Jenny Ashcroft’s historical fiction reflects her many years living and working abroad. She does captivating romances that have been compared to the big names of popular fiction, people like Lucinda Riley and Kate Furnivall. Stories of family secrets and love doomed by misunderstandings of war set in Bombay, Singapore, Australia, and Egypt.

Hi there, I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and in Binge Reading today Jenny Ashcroft talks about her latest book, Under the Golden Sun, set against the epic beauty of a cattle station in rural Queensland disrupted by the tentacles of a far-off European war, and the arrival of American troops in Brisbane.

WIN AN E-BOOK COPY OF UNDER THE GOLDEN SUN

We’ve got three E-Book copies of Under The Golden Sun to giveaway to three lucky readers. Enter the draw below. If you entered last week for Monica McInerney your name will still be entered.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Where to find Jenny Ashcroft: 

Website: https://www.hachette.com.au/jenny-ashcroft/under-the-golden-sun-jenny-ashcrofts-best-yet-dinah-jeffries

 Twitter: @Jenny_Ashcroft

Instagram  @jennyashcroftauthor

What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

But now, here’s Jenny.

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Jenny, and welcome to the show. It’s so good to have you with us.

Jenny Ashcroft: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.

Jenny Wheeler: You are in COVID – well you’re very successfully combating COVID in Britain these days, aren’t you, but you are in Brighton.

Jenny Ashcroft: Yes, it’s been a long winter, a very, very long winter here in lockdown. My kids have only just gone back to school. The schools were shut since December, everything’s been shut, so it’s been a really long haul with quite a grey and dark winter as well, not a lot of sunshine has broken through, so we’re all very happy to see spring on its way.

Jenny Wheeler: You have made your specialty area historic fiction, but outside of some of the more traditional settings. First and Second World War, but also related to India, British occupied Egypt, Singapore, Australia, rather than just the traditional European setting.

You have also included a lot of stories about family conflicts, misunderstandings, and secrets, which I think readers always love – misunderstandings and secrets. What drew you to this particular niche in the beginning?

Jenny Ashcroft: It’s a hard one. I think probably the biggest thing is that I have got a lot of experience, personally, of living overseas. I’m married to an Australian, so I’ve spent a chunk of time in Sydney, but we also lived for six years in Singapore, and they were the years I started writing – when we were still in Sydney and in Singapore, so I think there was a natural inclination in me to write about the experiences of people who were not living where they’ve grown up.

Also, I’ve read a lot of books set during those periods that I’ve really loved. I think when anyone starts writing, they think about what are the books they love to read most. I feel that’s what a lot of authors do, you write the books you would love to read. For me, that was part of what drove me to write, love of those stories that I discovered.

I think those two things together, having enjoyed stories set in those places plus the fact that I was experiencing living overseas myself, drew me to write those settings.

Jenny Wheeler: The very first one you wrote was Beneath the Burning Sky and it was set in Alexandria in Egypt. Two sisters, a tale of love and betrayal. What was the catalyst when you were in Sydney to get you started on writing that particular book, your first book?

Jenny Ashcroft: Weirdly, that wasn’t my first book. My first book was a book that didn’t even get a UK deal, only got a German deal.

I think I often forget that. I talk about Beneath the Burning Sky as my first book, but I think most authors will say their first book wasn’t their first book. We’ve all had these books we’ve written that, for whatever reason, didn’t get those deals.

But when I wrote about Egypt – it’s hard to remember exactly. I’d read a couple of books set in Egypt that I’d loved. One that springs to mind is Iris and Ruby by Rosie Thomas, which I think is a beautiful book. I had been to Egypt with my husband and been fascinated by it, and I think I was drawn to the idea of writing a book set there.

Then when I started to do the research and coming across some of the things that happened and the cruelties of the British rule there, it spun up the idea in my mind of the friction between the British oppressors and the native population. That was where the idea came from. I never really know fully where my ideas come from, but that was the origin of where it starts to evolve.

Jenny Wheeler: Going back to that book that you did get published in Germany. What was that one?

Jenny Ashcroft: That was a First World War book as well, and funnily enough, it wasn’t one set overseas. It was a very British First World War book. It was two families in Oxford who had their lives turned upside down by the start of the First World War. It was very bucolic, born of my love of books like The Go-Between and Atonement – those types of reads. I loved that book, but it didn’t get a UK deal, but it was published in Germany.

[Ed note:  Jenny Ashcroft’s first novel, Remember Me, was published in October 2014 in Germany under the title, Die Frauen vom Rose Square (Goldmann Verlag).]

Jenny Wheeler: We are going to be focusing on your most recent book and that is Under The Golden Sun. It’s one that is split between a bombed-out London and an outback pastoral station in Australia, both of them in the Second World War and both of them very much imbued with the sense of war.

Even in Australia, in the Outback, we’ve got a fighter pilot who’s returned home rather badly burned, we’ve got the Americans piling in as they enter the war. It’s another tale of family secrets. I know you’ve said you don’t quite know where these things come from, but how did that one get sparked?

Jenny Ashcroft: I was under contract when I wrote this book, and what you tend to do is come up with several synopsis that you send to your publisher, your editor, and say, what about this? What about this? What about this? We had talked about whether there was a potential, because of the fact that I’m married to an Australian, to set one there.

It’s a country I love. It’s home. It’s part home. My husband’s grandfather spoke a lot about his experiences when he was in Australia during the Second World War and the arrival of the Americans and how that felt to the Australians who were there at the time. There were all of these various things just bubbling away in my head.

Then I think I must have read a book – that often is how it happens – when I was doing a bit of research, and I read a couple of things. One was the guide to the American servicemen serving in Australia, which made me laugh a lot. You know, be warned, this is the kind of thing they do, and this is the way the women are. It really made me laugh.

Also, a book which was set in Brisbane during the Second World War, and the way the author brought the city alive with talk of the dance halls and the winter garden, all of that.

There was this passage I read about the American ships first landing when they sing “You Are My Sunshine” to all the people on the banks. It was like, I’ve got to write about this. I’ve got to write this story because it was so beautiful, this idea of these boys, such a long, long way away from home, singing that song to those people on the riverbank and having them sing Waltzing Matilda back to them.

I knew then it was going to be war time Australia. I don’t know why I decided it was going to be Rose answering that newspaper advertisement, but I thought, what would have taken a British woman to Australia at that time? It would have to be something. Then the idea of this quest to take this little boy home was what came to my head.

Jenny Wheeler: Walter is the little boy. His mum has died in London. They’ve been estranged from the family for reasons we don’t really understand much about at the beginning, but when he’s returned to that family in Australia, it’s a little bit of an unknown journey. We don’t quite know how he’s going to be received, or even who’s going to be there to receive him.

Rose promises she will stay with him until he’s settled and happy. She makes that commitment because she’s his main connection with the world once they get on that ship and they’re sailing away. You have got a great heart wrenching set up there at the beginning.

Jenny Ashcroft: That’s also probably to do with the fact that we often will write what we know. I’m currently the mum of small children, they are growing up too fast, but they are currently still quite small children, and one of the things that struck me most when I had children was their vulnerability, and how much they depend on their parents to make things right for them, to look after them.

And so the idea of this little boy who has been left parentless a long way from where he’s from, that connection with Rose who’s lost someone herself, I thought it was a very special thing. Heart-wrenching for both of them, but they heal each other as they go on this journey across to the other side of the world.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

It was hard to write because I honestly didn’t know how it was going to end when I was writing it. I was building up the love between them with this, what is going to happen, because she’s taking him somewhere to leave him. It was definitely a heart wrenching set up.

Jenny Wheeler: I love the dialogue that you give Rose and Walter. It feels to me very real that these wonderful chats could have gone on. They are very open and innocent, and I suspect that perhaps being the mum of, it is boys, isn’t it, younger boys…

Jenny Ashcroft: Yes, two boys and one girl.

Jenny Wheeler: … that you probably had a real sense. I wondered if some of your own chats with your children got in there.

Jenny Ashcroft: There’s a funny story, because the book is dedicated to my nephew, Leo. We were getting ready for Christmas and he was really excited, he was about five, and he said to my sister, “my nerves are shocked”. It has lived in our family. “My nerves are shocked” – we always say it. Then Walter – I said, do you mind if I use that in my book, and he’s like, you’re fine Aunty Jenny, you can use that.

We all know kids say funny things and they perceive the world in a way that we don’t even realize they’re doing. They’re taking things in, they’re absorbing.

The one thing I didn’t want to do was try and write from a child’s perspective because, as an adult, I would not be able to. I write from the perspectives I understand, and as an adult I would struggle to portray that. But I did think it was fair enough to try and write from the perspective of an adult caring for a small child.

Even then, in the edits, when I went for my round of edits, my editor in America said, he’s too smart. He’s acting. Sometimes I did slip into making him talk a bit too old. Things like, would he have known what a prime minister was at age five? All of those things had to be edited quite carefully. He’s a precocious child, he’s a very smart child, but he is still five. That was quite challenging to get right, but I enjoyed it.

Jenny Wheeler: There is an aspect of it where Aboriginal heritage comes into the story as well. We won’t give away too much of the storyline, but I thought that was quite brave and also challenging to enter into that territory, because it is a little sensitive, isn’t it? How did you tackle that?

Jenny Ashcroft: I was worried about it. I was not worried about the issue, but worried about getting it right, because it is so important to get it right. I could have very easily written a story about a British woman taking a British child, but I thought there was something very true at the time – given he was going back to Queensland, given he was going back to an area where his father would have been from – to have that Aboriginal heritage there.

We did get a sensitivity read done to make sure the terminology that was being used was appropriate, that there was nothing upsetting or in any way wrong that was written in the book, and fortunately, there wasn’t. I was very careful the whole time to be respectful, and that was something that came back from the sensitivity reader.

It is something we all need to be mindful of. It was definitely a line I was very careful about treading and I hope I have done it properly. I can only hope I’ve done my best there.

Jenny Wheeler: It’s interesting, the sensitivity read. Quite a few readers probably don’t understand or realize that this is something that’s becoming more and more common, isn’t it? Could you tell us a little bit about how your editors handle that side of things?

Jenny Ashcroft: I think it is becoming very common now. Once the book is almost ready to go to production, you get that final read done, and if anything has flagged then you change it or you have the discussion with the reader to work out the best way forward.

