Karen Swan: New Beginnings and the Power of Storytelling

Sunday Times bestselling author Karen Swan,  takes us on a journey through her unexpected path to authorship, from journalism to becoming a bestselling novelist. She recounts how an innocuous library visit revealed her innate storytelling gift, challenging her preconceived career notions.

We talk about the critical balancing act between creativity and professionalism in publishing, diving into the realities of the editing process and her new novel, 'All I Want for Christmas'.

All I Want For Christmas
Can she find love this Christmas?

Christmas in Copenhagen is a magical time of year but Darcy Cotterell isn’t feeling festive. Newly single, again, she's not even going home for Christmas. Instead she will be spending her holiday finishing her art history PhD. Her best friend, Freja, has other ideas. She signs Darcy up to a dating app, determined that she won't be lonely this Christmas.

Darcy agrees to three dates – but her mind is on work, not play: an unknown portrait by Denmark’s greatest painter has been found and she is tasked with identifying the woman in the painting. During her research, she encounters sexy, arrogant lawyer Max Lorensen – who happens to be bachelor number one! The attraction is instant but, knowing they must work together, they abandon the match. Or try to. But their feelings are undeniable - until Darcy discovers Max has an agenda . . .

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Chapters

• 0:00 Author Event Disappointments and Advice
• 5:27 Discovering a Passion for Writing
• 15:56 Navigating the Publishing World
• 30:08 Navigating Editing Challenges in Writing
• 45:43 Life Imitates Fiction
• 55:23 Frustrations of Women Writers
• 1:03:12 Impact of Books on Readers
• 1:15:37 Writing Career Advice and Style Relaxation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

When I did finish my first book and of course, what I did was completely the wrong way round I'd written, now, one scene and I decided to create an entire book around that scene. That is not the way to write a book, ladies and gentlemen, probably have a plot idea first.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Hello and welcome to the Conversation with Nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you've had a good week. Now, before I sat down to record the intro for this week's podcast, I was scrolling through social media. I was scrolling through threads and I came across a post by an author and in the post there was a picture of a table in a bookshop and all their books were on the table. And this person had said and I'm only laughing because it's happened to me, it's happened to authors who have appeared on this podcast, it's, it's happened to everyone who's written a book and has gone to do an appearance and this author. They said that no one turned up.

Speaker 2: 1:01

And you know, when you do an appearance, you do an event, whether it's in a bookshop, whether it's in a library, if you're signing books at a festival, you want there to be a queue of people and you want the queue of people to be for you. And if you're in a bookshop, you don't just want the queue to be inside the shop, you want to have that moment when you walk up to the bookshop and you see a line of people outside and you want to be able to say, ah, they're here for me for some reason. It's a sign that you've made it, not the fact that you may have hit the bestsellers chart times in a row. It's not that. It's the fact that you've got a queue of people wanting to see you and they've got copies of their books waiting for you to sign and they're going to buy all the hardback copies and your back catalogue of your books. And this person had posted that. No one came up and another author posted yeah, I did an event, and three people turned up. Another one posted I did an event. One person turned up. I did an event.

Speaker 2: 2:01

I traveled to an event in Birmingham, in the Midlands, and it was me and two other authors and this event had been advertised for weeks. It wasn't like it just appeared out of nowhere. It had been advertised for weeks and you know I had to drive there, spend a night in a hotel because it was an evening event, and obviously drive home. There were and I'm not even lying, there were six people in the audience. Four of the audience were staff members, so they worked in the library, and two had obviously come in. One person out of the two that were left had paid, because I remember it was pouring down with rain and I think the second person had just strolled into the library in order to escape the rain and I just sat down and listened to us talk.

Speaker 2: 2:58

So the reason why I'm bringing it up is that it will happen to you. You know the lottery saying it could be you. Well, you as an author turning up to an event and there only being one person there, or no one there except the staff, it will happen to you and I just think it's a rite of passage. It's kind of it's the more true way of showing that you've made it. So if it does happen, don't be upset. Honestly. Don't be upset because I guarantee, if you were to go through all of my past conversations that I've had on this podcast, there wouldn't be one author who has not experienced not having anybody or just having one person or just talking to the staff at an event.

Speaker 2: 3:42

It happened to me again at a library event in southeast London and it was just me appearing, so it's kind of like an in conversation thing with me, and I think only six people turned up. So there were six people sitting in the chairs waiting for me to talk, but there were people in the library. You know there were little kids running around looking for their parents. Um, there were students there doing their work, adults that, there were people around that, but only six of them were there to see me and I just told them to just bring their cheers forward. Let's form a nice little circle. Let's pretend we're sitting in my living room and we'll just have a chat and you can ask me any questions you want. And in a funny way, because it was smaller, I think it was less intimidating for the audience members, because sometimes when you get to the end and it's a large crowd and you say, are there any questions, it takes a lot for someone to raise their hand and ask a question, because not everyone likes speaking in public. But in a funny way, that very small setting and making it intimate and making it cosy, it worked. So my advice don't be upset if no one turns up to your event. It happens to everyone and you will be fine, right, let's get on with the show.

Speaker 2: 4:55

This week I'm in conversation with Sunday Times bestselling author, karen Swan, and in our conversation we talk about how other people can recognise your talents before you do acting on those sliding door moments in your life and how you shouldn't write for the market. Now, as always, sit back. We'll go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Karen Swan, welcome to the conversation. Thank you, I'm so happy to be here. I'm very happy to have you here, right? My first question for you, because when I was going through no, it wasn't that I, I've got your new book with me, all I Want for Christmas, and I think it's the first page I opened up and I saw the long list of your previous books and I said to myself. I said to myself, I didn't realize it was so many.

Speaker 1: 5:45

I didn't realize I feel the same people say to me how many have you written? And I go, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 5:52

I sort of stopped counting once we got to the mid-20s well, I counted 26 and I was like that's absolutely, it's amazing and also crazy. But I think the question that popped into my mind was did you ever envision yourself you know, way back, I say way back then, when you was writing that first book that you would be here at book number 26?

Speaker 1: 6:16

literally never and in fact I can remember a very specific conversation with I was I used to be a journalist with another journalist friend of mine. We were sitting in Kensington Park Gardens. It was like the mid nineties, late nineties yeah, late nineties and she she's now an author and she had asked me to read an article she'd written and I said to her this is so beautiful, you write so beautifully. And she said I really want to go into fiction. I really, I really want to write a book. And I was like, oh my God, that's amazing. And she said don't you feel like you have a book in you? And I went, no, no.

Speaker 1: 6:56

It had not crossed my mind and it still didn't cross my mind then. It had not crossed my mind and it still didn't cross my mind then. And she went on to write a book that did incredibly well and I was just in awe, but I still wasn't ever thinking well, I'll do that and it was. I was such an accidental author. I loved writing but I had never written fiction. You know, I did an English degree. I consider myself like a professional grade reader. You know, I read avidly and obsessively and I love language and I loved my job. But at no point did I ever think oh well, I'm going to go into fiction and make up stories. I mean, that was just like a whole other skill set that I just didn't think I had.

Speaker 1: 7:45

And the weird thing was that I had my first baby and, as a sort of project, while I was on maternity leave, I wrote this nonfiction book it was a pregnancy book with my doctor and it turned out her other clients as well as me were Kate Moss, gwyneth Paltrow, you know, like the great and the good.

