Coffee Break with Helen Monks Takhar: The Marriage Rule

Ever wondered what happens when you break the unspoken rules of marriage? Nadine Matheson launches an exciting new segment called "Coffee Breaks" – 20-minute conversations with authors about their latest works that feel as intimate and refreshing as catching up with friends over coffee.

In this debut Coffee Break episode, psychological thriller author Helen Monks-Takhar discusses her chilling new release "The Marriage Rule." The premise hooks you immediately: what happens when a woman wakes up disoriented in a hotel room next to a dead man, who isn't even her lover? Helen reveals how she crafted this dual-timeline narrative that explores both the immediate mystery and the events leading to this shocking moment.

The episode closes with Helen's passionate call for more open conversations about normalised violence against women, challenging the victim-blaming question "Why did you stay?" through her character Elle's journey. Her hope that readers will not only be entertained but also prompted to reflect makes this thriller's purpose clear, to entertain while illuminating difficult truths.

Starting in Season 4, Coffee Breaks will become a regular feature, including listener questions for authors. Send your burning questions to theconversation@nadinematheson.com to have them answered in future episodes!

The Marriage Rule

What’s the one thing you need to do to stay married?

Elle never dreamed she’d end up with a man like Dom. He’s handsome, successful, the perfect father to their baby girl.

But Elle doesn’t feel the joy she knows she should. She's struggling with being a mum, failing at work, even her post-baby body doesn’t feel like her own. Not that Dom cares. He worships Elle and craves intimacy as deeply as troubled Elle wants to shy away from it.

Elle starts relying on red wine and the attention of new colleague Gabriel to get through her day. But the morning after a team away day, a bewildered and hungover Elle wakes up with a lifeless body in her bed. She knows devoted Dom is the only person who’ll give her any

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Coffee Breaks Segment
• 2:00 The Marriage Rule Book Overview
• 5:27 Exploring Themes of Domestic Violence
• 10:40 Character Development and Writing Process
• 18:10 Editorial Journey and Publishing Challenges
• 27:20 Future Projects and Final Recommendations

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Conversation with your host, nadine Matheson. Now, I know it's not Tuesday and this isn't a bonus episode of the Conversation. This is something completely new. I am so excited to introduce you to Coffee Breaks Now.

Speaker 1: 0:20

Coffee Breaks is a brand new segment of the podcast which which is going to launch officially in season four season four starting September and in addition to our regular Tuesday episodes, Coffee Breaks will be 20 minute chats with your favourite authors where we just talk about their new book and we'll also be answering your questions. So if you've got a burning question that you've always wanted to ask an author, this will be your chance. All you will need to do is send your question to the conversation at nadinemaffersoncom and we might feature it in a future episode, along with a shout out for you and what I'll also try and do. I'll try and let you know in advance who I'm talking to, so you'll be able to tailor your question to that author. Anyway, I didn't want to wait until season four to get started, because we're only in May and September is still quite a while away.

Speaker 1: 1:14

So from now until the end of season three, I'll be dropping in with episodes of Coffee Breaks just to give you a taste of what's to come. It's literally like walking into a cafe and trying a sample of their new coffee or their new biscuit, or, more preferably, cake I prefer sampling cake. Anyway, that is what coffee break is about, and I'm thrilled to start things off with today's debut coffee break episode featuring my guest, helen Monk-Tacker, and we're talking about her brand new book, the Marriage Rules, which is out today. Now, usually I will say, sit back, we'll go for a walk, but instead I'm going to say so grab a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy your break. Helen Monk-acker, welcome to the conversation. Coffee break.

Speaker 2: 2:07

Thank you so much for having me, Nadine.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Right, this is all new. This is my new segment of the conversation where we just talk about you and your book for 20 minutes, like we're just chatting around having a cup of coffee while we talk about your book.

Speaker 2: 2:20

So this is what we're going to do. This is like my ideal coffee break.

Speaker 1: 2:24

It's a perfect coffee break. So, helen, would you like to tell the listeners of the conversation, whilst we're having our coffee break, about your new book thanks.