It’s hard to have this conversation because you’re so conscious the whole time about what could be misinterpreted. Whilst I will always write with the best intentions, the sensitivity read is about making sure the books I have written do bring joy to people, rather than anything else.

Jenny Wheeler: Have you had a sensitivity read on any of your other books?

Jenny Ashcroft: Yes, I think it is something that is more and more happening.

Jenny Wheeler: It’s interesting because we do AI translation on these recordings that we make and my sister helps with the editing of those, and we came across this sensitivity read in another author recently and she had never heard of it. She didn’t quite know how to put that into a transcript because she didn’t understand the concept.

Jenny Ashcroft: It’s done across the board, it’s for every type of book. I think it’s to do with when an author is writing about something they may not instinctively have grown up with or lived with.

I know plenty of authors who have had it done for teen books they’ve written and young adult, because it’s important to get the tone correct. I think that’s more than anything what it’s about.

Jenny Wheeler: The book before Under the Golden Sun was Meet Me in Bombay, and it’s got tremendous response as an absolutely irresistible love story. It’s split between wartime Europe and India but this time it’s the First World War, and so the war theater is the French trenches.

Luke and Maddie fall in love. They marry before he goes off to war, and then he loses his memory at the Front because of a very traumatic experience. There is quite a big follow-on of whether they ever manage to find their way back to one another again. Was there anything in the way of historical fiction or journals that sparked this, or how did you come upon that story?

Jenny Ashcroft: I have read it’s been likened to The Notebook. I’ve never read The Notebook, so it wasn’t that. No, it was nothing I read. The first thing I read when I was researching this book was a lot of letters that were written by the Indian soldiers to their families back in India, and they are incredibly tragic and moving, those letters.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

That was probably the first research I did specifically for the book. These people who had never left their country, the warmth of India, and were taken to the Western front in tropical kits to fight a war that had nothing to do with them.

I really wanted to make that part of the story because I haven’t seen it much in fiction at all. I have had a lot of people write to me say that we didn’t even realize this is what had happened. As a historical fiction writer, one thing that can be done is trigger awareness and more interest in a period, so that people do go out and find out more about it.

But the actual story came about because I was scribbling down lots and lots of different ideas, and I came up with a scene that’s quite far into the book actually. It’s Iris’s birthday party. I originally wrote that scene as the prologue to the book. I think most people would say that the original prologue they write never ends up being the prologue you end up with.

The story then spun around this person. Will they return to the person they love? And one day I suddenly thought of this letter, this very elderly man writing a letter to a woman he wants to return to. I wrote the letter and then I thought about cutting the narrative with this soldier trying to get home. It came from there. It was an evolution of an idea rather than a single, this is what I should do.

But like all my books, I don’t plot them that much before I write them, I genuinely make it up as I go along, and then you have to go back and rewrite chunks because you’ve realized the way you want your story to go.

Jenny Wheeler: I must admit I had no idea about the kitting out of the Gurkhas as well. I was absolutely shocked when I read that.

Jenny Ashcroft: Appalling. I studied the First World War at university and I remember reading a nurse’s account of being on a convalescent train full of Indian troops and talking about how cold they were.

Cold is miserable, but to be injured in a horrific war and that far from home and freezing cold because the British hadn’t even given them the uniforms. I found that so beyond shocking, and it was months, it was Christmas before they got those uniforms.

Jenny Wheeler: You are mentioned now in the company of top authors, they say things like ‘perfect for fans of Lucinda Riley, Dinah Jeffries, some of the big names. When you started out, what were your expectations for what you were going to achieve as an author?

Jenny Ashcroft: You mean instant huge multinational success and a movie deal, obviously.

Oh gosh, I don’t know. What has really hit me is, this is a really tough industry. It’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. When you first start out you can be a bit naïve, or I certainly was, about how long it would take.

Words I often get used to me by my publishers are, it’s a long game. It’s a bit like panning for gold. You keep writing these books, hoping you’ll be hitting the zeitgeist, and that it will take off and you’ll get some luck come your way, because I do think you need a bit of luck.

My expectations – I don’t know. I heard a really great way of putting it, I think it may even have been Dinah who said it to me. You get to the top of one hill and you think that’s your hill. Then you look around and see all the other hills you have still got to climb.

My first hill was getting an agent. I got an agent, then it was get a publishing deal, which wasn’t as easy as I thought it might be. It was really hard. Then it was get foreign publishing deals. Then it was get a US publishing deal. Then actually sell some of these books. It goes on and on.

When I first started, I hoped it would become a career, and now I’m currently writing my sixth book and it’s a career, it’s something I do day to day. That is a dream come true, but it is really hard sometimes.

This is a rough time to be publishing, bookshops are closed. I don’t deny how lucky I am, so delighted to be doing this job, but it’s hard sometimes to just keep going. If any authors are listening or aspiring authors who are finding it hard, I would say you’re not alone, but keep going because one surefire way to not have your dreams come true is to stop writing.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. One of the authors I’ve spoken to recently, a British woman who now lives in New Zealand and is writing from New Zealand but she’s got an English publishing deal, had a book that was due to come out early last year.

It was initially fan fared as the summer blockbuster. It was looking like it was going to trend wonderfully and then COVID hit and all the book shops shut. She’s been really gutted. She said that one day last year, 600 books were all released on one day when the warehouses opened.

Jenny Ashcroft: That was in September, and it continues to be that way. Under the Golden Sun is coming out in England in June, but there are a lot of books coming out in June. Even getting it on a shelf is hard, and if you don’t have it on a shelf, then no one knows it exists unless they happen to get it served up on Amazon.

I think book sales have been really strong for some, because one of the positives of the pandemic is people have rediscovered this love of reading. There are a lot of people I know who say, we have just got to keep going.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, that’s right. Turning to your wider career, tell us a bit about your life before you did become a full-time writer. I know you did a lot of traveling. Tell us a little bit about life before being a mum.

Jenny Ashcroft: I used to work for Microsoft for a long time, 7 years. I worked in corporate strategy at Microsoft, which was a lot of fun. I loved that job, but it was a lot of travel. When my daughter was born I kept doing it, and then when my second child, my son, was born, (a) I wanted to start writing properly, and (b) it was hard having two people, me and my husband, both traveling.

We had this one situation, no word of a lie. He flew back from New York into Singapore airport. I was there with Molly in the push chair, and I had my suitcase. He was jetlagged, just come back from New York to Singapore. I handed him over Molly and got on the flight to LA and Seattle. It was really hard. I wouldn’t see the kids for a week or 10 days at a time and then I’d come back, and I’d just get over my jet lag and it would be off again.

But I loved that job. It was working with great people, seeing countries all over the world, working on interesting projects. It’s a really fun company to work for, they were very supportive of me when I had children.

But it wasn’t right for me and it wasn’t my dream, so when Jonah was about 10 months old, I started writing and I realized this was authentic. This was really me. This was what I wanted to be doing.

Very quickly after that I moved to a consulting basis with Microsoft, and when I got my German deal, I was able to start writing full time.

Jenny Wheeler: A question I like to ask everybody: is there one thing you’ve done in your writing career, more than any other, that you see as being the secret of your success?

Jenny Ashcroft: Can I say two things?

Jenny Wheeler: Yes.

Jenny Ashcroft: One would be reading. The more you read, the better you write. I say that to my kids. I think it’s true when you read and read and read. The other, and this is so important, is listening. I have given feedback to people before and I can see they don’t want to hear it.

I think every piece of feedback you receive is valid. The solution somebody offers may not be the right solution, but if the feedback is there for the book, there is a problem that needs to be fixed. The ability to swallow your disappointment that the book is not as finished as you thought it was going to be and listen to that and go back and rethink how you’ve done something.

That to me is so important because no author is an island. Another analogy – it takes a village to write a book. I take feedback from my agent, my editor, my editor in America, and that’s when the book really becomes a book – when you listen.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s very good advice. This is The Joys of Binge Reading and we’re coming to the end of our time together, so turning to Jenny as reader. You have mentioned how important reading is.

We like to focus more on the light end of the scale, the binge reading, where people might discover an author – and it can be really great books, but books that are targeted entertainment and when people discover the author, they like to read their whole backlist.

Who are the people in your world like that?

Jenny Ashcroft: Well, I don’t need to say one of them because she’s in everyone’s world, but Jojo Moyes. I discovered her late and then had this incredible backlist to read. I remember when my third child was born, I was reading The Ship of Brides in hospital. She’s just incredible. She transports you and you know that when you pick up one of her books, you’re going to have an amazing time.

Another funny one, this is a young adult one actually, but I remember when I was flying back, when I was still at Microsoft, and my mum and my sister and pretty much all of my university friends had been going on and on and on about the Twilight books. I was so, they are kids’ books, what are you talking about?

(Stephenie Meyer, The Twilight series)

Anyway, I was on the plane from Singapore, and it was before all of the films had been made, but the first three films had been made. I got completely hooked, and I went straight back to Singapore – Borders was still a thing then – and I bought all of the books and read them in a week. I loved those books, so that was another binge read.

Another author I could just read – I could read a shopping list that she wrote – is Kate Atkinson, who I think is utterly wonderful. Life after Life, Behind the Scenes in the Museum, A God in Ruins, Transcription – I could read her all day long.  They’re all brilliant.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. How long have you been writing?

Jenny Ashcroft: I was talking to my husband about this. 2012 was when I started. It’s been 9 years now, almost 10. It’s quite a while.

Jenny Wheeler: Looking back down that tunnel and considering your writing career, if you were doing it all over again, is there anything you would change?

Jenny Ashcroft: No, I wouldn’t. I do ask myself those questions because you have choices you make at different points. Which publishers? Some of them are really hard.

I am a firm believer that everything that happens – even if it’s not something you want to happen – has its own consequences that are important and they’re meant to happen. Not fatalist, but I do think that if ever something’s happened, it’s because it was meant to happen, and you go on.

I wouldn’t be where I am now if some of the slips along the way hadn’t happened. Yes, I would love to have had an instant, huge hit, debut success, but that’s not something in my control.

Everything that’s in my control is what I focus on, and that is mainly writing the books. I wouldn’t change the books I’ve written when I’ve written them. I do believe you get better with each book you write. Of course, I would love to have written a more recent book as my first book, but that’s not the way it goes.

I wouldn’t change anything, and I do genuinely count myself very lucky to have had the breaks I’ve had, to be doing what I do. But when I’ve got the movie deal, I can definitely look back and say, I’m glad that that all happened when it happened, because it was all leading into this.

