Marnie Riches: Gambling with Words-The Writer's Journey

In this illuminating conversation with crime author Marnie Riches, we dive deep into the unpredictable world of professional writing and publishing. With remarkable candor, Marnie shares the rollercoaster journey that's taken her from writing children's books under a pseudonym to becoming an award-winning crime novelist with 22 publications to her name.

"Writers are gamblers," Marnie reveals early in our discussion. "Even on days where we don't love writing because it is a grind, there's always the gambler in us thinking next time, next time, the next spin of the wheel." This gambling analogy perfectly captures the persistent hope that keeps authors going through rejection, disappointment, and the countless variables beyond their control.

Our conversation takes fascinating turns as we discuss the politics of book covers, the challenges of switching genres, and how class background shapes risk-taking in creative careers and her latest novel, "The Gardeners Club," a cozy crime mystery that represents yet another pivot in her versatile career. 

The Gardeners Club

Gardening is dirty work – but should it be deadly?

When Gill Swanley decides to take up gardening to fight a midlife malaise, she never expected it to become quite such a dangerous hobby.

Pushing herself to 'get out there', Gill picks herself up the secateurs and joins the Bromley Botanists. Here she finds a seven-strong group whose main agenda is how to win the coveted Golden Trowel for best community club of the year.

But when a dead body turns up in the community greenhouse, they suddenly have more serious matters to consider than victory. They must uncover whether their arch-rivals, Croydon, are taking things to another level or whether someone more dangerous is targeting their rag tag group.

Can they dig up the truth before someone else is left pushing up the daisies?

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Chapters

• 0:00 Writers as Gamblers
• 5:54 Marnie's Author Journey
• 11:38 The Reality of Publishing Success
• 19:32 Finding the Storyteller Within
• 27:46 Marketing and Cover Battles
• 37:02 The Gardeners Club
• 45:40 Class, Risk-Taking and Fear of Failure
• 1:07:20 Writing Advice and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I think that writers are gamblers. We love the thing of writing, but even on days where we don't love the thing of writing because it is a grind, there's always the gambler in us that thinks next time, next time, the next spin of the wheel.

Speaker 2: 0:15

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation with Nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you've had the good week. And not only have you had a good week. I hope that you had a fantastic Easter weekend, because if you're in the UK and I can't remember where else in the world but if you're in the UK over Easter, we get a four-day weekend, and I love a four-day weekend. So we had good Friday, obviously the whole weekend, and then Easter Monday, and then today, tuesday, is the start of our four day working week, and I didn't do a thing over the Easter weekend.

Speaker 2: 0:54

Once Thursday, at what four o'clock had passed, I had down tools Like I'd made such good progress with my edits I'm basically finished that there's nothing for me to do, and all I wanted to do over the weekend was just relax, read my books, watch movies, hang out with my family and friends and eat and drink, and I wanted to just do that for four days, and that's exactly what I did.

Speaker 2: 1:20

So I hope that your four-day weekend was just as restful and fun. And well, you're ready to start the week, and what better way to start our very short week with a new conversation with my guest, marnie Riches. Marnie Riches is an award-winning author and she's written everything. She's written children's books under a pseudonym. She's written crime thrillers what she would describe as gangland thrillers and now she's embarking on cozy crime with her new novel, the Gardeners Club, which is out on Thursday. And in our conversation, marnie Richards and I talk about managing expectations in the publishing industry, discovering the storyteller within and the fear of taking risks. Now, as always, sit back. We'll go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Marnie Riches, welcome to the conversation.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Thank you for having me. It's very lovely to see you.

Speaker 2: 2:24

It's lovely to see you too, right? My first question, right, is so your new book, the gardeners club, is going to be your 12th crime title, yeah, and then your 22nd publication overall. So my question is I know. So my question is how would you describe your journey from the publication of your first book? And I was going to say way back, but it's not way back, it's 10 years ago, in 2015.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Well, actually, my first book came out in I think it was 2012 or was it. Oh, was it? Yeah, I had six children's books published under a pseudonym, chris Blake, before I did the crime. So I'd been writing for a long time trying to get published and I had an agent. Back then. I was writing middle grade and I got this gig to write the first six books in a HarperCollins series for seven plus year olds called the Time Hunters, and I was Chris Blake. In series for seven plus year olds called the time hunters, and I was chris blake. Um, and they were lovely historical adventures and I absolutely loved doing them. Um, and I thought I was going to be, you know, the next jk rowling or whatever and earn a stack of cash and be loved by children, um and um, yeah, that didn't happen. So, so then I'd written.

Speaker 1: 3:47

There was a trend back then.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Everyone thought that new adult fiction was going to catch fire in the UK and it started to take off in the US and I was already reading a lot of Scandinavian crime thrillers and love crime thrillers.

Speaker 1: 4:02

I mean, silence of the Lambs has always been my, my favorite, one of my favorite novels, and I started so I'm a linguist and I spent a year in the Netherlands when I was a student and I started writing my answer to the girl with the dragon tattoo and I thought I'll pitch it as a new adult crime thriller and it is bound to go supernova and I'll be yeah, I'll be the next James Patterson, or whatever, or the next Stig Larson not dead and um, yeah, that didn't work either anyway, but I did get a deal. I did get a deal, but it wasn't marketed as new adult at all because that never took off here. It was marketed, marketed as straight crime fiction. And the series it was picked up by Harp Collins on a really small digital sub-imprint of Avon called Maze and it was kind of digi-first. But that series went on to sell loads. I mean, first copy sold 75,000 copies.

Speaker 2: 5:04

Oh, wow yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:06

The second one sold about 50. And you know it keeps selling the backlist. It's kind of perennially popular, I suppose, and it was about transnational trafficking, the kind of overarching theme of the series. So it got really meaty. Even though my main character, george McKenzie, started as an Erasmus student with criminologist aspirations and she was taking a year out in Amsterdam, it ended up something far more adult and you know she uncovered all this kind of you know know, the seedy underbelly of amsterdam.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Basically it was set in amsterdam, cambridge and south london, southeast london, because I used to live there and I went to cambridge and I lived in the netherlands. So my, you know, some of the elements of my my um characters journey were kind of inspired by stuff I'd done. So that did really well and I thought that I was destined for you know, super literary stardom and you know, and then reality bit and I started, you know, and then they went oh well, you're like Martina Cole of the North, why don't you do some gangland fiction set in manchester? And I'm like, yeah, all right then. And I just thought my career was building and building and and I did born bad and the cover-up, and they sold really well as well. They were my first proper kind of straight to paperback and um and I was very excited to be in Tesco's and Alistair and stuff.

Speaker 1: 6:44

And then I'd got divorced and I needed the money and so I moved publisher because Hob Collins wanted to wait and see how those did and I couldn't wait. I needed to feed the kids and I moved to Orion and did a couple. So it's been like and then they didn't work very well and you know it's just up and down and up and down. So I suppose I'm one of those work horses that we get in crime fiction that do two books a year and in some years I have done three and um, and more recently I write crime fiction and historical saga. So I do one of each a year and I teach two jobs and I'm always knackered. So I'm lucky to have always stayed published for over a decade. But I, you know, and I've sold lots of books, but I'm not one of those memorable Sunday Times bestseller names. I just chug away in the background growing this massive backlist and getting critical acclaim.

Speaker 2: 7:47

But you know it's, it's a typical writer's you know, jobbing mid-listers journey, I think you know, I'm listening to you and I'm like it's not exhausting but I'm like it's just a lot it's exhausting, it's depressing.

