The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Welcome to The Conversation with Nadine Matheson, where best-selling author of the 'Inspector Anjelica Henley' series Nadine Matheson sits down with fellow authors for insightful, honest, and entertaining conversations. Each episode dives deep into the world of writing, from the publishing journey to overcoming challenges, the experiences that shape their work, and anything else that comes up when great minds come together. Whether you're a fan of gripping stories or curious about the life behind the books, 'The Conversation' promises thought-provoking chats and moments of inspiration.
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The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Coffee Break with Patricia Marques: The Burning Woman
Patricia Marques joins us for the final Coffee Break of Season 3 to discuss "The Burning Woman," the fourth and concluding novel in her Inspector Reis series. For readers who enjoy their crime fiction with a speculative twist, this finale delivers a satisfying end to character arcs while introducing a complex serial killer investigation.
The Inspector Reis Series
A local woman is found in a children's playground, tied up and burned to death. Her clothes are neatly folded and laid at the base of a nearby tree. Her body, charred and still smoking, is on display for all to see.
One town over, another victim is discovered in the scorched remains of a brutal fire, her clothes having been laid out just beyond the reach of the vicious flames.
Isabel Reis is called back to her post in the PolÍcia Judiciária hunt the serial killer and extinguish the red-hot city of Lisbon, or will she too get caught up in the smoke of the fire burning so close to home . . .
The blood-tingling final instalment in the critically acclaimed Inspector Reis series propels us back to Portugal, right into the path of a serial killer.
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Hello and welcome to the Conversation Coffee Break with your host, nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you're enjoying your week. Now. This is our last Coffee Break for Season 3 because, as I explained when I released the first Coffee Break, these are just sample episodes. So you know, it's like when you're going to a coffee shop and they might give you a sample to try. This is what these Coffee break episodes have been about, but we will be back officially in season four, so they will be a regular feature. So I really hope that you've enjoyed listening to these coffee break episodes.
Speaker 1:And for my last coffee break, I'm in conversation with author Patricia Marquez and we're talking about the last book in her Inspector Rice series, the Burning Woman. If you haven't read Patricia Marquez before, her series starts with the Colour of Death. The second book is House of Silence and the third book is Broken Oaths. And if you like your crime fiction with a bit of a twist and I mean a speculative fiction twist then Patricia Marquez's Inspector Isabel Rice series is the one for you. Now, as always, all the links to all of the books will be in the show notes, and can I just say thank you to everyone who does support the podcast and if you would like to support the podcast does support the podcast, and if you would like to support the podcast, you can do so by simply buying me a cup of coffee. Again, the links are in the show notes now. Normally I would say, sit back or go for a walk, but instead grab a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy your break.
Speaker 1:Patricia Marcus, welcome to the conversation. Coffee break. Thank you very much for having me. I'm just going to be honest, because Patricia and I've been chatting for a whole 33 minutes before we officially started. We had a really long coffee and tea and sandwich break before we even started this chat yeah so, patricia, can you tell the listeners about your book the burning woman?
Speaker 2:so the burning woman, which I will show here, yay, my lovely, lovely cover. Thank you, um, because nadine reminded me to get the cover. Um, so the burning woman is the the fourth book in the Inspector Rhys series, which is published with Hodder and Stoughton, and it follows Inspector Rhys and her partner Voronov in, I guess, their crime solving in Lisbon. So this book is going to be wrapping up the series. Um, so it's goodbye for now, maybe for a long time, I don't know, but it definitely wraps up this arc of her, I guess her life.
Speaker 2:And for the first time I got to write about a serial killer, which I thought would be fun at the time. And then, once I started doing it, it did I was wrong, um, and so why was you wrong? Why was you wrong about having fun? Because you know what, when I was doing the previous three and you have to, you know when, you have to plot out, like the timelines of the crimes and all of that, it was already hard. So then, when I had to do a serial killer, I was like, no, because he's a serial killer, he needs to have more dead people, and so then they had to be historic dead people, and then it was just like what happened when.