Speaker 1: 8:06

So I was like okay, well, we have here a very commercial product, we can make this a book. And so it was the agent for that book who said to me go into fiction. And I thought she was mad. I thought she was and I just I said why would you say that? I've never done any training, I've never done a course, I have no idea how you would go about writing a book. And she said sit down and just write something, anything, write 2,000 words. And I only had to go because my parents-in-law turned up at the house unexpectedly one day, really sweetly saying Karen, go and have a day to yourself. Which was a disaster because all my friends had had their babies so they weren't available to come out with me because they were looking after their babies and we had no money, so I couldn't go shopping for the day.

Speaker 2: 8:59

and I thought god, almighty, what am I going to?

Speaker 1: 9:02

do. I've got a day with nothing to do and I've got no baby to occupy me, and so I went to the library and I took my laptop and I just sat down and I had no story idea, no plot, no character, nothing. I just closed my eyes and I wrote a scene. And I wrote a scene. And the weird thing was the moment I did it it was like my entire brain made sense and I just thought it was like a eureka moment where I thought, oh my god, that actually reads like something you would read in a book. Like I couldn't. I couldn't understand how I had put these down. Like it was quite a.

Speaker 1: 9:46

It was a bit of prose, but it was. It was mainly dialogue and it just worked so easily. And I thought, oh, and I suddenly realized that I had been telling stories in my head my entire life. But I just thought that everybody did that. I thought that's what brains do. I thought that was everyone's experience. Like I didn't think that was being a creative person or being a writer. I just thought everyone did that and, of course, my husband's an accountant. His brain does not do that it doesn't work that way.

Speaker 2: 10:20

It doesn't work that way.

Speaker 1: 10:21

It doesn't work that way, and but I it was just a weird thing because it was a moment where I suddenly realized like, oh my God, I can do this and this is what I am supposed to do. And there are moments where even now I get I sort of get the heebie-jeebies because I think what if I had never sat down and decided to have a go, Because it's sort of altered the course of my life? It's definitely been massively emotionally fulfilling for me because it's how my brain works and it's what I should be doing. And I just think there was no good reason for me to. If someone hadn't said to me Karen, and just do that, I never would have done it. And I just think how many other people out there maybe should be writers and they don't know it, or they should be other things and they don't know it because they're not, they haven't got the opportunity or it just hasn't occurred to them to try to do this thing, you know.

Speaker 2: 11:21

I always. I always find it amazing, though, sometimes, how other, someone else, can see something in you that you just can't see that thing for yourself. So your, your agent's saying to you know, you can write a fiction book. You're like what, what enough, can you? What is there about my personality, or the way in which I wrote an email, for example, that makes you think I should be writing a book of fiction?

Speaker 1: 11:48

And that's the thing. I think that it is other people who see it in you first. Sometimes, or most of the time, it was for me my entire childhood. All my school reports English, you know, but even in other subjects. They would talk about my writing style and I used to think everyone has a writing style, like surely, and so I never paid any attention. And then you know you do those sorts of psychometric tests and they you know.

Speaker 1: 12:17

They say you know I think mine said I was going to go into shiproking, firefighting and author. Now, of course, maybe I I should have gone into shiproking. Maybe I've got even greater skills in that area, I don't know about, but as it is, I've ended up in writing and I'm very happy about it. And let's not think about me doing a farm and lift up a ladder. I mean, you know that wouldn't end well for anyone. Um, but I, but other people could see it and, like I, would write a thank you card after a dinner or something, and people would make a comment about oh my god, your card.

Speaker 1: 12:56

And I always used to think why the fuss? Like, yeah, it's just the card, you know, and it was. Other people could see that there was just something, maybe a little bit more than the ordinary and and I didn't see it, or it just it just wasn't crossing my mind. And so I think for other people, if they are thinking maybe they're not quite living the life they should be living or doing the thing they should be doing, maybe ask the people around you what do you think I'm best at? Because I can't, I can't imagine. It's sort of, really, it's like a sliding doors moment.

Speaker 1: 13:32

I hadn't gone to the library, that day would I, would I still be doing what I had been doing, which was print media, which was wonderful, but it was a great for time in my life. It was fashion. I was young, I was in my 20s, it was all brilliant party party fashion shows, you name it Amazing travel, loved it. But now I have a family. You know, I'm 110, you know I don't want to be doing, you know, that life anymore and this, this just gives me so much. I feel so privileged that I get to wake up every morning and get to work in my house with my gorgeous dogs by my feet. You know I get to go from walking the forest and my hair comes back absolutely enormous with humidity and I look crazy, but it doesn't matter because no one cares what I look like all day and and I just get to live in my head and for me that is absolutely the best way to live my life it is.

Speaker 2: 14:36

But I was thinking, you know, there's always those pivotal moments in your life. You know just as you described it, those sliding door moments where, if you, if you just decided, well, I'm not going to go to the library, I'm just going to go and sit in a coffee shop and maybe just read a magazine for the afternoon, things could have been so completely different.

Speaker 1: 14:53

And I always feel that, people, there's always a moment in someone's life when you need to make that pivot and then that leads you to the thing that you should have been doing all along and that's the thing, because my journalism career I was doing really well, I had a great salary, I had a lovely life, I worked for a big employer and then, when I, when I did finish my first book and, of course, what I what I did was completely the wrong way around. I'd written, now, one scene and I decided to create an entire book around that scene.

Speaker 1: 15:26

That is not the way to write a book, ladies and gentlemen Probably have a plot idea first, rather than you know a scene with some characters and then you develop outwards. So I did it the hard way and it took about two years to write this book because I had my daughter in between again. So I lost maybe eight, nine months to that baby fog and I wrote the book and it was. I got an agent, she sent it off and then I got my offer for the book and like it was pennies and I was like I can, can't sustain, like I have to earn and I can't. I was going to turn it down because I was like I'm going to make more money really, yeah, yeah. And I just didn't go back to the agent because I was like I was so upset like I was crying.

Speaker 1: 16:22

Oh, because the friend of mine, mine who I had the chat with in Kensington Park she'd had this mega first book and done incredibly well. So I'd sort of heard through the grapevine of that. I'd also heard through the grapevine of another journalist who had done incredibly well. She'd got like a three book deal and she'd bought a house off the back of it Like amazing, oh, wow. And I literally, and I got this offer and I just thought I cannot afford to take this, like this is not viable. And I was going to turn it down and my, it was my mother. She turned around to me and she said, darling, you must, you must give this a go. She like really believed in my ability. I don't know why, because she hadn't read the book at this point, but she really believed in my ability to do this or for some reason, she felt like this was my path. I'm not sure, but she was the one who said to me you must go for it. And she said you will find a readership. She said I know you will find people who love what you're doing. How could she have known that? Of course, I mean, no one could have known that, but it's your mum, right. So if your mum tells you to go do this, it doesn't matter if you're in your 20s and your 30s, you still go do it.

Speaker 1: 17:54

So I took it and and of course my children at this point were like zero, two and four, like I was really in the thick of it all. It was really difficult. We couldn't afford a nanny. I was having to rely on my mum and my mother-in-law to come in and look after the baby, do the nursery school pickups, all of that for me, so that I could have one or two days a week where I could work. And it was really, really hard and there was nothing ever to say that I was going to make any sort of success out of this or that I would know how to write book two. You know, book one felt like a bit of a fluke and it was incredibly hard work because I did it all the wrong way around and and I had a two book deal. So it was stressful and it was difficult and I sort of got signed. My first book was called Players and it was a slightly different market.

