Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation Podcast with your host, best-selling author, nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you've had a good week. Now, last week was the end of season two of the Conversation Podcast and season three starts on Tuesday, the 17th of September 2024. Now, I didn't want to leave you alone for the next couple of weeks. I didn't want to leave you with dead air, so what I have coming up is the best of season two.
Nadine Matheson:Now, as I said last week, I know I've called it the best of season two, but, believe me, every conversation that I've had in season two and in season one have been fantastic conversations, but I thought it would be nice to give you a compilation. In this week's episode you will hear from SA Cosby, tim Glister, dorothy Coombson, derek Thompson, erin Kelly and Simon Mair. The best of season two starts with my conversation with award-winning New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of All the Sinners, bleed, razorblade, tears and Blacktop Wasteland, sa Cosby, and in our conversation we talk about rejection, ego and being humble. Now, as always, sit back, go for a walk and enjoy the conversation.
S.A. Cosby:His encouragement did keep me going a lot, because I got so many rejections. I got oh gosh, I got rejected in double and triple digits, sometimes for stuff.
Nadine Matheson:You could see my face. I don't. I've spoken to writers who have kept a spreadsheet of their rejections. And I don't think I don't like Excel anyway, so I wouldn't have done a spreadsheet and I don't think I I don't like Excel anyway, so I wouldn't have done a spreadsheet, but I don't think I would have been keeping a note of it because I don't know what that would have done to me mentally to be cataloging or tabling these rejections.
S.A. Cosby:It just made me more determined to write, like I. I used to have a file with the rejection emails. Determined to write like I, I used to have a file with the rejection emails. I would take them out of my main email, put them in a file and I would just tell myself one day everybody who's rejected me is going to regret it.
Nadine Matheson:So I guess spite kind of kept me going but I think I think you need that, I think you need to have a bit of spite, you need a little bit of pettiness, because I do I acknowledge there is a bit of a petty side to me. So when you do get so, when you do get success in whatever it is and you know, someone in your past has maybe looked down at it or been critical about it and I'm like, yeah, okay, look at me now. Yeah, look at me now. Yeah, I got the face. And then there's a stubbornness as well, like well, no, you can't tell me, no, I'm just going to keep on going.
S.A. Cosby:I think also, as a writer, you have to have a little bit bit of ego, a little bit of egotism, because you have to believe that what you're trying to say in your perspective is worth other people seeing it. You know, and I think you know, it's good to have a healthy dose of no, I am good. This, what I'm saying, is important, you know. It's funny, though, because for me, once I started to have a little bit of success, I sort of regressed. I got very humble. I still am, and I'm very self-deprecating and I don't think I'm a big deal. I think I don't take myself seriously. I take the writing seriously.
S.A. Cosby:No-transcript had that conversation with him. I was online looking at something and I saw this clip of Alan Moore and he did like one of these masterclass thing, but he said this most, this incredibly beautiful thing. He said I hope that right, and I'm paraphrasing, but I hope that writers of today are emerging writers, don't just think of themselves as entertainers. You know, he said books have changed the world. Writing can change the world. You're a part of this lineage, this legacy that, like started with people around fires in a cave.
S.A. Cosby:He said this. He said you know story, and writers are telling stories that are myths, and myths are what society thinks it should be, and we do that. We show them what they could be for good or ill, and that just it's. It's stuck with me. It makes me emotional thinking about it because I do think writing. I think, you know, the first duty of a writer is to entertain, but the second duty is to make you think. You know, I have a tattoo on my arm that says writers tell lies to find the truth, and I fervently believe it.
Nadine Matheson:I mean the thing about writing especially. You know, being at not even a young age, any age, but it opens you up to so many different worlds and you can, you know, you experience the world, you experience lives and they could be real lives, fictional lives, alternative realities. It gives you access to so many things, which is why I find it very frustrating when I see what's coming out of the states with the book banning, because I just it makes no sense to me. How do you feel about that? I didn't even know we were going to talk about.
S.A. Cosby:Oh, it's it, it's insane. And the funny thing about book banning, it's quaint that somebody thinks they can ban a book in the age of internet. You know, when I was a kid, you know, yeah, when I was a kid, there were books that were like verbote. Oh, you know, like there was a book called the anarchist cookbook or last exit of brooklyn, and you had to search for those books. You had to go to like a rare, like used bookstore to find these books that were dangerous. And now kids can go on the internet and access it through any archives, through any portal. So the idea for me, the book banning, is terrible and it's stupid. But it's also very performative, you know, it's just. It's people trying to make a point when, like I said, any kid over 10 can find any book they want. So you're not really accomplishing anything. You're showing off for your base or for your supporters or for people who are narrow minded like you.
S.A. Cosby:But I do think it is dangerous to think that there are books and words that children should read. I mean, yeah, of course there are books that are above a child's intellect, but the books that they're banning aren't obscene. They're not, you know, they're not pornographic. They're books about ideas and, again, if you think you can control ideas, I think it's very naive to think that.
S.A. Cosby:I think it's very quaint, like I said, to think that you can control the flow of ideas. And that's what it is basically in America. They want to control what the kids read and nobody. You're always smarter after you've read a book, no matter what it is, and there are people who want to keep people dumb and ignorant. And every time you read a book, like you said, you open your mind to another world, different perspective, a different point of view, and there's a whole contingent united states that doesn't want that. They have one point of view. They want everybody to sort of fall in line. But, like I said, you know, again, if you think you can stop a kid from reading a book, well you know, good luck with that.
Nadine Matheson:So you know you're talking about when we were younger, it was. It took hard work and determination to find something you wasn't supposed to find. And back then, when you know, when you were looking for stuff that you weren't supposed to read, it was stuff that was considered dangerous, but in the sense of, oh, it might be. Well, I'm saying I'm not saying porn, but you know something that would be considered racy in that? Yeah, oh, let me go.
Nadine Matheson:Let me go and find it, whereas these are, but you know, something that would be considered racy in that, yeah, oh, let me go, let me go and find it, whereas these are just, you know, young adult, it's just not, I say, normal books there's nothing, I'm in them, yeah.
S.A. Cosby:No, they're banning like to kill a mockingbird because it. And I saw this article where they said well, we don't want this in our library because it makes certain people uncomfortable. That's the point of the book. You're supposed to be uncomfortable with racism. That's the whole point. And so you know. I think it's like you said. But when we were kids, if you wanted a underground book or a book that was you know, sort of dangerous or something like that, it was like Indiana Jones. You had to find it, you had to earn it.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, it reminds me of reading them. You know these books that made you uncomfortable. I remember feeling that way when we had Othello read . So I would have been seven, maybe 16, between 16 and 18, read A Fellow and then, as a black person, you realise what Othello is about and the undertones of Othello and You're like oh, oh. But there are lines in that book that stick, or in that play that stick with me, that it will never, never leave my mind. But again, it's education, it's learning and, you know, learning how to articulate yourself in different ways, and I'm not sure who said it and I'm sure I'm messed it up, but I'm sure someone said, like the most dangerous person to fear is an educated person. And that's what they're in there with farewell, oh yeah yeah, definitely.
S.A. Cosby:I think the idea of you know, of empathy and education and understanding it frightens people because you know again, like in in the states, there are certain contingents of folks who are against higher education. They're, they're, you know y'all. My kid went to this liberal college and then liberals turned him into a liberal. No, you can't learn. And your kid understood and became aware of a wider world. You know, and, uh, I think it was mark twain that said I think I'm butchering it as well but he something to the effect that travel is fatal to ignorance.
