Ruth Ware: Timing, Passion and Success

What happens when a maternity leave transforms a hobby into a bestselling career? Join us as we sit down with Sunday Times and New York Times Bestselling author Ruth Ware, the mastermind behind "The Woman in Cabin 10," and uncover her fascinating journey from aspiring writer to literary sensation. Ruth opens up about the childhood conversations that ignited her passion, the determination that propelled her second book to success, and the unique challenges of transitioning from YA to adult fiction. This episode offers an inspiring look at how personal experiences and the right timing can lead to unexpected triumphs and her new novel, One Perfect Couple.

One Perfect Couple

Five beautiful couples.
One deadly game.
Who will escape alive?

Lyla Santiago has spent months working on a research project that could be the key to getting a permanent job in her field.
So, she can’t really drop everything to go to a desert island with her actor boyfriend Nico to film One Perfect Couple, a new reality TV show that Nico is sure will lead to his big break – can she?

Two weeks later, Lyla finds herself boarding a boat to an isolated luxury resort in the Indian Ocean.

The rules of the game are simple. Ten strangers have to survive together on the island - and the last couple standing scoops the prize.
There will be sun, sea, laughs and plenty of flirting.
What could possibly go wrong?

But when a huge tropical storm cuts them off from everything, the group must band together.
As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla realises that someone is playing this game for real – and they'll stop at nothing to win.

Ten might have arrived, but who will survive to the end?

Follow Ruth Ware

Chapters

• 0:00 Author Success and Olympic Excitement
• 4:21 Maternity Leave Motivation and Self-Doubt
• 9:56 The Journey to Becoming an Author
• 21:59 Deciphering the Publishing Industry
• 27:25 Understanding the Author-Publisher Dynamic
• 33:02 Unexpected Success in Publishing Industry
• 42:36 Navigating Publishing Success and Pressure
• 53:46 Reality TV Show Survival Dynamics
• 58:12 The Impact of Personal Experiences

Transcript

Ruth Ware: 0:00

But it was my second book that really really took off, the Women in Cabin 10. Partly it was a, you know, it was a fun concept that everybody loved the idea of, you know, murder on a cruise. It's sort of bit Christy-ish but it's a bit modern kind of thing. But I think partly I was so desperate to show that my first book hadn't been a flash in the pan that I threw everything at that book.

Nadine Matheson: 0:24

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, and if you can hear the excitement in my voice, then you will know, if you've been keeping track of my social media, that I've been having a very, very good week and that's because the Olympics are on. I love the Olympics. I'm literally living my best life watching the Olympics. I am one of those people. I will watch everything, and I mean everything. I've now got dual monitors in my office where I work and on one one monitor I've got the Olympics on, and on the second monitor I have book four, because obviously I have a deadline and I have to finish book four. But I just love it and I just think it's amazing.

Nadine Matheson: 1:18

Actually, you know, the crazy thing about the Olympics is that in events like judo, for example, you don't just train the three years prior to the Olympics. You know it's a lifetime. It's a lifetime of training and then you have your first match and you can be out in five seconds because someone nipped on you and that's it. The Olympics is over. Moments like that are absolutely crazy.

Nadine Matheson: 1:44

I love the fencing. I feel like I would have been a good fencer. The BMX was a lot of fun, but I shake my head every time I hear oh, I see the schedule. I don't understand how breakdancing is on the Olympic schedule. I don't understand it, but I will watch it. I want to see what this breakdance battle will look like. So, anyway, that's why I'm living my best life, and if you want to hear the best of my commentary, you just need to follow me on threads, because you'll get it all. You will get it all. Now let's get on with the show. This week, I'm in conversation with Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author Ruth Ware, and in today's conversation we talk about if working in the book industry is helpful to getting published, how we feel about the wrong book advice being put out on social media and how Ruth Ware manages success. Now, as always, sit back. We'll go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Ruth Ware, welcome to the conversation.

Ruth Ware: 2:50

Oh, thank you so much for having me, nadine. I'm so happy to be here.

Nadine Matheson: 2:54

I'm so glad to have you here, right? My first question for you is can you remember the exact moment when you decided right, this is it. This is the time I'm going to write my book and see how it goes? Do you remember that moment?

Ruth Ware: 3:09

Yeah. Well, so I'd say it's like a series of moments probably. I can remember the first time I decided I wanted to be a writer, and that was when I was really young. I was walking to ballet with my mum, which I stopped doing pretty early, so I was definitely fairly small I think I must have been about like six or seven maybe and I remember my mum doing the whole kind of thing like what would you like to be when you grow up? And me saying well, I think I'd like to be a writer. And my mum said which was good advice, but maybe a little bit more practicality than I needed at that age she said well, I think that would be lovely, but you might find a lot of other people want to be writers too, so maybe you should have a plan b just in case it doesn't work out. Um, so I thought for a bit and I said okay, well, if I can't be a writer, do you? You think there's a job writing the blurb for the backs of other people's books? And my mum said, yeah, I guess that probably is a job. And bizarrely I did.

Ruth Ware: 4:12

After many kind of twists and turns, I did end up doing something similar for a while. But I can remember the time when. So I wrote and wrote all through my kind of teens and twenties, but I never really did anything with it. I kept kind of just shoving the books under my bed, um, but I remember really vividly the point where I suddenly decided that I had to try and do this seriously, um, and that was when I was on maternity leave with my second, uh, baby, and I was sitting in the library and they were kind of messing around with the books, and I just remember this idea for a story coming into my head and having this realisation that I wasn't going to be able to do this anymore, this kind of writing thing, because basically it was a hobby, it was something that I just, you know, had fun doing in the evenings and at weekends, and I just didn't have time for hobbies anymore.

Ruth Ware: 5:05

You know, I barely had time to wash my hair, let alone kind of write a novel in my, you know, in my lunch hour, and I was about to go back to work you know, a fairly demanding job, had now two very small kids as well as, you know, all the rest of the life admin that we all have to cope with, and I just remember thinking all have to um cope with, and I just remember thinking I have to make this pay because otherwise I'm just not going to have time for this in my life. For, you know, for the next foreseeable however many years until the kids start school, and I couldn't afford any more child care than I already had. I couldn't afford to cut back on work. So I thought I have to write something that will hopefully get me enough money to cut down on work an extra day or to get an extra morning's childcare, so that I can you know, I can do the writing then, and I realised that I had this kind of ticking clock until the end of maternity leave, kind of ticking clock until the end of maternity leave.

Ruth Ware: 6:07

Um, so yeah, I sat down and for the first time, I wrote a book in the hope, in the specific hope, that it would be published, and I don't know why it never occurred to me to do that before. I'd just kind of written whatever I fancied, um, and this was like a story that I was really passionate about and really wanted to write. But I was kind of writing it in the full intent of subbing it to agents and hoping that it would get published that's like I say crazy.