Speaker 1: 18:41

It was a bit glitzier but it was sort of more what was happening in the market at the time and I was just sort of slightly copying what I was seeing selling and what I knew was, you know, I knew these other authors who've got these amazing deals, so I was slightly trying to copy them and just do what they were doing.

Speaker 1: 19:00

But it wasn't really me. And when it came to my third book and I had to get a new deal and I had to pitch an idea to them, I had this idea but it wasn't in the same niche as the first two books and it was the book that became Christmas at Tiffany's, although in my head it was always just it was a fashion book, it was New York, paris, london. It wasn't a Christmas book, it was a fashion book, it was New York, paris, london, it wasn't a Christmas book and that they immediately saw the commercial potential of that book and they signed me then to a two or three book deal I can't remember, but they it was a punt on my part because I'd been signed to sit in this particular place on the publisher's list. And now I was already moving off from that because I thought, well, I've got this idea, which I think is really good, but it's in a slightly different area of the market and you might have authors who are already doing that on your list.

Speaker 1: 19:55

So you might not want me, but nonetheless, I don't think I can sustain a career or build a career and then sustain it writing books that aren't really me, that I don't really want to write or read, and I just thought I can't do that. If I'm going to do this, I've now written two books. If I'm going to do this, I need to write the sort of books that I want to write and that I want to read Otherwise like there's no integrity to it. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2: 20:27

Yeah, yeah, so I.

Speaker 1: 20:30

I, it was all. When I look at where I am now and where I started from, like I never, ever would have thought that 15 years later I'd be 26, 27 books down the line like never because there are.

Speaker 2: 20:48

So there's so many things that that come out from what you were saying. Um, one of them I was thinking is that when we write up, when we write our book, in a sense you need it, need expect to be in some kind of bubble and completely insulated from the news of other writers around you, because you can't help but compare and because it's a completely if you've been doing something completely different before. So, like you, I was in law. You're using um journalism. When you come into this new area, you have no idea how it works. So you are looking at people you know and then you then you have your expectations are built on what's happened to them.

Speaker 1: 21:28

So completely, yes, I mean, we've all got our, our community that we're wanting to be a part of. And I was sort of breaking and people are like, oh, but you were in journalism, you must have had contacts. They're completely separate worlds yeah so all that journalism really did for me was teach me and they were good things how to write to a brief, how to write to a word count and how to write to a deadline. Like those are really good skills being a lawyer. I think there is crossover though you know.

Speaker 1: 22:01

You know because you know and I just, I sort of was in this new world and I didn't know anyone, didn't know anything. I didn't know about the editing processes, I didn't know about marketing, I didn't know about retailer relationships, nothing. And all you know ever since then, really.

Speaker 1: 22:21

I mean, I obviously know all about it now, but I just put my head down and I just got on with my job, which was creating a world. I was like that's all I can do, you? What I realized was I can't try and be like anyone else and I can't worry about chasing the market, like I've just got to write the stories I want to write and hopefully readers will find me and they'll like what I'm doing and they'll stick with me and they'll read my other things and you know that will be our community. I'll create my community and and that's what I've always done. And and people say, oh, you know, do you have a particular? You know you've got your reader in mind.

Speaker 1: 23:05

No, literally I don't think about anyone, because it's very inhibiting as soon as you start trying to bring in the outside world. I just have to inhabit the world I'm creating and let those characters be real, like they have to become fully three-dimensional to me. And then, if they do become that to me, then I've given them, you know, breath. I've given them flesh and blood and breath and they're moving in their world. They are now their own thing and out they go and people will either love it or they won't. And when I'm very sort of sanguine about it, I don't, I don't obsessively look at what else is going on in the market. Not at all. I just stay in my own lane.

Speaker 2: 23:54

I think that's the best thing to do. I think, um I, a few years ago, I went to see um Oprah in New York. She was doing her tour and she and Michelle Obama was appearing with her. On the day that we went, I mean my best, wow, I was just like. I know it was like I can't believe I've seen Oprah, we're gonna see Michelle Obama, but Michelle Obama was basically I can't remember exactly the full details of what she was talking about, but she did say you need to just focus on the walk that you're taking and focus on the steps that you need to take and your path. Just basically stay in your lane, because I think the frustration comes as writers when you are looking at everyone else around you, and I did an event yesterday online and someone asked me about writing to trends. I said don't.

Speaker 2: 24:44

I said don't you can't write to trends, because you won't be authentic in what you're doing. You just need to tell the story that you want to write and then you'll just find that you'll finish whatever book you're writing, you may find that when it's eventually published to in two years time, that book then becomes the trend. You can't predict those things at all.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Look, at Richard Osman. You could go out there now and do your cozy crime. You're still not going to be Richard Osman. Richard Osman is Richard Osman and you're just going to be the copycat. You're going to be, at best, number two. You're going to be Richard Osman light, like you've just got to be who you are and tell your own stories, because our brains are so like they're. They're that I think they're like our fingerprints, like I think they are who we are you know, I, I suppose I could do a pretty good job of reading another writer and then mimic them.

Speaker 1: 25:42

You know I could. I I'm very careful when I'm writing actually to not read when I'm writing, because I do absorb tone and I live in fear that I'm just going to start regurgitating that person's tone and that person's book. So I'm pretty careful when I'm writing to not read too much and it's that thing of you could probably do a good approximation of someone else, but it's never going to quite have the beating heart because it hasn't come from you, hasn't come from your DNA, your brain, your fingerprint, it's. It's you're chasing a formula or a model or you know something that really belongs to someone else and I I'm yeah. I mean when people say, what type of books do you write?

Speaker 1: 26:29

and I always think, oh, I don't know how to really describe them because I don't know, they're just well, they're sort of me like you know the characters aren't me, but they're from me and if you know me well then you know I mean my best friend.

Speaker 1: 26:44

When she she read my first book and I, she said, oh my god, I can't put it down. And I said are you, are you enjoying it? And she said it's so funny. She said I literally feel like I'm sitting at the end of the bed reading it to me because it's my tone, it's my cadence, like that's me. And yeah, it's so. You know it's, it's funny, it's funny.

Speaker 1: 27:06

That's the challenge when you're writing a character and you have to write a character particularly male. For me, um, it's so that's where it's really really difficult to adjust dialogue in that way to get their tone, to get their cadence. You know it's. You know I'll sort of say to my husband a man wouldn't say this. What would a man say?

Speaker 1: 27:30

You know, because speech is so particular to all of us. You know, we all have our little funny quirks and you know I'm forever giving nicknames and shortenings and you know. But I also love beautiful language and I get very agitated when people use words like that. My particular bugbear at the moment is the word anyway, and it appears to me that there's a whole generation coming up saying anyways, and I am single-handedly out in, I'm out in the Twitter sphere. No, I'm not on Twitter, but, um, I'm out in the TikTok sphere. When people are saying, anyways, I'm correcting them in the comments, anyway, anyway, anyway, please, can we speak correctly? I'm trying to be mad. Um, so you know, we all have our particular way of speaking, talking and therefore of writing. Um, so, yeah, be true to you, I would say yeah, no, I agree with that 100%.