Jenny Wheeler: For some of those authors who do get the huge thing at the beginning with the debut book, it must be awfully hard to turn around and write book two.

Jenny Ashcroft: Absolutely. That’s the thing – everyone’s got their own thing going on, and nothing is what it seems looking in. Also, probably, for a lot of those authors, it wasn’t their first. They would have had those disappointments and whatever along the way that we don’t know about.

Jenny Wheeler: Looking ahead towards the next 12 months, what is next for Jenny the writer? Any new projects under development?

Jenny Ashcroft: I’m currently halfway through writing a new book, which I’ve got to finish by July. My grandmother was Greek, and she was in Greece during the Occupation and I’m writing a book set in Crete during the Occupation. I’m really enjoying this one, actually, I’m quite excited about it, but it’s just the hours in the day to get it down.

It’s great because it’s obviously lockdown. It’s been winter, and every day I sit at my desk and I leave England, I leave 2021, and I’m back in Greece in the heat, in the sunshine, and I’m with my grandmother. It’s a lovely thing to do and go and escape to. So that’s what’s next. It should be finished by July, but it won’t be coming out until next September.

Jenny Wheeler: I guess that one doesn’t have a completed title yet.

Jenny Ashcroft: No, it doesn’t have as yet. It’s got like five different titles and I don’t think any of them are right. Titles are a nightmare. For Under the Golden Sun there must have been 200 titles that got knocked back and forth, and every time one person liked something, somebody else said, no, I don’t think that’s right. It went on and on. We could not find the title. So this one doesn’t have a title at all. It’s called the Greek book.

Jenny Wheeler: I imagine you love hearing from your readers. Where can they find you online?

Jenny Ashcroft: I have Instagram or Twitter, and there’s always an ability to message me. I did have a Facebook page, but I was so awful at keeping up with it and I felt permanently guilty because I was never writing anything interesting on that Facebook page. I thought this is probably not worth it. So through Twitter and Instagram, please ping me and send me a message. I’d love to hear. That’s why I write.

Jenny Wheeler: You don’t have an author website. You rely on your publisher, don’t you?

Jenny Ashcroft: I do. It’s bad, I should have one. It’s hours in the day. I’m struggling so much to stay on top of things at the moment that to add anything at this stage, I feel like I won’t do anything well. That’s why I took the Facebook author page down. I thought I just need to focus on what I can manage at the moment. So that’s what I’m doing.

Jenny Wheeler: Quite funny for somebody who worked for Microsoft not to have a web page.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Jenny Ashcroft: I know. I wasn’t technical. I always joked that the IT guys, when I used to go in with my laptop to get it fixed, they would shudder because they would be like, she’s here again, we have to explain, really? I remember I would talk to the guys who did the coding and say, can we do this? And they’d be like, no, that’s not technically possible. I’m not a technical person at all. I am quite business minded, but no technical know-how whatsoever.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely, Jenny. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been fabulous and I love the sound of the Greek book. We will look out for it.

Jenny Ashcroft: Thank you so much, thanks for having me along and chatting with me. I can see the sunshine in the background, and I can almost feel like I’m over there.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. Just a reminder that all of the things we have been talking about, your links to books and things like that, will be in the show notes we publish, so people who hear this podcast can find all the links in the show notes at the same time. Lovely to have chatted. Thanks so much. Bye for now.

Jenny Ashcroft: Thank you. Bye-bye.

If you like Jenny you might also enjoy Kayte Nunn’s The Last Reunion, another historical fiction book that moves between Australian servicewomen in Burma and present day UK.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with.

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]

Monica McInerney’s best-selling and award-winning books explore the resilience and fragility of family bonds, whether in a single-mother family as in her latest book, The Godmothers, or in earlier ones like the hugely popular The Trip of a Lifetime. This one introduced, as one critic put it, “a huge-hearted and colorful family you’ll want to call your own”.

Australian born and Dublin based when we’re not in pandemic, Monica tops reader popularity polls for warm family stories packed with emotion on both sides of the world.

Hi, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Monica talks about why she loves the drama of big families – she’s from a big family herself – and about her first published book in her primary school library.

She got her first paid writing job as a script writer on a popular children’s TV show when she was just in her teens, and she has been writing in one form or another ever since.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Where to find Monica McInerney: 

Website:  http://www.monicamcinerney.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/monicamcinerneyauthor/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monicamcinerneyauthor/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/47105.Monica_McInerney

What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

But now, here’s Monica.

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Monica and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Monica McInerney: Hello, Jenny. Thanks very much for talking to me.

Jenny Wheeler: You are in South Australia, I’m in New Zealand; we’re both rather lucky in terms of what’s going on in the rest of the world.

You have been published regularly in Australia’s Booktopia Top 10 as one of the most popular authors in that country, and you’ve made emotional women’s stories your chosen area of expertise.

As one reviewer put it, you explore the resiliency and fragility of family bonds. What drew you to that territory initially?

Monica McInerney: I think it’s because I grew up as the middle child in a family of nine, Jenny, to be honest. I’ve got six brothers and sisters and I’m the middle child. I grew up in a small country town called Clare in the Clare Valley of South Australia. From the earliest I can remember I was surrounded by people, by drama, by comedy.

My father was the railway stationmaster and we lived in the stationmaster’s house. It was always visitors, friends, families, relatives visiting, and so constant squeaking of the gate as people arrived with stories to tell – some news, some drama, a funny thing to share – and that really concentrated my mind, even as a child, how interesting families can be.

Agatha Christie always said that she set all of her books in small villages because they were a microcosm of the whole world. For me, families are that.

Through them are introduced to so many different elements of being a human being under the family roof – grief and love and sometimes bitterness, sometimes difficulties, sibling rivalry, and all of that is such rich pickings for a novel, so I trace it all back to my childhood.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Jenny Wheeler: The Godmothers, which is your most recent book and the one we’ll focus on today, is Eliza’s story. She’s the sole child of a single mother who, though troubled, creates a magic world for her daughter. The outside reader can see that this magic world that is related through Eliza’s eyes, is also a little bit turbulent on the surface, but she’s also got safety and oversight from two remarkable godmothers who are the godmothers of the title.

You’ve said that an event in your own family initially inspired this particular story. Can you tell us about that event?

Monica McInerney: I certainly can. One of the many things I’m fascinated with about family life is the secrets between generations, and I’ve always been very aware of that. I was an eavesdropping child, I’m an eavesdropping adult to be honest, and a very curious child and a curious adult.

I grew up very conscious that I had a missing aunt in my family tree and that was my father’s half-sister, who drowned in her forties on the family farm in Northern South Australia, about eight years before I was born.

She was in her forties and she drowned in an underground water tank and it was one of those stories that was never discussed in front of the next generation, and if you walked into a room and you knew they were talking about it, everybody would go quiet.

I asked my father about it once and he said he didn’t know any more. As far as he was concerned it had been a drowning, it had been an accident. But there was always that mood that there was more to it. Was it suicide? Was it something more sinister?

I had only one godmother. I didn’t have a godfather. I grew up in a big Irish, Australian Catholic family, and my brothers and sisters all have a godmother and a godfather. My godmother was very, very religious so mom and dad thought they couldn’t match her with somebody to share the role. I always believed that my godmother knew more about the mysterious death of this missing aunt, but I could never get her to share any details with me, no matter how much I asked her as I became an adult.

I think those two elements came together in terms of – what if the godmother in your life was the custodian of some very important family secrets? For me, of course, the missing aunt was just curiosity. I wondered about this woman, what had happened, what had her life been like but, as is often the case with my novels, you add on.

What if the godmothers knew secrets that were absolutely integral to your development as a human being, to your safety, to your idea of yourself. That’s where the novel came from.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s fabulous because both Eliza’s mother and her godmothers keep a lot of information from her, including the identity of her father, and at the end there is still one thing that the godmothers conceal from her. You introduce the interesting question of – is it sometimes best to lie?

As a reader going through it, you identify with Eliza and you feel indignant because there are hints that they are concealing something that they’re not telling her, and you feel very much indignant on her behalf.

Then right at the end, when you realize what this information is, and you realize what their decision is – and I won’t spoil the story by saying what that is – you actually agree with the final decision they make and you make a decision about that. Can you talk about it without giving the actual storyline away?

Monica McInerney: I can, and you have to get to be so careful of spoilers, especially with The Godmothers, because it is full of twists and turns and moral dilemmas and secrets and lies, all the way through.

One of the things I’m really interested in as a human being, and also as a writer and as a reader, is the secrets we all keep from one another and the moral dilemmas that are involved in our relationships with other human beings.

It’s very easy to hurt people by telling the truth. It can be as, not superficial, but as casual as telling somebody they look terrible in an outfit they’ve spent ages preparing.

In the story of The Godmothers, if the godmothers were to reveal to Eliza their goddaughter everything they know about her troubled mother’s life, everything they know about their own relationship with her and all the very many layers of it – how devastating that could be to her.

They have to make a decision, because nothing is ever black and white, everything is gray in terms of our relationships with one another, I believe. So it’s a book of moral dilemmas. Absolutely.

Jenny Wheeler: The other judgment call you make is that if a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a counselor was reading it, they would probably put both Eliza’s mother and the other character, the boy Sullivan, into one of those personality profiles that have a label, and yet you very much hold back from making judgment calls.

You describe the way they behave but you withhold totally any judgment call about why that might be, or what it really is all about, don’t you? You leave the reader to make up their own mind.

Monica McInerney: Absolutely. That was a very, very deliberate decision on my part as the writer of this novel. Eliza meets Sullivan, the 12-year-old boy you mentioned, on a plane when she’s flying from Australia to Edinburgh, where she’s going to meet up with her two godmothers.

She’s sat next to this young fellow who is, as I said, 12 going on about 112, a very articulate young man and very unusual character. Certainly, Eliza’s mother is a troubled person but full of love, full of drama, full of adventure, but for every high there’s a low.

Indeed, I could have said with both of those characters, here’s what they probably would be diagnosed with if that was to be the way I was going to be writing it. But I didn’t.

To go back to that there’s nothing black and white about the way human beings are, everybody has shades of personality, shapes in themselves, I think.

Also, what I wanted to really explore in this novel, as in all my novels, is the way people react to other people’s behavior – whether that behavior is because of a particular personality order or disorder or because people are behaving out of selfishness or fear or anger or vulnerability, all the things that make us react in difficult ways with one another – that is what really interests me as a writer.

