Maddie's father, a famous archaeologist, and with whom Maddie has had a major falling out.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like her father has chosen Ben over her.
[SPEAKER_01]: When famous TV archaeologist Pete Pahar arrives at the Toronto Archaeological Museum to verify the provenance of objects from their Egyptian collection believed to be from Caliapolis, Maddie jumps at the opportunity.
[SPEAKER_01]: After all, she has her own ties to the Curse City of Caliapolis through her grandmother Iris, who worked at the site.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Maddie and Peter begin digging into objects and circumstances surrounding the excavation, they learn that two paparologists seem to have abruptly disappeared from the dig without an explanation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly the search for provenance becomes a quest to uncover a history shrouded in secrets and lies, and a murder that has been covered up for more than a century.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so from there, wow, Kate, so this book is so different from your others.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I need to know how the idea began.
[SPEAKER_02]: Concept first, like, oh, this is a cool concept or did a character come to you and you're like, okay, character first thing concept.
[SPEAKER_02]: Take us through it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I should maybe begin by saying I have a lifelong.
[SPEAKER_01]: completely nerdy interest in archaeology.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like in grade six, you know when you have to do, maybe it was the same in South Africa, maybe not.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in Canada, in grade six, in my era, you had to do a public speech in grade six.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, it was grade six, they're 12, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like my dog Sannie, like what I like about coalesce, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Mine was on death and burial in H. Egypt.
[SPEAKER_01]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a long standing interest, and probably also related to the fact that, you know, the King Tut exhibit had a huge international tour in the late 70s or early 80s when I was, you know, me high, and, and I went to see that at the wrong, in Toronto, and it was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: brain exploding stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that interested with me always.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I've continued to, you know, when I travel, I like to go see archeological sites and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's my way of background.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a long standing special interest.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might say.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I'm an neurodivergent person, so we take our special interest pretty seriously.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for this particular book, I, you know, I subscribed to National Geographic and I'm always getting little tidbits about weird archaeological facts that I kind of square the way for this book was a number of years ago, a couple of different news stories sort of collided in around the same time in my brain and one had to do with
[SPEAKER_01]: a scandal at the, at a museum at Oxford, where the collection of the pyrospriegman's collected at a site called OxyRynkis in the late 1800s, or cap.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're stored there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've been stored there since, you know, 1896.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they collected so many fragments at Oxi-Rynkis that they've still only like to this day present day have only translated a tiny, tiny fraction of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like 2% I mean like a really tiny fraction.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a huge scandal which you can look at involving the curator of this collection and the allegation that he had perhaps taken some of these fragments and tried to sell them to the Big Bad Sackler family who were building a museum of the Bible in Washington DC.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a big scandal because some of these fragments are biblical, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why the Bible
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was one, you can imagine not a huge number of scandals in the field of paparology or even YouTube told you really knew any more of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this was like really big news in the YouTube told it to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was pretty interested in that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like a dark academia scandal in the YouTube told it to you scandal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a classical thriller literature scandal, like all wrapped into one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it really like tickled me great.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's giving dark academia, I'm loving it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and there is at the same time another story about this like grad student, you know, who those of us who were grad students or no people who were grad students know of it, you know, you spend a lot of your life like just trying to find something that's
[SPEAKER_01]: Obscure enough that no one's written about it and interesting enough that you might it might actually have some legs It's an area of academics.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did this is like a very hard needle to thread and there was a graduate student somewhere in Italy Who stumbled up cross a letter that Galileo had written it had been misfiled in the archives right it was like just in the wrong place and he stumbled across it
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, don't ask me what it said or why it was important, but it like completely changed how people understood the story that everyone knows about Galileo that he sort of fell on his sword and, you know, confessed to having misled the
[SPEAKER_01]: Pope or whomever about his findings and then sort of off to the side said, but yet it moves.
[SPEAKER_01]: In any way, so the story was that there was something about this letter that actually contradicted the known narrative about Calilette.