Speaker 2:But who knew what? Who was investigating at the time? Why did it not get solved like what's happening? And then also the methods I chose didn't help me, so it just yeah, it was. I basically set myself up for pain. It was still interesting and I am happy I did get to do a serial killer, but yeah. So she's having to kind of solve a crime that initially seems isolated, and then they find out that there are these historic kind of similar deaths that happened before and then they have to try and get them there.
Speaker 1:That person. See, this is the thing about serial killer thrillers they're not an easy way out, they're not straightforward, because the thing that always gets me when I'm, when it's time to do the, when I get my structural edits back I'm. I guarantee there's going to be a section in my structural edits from my lovely editor saying timeline, and I'm like I know. I know timelines are the bane of my life and I think with the last book I think it took me like a good two weeks to sort out the timeline before I could start writing the next draft. It's a nightmare.
Speaker 2:And especially, and I think one of the things about sorting out all structural edits in general is that I don't know how you feel about when you're, how you're how you kind of, how you work through them, but it always feels like because I'm working from a computer, the screen feels too tiny for all the things that I need to be able to see at once at a glance, yeah, and so I have to get out like a three sheets of paper with things written on them so and stick them up, like in my room or wherever I'm happening. I'm I. There was the time that I, with the colors of death, I took over the whole kitchen. I had to stick them up with blue tack on the cupboards of the kitchen, cupboards so I could view everything. It was like it was on the two in front of me, it was on the two behind.
Speaker 2:My poor family had to walk through that Like, and I was like no, no, no, don't disturb it. It wasn't that bad, but I still had to, kind of, I just I feel like the details. There are too many details for my tiny brain to just contain all at once, and so it's just also about visually what can I see to try and sort this out, otherwise it's just. I feel like I can't do it. It's nuts, it's not.
Speaker 1:I feel like this is why I I'm not saying I can't edit on screen. I'm sure if I had to I could, but my preference is to print out the pages and to edit on the hard pages because I can. It's like I can see it better.
Speaker 1:Yeah and I think it's about having that expanse of space, even if I'm just scribbling a line or just two words in a little bit of space, but it's having that space and I can see the bigger picture, as opposed to just being blocked. I suppose constrained that's a better word constrained by this page on the screen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is exactly what it feels like, I think. Yeah, I think, funnily enough, I actually just threw away and I was like, oh, why are you keeping? But I just threw away the actual stack of where I did all my edits. It's been sitting on my desk since, god. When did I finish? God, I don't know April or something, I don't know, maybe a little bit before that, but it's been sitting there since then, like this huge stack of paper with like the little, like page markers and the bloody highlighters and all the notes, notes.
Speaker 2:I only just chucked it away, uh, last weekend. Um, and yeah, but exactly the same, I had to. I had to have it printed out. Um, because even for that as well, you can't do it on an iPad or like whatever kind of digital you know a device you might have for your edits. I can only do proof, like proof editing on there. I can't do anything else on there because, like you said, I need to be able to go back to the page, have that page out, have that page out and then and this one was so bad I had to literally move.
Speaker 2:I had to literally move chunks. It was like doing a, like a jigsaw pad. The jigsaw had to literally be taking chunks out and then figuring out where they needed to slot in, and then you have to go through and make sure the details are consistent with the timeline that you've moved them. Yeah, because it was just things were happening at the wrong time and it was. It was, it was just, it was a mind. I won't say the rest of the word because it's but it was an absolute mindfuck.
Speaker 1:So, patricia, what came to you first with this book, the Burning Woman? Was it the character, a specific scene, the overall premise or something completely different?
Speaker 2:I think I would say I get. Does having the serial killer count as the premise?