That’s what I’ve done in this novel. They are tricky characters, both of those. I think everybody in the novel is actually, because no human being is straightforward. But Eliza’s mother Jeanie would have been a very difficult friend, and the godmothers, her two best friends since school, are very conflicted in their love and their relationship with her. They are very protective of her, but they’re exasperated by her.

Certainly Sullivan, the young boy, would not be the easiest of sons to have either, but he makes a really excellent friend for Eliza when she needs one. People react to him in different ways throughout the book as well. As one of the characters says, that kid’s a weirdo.  Perhaps, but he’s also got enormous charm.

That’s what I like to write about – the way we react to people who behave in ways we don’t expect.

Jenny Wheeler: I love the dialogue between Sullivan and Eliza, and I think that by not labeling him, you give him the space to be himself, which makes the book that much more fun in a way. It might not happen in real life, but it’s lovely to be able to see it happen in a book.

Monica McInerney: I’ve been quite spoiled actually. I’ve got lots of young nephews myself and where I usually live in Dublin – I’m sure you and I will talk about that, moving between countries – and in our street there were lots of inner-city kids, very kind of wild and free in Dublin in a way that they’re not so much in Australia.

I had lots of friends, I’m 56 now but of about 10, 11 and 12. These kids would come and play, because I was home all day writing in my office. My office looked out over this Dublin street, so I was like a curiosity then, also because I had this different accent. I got to know all of their friends and, to be honest,

I think Sullivan is an amalgam of a lot of those kids. I have seen it in real life, I reckon, that kind of particular friendship you can have with really unusual kids.

Jenny Wheeler: That does bring us on to talking a little bit more widely about the rest of your literary output, because it’s huge. This is your 13th novel.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

As you mentioned, you were born in South Australia, but you’re married to an Irishman. I presume you might have even been tracing your family roots back to Ireland when you met him, I don’t know. But you now divide your time between the two countries and your books very much reflect that kind of peripatetic lifestyle, don’t they? They often do spread themselves between those two places.

Monica McInerney: They sure do Jenny, and yes, again, that comes from my own life experience. I often say that I don’t write factually autobiographical books, but I certainly write geographically autobiographical books and I write emotionally autobiographical books. I draw on my own life in lots of ways as every writer does.

We all have to draw on all the material that’s inside us. As I mentioned, I grew up in the Clare Valley of South Australia and I’m the great granddaughter of Irish immigrants on both sides. My mother’s and father’s side were from County Clare in Ireland.

My Irish husband had immigrated to Australia back in 1988 and we met when he was working on a newspaper in Melbourne. He’s a journalist, and he was already going back to Ireland, so I went back with him.

Rather than a kangaroo keyring souvenir he brought me back to Ireland, and since then we’ve been moving back and forth between our two countries. He’s one of a big family too so we’re very used to packing up our lives and spending time back and forth.

He was a big traveler. I’ve traveled a lot as well, so I know that feeling of arriving in a new city or country.

Some of it I think was coming from a small country town, and if I wanted to experience as big a life as I can, which I did want to, and still want to. I left our small country town at the age of 17 and I was living in London by the time I was 19. I’ve lived all around Australia and traveled widely.

I’m very interested in the impact travel has on a person, that sense of excitement you get when you go to a new place, the opportunities that open up, the way you can reinvent yourself if you care to, but also the fact that you bring yourself with you.

There’s a terrific saying that “skies change, not cares, for those who’ve crossed the seas.”  I think that underpins a lot of my novels too. People do travel for lots of different reasons, but they bring themselves with them and sometimes they find what they’re looking for, sometimes they find unexpected happenings and again, for me as a novelist, that’s really rich pickings.

Jenny Wheeler: How has all of that been affected by what we’re going through at the moment?

Monica McInerney: Oh, gosh, I tell you it’s the funniest thing.  I’m talking to you from Adelaide in South Australia which is where I grew up. I came here in March last year for a month.

I try and get home to Australia once a year for a month to see my mum who’s in her eighties and all my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, and I was due to fly back two days before the pandemic was declared and all the international borders were closed. I’ve been here since.

I had nine months where I didn’t get to see my husband. He had stayed home in Dublin while I was here, meeting publishers and finishing, researching, writing and editing The Godmothers. We turned into pen pals for nine months because the world closed down and I couldn’t travel and he couldn’t travel.

Then a circuitous chain of events meant he was able to apply for a travel exemption, so he arrived in Australia in November. We were reunited, not in Dublin, but here in South Australia. All that while I was editing and working on The Godmothers, which has people flitting back and forth between Australia and Scotland and getting on ferries and going to Ireland and all sorts of travel.

It was very strange to be editing and reading these scenes – people on a plane, so close to each other, no masks, walking through crowds. It felt like fantasy more than fiction sometimes.

 I’m really interested to see how it’s going to affect my novels in the future, whether I always set my novels in 2019 from now on, because my novels have people flying all over the world. Also, I don’t think anybody will ever want to read about a pandemic, so I don’t know if I want to put it in my books.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. It creates a few little conundrums going forward. It also introduces the thought about uplifting stories. Your stories are uplifting, and you write about what one person described as colorful and huge hearted families that you want to call your own. There is very much a good vibe in them. Do you think it’s important to have that uplift in these times as well?

Monica McInerney: I do, very much. Again, that’s not a deliberate decision. I think a lot of them, all of my novels, the thirteen novels and I’ve written a lot of short stories as well, reflect my worldview in a way that your novels would reflect your worldview. Every writer brings the way they see the world into their stories.

For me, as a human, I need to feel hope. I need to feel that even though we’re all going through bleak times, and I certainly have in my own life had times of deep sorrow and deep sadness and gloom and bleakness, but there’s always been a tiny light.

You’re going to get through this. All things will change. If you get through this, there will be brighter days. That has proved right to me over and again in my own life and that’s what I bring into my stories.

I don’t write happy endings in my novels because I put my characters through the wringer each time. I explore under the family roof and through each of my novels, the darkest of human experiences – great grief, results of accidents and terrible decisions. But what I want to do is see how people are shaped by those elemental things that happen to them and keep going.

What I always say is I write hopeful endings. All my novels have hopeful endings in that you can think, God, that person, that character has really been through it, but I think they’re going to be okay. I always write epilogues because I love epilogues as a reader.

I love when you finish the story and sometimes if it just stops, you go, but then what happened a year later?  All of my novels reflect that desire I have. I introduce my readers to, here they are a year later and look, I think they’re going to be alright.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. Turning from talking about the specific books to your wider career. Tell us a bit about what your life was like before you became a full-time writer. I’m not quite sure how long ago that was, but did you have experience that you brought to your work when you started writing?

Monica McInerney: Absolutely Jenny. This year marks my 21st year of being published, so I’ve been writing or around words and stories all my life, again, as I said, starting with my childhood in this big noisy family full of stories and comedy and drama.

My first job out of school was as a wardrobe girl on a very well-known Australian television show called Here’s Humphrey, a kid’s’ TV show. I was originally wardrobe girl for this, it was a man in a bear suit, a real tradition in children’s television here in Australia.

Then I began writing TV scripts for that, which was fantastic experience now I think about it, in terms of writing for children. You’ve got to keep the action going, there’s got to be lots of color, lots of movement, and my books to this day are very fast moving and full of dialog.

Ironically, Humphrey B Bear, who was the bear in this children’s TV show, didn’t speak, but all the adults around him did, so it still had to have lots of very big and fast storylines.

I moved to London where I worked in the music industry and writing media releases and advertising copy. I moved back to Australia, worked in the music industry in Sydney for a while, again writing articles and media releases. Then I began working in publishing and I worked in publishing for 10 years.

I worked for Penguin Books who are now my publisher in Australia, in Melbourne, where I worked with authors including Roald Dahl and the wonderful Margaret Mahy from New Zealand. I toured with her, which was an incredible experience.

Then I met my husband, moved to Ireland, and worked as a book publicist there. I worked with incredible authors. I met Harold Pinter, Toni Morrison, all sorts of amazing authors, Tim Winton I’ve met as well, Carol Shields, so I spent a lot of time listening, talking to authors.

In a way, I think that was fantastic experience in terms of almost doing a writing course by osmosis, because I sat in on lots of interviews, like I’m doing now, hearing the way people write, hearing that so much about writing and longevity is determination and dedication, turning up to your desk day after day.

A lot of those interviews that I sat in on when I was a publicist for 10 years have been fantastic grounding for me to keep me going.  I know basically what goes on behind the scenes to be an author. Along that way as well, in my career, I worked as a temp. I’ve worked in arts festivals, I’ve been a hotel cleaner, a waitress, a kinder gym instructor, lots of other jobs, public relations journalist. If anybody has ever read all thirteen of my novels, every single one of those careers has popped up my books in some way.

I teach a little bit now, I do some writing courses in Ireland, and I always like to tell the students that nothing is ever wasted. If you think, I can’t be a writer because all I’ve ever done is worked in a morgue, I always want to say, you are a perfect person to be a writer because people would want to know what happens in a morgue.

Whether you are you a paramedic or working in a boutique or whatever job you do, you’re coming up against people and stories. I’ve drawn on every single job I’ve ever had.

Jenny Wheeler: What was the trigger that made you decide you wanted to write a book rather than publish and market other people’s?

Monica McInerney: I had always wanted to be a writer. I actually wrote my first book when I was eight at my primary school in the Clare Valley. It was a school holiday project. I loved writing that. It was a very small, simple story with illustrations, but a wonderful thing happened with that book.

The school librarian asked if she could borrow it when we went back to school, and she covered it and cataloged it and put it on the shelves at the school library, so the whole time I was at that primary school, a book I had written was on the shelves.

No one had ever borrowed it, but I was very conscious that there it was. And we copied the books, so it had a cover, it had the ISBN at the back and the little biog and everything. Also, I just adore books. Everything I do as a writer is because I’m a reader.

I was writing stories, even though I was writing children’s TV stories, and even writing media releases and articles was about working with words and putting information across and shaping the way I see the world into other stories, I suppose.

In fact, ironically, it was only when John, my husband, and I moved to Tasmania in 1996. Up until then I’d been working in book publishing for more than 10 years, working with all these writers, and that was fulfilling my longing to be around stories and storytelling – working with authors all the time and hearing what they had to say about their inspiration and their working life, et cetera.