Speaker 2: 2:34

So my new book, book four, is called the marriage rule. This is the US cover, this is UK. So what is the one rule of staying married? Well, elle's friend tells her to stay married, you need to have sex with your husband whenever he wants, even if you don't want it, to which Elle is horrified, particularly when the problems in her marriage lead her to wake up dazed and confused in a hotel room next to her lover. But there are two problems One, he's dead and secondly, the guy next to her is not in actual fact her lover.

Speaker 2: 3:12

So we have two timelines. We've got the locked box kind of procedural timeline where Elle looks at her body, her phone, the scene, to work out how she got there, who are the culprits for what's happened to her, and there are several um. And then there's the historical time weeks timeline, three weeks before, where she finds out about the marriage rule and we understand. We peel back the layers of Elle's life to understand how she found herself in this predicament you know what, when you said the marriage rule, this wasn't what I was expecting.

Speaker 1: 3:43

I don't know what I was expecting. I'm thinking a little bit. I knew it wasn't going to be fluffy, because it's you. I don't do fluff, I don't do nice, ellen doesn't do fluff, but I was like oh OK, and now we're not just one lover. Well, yeah, she wakes up with the person who's not even her lover, not even even her husband yeah, it's um, it's the.

Speaker 2: 4:04

It's the worst possible person. This person could wake up with that. You could wake up with I won't say who, because it is part of the many twists in this uh in this book.

Speaker 1: 4:15

We're doing this coffee break with no spoilers, so, helen, what came to you first? Was it the character, a specific scene like waking up in the hotel room with the man who's not her lover, or the overall, the overall premise, or just something completely different?

Speaker 2: 4:30

so it's a developed a story I want. I was thinking about developing a story about mismatched libidos in long-term relationships, particularly when children come into the equation. For ages ago, because it's one of those I don't know how you develop your, some of your themes, but I just listen to what folk are saying, what folk are writing about. But it wasn't enough. Mismatched libidos and the pressure under new mums just wasn't enough to hang a book on. And then I've always been actively interested, appalled, outraged by the persistent violence and coercive control against women and girls across the world. And I was reading some research in the pandemic about how the pandemic had really accelerated violence against women and girls and the UM's calling it the shadow pandemic, and I thought, okay, that's enough. If you, if I bring those two themes together and I send an every woman character through those issues in a kind of psychological thrill away, then I've got enough to write a book.

Speaker 2: 5:27

So, that's, that's. And then, by the time I came to write it, it was ready, ready to go.

Speaker 1: 5:33

You know it's interesting, when you're talking about, like, the rise in domestic violence during the pandemic, they always say like, in addition to the pandemic, it's always Christmas, there there's a rising violence and also football events.

Speaker 2: 5:48

so like World Cup Euros, yeah, there's always an increase, a big acceleration, and actually one in terms of you know, one of the versions of the abuser's playbook is reproductive control, where the woman is kind of coerced into having a child, and actually when they're really vulnerable in the earliest days postpartum and the earliest periods postpartum is when the violence and the coercion can accelerate too. It's kind of well well understood, well understood, but somehow normalized or accepted. I mean, why aren't we out on the street? You know every day about the conviction rates for rape in this country, right? Why aren't we out on the street? You know every day about the conviction rates for rape in this country, right? Why aren't we? Why does it persist everywhere all the time, this violence against women and girls? I don't have the answers, but I wanted to write something that was part of the conversation yeah, even I like even being in criminal law for 20 I'm saying 20 plus years.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Now I don don't. I don't have the answers. No, you think you do, you think you've worked it out, and it's like another variable comes into play.

Speaker 2: 6:55

But it is, but it is. But it is across social classes, it's across history, it's across geography, it's across ethnic background. Geography it's across ethnic background, it it's. There's not a single group that's immune from males being violent and coercive against females. So yeah, it's. I don't understand.

Speaker 1: 7:15

It's baffling it will continue to be baffling one day, one day, one day we will have answers. So, helen, with your book, with the marriage Rules, which character surprised you the most whilst you were writing the book?