[SPEAKER_01]: And originally, I thought I would do like a kind of an archive story because that had been so interesting to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the finished book isn't really about archives, but I do have a character who is
[SPEAKER_01]: like an archivist who is really struggling to find her way in academia and trying to find admired in that moment of like what have I done with 10 years of my life and nothing to show for it and I'm now this lowly little being counter in the basement of a museum and then she finds something that really changes her world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So those two weird little national geographical
[SPEAKER_01]: for the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, even more so, because I will have these ideas and I have idea one, idea two, idea three, and I think they all different books.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are things that I will have to, you know, look at completely separating.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when that aha moment comes when you realise that are actually the same book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that you best, it's not the best, it's just like fireworks going off and you like, oh my god, the whole time I thought these were superstories there or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I mean, firstly, okay, I wanted to ask you how long this took to write, because I can imagine this took a long time and and I think what were you working on different projects, while you were working on this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I take a trip there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was probably working on this book for about six years, but always between other projects.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think I started working on it when my third novel, better like next time was in edit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started doing the research for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just got that was probably around the time that I found these stories and then I started reading all kinds of academic articles about what people found on those digs and learning about what
[SPEAKER_01]: papyrus studies was and what was the importance of these particular kind of finds and the history of Egyptology and then I got really interested in women's roles in the field of archaeology which we should talk about later but that's a super interesting field in and of itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you know and then that became back and I
[SPEAKER_01]: promoted in and then I was working on, I was working on this book, I'd started writing this book when the pandemic hit and because this book is a departure for me but also so research-heavy and I was really working in isolation through the pandemic, I kind of got a little stuck on it and then the story goes that list runs eddy and I were wandering around in the snow and
[SPEAKER_01]: and both of us working on projects that were kind of like a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: stuck in the shallows and said, like, let's just what if we just had some fun writing something different for a while and then the Kulampakah mystery series came.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then, then we wrote two more books in that series while I was still ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this poor bug just kept getting shunted aside.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was always happy to go back to it and I was very happy when the time came that I had a
[SPEAKER_01]: in the last couple of years.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have tried to cheat on books with other books and I just, I don't know, I've always, I've been trying recently especially and I just can't.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so fascinated when people can do that and I'm fascinated by writing collaborations like you and Liz have, I've told you guys both, I think it's absolutely incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that, you know, again for our listeners, this is so important because sometimes a story needs room to breathe.
[SPEAKER_02]: sometimes it isn't the story for right now, but that doesn't mean, you know, burn it or reject it for eternity.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes it just means work on something else and come back and then things might fall into place for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I really think of myself as quite a monogamous when it comes to my projects, but I think that's just a story I tell myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what, looking back, I've played around a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you know it's it's because books have a momentum arc to them and they're different for every book and and somewhere for me in the middle I get like overcome with a sense that this I will I do not have what it takes to write this book
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not good enough to realize this book or I'm too exhausted to realize this book and I do need to toggle sometimes to just get a different injection A fuel and sometimes like the book the life of publishing lets you do that
[SPEAKER_01]: just because books are coming out and you take a break and you do promotion and you're at different life stages with projects or editing one, you're dropping another.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I like that better, like it's not ideal to be really deep into first drafts at the same time I would say to your readers, to your listeners.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a point in time where I completely had to shelve.
[SPEAKER_01]: a book and I remember saying to Liz, I actually, I've now discovered something about myself as a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot write to first of all this at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Neither of them is getting enough of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wouldn't set out to do that again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to say, yeah, personally.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in terms of the dual timeline, dual POV narrative, I'm assuming that from when the idea fell into place that is how it was always going to be or was at a case of you started with one and then realized you needed the other one.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always knew it would be a dual timeline.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like dual timeline mysteries a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think I was thinking about people like Kate Morton, who I think does that to good job with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love a cold case, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So my own tastes and mysteries, like if you said to me,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a cold case, it has either an archeological or artistic or literary thing going on in the past and there's some object or piece of writing or like possession is one of my favorite books as by its possession, that's an older book now, but it when I was an English literature major, I thought that book was like the absolute.