Speaker 1:because I think I knew it's different to the other three books you've written. You haven't had a serial. Well, have you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think. No, I haven't. I mean, they killed multiple people, but this is the first one where you had loads of people and again, that historic element. Actually, I think I know the idea that came to it. It was actually quite a sad connection for it, which I feel a bit morally, a bit like were my morals in the right place? But I guess as writers, I don't know it. It was. Were my morals in the right place, but I guess as right as I don't know, but it was actually.
Speaker 2:Um, I got the idea because someone who was a very well-known member of the community where I grew up in portugal he passed away very unexpectedly. Um, and you really saw the impact of his death on like, our neighborhood and just like the online tributes and everything that was coming up, even like people from like, uh, singers really well well-known singers in like, uh, the angolan singing sphere they were all kind of paying tribute to him because he was just so such a huge personality and, um, there was like someone did a mural of him on in the neighborhood, everything like that, and for some reason it was that that kind of ended up inspiring. I knew that someone that was one of the victims that was going to be in the book had that kind of impact on her community and then it kind of built from there and then I knew that was so. That was a kind of a scene I had in my head, that kind of coming together the community, but also I knew I wanted a serial killer and so then I had to kind of piece those two things together and grow a story out of it.
Speaker 2:And then also because it's, you know, final book, then I had to answer a lot of reader questions or just story questions from Isabel's arc dating back to book one, because I couldn't just wrap up and not resolve those things. So relationships, romances that people were interested in and, you know, no spoilers, but a certain character from book one who never quite went away, like what happened with that person, and then making sure that those were. So I think I found that quite hard, trying to wrap up all the individual character, um, I guess character arcs for isabel, uh, because there had been quite a few that accumulated as the series went on which complicated it. So maybe it wasn't all the serial killer that made it difficult, maybe it was also getting those kind of things, you know, eyes dotted, t's crossed etc you know?
Speaker 1:just going back, do you know when you're talking about just getting rid of the stack, like the hard copy of the manuscript that you've been editing the one that you've, I always say you've highlighted to death and you've got post-it notes sticking out all over the place and ramble scribblings that only you understand? Anyone else looking at it will just be like I don't know what this is. It's just a mess. Did it feel like more of a moment when you were throwing it away because this is the end of the series, or was it just? I just need to clear my space.
Speaker 2:No, I mean yeah, no, it didn't feel that way because it was a final one. I think I always, with each one that I've had to throw away, I always feel slightly precious about it. I don't know why, because it's already been written. Part of it is from my mum's voice in the back of my head whenever we throw something that we haven't torn up in the in the bin, someone's gonna steal it. But it's like Patricia, who's gonna steal this? It's already in the editor's hand and it's on their way to publishing what. Who's gonna steal this?
Speaker 2:So part of it was that like little, like niggle that you always get from, like, no, don't throw things away like that, you need to tear it up, um, but part of it is just because, oh, you feel a bit. Oh, you know, but other than that, no, I didn't feel anything very sentimental. The one thing I do, actually, I'll show you the one thing I do feel sentimental about is this, and that's literally books. One to four have all been planned in this notebook. Oh, literally, and funnily enough, I literally went all the way to the final page, like so I just fit four books to find this. So this is the entire inspector reese series in there.
Speaker 1:So I feel more sentimental about that, which is why it's still on my desk and I don't know if I'll be able to throw it away um, yeah, I wouldn't throw the notebook away like I've thrown away, but eventually, like I only threw, like the second printout of the jigsaw man, I think I only threw it out, like the other day, because in my head, and it's so, it's stupid, it's like I had to justify in my head. In my head I'm thinking, if someone turns around and says I stole their work, like I plagiarized it, I've got the proof that I did not right, so this is why I've kept it. But then I also have my notebooks and everything. You know the first little scribble that I have evidence of that and I have to tell you to myself. But if you hadn't, if you just edited on the screen, you wouldn't have had no proof of that. So why are you keeping it?