Speaker 2: 7:29

So her mother-in-law, elle's mother-in-law, a lady called Patience Graham. I knew I wanted to write a nightmare archetypal mother-in-law. I just knew she needed to have that, you know, grist to the mill. Have that, you know, grist to the mill. But I didn't know how much depth into her pathology I was going to introduce, which I managed to do. So she is. She is quite up to me. She's a. She's a quite a stunning character in terms of her physical presence and her way of speaking and the way she holds herself. Um, but we also peeled back her layers too. So it was great to bring depth to that character as well.

Speaker 1: 8:08

You know I never asked this in the other conversation in the podcast, but I never asked the writers if they're planners or plotters.

Speaker 2: 8:17

It normally will come out, naturally.

Speaker 1: 8:19

But are you One or the other? I'm a bit of both.

Speaker 2: 8:23

No, I'm a bit of both. Like I have in the past basically written the beginning and the end of a book. I did that for my debut. I knew where I wanted to start it. I wanted to see this woman ruined and then at the end I wanted to fight back and maybe win in a in a fashion um, but yeah, it depends. Like I tend increasingly, I find myself spending like years sitting with a story, yeah, and then, and then just developing it in my mind and then yeah, but you still, I don't know you write, you know you learn as you write, don't you? And that you can things announce themselves and characters that you weren't expecting along the way, even if you're a planner. Even if you are a planner, yeah, I can't imagine anyone sitting down to write. You know 90,000 words and knowing exactly who everybody is and how everything's gonna go. Do they do that?

Speaker 1: 9:16

because no, I don't. I mean, even though even though I do plan like anyone who listens to the podcast know that I do plan but I always say characters will still appear out of nowhere, like you had. They just appear and they come fully formed and with their own backstory and they find a way of fitting into the plot that you have planned, whether it's like a year ago or a couple of months ago. They will come fully formed on the page. You're like oh, okay, who are you?

Speaker 2: 9:45

okay, fine, and then work out what to do with you and they kind of took I've heard some described it as like characters and stories like tugging at their sleeve, like so you're just doing this thing, okay. You're like okay, come on, come on, excuse me, because you can't resist, because they're just tugging at your sleeve.

Speaker 1: 10:02

So much you can, you feel that, yeah, you do, and you put them in the story, so even like you can't plan for that. But that's the magic, yeah, I think. Yeah, that's right. I think that is the magic of writing when, as in scenarios, little subplots, yeah, characters who you thought were going to be minor, then suddenly you finish that first draft and they're like oh you're not a little character, actually you're quite big. Yeah, yeah, helen. What's the most random fact you now know?

Speaker 2: 10:32

because of the marriage rules, because of this book this is a really good question because and I like it because it allows me to talk more a bit about patience so I've developed this archetype and I wanted to have a very specific presence, including a scent. Now my mum used to wear this scent called Yerivian by Yardley back in the 70s. It's kind of a soapy, bergamot-y thing, and in the book Elle transfers Yerivians, you know, everywhere she goes, which is a useful kind of plot device. Which is a useful kind of plot device. And then I wanted to make her a bit like Mrs Danvers. You know from Rebecca, this kind of you know, the over-mistress of Mandalay.

Speaker 2: 11:15

And then either I learned because I read Rebecca when I was really small and then I remembered the boat that Rebecca disappears on is implicated in her death is Gerivion I Will Return, which is the kind of the promise to the poor second Mrs de Winter, who narrates to Rebecca that she will be back. So it was really it kind of it felt like a really neat little. You know, sometimes when you're writing you get these little green lights that say you're doing the right thing. Yeah, it felt like a green light because it was so, but it was something I'd forgotten and then remembered.

Speaker 1: 11:50

That's pretty cool green lights are cool. Green lights again. Yeah, do you get them? Do you feel? Yeah, I was thinking, um, I got it where when I wrote the binding room and again it comes down to not not being able to plan everything, everything yeah, character surprising you and and this missing baby plot suddenly materialized and it came, it popped like, it literally appeared on the page and I was like, well, first I went, yeah, well, I didn't even say that I went, oh shit. But then I was like, oh, oh, and it's like green lights all the way. You're like okay, yeah, this is going to work yeah, definitely so, helen.

Speaker 1: 12:28

Was this book harder or easier to write than your last one, and why?