[SPEAKER_01]: peak of perfection.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I have an attachment to those types of stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to write one of my own.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think it's always a good rule of thumb to write books you want to read.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this book, you know, tickled me in a bunch of, in a bunch of my different interests.
[SPEAKER_01]: And dual time line was one of the components I wanted to
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to play with.
[SPEAKER_02]: And those of you who do it so well make it look easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: But here's the thing with a dual timeline narrative, especially when the say present day one has got to do with figuring out what happened in the past is it really is a balancing act.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you go from the present day back to the past,
[SPEAKER_02]: Pass narrative has actually got to be feeding the present day narrative right there's got to be a golden thread between both narratives one to explain why they're on two different books entirely and two so that when the reader goes from the present to the past they don't feel like
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And really it's a, I think that it is about keeping the momentum going because it's very easy to lose that energy when you're switching timelines.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to continue the thread of suspense in particular.
[SPEAKER_01]: that you feel like you're as a reader continuing on your hunt for answers as you jump through time and that in a satisfactory kind of a way, your own investigation into the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether it's a mystery or not, I mean, every book is a mystery and a sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are we here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are we reaching this story?
[SPEAKER_01]: What are we trying to learn about this character?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what will happen?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, so when we're jumping through timelines, we have to feel like we're moving forward in our understanding of whatever that essential question that we're trying to answer is.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I just remembered what I was going to say earlier, you were saying that you get to a point in a project where you like, can I do this, can I do justice to this, can I carry on?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I get to that point as well, but my favorite part because the part when I know that I'm actually going to finish this book is the part when I'm terrified I'm going to die before I finish the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god, I'm going to get hit by a bus and something's going to happen before I finish this book and that's when I know I've built up enough the momentum to keep going.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you reach that point after the often that I can't do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not the only person who experiences that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like deep writers and coaches, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: When I see this through, I'll crawl up the desert.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think a lot of notes while I'm actually writing, but when I get to that point, I start making notes for the author who has to step in and finish up that doctor.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Raiders are so crazy in their own distinct embrace.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I feel seen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Bianca.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so now differing shading our characters in our dual timeline narratives because what you write so well is like strong woman the kind of woman you don't expect to find at a particular point in time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean if we look at Helen for her time
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, going against everything whatever one wants for her.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we come to Maddie, who, okay, it's 2019 and she's feeling a little bit last, she's got more to prove.
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, it's so important in those two different narratives to completely separate them in a way so that the reader could pick up the page and not even see the headline.
[SPEAKER_02]: And where we are to be able to know which character they were, what's your advice there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the first is even though, so if you're writing historicals, right, and you want to write strong female character, I think obviously strong women have existed throughout history and found a way to sort of fucking against the structures of their particular circumstances.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can, there are always people you can read about.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was very interested to read about
[SPEAKER_01]: specific and real-life women who had been part of the very early days of archaeology because archaeology was a really new discipline.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the women who were there in that discipline were going to university.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were getting kind of the first university university degrees issued to women.
[SPEAKER_01]: Women mostly were not given degrees.
[SPEAKER_01]: They could go to university, but they wouldn't be given degrees at the end of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were given degrees in archaeology because it was the new science.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they hadn't really figured out that there was kind of anything in it to exclude women from yet, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They had no, like,
[SPEAKER_01]: know, there was no franchise to protect, particularly so women were there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can imagine the kind of women in that era who wanted to go into dusty, dirty, dangerous places and do
[SPEAKER_01]: this kind of work that was both extremely intellectual, but also like extremely lenient because everyone was literally carrying baskets of dirt out and and no one you know, they were inventing a little discipline, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So so you just kind of did it all.
[SPEAKER_01]: These were very unusual women and and there are lots of wonderful books
[SPEAKER_01]: Professor does a lot of work on these women, and she's written a wonderful book called Women in the Valley of the Kings.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, incredible book, full of stories about these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my first piece of advice for your listeners is do your research, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the women exist at any point in history who are just doing something a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I always liked to start kind of,
[SPEAKER_01]: grounding in reality because the way independence and free thinking and spirit kind of shows up, it is historically specific, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Things that feel like radical acts of of individuality in
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, 1890, it looked really different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then radical acts of individuality in 20, 20, to X.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, you really need to, I think, situate yourself in those time periods so that you're not writing someone who's completely a historical.