Speaker 2:that's the only reason why I've gotten rid of it, because if, if you put it on the screen, With the digital file, you still have their date stamped of when it was created, See you shouldn't have told me that now I'm pretty sure it's date stamped so you can have the digital print of it, and if you are someone who works on Google Docs, I don't but even the revision or the dates you've made changes. I think there's also. I don't but even the revision or the dates you've made changes.
Speaker 1:I think there's also, I don't know how to find it, but I know that it does track. It's not, it's not, it's not the same, but that's the reason why I kept it. I'm like if anyone turns around and says as they like to do, I came up with this idea. No, you never. No, you never love it emails.
Speaker 2:Don't forget, there's emails as well. That date stamp everything of when you sent it to whom, of when you first mentioned an idea.
Speaker 1:You're safe exactly thank you, I needed that.
Speaker 2:So, patricia, which character surprised you the most whilst writing the burning, trying to think who surprised me the most. I don't think anyone did surprise me, which I wonder if that makes me boring. I do. I guess I am not. Okay, I wasn't surprised by any kind of actions or anything like that. But I think one thing that I didn't plan for. I didn't plan for maybe Daniel or Carla, who are the inspectors who often work alongside Isabel and Voronov. I didn't expect them to have as especially Daniel. I didn't expect them to have as heavier role as they ended up having in the book. I mean, it's not that they take over completely, but I think they've had the lighter presence in in the previous books. Um, but daniel in particular, I think he has more of a presence here and I think what I did like was I liked him even more. I've always liked him as a character, but I I liked him even more. Now at the end, I was like I really do like you, you're like. You know, you're a solid guy like you, can we?
Speaker 2:can rely on you, um, and I think that was that was quite.
Speaker 1:That was nice yeah okay, what's the most random fact you now know because of this book?
Speaker 2:oh, my god, the most random fact. Oh, oh okay, I know one, um, I'm gonna forget all the terminology, but I know one. Did you know that you could potentially track, um, basically, if someone's committed arson or something like that, you can actually, if you manage to find the matches, you you can probably trace that back to the manufacturer and then where that sold. And then, yeah, it was a bit crazy. I was like what? By one tiny little match. How can you tell that From?
Speaker 1:the match.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can. I don't know if I'm doing the correct kind of, if I'm explaining it correctly, but there is something about a match that you can test. Then you can actually figure out what that, what, what the make is or whatever, and then kind of what factory made it. Yeah, it was something a bit more detailed that now the details have just been squeezed out of my brain, but you basically you can get a lot from a little tiny match. So if it happens, that goes into evidence, it could help. And not by fingerprints either. It was literally to do with the match itself and the phosphorus bit and stuff. So I was like, oh, that was interesting. Um, also how dogs track the the. They actually have dog dogs who can actually track the scent of, which is a surprise, but I never, it never occurred to me and they can actually track the smell of the accelerant as well. So I thought that was really.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So firehouses I mean firefighters or fire investigators, I don't know. You can tell clearly that a lot of the stuff that went into my book was made up um. Really they like the whole thing um, but yeah, so they. That's why sometimes they also have um I forgot the official title for them, but I guess working dogs who can help identify certain scents that can inform an investigation. I thought it was quite cool because we love dogs and so that was nice to know it is.
Speaker 1:You learn something new every day. Literally, you do okay. So, patricia, was this book harder or easier to write than your last one, and why?
Speaker 2:no, they were both as bad as each other. I think they were both as bad as each other. But you know what, oh god, the thing is? I think I think my easiest book to write was book three, and I think that's just because that was the closest to the finished product I ever came with a first or second draft. But, to be fair, I think book three and book four uh, not to get too like deep into things, but book three and book four just came very like hard lifetimes, so things were going on in my life that impacted how I was basically writing the book and when I could write the book and all of that, and then it just all kind of exacerbated and probably made it seem a lot worse than what it really was.