Speaker 2: 12:32

so I think it was easier because I've been developing it for so long and also so my last book, nothing Without Me, was set in the world of film and tv. It's quite a complicated sort of universe. This is really contained domestic, with some workplace drama as well, and obviously for for half of the book we're just in one room with Elle as she explores, you know, the clues. She's kind of her own procedural investigation into what's happened um. So it was easier. There are the work. There are some scenes in the book that were really really hard to write um, and I know there's been quite a visceral reader response to those scenes, so they weren't easy to write. But overall the book was easier to write.

Speaker 1: 13:14

Were you expecting the visceral response? Because I already know the scene, because we spoke about this before and I just yeah, yeah, why did you want that? When we're trying, we're trying to talk about it without talking about it.

Speaker 2: 13:26

Yeah, so I? So I don't know that I ever want. I want a strong response, but I want to take readers with me and I really hoped the way I'd written one of the more challenging scenes took the reader with Elle as she went through it. But I think you know I've had a few comments like but this needs trigger warnings and you know it's when we send our manuscripts off into the world and we've done our best and we've, you know, put our emotions into writing difficult. You know challenging scenes as I, you know, I know you'll do as well. It's hard when the response is is I don't want to do. You know, looking at, looking away, um, yeah, when you try and take with, it's difficult, isn't it? But then you know I wouldn't want anyone to read this who would find this incredibly upsetting or triggering. I wouldn't want to, you know, I wouldn't want to, um, lead to somebody having, you know, being re-traumatized or what have you.

Speaker 1: 14:25

So, yeah, it's difficult, isn't it are you aware of that, though, when you're actually writing the scenes, because I always say I'm detached, I'm very detached from it, I'm really detached?

Speaker 2: 14:34

well, I'm not. I'm not detached emotionally, you know, for there's like one scene where something very traumatic happens and I realized that I was rushing through it in the first iteration, the first time first. No, you have to sit with it, you, you know, this is something that you know. It's an extreme version of something that, when we go, you know, a lot of women are having to go through or have gone through. So it I it demanded me to really go there. Um, did I think about the reader? No, I didn't really. At that point I just thought about serving, servicing the theme with the, the, the you know seriousness that it deserved. I didn't really think about the end reader particularly okay.

Speaker 1: 15:15

So, without giving away any spoilers, did the book end the way you originally planned or did it surprise you?

Speaker 2: 15:23

so this is some a genre thing here. So I thought that I had to give it a super, super bleak ending. I don't know why. I guess because I'm still learning how to write psychological thrillers. Four books in, and then I wanted I did want some redemption. I didn't want a tiny spark of hope, and then when my editors, both here in the UK and the US, like read the first draft, they gave me permission to put the spark of hope back in. So it did end up being how I wanted it, but despite of myself, not because of my own ability or choices. So you know, you just need someone to say, yeah, do the thing, do the thing. Do you ever have that when you're, when you're kind of flip-flopping on on a choice, and then someone goes no, no, of course, of course you should do it, I think not in the initial draft that I write.

Speaker 1: 16:21

I think when I write the initial draft, I feel like I'm at that moment, I'm quite sure of everything and then, when it's when the edits come back and they're like well, maybe you should do this and maybe you should do that. And I'm there thinking really like I feel like I kind of fight it a bit okay, and once I get out of my own feelings, like I push my ego out of the way, just being so precious about it, then I'm like yeah, maybe, yeah, actually you got a point.

Speaker 2: 16:45

You kind of yeah, you got a point, you were right you're right, you really have to get out.

Speaker 1: 16:50

You get out of your own way that's it.

Speaker 2: 16:53

That's such a good way of putting it and I was just. I think we've talked before about um the seven stages of getting notes, you know denial, anger, acceptance, resignation.

Speaker 1: 17:04

I don't even know if my first stage is even denial mine. I feel like it's just a lie, like I'm happy to have it because I get also. I get the email and I just email straight away going thank you very much, and I don't even opened it. I say thank you very much, I'll get back to you over there then I have to psych myself up and then I'm like, okay, let me open this and see what it has to say.

Speaker 2: 17:27

I'm a narcissist. I just go straight in like come on straight in hit me, hurt me.