Speaker 2: 8:06

No, I mean it's great because you know, but you think it's going to be this lovely, smooth journey. You know it really isn't and you know, you hear so often that I don't know in you, in your head, because of what you think writing is and being an author is. You think that once you sign with your agent and once you sign the deal, then that's it, it's all, happy sailing, happy sailing, plane sailing. You just think it's going to be a smooth ride and it's not.

Speaker 1: 8:37

I was talking to Mike Craven, mw Craven, recently and I was saying so, uh, so what was your journey? And he's like oh well, you know, I did a few books with a small publisher and then I got a better age. You know, I've got a good agent with David Headley and, yeah, my career kind of built from there and then I won the Sexton's and then things have gone bigger and I've done this and I've done that and Netflix is blah blah. And his trajectory, the way he told it, me sounds like it's one of those beautiful straight lines going upwards and I thought I'm missing a trick here this is the thing, do you think?

Speaker 2: 9:14

I've had a couple, a few conversations like this on the podcast and when I've done events outside where authors have said it's just luck. You know, I've just got lucky and in my head I'm thinking I don't know if it can just be reduced down to just being luck it's a mixture of things.

Speaker 1: 9:37

I think luck is the main ingredient, because it's all about writing the right thing at the right time and it hitting the right editor's desk, and then your editor stays. Your offer is big enough for them to put weight behind the book. You know, it's a perfect alignment of the planets, I think, plus engaging writing. It's not, you know. I mean, mean it's not always the best writing that makes it to the top of the bestseller list, but it's the writing that people enjoy, which is a different kettle of fish. Else we wouldn't have a distinction between commercial and literary fiction.

Speaker 1: 10:19

But you can be writing fabulous stuff and it just goes out and there's no real hunger for it in the market. But a publisher's business model is always a bit hit and miss and they might take it on with a low advance and not put the weight behind it. And then your publisher, your editor, might leave, and then you're somebody else's sloppy seconds leave, and then you're somebody else's sloppy seconds and, um, you know the uh, you don't get the full marketing weight behind it, or something else comes out that week and kind of eclipses your book, or you know, there's so many variables and I think, yeah, think literature. There's just no hard and fast recipes for success, and it's not a meritocracy and it's not. It's difficult, isn't it? It's just a really tricky arts industry.

Speaker 2: 11:19

Yeah, I think the sloppy seconds thing is very interesting because it's so common and I don't think people like outside, I say this little niche world of publishing that we're in realise that you know it's even having the same editor for one, two, three, four, seven, eight books. It's not that it's not that common, because I know so many authors friends of mine, yeah who have on their fourth book and they're on their fourth editor and they've lost editors halfway through for various reasons, nothing to do with them, but for various reasons They've lost an editor halfway through writing the book or during the editing process.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Yeah, yeah, I mean, while I was at Avon, I had seven books come out within a three-year period and I had nine editors, nine, nine editors. It was a constant revolving door of editors and I had some really good editors and some that were less engaged and um, but that's, that's just the case. It's just publishing, because I think editors aren't particularly well paid. They work extremely hard and you know they're often young and ambitious and you know some just get offered a better job elsewhere and then it's like six months Adios, and then the writer sat there being, you know, being picked up by someone who didn't commission them, and there isn't the same. You know you want someone who's going to champion your book, don't you? So yeah, and that isn't always the case, um, and sometimes it's to do with covers or supermarket slots, or you know there's there's so many variables. If you get a duff cover and um, and you're in a kind of dead time supermarket slot on a bad shelf, you know your book can tell.

Speaker 2: 13:14

it's as easy as that yeah, how do you keep going, though? Well, you know there's so many different variables that you have no control over, but how do you personally and like mentally, keep going through all those ups and downs?

Speaker 1: 13:28

I think it's a mixture of naive optimism, uh, dogged persistence and a sense of professionalism and the fact that I've signed a contract. I'm gonna have to deliver, and also it's a long time since I was a professional fundraiser, which used to be my career, and I don't have to do that anymore and I'm now not qualified to do anything apart from write books and teach. Really, I do a lot of teaching on the side because obviously I've got quite a lot of experience under my belt and this is what I do now. This is what I do, and I'm at an age where you know I don't want to retrain. If I get off the hamster wheel, then that really is the end of my career. And I think that writers are gamblers. We love the thing of writing, but even on days where we to we love the thing of writing, but even on days where we don't love the thing of writing because it is a grind um, there's always the gambler in us that thinks next time, next time, the next spin of the wheel you know.

Speaker 2: 14:34

I think you have to think that, though you have to have that belief because you need something to keep you going, because you know, if you're going through that whole roller coaster of you know I love this editor, this editor's amazing and then they go halfway through your book, or you didn't get them the marketing spend that you thought you was going to get or your the book doesn't go in any supermarket. You do need to have that element of risk, I suppose, in your personality, to be thinking all right, I'm going to spend eight, nine months a year writing this book and it's going to pay off.

Speaker 1: 15:08

Yeah, you have to think that the next thing you're going to write is the one. And I've had a few moments in my career, certainly before I got my deal with Penguin for the Gardeners Club and the housekeeper at Holcombe Hall, which I write as Maggie Campbell. Before I got those two deals, I was a bit in the doldrums. I'd had a couple of good books that didn't really go anywhere and you think well, you know, you have to dig deep and think, yeah, this is the career that is for me. I am a published author, I am going to continue.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Readers still want to read my work. I'm, you know. Sometimes I reread my reviews on Amazon just to keep me going. Yeah, well, occasionally I'll look back and think people love, love this stuff. You know, they love you, they love me. Why would I give up if this is enjoyable for people and it makes them think? And, um, yeah, so it just inspires you to keep going and you think the next one, the next one, although, having said that, I've had a few publishers.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Now I've been around the block and I've had, you know, four bloody series. Um, that ended because, mainly because I moved publisher, yeah, and I'd always wanted to be a Penguin author and now I am. So you know, you just got to and that's so. The amount of time that's elapsed between me having this zeal, oh, I really want to be a Penguin author. When I was writing kids' fiction, I wanted to be a Puffin author and now, in 2025, it's like 15 years. It's taken me 15 years to get there, but you got there. Either it's a great example of persistence and hard work paying off, or it demonstrates that I'm mental in the head for having so little reward.

Speaker 2: 17:12

So you decide when did you know that you could tell a story, though, marnie, because I always think it's a different, that's a different question to asking when did you know that you want to write? Because I think lots of people can write, I can have a talent, talent for writing, but that talent of telling a story, when did you know you could do that?

Speaker 1: 17:31

uh, well, I suppose. Uh, I was an only child and, um, a bit of an a. You know, if I had a fiver for every time I've been told I'm eccentric which which I don't think I am at all I'd be a rich woman. So I guess I was a slightly odd, creative, only child and I used to fabricate all sorts of crap when I was little. So I'd go on a school day out to Alton Towers. My mum would go, oh yeah, how was it? And I'd just make this shit up, you know. Oh, and Anthony Shaw puked all over and we went on the pirate ship and he puked, landed on Aviva Ashbell's mother's head, and then we went in the boat on a boating lake and someone fell in and I just, but I just was always embellishing on things and I had a wild imagination and I used to scribble stories in exercise books, and I'm sure this is true of loads of writers, I bet you did it as a kid as well, scribbling little stories and then stashing them under the bed, and I always liked words.