S.A. Cosby:You know, leaving your bubble, your small town, your small township, and going into a wider world forces you to be more open and more educated. You know, and I think that's true, I've had an opportunity to travel a lot in the last year and I've learned that, you know, honestly, people are more kind than they are, cruel. They really are. And I think once you get out of your little bubble, whether it's physically traveling or going somewhere through a book you sometimes realize. You know, there's a moment I think we all have when we realize our parents aren't infallible. You know that our parents aren't perfect and they're right about a lot, but they're wrong about some things and you learn that through education, through reading, you know.
Nadine Matheson:You learn that through understanding other cultures, other world, and again, I think that's what frightens people sometimes sometimes a lot just don't need to look around you I mean I'm not saying it's perfect over here in the uk, because you can see the same thing. You know, when they feel this, it's kind of that idea of you getting above your station and we need to keep you down, we need to minimize you, because then you know, once you're aware of who you are and the world, you can do things exactly, and I think that's the thing that people fear and they shouldn't, because people again reading literature whether it's a play, whether it's a book, whether it's a movie again it opens your mind and I think we're all the better for it.
S.A. Cosby:You know, I had a person send me an email. They read uh, raise blade here, and and. And they sent me an email about how that book opened their mind to you. You know what certain African-American people are going through in America, in the South, and on the one hand, that's beautiful. You know that that book helped educate or open somebody's mind, but on the other hand, it's pretty sad that it took that book in the year of our Lord, 2021, to open your mind to what people are going through, and so you know. But again, I think that's what books do. That's why books are important, that's why writing is important.
Nadine Matheson:Glad to bring you back to college and you said you dropped, you had to drop out. Did you ever feel as though you were missing out because you hadn't finished?
S.A. Cosby:Yeah, yeah, After a long time I felt ashamed of it. I felt, you know, because, yeah, because, like in my family, I was sort of highlighted as the smart kid early on and I knew that, you know, certain people had expectations for me to go to college. And, you know, even though my mom didn't want me to drop out, I had to. She physically needed help and I couldn't go away to college and you know, I have an older brother, but he had a family of his own, you know, and it was just a lot going on. And so when I did drop out, I felt ashamed of it, you know, I felt like, oh, wow, I've wasted my potential. And it made me feel really insecure for a very long time. And but I never, like, I never stopped educating myself. You know, like I said, I'm a voracious reader. I never stopped educating myself. Like I said, I'm a voracious reader, I never stopped writing. But I did feel like a failure for a while, because I think I had this idea that if I don't earn a degree at university, then I'm not really living up to my potential, I'm worthless. And that's not true. There's nothing wrong with getting a degree. There's nothing wrong with finishing college. There's also nothing wrong if you can't. That piece of paper doesn't determine who you are as a person.
S.A. Cosby:But yeah, it was a long time before I felt comfortable even talking about it. You know, it was just a. It was a difficult time period and I used to really beat myself up about it. I don't anymore, but I definitely felt like I missed out on certain things. And you know I had friends that were going to college and I would see. You know them and you know they come home from school and they tell me about. You know, we went to this great party or I'm learning this, I'm in this class and I felt, know, just really like left out, but at the same time I think it really it inspired me to get published. Like I had this sort of mindset okay, I couldn't get the degree I wanted, I'm going to publish a book.
Nadine Matheson:Up next is author Tim Glister. Now a fun fact about Tim Glister and I our debut novels came out in the same year, 2021, and we first met on an online panel. His debut novel is called Red Corona and it's the start of the Richard Knox spy thriller series. The second book in the series is called A Lol Traitor and the latest book is called A Game of Deceit.
Tim Glister:In our conversation, tim glister and I talk about the admissions that an author shouldn't make it's taken me a bit of time to make myself feel comfortable that my characters are not simply puppets I control, but are, and should be, living, breathing creations who can mess around with those fixed plot points that you want to hit. Yeah, it's funny. It feels like three books and I'm starting to learn how to write that's what I was going to ask you.
Nadine Matheson:Are you surprised that you're taking you three books?
Tim Glister:you're like oh, this is how to basically that's how you do it, yeah, yeah, I guess, and actually I would, I would, I would say, and this, this feels like the kind of the admission an author shouldn't make. But so I've. I've written three novels in my richard knox series of 1960s spy thrillers. First one, I was, you know, the. You love it the way you love your first book. That was red corona.
Tim Glister:The second one, a loyal traitor, I wrote kind of in isolation. I didn't know how successful red corona would be. I didn't know how people would respond to it because it was delayed because of the pandemic. So I was writing book two before book one came out and I didn't understand why book two resonated with as many people as it did. When it did come out, people, you know, people were incredibly complimentary about it and it was nominated for for steel dagger, which was absolutely insane. But I realized it took me a while to realize it was because I had dared to go more into the depth of the characters, not in a particularly happy way. I mean, my, my, my conceit was what happens when spies are depressed. So I've got a bunch of spies running around london in in 1966 being feeling quite sorry for themselves. But it was that depth of character, that emotion, that sense of motivation underneath the plot, which it took me a while to realize was what resonated with people.
Nadine Matheson:So you know, yeah it it does feel like I'm learning what I'm doing as I go isn't it weird, though, that you know, when you look at all these, like how to look at all these, how to book, how to, how to book, how to write books I can't even speak today. When you look at all these how to write books and they break it down into you know plot and characterization and setting. Isn't it odd that character characterization didn't even yeah, I don't know, I skipped it.
Tim Glister:I still like. No, I would like skipped every like into the woods. You know the art of screenwriting, the science of storytelling, you know the hero's journey, just cared about where they were going. Yeah, it's been really interesting. I've made over the last year. I've made a really conscious effort to get into kind of understanding more analytically character archetypes and things like that, and sometimes it's really refreshing to see where I've done it intuitively and kind of like, oh, I can map this character against that and it works and I have done everything that I should have done. I just didn't realize I was doing it. But it's also yeah, it's also quite, quite concerning that as a professional, I was just ignoring, you know, the second chapter of every guidebook. I was supposed to be using.
Nadine Matheson:Who needs character?
Tim Glister:we just need to skip and keep going.
Nadine Matheson:Welcome to the conversation with the fraud, tim glitzer we're talking about fraud, because talking about fraud I was talking to other authors recently we've been talking about imposter syndrome. Do you think or did it ever come into your mind, imposter syndrome when you realize, oh, I've overlooked this important aspect?
Tim Glister:so I mean I always. I mean not for that I've always had imposter syndrome. I've, I mean I back when I agented. I worked with the likes of Charles Cumming, henry Port, ellie Griffiths when she was starting out people who are massive, incredible talents. And it took me the decade after which I left publishing to kind of have the gall and the gumption to try writing full-length fiction myself. So it that took me a long time to get over and I wrote my first book almost entirely in secret, disappeared off the face of the planet. Friends wondered where I'd gone and then we all did. But even even now, like I, I, when I'm kind of lucky enough to get invited to festivals, I sit on panels with legitimately successful, famous, regarded spy writers and I just kind of can't believe that I'm also there I don't know why I find it so fascinating that you know you worked as and you know you.
Nadine Matheson:You work in marketing advertising now. But when you had that career as an agent and I said all that advice you would have given to your authors and you know how it works, but yet when you put yourself in their place it's kind of like everything you learned just disappeared yeah, it's, it's totally the the only, like I'd say.