Nadine Matheson: 6:31

So all the time you're writing stuff, but you you're just seeing it as a hobby, you're not doing anything else with it. You said, just putting it underneath your bed and then that was it.

Ruth Ware: 6:39

And then you have like this light bulb yeah, I probably wrote like 12 books like that and I think, you know, there was always kind of this hope that I don't know what, because I never showed them to anybody, so I don't know how I thought this magical step was going to happen. I think I let my best friend read a couple, um, but I was working in the book industry. Um, for a big chunk, I think, when I was a teenager, I was just really self-conscious, didn't want anybody to know that. You know, as writers, you put quite a lot of yourself into your book. It's quite an exposing thing to do and I think I felt like the thought of someone reading my novels was kind of the equivalent of someone reading my diary.

Ruth Ware: 7:20

And then, as I got older, I was working in the book industry and I just had this kind of horror of subbing a book and then ending up, you know, having to work with the agent who just rejected me, or you know everyone secretly thinking it was really rubbish. And you know, obviously it's all. It's completely crazy because it's such an egotistical way to think, like everybody cares about what you're doing on your free time and in my, you know, in my logical moments I knew that wasn't true, um, but yeah, basically I was just. I was just doing it for fun, with this kind of vague idea that you know, one day it would be great to write a novel that got published, but without actually ever kind of really trying to do anything about that part of it but it's amazing how powerful the stories that we tell ourself are.

Nadine Matheson: 8:10

Because you're sitting there at home writing these books you said 12 books. I just keep, I just keep seeing these books under the bed. But you've got these 12 books under the bed but you've told yourself all these stories and you stop to stop, you going that one step further and then one day you're like nope, no more, it's a different story.

Ruth Ware: 8:29

I know it's absolutely, it's ridiculous, and you hear so much, you know there's all this stuff about the pram in the hall and you know children being the death of creativity and I honestly think if I I mean maybe I would have come to it a different way. I don't know, but if I hadn't had that kind of use it or lose it moment with my kids and I think it was having kids that kind of maybe it gave me a bit of bravery, maybe it made me realize that there's worse things in life than, you know, having a failure or getting rejected, um, and it just made me get over myself a bit and I'm not sure if I would have been published when I did if it hadn't been for having kids.

Nadine Matheson: 9:09

So yeah, did you know you were good, though, because you're writing these 12 books, because I remember, like the first book I wrote and it took me ages to write, but I never and I sent it off to agents because I didn't know any better. And I always say, when I think, when I look back now, I sent it off to agents because I didn't know any better. And I always say, when I think, when I look back now, I had no business sending it to anybody. It needed to be rewritten and reworked and all that sort of stuff. But I don't remember sitting there thinking, yeah, I'm good and it needs to go out.

Ruth Ware: 9:38

So did you have that?

Nadine Matheson: 9:39

recognition.

Ruth Ware: 9:41

No, I'm always amazed even now on social media, media when people put books out and are like I think this is the best thing I've ever written and I always think everything I've written is the worst thing I've ever written, until it's published, um, no, I don't think I did know that I was good. I think I knew that I was competent because I could tell, you know, like when I was at school, I could compare the kind of stories that I was writing to, um, the of thing that a lot of you know my friends in my class were writing, and I could tell that mine looked and felt more like a book to me. But I kind of wasn't sure if that was just. You know, you, there's no way of kind of appraising your own writing in a dispassionate way. It's always the story that you want to tell. You're always filling in the gaps of the kind of emotional freight that you bring to it and you know that no one else is doing that. So it's very difficult, I find, to tell how readers will react to a book, um, but I think I just felt, I think it's partly because, you know, I don't know about you, nadine, but I grew up in a really kind of normal I wouldn't say working class, we were probably middle class, but like a normal working household.

Ruth Ware: 10:55

You know, my mum was a stay at home mum for a big chunk of my childhood and then she went and worked as an accountant and my dad worked in IT at the local council. We didn't know anybody creative, we didn't know any writers, we didn't have the first clue how you would turn something as kind of as weird and ephemeral and personal as a book into a way of paying your rent. It just I just couldn't sort of see the equation from A to B. And even when I worked in the publishing industry, I think that in a way almost made it worse because partly I was working in very kind of high-end literary fiction. So a lot of the people I was working with kind of, you know, like booker prize winners and stuff.

Ruth Ware: 11:54

So it was, it was a very different sort of um publishing experience to um kind of the books I write, um, but also, I think, working behind the scenes. You see how many really really good books don't make it, because you know it's just the wrong time, or everybody likes them but no one quite loves them enough to take them over the line, or you know, something similar came out last month and this one's great, but it's just a bit too close. There's so many reasons why a book doesn't make it. That's nothing to do with the quality of the book, and I think that just made me all the more aware of how not just how high the bar is, but also how like unfairly shifting the bar is, how the same book in a different time or a different month or a different editor would have a completely different reception. So I think that also kind of made me, um, yeah, a lot more doubtful.

Nadine Matheson: 12:52

Oh, do you always think back to what you're saying about how you grew up and and talking about you know, you don't know writers.

Nadine Matheson: 12:59

I didn't know, I didn't know any writers. I said my parents were both at work and we have a creative family because my dad, especially my dad's side of the family, a lot of his cousins and stuff they're in bands, so music, and my dad played guitar and my mum used to dance. So there's a lot of creativity on that side. But I think, like the world of books seemed otherworldly that's what I'm trying to say it just didn't seem to be in it. Oddly, that's what I'm trying to say it just didn't seem to be in. It was in reach in terms of I could go to the library and pick up books and my friend reminded me this of this the other day when there's to be like a mobile bookshop that used to come around like every couple of weeks to the school and with the little catalog and it was the biggest treat if you were one of the kids who was chosen to go and get the class books.

Ruth Ware: 13:41

Oh, I remember that and just the responsibility of you can pick eight books that the rest of the class gets to.

Nadine Matheson: 13:47

Yeah, it's amazing it's so important, it's like I've made it so I remember so, like access to books is there. But you said it's that jump from you know reading the books and accessing the books to being the one who you can be, the one who writes the books and creates the books and you you've got your little picture on the back. It's like that leap, that gap is not filled for you yeah until yeah, no, absolutely.

Ruth Ware: 14:11

And I don't know about you, but when, when I was at school, we didn't really have, like we didn't have writers come round. You know, my kids schools seem to constantly have people turning up and talking about this and talking about that, and you know visits from authors and stuff. That just didn't happen when I was a kid, writers were just sort of, you know, half of them were dead and the other half was sort of somewhere off. That you didn't actually, you know.