Speaker 1: 18:39

And then, when I was at college, I went to university and I did languages and during my time there I was inspired by cop, this, an epic 12th century Dutch poem about Charlemagne the Great, which I loved. I really loved it. It's called Caroline Elhast and it was, like you know, charlemagne kind of lore and I, during my I think it was my second year, I novelized it in the summer holidays and wrote this really crap fantasy rendition of it. And then I put it away for 17 years and came back to it at the age of 37, when my kids were little, and I rewrote it as um a YA fantasy thriller. I mean, it was so niche, it was unbelievable and it was crap to realize I'd got the book for writing by then and I had been, I'd been a professional fundraiser and I had been doing houses up on the side and then, just as I was about to go full-time as a property developer, the market crashed the housing market and and we had the recession, everything.

Speaker 1: 19:57

So I couldn't do that and I thought I need a creative outlet and I've. You know, I kind of rewrote this, this execrable manuscript, this fantasy manuscript, and and had written a picture book for kids and done a little middle grade manuscript and decided that. You know, that was when I realized that I knew I wanted to go full-time, but the storyteller within me has always been there and I think it comes from the women folk in my family because they'd always hold court at my mother's or my auntie's kitchen table with fags and strong tea and telling tall tales and you know, guess what happened? And she 77, and I was party to that as a kid. So I think that that's the tradition, this kind of oral bullshit. Storytelling is where I've come from and that's a lot of that, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 20:54

and I think that I think that's when you learn a lot about character and building characters and yeah, and personalities and how, and then, and I think even at a young age, you can kind of work out how much of it is true and how much of it is, as you said, it is bullshit yeah, yeah, of course you can um, and it's the stuff at the margins that's interesting, the, the kind of gray area and the who's, who's a demon and who's a saint and who's telling lies and the kind of what if and what could be, and and then you know, you, you couple that certainly on, for my part, with an upbringing on a rough estate in Manchester and everyone's skin and on the breadline and on the dole and doing a bit dodgy this and that and grafting and never getting anywhere, and suddenly it's a crime story.

Speaker 1: 21:47

You know, it's very easy to turn into that. Suddenly you get your windows smashed and there's kids giving you a hard time and it becomes a basis for your first novel did you know when they asked you or they spoke to you about writing a gangland series?

Speaker 2: 22:03

did you and did you feel in feel any like resistance to it? Did you feel like maybe this it sounds a bit, it feels a bit cliche because of who I am and where I've come from that you'd be expected to write that? Did that ever come across your mind?

Speaker 1: 22:17

um, no, no, not at all. I mean I'd, I'd just, I'd really enjoyed doing that first series about the transnational trafficking and my, my criminologists and the Dutch police. But you know, when Harp Collins said, we're going to give you a book deal that doesn't involve being digital first, a proper one, we're going to put some marketing behind it and you're going to be in WH Smith and blah, blah, blah, would you like to be the Martina Cole of the North? I just thought do people want to read it? Yes, am I personally equipped to tell a reasonably authentic tale? Absolutely. Am I going to sell a load of books? Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 22:57

You know, it's the pragmatist in me that thought and also the artist in me that thought yeah, let's try something different now. And it's a very, very different storytelling technique. And I had to adopt a kind of saga structure for telling a gangland story, as opposed to the whodunit thing of doing a police procedural. Yeah, so it was a challenge and I rose to it and it was. It was fun, um, and it's it's. You have to find the story within the story with a gangland fiction. So I didn't mind. You know, I mean, there's so many people out there, that kind of middle class poverty tourists telling stories about gangland this, that and the other, and you just think, well, actually here's a chance for someone who knows what they're talking about to tell a reasonably authentic tale.

Speaker 2: 23:55

I think you can tell, can't you? When someone's um, like cosplaying, having that sort of, having that sort of background or being adjacent to that sort of life, you can tell, especially if you're from that area. If you are, you are.

Speaker 1: 24:14

I'm not one of these that believes that, that I'll not tell the story unless it's my own. I just think that's that's counterproductive. But you can certainly tell when someone knows their onions, knows what they're talking about, has experienced it firsthand, Because and I know this from students that I've taught that it comes across in their voice. They have a more authentic voice.

Speaker 2: 24:41

You know when you're teaching, sorry, you know, when you're teaching, what is the most like common, I'm gonna say, question that's always put to you by your students um, they don't really ask much question, many questions, because I think really, yeah, they just want to write and be told their writing's good.

Speaker 1: 25:07

That's, students attend these courses, I think, with the intention of being told that they're good and can get published. And then what they get is a rather different thing, because obviously they get constructive criticism and feedback that will help them improve their craft. So, you know, they ask about how do you get an agent, how do you get published? But I get the sense of there's very few that are genuinely curious about how to tell a story, because they come with notions that they've already got something you know what?

Speaker 2: 25:49

I was listening to all of this and I was watching um Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was. What was I watching? I was watching an interview she was doing on YouTube because her new book, I think, dream Count, came out a few weeks ago and she was talking about teaching creative writing to students and especially those who are in, I'd say, like the Ivy League schools, and she said there was an expectation with them, not like you're saying, they just want to be told that they're good, and there was an expectation with the students that anything they produced, they would automatically just be given an A.

Speaker 2: 26:30

Because, by virtue of the fact that who they are in terms of who they came, you know their family background and the fact that they're in this school claiming the space. And she gave a student a C and he was like well, why have you given me a C? Like I've never been given a C. And she's like well, because the work is a C. And he was like well, why have you given me a C? Like I've never been given a C? And she's like well, because the work is a C. It's like it's got nothing to do with who you are. And again, it's that. It's that expectation. You just want to be told that you're good. But yeah, that's, but you don't know anything from that.

Speaker 1: 27:01

No, that's not what the're paying for. They're paying to get better, they're paying to learn and you know we've all had to do it, haven't we? I mean, you know, had I done a master's in creative writing, I could have cut my journey time down from 10 years to two years, because I went off and learned by my own mistakes and they're getting told all this stuff up front. But I think you do get students who who come to the table expecting to be told they're great and ready to be published, and you get those who are more curious and want to improve and in some cases students will have stuff that's that's got real promise and they go on to get published and in other cases they they just won't, you know, um. But hopefully they've learned something from the process, because not everyone can write a book, not everyone can tell a story, and typing is very different from writing.

Speaker 1: 27:55

It's so true, yeah, I mean, I do love teaching though, because it is very, it's very satisfying when you get a student who is eager to learn and will listen, will listen to your feedback and act on it, and then by the end, they've they've gone through this lovely journey of moving from a c to a well-earned a.

Speaker 2: 28:15

yeah that's what. That's what I do enjoy about when I'm I said, when I'm teaching the baby lawyers, but and but? When I'm teaching them advocacy and communication on that first day of their three day course with me, I can tell like 60% of them they don't want to be there, they don't want to be doing advocacy, they don't want to be talking, they're scared to look at you in the eye. And you can have such a strong transformation from day one to day three that on my last day you know when they're leaving my room. I like oh, bless them.

Speaker 1: 28:47

Yeah, yeah, even within a day. You can get that, I can. I teach sixth formers for the rural literary fund. Uh, how to bridge the gap between um, a-level writing and what's demanded at university or in the workplace. And by the end of the day you can see that kind of boost in confidence and willingness to speak and feeling that they're equipped with everything they need and it's, it's nice and that's an unlooked for side effect of not having gone supernova with my writing, because had I immediately shot to the top of the charts, I would never have taught. I'd simply have just sat around and took four years to write a book and lived off my advance and gone. You know I'm doing valuable research in the brasserie.

Speaker 2: 29:36

But wouldn't that have been nice though, Marnie.