Speaker 2:Um, because I don't think that actually, if, when I look back at it, it didn't it wasn't the you know the revisions and everything like that they weren't any worse than previous ones that I had to do like I think they were probably in line with the first one. Um, but I know, with Broken Oaths I found it really hard because of the shift from, uh, lisbon to London and I think with this one, obviously we were back in Lisbon and that was okay. But then, yeah, yeah, I did so. Yeah, I think both of them were as hard as each other, but I think it was more owed to like life stuff life was the yeah, then it was the actual process itself.
Speaker 2:I mean, writing is always, you know, they always say you kind of forget, don't? They say? It's like giving birth, you kind of forget the pain and then you do it again. I think I've never done it, so I can't say but.
Speaker 1:But I mean, if you, I think if we documented every single painful moment of this book writing process, and I'd say book writing process, from coming up with the idea, talking to your editors about it, doing that for god, doing that first draft, doing the second draft doing edits, like if you document every single painful moment and then you reread it. I don't think you'd do it again because you're like why would you put yourself willingly through this?
Speaker 2:it was not, it was not. I think I may have messaged you when I was doing. I probably did message you because I remember I finished the first draft when I was in Madeira. I had to go go, which lovely, sounds great but I wasn't, because the weather was lovely and I was inside a hotel room. I couldn't leave. And I was there and I think I finished the first draft at I think it was 6am and I had 6am, 7am, slept through. That was my second night where I'd only had like maybe an hour or two sleep because I was over, I was across the deadline, um, and I just remember getting to the end, which wasn't even the actual end, that eventually came and I was like that's it, I'm ending it here. They get in that vehicle and I don't care, I don't care anymore, this is how it's going.
Speaker 2:I didn't edit for grandma, I didn't edit for anything. It was just horrible. I was sleep deprived, I was tired, I was just ready to be done with it and I just that's how I sent it. I sent it in like a few. It was so bad. But yeah, no sleep, no sleep, which you know I've done before. But I think also I'm older now, so I feel it more like before, when was younger, I could get away with this. Nonsense is to wake up feeling refreshed.
Speaker 2:No, it was like I was hungover. It was horrible.
Speaker 1:I've never been one four-nighters Never. It's just not in my genetic makeup. I'm just not. My brain stops working at 10. So the idea of staying up till six.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure that my brain was working and I think it was reflected in the draft that I turned in. Poor Kate, I don't know what she read when she opened her brain. She must have been like what the fuck when she opened that, because it was pretty decent at the start and I think she probably just saw a descent into madness as the further she went along, the manuscript yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think you can tell when I, even when I think about some of my first, how, how some of my first drafts have ended. They have literally been like you just found, we, just we found the baby. I don't care, we can fix it in the next draft. Exactly, we found the baby, the end, or literally. I think Henley and Remuta they literally walk off into the sunset in one of the early drafts and I'm like they don't care.
Speaker 1:They're off, they're going to get dinner. We don't need anything else. I'm, I'm done. Yeah, yeah, all right, patricia, without giving away any spoilers, did the book end the way you originally planned or did it surprise you?
Speaker 2:uh, hmm, yeah, no, oh, okay, no. So the case element did, although I realized after it went all through this that there was like a tiny thing that I wanted to include in there that I completely forgot and I was like I'll have to live with that. It's fine, it was just. I just thought it would have added a nice creepy detail, but it's fine. Um, but one of the longer term arcs there was only way.
Speaker 2:I just didn't know how I was going to wrap it up. I didn't Um, and I knew that, and I think that's one thing that I'm not sure how readers will receive. I feel like I'm happy with the way I wrapped it up, um, but some readers might disagree, um, but I wasn't expecting to wrap it up that way, but I was pleasant, pleasantly surprised at how I felt with how it did. Um, but I was pleasantly surprised at how I felt with how it did. But, yeah, so, yes, I'm happy. I was surprised by that element. But the actual case stuff I knew how it was going to end and it did end as planned.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So did you ever hit the wall when?