Nadine Matheson: 14:35

It's true, I remember being taken. They'll take us to see plays. You know, especially Christmas time we go and see pantomimes and things we had like a local theatre. We'd go there. You know there's always be the drama students who'd come in and do they don't take drugs plays in terms of would you like to write a play?

Ruth Ware: 14:57

this is how you could write a play maybe something to do while you're not taking drugs, but that didn't happen yeah, no, I know, and I think one of the lovely things about the whole kind of you know, author visits and stuff that we have these days is, I hope that maybe it does feel like something that's a little bit more in reach for kids. You know that they can meet an actual author who is just flesh and blood, normal person like the rest of us and kind of appreciate that that doesn't have to be something that you know you're sort of magically born with a golden rightly halo or something, um, but yeah, yeah, I mean I I hope it feels a bit more normal these days, maybe not.

Nadine Matheson: 15:42

I think it does. I think social media and the stuff, that fact that kids have everything at their fingertips, not, I think it does.

Ruth Ware: 15:45

I think social media and the stuff, that fact that kids have everything at their fingertips now I think it makes it a bit more accessible and also there's so many more routes to publishing now in terms of things like self-publishing and um, you know, I guess I was writing um a lot of the time. We, you know we didn't have a word for it then, but it was pretty close to sort of fan fiction. Um, I didn a word for it then, but it was pretty close to sort of fan fiction. Um, I didn't use the same characters, but it was definitely like often when I was a kid, it was pretty heavily inspired by whatever I'd just been reading. And you know we didn't have the kind of the fan fiction archives and sites that kids do these days.

Nadine Matheson: 16:20

But I think if I had been able to see that other people were doing this, then maybe yeah, maybe it would have felt a bit more attainable so when you so you're still working when you send your book out to agents, what was that moment like for you when you got accepted and agents like I need to see the full manuscript, that whole thing. You probably built it up in your head and yeah, yeah, I, so I send.

Ruth Ware: 16:46

I only sent it out to agents that I didn't know and hadn't worked with and I didn't say what I did. So I was still being quite weird about it even at this stage. Um, and I got a bunch of requests for the full manuscript and then a bunch of rejections, um, and then I went back and re-edited it and for the first time, I did show it to people. I joined a writing group and, um, they commented on extracts of it and I sent it out to some of my friends who gave me, you know, really good feedback of the kind of. I think writers are often actually the worst at giving feedback, because so often they're telling you how they would have written the book, whereas someone who's just a reader will give you the gut reaction that you need, which is usually like. I was bored in this chapter. I didn't understand what was going on in this chapter. This was really exciting. This just didn't make sense, you know, for me. I mean, everybody's different and everybody wants different kinds of feedback, but for me that's much more useful than kind of, you know, line by line. What about this word choice? I think you know could have been different, or you know. So they were really generous with their time.

Ruth Ware: 17:51

So I rewrote it again, that we're all we're about two years on from the original manuscript here sent it out again and this time I got picked up. And that was incredible and it was pretty swift between because a bunch of agents showed interest and the I eventually signed with an amazing agent, eve White, who is still my agent today, and I remember going home and lying on my bed and thinking, well, this might be the happiest point of my journey. So I made take most of it. As you can tell, I'm not I wouldn't say I'm a pessimistic person, but I'm I'd. I had enough writer friends by that point and aspiring writer friends to know that getting picked up by an agent is just the first step and that there's inevitably usually quite a lot more rejection coming down the road. So I think I had a sort of sense of I might as well enjoy this peak before it appears I'm going to enjoy the mountaintop and the view before I start to go downhill.

Nadine Matheson: 18:53

Exactly, exactly. It's weird, though, because I remember when I sent my book out to agents and then I had because it got sent out just like two weeks before Christmas I'd it was the full manuscript had gone out to those who had wanted it and then, during that Christmas period, three of them got that to me, saying like I finished it and I want to meet you, and I met them in the new year. Yeah, it's amazing, but it's also a bit of I was gonna swear, but it like messes with your head a bit, because all the everything you hear about is the struggle to get an agent, and then you realize, okay, it wasn't such a struggle, because now you've got three agents who want to represent you, and then my struggle was, let's be honest, I know.

Nadine Matheson: 19:38

I know, I know I know, but it does happen the other way. But then my main like concern or issue after that was well, who do I pick? Because all the advice, all the literature, all the information outlets out there writers and artist guides, all that sort of stuff it's all about how to get an agent when no one says, okay, you've asked for an agent, you've now got one, two, one, two or three, four. You might have 10 people wanting you. Well, how do you decide which one? And I was like I don't know, like how no one told me about this.

Ruth Ware: 20:12

There's nothing to guide you through that is there yeah, it's all focused on getting over that first hurdle and once you're over it's sort of like right, good luck exactly.

Nadine Matheson: 20:23

It's like they pushed you out the door, slammed the door behind you, and it's only then you realize it's now a succession of more and more. It's literally like doing a hundred and tenant hurdle race. There's more and more hurdles. Yeah, you're like, oh, there's another mountain. Oh, no, we need to get into submission. Oh, you can get more rejections from there. And then you're out in submission. Okay, you get picked up by an editor, so you pub to. You signed your deal, but you know you might write your first book. They don't like the second book. You're like, oh, there could be another rejection. And you're not aware of that in the beginning yeah, yeah.

Ruth Ware: 21:00

Or you know it goes out to retailers and they're like, yeah, we're not fast, or we don't like the cover, or we don't think the title is very good. It's just endless possibilities for having your ego pulled down to size in publishing.

Nadine Matheson: 21:14

How did you manage it, though? Because you've been in, you know you've been in publishing working, but now you're on the other side of it, where you're the author and you're now working with the publishers as the author. How did you manage it, or did you feel you were prepared for it?

Ruth Ware: 21:32

So people often ask whether working in the book industry was helpful to getting published, and I think for me, in terms of actually kind of getting an agent and getting a deal, it was not particularly helpful because, mostly because of barriers that I, you know, as previously discussed, existed mainly in my own mind, but I think it actually stopped me from taking that final step for a long time. But once I had an agent and a deal, at that point I think it did become really helpful, because I think the publishing industry is just it's so weird and so quixotic and has so many decisions that make sense from the inside. But if you are someone completely new to the industry, it's really hard to understand why a lot of things happen the way they do, why what feel like really counterintuitive decisions are being made. And because I'd worked on the other side, I understood all of that completely. I understood when things weren't happening in a way that made sense. I knew why they'd chosen to do it that way.

Ruth Ware: 22:40

So I think a lot of the frustrations that debut writers feel I didn't have, because I had experience of why things were panning out.

Ruth Ware: 22:50

I knew what questions to ask.