Speaker 1: 29:38

Yeah, I love that now. I love that now. The problem is, club can go supernova and finally will uh earn my back of chips instead teaching people stuff they wish they didn't need to know?

Speaker 2: 29:56

but how do you manage? Like their expectations? Because obviously you've learned from yourself over your roller coaster journey.

Speaker 1: 30:08

Yeah, how do they manage their?

Speaker 2: 30:09

expectations, yeah, or how do you? Yeah, how do you? I don't know if you can teach someone to manage their expectations.

Speaker 1: 30:15

Well, I think you have to kind of give them a dollop of realism by telling them anecdotes of who got where they were and what their journeys were, and hopefully they'll absorb that.

Speaker 1: 30:28

And some do and some don't. And sometimes it's better not to absorb the dollop of realism and just to plough on, because it is an industry that forces you to lean into the punches and get up and take the next one and the next one and the next one. But for the ones with the egos it's probably useful to. It's not, it's not knocking them down, it's managing their expectations, which I think is a grown-up thing to do, because it is a very hard, cutthroat industry. And even if you get published with your first novel and that's a big hit, and that does happen to lots of people you can then struggle to get published with your first novel and that's a big hit, and that does happen to lots of people. You can then struggle to get published, get the next deal and the next deal, and you can be dropped at any time. You can end up with bad track and it's about nurturing resilience and understanding about what it is to keep going and keep striving. Why, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 31:29

You know, sometimes not when I'm recording, like normally when I finish recording these interviews and we're still chatting, and sometimes we're chatting for like still half an hour and at the end of it you're thinking why are we still doing this? I know you need to have a word with yourself, love, thinking.

Speaker 1: 31:45

Why are we still doing this? I know, listen to myself and lie. You need to have a word with yourself, love.

Speaker 2: 31:50

I know, I said that to myself do you ever dance? Have a word with yourself, sort yourself out. So I think I was lying in bed saying to myself. I think someone asked me would you go back to court? And I was like no, no.

Speaker 2: 32:02

It's like I'm doing everything I can to make sure I don't go back to court and I was like no, no, it's like I'm doing everything I can to make sure I don't go back to dragging my little mini suitcase up and down London and wandering around various courtrooms in London representing people like I'm working this hard so I don't have to go back to that yeah, well, there's an element.

Speaker 1: 32:19

You know I'm a great believer in sunk cost fallacy. You know I've just got to keep going at this point. But with the Gardener's Club it's weird. Actually, because I'd written so many crime thrillers, I did think, oh well, I'm going to change genre now I'm going to write women's fiction and just start fresh. And I wrote it originally like that in a bid to start fresh and kind of roll the dice again, so that I didn't have to go back to doing something I hated. Uh and. And then, bugger me, it got picked up and my commissioning editor said to me uh well, she's publishing out how I said. Uh oh well, I would like you to rewrite it as a cozy crime. So here I am again going through those again Marnie Rich's part four or mark four, I should say.

Speaker 1: 33:11

All I need is a couple of those weird wolves Drax wolves is it that they've got in Game of Thrones? Start my own epic, die wolves, I think, god knows I don't know what before. But um, yeah, I mean um, who knows? Who knows where it will lead, but it's, it's been quite nice doing something lighter. That has been really nice and humorous and that's something I always wanted to do, actually, and I thought, well, maybe this is my authentic voice, maybe this will be the thing that cuts through do you think it's?

Speaker 2: 33:44

do you find it interesting or just just plain weird that you know, since you first started writing, you're saying like 20 from 2012, so we're talking what 17 years that you're still now, in 2025, thinking is this now my authentic voice?

Speaker 1: 34:03

yeah, I think you know you're evolving all the time as a writer and learning more about the craft and learning more about the business and what works and what doesn't work. So yeah, I think that when you first start writing you're necessarily affecting the voice to to kind of settle into the craft and by the time you're kind of 10, 15 years down the line, maybe what's coming out is the real thing. I don't know, because I use different voices for writing different genres. So I'll use a completely different narrative voice for my historical sagas than I do contemporary crime.

Speaker 2: 34:45

You know, looking at publishing, I say as a whole, do you think it has changed much from 2012 to where we are now?

Speaker 1: 34:56

Yes, yes, I think what hasn't changed is that publishers still don't know what makes a great, you know, a massive hit. It's still a little bit of throwing a shit out the wall and hope something will stick and they'll try their best. And even stuff that has a big advance and huge marketing behind it can fail. So that hasn't changed. I think the publishing arena has become a little bit more diverse. I think the publishing arena has become a little bit more diverse. I think that there's a huge move away from people writing other people's stories. So, for example, when I first started writing and when my first novel got, my first thriller got published the Girl who Wouldn't Die, my character is mixed race, uh, because I'm minority, ethnic, ethnic, but I'm a boring. You know, no one, no one wants to hear about my background. So and I was all about diversity and fiction at a time when it was completely white, the industry and you know, anglo-saxon christian middle class, there is no that there were fewer interesting voices. So and back then it was fine, it was fine to have done that and I did do my research. I used to work in a black-led organization. We were all minority ethnic and I, you know, I did my research and I had beta readers and they were really happy with what I'd done. And you know, I set up the first diversity in children's fiction writing prize with Common Word and Puffin back in 2007 and whenever it was. But then identity politics hit home and now I think publishing takes the view that you should write your own stories, which people may or may not agree with, so, but the good thing about that is that we've got more black and asian you know, writers of color coming through writing their stories. So I would never write my first series now with the same protagonist, because now, yeah, that has changed and that's no longer the done thing and that's that's fine, that's right, although I, you know, I still think George Mackenzie's character that appeals to readers and you know she's, I think she's great, but that's all it's time. You know that was over 10 years ago I wrote. I started writing that book in 2009. It's was a long time ago, yeah, and the past is a different country.

Speaker 1: 37:28

So what else has changed about publishing? The digital landscape has made it a lot easier for aspiring novelists to make it through and for publishers to take a punt on different voices that they wouldn't have done before and you are seeing some more working class voices coming through. Not many, but it's those digital imprints and the rise of things like TikTok and social media generally. It's power in the publishing industry. It's just gone crazy. So you'll get things like Facebook and x that now have fallen away, and then tiktok's taken over. There's always some new platform or instagram suddenly come into itself. So that's created more marketing flexibility, more chance for different voices to come through.

Speaker 1: 38:21

But the trouble is that those you know there is a concern that those digital acquisitions just don't get the same way put behind them. So they might be equally as good, they just don't. They don't get the same spend, they don't get the same welly and authors might fall by the wayside a little more quickly. So there's more opportunities there for different writers now, which is good. There's still work to be done. I think a lot of work, yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:55

Does it make you think about your own strategy in terms of writing when you're looking at how, because the publishing landscape, it changes so quickly Even for, say, from the five, is it five? So quickly? I say even for my say from the five, is it five years, five, six years? I think that I've been involved, like traditionally published, that I can see how much it's changed, so that's so. Does that change make you re-evaluate your thinking and how you write and what you should be writing?

Speaker 1: 39:23

um, no, because I think. For I think that unless you're one of these lucky buggers that just takes off and stays at the top, you have to be supremely adaptable to keep being published in this industry. So it's okay, I think, to switch tack and change lanes, because the trend, you know, publishing trends change and suddenly what you were writing, that was being lauded, is out of fashion. You know, I started out writing these gritty serial killer thrillers, stuff about trafficking and really dark, gritty, and no one wants that anymore and it's one of those that there's no point having. Yeah, there's lots of things I could have done better.