Speaker 2: 28:35

So you know. So, once you moved into this publishing world, what surprised you most about it? Because I always think I mean I've said this loads a lot that whatever profession you were in before, you know your place there. You know, you've worked it, you've built it, you've carved your career, you know your, you know how it works, and then you move into this completely different world and it's like you're starting from scratch. But also you kind of think that the rules that worked in your previous world it would simply apply in this new world, and they don't not at all. So what surprised you the most?

Speaker 1: 29:18

the thing found weird and I still find it weird is that when you are the author in publishing, because you're the creator of the product, like everything is driven from your creation, so you are treated with kid gloves creation. So you are treated with kid gloves, like you are treated in a way that you're not, certainly not in journalism and certainly not at home. I mean, you know, you are, you are, you're treated not like a star, but you are, you are protected and looked after and everyone is incredibly nice to you and you're very sort of protected and yeah, you are, and that's, that's a lovely thing. I mean, I'm not knocking it, but as a as someone who was a journalist, you know I'm, I'm very practical, I'm very professional, I see it as a job. I know that other people cannot do their job until I've done mine.

Speaker 1: 30:26

I don't drift around the house waiting for the muse to strike. I mean, I sit down and I will stare at the screen until my eyeballs bleed, I mean, but I will get my word count down. I am tactical, I'm commercially driven, my, what I want is to get books out there that people want to read, um, and that they love, and I'm very, very focused on that and you know I'm a mother of three. I'm 110, like you know. I just don't. You know I'm a grown up, I don't need to be mollycoddled, but there is a lot of.

Speaker 1: 31:07

It's a lovely problem to have, but I sometimes just would prefer a little bit more straight talking. Actually, you know, I'm not a child and I just want we all. I want what we all want, which is to sell books. You know, I want them to be beautiful books and I want them to be in as many people's hands and bookshelves as possible, because that's the point of them. You know, there's no point in being beautiful, and only 10 people read it.

Speaker 2: 31:32

So you know, it is what you want.

Speaker 1: 31:35

It is and so it's. You know, for me that was a surprise. I never expected that and it's. And I, you know, I'm forever saying you know, if we're going out for lunch, I'm perfectly happy just to go to itsu, Like I don't need to be taken to the greatest restaurant in London. It's lovely, lovely, but don't feel like you have to do that, like I don't care.

Speaker 2: 32:01

yeah it's just you're not. You're not the first person to say that on here. Yes, it's like you just want to be. You just want to be given the facts, be spoken to like an equal, you know, be open about the good and the bad and realities of everything, and you can do that with a sandwich from prep and a cappuccino. You don't necessarily have to be, and I mean, the lunches are nice, but it doesn't have to be that way, exactly.

Speaker 1: 32:31

And I, you know so it's. You know it's it's a lovely problem to have, but you know it's a lovely problem to have. But you know, as far as I'm concerned, I'm the face of a very big team, like when we do our Zoom calls, when we're doing you know we've got the pre-publication meeting and we're looking at the roundup for publicity and marketing and social media and you know print media and you know the subs that the retailers have picked up and all of this. There's like 30 people on the call and all of those people are involved in making that happen. And that's the thing. People see Karen Swan on the book, but there's 29 other people standing behind me who have made that book into what it is. So, yeah, yeah, that's, that's, um, yeah, I think it's good for people to know that um, it's, it's a team effort and um, it's it's a much bigger industry than people realize. I mean the amount of edit processes we go through. That was another surprise to me. Obviously, as a journalist, I was my own editor and then it would go through to sub-editing, but that was it.

Speaker 1: 33:49

As a writer, I will hand in a first draft. Most writers would hand in like their second draft, but because I'll do two books a year and my deadline is so tight I generally don't have time to do that for that three week read rewrite in my deadline. So I hand in the first draft, everyone cries and has a very stiff gin and tonic and then we go okay, let's have a meeting and and then when we have that, we go, we really pull it apart and we go okay, and then I take two or three weeks to do my second draft and usually it's almost a complete rewrite. It's structural, it's huge. After that it goes to copy edit and then after that it goes to page proofs where it's all typeset and we have like a proofreader come in and there's two stages of that as well. So in all you're probably looking at six, a minimum of six, edits, and still stuff will go through like there'll be a typo or something, which is the most annoying thing in the world.

Speaker 2: 34:53

But after a while you go blind.

Speaker 1: 34:55

Like your brain knows this story so well that it's it's reading for you. So I, um, yeah, I. I found that a surprise just how very rigorous the the edit processes are in publishing as well. It's, it's a big deal listeners.

Speaker 2: 35:15

It's time for a very short break. If you're enjoying this conversation with Nadine Matheson and want to help keep the podcast going, why not buy me a cup of coffee? Your support goes such a long way in keeping these conversations flowing. Just check out the link in the show notes. I have to have a word with myself, because I think with that first time I was ever received edits from an editor, you feel as though it's not a critique on your work but on you, because of your lawyer.

Speaker 2: 35:46

I mean as a baby, I say as a baby lawyer. When I prepared applications and stuff, obviously I had my supervisor, so I'll draft it, he would look, he or she would look at it and then off it would go. But then, you know, with experience it comes to the point where I'm now supervising the baby lawyer. So my applications, my briefs, I'm doing them myself and I might give it to one of my colleagues. I'll just have a take a look at that section, tell me what you think but I'm doing everything I'm doing the editing, I'm doing the proof, and then off it goes to the judge.

Speaker 2: 36:15

So you have all that control. And no one's ever turned around and said oh, miss Matheson, like you made a mistake with the structure of a paragraph. But then you become a writer. You become a writer, you start working with an editor and then you and it's not just a couple of comments on the manuscript you get a completely separate document with your structural comments on it. And you're thinking me, I know, how dare you?

Speaker 1: 36:46

yes, you really do and I think most uh writers actually when it gets to copy edit stage. So like the second edit stage where they have to be so fastidious and nitpicky, like if you say, oh, there was a bunch of peonies in the bowl on the kitchen table and it's November, it is their job to say peonies aren't in bloom in November. Like this is the level that we're talking about, and there comes such a there comes such a perverse joy from sort of arguing back or getting one over on your copy editor. Actually this is correct, or this that the other you know, or they you know, they want the latin name for a particular bird or do you know what I?

Speaker 1: 37:39

mean you're like oh my god, I it's. I mean it can drive you crazy what I have and it is. I absolutely agree with you when it's my agent and my editor and they're coming in hard on that first read through, and particularly because my drafts are so rough, because, frankly, no one should be reading them at that point. But the reality.

Speaker 2: 38:03

I always say that about my first draft, like that's not for anyone to read. I'm gonna admit it's a mess.

Speaker 1: 38:08

Yeah it's embarrassing. I say to them please make sure this doesn't go to the rest of the team, because what the hell must they think if they see my first draft, like if you were to see the first draft of all I want for Christmas and then this, the finished copy, you would be astounded, staggered, you'd be laughing your head off, you'd be appalled, you'd be crying like all the, all the feelings. Because it's such a mess, because you, I find I don't necessarily know what the story is until I get to the end. I'm sort of living it with the characters, yeah, and it's all a bit messy and inconsistent and in places incoherent. And I'll change. I'll have changed my mind about something that I wrote at the beginning, but I haven't had time to go back there, so I'm just going to carry on. And you sort of get to the end and you think, oh, my.