Ruth Ware: 22:52

I knew how to ask them in a way that ensured that I got sensible answers and I think perhaps that's partly why I've always had really really good relationships with all of my editors and my agent good relationships with all of my editors and my agent and I think so much of it is just people inside the industry.

Ruth Ware: 23:11

It's really hard for them to understand that what information is not obvious to people outside the industry and I think this goes, you know, this goes for for for all industries. You know you have jargon, you have weird practices, you have things that seem obvious to you, but it's really hard to remember that they may not be obvious to other people. Um, and I try, I spend a lot of time on Twitter, kind of trying to uh although less on Twitter these days, actually more time on threads um, trying to sort of dem on Twitter these days, actually more time on threads, trying to sort of demystify publishing as much as I can, because I feel very grateful that I didn't have to go through that and therefore it's my responsibility to kind of try to explain things as much as possible to other people, while obviously appreciating the fact that I worked in the UK publishing industry and other countries have their own extremely weird systems that I know nothing about.

Nadine Matheson: 24:09

It's better because I see you on threads and stuff when I always reply everybody listening to this.

Ruth Ware: 24:17

If you're not following Nadine on threads, you should, because she's brilliant.

Nadine Matheson: 24:21

Thank, you so much. Oh yeah, I'm more on threads than less, much less on twitter if you want to hear, you want to hear my, my crazy thoughts. But I think like half the battle on threads especially when I've seen like your and they're so good, like your advice but half the battle is it's dealing with, I would say, the counter advice that you get from the majority of the people on, like writer threads and book thread. You know that makes absolutely no sense at all, like what you're saying. It's like how do you feel when you see the wrong advice being put out there?

Ruth Ware: 24:56

um, it is really frustrating and a lot of people, particularly uh, I don't know why this is more on threads than on twitter. Um, particularly on threads, people often give advice. That is true for, um, self-publishing, but not true for traditional publishing. Yeah, but they present it as if it's a completely um.

Ruth Ware: 25:19

So one thing that's been going around a lot recently is the idea that you need a huge social media platform for publishing, and I've seen a lot of people saying that's why I decided to go the self-publishing route, because I didn't have that platform. So I knew I would never make it. And I've tried, and I've seen so many traditionally published writers trying to say it's the other way around. Yeah, by and large. You know, fiction editors non-fictions are different kettle of fish, um, fiction editors in traditional publishing really won't care how many twitter followers you have. If you've got a million, great, but then you'd probably be in celebrity publishing, which is a whole different ball game. But if the book is good enough, they won't care, whereas self-publishing, actually you're the person selling it. So at that point your following really does count, because how are people?

Ruth Ware: 26:07

going to find out about your book and, yeah, all I can do is say here's my credentials, here's what I have found to be true. Make up your own mind and you know know, some people will agree, some people they won't, and that's okay it's when they double down on it, though, and I'm like why are you doubling down?

Nadine Matheson: 26:29

why can't you just hear the advice, receive the advice and then like, move on from the advice whether you take it or not, but just move on. But it's when they double down on something, that's that you. We all know it's wrong, and after a while I'm like I can't deal with it anymore. I'm just gonna go and find another friend about comics movies, because I can't cope. I think. One thing that I want to get into arguments.

Ruth Ware: 26:52

Yeah, no, that's the thing. There's no, there's absolutely no point. One, one, one thing that I've got quite good at on social media over the years um is just accepting that people will feel what they feel and that's okay. You can't, you're not going to change that, um, and the more you try and make them not feel what they feel, the more they're going to tell you that they feel that thing, um, and that's, that's okay, that's. You just have to, just as you say, move on, find another thread, except that you're never going to agree on this, I think there has to be.

Nadine Matheson: 27:25

You might have to write one, but was there anything that still surprised you, though, about publishing as an author, even though you'd been in it and you you'd seen like behind the curtains, like Riz visit the boss? You knew it was behind the curtain, but was there anything that still surprised you? And then you were like I can't believe that that has surprised me the way that it has um, I don't know about surprise.

Ruth Ware: 27:54

I mean, there's lots of things that have surprised me about my own career, like there's just a ton of stuff that I never ever expected to happen, which has been amazing. But in terms of what I think you're talking about, you know, um, discovering things that I didn't know to be true until I got to the sort of author side. I don't know if it was a surprise exactly, but I think I there's just no way of appreciating this until you are in this boat. But I think I had never fully understood how, like, how, this sounds ridiculous, because, of course, on some level I understood it, but I never really appreciated how important a book is to an author compared to a publisher, in the sense that, you know, as an editor or a publicist, you know a publicist might be working on four, five, six books a month, every single month, and they'll probably be on their radar for 12 months. So they'll have, let's say, 60 books at any one time that they're juggling with sort of different levels of need and so on.

Ruth Ware: 28:56

For the author, their one book is their only book, that, that's the book, that's their baby. They'll have been working on it for a year, two years. Its success or failure is going to mean that, you know, it's going to affect their ability to write another book, whether they're given another contract. And I think, obviously, in an intellectual way I knew that, but I think I didn't really appreciate just how yeah, just how unequal be a very big book for the division which is quite embarrassing if it flops, but it's not really life or death Whereas for an author that really can be whether they're able to carry on doing this as a career or not. And that is something that, until you've experienced it, I don't think you'd ever fully get, however much you intellectually know it.

Nadine Matheson: 30:00

Um, just yes, that having your entire career rest on one roll of the dice whether this book does well when it's released, that's a very weird feeling it's okay, said it's, it's so personal, I mean, whether you like, I think people may deny it, but I think there's there's always going to be a part of yourself. It might be a tiny little bit of yourself, but it's going to be a part of yourself in each book that you write and then you hand it over. And you hand it over with trust that they're going to look after your baby, look after it and, you know, make sure it grows and it blooms and it becomes the best it can be. And then that may not necessarily be what actually happens. You're like how how could you do this to me?

Ruth Ware: 30:42

yeah, it's not about you and it is the whole kind of the whole baby metaphor. It is a really good one. It's very light waving your you know, your little four-year-old off to primary school with his 30 other classmates and thinking, oh, I hope the teacher takes care of him as I would, while at the same time knowing that she's got 29 other children she's also got to look after and that therefore, probably that relationship is not going to be the same as the one between you and your kid. Um, yeah, you know, that's a really it's a really hard thing to get used to, um.