Speaker 1:writing this book, and how did you get past it? I hit it multiple times. I don't even know. I mean, I have to ask you because we're on the podcast.
Speaker 2:But I know you hit the wall multiple times and it wasn't like I bumped into it with a shoulder, it was like a full you know when I was young, I actually walked into a post because I was looking behind me and my mum loves to tell this story and I walked full into that post forehead, hit, bang on. That's how I kept running into the walls in this place. How did I get over it? How did I get past it? I honestly don't know.
Speaker 2:I think I just you know, when they say because I think we've talked about this before and I might have said that I didn't used to believe in writer's block, I still I kind of do and I don't, I know that it can happen where you get stuck, but I do think that you do just need to write the next word and write the next word.
Speaker 2:And that's literally how I kind of got past it. It's like okay, well, just, you know you're on, I don't know word 3,352, let's just get to 3,400, let's go. So I would kind of like get myself up by the hundreds, like just get to the hundred, you know. And then we kind of, and it was literally just well, you just need to write this next bit, just right, just get it moving a little bit more. And it was like baby steps because and then I was like you know, just write what happens, patricia, he took a step, so just right, he took a step. You know he looked up. Well, he looked up, so just write that. It was kind of like you really had to just tell yourself, just tell them the next action, whatever gets you moving forward, and I think it kind of boiled down to that, but like an excruciating pace whenever you got stuck yeah, see, I'm not.
Speaker 1:I don't know. There are some days I believe in writer's block. Then I listen to other people and they're like writer's block's not a thing. I'm like, now, maybe it's not a thing, and then you have it. You're like, no, it's a thing. I don't know. I think it just changes it. Just, I suppose it depends on what I'm doing, because there are some instances where I feel like, no, I'm stuck. I mean, that's a difference if you're stuck, and when I'm stuck I'm like this isn't working, I'm stuck, let me just leave. So I just have to leave the desk, leave the project, walk away from it. I don't know, if you ask me next week, I probably will say, yeah, right, it's.
Speaker 2:I think it boils down to writing is difficult. I think sometimes we forget how difficult it is. And you know, I know there's a lot of myths of oh, the writing was flowing that day. I don't, I have not experienced many days where the writing was flowing, I think. But you've had good writing days?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have. Yes, you do have good writing days.
Speaker 2:Especially, I think, when you're writing a particular scene that you were really looking forward to and you've had that crystal clear in your head, that's easier to walk through. Even if you're writing, pace slows down because you want to get it right, you still have the vision in your head, so you're yeah, that's a really nice moment where you'll get to reach one of the scenes that you've been planning forever. And I'm one of those people where often I'll build an entire story around a specific scene and then that scene ends up being tiny, but it doesn't matter. But I think that writing those scenes always feels better than writing the rest of the book and that's a little bit easier. And I think, even though that's still hard I guess maybe that is my version of the writing flow that's when I know exactly that part and I can write it because I know what happens next. I know who's there, I know who's looking, I know the sun is shining, whatever that might be yeah you know.
Speaker 1:So that's where maybe writing is easy yeah, no, I think that makes it makes sense to me. I think this is why, which is why social media can sometimes be the enemy of a writer. When you're scrolling on Instagram I'm saying Instagram, but you're scrolling on Instagram and someone's they're showing a photo of their, their word count for the day, like oh my God, I've written three and a half thousand words. And you're looking at your word count, you've like.
Speaker 2:I've been on both ends of that, of that of that scale, like where I've written zero or I've written a stupid amount, but yeah, yeah, it's right, it's the writer's life.
Speaker 1:So, patricia, what are you working on next?
Speaker 2:um, I'm a bit stuck on what to go with. I've got a couple of ideas that I want to work on, but I'm stuck on what to pick. One of them is pretty, I think, as fully formed as an idea can be before you start the outlining stage, and that's got a little bit of time travel, crime as well. And then there's others where it's a little bit more speculative, a little bit more ambiguous, but they're kind of more attractive to me because they feel so much darker, um, a lot of stuff around media narratives, um, and things like that. So it's like, it's just like what do I pick? Maybe I need to just write them down and go to my agent and be like listen, do you have a preference?