When we moved to Tasmania there were no jobs in publishing because there wasn’t really a publishing industry there, and I missed it, Jenny, I missed that feeling. One day I borrowed the laptop from work – this is now 25, 26 years ago – and I thought, I wonder, could I write a story?

At that stage it was the magazine I was really interested in. I loved reading magazines, and often there was a five-minute fiction at the back of magazines and a little twist in the tail.

I’d read one in the dentist and I thought, I wonder, could I write one of those? I sat down one night in Tasmania with the borrowed laptop and had a tiny idea for short story. I wrote it and I can still remember it, the feeling, I can feel it now even, the hairs at the back of my neck standing up.

This story poured out of me. I borrowed the laptop the next day. I had another story, another story, another story. Within about three months, I’d written 50 short stories.

It was like all these stories had been building up, all these other jobs I’d been doing, all these writers I’d listened to being interviewed, and now I was away from publishers and away from talking to authors, I needed to tell those stories myself.

That’s how it started. Short stories for me. Many, many, many rejections, and then in very quick, succession three got published in magazines in Australia. That gave me the confidence to start my first novel. That was published 21 years ago.

Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic story. There’s a perennial question I like to ask everyone. Is there one thing you’ve done in your writing career, more than any other, that you’d attribute to your success?

Monica McInerney: Yes. To repeat again, it’s because I’m a reader. I still read two or three books a week. Every writer I know, and I’ve got great writer friends in Ireland and Australia and America – we’re all huge readers. We’re interested in what other people are writing, we’re interested in how they did it.

We read first and foremostly as enthusiastic readers, being lost in a story, can’t put that book down. But we also read as writers going, how did they do that, I wish I’d done that, I wish I’d had that idea, why have they kept me turning the pages – or sometimes if you feel your attention is not quite as gripped as it might be, why isn’t it working?

That’s the beautiful thing. I didn’t go to university. I started work as a 17-year-old when I got that job. I had taken a gap year from uni and then got the job in children’s television and never went back. But for me, a library, a bookshop is my university, because every single book you pick up to read as a writer teaches you about writing.

I read every genre. I read children’s books; I’m writing children’s books now. I read poetry, I read nonfiction, everything I can get my hands on – classics, contemporary fiction. That’s why I’m a writer. That’s why I’m able to be a writer because I’m a reader.

Jenny Wheeler: I have heard it said that you actually learn more from books that don’t work quite as well as the ones that do work really well. I think it’s sometimes interesting to look at it that way.

Turning to Monica as reader because we are starting to come to the end of our time together. The series is called The Joys of Binge Reading because it’s aimed at readers and it’s hopefully introducing our listeners to new authors and books they might not have discovered yet. You say your taste is very wide. What are you reading at the moment, and what would you like to recommend to our listeners?

Monica McInerney: I’m going through a real crime and thriller stage at the moment. Funnily enough, I think The Godmothers is a family mystery because Eliza is on the search for some truth about her mother and also the father she’s never met. That’s the pull through the book – to find out, the solving of this family mystery.

But in terms of my own reading, I love crime novels because I don’t think I could write them, the little twist and the turns and the red herrings and all that kind of thing, when it’s about a dead body somewhere.

Particularly because I’m here in Australia unexpectedly for such a long time, I’ve been reading a lot of the novels by a crime writer here called Garry Disher.

He has a series of books with a detective called Hirsch, and I’ve loved those. They’re set in South Australia, not far from where I grew up, so I get double pleasure out of reading his novels because I can recognize the street, the roads he’s talking about in the Hills, and the scenery and the weather, as well as really intricately plotted, crime novels too. I’ve really enjoyed him.

In terms of children’s books, I’m about to start rereading all the Harry Potter books. I read them. I didn’t want to wait a year each time for J K Rowling to finish them, so after I read the first one, all those years ago, I thought I can’t bear to have to read it and then wait a year.

So I didn’t read any of them until she’d written all of them, and then I took to the bed for three weeks and read the whole lot. I’m thinking about doing that again. I love that immersing yourself in a whole fictional world.

I also love the Vera books, Ann Cleeves’ books. I’ve been reading those and watching the TV series, again that world of crime novels. John Le Carré I love. I love spy novels too, so I’ve read a lot of his Smiley books. It’s not a series as such but you meet the same characters at different stages. So I’m on crime binge at the moment.

Jenny Wheeler: Michael Robotham is one of the people we’ve had on the show and his thrillers are great, aren’t they?

Monica McInerney: They’re fantastic, but I have to read his in the daytime because I get really spooked by his books. I can’t get to sleep. (See Michael Robotham on the Joys of Binge Reading.)

Jenny Wheeler: Circling around and looking back down the tunnel of time, at this stage in your career, if you were doing it all over again, is there anything you’d change, and if so, what?

Monica McInerney: I don’t think so, Jenny. It’s a really interesting philosophical question in lots of ways, and I have to say no, I think. I mean, I’ve had books where I started which didn’t work out and I had to go back to the start.

Even before The Godmothers I had spent two years working on another novel during a very sad time in my family in Ireland’s lives, and I discovered that much of the grief and homesickness I was feeling had gone into that book.

After two years of writing it and spending every day on it, I realized that book wasn’t for publication. It was a book I had needed to write to sort through all these very sad, difficult feelings I was going through. That book is sitting on my laptop in Dublin. 

But I don’t regret a day I spent working on that book because that book didn’t need to be read by anybody else, but I needed to write it. And because I wrote that book, because I worked through a whole lot of other feelings, I was able to then write The Godmothers. It almost cleared lots of layers of feeling so I could find other things underneath it.

I think if I was to change anything along the way of my experiences as a human and as a writer, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’m in the early stages of a couple of new books at the moment, and I’m really interested in what I’m uncovering. I think that’s because I’ve been through what I’ve been through, and if I was to change one of those elements, the whole castle might fall down.

Jenny Wheeler: It’s interesting hearing you say you’re now working on two books. It sounds a little bit as if you might be the sort of writer who starts with an idea but then follows it through, rather than a big outliner. Is that how you work?

Monica McInerney: It is, Jenny, yes. I’m not a plotter. What I do is, I’m a thinker, I’m a preparer, but I’m not a plotter. I spend months before I write any of my novels thinking about my characters, thinking about my fictional family.

I consider where they live, who gets on with who, just their normal lives, what they work at, what shaped each of them, what their sibling relationship is like, the mother/daughter, what the makeup of the family is like.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

The Godmothers, for example, it’s the smallest of possible families, a single mother and her daughter, but I’ve written books about six members in the family and five members and all girls and a mixture, all the different shapes a family can take.

Once I know those fictional people, very, very well – and I haven’t written a lot of it down, it’s when I’m daydreaming, it’s when I’m imagining in the middle of the night or walking – then I decide on what I call an emotional explosion, which I throw into the middle of that fictional family.

That’s when the story takes off for me. That’s when I start writing. I know everybody very well and then it takes off. It’s me working out how they all react to that explosion.

Sometimes in my novels the explosion has happened, say, 10 years earlier but the shock waves are still there. Sometimes I write about the family and everything is going fine, everything’s normal, and then in the first chapter, bam, this great big thing happens.

How are they all going to cope? Because that’s what interests me. How are people shaped? How resilient are people? How do people react differently – because of the way they’ve been brought up, because of their personalities – to what happens to them?

That when I then write. I write seven days a week. I aim at 2,000 words a day. The first draft can be very, very long – 200,000 words sometimes – but then the whole story is down. It starts with knowing all my characters very well and then that explosion that I mentioned.

Jenny Wheeler: But you probably don’t know how it ends.

Monica McInerney: Never. In The Godmothers, as I said, Eliza is in search of the father she’s never met, and knowing that the godmothers are keeping secrets and how much they know and not know. When I began that book, I didn’t know who her father was and so I had to discover as she discovered along the way.

I get a lot of emails and messages from readers, which I really love to receive, and people say you kept taking me by surprise the whole way through this book. I didn’t know, this happens and that happens. I write back to them and say, it’s because I didn’t know what was going to happen.

Every time I feel a big emotion when I’m writing one of my novels, be it surprise or be it being amused or being moved and crying – then I often find out that’s when readers get in touch and say, I really laughed then, and I really got very upset at that stage. It echoes what I feel when I’m writing it. 

That’s a really lovely thing, to think that the pictures that were in my mind when I was writing it, all the emotions I was feeling through the magic of writing and reading, gets transferred into another person’s mind and imagination. I love that side of writing.

Jenny Wheeler: It sounds like you and Michael Robotham have got a lot in common because he writes seven days a week as well, including Christmas Day. And he is exactly like you, he doesn’t know how it’s going to end, even with those really twisty plotted books that he does. He basically lets the characters tell him what’s going to happen. It’s remarkable.

Monica McInerney: I find it amazing when I hear crime writer saying that, because I’ve listened to the wonderful Jane Harper who wrote The Dry and Force of Nature and The Survivors, and she plots hers absolutely intricately before she writes. She knows everything that’s going to happen in every chapter.

I have a great author friend in Ireland called Sinead Moriarty and she does the same thing. She knows absolutely before she starts writing what’s going to happen. She and I meet often and talk about our books in progress, and I say, how can you write when you know what’s going to happen? Why would you want to? And she says, how can you write when you don’t know what’s going to happen?

I think of Michael Robotham, but the idea of a crime novelist not knowing who did it – I love that. He surely must have to go back at the end to plant some clues.

Jenny Wheeler: He might do, yes. You’ve alluded to it beautifully, but tell us what is next for Monica the writer? The next 12 months, what do they hold in store?

Monica McInerney: I’m working on two new adult novels. I’m looking at a smaller project which I can’t talk about too much. I find I get very secretive about books in progress, just because they’re so fragile and I need to keep them a bit special and keep that feeling there’s something magical happening.

It’s a book that has no travel in it, interestingly enough, going back to what we were saying earlier, the way the pandemic and the way we’ve all been locked down and then staying still is going to affect so much creativity and so much subject matter. This book is set in one very small area, and I’m sure that’s me responding to what has happened.

I have also started writing children’s novels. My first children’s book is for 10-year-olds, it’s a chapter book and that’s being published in Australia and New Zealand in October-November this year. That’s called Marcie Gill and the Caravan Park Cat.