Speaker 1: 40:09

Maybe I shouldn't have moved from HarperCollins in the first instant. I should have been patient, but I needed to feed my kid. Maybe I shouldn't have moved away from doing the gangland. I should have kept going with it. But there's no point in having those recriminations, because the market changes all the time. There are always new opportunities opening up. If you're considered a safe pair of hands and generally well liked and you work hard and deliver on time and write good books, you can keep writing and hopefully at some point well, it's numbers game, isn't it? Hopefully, then at some point you will have your kind of big breakthrough. Like sarah pimbrush, you've been going kind of in the horror section and and then also in crime for 20 books before she out to a big breakthrough with behind her eyes.

Speaker 2: 40:59

I think that's the thing that a lot of people say when they're outside looking in, don't realize. Like I always say, there's not really any overnight successes. The book that you think is a debut and has made it big, that might be the fourth or fifth book that that author has written. Oh, you know you are paula hawkins yeah, yeah, because didn't she used to write um before she wrote A Girl on the Train? Didn't she write like? Was it like romance, rom-coms or women's fiction? Yeah, I think she used to write women's fiction.

Speaker 1: 41:32

Yeah, so she was hardly a newbie. You do get debuts that do spectacularly well and stay at or near the top, like Claire McIntosh. You know, I think she's always had sunday times bestsellers and hasn't really known, you know, certainly to the, to the public. There's no obvious failures there at all. She's just. You know, every book she puts out is considered a literary event. Yeah, so that's a very different experience to my experience and will be different to yours again listeners.

Speaker 2: 42:15

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. Do you know you were talking about marketing earlier and it's come up a couple of times in the last conversations I've had, whereas we've spoken about books that have had the big like you can't miss it at all marketing spend, but then they haven't appeared, and that goes across any.

Speaker 2: 42:52

You know all the categories, whether it's literary or whether it is crime, but they've had that big spend. You know the posters have been everywhere they're in, they're in the news, but you know, everywhere you turn you can see it. But then, when it comes to that, you know that bookseller when you look, see it. But then when it comes to that bookseller, when you look for it on a Tuesday after publication, you're like, well, where is it? It simply hasn't sold. Do you have a theory as to why that happens?

Speaker 1: 43:20

It's difficult. I think that sometimes the publishing industry gets really excited about something that just doesn't resonate with the public and publishing is not a majority voice. It's not the world out there, joe Public on the street. The world out there, joe public on the street, it's a very, very niche environment filled with lots of very similar people who think similar things. I'm not saying that's wrong, but we're not. We're not a broad selection of society. So when you get editors and marketing people who get really excited about a book, they might be way off, because your average schmo on the street who reads books just doesn't think that way, just doesn't appeal to them, and I think it's that error of judgment occasionally just blindsides publishing yeah, and also it must you know.

Speaker 2: 44:31

If you're not, I say, a normal member of the public, you know, you're, you're, you know going through, you're walking through the aisles in the supermarket and you see the book on the show. You probably think I don't want the same again. Like I've already read this. You are looking for something different yeah, I think there's always.

Speaker 1: 44:51

publishers are always very keen to slap a homogenous, easily identifiable, genre specific cover on a book, whether it's the same ilk or not, because they know that in a supermarket someone's going to think well, I liked this and this looks similar, so I'll whack it in the trolley. Um, and yeah, I think that's diminishing that yields, diminishing returns, personally, um, and I think. But then it's taking a huge risk to give a book the cover that's appropriate for it, you know, and let it stand out in the market. So you'll have, like, I think the first, the kind of a leader in its little sub-genre, was Eleanor Oliphant is absolutely fine, wasn't it? And it had its own quirky cover and was a bit of a quirky book and it just sold brilliantly Because people I guess that must have been a word of mouth thing and then it spawned a million copycats and it's like what is it about those left of field things that just suddenly go supernova?

Speaker 1: 46:08

but I don't know that. Publishers are brilliant in doing retrospective focus groups to see why something's succeeded that. Maybe they do, I don't know, but I get the impression that it's just oh, this was a hit, great, let's do more like that.

Speaker 2: 46:19

That's probably why you did end up with, like, after go on the train you end up with a million girls everywhere you know and everything, yeah, and they're all saying psychological people are dead now, but they're not I don't think they are. I can't see people still love that stuff.

Speaker 1: 46:36

But I do get sick of those generic covers. You know, for these procedurals too it it's like Jesus, get a different coat, other than a Mac, and stop running away in those crappy boots, for God's sake.

Speaker 2: 46:52

What is it with the sight? Not the sight, because it could be. Is it the yellow window or the light in the window?

Speaker 1: 46:59

Yeah, I think was it Lisa Jewell that spawned a load of those, Was it?

Speaker 2: 47:04

I don't know, I don't know who it was.

Speaker 1: 47:12

I mean, he's like he's not even getting published anymore. He jacked it in, I think, and yeah, we're still getting them now, but it's just that's a piece of fiction, though, isn't it? It's like I was saying. Or the girl in the red coat fiction, though, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 47:26

it's like yeah I'm high, solemn, cheek. I was saying or the woman in the red, the red coat, that's another one, you know? Oh, there she is, she's back again oh, I know it's that.

Speaker 1: 47:36

Yeah, and it's always the primark mac, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 47:41

nothing wrong with a primark mac, other brands no no, no, I, I've seen it and every writer thinks when May book's special, May book's slightly different and more interesting can have a different cover. Having said that, the Gardner's Club has got like quite a Richard Osman-esque treatment to it and even though my book is nothing like his book apart from the fact that it's got club in the title and it's marketed as a cosy, I'm quite happy for it to have that easily identifiable cover with the red and the jaunty font.

Speaker 2: 48:15

Do you think you need that, though? Because I've spoken to some authors who have made the switch over to cosy, and we haven't spoken on this podcast, but we've spoken and they fought really hard against having that same similar I say that brand in for for their book, but they've just lost that battle yeah, well, I mean, I stopped fighting publishers over covers a long time ago.

Speaker 1: 48:40

You know I've had enough books come out where you just go. Yeah, the. The only time I really kicked off was the second in my Bev Saunders PI miniseries for Orion. It was looking like the supermarkets weren't going to take it because the first book had what I thought was a reasonably nice cover but wasn't appropriate for the book inside. It was a gangland cover on a book that just wasn't gangland and I think that was a mistake. But then they tried to push a cover on me with this girl on the front. It was a bit like a Kimbo Chambers gangland thriller again, and it wasn't a gangland book and it had this girl on the front and I know why the editor wanted to do it and that was noble and everything. She wanted it to get picked up by the supers because this Kimbo Chambers book had sold really well. But it wasn't.

Speaker 1: 49:31

Readers weren't getting what they were expecting and it was a girl with the big lips and the tongued hair and she looked a bit like a pole dancer and I'm like I'm not being funny, but you're not putting her. I bloody hate tongued hair, sorry tongued hair people. I hate long hair and I don't want a pole dancer on the front. You know, yeah, I mean it was. It's not. I'm not a classy person, but I just didn't like it. I didn't like it. I just thought it's. It's not what the book is about. I don't.

Speaker 1: 50:05

I hate the picture of the girl on the front and I said look, it's obvious this isn't going to get picked up by supermarkets. Told this to my agent. I've got to live with that cover, however, in perpetuity. So I'm going to put my foot down and say no, because I don't want my writing to be associated with that particular image on the cover. I didn't like it. It's the only time I've really dug my heels in and said over my dead body and it did tank. I think it sold about five. Maybe I should have had the pole dancer.