Ruth Ware: 31:15

But I think also and it's probably one of the reasons why I didn't give up my day job for a long time, um, yeah, long past actually, when I financially could have done um was wanting to sort of protect myself a little bit in that equation, because, you know, if I am now a full-time writer, which I love, I'm incredibly grateful to be able to do that and it is really all I've ever wanted to do, um, but it is a very all your eggs in one basket kind of feeling in terms of this is now how I pay my mortgage and you know, the success or failure of a book could really affect that ability. So I think that was part of the reason why I hung on to my day job a lot longer than perhaps someone else might have done, because I think I wanted to protect that kind of ability to write from a place without fear. You know the knowledge that if this book, for whatever reason, didn't get picked up or didn't do as well, it wasn't going to be the end of the world.

Nadine Matheson: 32:16

So you know. So when your book went out and you know you've been picked up by publishers, you know it's going to be out there in the world. Finally, on bookshop, what were your expectations? Because you know, we all have. We all have our own definitions of what success is and at that time, as a debut, I don't know some people I think like my success. My idea of success would have been yes, I want to be in all the charts, I want to be everywhere. And then some people that I think like my success, my idea of success would have been yes, I want to be in all the charts, I want to be everywhere. And then some people would be look, I'm just happy, I got my names on a book. I said my pictures on the back and someone can my mum can walk into the supermarket and perhaps pick it up off the shelf and she can tell her friends about it at church. That might have been someone else's idea of success.

Ruth Ware: 32:57

I think I'm probably closer to the second one, um, partly so. My first published book was actually YA, um, yeah, and obviously that market's very different um, at the time in the UK anyway, um, ya was lumped in with um, all children's um fiction, in the charts and I'm pretty sure at the time the Sunday Times chart was only five places. So basically three of them were occupied by Julia Donaldson and maybe one by, you know, diary of a Wimpy Kid and one by JK Rowling. That was, that was it. So you pretty much knew that charting wasn't going to happen, in the UK at least.

Ruth Ware: 33:40

And I think I just I really wanted to see my book on the shelves of a bookshop. It was picked up by WH Smiths for a kind of like, I guess, like a promotion, at least slot or something like that. And I remember on publication day walking out of my office and going up to Victoria and looking in the WH Smiths at Victoria, um, and it wasn't there, just having that kind of like, oh, sort of moment of deflation. And you know, in hindsight that's a very busy branch. It's got a very small book stock. It maybe wasn't unreasonable that they wouldn't have unpacked it on publication day, um, but that was yeah, that was definitely a real down-to-earth moment of walking you expect to see it.

Ruth Ware: 34:28

Yeah, we saw it in waterstones and other branches and that was all amazing. But that that to be the first one was kind of it's like huh it's like someone stabbed you, because I had the same experience.

Nadine Matheson: 34:43

I mean always, always have the excuse of like we're in the middle of lockdown, so that explains it. But I knew it was going to be in Asda, so I took myself out of my house, drove to Asda, so I'm going to see my book on the shelves and I'm looking and you scan the whole bay, then you scan the next bay where the non-fiction is. Clearly it's not going to be a non-fiction, but you think maybe they just put it there by mistake and it's not there. And I went to two Asda's and I just thought, oh, hell with this, I'm going home, I'm going home. I haven't seen it. I didn't see it. I've said this before. It was only my friend who lives in St Albansans. Her husband had just walked randomly, just he didn't even know it was publication, that he just walked into Asda and it was there and he's like he said he messaged his wife I've just seen this book on the shelf and she sent me a picture. So that's how I saw it.

Ruth Ware: 35:31

Oh, thank goodness for friends. Yeah, I've still never seen someone reading my book in public and I I've had so many pictures from friends saying oh, there's a woman on my flight reading your book, or there's someone on the tube who's got your book, never seen it. So I still don't know how I'd react. But I like run up to them and go oh, that's me. No, I wouldn't, I'm far too shy. I'd just sit there kind of slightly creepily staring while they were like who's that weird woman over there?

Nadine Matheson: 36:01

I'll just be like, oh my god, he's reading my book. I said one of my other friends she saw someone reading my book on the train. She, I just got this picture. I'm like why she sent me this picture of this man, like this random man, it's just a random man. And then I saw he's reading my book. I was like where did she found this? And then the next picture was her with the guy.

Ruth Ware: 36:21

So she didn't just kind of like creepily stalker, snap him and then run away she went up there and said you're reading my friend's book.

Nadine Matheson: 36:30

I'm gonna send her a picture.

Ruth Ware: 36:33

I love this. Oh, your friends sound like the best. They're the people everyone needs. It is in asda. People are reading it.

Nadine Matheson: 36:40

It's amazing even though you had your, you know your, your first, your wh smith disappointment. That's victoria's station which is all this crazy they've stopped me very well since, so I can't complain all this, but how did you then manage the success that come, that came and still comes, because I always say no one can plan for that. I mean you can have yeah, but when it happens.

Ruth Ware: 37:09

So I wrote um five YA books, um, which I think stood me in really good stead because they gave me a really kind of, you know, kids writing for kids. It's amazing because when they love you, they really really love you, and when they don't, they are very happy to tell you that. So, you know, I did a bunch of school visits where, like you know, one third of the audience was absolutely enraptured and read all my books and really really was keen to be, and two thirds of the audience were, you know, year 10 boys had been pulled out of English and were very keen to do it. They weren't interested. They're just going to sit there with their arms folded doing big sighs every time he says something. So, you know, it gave me a very good grounding in dealing with feedback of all types, including online. And then so I had this idea I'd come to the end of um, kind of the natural finish of my sort of YA series, and I was trying to come up with another idea. And I had this idea for a book that was um, very clearly not YA. It was about a murder on a hen night and there was no way I could make it YA. But I kind of really wanted to write it.

Ruth Ware: 38:24

So I went to my agent and said I think I want to, you know, take a real kind of left turn here and write something for adults. And she could have said you know, stick with what you know. You've got a really established audience, your publisher's really great, all of which is true, but to her credit, she, she didn't. She said what you know. You've got a really established audience, your publisher's really great, all of which is true, um, but to her credit, she, she didn't. She said well, you know, that's what you want to do, we'll make it work, we'll support you see how it goes. So I wrote this book really with no expectations of um, you know, beyond kind of hoping that it would um sell in the UK. And it suddenly started to do just weirdly well overseas. It got picked up almost straight away by Italy and Germany in deals that felt to me at the time like pretty astonishingly big.

Ruth Ware: 39:14

And then it got a US deal, which my YA had not, and I think even before publication I had just had this awareness that something was different this time and because I had that experience, I had something to compare it to. I could tell that this wasn't, you know, this wasn't going to um, sort of be the same kind of trajectory as my ya, um. And then I think it was about, maybe it was like a couple of weeks before publication. My agent phoned me and I was struggling up the hill from the park with my kids, who were sort of I guess they must have been sort of seven or something at the time. So I had, like you know, the usual kind of paraphernalia of like scooters and bags and goodness knows what else, um, and it was raining and, like you know, the rain was dripping off my glasses and my agent was on the phone, said so, reese Witherspoon really loves the book. Um, and suddenly there was this film deal on the table, um and it. But because the book hadn't been published, it sort of just didn't all feel really real. Um, and it wasn't until the book came out in the United States and, um, I got a call from um.