[SPEAKER_01]: But...
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for character, I mean, I don't know, we've just introduced a whole different, I'm a psychotherapist, so I've spent my whole life being very interested in what, what makes up a character that is to say how does a person think about themselves, what stories do they have about themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: and their relationships, what stories do they have about themselves and their strengths?
[SPEAKER_01]: What dreams do they have for themselves?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did they see themselves as a collection of roles?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they see themselves as a collection of wishes, interests, priorities, relationships?
[SPEAKER_01]: what are they proud of about themselves?
[SPEAKER_01]: What kinds of moments in their lives do they feel define them as a person?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in a sense characters are like regular people, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We all have those
[SPEAKER_01]: we could all tell a story about ourselves and what makes us us and past or present you want to be able to do that with your characters and so I always feel like there are as many different kinds of strong female characters as there are different kinds of weak female characters you know it's not it's not a particular the strong woman character isn't a particular kind of
[SPEAKER_01]: Barbie that you try to out and that's your strong woman, Barbie, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: There you have their strong in different ways in different circumstances and everybody has things about them that make them vulnerable.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, you chose to write Helen in the past in the first person.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then Maddie sort of present day in the third person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, is that like, how do you how do you decide which character should be first, which should be third?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you play around with that until the voice feels right to you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I talk on the podcast all the time about circling the building of the work.
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the beginning, there are so many options available to us, but writers like yourself, I know that you're very intentional with your choices, so can you take us through that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, point of view.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've played with point of view in each of the books I've done, I've played with it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I don't have one default point of view that I always go back to, and it is a question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the way that you phrase that, I've circling the building and figuring out
[SPEAKER_01]: what is the right thing for this book and for this character?
[SPEAKER_01]: I am quite an auditory writer that is to say, I hear voices.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can hear it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a sense in which I can hear my characters' voices.
[SPEAKER_01]: Much more than I can see them, for example, like with Liz, who's very visual as a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I can't tell you exactly what people look like.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you reclusely, you'll notice a lot of physical descriptions.
[SPEAKER_01]: because it feels a little forced to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I can do is really hear them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can hear them talking.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can hear their dialogue.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Helen was always in the first person for Merck, just really hear her.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I liked the contrast of doing a different point of view between the two parts of the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like the first person in the past was great because it is
[SPEAKER_01]: you're building dropped into a foreign place, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a long time ago, a different part of the world is also a very distinctive setting, like an archeological,
[SPEAKER_01]: dig site at that particular point in time like none of us have been there and none of us really know very much about it because it's not even a part of egyptology like so there's archaeology and in that there's the host of egyptology and deep buried in that is this tiny little
[SPEAKER_01]: Hot of paparology and most people know nothing about it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So putting it in the first person just makes it more immediate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's more Starling, it's like you feel it there and you don't I think you don't have to work as hard to try to picture it you're just there
[SPEAKER_01]: In the present, the third person just let me do a wider lens.
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt like I wanted you to be really literally in the dirt with Helen.
[SPEAKER_01]: With Maddie, I wanted you to be able to kind of see a way broader lens because I'm also talking about a whole lot of political and cultural themes about artifacts and institutions and how they operate
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just wanted to like have a little bit of a wider lens, I think, in the present day.
[SPEAKER_01]: And third person, you know, you give up something an immediacy to get a broader view of the landscape.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for our listeners, so important because how Kate just spoke about it, just speaks to the, you know, choosing something on purpose to serve a purpose as opposed to just being like, I'm kind of like their person passed, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, remember, in past tense, if somebody is relating something in past tense, they can give foreshadowing, for example, that you can't have in the present tense, but you have immediacy in the present tense.