Speaker 1: 38:56

God and you know I literally today is Wednesday. I on Monday handed in my edits for the last book in my current series, the Wild Isle series, and it is the last book in the series and I've had to tie together four women's stories in one. I've had four arcs all coalescing in this one book. It was such a huge mental load and I was so happy and overjoyed to get this thing done. To actually make the plot and the timings work. I had characters in Canada, iced in by the sea ice, who I couldn't get back over the Atlantic until like April because of course, there were no planes in 1930. There was no transatlantic sea routes, it was all cruise liners. And there are no cruise ships like in December, january, february. So I you know the logistics of working out my plot and all of this to tie in with the other characters.

Speaker 1: 39:57

I was so happy that I had achieved this that I handed it in thinking my editor and agent were going to think this is amazing, she's a genius, and I was a bit. I was a bit peeved when I got these rather muted responses and then I've spent the last three weeks doing my edit and I'm like, holy hell, how could I let them see this. This is appalling. I am embarrassed for myself that I let this. I even let them see it and they've seen some shockers, you know. So now it's in a fit to say, but it has been a grim couple of weeks to get it there. But you have to hear what they're saying and of course you can disagree and argue your point because at the end of the day it is your book, your world, your characters, your story. But I I have learned that if you have a consensus, if, if two people or more are saying the same thing, listen to them you know, listen to them.

Speaker 1: 40:58

They're going to be right, because if they think it, everyone else is going to think it. You know, sometimes you can be too much in your own head and that's the thing. It's not your baby you have. You have to have a sense of let it go. You do, you've got to love it, you've got to nurture it and do everything you can to make it the best version of itself. But you also do have to let the outside world have its influence. And and those, those people in their roles your agent, your editor, your copy editor, your proof editor, your desk editor they are all there not to sort of destroy you and pull you down, but to put out the best product that can be put out with what you've provided and it's good to sort of have that distance and that discipline of going.

Speaker 1: 41:51

it's hard. There's definitely times where I do not want to do it. I have really resisted some things in the past and I've been mad as hell and I've been resentful, but it has always proved to be the right thing Eventually, once I've got through the pain barrier with it you know, right thing eventually, once I've got through the pain barrier with it.

Speaker 2: 42:12

You know, yeah, I had that with um with the first book in my series, the Jigsaw man, and I was saying this last night to the group I was talking to with my very first draft, literally nearly from the first page, I had this character called DC Clark and I could tell you what DC Clark looked like. I could tell you that he was slightly overweight, that his shirt was slightly too tight, that he was balding and he had a bit of sunburn on his scalp. I could describe him in all this detail and he was there from the first page right to the end of the book. And then it goes to the editor and I get my structural edits back and the first thing she says is you've got too many characters, you need to lose DC Clark. And it was that you know something like there's that anger, that frustration, like what are you talking about? How dare you? You have no idea what this person means to me and to the group. And I was like you I'm not saying I was like throwing my toys at the pram, but I was like I can't believe she's saying I need to get rid of DC Clark. Like DC Clark is. He's part of the of the unit, he's part of the book. He's like part is the heart of the book.

Speaker 2: 43:15

And then I did what I was told after, you know, had a word with myself, got rid of him but I kept him back. I kept. I'm not I'm gonna bring you back. So I brought him back for a cameo in the second book but fast forward to having a finished book in my hand. I knew that my editor's um decision was the right one. I was like she was right. It made for a better book. I didn't lose anything. I gained actually more from actually listening to her. So a lot of it is getting used to trusting someone else with your work. But I have those moments with the copy edits when I respond to the comments and a lot of four letter words in the response and I'm like you can just, but I'll delete it the frustration is real yeah, the frustration is so real it really is.

Speaker 1: 44:09

But it's also so difficult, like to have to lose a central character is so difficult for you as the origin creator, because that is, you've created that world, that story, with them in that place. To have to go back and reshape, itashion it in a new mold is very, very difficult, like the mental plasticity that you need to be able to do that. To tear down something that you've created from nothing and re-invis, revisit it, revisit it in a new form is a very difficult thing to do and it's a great thing to be able to do. And I think this is where you know you're a writer, because I think if you've got that mental agility, that sort of creative flexibility to be able to keep changing, like that, you know the synapses are snapping and you're just able to keep going, keep trying different forms. That's where the creative brain is, you know, in form is helping you to do your job. I think if you were very rigid with it and you could only see it in one form and one form only, and it's do or die, well, you know you've got to have that flexibility and it's. But it's hard, like I've had to do that once. I had to.

Speaker 1: 45:43

I had written a book and I handed it in and it was my first book after I'd written Christmas at Tiffany's, which had been a massive bestseller, had done incredibly well. I was just was so over the moon by the time that was hitting the tills and doing really well. I was almost finished with the next book. So thank god for that, because I wasn't having to sort of effectively rewrite, try and rewrite that same book because I didn't know it was going to do as well as it did.

Speaker 1: 46:12

So I'd written this other book and I had made one creative decision in which I had decided that this woman was being stalked by her. She had amnesia and she was being. It turned out she was being stalked by her marriage counsellor, unbeknownst to me. I hadn't read this book. It had come out in hardback. Unbeknownst to me, it had been sold as a film with Nicole Kidman. Oh, before I go to sleep, oh my God, oh my God. And I handed it in and my editor came back to me immediately and she said, karen, have you read Before I Go to Sleep? And I said no and she said look, I know, because obviously I wasn't writing a thriller, but I had just decided on this one detail, just as, like a slightly dark twist, I was writing a love story and I.

Speaker 1: 47:04

my story was I had a charm bracelet. It became a necklace, but it was a charm bracelet. It was a woman with amnesia and each charm represented a figure in her life and unbeknownst to her. The client was her husband and he was trying to bring her, to reacquaint her with the people in her life by triggering memories, getting her to talk and interview all these. So it was a love story. I mean, it was nothing at all to do with before I go to sleep. And that one detail of oh, why don't I have it that her current boyfriend is someone she knew before, who's now like? It was just a thought, but because of that they said, by the time this book comes out, the film is going to come out and everyone is going to think you've copied it.

Speaker 1: 47:50

And I was like, oh, oh, my God. I mean I'd just written Christmas at Tiffany's. So obviously the idea for the charm bracelet had come, because I'd been researching Tiffany's, I was looking for something from Tiffany's, I'd seen all these charms that had given me the idea for the next book. You could see my sort of thinking from one book to the other, but I instead was getting lumped with this other book which I hadn't read, hadn't heard about, and I thought, oh my God, and I had to go from 110,000 word book I had to scrap down to 30,000 words I had to take, I had to scrap down to 30,000 words.

Speaker 1: 48:31

I had to take out almost everything. And the boyfriend, who was the bad guy I had to rewrite as a really nice guy, but of course, to me he was just a villain. At this point it was so hard to recast him as this really wonderful guy. I was like no, and I was so resisting it, but I, I had to do it and more it, but I, I had to do it and more than that. I had to do it in six weeks. Now I'd had a year to write the other book.

Speaker 1: 48:56

But because now I handed this book in and they said the retailers, if they're going to accept it, need need to have it in six weeks now, oh my god, I sat down and I had focus like you have never seen, and it was as a result. And so, first of all, the book I ended up writing was so much better. It's one of my favorite books that I've written I. It became the perfect present. I love the characters in that book, I love it. But and I still love the idea of that amnesia story and I obviously can't use it now but it was wonderful.