Tim Glister:Well, not the only, but the the main. The main thing that stayed with me positively is I remember my boss when I was, when I was agenting. She worked a lot with people who worked in advertising or were journalists and she said the reason she did it is because they know it's a profession. And now that and I never really understood that at the time, because I was always like if you've got a book deal, you'd write the book, you deliver it on time, you do everything you're supposed to. Now that I work in advertising and I have to hit deadlines and I have contractual obligations, I do apply that to my writing. So, yeah, I do, I do make sure that I hit my deadlines, I do make sure that I that I, you know feed in my amends that I'm, that, I'm a good author. But yeah, apart from that, everything else is kind of yeah, that's that strange disparity where one half of your brain knows what you're doing and the other half is like how am I getting away with this?
Nadine Matheson:it's a lot of talking to yourself, isn't it like talking yourself around? Yeah, talk so much talking to yourself about your books. But also I think I said someone you have you kind of have to be your own therapist and when you're a writer, to talk yourself through not even necessarily like completing a project, but even just starting a project, letting yourself feel okay about your first three chapters possibly being shit- you might, you, you might need to you might need to come back to them at the end.
Tim Glister:You will come back to them at the end. But yeah, it's and it's that. And the further you get into writing, I guess, hopefully you develop a kind of and that's why it is a good comparison to therapy I think you get this kind of objective, I guess, authorial voice. So you are going, you're still going to go through that creative graph of this is amazing. Oh, is it okay? Oh god, this is terrible. Oh, I might be able to save it. Oh, no, it's dreadful. Oh, actually, it's fine. You're still going to go through that journey. Yeah, but another bit of your brain is going to be watching you go through that journey from above and saying you know it's going to be fine, you know you're going to get there, you've done this before. You know 70 of the way through the manuscript you are going to feel terrible.
Nadine Matheson:So then it will end and it'll be great but you know, that's basically the free act structure, which is why it's that exciting incident and it's like, oh my god, it's not okay yeah, yeah yeah, it's looking better yeah, so it's the thing I'm great with structure.
Nadine Matheson:It's character before you know, way back when, when you're just like tim glister at uni, and even though we are where we are now, you being three books in with your, with your knock series. But was this what you wanted to do? Or did you just think I'll just be an agent?
Tim Glister:I'll be on that side of publishing, I'll stay on that side of the wall I, I think, if I was being super deeply honest, I've always had ambitions to be some sort of storyteller, whether that took the form of novel writing or TV or film. That's what I love and you would have loved to have been able to do. There was a point when I was at school that my parents figured I'd go to drama school because I didn't read that much. I'm not one of those people that comes, you know, comes to festivals and says I was reading agatha christie when I got out of the pram. I was always consuming stories. I was always, you know, I was always consuming stories, but they weren't, but it was kind of platform agnostic, by which I mean I read a lot of comics and watched a lot of star trek nothing wrong with that so I'd always kind of harbored secret ambitions to be some form of storyteller.
Tim Glister:And then going to, you know, go to university to study english is is getting to know how to you rhetoric, tell compelling arguments, make cases and also read and discover amazing stories. The agenting job was. I mean you can pretend it wasn't inevitable, but I've studied English, I worked in libraries, I worked in a bookshop. I was going to go to a job. You were going there, it was. You know the universe was pointing me in that direction and it did, and I loved that. And it did nice, you know, and and I loved that I loved helping people craft their stories.
Tim Glister:What I struggled with was when I couldn't sell them, and you know it's. It's difficult enough, and I think every writer has that kind of white whale project or albatross around your neck that you can never let go and you can never get quite right. It's difficult enough to deal with that. As a writer, it's also very difficult to spend six months a year plus helping someone craft and hone their writing into something that you think is brilliant and that the market might think is brilliant, into something that you think is brilliant and that the market might think is brilliant, but because of budgeting restraints or publishing schedules, they just aren't going to buy.
Nadine Matheson:Now I'm sure you've all heard that saying never meet your heroes, and I can categorically say that doesn't apply to award-winning and best-selling author Dorothy Coombson, who has a 20-year stellar writing career and there's a very good reason why they call her the queen of the big reveal. And in our conversation we talk about how Dorothy Coombson's photo didn't appear on her early book covers and how she avoids being pigeonholed as an author. You know, when you wrote, when we go back to like like the Cupid effect, because I was thinking about this, because I had the I don't know where it is now I had the copy that was kind of like the the star.
Dorothy Koomson:I don't understand.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, the star yeah, like I call it the animated cover. Yeah, and I kept thinking.
Nadine Matheson:I was telling myself I'm sure Dorothy's picture was not on the back of that book, because I'm sure she wasn't and I remember reading the book and there was something that the character said and I'm sure it was either a headscarf or something. I was like one second yeah, it was a headscarf. And I was like headscarf, headscarf, what? You're a black character? And that was what went into my head. I'm thinking 2003 the only people I know wearing their headscarves to go to bed are us. Yeah, and that's when it dawned, you know that's when. But then I was reading somewhere and I know it's happened to me where I've had, like, some readers that said oh, I didn't realise that you were black and I didn't realise that the character was black and in a way I'm like but why should it matter? I think for me it made a difference because back in 2003 you weren't seeing well, for me you weren't seeing, um, black authors as writing books, romantic comedies, yeah, yeah, yeah, you weren't writing, for that's it.
Dorothy Koomson:You weren't writing, they weren't commercial books.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, yeah, you weren't writing, for that's it. You weren't writing. They weren't commercial books. Everything was probably, and I say, drowning in the black experience it was, it was all literary books.
Dorothy Koomson:They were absolutely yeah, that's what, that's what people expected. And I know that over time, over the course of my, uh, writer career, a lot of that, my, um, I have been dismissed and ignored because I'm not doing what black writers are meant to do in the writing literary books. You know, I write commercial books and I write romantic comedies. I now write emotional thrillers, but over the time they didn't expect black writers to do that. So you know, that was I went against the grain and no, I didn't have, didn't have my picture on the back of the book because I didn't want to be put into the black section. I didn't want to be kind of moved, my book to be put there, I wanted it to have a chance at the front of the thing. Thankfully, there is less of that now with fiction. Um, particularly, I mean there are books that, yes, you want, you want to go to the black section or the whatever section to find. Yeah, absolutely. But at the time, you know, I want everyone to pick up my books, I want everyone to read my books. I want, you know, I'm not writing it so specific people can get it all. It can be put away at the back of the shop and no one can find it. And then publishers can then say, oh, you see, publishing commercial fiction by black authors doesn't work. It's like, yeah, did you give it a chance because it's shelved away. So, yeah, my, I didn't have my picture on the back of my book for ages and then I was tricked into it.
Dorothy Koomson:I was tricked into it, when you try it, by one of my books, um, my publisher, um put an ad for my website and then put the picture in the back and I was like, oh, you're like speaking, and I didn't even do know what. It didn't even occur to me until somebody I went to school with emailed me and said I thought it was your name. And then I looked at the back and there's a picture of you and I realised it was you and I was like, hang about, there's a picture of me in my book. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, good one.
Dorothy Koomson:They got one, they got me, you know, but did you ever feel like, did you ever feel um that?
Nadine Matheson:you were pigeonholed in the early days, I think people tried to pigeon me, or they tried to, but it.