It’s set in a kind of alternative caravan park run by this family of hippies, who call themselves hippies. It’s all through the eyes of a 10-year-old and her grandmother’s cat. I have had so much fun writing that series. I’m working on the second book at the moment. It’s full of magic and family and childhood memories.

I’ve absolutely loved writing that. It’s got illustrations too. I’m working with a beautiful illustrator called Danny Snell, and that has been a first for me. He has brought all my characters in these settings to life through illustrations in this chapter book. I’m working on that. Lots of ideas still.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. You mentioned that you enjoy hearing from your readers. Where can they find you online?

Monica McInerney: I love it. If anybody’s listening and they want to ever get in touch, if they have read my books, I’m very active on Facebook and on Instagram. It’s me that does both of those pages, and I get back to everybody as quickly as I can. I post a lot – not about my writing process because I do keep that quite private until I feel that the book is as ready as it can be for other people to read about it.

But because I’m a big, big reader, I do lots of posts about other books I’m reading and loving.  I invite other authors onto my page and do giveaways of my books and other people’s books.

My hobby is nature photography. I do a lot of walking and I find that when I’ve been in my own head and intricately untangling or tangling plots, to be out and about with my camera, taking details of nature and sometimes closeups of flowers and leaves.

And I do a lot of galleries on my social media of beautiful things I’ve seen on my travels and walks. I’m very active and people get in touch with me via that, and also my website. I love hearing from people and always get back in touch as soon as I possibly can.

Jenny Wheeler: We will have show notes for this podcast and links to all those things when it goes up. We’ll make sure those are all included.

Monica, thank you so much, it’s been fantastic talking to you. I almost feel like I’ve made a new friend just across the ocean. It’s lovely. Thank you.

Monica McInerney: Thanks Jenny. You have made a new friend. It’s been gorgeous to talk to you too. Thanks so much for inviting me on.

If you enjoyed hearing about Monica’s emotional family stories you might also enjoy Tricia Stringer’s The Model Wife and other family stories

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with.

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]

Chanel Cleeton’s latest Cuban historical, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, covers the remarkable real-life story of Evangelina, a young Cuban noble woman who became an “overnight celebrity” in a bitter New York circulation war that birthed the world of newspaper tabloid journalism we see today.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Chanel talks about the birth of yellow journalism and the role the Cuban War of Independence in the 1890s played in its creation. It’s a colorful story, poignant, with lots of human emotion and larger than life characters, like William Randolph Hearst and his bitter rival Joseph Pulitzer.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Where to find Chanel Cleeton: 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chanelcleeton/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorChanelCleeton/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7383025.Chanel_Cleeton

Bookbub:  https://www.bookbub.com/profile/chanel-cleeton

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Chanel-Cleeton/e/B00G1BWPD2

What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

But now, here’s Chanel.

Jenny Wheeler: Welcome back, Chanel. It’s great to talk with you again.

Chanel Cleeton: Thank you so much for having me again. I’m thrilled to be here.

Jenny Wheeler: For those who weren’t with us then, you were on the show in 2019 with your first Cuban historical, Next Year in Havana, which had the distinction of being a Reese Witherspoon Book Club Choice. Now you’ve got your third Cuban historical out, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba.

These books are wonderful. You’re digging back into your own heritage with these stories., aren’t you? Tell us a little bit about your family links with Cuba.

Chanel Cleeton: I’m Cuban American. My family came over from Cuba in 1967 after the revolution in 1959. They came to the United States as refugees, and I grew up on their memories of Cuba and their love for their homeland, and so it’s been fascinating for me to be able to explore that part of my heritage and learn new things about Cuban history as I go back in time and imagine what my ancestors’ lives might have been like.

Jenny Wheeler: This book draws more heavily on true events than the earlier ones did, and it reveals some harrowing information about the way the Cuban population suffered in the War of Independence in the late 19th century. Did knowing that it was your family’s shared experience give this period a special interest and poignancy for you?

Chanel Cleeton: It really did. It was one of those things where I asked my grandfather about it and if he had heard anything, because it’s something my great-grandparents would have lived through. Unfortunately, I don’t know what my family’s experiences were like during that time period, but it definitely made me interested to imagine what it would have been like for them in such heightened and also important times in Cuban history.

It was interesting to be able to go back to that and look at what my fictional characters went through and imagine what my ancestors would have as well.

Jenny Wheeler: We’ve mentioned that it’s based on true events and it’s built around the story of a real-life woman who attracted American interest. She was well born, she attracted the ire of the Spanish authorities and was thrown into a confined situation for reasons that are really very feeble, because they suspected her father of something.

Tell us about Evangelina Cisneros, who was dubbed “the most beautiful woman in Cuba” by the American newspapers.

Chanel Cleeton: She was a fascinating character. I knew I wanted to write about this time period and this moment in Cuban history, and when I started researching the book, her name came up and as an aside I looked her up to see about her life. When I found out about the facts of her life, it was such an interesting story that I couldn’t help but want to write about it.

She was a young woman whose father was arrested by the Spanish for trying to join the revolutionaries during the fight for Cuban independence from Spain.

She actually joined him an exile on the Isle of Pines, and while they were there, the Spanish Colonel who was in charge of the Isle of Pines at the time, tried to force himself upon her. She rejected his advances and subsequently was imprisoned in a prison in Havana know as Recojidas, which was a notorious woman’s jail in Havana.

While she was there her story came to the attention of the American media, specifically William Randolph Hearst who was the publisher of the New York Journal at the time. He used her plight as a rallying cry to try to get the United States involved in the war that was going on in Cuba for independence from Spain.

He was the one who gave her the title of “the most beautiful girl in Cuba”, and splashed her story all over his papers. She became an international celebrity for a very short period in her life as petitions were raised trying to get her out of prison.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Then there was an attempted jailbreak. I don’t want to spoil too much about the book, but she was one of those figures who had a larger-than-life life. She was very ordinary and didn’t expect this kind of notoriety. She was just a girl going about her life. She was very patriotic.

She loved her family. And then because of the set of circumstances, she got put on this path where she was thrust into the public eye in a way that she later remarked on, not understanding why such a fuss was made about her life.

I think she was a little bit uncomfortable with the pressures of all that, but certainly she tried to use the platform as much as she could to bring awareness to the cause of Cuban independence. That was very dear to her heart.

Jenny Wheeler: You’ve mentioned William Randolph Hearst. The other thread in the book is a very strong circulation war that was going on in New York between Hearst and Pulitzer at the time. She became kind of fodder for the development of yellow journalism, what we’d call tabloid journalism today. They went to extreme lengths to try and own the news, didn’t they, and Cuba became a pawn in that.

Chanel Cleeton: Yes, absolutely. They both definitely looked at the situation in Cuba as an opportunity to increase circulation. Hearst said he preferred power to profit. He was really trying to court influence and shape the direction of New York society and, more largely, global society with the stories he was covering and how he hoped that would influence US foreign policy.

As you mentioned, they were engaged in this battle. Pulitzer at the time was nearing what he envisioned to be retirement and then Hearst swept in on the scene and was a threat to the newspaper empire Pulitzer had built.

They became engaged in this very big rivalry and anecdotally, they said at the end of the Spanish American War, had the war not ended when it did, they both likely would have bankrupted themselves and the papers because they were spending so much money to try to cover the conflict and trying to do everything they could to get those circulation numbers up.

Jenny Wheeler: The other key characters in the story are creations of your imagination, I understand, but they’re all just as interesting in the roles that they play as Evangelina. You’ve got Grace, the young woman who is determined to become a journalist who’s working for Hearst.

You’ve got Marina, the high-born Cuban who’s caught up in the war and whose path crosses with Evangelina’s, and Rafael who’s a self-made Cuban American millionaire who has got a bit of an identity crisis about where he should fit into this conflict. Each has a keenly perceptive assessment of the war and the motives for entering it, don’t they?

Chanel Cleeton: Yes. It was definitely important to me to look at all the factors that went into the conflict and all the influences that you had. At the time there was a very large Cuban exile community in the United States – they had left Cuba largely because of the previous war – and they were there trying to get support for the independence movement.

Rafael was an opportunity for me to let readers see into that world because it was hugely influential, particularly in New York and Tampa. There were also women’s clubs of Cubans in the United States who were raising money for the cause of independence and trying to bring awareness. I wanted readers to see that aspect of this story.

Grace’s storyline was inspired by the real-life figure of Nellie Bly, who is an American journalist who set about trying to make her mark on New York journalism. Grace looks up to her and not someone that Grace uses as a professional role model.

And then Marina’s story came to me out of the women that were in Cuba who were in the reconcentration camps. The Spanish sent many Cuban civilians to these reconcentration camps. They were sent from the countryside to the city centers, and it was a very difficult time in Cuba. It was really sobering hearing their stories and the toll the war took on Cuba.

Through Marina’s story and her work as a courier trying to help the revolutionaries, and her husband’s role, off fighting with the revolutionaries, I wanted to bring that struggling Cuba to the reader. It was also something that for me personally was very sobering and certainly very powerful, especially being Cuban American, to understand that perspective of the conflict.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. The story obviously has very emotional aspects, the suffering of the people on a human level, but you have brought in the political aspect as well.

It seems as if it’s been Cuba’s misfortune, in a way, to attract interest from a succession of imperial powers – first Spain, then America, and then in our century, Russia as well. Do you think they are starting to find their own feet today?

Chanel Cleeton: I think that, as you said, the continuum of influence that colonialism has had on Cuba is a huge part of the book and something that has obviously come up quite a bit in the books that I’ve been writing and the research I’ve done on Cuban history.

It was fascinating for me from that perspective, growing up in a Cuban American household. So much of my family’s lives was influenced by the revolution in 1959 and so much of what they spoke about and their desire to go home was influenced by that event.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Going through the historical record and looking at all the different eras in Cuban history and how Cuba’s growth has been influenced by foreign powers and the struggles they faced under Spain, and then how things turned out after the war – I don’t want to spoil too much about the book for people who don’t know this part of human history, but it was very heartbreaking and definitely gave me a greater appreciation of all the factors that have gone into Cuba’s position and the way events have turned out.

It was very interesting for me. The cry of a free Cuba that you hear in the book is also one that you hear in exile circles now. That hearkens back as well, the familiarity of that hope for a truly free Cuba.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. And it does come through that the result of the war and of those years, the so-called fruit of the conqueror – they did manage to get rid of Spain, but it’s fair to say that the people of Cuba didn’t really see the fruits of a successful outcome, did they?