Speaker 1: 49:32

But, um, it was a better book as a result of that horrible experience where I was literally in tears, crying down the phone to my editor, just going, you can't like I've written the book, I can't rewrite it in six weeks, and she said you have to. Christmas at Tiffany's has done so well, we have to follow up. And I was like, oh my god, I've just had the biggest hit of my career and now I'm about to have the biggest breakdown, like the biggest fail. And when I tell you, I went into hyper focus and I was so pleased with I ended up handing it in early. And that was when I realised I was able to write two books a year because I realised how much faffing around I'd been doing with a year for each book. It was lovely, but I had too much time on my hands and I was drifting around the house and playing with the dogs and making too much tea, and all of which makes me happy. But you know, come on, god, you've got to work.

Speaker 2: 50:32

I was going to ask you. I was going to ask you about writing two books a year, but also, you know, just coming on the off the back of that it, it does make you wonder if there really are like writing muses out there, because I think in the last six months I've read, I think, three or four books where the central premise is the same a group of people are on an island and there's a game show situation going on and then murders take place. I've read, actually I've read, three books with that same central premise and you know person, writer a is not going to know that writer b is writing that book. But then we've reached this place where these three books have the same, have similar themes, and it's crazy how that. I definitely believe in the zeitgeist there's death.

Speaker 1: 51:23

I find almost every time I write a book it's almost like when you buy a new car and like maybe you've just not really seen many of those cars. Like you decide to get a yellow car, suddenly all you see are yellow cars. And it's such a funny thing that every time I write a book and often they're quite obscure there's like stuff in the papers like obscure papers they're not necessarily Daily Mail headlines. It's like you the papers like, but obscure papers, they're not necessarily daily mail headlines. It's like you know something in Australia or Scotland or you know, and I send it to my editor going look, look, yeah, it's not just me. It's so weird the way it happens and I there's like an energy out there and I think you know we do pick it up without knowing that we do. It's happened on so many occasions with me that I'm just like yep, there it is. Told you, told you, this is the book.

Speaker 2: 52:23

Yeah, I've had the exact same scenario take place yesterday while I was standing in my kitchen. So I just finished writing book four in my kitchen. So I just finished writing book four in my series, delivered that last week and it's a central theme going for it and I kept thinking are they going to be convinced by that?

Speaker 2: 52:38

I'm not sure they're going to be convinced by that, it just seems a little bit out there and then I'm in my kitchen and then the exact scenario I explore in my book it's on the lunchtime news on the radio what, what, yeah, how dare you? But then also it's like oh, it's validation.

Speaker 1: 53:02

I know, honestly, do you know? I was out for a girl's dinner last week and I saw one of my friends and she'd been to Hawaii for the summer with her family and it was like this amazing holiday and I couldn't wait to see her. I so badly want to go there. And I said to her, oh my god, just tell me everything I said was your holiday amazing? And she went, karen, it was bloody awful. And I went I'm sorry, what? No, no, it was the worst holiday of my life. And I said don't. No, I said shut up. I said no, stop, what? No, no, it was the worst holiday of my life. And I said no, I said shut up. I said no, stop, what are you saying?

Speaker 1: 53:32

And she said it was so bad. And she proceeded to tell me this litany of disasters which started at the airport when they arrived and they couldn't get their luggage in the car. And then her husband and two of her sons are six foot four. They didn't fit in the car like this is where it began. And by the time she got I mean it was one I was literally on hands and knees in the floor, on the floor in the kitchen, belly laughing, like I couldn't even stand at a certain point. And I said to her if I was to put this in a book, no one would believe this would happen because it's too many disasters, one after another. And yet it's exactly what happened. And you know, life can be stranger than fiction that's for sure.

Speaker 2: 54:17

Life it can. I had a question to ask you before we move on, because I'm watching the time. I'm like, oh my god, it's flying by. You know, because you're talking about and I know how much planning and I say planning, but you know when you're talking about and I know how much planning and I say planning, but you know when you're doing the rewrite and having to restructure things and take characters out and reorganize and basically I would say it's like you've taken you've already got a house, you've had to knock the house down and you're now rebuilding a house, um, again from the bricks. Does it ever frustrate you when you hear critics out there talk down about what they'll say, whether it's commercial fiction?

Speaker 2: 54:55

oh yeah whether it's romance crime. I do, but it's not because the amount of work you know, no matter what you're talking about, that you put into your book, no matter what I put into my books, yeah, then people will diminish it it is the most it is.

Speaker 1: 55:12

It is so frustrating and I do, you know it's funny because I I picked up Victoria Hislop's the Island, uh, quite recently, hadn't read it for years. I just had a need to read it and I picked it up and what I noticed on the front was the there was a quote from the observer and it said I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly, but it said something like at last, a beach read with heart. And I thought, and I just thought oh my God, this book has sold millions. This is a book that people still talk about 10 years later. This is a book that had such an incredible impact, like on the just general culture as a whole, like it was a fabulous, fabulous story about something that was really worth telling. And what I thought was wouldn't they have said that if a man had written it?

Speaker 1: 56:12

probably not, do you know what I mean, would they call a book like that a beach read? And because that's what they said, they didn't just say this is a book with great heart.

Speaker 1: 56:20

It's a beach read with heart we're going to take it down but then lift it up a little bit and I just thought if William Boyd had written this book, they wouldn't call. Do you know what I mean? Like, oh, it makes me mad and I think you know I did an English degree. I did old English, middle English. Like you know, that was sort of my thing. I really know language and I know cadence, I know meter. I just know beautiful sentencing structures and I understand what good literature is.

Speaker 1: 56:58

Now I'm not personally trying to write literary fiction. I don't have the time. I have a family. I can't afford to take five years to write a book. You know we have bills to pay and, frankly, who wants to wait that long? I don't want to spend five years in that world. I get bored. You know it's not what I want to do, but it doesn't mean that I'm doing my job slapdash or that it's written to a formula.

Speaker 1: 57:24

Every single book stands alone. All of my books are written in a different way. They are not formulaic. I will change how I write. I might have a past, present timeline, I might have a completely historical story, in which case I've had to do a shed load of research on the Spanish Civil War, or the Second World War, or an island off the coast of Scotland in 1930. I feel that because books will be packaged in a certain way, they sort of get dumbed down. And I understand that the art of marketing and branding and all of that. You know, you're trying all the time to appeal to the widest possible reader. You're trying to appeal to people. People are buying their books in supermarkets because they're busy.

Speaker 1: 58:27

You know they don't, they don't. And also, shopping habits have changed. We don't necessarily go down to the high street on a Saturday afternoon in the way we used to. People aren't browsing bookshops anymore, you know. So if you've got people picking up your bookshop, your book, in the supermarket, that's a brilliant thing, because they're still keeping books in their lives. But therefore it's just got to appeal, it's got to stand out in a, in an environment that doesn't have soft lighting or beautiful wood bookshelves, or do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1: 58:58

You've got to you know they've got the Kellogg's cornflakes and they've got coffee, and you know, and then you've got a book Like it's got to be able to be seen and to look beautiful but to be pick upable, and you know. So there's an awful lot going on and I feel that with a lot of I understand why books get packaged the way they do, but it's it's not always representative of the quality of what's inside do, but it's it's not always representative of the quality of what's inside. And I know that a lot of my readers come to my books Because I have a very large backlist now and what I have really noticed in my messages that I get from people is I have a lot of readers who have cancer and they're sitting in the chemo chair for eight hours and they need something. They can't move and they need something to take them away from this awful reality that they find themselves in right now and what they do is they sit there and they pick up my book and it takes them away for that time and then, oh, she's written all these other books. So then they read my other books and the messages I get from people who are facing really horrible scenarios. They've got a lot of fear and they need reassurance and they need comfort and they need to live something better and my books and other people's books can do that for them. I've had readers who have lost their children and they've written to me with incredible messages I've had. I wrote a book about people going missing and I couldn't believe it when, um, actually, an excerpt from my book was read out at this missing people's charity at St Martin in the Fields Church at Christmas.