Dorothy Koomson:it didn't work, partly because I I just wouldn't do it, I just wouldn't allow it to happen. And that was one of the things I'm somebody who's very high up in publishing said to me a couple of years ago you're very good at standing up for yourself, and I took it to mean that they thought I was a pain in the behind, because how else am I supposed to take that?
Nadine Matheson:I would always feel offended if someone said to me you're very good at standing up, because of course it's like well, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to just lie there, roll over and take everything Like should I have a voice?
Dorothy Koomson:Well, no, I, I, I understand what they mean is because a lot of writers don't, you know, there's writers who will have just a black writer or a writer of color who will have just a white person on the front of their book, and I could never allow that to happen. I have white and black people sometimes, or just black people or just a place, but I couldn't, you know and I'm sure I've said this before, but I've always, with the whole publishing thing, and I've given this advice to writers before I have red lines. There are red lines that I'm never going to cross, things that I will not allow to happen, and that's one of them. I won't have just a white person on the front of any of my covers will not allow to happen, and that's one of them. I won't have just a white person on the front of any of my covers um, my uk covers because sometimes the foreign publishers they do, and I don't know about it until, yeah, a lot after usually they let you know what the cover's going to be, but sometimes I don't um but um with my covers, that's. I mean, that's one of my red lines. I've got several red lines, things that are just not going to be crossed.
Dorothy Koomson:But everything else was a negotiation, and I don't mind negotiating, but other people just like you know. Oh, the marketing department has said that books with black people in front don't sell. So I they've allowed them to have, you know, white people in front of their books and I'm just like, and that's up to them. You know what, I can't tell you what to do, but I know that certain things that I couldn't bear is that I couldn't bear something like that happening. So I get what they were saying. They were saying that I have boundaries, I have these red lines and I'm very clear about them. No-transcript going to try and do someone else's job for them. But, by the same token, I have been longer than I was a writer, I was, I was a reader, so I am the end game person, you know.
Nadine Matheson:So I don't know why I keep going back to 2003, but I suppose it's that nice round 20 year mark. Did you envision this? Did you envision this length of your career Did?
Derek Thompson:you think I didn't know.
Nadine Matheson:I didn't 16 books, 16?.
Dorothy Koomson:How dare you? It's 19 books, 19?.
Nadine Matheson:That's 19. That's 19. There, you've got your hand. Whoa, come on girl, I've got the 19th book in my hand. I'm sorry, I don't know where I got 16 from.
Dorothy Koomson:No, I didn't, Do you know what? It's weird because I didn't. I didn't envisage anything else either, because it is a job and it is my job now and I'm very lucky to have this job. It is, um, when I used to work in magazines, um, as a journalist and editor, I just always thought of the it's always the next issue. You know, you, you're just working on the next issue, the next issue.
Dorothy Koomson:I didn't actually think of my career in terms of where I was going to go or end up, and it's the same with writing a book. Is it's? It's only recently, only the past year, because of the 20 year anniversary, that I've actually stopped and thought about what I've actually, how many books I've written. Yeah, because I I don't think about that, I just think about okay, I've read. Yeah, because I don't think about that, I just think about okay, I've written a book, I need to get on with the next one, I need to do the next book and I need to promote this one. And then now there's another story I need to write and I need to tell, and I don't very much sit back and go wow, look at this.
Dorothy Koomson:You know, my dream has always been since before I was published was to have a book and have a shelf in a bookshop. You know, have a whole shelf of. Don't you have that? I don't know because there's only one place. I've only been to a fourier, I think, and I've seen that everyone else has had one or two books. It's like come on, gang, get on with them, get with the program, get my give me a show 19 books.
Dorothy Koomson:You are a shelf, yes I am, yeah, theoretically a shelf, but realistically I haven't been to a bookshop yet that has given me a whole shelf, you know, which is great, because it means other people have bought books. So that's not a bad thing. Is it really bad thing at all?
Nadine Matheson:no picking up the cupid of fantasy, like once I found you, it's like, okay, I need to find everything else that you've written and then whatever. Well, you know, you're just waiting for the next dorothy crimson book to come out, and I think that is. I think it's such a great moment for a reader when you find an author who, like you're invested in like 100 and also as well, obviously it's like you know it's someone who I'll say, looks like you. It's not exactly you, not not the other you, but you know someone you you can recognize, you can see, you can see yourself. And it's not very often, it wasn't. It wasn't very often for me, like I would have those moments when I picked up a book, so all of that was important, and then you see you, just you know you're just carrying on, you're not I think it's important to carry on and I think it's important for other people.
Dorothy Koomson:I was talking to somebody recently and saying to her how important it was for her because she was. She was like on, she was feeling unsure about whether to carry on or to you know, maybe knock it on the head for a bit. I was like it's important because you need to show other people that it's possible and it is possible that you can do. That is possible for black people and writers of color to have a career in publishing. It's not an easy career, but I don't think there's anything out there that's it's easy career for anybody. Really it's, especially if you don't come from that world and if you're not one of the people who traditionally have it easier in that world. I'm not saying it's easy for anybody to get published, because you do have to write the book, you do have to stand out there and get published and, you know, usually get rejected. It's not easy but it is easier.
Nadine Matheson:Now it's time for a quick message. I've always wanted to say that Now I am really grateful for all of the support that the listeners of the conversation with Nadine Matheson podcast have given me. I can see where all my listeners are from and they really are from all over the world and I am really grateful for every time you have liked an episode, reviewed an episode and shared an episode and talked about it on your social media pages. I really appreciate it. But there is another way, in fact, two ways, in which you can support the conversation with the Dean Matheson podcast and help me keep it going. The first way is simply to buy me a cup of coffee. A donation of just three pounds, which I think is the price of a cup of coffee, will help me keep the podcast going.
Nadine Matheson:Another way to support the show is on Patreon. If you sign up to Patreon and there are all different options you will receive not only exclusive merchandise, but you will get a shout out on the show and you'll also get access to bonus material. All you need to do is go down to the show notes and click on the links for both Ko-fi and Patreon. Now let's get on with the show Now, before I start recording each episode, I always say to my guests it's absolutely fine if our conversation goes off on a tangent, because sometimes the tangents are where the fun is, and this and my conversation with Derek Thompson really did go off on a tangent at times, but it was absolutely fantastic and it was so much fun. Derek Thompson is the author of the Thomas Bladen series and in our conversation we talk about basing characters on people you know and the great milk float robbery and, believe me, it will make absolute sense when you listen to the conversation.
Erin Kelly:But but no, thomas, not based on me at all. I realised quite some time later that some of the other characters I'd sort of stolen, some of the family members of a girl I went out with years before and forgot and then realised, and in one case I stole someone's name. But no, they're not me, but they are the East End family because I used to work I was a milkman in Hackney which at the time had a crime rate second only to the parts of Northern Ireland.
Nadine Matheson:My dad did not want me to go. It's funny, I was talking about this on the weekend with someone at the Bookfest I can't speak, funny. I was talking about this on the weekend with um someone at the book can't speak. I was at bloody Scotland festival and was talking about it, about Brixton and how much it's all about gentrification. That's what we were talking about. And I said I remember being like 14, 15 and saying my dad, I was, I wanted to go to Brixton and go to hackney. My dad's like no, no, no, because those were places that you did. You just did not go to because they were just, it's just, it's just rough, it's just danger. It's just danger. It's danger, murder marvels in hackney. It's just dangerous.
Nadine Matheson:But also hackney was north as well, so never yeah it's north of the river for me as well, so I'm not crossing north it's like a river of fire.