Chanel Cleeton: Definitely once the United States enters the war, the tenor of the conflict changes, and obviously this is a turning point in American foreign policy. You see that heartbreaking situation where they’ve been through hundreds of years under colonial rulers – Spain, and then independence is obviously not what they envisioned. That’s something the characters feel very much in their lives, and you see that play out in the book.

It was heartbreaking to go through the story and then to see how things ended up, not quite the way people had hoped at the time. That was a concern that was going on. There was definitely discussion on whether or not American intervention in the fight for independence was actually a good thing.

Within Cuban groups, you definitely had divided opinions on that. Some people wanted the United States to come into the war to help out. Others thought that it was a dangerous situation if they did. They were concerned that the US would become entrenched in Cuba. You see those kinds of conversations playing out in the novel, among the different characters.

Jenny Wheeler: The catalyst that finally did turn the Americans to war was the sinking of an American battleship in Havana Harbor. It had been sent down there with a little bit of a monitoring role, I suppose, the USS Maine. There is still controversy today over what caused the sinking of that ship.

That was one area where the American newspapers, Hearst in particular, seized on it and blamed the Spanish for it, but there’s still a lot of controversy over what really caused the Maine to sink, isn’t there?

Chanel Cleeton: I think it is largely accepted that it was an accidental cause. What I try to do when I’m writing historical fiction is make sure my characters only have the

information they would have had at the time. I try very hard not to look at anything that is external to that time period, because I think that often shaped so much of the characters’ reactions. And you’re so right. Hearst did use that. All the papers did. But I think Hearst definitely saw that as an opportunity to bring the US into the war. And then obviously, after years of this push to get the US in, that’s the catalyst that has them decide to move to war.

I wanted readers to see that aspect of it and to go through what the characters go through, which is trying to understand why this happened and if the Spanish are to blame or not. We talk a little bit about the naval inquiry that goes on and that sort of thing. I want my readers to feel like they’re on the ground with the characters, with the information they had at that moment in history.

Jenny Wheeler: Sure. You’ve mentioned Nellie Bly, the real-life journalist that Grace took as being inspiration. I must admit, I looked up a little bit about Nellie because I hadn’t heard of her before, and it struck me that both your character Grace and Nelly were put under extra pressure as women who were trying to break into a masculine world, a male world.

They weren’t very readily received by the editors of those papers as women journalists, but they were put under extra pressure perhaps to do things that were extreme to prove their worth to their editors.

I’m thinking about Nellie’s investigation of the insane asylums and actually going to stay in one herself under cover for some time. Did you feel as if that was part of the way they pushed the tabloid journalism in those years?

Chanel Cleeton: I think there were different layers to it, definitely. At the time the book is set and at the time Grace, my fictional character, is coming into the journalism scene in New York, Nellie Bly is held in quite high esteem.

She’s proven herself through various stories, including the work she did at Blackwell’s asylum, whereas Grace is entering at a much earlier point in her career and does feel a need to prove herself more.

It’s an era of stunt girl reporters. Like you said, it’s women doing outrageous stories. They were frequently writing under a pseudonym so that they wouldn’t be exposed for future stories, and lots of going undercover. The more attention grabbing the better for getting the attention of the readers and improving circulation.

Nellie Bly – I think you see a little bit of stunt journalism with her, but you also see someone who was very passionate about investigative journalism. I think a lot of times she wanted to go into these certain situations, because it was an opportunity for her to get the story that she felt needed to be told and that maybe people weren’t hearing.

But definitely, overall, in New York journalism there was a culture of these stunt girl reporters as they were called, and that need to top each other in order to gain prominence within the career field.

Jenny Wheeler: We’ve mentioned the first historical fiction novel that you did on Cuba, Next Year in Havana, which did get chosen as a Reese Witherspoon book.

I noticed in this book, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, that in the acknowledgements you do thank the Reese Witherspoon book club and the support and camaraderie and collegiality you enjoy as an author. I wonder could you share a little bit with us? How does it feel to be a Reese Witherspoon author? What do you get from it?

Chanel Cleeton: It’s been an amazing opportunity. Reese and the community are so supportive. Everyone at the book club has been wonderful, not just with Next Year in Havana but with all of my subsequent books as well. They hosted the cover reveal for The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, which was so kind of them, and you really do feel like you’re part of this very passionate community that loves books.

I love reading their picks and talking to their other authors. The joy they have for reading and for books comes through. It’s been an amazing opportunity. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to connect with other readers and, as a reader myself, to find new books that I’ve really loved.

Jenny Wheeler: Is it a given that that will be made into a movie, or is that still up in the air? Is Next Year in Havana set for the big screen or the small screen?

Chanel Cleeton: Independent of Reese’s book club – the TV adaptation for Next Year in Havana is a separate entity, but there are some things happening with that.

I can’t unfortunately talk too much about it, and obviously the road from book to being a movie or on TV is definitely a long one and unpredictable, so I don’t know what will happen. But I’m definitely excited about the possibility and hopefully, fingers crossed, we’ll see something soon.

Jenny Wheeler: Turning to your wider career, a little bit away from the specific books, you have now got four under your belt. We haven’t mentioned the fourth one, set around Key West, but has your writing process changed much between book one and book four? Do you approach it differently now than you did at the beginning?

Chanel Cleeton: Each book is different in terms of what that particular book demands. With Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba, because they were such personal connections to me with my family history and how much I grew up on the stories of the revolution, I wrote and researched at the same time. I would look into something I wanted to know more about, and I would stop the research and then go back to writing.

With The Last Train To Key West and The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, I tried to front-load my research more. I learned that while I was working on The Last Train to Key West, because there I was going a little bit further back in history, they were events that I was a little less familiar with.

I think it’s helpful to have that strong research background before you start writing and often as well, the research informs the story for me in terms of the plot, the characterization.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Particularly with The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, when I was researching is when I learned about Evangelina Cisneros and decided she was going to be a character in the novel and that helped shape the direction of the book. That’s probably been the biggest change.

I still write all my books in Scribner and I still love the revision process in each book. I like the opportunity to go through as many revision passes as possible. That’s where I feel like I can make the book shine, so those things have stayed the same.

Jenny Wheeler: Are you a plotter? Do you do a big strong outline, or do you let the story develop organically as you go?

Chanel Cleeton: I’m not a plotter. I’m what we call a pantser. I let the story develop as I’m writing. Often, I will start with a kernel of an idea or I’ll have an idea of who my characters are, but as I’m researching and as I’m writing,

I find that the story is constantly surprising me and my characters are constantly surprising me, and so it’s leading me in unexpected directions.

That’s one of the things I love most about writing – that opportunity to go down a new path and to be surprised by your work. It’s always fun to start the day off thinking I’m going to go in one direction and then finding something that takes me in a different one that really suits the book well.

Jenny Wheeler: Without giving away any spoilers, can you tell us any surprises that you got writing this last book, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba? Were there things you thought were going to happen that didn’t, or things that did happen that you didn’t think were going to?

Chanel Cleeton: I would say, honestly, pretty much all of it was surprising. This is such a fascinating era in history, and I don’t think I appreciated that until I started researching the book and until I started writing it. You have these very larger than life figures doing outrageous things, and then you have the powerful story of what was going on in Cuba – that was really moving for me.

And then Evangelina, her storyline – I couldn’t have fictionalized something like that. It was definitely one of those rare cases where real life was a little more unexpected than anything I could have fictionalized, so the whole book was an incredible journey. I feel like I learned so much writing about it, and also really enjoyed the research and what I learned.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. Has your launch process for this book been much affected by the pandemic we’re still enduring, and how much have you been impacted generally by the things that have been going on around you?

Chanel Cleeton: This has definitely been a move to virtual events. The Last Train to Key West came out last June, so I had released another book while the pandemic was going on.

That was my first move to lots of virtual events. We had in-person tours planned and then had to change it all for virtual. This time, having had that point of reference and been through a virtual at least once, it was helpful to know what to expect. 

On the one hand, it’s great that you have an opportunity to connect with readers who might not be able to go to events in certain locations, so it’s nice that we’re able to connect virtually and have these conversations. Obviously, it’s nice as well having the in-person visits, but I think everyone has done a great job of pivoting to these virtual events and has been so supportive, and it’s wonderful to see that enthusiasm for book events.

Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. As you know, this is The Joys of Binge Reading, so turning to Chanel as reader – I know you have been madly writing since I talked to you last, but hopefully you’ve had some time to also do some reading. Have you got any recommendations for our listeners of books you have read in the last 18 months that you feel are worth them investigating?

Chanel Cleeton: I’ve read some amazing ARCS (Advance Reader Copies) for historical fiction that is coming out this year. I would really recommend Natasha Lester’s The Riviera House. That one’s phenomenal. I think it’s coming out at the end of August. It’s a World War II historical fiction set in France during the Nazi occupation, and it deals with art theft. That was a beautiful read. I love her books and that one was amazing.

I also enjoyed Island Queen by Vanessa Riley. That’s a fascinating read about Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, this amazing woman who lived in the Caribbean. She was born into enslavement and became one of the most influential and powerful women in the Caribbean in her time. That was a beautiful read. I think that one’s out in July.

I also loved The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. That comes out in July as well. It’s the story of Belle da Costa Greene, who was JP Morgan’s personal librarian. She has an incredible story as well.

So lots of great historical fiction. I think readers are going to have a good reading year this year.

Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. They all sound great. We have had Natasha on the show actually, with The Paris Secret.

We are coming to the end of our time together, so circling around and looking over the last few years and your overall career, now sitting where you are, is there anything you would change if you were doing it all again?

Chanel Cleeton: I don’t think so. I’ve been really fortunate in my career and I think my career has taken me on an unexpected path. I have been able to write in many different genres, which I’ve enjoyed, and as a reader, that’s been fun for me as well. So I’m very grateful and I’m excited to see what direction things go in the future.

Jenny Wheeler: What is next for Chanel, the writer? What have you got coming up in the next 12 months?

Chanel Cleeton: My next release will be out next year, next summer probably. I can’t say too much about it yet, but it’s set in the 1960s and the 1930s and it features three heroines. One of them is Isabelle Perez, she’s one of the Perez sisters from the first two books, and her story picks up where When We Left Cuba left off.