Speaker 1: 50:41

You should have had the pole dancer on the cover I know, I know and I learnt my lesson Now just like I go. Yeah, that's very nice.

Speaker 2: 50:50

I think I was, you know, thinking if I'd ever push back on the cover. And I can only think with the, with the jigsaw man, and you know they send you the first concept which I love. Thank you very much, marnie.

Speaker 1: 51:03

That makes me happy, but I didn't send you editor feedback because I'm terminally poorly organized and my reading was like way behind, and that's all right. But I'll tell you, give me the love.

Speaker 2: 51:17

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah, but I remember them. They sent me the concepts for and you're all excited because this is the first issue of debuting, it's the first time you've seen the covers and they sent me the concept and I think I remember it was four covers. The final cover is blue and I think one was white, one might have been one was definitely red, but one of them it had a fish hook and I was like why is there a fish hook? Like what's a fish hook got to do with anything? And I think, yeah, it starts on the river, but no one's fishing. It's not like they're fishing and they pick a leg up and I just couldn't understand why. And then it reminded me of another cover and I was like, no, I think that's the only time I pushed back. I don't know if it's a pushback, it was just like I don't see the point of this, like no, give me the knife with the eye in it.

Speaker 2: 52:03

I like that one, but yeah it just, it was just so random, just gonna make it.

Speaker 1: 52:07

Occasionally you do have to. You know they don't go it right every time, and occasionally, if something you really detest it, it is your book.

Speaker 1: 52:15

After all, it's your baby and if it's something that you really don't think will work or you don't want to be associated with it, then I think it's fair. But I've just, especially when editors say to me well, sales love it. Then I go, yeah, all right, penguin, do I like the covers they've produced for the holcomb hall book and the gardeners club, and I do feel like I'm in safe hands with their marketing team, so I'm just going to let them get on with it. At this stage I'll just write the book and if it flies, it flies.

Speaker 2: 52:52

I think if anyone's listening who's just starting out on their publishing journey, they need to understand that if you, if you're, if they reply back to you, well, sales love it.

Speaker 1: 53:03

Just consider it game over, because you're not oh, yeah, absolutely yeah, I mean, you start out right. So my first book, the girl who wouldn't die, I hated that title. I wanted it to be called blown away because there's like, uh, you know, there's this, this um, this terrorist, that this terrorist serial killer at the heart of the book, that um, that blows, blows people up. He's a nutter. And I thought, oh, blown away. Blown away. And she's also blown away by this amazing experience. But and then the next book, where, where organs are being harvested like organ trafficking, it can be called empty vessel, because an empty vessel makes the most noise. And they like, you know, I've got my book deal and they're like, no, come on, sounds like a porn novel, it sounds like erotica and I'm like, really, yes, it's too.

Speaker 1: 53:59

It's either literary or it sounds like erotic fiction and I'm like all right you've said it, I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, and yet the book that I I the books where I've picked the name, like tightrope, which was a book I'm really proud of. I really enjoyed writing it, that tanked. I thought it was a dead, dead good title and they went oh yeah, we love that title title. And like the first book was tightrope, second book was backlash, and neither of them sold well, sold well. I'm hoping if the gardeners club is a huge hit, then my backlist will rise and everyone will go oh, that tightrope, it really was a good.

Speaker 1: 54:41

It didn't do anything. I thought one word snappy, she's walking a tightrope. Never asked me for anything. I always think I know and I'm always wrong. And like everyone died sold really well. And the girl who this and the girl who that and everyone's like I was like, oh, it's so derivative and it sounds so much like the girl with the dragon tattoo. I'm almost embarrassed. Shelve your sensibilities, for God's sake, and write the book and leave them to do their job.

Speaker 2: 55:13

Just leave them to it. Just write the book. That's what I said Marnie, Just write the book.

Speaker 1: 55:17

It's just taking hills to die on. That's what I've learned over the years.

Speaker 2: 55:22

Let your agent have the difficult conversations, so I'm quite gobsmacked and I've learned the years before I go on to ask you about the gardeners club, though, but what I found like so interesting recently and this is just about this has just come from being around different circles that there were so many authors who, like they have these battles to fight and they don't think to just tell your agent what the issue is and let them fight on your behalf, because that is their job. It's like you don't need to be carrying this horrible burden on your own.

Speaker 1: 55:58

No, no, exactly, I've learned. I mean, I've been told off at times by my agent because I'm such a gobshite and I'll very happily wade in and fight my own battles, and certainly in the early days, um, I was told to leave that conversation to me by my agent. Um, and my agent, who I've been with for like 11 and a half years you know he's my third agent. Actually it takes a while sometimes to settle with the right team. You know, on a team of two really, and now team of three with my editor at Penguin. She's brilliant.

Speaker 1: 56:33

But, yeah, you've got to leave them to it because it's easier for them, as a third person, to arbitrate and rather than me wade in and say, well, you fucked that up, didn't you? Nobody loves you for telling the truth in publishing. It was like do you know what I really loved, what you did with that? I really look, it's the shit sandwich, isn't it the shit sandwich? Feedback that, as a teacher, I won't think twice about doing. I'll keep going. Well, I really love this, but you might consider this. But I really did love this. But, like, when it comes to my own stuff, it's like well, you fuck, you fuck that up and you kill my career. Thanks, it's personal. That's why. Well, it's just like there's so much at stake. This is how I pay my family. This is how I pay my mortgage.

Speaker 2: 57:26

It's like, if you're not, it's not just a fanciful hobby you just do to pass the time on a sunday afternoon this is work.

Speaker 1: 57:34

The thing is, in any other industry, right. You would have, uh, a review and you'd go in and if things have gone wrong because someone dropped the ball which happens in publishing, because people are only publishing, because people are overworked or just shit at the job, and you know there's a million reasons why things can go wrong In a normal business you would go in and you would say, right, so here are the ways in which we could improve next time, because actually you dropped the ball on that and you could have. You know you've got a right to reply if you're at a certain level and you've been going, you know you're asked for your opinion. How could you have done this better? What do you think were the pitfalls? What would you do differently next time?

Speaker 1: 58:20

In publishing, it's kind of a faux pas to do that, isn't it? No, it is. Which is so one of the dysfunctional parts of the industry, I think, because everyone benefits from a bit of honest feedback, but you better leave your agent to do all that because my agent's got more finesse than me it's strange, but it can also be frustrating, when you've come from another career where you would have done those things and just what.

Speaker 2: 58:51

I wouldn't have thought twice about it in my other other jobs, I just wouldn't. But you come into this publishing field and you just it's like you become. Sometimes you become a smaller version of yourself, which is where you go play nice.

Speaker 1: 59:06

I come from a long time people who don't play nice it's the same, which is why it's weird.

Speaker 2: 59:10

I would never think of like making myself small no, because I wasn't brought up that way. But you come into this arena and you're like, oh, maybe you'd like you second guess yourself, and it's it's.

Speaker 1: 59:23

Yeah, it makes no sense it really it's an incredibly political environment and if you, like me and perhaps like you, you come from a long line of scrappers who have, you know, had to stand up for themselves and, yeah, you know, be articulate, fight the corner, odds are stacked against them, you know. You learn to speak up for yourself, you learn to lay it on the line, and that kind of honesty is you have to dress it up, you've got to be nice and I can understand. You know, it's been relayed to me that actually people will go the extra mile for you if you aren't a complete moron and shout at people down for getting too long. I understand that. I can understand that. Yeah, I can understand that. But you do, necessarily, it's not in my nature to be nice all the time.