Speaker 1: 17:32

Nah, I'm not about that life. I don't like pain. What's it like working with two editors and I mean not, and especially now you've got American and British editor?

Speaker 2: 17:45

yeah, yeah, and it's good.

Speaker 2: 17:46

I mean, I've been with one editor, my New York editor, cleo Serafin PRH, since the start, so she's been with me all the way. I have had a few UK editors my latest, my current editor, is Claire Gordon and, for whatever reason, I've been really lucky that each of those editors, starting from Emily Kitchen who first acquired my debut manuscript they've all worked so well with Cleo and they've all had, you know, each had bringing something else to the party. Um, yeah, I've been really lucky and I'm, you know, and Cleo is brilliant as well, as you know, being adaptable. And, and the joy now is, is that I have, like these four very wise voices on my shoulders probably more than four, if you're, you know agents as well, like when I'm saying you know, do you want to slow it down here? Do you want to make that a bit more? You know, do you want to make that clearer? Would they really do that? So I've got them all on my shoulders now and sort of incorporated into my own sort of editing personality. Who's the first person?

Speaker 1: 18:52

yeah, who's the first? Who's the first person you showed your manuscript to?

Speaker 2: 18:57

it's usually my friend Vicky oh really brilliant and a voracious reader. So for a good time now she's in the acknowledgements. Um, she'll, um, she's. Yeah, first on the list and then I'll, I'll send to my. You know I've got a circle of folk that I trust yeah obviously after after my agent heli ogden at wme. She's the, she's the very first, always. What about you? You?

Speaker 1: 19:24

um, who sees mine first? Um, I'll always send, like, the first three chapters to one of my, say, one of my writer friends. Yeah, because just to know if it's. Is this rubbish? Yeah, basically, is it rubbish. Would you read this? Yeah, I need to know. Would you carry on reading this after chapter three? Yeah, yeah, okay, and has it hooked you in enough?

Speaker 2: 19:46

yeah and okay, and do you think it's any good?

Speaker 1: 19:48

That's all I really want to know, so I'll always do that Sorry.

Speaker 2: 19:53

Have they generally gone? Have you ever had one that you thought was an absolute humding and they've gone? No.

Speaker 1: 19:59

No, they've all been. So with four books, yeah, four books in, they've all been. No, this is good, keep going. But they've also have always given really good points Great.

Speaker 2: 20:10

It's invaluable, isn't it About the?

Speaker 1: 20:11

opening yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:15

And I've been like, oh, I don't know, and I think I'm much more open to it at that initial three-chapter point. Yeah, okay, whether it's just like a small thing, because whether a character said something called, I think one of them, I think my friend, jonathan, the second book, it wasn't even what a character said it was just the way they moved and how I'd placed them in the scene, and he made a general comment.

Speaker 1: 20:36

I was like, oh no, actually that's a, that is a good point, yeah, and it then just follows through, but after that I don't send it to anyone until it's finished. Yeah, the first draft, no one sees, no one after that. No one sees that first draft, and then they'll probably they'll see. I'm trying to think it's like the second. It might be third. Technically it might be draft three, the way I, the way I draft, yeah, so I don't yeah, I don't even consider my first draft.

Speaker 2: 21:04

My first draft, my first draft, is after I looked at it a hundred times. There won't be draft. I'd never share draft one with anyone oh god, no, no, no. I'm, I'm talking about my. I've got like draft zero, zero.

Speaker 1: 21:16

You know a to a to m and then draft one is the one I'll send to yeah the official draft, but it always annoys me when um, yeah it annoys me when I know it's draft free that I've sent off and then I get made its backup back and it'll say, let's say, the shadow carver draft one. I'm like this ain't draft one this ain't draft one how many versions of this.

Speaker 2: 21:38

Let me show you my laptop. Let me show. Let me show you the various.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Yeah, this is not draft one. So, helen, did you ever hit the wall when writing this book and how did you get past it?