Speaker 1: 1:00:54

Like you know, these books don't aspire. They're not trying to change people's lives by being by winning awards. I'm not trying to win awards, but I still think I can make a very big difference to someone's day. I'm not going to change their life, but I can change their day. You know, I can give them a three-day mini break and then some characters that will live on with them for a while afterwards. That's what I can do. I'm not aspiring to do more than that, but there's real validation in that. Like we all live stressful lives. We're increasingly isolated, you know it's. This is a way of connecting with people and it's frustrating to be reduced to a beach read, an easy read, a light read, because these books are written with care and attention to detail and a lot of research and focus, and and, frankly, they're written with respect for the reader. If I didn't care, if I didn't respect the people who are reading them, I would just write to a formula that would be so easy for me to do.

Speaker 1: 1:02:04

I could then write four books a year and you know, I could just count the pennies coming in and and whatever it doesn't matter, and I don't do that because I care about putting out a book that is an experience that is completely unique to the book that went before and to the book that's coming after. And you know it's just reductive to be labeled, but that is the reality of you know the industry, you know these print print media. Just, I'm afraid there's a lot of sexism towards women writers. Uh, because most of your reviewers are men and it annoys me to have to say it because I don't want to come across as some whinging feminist, because I'm not. I am completely a feminist. But you know it frustrates me in this day and age that this is something we have still.

Speaker 2: 1:02:58

Yeah, I think that is the frustration that you think in this day and age we will be way, way way past that. But then it seems, you know, with another new book that's published that it just resurfaces again or it just shows that it just never went. And you know, you saw the impact of our books and I remember I had a reader email me I think she was in the States and she said she hadn't picked up a book since her daughter had died. And you know, sometimes I, you know emails appear in your spam folder and I was going through the spam folder and these emails and it's been sent months and months ago. And she said she picked up one of my books and she started reading and she said she got her back into reading after such a long gap, you know, because of this awful tragedy in their life and when.

Speaker 2: 1:03:45

You know, when I started writing a book about a serial crimes unit, I wasn't thinking about you know it could have that impact. You know you just you're telling a story, you want to tell a good story and you want and I think you do want to give people escapism. But you know the effect that your books can have, your writing can have it's, so it goes beyond just entertaining someone.

Speaker 1: 1:04:09

It really does yeah, and I think when people are snobby about books, you know, like ours, you know books that appeal to a wide audience, they're not disrespecting us, they're disrespecting the readers, the people who are actually taking something from those books. It might be the exhausted mother breastfeeding through the night. It might be the cancer sufferer, it might be the widow. You know I've got a reader at the moment. Her husband has been in hospital for 23 weeks. She emails me every week and we just have a chat. She loves the books, like you. You know, books just connect people. They give people hope, they give them escape and you know they're important. Doesn't matter how people take their books, whether they listen to them, whether they're on a Kindle, whether they're, you know, old school paperback, whatever it is, they matter and there's, it's just so narrow minded to. You know, take away, you know to diminish their value to people.

Speaker 2: 1:05:12

Yeah, definitely Right. So, karen, before I go on to our last set of questions, I have to obviously ask you about All I Want for Christmas, which I have, I'm sure, even though no one else was it because I'm showing you and I love this book. I was like, oh, I love it, but what I was going to is it hard? Do you find it difficult to talk about this book now, all I Want for Christmas, considering that you write two books a year, so I don't even know what book you're working on? Yeah, it is difficult, because right now that book you're working on. Yeah, this is already coming on.

Speaker 1: 1:05:43

Yeah, it is difficult because right now that book has just come out. I've literally just finished the book, the edits for the book that's coming out next summer, and I'm already researching the book. I'm about to start writing. So I call this my pinch point, and it happens twice a year where I've got three books in my head and it's terrible because I'll go oh god, what was that character called? And people think, how can you not know? But it's because, oh easy, I, that was like that was two worlds away for me now.

Speaker 1: 1:06:15

Um, so you know, I went to Copenhagen this time last year, went out on half term with my daughter. We had a and my poor daughter, I dragged her around the city because I don't do the touristy things, I don't go to museums or any of that. I. I go to the city and I want to feel it as a local. So I walk around all the houses and I'm taking pictures of people's gardens I mean there must be one at Interpol of me all over Europe. And and you know, and I, yeah, I mean I wrote that book a year ago. I finished it just after Christmas it was. It was it was a tough book to write actually, because, again, it was one that I didn't quite. I had an idea of what it was going to be, and actually it ended up not being what I thought it was going to be and actually it ended up not being what I thought it was going to be.

Speaker 2: 1:07:05

And that was a little bit weird to accept.

Speaker 1: 1:07:08

I was like, oh, oh, like I had this very distinct first scene for the book which I ended up having to take out. It was like the prologue scene was going to be these two characters standing outside of a library and waiting, um, for it to be open because, uh, there was going to be a bequest that was being unsealed and that was that was going to be quite an almost like cinematic moment of these two people on this street in Copenhagen in the in the January light and December light. And it ended up not being that, because I sort of got through and I worked out the plot and I was like, well, this is now not the moment we need to have in the prologue yeah and that was sort of weird.

Speaker 1: 1:07:52

So that was a messy first draft that landed in my editor's inbox it's a number of things.

Speaker 2: 1:08:03

When that happens, in one hand you're like I can't believe, like I've worked so hard on this piece and it's beautiful and I love it, like I had a scene like that with my with the last book. I've just finished and I've got this and I still think it's a brilliant scene that takes place this whole set, the whole setup and the resolution of it. And then I got to the end of the book and I realized this does not work anymore. It it doesn't work and I have to take it out. And I didn't want to take it out because I had everyone, yeah and I like, and it was all, except it was almost cinematic.

Speaker 2: 1:08:36

Yes, how it took place, but then I realized it just didn't. It didn't serve its original purpose Exactly, and you have to have that discipline to go.

Speaker 1: 1:08:48

No, you know, I want it, I love it, but it just doesn't serve the story now and you have to let it go.

Speaker 2: 1:08:58

I didn't even do the cut it and put it in a separate folder.

Speaker 1: 1:09:07

I just selected it and pressed delete. I was like like no, it has to go and we need to keep it and it's funny, from when you do, as soon as you've done it, you let it go. It's gone like for as long as it's in there. You know, can I make it work? Can I re-angle it? What can I do as soon as you've made the emotional cutoff gone?

Speaker 2: 1:09:22

yeah, and you never think about it again, never think about it at all, right? So, karen, I have some questions. Are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?

Speaker 1: 1:09:32

well, this is probably.

Speaker 2: 1:09:34

I'm an introvert.

Speaker 1: 1:09:35

Everyone, of course, thinks I'm an extrovert because I'm. I'm loud, yes, and I'm animated, but I need, like I will literally now go and lie down for 24 hours. I won't ask, only the dogs will be allowed to come near me like I need so much time on my own. Thank god I get to work in my study on my own and no one can see me talk to me like. I am such an introvert, I find social, I love seeing my friends and I burn brightly when I'm out.