Speaker 2: 1:00:23

No.

Speaker 1: 1:00:25

And as a strong woman, I shouldn't really have to apologize for that, and you shouldn't either. But yeah, I'm.

Speaker 2: 1:00:31

I'm like. I'm always being described like my family. I'm an activist by nature, so it's not in my DNA to just sit back and always be polite and play. Not and not to all.

Speaker 2: 1:00:42

Just not tell you about yourself, but sometimes you know, not like that oh, it's an extremely British way of doing things and I was just gonna say, like you're always playing chess and I'm not even talking about the 4d chess that Donald Trump thinks he's playing no, you're just constantly just playing normal chess, trying to think two, three, four steps ahead, just to stay, yeah, on your level, on your level playing field it's amazing that being forthright when you're a woman is very easily repackaged as being abrasive and used again.

Speaker 2: 1:01:17

Oh yeah, not just in this industry but generally and that's always the case, isn't it? It said in any industry, if a man is going to be, you know, speak out or say what he's not happy with, oh you know he's very, you know he's very strong-willed, very authoritative. If a woman does it, well, you know, she's just overreacting, very emotional, just being a bitch you're like no, I'm just telling you what I want and what I expect yeah, we're supposed to be.

Speaker 1: 1:01:51

Uh, alphas in beaters clothing.

Speaker 2: 1:01:53

That's what an author has to be no, I don't, I don't, I do not think so. So, marnie, would you like to tell the listeners of the conversation about the gardeners club?

Speaker 1: 1:02:06

Yes, well, the gardeners club is inspired partly by my own obsession with gardening. I absolutely love gardening and back in 2016, when my mother died and I got divorced and I moved house into a wreck, it's the gardening, really, that kept me sane. Um, and so my main character, jill Swanley, works in an insurance call center. It's set in Bromley, so it's a rivalry between Bromley Croydon.

Speaker 2: 1:02:37

I wonder if I know if you actually based it on the insurance center that I'm thinking of in Bromley, opposite the station, and they're the police station not there anymore, see, but it was that one.

Speaker 1: 1:02:50

I knew it. Neither confirm nor deny. I did get that works in a big bank and uh, he, he sort of uh schooled me in all the bullshit bingo that gets said in meetings. So that was fun, but yeah. So Jill is a widow of nearly 10 years with a 17-year-old son who's a handful, and a cantankerous mother who's ailing and narcissistic, a cordial personality disorder, and she's absolutely sick of her life and suffering that kind of sandwich generation, midlife malaise and menopause and the whole lot. So she joins Bromley Community Gardening Club and gets very quickly entangled with this kind of motley band of community gardeners who are competing for the Golden Trow Association's biggest award, the Golden Trow for Community Gardening Association of the Year, and all sorts of competitive shenanigans ensue. And when a body of a rival team pops up in a shed, suddenly Jill and pals find themselves trying to solve murder right, I've got two questions for you that come up your gardeners club.

Speaker 2: 1:04:16

First one is which one of your characters would you spend the afternoon with, and why?

Speaker 1: 1:04:24

oh, I'd probably spend the afternoon with uh, marjorie who's, who's one of the elderly gardeners, and um, I'd spend the afternoon with her for gardening tips certainly not a politics. Um, she's, um, she's an extremely willful old woman, uh, in her 70s, but you know she's hilarious and she, she says oink instead of uh, oik and um, she's like mrs malaprop, gets everything wrong, but she's kind of steely church elder who does the church flower arranging and she's, you know, she's absolutely full of opinions about Dottie Gloucester in the rival group, who's a BBC star and terribly louche and has a big bosom. So I'd probably say, or there's another older character called Val who's an ex-punk and a political activist and rolls around fags and has green hair, so, um, she's, she's probably a good laugh as well. So generally I'd gravitate towards the older women in the book because they're all really quirky but fabulous okay.

Speaker 2: 1:05:46

So next question, coming from the book Did you face any challenges when writing the Gardeners Club?

Speaker 1: 1:05:53

The biggest challenge, I think, was taking a story that was focused on Jill's life it was women's fiction and turning it, reworking it into a cosy crime mystery. But actually it was much better for a very hefty rewrite and I think that the pace is now exactly right and I think the narrative has got better focus. So I was glad I did it and writing in a different style with a first person narrator. That was. It was a first for me doing the i-narrator and I really enjoyed it, did you?

Speaker 2: 1:06:35

I'm always scared of it. I can maintain it for a short story, but I'm scared of doing it for a whole novel. But I feel like if I write a standalone next, I already know like I would have to write it. I want to try and write it in the first person, but it scares me no, well, I did it.

Speaker 1: 1:06:52

I tried it years ago. This is actually. This novel has grown out of a sample that I wrote in back in 2008 called not for profit, that was.

Speaker 1: 1:07:01

It was like Trainspotting meets Bridget Jones about my kind of previous experiences as a, as a, as a fundraiser, and it was a 30-something woman who was fed up with the life and that was the first time I tried an eye narrator in the present tense and I loved it and it kind of. And then I rewrote it and that book went out on submission when the women's market was dead, never found a home, and then I rewrote it again for this and then I rewrote it again to make it a cozy, so by the time it was ready for publication I was really comfortable with that narrator in present tense and it gives the book a pace and an urgency and an authenticity that you can't necessarily get with close third person narrator, which is what I normally use. So it was fun yeah, I'm gonna try.

Speaker 1: 1:07:49

I mean, you've got to do the things that scare you, so I will try it you might find that you write a very different book and that you're really excited by what you've written, because it'll be different yeah, I'll see how I go.

Speaker 2: 1:08:02

All right, marnie. Your last set of questions. Are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?

Speaker 1: 1:08:07

oh, definitely a hybrid. Definitely a hybrid. Put me on stage and I'll gas to my heart's content and I used to be in a band and all of this business, so absolutely fine, I'm being the joker in the room and that was always a coping mechanism when I was a you know, this kind of timid, only child and a bit odd, I suppose. Um, but also my social batteries run down really quickly and I like a bit of peace and quiet. And if you put me in a room to network which I had to do when I was a professional fundraiser I'm hopeless. I just can't work the room at all.

Speaker 2: 1:08:44

So, definitely a mix of the two, definitely what challenge or experience and I like to say good or bad has in your life, has shaped you the most?

Speaker 1: 1:08:57

um, my childhood, I mean, that's a whole raft of challenges and experiences that were very difficult and I think that, being a poor kid from a minority ethnic background that suffered a great deal of racism and we starved and struggled and I didn't fit in that school posh school uh, free place and just a really difficult childhood broken, my parents split up and it was acrimonious and just a very difficult upbringing. But I managed to get to Cambridge, do well at Cambridge, get a career for myself, do you know? Everything I try, I work harder and I make a success of, and those hardships and knockbacks have taught me great resilience. You know there's nurtured resilience in me. So those are my formative experiences and I continue to fall back on that toughness of character.

Speaker 2: 1:09:58

If you could go back to when you were 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 1:10:05

Oh God, oh god, um, I would. I would tell myself to take more risks because back when I was younger I was so worried about being poor and and I'm failing that I didn't take risks. I didn't put myself forward. I would never take it. I wanted to get into TV but I couldn't bear the thought of going freelance and having to get contract work because I was scared. I just got a boring fundraising job because I wanted to know where my next paycheck was coming from.