Erin Kelly:No, I mean I hadn't talked about this. I was a milkman in Hackney. I was milked twice in three weeks company record. Why are they bugging you off milk? No money I was carrying money?
Nadine Matheson:Well, I say not much, but everyone was getting milk delivered at their door.
Erin Kelly:I suppose, yeah, it was not a good time. And then, um so, after being mugged twice, hammer and knife, um, I was put in a yard to work and three guys well, four guys came in with guns, three sort of shotguns, and someone stuck a gun in my back and, uh, hold on milk at the milk house where you know because it was before where they're stuck, where they're going to be stocking up the milk floats with well, milkman have collected all the money waiting for the security.
Erin Kelly:Wow, other security services are available to collect it. And these guys turned up with a white van around about the same time, so they must have obviously known. Something came in and they were tooled up proper guns, so not a good time.
Nadine Matheson:So after that, new york was a breeze really but if you told someone that you were a milk depot was getting robbed, it just sounds so completely far-fetched.
Derek Thompson:It does.
Erin Kelly:When you explain.
Nadine Matheson:You know people, I think if you're living in London around that time yeah, well, if you understand the dynamics of London and the East End of London not how it is now and everything's all gentrified, but how it was back then in the 80s and the 90s then it makes sense.
Erin Kelly:Well, the thing is not more than feasible. It did happen. Yeah, I mean people are desperate, and also some people. I mean the East End is famed for its criminality and its past. I actually used to deliver milk genuinely well for the short time that I was a milkman to Dolly Cray's mum. That's my claim to fame. And after I got mugged I genuinely considered going to visit her to see if she could help find the person who had mugged me or people who had mugged me, and then I decided against that because I thought that's not going to end well. But after, after the um, after the robbery and the police, well, actually, I think before the police got there, the real security call people turned up. I think they were security and they thought it was funny that we'd all been robbed, because they said in poplar, yeah, they'd not only been robbed but they'd fired shots into the ceiling. So they thought we got off lucky.
Nadine Matheson:How do you ever written about this? You know when people I've got to fill up, when people say that to me, you need to write about it. You need to write about it.
Erin Kelly:I've talked about it in this therapy, but no, not really. I mean, it was a long time ago, as ray winston ever said I know, but it's a.
Nadine Matheson:It's a brave guy, richie lock stocking to smoking barrels, sort of plot yeah, it is, I mean it's, I don't know it's.
Erin Kelly:It's strange. I look back, I have this thing about statistical improbability, the things that happen that don't really make sense, which is all of us you know. Wrong place, wrong time in new york I was on staten island. I took a taxi cab the guy was on crack or coke, took a bend at 40 miles an hour because I thought that's weird. We're driving on the left and hit the van head on and put me in hospital. Those rabbit really, really didn't work, did they?
Nadine Matheson:um, and so I was watching serpico last night and I just had a flashback of serpico which is completely irrelevant, but only because you were in new york and I was just thinking yeah, it's gone bad. How bad can it go? Serpico bad is that?
Erin Kelly:original serpico. Have they remade it?
Nadine Matheson:no, it's original serpico um al pac watching that last night, but it's the best, they're the best, that sort of era, I think, that sort of era of movies, the thrillers they're the best.
Erin Kelly:I think the trouble is now when they, when they remake things, it loses something, because it's also where there's so much focus on CGI and not enough, in my opinion. Not enough on characterisation, because people expect these big blockbuster movies and you can sort of keep it small and keep it tight and there's tension in that. You know you can put two people stuck in a lift and it can make for good drama because it's about the dynamics between them. I was stuck in a lift once. Fun's not fun enough.
Nadine Matheson:Needless to say, the lot of stuff was happening in hackney. But I think there's kind of like a simplicity in that, like in those 1970s movies, because I was watching the conference clubs. Yeah, they're watching the conversation, yeah especially I think during the pandemic as well. I just I couldn't watch anything new, so I was just watching old stuff.
Erin Kelly:Yeah.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, so I re-watched Conversation, I think Chinatown, the other day, but I said there's simplicity in it which makes it much more effective than stuff. That's a lot of movies that are made now, especially if you said with remakes and stuff.
Erin Kelly:Yeah, I can see why they'd make remakes, because they want to bring it to a modern audience, but some of the time it just feels like they're just trying to make money out of them. Because also, I mean, I had friends who said, oh, I don't watch black and white films. It's like what? What? On principle? You know, are you colourblind? What's the deal? Oh no, I just don't like them.
Nadine Matheson:Or people who say they don't like subtitles. You think you're missing out on a whole. You are of drama, you really it's, it's, it's so. It's so limited, like I remember I watched casablanca for like the first time. Probably must be about maybe six, seven, maybe a little bit longer. Eight years ago I watched casablanca like one sunday afternoon and it's so good. You know what? You know the philip marlo stuff, like how can you say, how can you say no to that? Have you ever imagined any of your characters in the movies?
Erin Kelly:I, I could see the the thomas bladen series as television. I don't think it would work on film, um, and I've got a kind of mini cast list for some of them. Talking about seeing characters, I was looking in a magazine years ago and I saw who I thought Thomas Bladon was and Miranda, yeah. So I took and I sent the pictures to my publisher and he said, oh, I didn't think they looked that bad at all. I think that's the idea that no two people read the same book, because a lot of the time you're bringing your own stuff to it.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, you do. You have because you know, with social media and stuff I get I've had when the Jigsaw man came out and I had a lot of readers they would send me. You know who their ideal cast was and who they saw Henley and Remuters and Palacios, just all, and Olivia, all the characters and I have them in my head, one way that you know my ideal cast, but you know it was four different actresses could have been playing Henley and, as you say, it's interesting how other people see these characters in their heads. So you've had Jigsaw man optioned. Yeah, jigsaw.
Erin Kelly:Man's optioned. So what's happening with that? Because a lot of people, myself included, won't know what that means. Yeah, well, the options.
Nadine Matheson:Basically it's like a production company basically says if you want to turn your book into a film or a tv series, can we have the rights for it? So you say, yeah, you have the right to, but only for a period of time. So they can have the rights for three years three years, I think. Mine, I think mine was free and then they had like a renewal. So you have it for three years and in like three years they try, they try and do their best to get a screenwriter on board and find a director and all this stuff and um, talk to other, like talk to the bbc or netflix, um, and you're hoping that three years, that everything, everything becomes in alignment and your book is made into a tv series. But most of the time nothing happens. The option just runs out. You hope you get this option re-options again. So it's just them borrowing. It's like them borrowing your, but they pay you for it. So it's not as if it's you're not giving it.
Nadine Matheson:You're not giving it away for free, but we've optioned and it's just look at it like they're borrowing your book for a period of time to see if they can turn it but that must, that must be good as a promotional tool to be able to say auctioned? I think it is. No, definitely, and it also is encouraging. I think it's encouraging for any writer to think, oh my god, my book's been optioned. Someone wants it to be.
Nadine Matheson:You know, they want to see in different mediums and have your character story or to be seen by a much wider audience, because you know there's a lot of people.
Erin Kelly:You know not in a whole, not in a dismissive way, but there's people out there, just don't read, they just don't but film might be their film and tv's their thing I um, among the many things I've done as sort of part-time jobs because I can't quite make this writing thing work.
Nadine Matheson:Oh no, you can. You're like you're seven books in. I'm sure you're making it work.