Speaker 2: 21:49

I know I did not on this book, just on some of those scenes where I initially I was really afraid. I sort of danced on by, I didn't want to write them. But no, the book, no, I have had absolute nightmares with writing, with writing books. Book two was wall-to-wall nightmare. After my debut I wrote like 250,000 words probably to get 250, at least a quarter of a million, if not more, if not more, to get to that I just screwed up. I just, I just really didn't know what. I kind of don't know. If you found this with your second book, you do the debut, you're like, yes, I can do this. Then it's like, for me, anyway, I just, I totally forgot how to do everything and my editors were so patient and I'm really grateful to Emily and Cleo for that um, but this with this one, no, we were, we were, we danced for you, we, we breezed through a couple of scenes that I knew how to go back to, but the overall drafting was really straightforward, yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:46

I think the second book. Yeah, I always said I found it difficult. I didn't find starting it difficult because, like, the best bit of advice I had was from my tutor had said to me I can't remember if I signed, I must have signed the publishing deal. And he said to me start book two straight away. Yeah, like, don't wait. That was the best advice I had. So I started it, but then once I was starting to get into it was a combination of things I'm starting to get into the flow of it, but one we're in lockdown so that doesn't help right yeah, yeah the jigsaw man keeps coming back because now you know, this is your first time, really no idea about the editorial process not

Speaker 2: 23:28

at all no, nothing really prepares you for it.

Speaker 1: 23:31

Yeah, you want more edits. Now you want I don't even know what line edits. I think it's only because because Helen and I were in the whatsapp group. I think it's only because we're in our group and I'm sure someone explained to me what line edits were and what vocabulary?

Speaker 1: 23:43

yeah, copy, edits and all this other editing nonsense. So the book, it kept coming back. And then, because jigsaw man kept coming back, it kept breaking up my flow, yeah, of writing the binding room. And then, in addition to that, then once bind the jigsaw man was out on, the proofs had gone out, yeah, then I was getting like early reviews in for the jigsaw man whilst I'm writing the binding room and the binding room, I was like, well, I can't do this again, that how did I do it? I don't even know. I did this the first time, yeah, and also I did it. I wrote the jigsaw man when I was on a course. So I was right in the binding room without that security blanket, yeah, and that safety net of having my you know, my friends were doing the course with me and be able to bounce back with my tutor. So it was a whole, it was a whole combination of different things that did not make it fun right um?

Speaker 2: 24:41

have you heard Simone Biles talk about getting the twisties?

Speaker 1: 24:45

yeah yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:46

So it's like so I describe it as like the writing twisties. Because you do the first. You know, trip, whatever incredible to you just needs an incredible feat that you've done this thing. And you did it while nobody's what was watching and you were barely thinking about it in some ways. And then book two comes along, if you're in contract, and you're like, oh my god, and you kind of go out of yourself and it's like I'm writing a book and and that you know but, yeah it's true, it's the.

Speaker 1: 25:16

What it is, the writer twist is okay. So, helen, what are you working on next? So the mad the marriage rules is out on Thursday, for today. So what are you writing? What you're working?

Speaker 2: 25:25

on next? Um, I always have loads on about you. I always have loads of work in progress, kind of in train, do you do that? Anyway, I always have loads, loads on the go. But right now I'm doing a psychological thriller with a sort of supernatural bent working title uh, blood bread barn. I'm writing a romance, a high concept, time traveling, cross-cultural romance, with my husband, um, danny taco. Uh, that should be very well ready for submission later in the year, and then I'm going to start I've started a horror as well, um, that I'm hoping to steam through soon ish yeah, the cycle is nearly done, um, but yeah I would say you're kind of like ticking all the genre boxes.

Speaker 1: 26:07

You've got your romance, you've got your supernatur boxes you've got your romance. You've got your supernaturals, you've got your horror supernaturals, do you get your coat? You've got your co-writing.

Speaker 2: 26:14

I've got my partner. I don't know, do you? I found, like I don't know, recently, maybe in the last couple of years or so, when you're, because I've I kind of you know, four or five into my genre, I kind of needed to need to go somewhere else for a bit. What about you? Yeah?