Speaker 1: 1:10:41

I didn't push myself forward for corporate jobs that I could have done, coming out of Cambridge with languages I should have you know. Cambridge with languages um, I I should have you know. I wanted to go into entertainment law, but there is some idiot within me that always kind of went for the the lower thing. I was always aiming lower than you know. So I just I didn't do my law conversion course. I joined a band instead. I never put my for myself forward for these posh people's things. I would tell myself, my 25 year old self, to aim higher and not low ball.

Speaker 2: 1:11:16

Keep low balling myself you know what I find I was going to say weird, but just interesting, is that you know you went to Cambridge and you'd think I'm assuming I was saying, oh, this is a big assumption I'm making, but I would assume that going to Cambridge, spending that formative time in Cambridge, that you would leave there with this expectation, or I'm even going to say like entitlement belief, that well, every single door is opened to me, so of course I can go into TV, of course I can be an entertainment lawyer. But to think I'm not gonna, I just yeah. I find it interesting that you would think the opposite as to think that's too risky, let me do something. And I would say being in a band is not safe.

Speaker 1: 1:11:57

But no, it certainly didn't last very long. But, um, I think I had an expect and my mother had brought me up to believe that the world was my oyster and I had, on the one hand, her voice always going go on, the world's your oyster, you've done all this that you know. Go go forth and be fabulous. But, on the other hand and I think this is something that comes from growing up in poverty there's always the poison power no, you can't do that. No, you're not good enough to do that. The the first sign of failure is like go and do something more sensible, something that's lower risk, and I think that I I don't think, personally, that you can ever scrub off the grime of having grown up poor. No matter your circumstances, you do not learn to acquire the entitlement that some are born with. So, even though go on.

Speaker 2: 1:12:58

No, I think that's true. I think you always, even though you may be, you may be secure, like someone else might look at your and I look at your bank account, look at your fact that you have your own house and think, well, you've got all the, you've got everything that symbolizes security. Uh, because of how you've been brought up, yeah, you're like, well, no, I haven't got that security of knowing I'm going to get paid next month.

Speaker 1: 1:13:22

So that just makes me feel uneasy it's that thing of you know that failure is a real prospect. If you have never failed, it's very easy to to walk through life with expectation that you're going to succeed and glow. You do succeed because you have that confidence. And it's the fear of failure, I think, that always holds you back, keeps you in check a bit, and it's it's really. It's the fear of failure, I think, that always holds you back, keeps you in check a bit, and it's really.

Speaker 1: 1:13:51

It's not great behavior, but it's very, very hard to shake off and I'm sure, even multi-billionaires that have come from nothing and done really good, really well for themselves, I bet they still have a bit of that poison parrot and that's partly what drives them along, maybe no, I I agree, because I think you're constantly looking for security and you need to know that.

Speaker 2: 1:14:18

You need to know I always say you need to know that you're standing on concrete and not on shifting sands. And I don't think that, I don't think I'll probably ever go away if you do have that working class background.

Speaker 1: 1:14:30

No, well, I mean no, it's. It stays with you the, the desire to to succeed, the will to succeed and the abject fear of failure. It stays with me now. I'm more of a risk taker now because some of the riskiest stuff I've done has paid off the best. You know some stuff I've done with property. I just had a bit of a wild west spirit about it and that's worked out for me quite well.

Speaker 1: 1:14:56

Uh, and with the writing, that was a huge risk but if I'd been born with a silver spoon in my mouth I wouldn't have seen it as such because I wouldn't have been worried where my next paycheck was coming from and likely I would have succeeded. I would have written different stuff. You know there's this kind of self-perpetuate. You know it's self-fulfilling prophecy that you are going to succeed from day one. And I see a lot of writers come through and they have that confidence and they do shoot straight to the top and they never countenance for a minute that maybe they're going to fall on their ass after the first or second book it's a tricky, it's a tricky one, but then I also think that you do need to have that experience of failure early on.

Speaker 2: 1:15:42

You need to know that it's not all just going to be a very smooth uphill ride. Well, it's that resilience thing, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 1:15:48

yeah, and you need to learn how to pivot when things don't go the way that you yes, and you do notice that those who have never experienced failure crumble the minute they come up against a brick wall yeah so you know it's like who's who's the better off there.

Speaker 2: 1:16:08

But 25 year old me, I just wish she'd had more confidence in herself yeah, I always say 25, I think is the is the age you're most likely to listen. You're not going to listen at 18. Could you think you know it all?

Speaker 1: 1:16:22

I think 27. I was 27 really before I had an adult's head on my shoulder. At 25 I was still a bit of a dick. I was still in a band and thinking I was going to be a bloody rock star. That's true, and with my own kids, you know, I just think they've got a long way to go until they've got that kind of adult mentality.

Speaker 2: 1:16:46

It's funny when I look at my nieces and the godchildren and anyone, all my little cousins, um, and they could be like in their mid-20s I'm thinking you're still a child, you're still a child.

Speaker 1: 1:16:56

Yeah, I know they talk, they talk it, they talk it. But they talk a good game, but they've not got the life experience they talk a very good game anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:17:07

So, um, marnie, what is your non-writing tip for writers? This is the one I say. It could be drink water.

Speaker 1: 1:17:13

It could be go for a walk oh, um, non-writing tip um, which, yeah, I mean going for a walk is a good one, but I'd just say get your bum on the seat and do it. Yeah, just sit down and do it, because you get a lot of people talk about it and don't fit. I think my biggest tip is finish, because a lot of people start and can't finish, and one of the things I've learned as I've got older and I was terrible at when I was a kid was how to become a good finisher.

Speaker 2: 1:17:53

It's true, I think a lot of people it's like I would say you just need to get that, just get it done. Once you've got it done, you've then got something to work with yeah, it's the discipline.

Speaker 1: 1:18:03

it's the discipline of of keeping going even when that initial burst of enthusiasm has waned. And I've got a lot of friends who have written manuscripts that fail to get placed and they keep going over and over and over it and I'm like start something new.

Speaker 2: 1:18:19

Yeah, that's another good one. Yeah, start something new. Yeah, okay. So finally, marnie, where can listeners of the conversation find you online?

Speaker 1: 1:18:29

Well, they can find me infrequently on Instagram, and I guess that now the growing season's begun and I've got a murder mystery set in a gardening club coming out, I might put more pictures of my garden online.

Speaker 1: 1:18:42

They can find me on. I'm still on X. I'm one of the only authors still on X, soldiering away, I mean, I don't. I'll just go on there to like and be horrified and surprised by things, mainly, but I am still on X. If you want to tweet me. Facebook I have a lot of engagement with people, but I rarely accept friend requests because I'm just a miserable bugger. I'd like to keep it to my author pages on facebook. So look at marnie rich's author, I'm on there. So, uh, I'm not on tiktok. Um, I'm a bit on blue sky, but don't really do anything with it. So I think the best place to reach me actually is twitter.

Speaker 1: 1:19:26

You will find find money on twitter or x, you will always find me in the kitchen at parties well, that just leaves me money, hopefully with better hair than this. One day I'll finish the book I'm writing go and get a haircut and get my roots done.

Speaker 2: 1:19:46

That's that's what it is, you it. You don't need to put on a bra, you don't need to do that, but that just leaves. We're going far too far. It's a different podcast. Yeah, anyway, that just leaves me, marnie Richards, to say thank you very much for being part of the conversation and thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:20:13

It's been a really lovely way to spend part of the morning. I'm off now back to my sweaty writing. Garrett, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:20:21

I'm not only fans oh god, I'd have to pay them 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 nadiemaffersoncom. Thanks again for your support and I'll catch you next time.