Erin Kelly:Well, I've written ten novels and I still can't make a full-time living out of it. Now, that could be the writing. That could just be a timing thing, but that's. You get the point.
Nadine Matheson:I'm not going to say it's the writing, because you said, when I look at your backlist and it's always nice to have a backlist and you've got your Thomas Bladen thrillers, which is the five thrillers.
Erin Kelly:Well, there's six now.
Nadine Matheson:There's six now. Oh yeah, so you said there's six and you've got your Detective Craig Mysteries. You've got two books in that series.
Nadine Matheson:You're published by Joffrey Joffrey Books and I, the publisher we're discussing the outline for a third book in the series. It's just that everything. I think God publishing is a strange game, Because look at Mick Herron was. He was writing for years and I think slow horses had come out years and years and years ago and it was just, you know, I'll say just a trickle and then all of a sudden it just hits. I don't think zeitgeist is the right, but it hits something and it just becomes. It then explodes.
Erin Kelly:I think it's the unknown. I mean, for example, when I wrote Standpoint, which was the first of the five of the six spy thrillers. I tried a lot of publishers and, similar to you, some of them were very encouraging and said it's nearly there, there, it's not quite right. And then, uh, joffrey books said it's an interesting idea, but we publish series. So I said, oh, it's a five book series, so I'd written book one, like every hustle, you know so many authors.
Nadine Matheson:It's all about the hustle, it is book one had been finished.
Erin Kelly:Book two was halfway there. Book three was I think it was two or three pages of notes.
Nadine Matheson:Book four was genuinely a paragraph and book five is a blank page award-winning and best-selling author of the Skeleton Key he Said, she Said, the Poison Tree and her new novel, house of Mirrors, erin Kelly. Erin Kelly is the most pragmatic, down-to-earth author that I know and she has the best writing advice. And in our conversation we talk about the realities of book deals and book advances. I can never remember who came in to give us one of our author talks, one of our guest talks, when I was doing the course, and it was yeah, don't expect to get the big deals. If you're lucky you might get 5,000. If you're lucky, you're like what do you mean? I'll just get 5,000. Richie does look really rich.
Nadine Matheson:Everyone else is rich. I want a castle well.
Saima Mir:Yeah, I mean, I want a castle as well. Be lovely. I've got a. I've got a semi-detached house in Barnet and I will. I'm very happy with that. But I do.
Saima Mir:I mean when I was, when I'm teaching evening classes and I'm doing long form courses, where I see the same people week in, week out for six months and they've usually looked me up and they can find out that I got a decent advance for my first book because it went in the bookseller and your agent always wants to celebrate a triumph. So they will say but you know, when you got your first book deal, you got paid a really good amount for two books and I said, yes, I did, and that was seven years ago. And now I need to teach evening classes. Because the other thing that shocks people is that and writing most of the time has the opposite progression to a traditional career where you would maybe begin as a trainee or an apprentice or a graduate and the more experience you get and the more responsibility you get, that is matched by pay.
Saima Mir:With an author it's far easier. The business model that publishing seems to work upon is that when you're a debut, you're just this ball of potential and you've never disappointed anybody and everybody's fighting over you and you know, three or four books in, I still, um, you know I still don't have to have a proper day job, but I still. I still do have to take on editorial work and every now and then teach or charge for appearances at schools or festivals, because you tend not to go in with a bang and then get more and more and more with every book because things just aren't sustainable at that pitch for more than a handful of writers I don't think because it's London book, that's we're talking.
Nadine Matheson:It's London book fair at the moment and I'm yeah, so I'm signed up to the bookseller.
Nadine Matheson:So, like every on the hour it seems to be, I'm getting emails about oh yeah this is the latest right still that's been announced for this debut, and this debut has been pre-empted at for significant amount of money. Yeah, and I just think for someone who's two, three, four, I don't know how many other number of books you are in. Yeah, see all that, see those emails coming in, to see that news coming and you're like, oh my god, I was.
Saima Mir:I mean, I would say, I would say, three or four books in. Yes, they did fill me with despair, not just because I was jealous. I'm always jealous, you know. Of course, of course I'd love a nice seven figure advance and be able to, you know, send my mum on a round the world cruise and and not be driving a 20 year old Nissan micro that's got grass growing in one of the windows. But, um, but I also, but I'm just about to publish my 10th book.
Saima Mir:So I've now, and I'm still here, and now I'm much, much better than I used to be at riding out and thinking, well, you know some of these people that are the book of the fair, and then everybody's talking about some of them I'll go on to meet in a couple of years and it's going to turn out that you're a great person and, um, yeah, they come, they go, and here I still am, and that's all I ever wanted was to be able to do this all day, every day.
Saima Mir:And I think, actually, survival as a published author, rather than world domination, is probably the healthiest ambition that you can have, because for me so far touchwood, it's been achievable. So if I'm looking around and thinking, you know why haven't I got six netflix shows in development and uh, why? You know? Why haven't I got all the publishers in america fighting over me? And why aren't I having lunch with reese witherspoon? Well, that's not gonna. You know, that's like wishing that I had the same body I had when I was 20. I could spend my life trying to chase that. But why don't I just get on with, you know, having a nice life with my fat middle-aged ass.
Saima Mir:Why don't I just deal with it that way? It's um, yeah, so I'm. I'm a lot more pragmatic about these things than I used to be. I just to still be here is you've still beaten the odds. I've still beaten so many odds to still be writing 15 years in. So that's amazing.
Nadine Matheson:I've asked questions I've asked this question before to other writers if you would have preferred to have had success really, really early on or have it later so you've had the progression with your books and learning your craft. I suppose then you've had the succession, because it's kind of escalated or just come out of a bang at the very beginning and then dealing with it afterwards.
Saima Mir:I've had both actually both, actually weirdly. So I started with a bang. My first book was really good to me. It's called the poison tree and it was made into a tv show and it got a good uh pickup in the states and it got really nice reviews and it was a Richard and Judy pick and I had an auction and that piece in the bookseller that I was that I mentioned earlier. And then things did get quieter and quieter with every book and then my sixth book he said she said was almost like having that again, because that did really well when I was not expecting it to.
Saima Mir:I don't know why, but sometimes the book just catches a light out of nowhere and I was so much better prepared to deal with everything when I had that level of attention.
Saima Mir:The second time around I appreciated it more because not only had I seen my career take a dip, I had also seen it happen to people around me. So one brilliant thing about being part of the crime writing community is that people are very honest and we do talk about money and sales and problems we might be having. Perhaps the editor that you love with your whole heart has just been promoted to a different company right at the moment. You signed a six-book deal and you thought you were going to be working with them, or perhaps um, I don't know there's a legal problem with your book. That means you're going to have to change the whole thing. We talk about everything. Perhaps there's a cover that you hate, or perhaps your publishers made you change your title. There are so many things that we talk about and now I can't remember what the question was it was about managing, about dealing with it, whether how you would have responded to success early on oh, yes, that's it.