Speaker 1: 26:32

I feel like I, I feel like me as a person. I like so many different things. I have so many varied interests. Yeah, yeah, that I kind of feel like I need to just reflect that in my writing also, because I like a good rom-com. I don't mind having a cry, even though I'm like I can't even crying at this nonsense. What's wrong with me, you know, a few days ago? Yeah, I'm not crying up like what, what, what is this? I can't believe this is happening. You know, I like my sci-fi. I did enjoy because it was made of four. So I did I sit there and watch all my Star Wars movies? Yes, I did, of course you did. Of course I did. I like my sci-fi. I did enjoy it because it was made of four. So did I sit there and watch all my Star Wars movies? Yes, I did, of course you did. Of course I did. I like my comic books. I feel like, because I'm so varied as a person, I would like my writing to be varied also. Still out.

Speaker 1: 27:21

Yeah, definitely. So. Yeah, there is a rom-com in my future. I think. I look forward to that. I do. Yeah, I don't know what my agent will say. Between really no bodies, no dead bodies, no, when is she gonna slaughter him?

Speaker 2: 27:41

no, there's no slaughter. Shut up going through the page it's like what there's no dead bodies, there's no slaughter.

Speaker 1: 27:49

So, helen, what message or feeling do you hope readers take away from the marriage rule?

Speaker 2: 27:54

so we talked before about how the whole subject of um violence quest controlled against women and girls is incredibly complex and persistent. I don't have the answers. I just wanted to maybe be part of a conversation, sort of by stealth, because it is a kind of a page turning book. It's designed to be entertaining but it is designed to linger, and I guess one of the things that the book hopefully does is, if anyone has ever been tempted to ask a woman in the throes of a abusive relationship, you know, why did you stay, how did you get there and why did you stay? It's a fixing, blaming question that I think needs to be challenged.

Speaker 2: 28:37

And you know, elle is an every woman character who finds herself in certain situations, so you can see how she got there and why she stayed, and I've got no ask. Women have always, always helped women in those sort of situations. I think there is a plea for men to really be part of the collective effort to challenge. You know, a bit like how you know Netflix has done with toxic masculinity in the manosphere, with adolescence. You know, if we can have more conversations, talk more broadly about how every day, every day, violence against women and girls is, is normalized. That would be. That would be a good, a good outcome for me and finally, helen, to end our coffee break, because we're gonna love a coffee break?

Speaker 1: 29:28

which book, film, show or video game?

Speaker 2: 29:32

yeah, would you recommend so I'm gonna change the the the tone of this entirely. I'm not all kind of grizzly stuff. Um, much like yourself, um, I was lucky enough to see a film called the Wedding Banquet, um, when it opened, uh, bfi festival earlier, I guess, this spring. It's out of theatrical release this week and it's on apple tv, I believe, as well. It is amazing. It's about fan family. It is a real writer's movie in as much as you will gasp at the acrobatic plotting but also the dexterity with which they manage this tone of this of, you know, fan family, uh, love story, love story about friends. It's kind of shakespearean double reverses. It is tremendous and it's got so much heart and an amazing cast. Go with someone you love, just go, go, go, go go. I can't recommend this film. Hardly enough the wedding banquet out this week.

Speaker 1: 30:30

I think you did a very good job of recommending it. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 30:33

Honestly, I want everyone to see it because I just take your tissues, because you'll laugh your head off and you'll cry and it'll be like it's gorgeous, gorgeous, amazing film well, that just leaves me to say, helen Marks Tucker, thank you so much for joining me on this very first Coffee Break. You're incredibly welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Nadine.

Speaker 1: 30:55

And that's it for this Coffee Break. Thank you so much for joining me. Starting from season four, we'll be bringing you regular Coffee Breaks 20 minute episodes perfect for a quick chat with your favourite authors about their latest book. And here's the fun part Next season, we're answering your questions. If there's something you've always wanted to ask an author, send it in. Email your question to theconversation at nadinemathersoncom, and we might just answer it in a future episode with a special shout out to you, of course. Until next time, keep reading, keep listening, and I'll see you soon for another coffee break. Oh and before I forget, don't forget subscribe, follow, like, review and share this episode with your friends. Your support keeps the podcast growing. And if you head down to the show notes, you can also support the podcast by buying us a cup of coffee. The links are to the show notes. You can also support the podcast by buying us a cup of coffee. The links are in the show notes.