Ruth Ware: 40:32

It was really late at night because of the time difference and when the um charts over there are published.

Ruth Ware: 40:38

So my kids were in bed, my husband was in bed, I was sitting up watching, you know, something trashy on Netflix and everybody in the house was kind of asleep and my phone went and I was like, oh my God, who's ringing me?

Ruth Ware: 40:49

At half past 11 at night picked up and it was my editor in the United States saying your books made the New York Times bestseller list and I just I kind of lost it but at the same time didn't have anybody to tell. I was like, oh my goodness, that's so great. And then sort of put the phone down and was like what do I do with this information? Everybody's asleep, all of my friends are asleep. So I just kind of sat there in my living room just I'm so busy with joy and then had to just go lie in bed and be like that's amazing. Um, so, yeah, so that was that was incredible. And um, yeah, my publishers have been amazing ever since and have really kind of like just tried to build on um the previous book each time, which has been incredible, and I'm very lucky to have them.

Nadine Matheson: 41:38

I've just had this image of you like trying like actually calling someone, calling one of your friends at half 11 at night quarter to midnight, saying I've made the New York Times in a response bin have you yeah, that's good, putting the phone down because you've woken them up.

Ruth Ware: 41:52

Is anyone dead? Yeah, I think they probably have forgiven me.

Nadine Matheson: 41:57

My friends are very nice and they would have put on a more, you know, a better face of like oh yay, I'm so happy for you, even while thinking maybe she could have phoned me tomorrow oh, you know, when you look back at that time and then you look at your career now, are you able to pinpoint, even like no pinpoint might be too finite to put on it, but are you able to come up with a reason as to why it was that book that took off at the time when it did, why Reese Witherspoon bought it before it even hit the shelves?

Ruth Ware: 42:34

No, it's a really good question, um. I mean, I think I was really lucky with the timing, um, it was sort of coming on the heels of sort of Gone Girl and Girl on the Train. So I think there was a real appetite for psychological thrillers and I think that Paula Hawkins had shown everybody that being British wasn't a barrier to success in the United States, because, you know, prior to that there really hadn't been that many sort of crimey big sellers um in in the US, um, and I think the girl on the train really showed that. Actually, you know, it was a bit like when, uh, scandinoy had a moment and everybody wanted to read books about people wearing jumpers and that was all um, and so I think I came along um at the right time for that um, but yeah, I don't. I honestly, I honestly don't know. I think sometimes you can just be in the right place at the right time with the right book, and it's sort of like the weird metaphor, but you know that, like fire triangle that they teach you about at school, where you need like fuel, you need oxygen, you need heat or something. There's three things, and if you take away any one of those, it the alchemy doesn't work and you don't end up with a fire. Um, and I, I think it. I think it was very much that I had the right book, I had the right timing and I had, you know, probably a fair dose of luck as well. Um, and the three together resulted in a book that really took off, although actually, interestingly, it my first book did very well, much better my first crime book, much better than I had certainly expected. Um, but it was my second book that really really took off.

Ruth Ware: 44:19

The women in cabin 10, um, and I think partly it was a, you know, it was a fun concept that everybody loved, the idea of, you know, murder on a cruise. It's sort of bit christy-ish but it's a bit modern kind of thing. Um, but I think partly I was so desperate to show that my first book hadn't been a flash in the pan that I threw everything at that book. It sort of, you know, got like all the twists I could think of and all the action and I made it as page turning as I possibly could because I was just desperate for people not to think oh, you know, she was a one-trick pony. Her first book was great.

Ruth Ware: 45:00

Second one, you know, not pretty, pretty forgettable. Um, I think I just threw everything but the kitchen sink at that book. Um, and whether that's why it took off, I don't know, but I think it's certainly. I just tried so, so, so hard to make it a kind of as good in a page turning a read as I possibly could have done. Um, but going back to you know what we're talking about at the beginning, of the sort of inability of, uh, sort of summing up your own work. I really hated writing that book. Every word felt like blood out of the stone. It felt really artificial. It felt really, you know, I've had real difficulty getting the characters to come alive and it was only when I finished it and was editing it that I was like huh, this is actually pretty good at the moment. It just yeah, writing is a weird thing it is.

Nadine Matheson: 45:50

But I think, um, especially when you're on threads and the other one I like to call it the other platform I always think there's a lot of and I don't mean this in a offensive is my word of the month. I keep saying offensive, I don't mean it in an offensive way, but I always think that, like new writers especially new writers they're looking for, like, the magic formula. They're looking for someone to tell them what the magic formula is in order to make their book a success, especially when you see and you can't help but see the latest deal that's being announced or the latest debut that's suddenly just gone straight in at number one and it's all over the place. You can't go to the toilet without seeing it. It's just everywhere. But they're looking for that magic formula and I feel like I want to say there's that there isn't actually a magic formula to it. You just have to write the best book that you can yeah, no, exactly.

Ruth Ware: 46:41

And if there was a magic formula, you know, publishers would have figured it out and every single book would be a bestseller and they would only publish bestsellers, and all of the books that didn't, you know, tick the bestseller boxes, whatever they turned out to be, would not get published. But, in a way, thank god we don't live in that landscape, because you know there's what makes one book incredibly. You know, some of my favorite books are books that nobody else has heard of, but they mean something incredibly meaningful to me. And in a world in which you know, only the sort of, you know, top five percent of books got published because the others didn't fit the magic formula, how incredibly boring would that be? You know we need weird books and, and you know, niche books and and experimental books and books that mean something to me, but not you, and that's okay.

Nadine Matheson: 47:33

So do you ever feel the pressure, though, with each book that come?

Ruth Ware: 47:37

that you've right, oh god always, absolutely yeah, I've tried to ease off a bit. I think, um, the woman in cabin 10 was definitely the book where I was feeling that the most. And you can see with the next book that I wrote after that, the lion game, that I've sort of taken the pressure off myself a bit. It's a much kind of slower book, it's a more meditative book. It's a book that's much more about grief and friendship and doesn't kind of um have the sort of constant bang, bang, bang of sort of events coming at you all the time. Um, but yeah, every single book I have that moment when you open up the blank word document and think, oh my god, how did I do this last time? How can I remember how to write this book?