Speaker 2:I don't know if not that I, not that. I feel like if my agent did have a preference, I'll be like great, I'll write that I'll probably. The irony would probably be he'd say that and I'd be like you know what I'm feeling? This one more, but I guess it's weird because I'm going to be back on submission, um, and so it feels like you're starting again, um, so maybe the just right, sit down, see what, what gets you where? I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, there is a novel coming, so I will be working on it. I think starting at the end of this month is probably, so I need to make up my mind before then, because that's when I'm going to start proper work on it. So I've got a new shiny notebook.
Speaker 2:Ready to go? I'll show you my new shiny notebook.
Speaker 1:I'll show it to you my that is the start of patricia's new project. There we go. I love that it just says nope no, here we go again.
Speaker 2:Maybe he's trying to tell me something, but yeah, that's uh the new one all right.
Speaker 1:So, patricia, what message or feeling do you hope readers take away from the burning woman?
Speaker 2:um. Killing is bad.
Speaker 1:Don't do it um I shouldn't laugh, but it's like, yeah, it's not good, yeah, don't do it.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's not great, but I hope, um, I hope that they walk away from it feeling, I guess, fulfilled as readers. I hope they walk away thinking you know what, I didn't mind that ending, uh. I do also hope that they walk away curious for more. Uh, not in the sense that, oh no, so much is left unsaid, but just I would. I love the idea of readers always wondering what the characters went on to do with their lives and how things progress. So I guess, if anything, I hope they walk away with an affection for the characters and hoping that you know they live a good life and that Isabel gets what she needs.
Speaker 1:Uh, bless her, god knows she goes through a lot, um yeah you do put your characters through a lot before I ask you our second, our last question are you going to miss your, your characters, patricia? Because this is the end of a series and that's a moment yeah, you know, I haven't actually thought about it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I I didn't think I would, but now that you're asking and now that I'm like talking about them, yeah, yeah, I will actually. Um, I mean, it's been five years of it longer than that when you think about it yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's a long time to spend with people you made up in your head, um, don't know how that sounds in terms of, like you know, psychological um, but yeah, I will miss them and I think I think someone asked me this on blue sky and we were talking about this and I will probably be writing like little snippets, like little time stamps of of them which I may share, which I may share on patreon or not, I don't know just to kind of show where they've ended up. And I actually ended up quite attached to my english characters, or my, I mean, the characters in the books in london I actually have. I know what happens to them and I'd love to kind of write about it. So I probably will do a scene.
Speaker 2:Poor, poor angela was not great for her um, but it was, yeah. So there's still be more, but just not, you know, not, probably not in the long form, at least not for a very long time to come, but I will miss them. I will play around with them, torture them some more in my head all right.
Speaker 1:So, finally, to end our coffee break, which book, film show or video game do you recommend?
Speaker 2:oh uh. Funnily enough just finished watching department q two days ago yesterday yeah, it was really great. Oh, he's an arsehole. He's fantastic. Uh, they're all arseholes in their own way, which is even more fantastic, but really enjoyed it really. Oh okay, second one department q, but also um. Harking back to my teen days and point horror days, absolutely loved the fear street trilogy. Um, they were really gory fun and I would recommend them as well I can well.
Speaker 1:That just leaves me to say, patricia marcus, thank you for joining me for a coffee break.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thanks indeed, thanks for having me, 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 30 minute episodes, perfect for a quick chat with your favorite authors about their latest books. And here's the fun part next season, we are answering your questions. If there's something you've always wanted to ask an author, send it in Email your question to theconversation at nadiemathersoncom, 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.
Speaker 1:Oh and, before I forget, don't forget to 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 in the show notes.