[SPEAKER_02]: So always, where those pros and cons, we pretty much at the end of our time, but something that I also wanted to ask you, Kate, was coming up with Kelly Uppellist.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a real place, but it's based on real places.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you have, I know you said you're not really a visual person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you create maps of the place to keep everything in your mind drawing or something?
[SPEAKER_01]: I did.
[SPEAKER_01]: I drew a hand drew a map that I was using and I kept changing it around, because I did want to be kind of realistic about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's this town.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is imaginary, but it's roughly in the location of a town that exists now that wasn't especially itself famous as a dig site, but has in its vicinity many, many famous sites which were all kind of a feature of a like a geographical shift in your nation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stay with me in Egypt.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were often aisles.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a period of time where a whole lot of canals got built to irrigate the desert.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, politics shifted foronic power, kind of disappeared.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot of political shifting around the canals silted in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there are all kinds of towns dotted through an area called the fine desert and then on the website of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: that became kind of ghost towns, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they're like, you know, like the towns, like Ephesus and Turkey and Rye and England where the ocean receded and these towns which have been really incredible and important reports.
[SPEAKER_01]: But
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, orphaned, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that happened all over this part of Egypt, and it left these little time capsules of these places that had been extremely important port towns and had, you know, very active literary cultures, for example, which is important for paparis,
[SPEAKER_01]: because they were up kind of at the top of culture where, you know, you've taken care of shelter and food and housing and now you're into the arts production and, you know, having interesting food and and like having delegations of authority and all kinds of government and so on, right, which happens as a society becomes more.
[SPEAKER_01]: powerful and sophisticated and then they just like got cut off the knees because these can out so let's know.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what makes them interesting from a pirate's point of view and so I imagined a town like this that had these traits that had been on a canal and there are there are many of them like it and many of them have produced really incredible artifacts and the artifacts that get found in this book are artifacts that have been found at some of these sites.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, very last question, with research, I find as a writer that research becomes a procrastination tool for me because the more I find out, the more I want to find out and eventually, it goes away or flack.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how do you know with this kind of book, because it's like the tip of the iceberg, you've got to know so much, but you can't show your reader everything, you know, otherwise it's going to be like a textbook.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how do you get that balance of the tip of
[SPEAKER_02]: have to include just enough for specificity, but not so much that it's too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not going to be that helpful for your readers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a feeling.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a feeling about
[SPEAKER_01]: I, one, like internally, I'm now avoiding the writing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: This, I'm, I am, there's a point at which you know that you know enough to write, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But you're avoiding the writing, because the writing is hard on the research as fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: That moment of catching yourself in, I could read one more book about this thing I've already read a few books about, or I could get down to the business of writing knowing
[SPEAKER_01]: point where I feel like I need to know more about one specific thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm pretty sure I can go stop, take a day and find the resource, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So some of that is just the discipline of curbing your own special interest and your own avoidance about doing the hard stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But some of it is, like you don't even necessarily know what you need to know until you get into the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: who this character is and what they're doing to get started on a first draft or an outline, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are things, even though I'm a planner, and I'm, I accept that as a planner, there is pantsing that has to happen on the, along the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're a pantser, there's some planning that has to happen a long way.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I know that even though I'm a planner, my plan will have to change because as I'm writing, there'll be stuff that isn't working or
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to take this in a slightly different direction to pull in the other timeline, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially with the dual timeline, when you're trying to match them up, you're going to find that what you thought was going to work doesn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there are moments where you have to develop something different so that it's more exciting.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something better to find in the present or whatever, over the problem is, but the tool timeline problem,
[SPEAKER_01]: definitely creates quite a few moments along the way where you have to stop and rethink.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's the end of our time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a ton more questions but luckily I'll be getting to interview Kate again so I will hopefully get through all of those.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm holding up the cover again city of the muse.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please we're linked to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page if you buy it there you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time and you support Kate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Kate, we wish you so much luck with this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll see you at the lunch.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah!
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's it for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you'll join us for next week's show.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the meantime, keep at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember, it just takes one yes.