Ruth Ware: 48:19

And I think you know the one of the odd things about publishing timetables and you know how long books take to write is that it very often works out that um, for me certainly, I'm usually um publicising or editing a finished book that's kind of beautifully polished and you know has had the copy editing kind of done until it, you know, shines and every word's been made to earn its place and every character has been made to, you know, be as interesting and distinctive as possible and at the same time, I'm usually about a third or a half of the way through the book that's going to be the next book, and it's always a kind of worst ugly duckling stage where you sort of you've hit the midpoint.

Ruth Ware: 49:10

You're not quite sure what's going to happen. There's a lot of loose ends that you haven't been able to tie up, the writing's a bit rubbish, because you sort of you know you haven't gone back and polished all of those bits. Um, and so every single book I get to a sort of halfway through point, and it's usually when the previous book is kind of, you know, just being released and I'm on social media going, oh this is all so great, um, and I remember texting, uh, one of my friends saying I think the book, whatever it was I can't remember which one it was I think this book might be the worst I've ever written, um, and she was like scroll up.

Ruth Ware: 49:44

And I scrolled up and there was me this time last year going I think this book might be the shittiest thing I've ever written. I was like, oh okay, it's that time of year again, is it so?

Nadine Matheson: 49:55

yeah, it's where I'm at that. I'm at that moment now where I know the cure list is coming out May, so we're in March now. So what's that? Two months it's gonna be, oh god, yeah, two months, not long, not long, not long. But I'm writing book four and I put on friends like earlier this week, like it's taking me 47,000 words to get a handle on book four and what I'm actually doing with it and I remember looking at that word count, thinking 47,000 words. It's taking me this long and I'm gonna have to not even not scrap, but I'm gonna have to rewrite.

Nadine Matheson: 50:29

It's a jigsaw because there's stuff all around places, yeah, I was like it's taking me 47,000 words to get here with book four, which I think is just a load of nonsense right now. But then I'm seeing people post who've been reading the kill list. They've got advanced copies, saying I really like it and I'm like oh, that's good.

Ruth Ware: 50:47

I'm glad. Does that make you feel better or worse about it? Does it make you think, oh, I am a good writer.

Nadine Matheson: 50:52

Or does it make you think, oh no, but this book's rubbish in comparison yeah, it makes me feel better about book four, because I meant the way I feel about book four right now. It's exactly how I felt about book three when I was writing the cure list and I was like I don't know what this is. This is a mess, it makes no sense. I don't know. I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm gonna go back to be a lawyer full-time because this is just shit.

Ruth Ware: 51:17

Everybody waiting for book four would be very angry. Oh no, I love that you can do I. I have days when I can do that and take a step back and say, do you know what I've done this before? It's gonna be fine, I'll just push through and we'll figure it out. And days when I just think, oh, this book's appalling.

Nadine Matheson: 51:37

But you know we do, we do, which brings us on to one perfect couple. You've got amazing covers you always have. I think my favorite cover is your zero days cover oh interesting, the UK one or the US one?

Ruth Ware: 51:54

yeah, uk one, I like the uk one with the kind of blue letters and the running women yeah, no, I love.

Ruth Ware: 52:00

I love my titles and my covers. They've gone um very different um for this one as well. Um, one perfect couple. The us has this kind of gorgeous sort of graphic stormy blue cover with like palm trees, kind of storm, sweat palm trees, and I think the writing is like bright yellow against this kind of stormy blue background. And the UK's gone for this kind of really sort of pink, sultry kind of desert island look with like a sun lounger and the sea. So there's like palm trees and stuff as well, but it's just, it's kind of photographic. It's very um sort of pina colada kind of colors. Do I mean pina colada? Maybe I mean tequila sunrise, anyway one of those very sort of you know tropical palettes. Um, so yeah, it's always fascinating to me how differently both sides of the atlantic see my books, and this one no exception. It's really. They've just gone totally different directions.

Nadine Matheson: 53:01

What's the perfect couple about?

Ruth Ware: 53:04

Oh, good question. This might be the first time I've actually talked about it in an interview, so I haven't affected my pitch. I tend to get better at summing the book up as time goes on. The main character in One Perfect Couple is Lila, uh, who's a scientist, and she's kind of got to a bit of a crunch point in her career. Um, and her partner, nico, is an aspiring actor who is also at a point where, like, stuff isn't going so well. His agent isn't really getting him any roles. And then, uh, one day his agent comes back to him and says I've got you this reality TV show. I think it could be your big break. It's like a new show on a brand new channel. So it has the potential to be really huge.

Ruth Ware: 53:46

But the catch is it's a couple's TV show. You have to go on it as a couple. So Nico has to go back to Lila and persuade her that you know, um, so nico has to go back to lila and persuade her that you know, far from a career in academia, what she really wants to do is take two weeks out and go to a desert island to be in a reality tv show with him, which lila is not particularly keen on. But eventually she, she agrees. You know it's a free holiday. There'll be a bit of free, uh free, swimming in the sea, bit of flirting, bit of fun, bit of drinking.

Ruth Ware: 54:17

So they fly out to this gorgeous kind of boutique resort in the Indonesian Ocean and when they get there all is not completely well. Everything's just a little bit like you can still smell the pain Some of the facilities aren't finished the pain some of the facilities aren't finished. Um, the come, like the um tv company running it, just seem to be cutting a lot of kind of things short. You know a lot of shortcuts and stuff, um, but anyway they're there, there's nothing they can do about it. So they stick it out.

Ruth Ware: 54:49

Um, and then on the first night there's a huge tropical storm. A lot of the island infrastructure is wrecked. The desal island infrastructure is wrecked, the desalination plant is wrecked, the boat that has most of the crew sleeping on it is swept away. And the rest of the novel is sort of about the fallout. It's about them kind of trying to survive and the idea that the way reality tv shows work, know, people sort of forming tribes and alliances and strategizing and kind of, you know, duking it out for power roles how that would work in a situation with much higher stakes. So the game show has turned out far from being something that you can, you know, win a nice cash prize and a bit of exposure. It's now about who is going to survive this island.

Nadine Matheson: 55:39

It's, you know, like when you watch, when you watch the traitors I watch UK traitors and US traitors and the Australian traitors and it's always when people get that little taste of power and you can kind of see it go to their head. And it's always the people you wouldn't expect, the ones you think they're gonna not necessarily meek and mild, but they're probably gonna be. They're more the follower than the leader, but they get that taste of power and it just switches them. It always intrigues me about people.

Ruth Ware: 56:08

I love the traitors and actually, although the game show in the book, uh, is not particularly Traitors-like, it's much closer to sort of something a bit like the Bachelorette or Love Island or something like that.