Speaker 1: 1:10:07

But oh my god like the energy that it takes from me, like it is a tax and I need so much time on my own, and so people think I'm an extrovert, but I am an introvert okay, so what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most?

Speaker 1: 1:10:27

I think it was when my husband lost his job, and it was at the time. Would you believe it? When you know, I told you I had to rewrite that book in six weeks oh, no, the exact same time that happened, and I'll add into that as well as that. So my book has just come out. It's done amazingly well and I'm getting royalty checks which are keeping us going. But my husband had just lost his job and our dog had just had puppies. So when I tell you the chaos in our house at that time, but what? First of all, what it meant was, thank God my husband was at home because he could take care of the puppies and I was able to just work, work, work.

Speaker 1: 1:11:10

If I'd had to write a book in six weeks and deal with puppies like no so thank God, in a weird sort of way, that happened and we ended up having a court case with his employer. It never got to court because they settled, because they knew it was all false, but it was a horrible thing to go through. But what it showed me it was all political, but what it showed me was that I could not. You know, my husband's job was safe, as houses, like you know, just people need what he does, and it was such a shock that this could have happened. It was I can't go into details about it, but it was a very large, global case that happened. It was a big Old Bailey trial and it was my husband's team who sorted everything out, discovered this thing, and then there was political repercussions afterwards in which they wanted heads to roll, his being one of them, even though his team had, you know, their processes had worked.

Speaker 1: 1:12:07

It was a horrible thing to go through and we had to take them to court. We couldn't allow them to bully effectively. And so we did that and I was having to write this book under incredibly stressful circumstances and it made me realize that my job was no mere hobby. I really needed to take this very, very seriously. We could not rely on one income and I was always very serious about my career. But this was the point at which I realized I have to throw everything into my writing and I was like, do you know what? I actually can't write two books a year like my. My focus was just a laser at that point because our whole world was about to fall apart. You know, our children were young, like it was I don't know, this was like 2010, 2011, something like that. Our children were little, like I had to really step up and take my career very seriously, and that was the point at which I really then sort of found another gear and just went hell for leather. I just thought I'm doing this, yeah, tough time.

Speaker 2: 1:13:22

Yeah, I've always. Yeah, no, it is. And you know I've spoken a lot with in previous conversations about, I think, that realization for authors that this is a business, and I think there's always, there's always something that happens that makes you have that realization and then it completely changes your approach to the task of writing. And, yes, you write for the love of it and you want to tell stories, but then you're you're now more or you're hyper aware of the fact that this is a business and you need to, you need to approach it.

Speaker 2: 1:13:53

That way in order to get a success, the success that you want exactly it's.

Speaker 1: 1:13:58

It's that. There's nothing fluffy about it, that's for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:14:12

No, it's not.

Speaker 1: 1:14:13

So if you could go back to when you were 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be? Be bolder, I was very sort of protective of myself, I was always very safe, I didn't take risks and, and I wish I'd just been more prepared to fail and to mess up. I'm sort of the eldest daughter, I'm the oldest of three, and I think that's so sort of a thing like I always had to be really on it and just set a good example and be responsible. And you know, and I am, and I always have been, and I just sort of wish I could have been a bit freer and a bit more prepared to fail and mess up. I would have had more adventures and I think as well I would have just learned some things earlier, because really it's when life goes wrong that you learn the big lessons.

Speaker 1: 1:15:06

yeah, if you go through life just trying to protect yourself, to insulate yourself from anything ever happening. Well then, nothing ever happens to you. And how do you grow? And? And as a writer, you you have to have seen a certain amount of the world, you have to have had experiences in order to be able to have any sort of perspective for your characters. So, um, so I think, yeah, I should have gone wild and crazy.

Speaker 2: 1:15:32

I shouldn't have been about it. You shouldn't have been bad. You shouldn't have been bad. So another advice question what piece of advice do you wish you'd been told earlier in your writing career?

Speaker 1: 1:15:46

oh well, I wish I'd been told to write fiction sooner. Um, yeah, it's one of one piece of advice I did have when I was a journalist was I'd written an article for an American magazine, the Hamptons magazine, and she said you just need to relax your style. She said it's very formal and like I went to a school where we couldn't ever write in the first person, we couldn't say I, we had to say one. So like I was really formal, so I was like really it was like the prime of Miss Jean Brody, so it was so formal and my was very, very formal.

Speaker 1: 1:16:24

And then I went to Vogue magazine and I was working with Felice Armstrong who is now at the Telegraph. She did Vogue and then the Times and then she's at the Telegraph and she's an amazing writer and uh, and she was a great person to learn from. She sort of really helped me just relax my style, just let some air in. And even now sometimes I was editing and I was like, oh my god, this scene is so tightly structured that I simply can't insert another sentence into here without the whole thing falling apart, like it only works in this rigid structure. I think generally that's. That's a sign I'm getting a bit uptight, just need to let things get a have a bit of air in them, so that.

Speaker 2: 1:17:10

so sort of, from those two different editors I sort of absorbed that lesson of just letting my style relax a bit and not become too uptight style is such a funny thing because I always, when my English teacher always used to say, when it came to my creative writing, she goes, it's very conversational, she goes, I feel like I'm in a conversation and that, and even now I recognize that as my style. Even writing the sort of books I write, I can see that conversational style in there. But that's so nice, you see, because that's what people want.

Speaker 1: 1:17:46

They, you know people are in it, then you know, because then it's organic, Then it's got a pulse.

Speaker 2: 1:17:53

Oh yeah, I like that. You want to tell me that's what you want. Finally, karen, where can listeners of the conversation find you online, if you are online?

Speaker 1: 1:18:03

Oh, please come and find me on Instagram at Swanee Writes. I don't do Twitter. Oh, I don't even call it X, I call it Twitter. I don't do Twitter because there's too much anger and Facebook drives me potty, because people will send me a message, but if I click on it it doesn't take me to the message, it just takes me to my page, and then I have to find the message, at which point I've forgotten what it was. So I find Instagram super user-friendly and I go on there every single day and if someone has written to me, I will write back to them like I will. I communicate on Instagram, so my Instagram is linked to my Facebook, so people think I'm on Facebook, but no, I'm only active, actively two-way on Instagram and I'm not allowed on TikTok because my teenage daughter would literally die.

Speaker 1: 1:19:01

She would literally die if she saw her mother pop up on her FYP. She hates the fact that I know what an FYP is, so teenagers and TikTok are absolutely hilarious.

Speaker 2: 1:19:20

Don't extremely territorial about it. My name's the auntie. Why? Why are you on tiktok like? What are you? What are you doing? I have books.

Speaker 1: 1:19:29

I need to sell books darling, we need to sell books. Yes, if I said that she'd be like mummy, I'm literally leaving home and I'm changing my name oh so, karen, that just leaves me to say and I've absolutely loved talking to you.

Speaker 2: 1:19:46

It just leads me to say thank you so much, karen Swan, for being part of the conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:19:52

I have loved it. This has been so much fun.

Speaker 2: 1:19:54

Thank you thank you so much for listening to today's conversation with Nadine Matheson. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode featuring more amazing guests. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a review. It really helps the podcast grow and if you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a cup of coffee or sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes and if you'd love to join the conversation as a guest, feel free to send an email to theconversation at nadiemappersoncom. Thanks again for your support and I'll catch you next time.