Saima Mir:Yeah, but you've had both. Thank you, um, yes, so the point being that the first time, my first time out the stable, I didn't have writer friends. Point being that the first time, my first time out the stable, I didn't have writer friends, so I didn't have anybody to talk to about it, and so I didn't really know. You know, my expectations were based on somebody who's probably writing their first book now and they are reading the headlines in the bookseller and perhaps getting an inflated idea of what the long-term reality of being a novelist is. So when it happened for me the second time, I was lucky enough that I had some really good friends in the writing community who not only could I whinge to them and say I'm a bit worried that things aren't going the way I want, I also had their experiences. So I knew by that point that it's entirely possible if you are a good author, by which I don't mean you're super talented or you're winning all the prizes, but if you have proven yourself to be able to deliver four or five books that have all been well reviewed and you haven't got a reputation in the industry for being an arsehole and you've got a few contacts about the place. It's always possible to reinvent yourself. You know you can switch genre, you can write under a new name, and so I was a lot more confident in that. I knew if anything I'd. You know I'd had friends who'd done that. I'd seen peers who had really reworked their careers entirely and had a great second act. You know, not necessarily the name on those books wasn't the name that their mum called them, but they had a great career going on with a reinvention. All people had branched out into screenwriting and I just was more confident.
Saima Mir:I thought, if the, if the plan a that I had goes tits up, there's loads of other ways I can still make a living from writing. There are loads of editors I could talk to. I can tell my agent I'm available for ghostwriting. You know. I just didn't have and never have had again. That sense of this is all over. I'm gonna go and have to work in a shop because I have no transferable skills apart from journalism, and that is dead. You know, the kind of journalism that I used to do, that doesn't exist anymore. All the magazines I used to write for are folded.
Saima Mir:So, yeah, I just after that first dip and I had a second stab at success. I was just in a much better position to handle every part of being an author and since then I have had books that got brilliant reviews but didn't sell very well, and I've had books that sold better than I thought they should have done because I wasn't didn't think they were by my best work. Um, and you know there will be, there will be disappointments again and then there will be those random days when you know money or attention falls out of the sky from a completely unexpected direction. So, yeah, I, if I could do it retrospectively, I would definitely choose to build towards success than have you know sort of crash into everyone's lives and then there's nowhere really to go but down. I kind of pity authors, in a way, who have phenomenal success with their first books, because it's, how could you ever live up to that? I mean.
Nadine Matheson:I know.
Nadine Matheson:I know, go on I was gonna say like you see it happen all the time. They come out from the starting gate and it blows up. It's just big and it's everywhere and they're everywhere and it seems like they're all over the world. You know, they're being applauded, they're getting all the awards, they're getting everything. So I would think your students will be that's what they want, that's what they're getting. And then the second book comes around and it's like it's like a little puff of smoke, like a barbecue dying. That's what it's like. It's like a puff of smoke. You're like what happened yeah and you can't.
Saima Mir:I don't, I think. I mean, I think they're very rarely absolute puffs of smoke, but I, I think anything is going to. You know numbers I would kill for, must be disappointed when two, three years ago you were the third best selling book on the planet. But I think the real reason I wouldn't want that first off is because I'm going to keep going on about this, but it's, the best thing I've had out of my career is the friends that I've made.
Saima Mir:The other authors and a lot of the people who I'm closest to are people like Julia Crouch and Jane Casey, and we were published within a couple of years of each other and so we know we kind of grew up together as writers. We kind of grew up together as writers, and I know that a lot of your friends in the community are people whose debuts came out round about the same time as you. It's just what happens. You naturally cluster together with people who are at the beginning of their journeys as well, and when success is so stratospheric, so early on, you don't have peers. In the same way, you have other established authors but very few debut authors who are in the position of not really knowing how the industry works, not having that experience to negotiate publicity and attention and everything else, so you don't get to grow up with people now, last but not least, we have award-winning journalist and author, simon mayor.
Nadine Matheson:Simon mayor is the author of the geocon thriller series, which starts with her debut novel, the con, and her latest novel is called vengeance. And simon is one of my favorite people. She really is, and I honestly think that one of the best things about being an author is the relationships that you make with your fellow authors. Syma and I were debut authors in the same year and it's so important to build relationships with your fellow debut authors because you can share and help each other on each step of this very interesting, sometimes strange, but always exciting publishing journey. Now in our conversation, saima and I talk about how we feel about being asked where will our books fit on the shelves as black and brown authors, how we feel about those predictable questions asked at book festivals and overcoming the need to ask for permission as an author.
Nadine Matheson:I was doing an interview and we were doing like a pre-interview before the actual interview and they asked me because obviously you know I'm a black crime writer and my main character in my book is a black woman. They asked me oh, why isn't there more black female crime writers? And I'm like I literally said to them. I don't have an answer, not because I can't think on, but there really is no good answer as to why there isn't okay. It's not as if, you know, back in 2013, you weren't sitting in your room writing your book. I wasn't sitting in my room writing my book. We're out there, you know we're all writing our books, but between writing your book, finishing your manuscript, it'd be forget the Adrian bit, a publisher saying we want it. There's some kind of wall there that they're not prepared to. I say they're not prepared to look to go past. There's some kind of block which doesn't make sense.
Derek Thompson:So I one of the things I do is I do some work for the SI Leeds Literary Prize and it's a prize for unpublished work by black and Asian women and one of the things we find is that when people women enter um these competitions, it's almost like we need to give people permission to write sci-fi with black women in or with Asian women and I know you love sci-fi and I know you love and it's almost as if it's it's the stories that we hear it's really hard to get it's publishing and actually it is, but some of it is.
Derek Thompson:There needs to be support systems for women who want to write these stories and then who come from different backgrounds, because if you're not seeing someone around you who's doing it, you don't know how to get there unless you go. It's a big job, isn't it? But you've written your book and then you've got to go and find out how to get an agent and find out how to meet and so, and then you've got to go and develop those relationships, um, but if you come from a background where you already know a writer and you've made some writers, and it's just much easier, isn't it? Yeah, I think those levels of privilege it's that.
Nadine Matheson:I mean it's sad and it gets. I was talking to a friend about this last week and I said it. It just gets frustrating. People like you're having the same old conversations all the time. No one's able to say you know, no, they'll say we're going to do better, but you're like, okay, you said you're going to do better last year and nothing's happening.
Derek Thompson:It's the dismantling of the middle middle bit. So what I found was the commissioning editors really want these books and the people right at the top who were in charge saying we definitely want these books. And the people right at the top who were in charge say we definitely want these books. But what happens is the business structures don't reflect the numbers. So it's the way that they decide which book they're going to buy, because they have to look at old numbers, don't they? That's how they do it. They're like well, you know, Nadine's book did really well, the Jigsaw man was fantastic.
Derek Thompson:So we've got here are statistics for what books like this and people, writers like this, can do. So what that means is the next person who goes in can maybe get a book deal because you've got the numbers, but if you're the first person breaking into the room and this is what happened with Khan there's no figures and they literally say things like but where will it sit on the shelf? My agent was like next to Richard Osman, that's where it's going to sit on the shelf. What do you mean? Where is it going to sit on the shelf? You know that's really going to be a question. And Richard Osman, it's sandwiched in the middle.
Nadine Matheson:It's alphabetical order in the crime section. It's going gonna be a question where is it going to sit? Where is it? How many copies do you think you want? Like, how are we going to market it? Those would be the questions that you should be asking, not well where you know well, where will we place it? In the bookshop? The same place you place everyone else's book?
Derek Thompson:and they don't know anything. Because one of the things I I one of my favorite things about the Khan, when it sold and it was marketed and people were buying it, was, you know who was buying it? Middle class white men. I loved that. I just absolutely loved it, because it's always women buy crime fiction. And then it's this story of well, south Asian women don't read and actually that's rubbish as well, because the number of South Asian women who love books and have book clubs and come to the events, come to mainstream festivals, but also it's just like the book might have had a brown woman as a protagonist, but actually no one's reading it the same guys who were reading mario puso, the godfather.