Ruth Ware: 56:20

Traitors was a huge inspiration because, I agree with you, what's fascinating about Traitors is the fact that you, the viewer, know so much more about the situation than most of the participants do, and you can see how incredibly bad people are at reading other people and they all think they're amazing, but they're all going on completely spurious details, like you know so, and so didn't smile at them in the lift or you know, someone was a bit weird on the train or something, and they spin this into this whole web justifying why this person is a pathological liar and ought to be voted out.

Ruth Ware: 56:57

And you, the viewer, can see that this is just an enormous construct and that actually it's mostly the people who are the biggest liars who are the best at reading other people and telling them what they want to hear and being charming, and you know, saying one thing to one person and one thing to another, those are usually the people who are the most successful. Um, but yeah, just you know, it just made me think how fascinatingly awful we mostly are as a population at figuring out who is really, you know, speaking truth and who isn't, and all.

Nadine Matheson: 57:28

yeah, all of that went, went into the book it's like I always um, when I'm teaching the to the baby lawyers and I'm teaching them advocacy and how to handle witnesses, I'm teaching them cross-examine and examination in chief and I always say to them I'm like this bit is not part of the syllabus, like this is not part of the module. This is my personal advice to you you need to learn how to read people, and a vast majority of this job is managing people. If you don't learn how to read people, you're going to find yourself at a disadvantage, and I learned that I had to learn that very quickly because I realized as much as um, you know, I'm very aware of things and I'm you know, I know exactly what's going on in the early days I'd be like, oh, they couldn't, possibly, they seem lovely.

Nadine Matheson: 58:12

And I went to the example of this woman charged with possession of firearms and I built up an image of her in my head which is like classic gangland mole. When I met her she looked like my gran you're too nice. She just looked like my grand, like a smaller version of my grand, sitting in stoke newton police station. So I had to change my whole thinking about people when it came to this.

Ruth Ware: 58:43

Yeah, I always think because I, um, I did jury uh service um a few years ago about pre pandemic um, and I I did.

Ruth Ware: 58:55

Obviously I didn't write about it because you're not really supposed to talk about what you did, but, um, I wrote a book that was kind of based on my general uneasiness about the justice system and it really was exactly what you're talking about.

Ruth Ware: 59:06

It's you know the fact that jurors aren't given any training in that whatsoever and you can sort of see people, you know, dismissing people because they came over a bit weird or a bit stilted or, and I kept saying, but that doesn't mean that they're lying, you know you, just just because someone's clearly uncomfortable in a courtroom situation or isn't coming over well, you can't extrapolate back from that to the fact that they're definitely wrong and that's not. So, yeah, I find the whole topic absolutely fascinating and I think there's I'm sure there's studies been done in it. But you know how people's effect and sort of general kind of manner affects how they're treated in the justice system must be. Basically, I ended up writing a book about someone who was an incredibly awkward, unpleasant, antiisocial person but had not committed the crime that he was accused of and ends up getting convicted of it, because he's basically you know doesn't come over well in court so yeah, I've had to say that in jury speeches.

Nadine Matheson: 1:00:07

I've literally said to the jury you know, this is not the x factor. You're not picking him on personality, because we can all see he does not have the best personality. It's whether or not he did it and he didn't. I'm glad you're out there your clients.

Ruth Ware: 1:00:22

If I ever commit a crime, I'll come to you.

Nadine Matheson: 1:00:26

You can have me right before we go, because the time always flies. Ruth, I have four final questions for you. Are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two? Oh, definitely an introvert. I extrovert, or a hybrid of the two oh, definitely an introvert.

Ruth Ware: 1:00:37

I should think 90% of writers must say that, don't they?

Nadine Matheson: 1:00:41

yeah, the vast majority do no, actually. No, the vast majority seem to say hybrid. They seem to be a hybrid. There have been a couple who said extrovert, who have been quite proud to say I'm an extrovert and I'm like really, if we could just text afterwards about who they are so I can avoid them, that'd be great. I'm married to an extrovert, but I'm definitely an introvert okay, so what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most?

Ruth Ware: 1:01:04

oh gosh, what an amazing question. Um, I would say it was probably the death of my mum when I was I was pretty young, I was like 23, and that pretty much changed the course of my life.

Nadine Matheson: 1:01:16

So, yeah, bit of a bummer answer if you could go back to when you were 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Ruth Ware: 1:01:26

um, so I, in a way, I would like to tell myself, kind of, keep going, you're going to be published, you'll get there, don't you know? Don't be so down on yourself. But I think actually I probably wouldn't say that because ultimately I think I got to the place where I needed to be in the way that I needed to and I wouldn't change that. Um, so yeah, I don't think I'd say anything. I'd just I'd just quietly pat myself on the head in a creepy way and then maybe use sunscreen.

Nadine Matheson: 1:01:53

That would probably be it yeah, use sunscreen and um eye cream. That's what I would say, but I think I've all. I've asked a few um authors if they're happy that they've had their success now. Would would they prefer to have had it earlier, but you're happy with the way it's progressed?

Ruth Ware: 1:02:10

um, no, I think I, I think I'm really happy. I had my success when I did um. You know we were pretty hard up for a long time and I'm not going to deny that. You know, some of the money would have been useful in my early 30s, when I was uh, I was running at a loss for quite a long time, paying child care out of my salary and actually ending up with less money at the end of the month.

Nadine Matheson: 1:02:32

Um, but no, I think in personal terms, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't swap anything and finally, ruth Ware, even though we know you're on threads, where can listeners of the conversation podcast find you online?

Ruth Ware: 1:02:44

oh, so my website is ruthwarecom um. Everywhere else I am Ruth Ware writer. Um Instagram, facebook threads uh, the bad place we're not allowed to talk about. I am sort of on tiktok, but I don't really tiktok. I just claimed my at just in case somebody else did um.

Nadine Matheson: 1:03:04

So yeah, come find me, say hi I I think it's so important for people to there's something flying around, sorry, I'll say. I think it's so important for writers, creatives, just to claim your name everywhere, even if you don't use it, just claim it.

Ruth Ware: 1:03:18

So no one else can take. Yeah, you don't want to be that poor person with a zero instead of an o or a one instead of an I in your name it just confuses everybody it does.

Nadine Matheson: 1:03:28

Now, all that leaves is for me to say move rare. Thank you so much for being part of the conversation.

Ruth Ware: 1:03:32

Oh, thank you for having me, nadine. It was, uh, my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being part of the conversation.

Nadine Matheson: 1:03:34

Oh, thank you for having me, nadine, it was my absolute pleasure thank you for joining me for this week's episode of the conversation with Nadine Matheson podcast. I really hope that you enjoyed it. I'll be back next week with a new guest, so make sure that you subscribe and you'll never miss the next episode. 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 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 a future episode of the Conversation, all you have to do is email theconversation at nadinemappersoncom. Thank you and I'll see you next week.