Nadine Matheson:So yeah, because it's a good crime story. It's a good thriller and you know, you know the days you said those white middle class men who are reading the Khan. I'm sure pretty much they weren't members of an Italian crime family. They got no relation to that.
Derek Thompson:They were reading the pasta recipes. They were reading it for the cannoli. Yeah, totally, but that's it. It's that kind of thing that needs to change, and I am I mean, I'm with you. We've been to enough festivals where I'm sure you've got asked dodgy questions. You must have done like why are you laughing?
Nadine Matheson:because the thing is you can kind of predict when the dodgy question is coming from the very first word and you just think you know. On the outside I always say I call it my lawyer face, I just put on my very calm, no emotion lawyer face and inside I'm like probably every swear word it's like going regurgitating in my head and I'm thinking again, like again, this should just ask, yeah, just ask me about my book, ask me about the story. You can even ask me where I got my characters from. Ask me about the next book, you know. Ask me what my hopes and dreams are. Yeah, not, yeah, not, why? Yeah, I hate the question. Why did you choose to, um, write about a black character, a black woman? Why did you make her your protagonist? I'm like, well, one, why wouldn't I but two? What does it matter?
Derek Thompson:yeah, yeah, yeah, so many, so many obvious answers to that question isn't there. Why would you ask that obvious question like why would you? Well, because she's a great character. That's why I knew you were inside out. And yeah, she's cool, she's got issues.
Nadine Matheson:I want to knock. Yeah, I want to knock her out. Even right now. I'm writing a scene. Well, I'm fixing it and I'm like Henley, I don't. Honestly, you really need to have a word of yourself, because this is not good how do you feel when that happens, when you, when your character does that?
Nadine Matheson:well, they, I, I kind of like it. I like when they do things unexpected because you can plan all you want. You know I'm a planner, so I do. I do plan my books. I know I know how it's going to. You know start, middle and end. But also there'll be changes in it, especially when you're working through the draft. So, like I've kind of done the finished, I'm two-thirds of the way finished through the first draft, but I'm I've already started the second draft. This is just my weird process but, um, I know there's things that are going to change. I'm like I know I need to put in, like I need to throw in the red herring.
Nadine Matheson:So I'm like really thinking about that but sometimes my characters like right now my one of my characters has done something. I'm like I don't know why, I don't know why you've done that, but it's a good thing that you've done, because now it kind of fudges out the story.
Derek Thompson:How does it come out when your writer does that? I'm really intrigued because I know how it happens for me. But what happens? Are you tapping away and then you suddenly tap a sentence? It's like, oh.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, I think it normally happens with dialogue, because I'm very much. I know I'm good with dialogue. So I think when I'm working through scenes and I'm working through character interactions, it's being done through dialogues when they're having that conversation, or even it's like an internal monologue. That's when the changes, the unexpected changes, happen. Like I had no, there's no, and one of my characters, they had no reason to be leaving London. Now, all of a sudden, they're on the m6. I don't know why you've gone up there, but now I know why you went up there.
Derek Thompson:Are you like? Oh no, you cannot go there because this is not in the plot, Because how are you going to get them back? Well, no, they're going to get back.
Nadine Matheson:But those moments are fun. I think those are fun. I think you can surprise yourself as a writer. I think those are fun moments. That's what makes the process joyful.
Derek Thompson:That's my favourite process, that's my favourite bit, and it happened to me in Vengeance, and I was writing this scene with Jia Fan and she did something, and it was dialogue. It's exactly what you said, which is why I wanted to know, and she behaved in a certain way and I closed the laptop. When I'd done, I was like, well, aren't you just a nasty piece of work, gfm? And I was just like I do not like you. How am I going to write more of you? And then, yeah, yeah, it's funny, isn't it? But I thought my brain went to this thing where I'd been saying, when the first one came out we don't like Ghan, we can't be friends just randomly in interviews. And then I thought, oh no, but I don't like her. So what does that say? I do like her, but in that particular moment I was just like you oh how she came alive.
Nadine Matheson:That's what I think. I think when they do those moments that make you, it's like when you have a friend and if you use that that um old example of them, like they're going out with someone they shouldn't go out with, and then then they break up and then you're like, oh good, you've seen, you've seen sense. And then you get a text message two weeks later yeah, we're back together. You're like what the hell is wrong with you? And it's like you have that reaction of your own not not your, at least. I stopped saying that. I said clients with your own characters. You have that reaction with your own characters when, like with Henry, what is wrong with you? Why on earth did you do that? Like, I can't stand you, you've just been ridiculous. Now, yeah, because it makes them feel real. They're not flat, they're not one dimensional.
Derek Thompson:No, they do become real and, and I think they've become better, don't they? Yeah, did you always write? Also I, no, no, did I always want to write? I always wanted to write. Since I was a child, I desperately wanted to be a writer. I just didn't know how to do it. I didn't know any writers. Um, so I became a journalist accidentally again. Didn't know any journalists, uh, but kind of by that time, I think I was.
Derek Thompson:I was 27 by the time I became a journalist and, um, I called, I called up my local paper and just pestered the features editor and got a job. And because I was then in that world, I was in local papers, but because I was meeting writers and I was meeting screenwriters, I was learning how to get into the industry. Still, what had happened to me is, I think I'd written something and somebody had critiqued it as a kid at school, and there was two things that happened. One was somebody had critiqued it and told me I was fantastic and he'd given me an A plus, and I think I was about 13 at the time and he just came in and he said this is just such a brilliant piece of work and it was mine. So that made me think I can do this.
Derek Thompson:Then, when I went to do my GCSEs the English rights the English teacher just kept giving me Bs and I was like someone who wanted to get A's and then I just thought I'm not, I'm not good enough for this and writing is something that other people do and I don't know how to do it. And I didn't have enough money thing is, I didn't have enough money to go on courses. Um, yeah, like it's fantastic. Um, so, yeah, I did. And then, um, when I, when I got pregnant and I was 36 no, 39, I was 39 I thought, all right, if I'm, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it now.
Derek Thompson:So I always wrote things, I always wrote features, but I'd never written a novel and that was I'd written. Actually, I'd written one novel and somebody else had read it and people had just been really disparaging of it and they shouldn't have been, because when I found it recently and I read it and I thought actually it wasn't bad. But that's one of the ways that people sometimes destroy confidence in the system. So, yeah, I always wanted to write, always wanted to tell stories.
Nadine Matheson:I really hope that you enjoyed listening to part one of the best of season two of the conversations with Nadine Matheson, and don't forget that the full conversations are available for you to listen to whenever you want. I'll be back next week with part two of the best of season two of the Conversation with Nadine Matheson, featuring authors Katie Brent, harriet Tice, femi Coyote, sj Watson, hia Abdullah and Joe Callaghan. Make sure that you subscribe and you'll never miss the next episode, and you definitely don't want to miss season three. And also, don't forget to like, share and leave a review. It really means a lot and it also helps the podcast, and you can also support the podcast on Ko-fi by buying me a cup of coffee, and also on patreon, where every new member will receive exclusive merchandise. Just head down to the show notes and click on the link. And if you'd like to be a guest on season three of the conversation with Nadine Matheson, all you have to do is email the conversation at nadinemathesoncom. Thank you, have a great week and I will see you next week.