Her story interweaves with two other women who are ancestors of Marina Perez, who’s one of the heroines in The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, so we meet her branch of the family. It is set in South Florida, Spain, New York and Cuba. It was a really interesting book for me to work on, and I’m excited to be able to share more about it soon.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s going to be great fun. So it’s not exactly a series, but it is lovely to have these linked characters. I wanted to know what happened next for Marina, so that will be fun to have a chance to find out.

Chanel Cleeton: I love getting to revisit them. But also, if readers haven’t read the previous books, you can jump in at any time and you won’t be missing anything. That’s nice as well.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s absolutely right. You mentioned doing the digital launch. Where can readers find you online and do you enjoy interacting with them?

Chanel Cleeton: I love talking to readers. I have a website www.chanelcleeton.com where you can find book club kits and information about my books. I’m also on Instagram @chanelcleeton and Facebook at AuthorChanelCleeton. I love chatting about books and talking about what I’m reading and always happy to have that time with readers. I think it’s really cool that we can share this love of books together.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely, and in the show notes for this episode we will have links to all of those, as well as the rest of Chanel’s books, so you can always find those online.

Thanks so much for being with us today, Chanel. It’s been good talking and wonderful to once again catch up on what you’re doing.

Chanel Cleeton: Thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful. I really appreciate it.

If you enjoyed Chanel Cleeton’s Cuban historical drama you may also enjoy Love, Lies and Rebellion in Barbados, Lauren Willig’s A Summer Country, epic family saga simmering with secrets, set in 19th century Barbados.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with.

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]

Karen White is best known as the top selling author of so-called “Grit Lit” – the mysteries with a paranormal twist set in the South, like her Tradd Street series set in Charleston, South Carolina, or family sagas in Georgia. Her latest book, in contrast, The Last Night in London, is, as the title suggests, a departure – the first book she has set outside of the South.

Hi there, I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and in Binge Reading today Karen talks about why she wants the full gamut of human emotion in her stories – laughter as well as tears, love as well as hate – and she shares how she confronted the dark period of her career when she almost gave up writing fiction altogether.

Support Binge Reading on Patreon for as little as a cup of coffee a month and receive regular exclusive bonus content on featured authors and the making of the podcast.

Bonuses include regular weekly Getting To Know You Five Quickfire Questions with authors including Karen, giving a fund candid snapshot of their likes and dislikes, as well as an exclusive monthly Behind the Scenes newsletter giving previews of upcoming books. You can join and get this bonus content and having the satisfaction of knowing you are helping pay some of the hosting and production costs for the show. The time I give to the show in sourcing guests and researching their books is still free. Become a Patreon supporter today by going to https://www.patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading/

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Where to find Karen White: 

Website: https://www.karen-white.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenwhitewrite/

Facebook: @KarenWhiteAuthor

Twitter: @KarenWhiteWrite

Pinterest:  @karenwhitebooks

Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/160033.Karen_White
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions

But now here’s Karen.

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Karen and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Karen White: Hello, Jenny. Thanks for having me.

Jenny Wheeler: You’ve got more than 30 books published so a fantastic backlist, and it’s a mix of best-selling and award-winning historic fiction, mystery with paranormal twist, and women’s fiction – quite a mix there. But it would be fair to say that they’ve probably all got one thing in common and that is they are emotional family stories, or there’s a lot of emotion built into them, isn’t there?

Karen White: Yes. I like to write the kind of books I like to read, and I like to read books that pull on all the heartstrings. I want to make you laugh, but if I make you cry, or if I make you think, that’s a bonus as well, because that’s real life. That’s what we’re all going through.

Jenny Wheeler: Your latest book is on the verge of being published in the U S. It’s The Last Night in London, a time slip story moving between the present day and wartime London. You set up a web of fascinating links between two women, one a fashion journalist in 1940s London, and the other a New York photojournalist in the present day.

It’s quite surprising that the fashion industry even continued during that very chaotic period of the war but tell us about the genesis for the story.

Karen White: This has been playing in the back of my head for many years. My first two books were historical fiction, both set in the American South. Then I switched to contemporary fiction and I wrote them all set in the South. There were two of my most popular books, Falling Home and After the Rain, that were published in the early 2000’s.

I thought I was done with those books, but over the last decade I’ve been getting so much fan mail and emails from readers who are asking me what happened to Maddie Warner. Maddie Warner is a 14-year-old girl, the daughter of the family – this large boisterous Southern family in a small Southern town in Georgia, in Falling Home.

Then it’s four years later, so she’s an 18-year-old young woman graduating from high school, getting ready to go to college, or university – wherever you are, that’s what you call it. Her life is ahead of her, although she’s had some sad things happen in her past and her future is not all that certain.

I left it at that because I thought those stories were told. But people keep asking what happened to Maddie Warner. I love that character, I love the whole cast of characters from both those books, and I wanted to go back. I just didn’t know.

Then the other thing is I lived in London for seven years. I lived in this beautiful Edwardian building on Regents Park. My father was with Exxon, so that’s why we were there.  I loved the history of it.

The day we moved in I remember the porter telling us the reason why some of the windows were plain glass instead of the beautiful leaded glass that so many of the windows had, was because during the Blitz there had been nearby bombings and they had been shattered.

I wasn’t a writer then. I had no intention of being a writer. That’s something I fell into later on. But I was a reader, and I had an active imagination and of course I could not sleep at night in that building without wondering about the lives that had transpired since it was built in 1904, and during the Blitz, my goodness.

I’d always loved history. My father was a history buff and so he and I shared that love. It truly was my first experience with holding history in my hands. It made it personal to me. My mother was from Southern Mississippi and I remember when we moved to London, people laughing at her accent and giving her a hard time. We lived in other places as expatriates, but I love those fish out of water stories, so I wanted to tell the story of a Southerner in London.

I thought, I’ve never written a book set in London. I was waiting for the right story, the right character, and of course it happened with Maddie Warner and my building in London, because both the historic period and the contemporary period in the book are set in my flat in London.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Jenny Wheeler: It’s wonderful because this book does have quite a sense of the Georgia family and what a Southern family is like, even though there’s only a tiny bit of it that’s actually located in the South. Most of it takes place in London, but the phone calls from home, et cetera, are always intruding into the scene, so you still get quite a strong sense of those family links.

I must admit that after I’d read this one, I had to go back and read Falling Home. I wanted to know more about this family. I think you are probably going to get quite a few readers who are going to do that – go back to the earlier books as well.

Karen White: I hope so. I’m making it very clear that this is not a sequel. You do not have to read Falling Home and After the Rain to read this book and know who people are and what’s going on. There’s actually another character, a main character, Precious Dubose.

I write collaborations with two other New York Times bestselling authors, Lauren Willig and Beatriz Williams. We had a book out last year called All the Ways We Said Goodbye, set in Paris during three different time periods. And we meet Precious Dubose for the first time. It’s 1964.

She is a beloved character in that book. We got lots of reader mail about her. She hints at a past from her war years that she doesn’t want to talk about, but there’s a lingering sadness there and you don’t know what that story is. In The Last Night in London we see Precious again and get to know that past. We also get to meet her now as a woman about to turn 100, sharing her story with Maddie.

Jenny Wheeler: It’s diverting a bit from The Last Night in London, but when you wrote that part of All the Ways We Said Goodbye, did you know yourself what Precious’s backstory was, or did you have to get to grips with creating that after the other book came out?

Karen White: Because we wrote that book together, we don’t admit who writes what part. We each add so much to each character. I think we all decided together, because I needed a character like Precious Dubose in the book I was working on at the same time, and both Beatriz and Lauren said, why don’t you use Precious? At that point, I didn’t know what that background was.

And the ending had already been written for All the Ways We Said Goodbye. Then we got together to do the final read through and discuss it, and we came up with this amazing plot twist that had to do with Precious. I’m not going to give anything away. So people who want to read that book, it tells you what the big deal was in World War II with Precious.

To see her now, to see her look over her life and all the things that happened at that point and talk about it to Maddie and share what she’d learned and what she regretted and all of that – I think it’s such a fascinating way to write about a character.

Jenny Wheeler: It raises an interesting issue. It’s wonderful that you’re friends, but that’s really shared IP, that they have now allowed you to take on and use in something else, isn’t it, which is quite an interesting thing that’s developing with this whole new publishing world.

Karen White: Absolutely. Beatriz, Lauren and I – Beatriz has, they’re not a series, just interlocking characters, and that’s the Schuyler family. And Lauren has more than once said, I need somebody in New York city at this time, and so she’ll say, I’m going to borrow this character.

They are kind of placeholders, not like main characters of course, those belong to the author, but it makes this fictional world very, very real. Several times in different books we have used characters, or dropped a name or whatever, and made reference to them because it’s so much fun to do.

 And all three of us have included a law firm called Willig, Williams and White, which is our three last names. Not everybody catches it, but when they do they go, oh, yeah.

Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s great fun. Maddie, in The Last Night in London is a photojournalist who’s commissioned to do a piece on wartime fashions for a museum exhibition.

This is how she discovers Precious still alive and about to celebrate her 100th birthday. But in the course of the book there’s wonderful detail about the fashion items – the gowns they choose for the exhibition, the shoes, the bags, and in fact, there’s an evening bag that plays quite a significant part in the story. Was that side of it fun to research? Have you done fashion stuff before?

Karen White: I have not. My link to beautiful, beautiful gowns and fashion was from my grandmother’s trunks in her Mississippi house. My grandmother had five daughters growing up in the fifties in the deep South.  If you can even imagine the dresses they have.

My grandmother saved them all with tissue, and the long gloves and the handbags, the head fashions, everything. My girl cousins and I would be ecstatic when we’d go visit our grandmother, because she would let us put them on and it was our own little fashion show.

So I’ve always had an interest. Then while I was researching this book – I don’t always, in fact I rarely know what’s going to happen in a book, and I didn’t even know about the fashion angle until I was researching other stuff about London during the 30’s and 40’s – and I came across a novel.

I want to give you the title of it – no, I’ve already put those books away, but it was a novel written in the late 30’s about a girl in a working-class family and she gets a job working as a model for a small fashion house.

And I read it. That’s where I got so much of that – what the models are talking about and how they got changed and ready for show, and what that felt like. That was incredible because it was written during the time, so how much things cost and all of that. She gets an apartment or a flat and has a roommate and how much that costs. It was such an eye opener.

Then at the same time I came across a coffee table book that had been written to go along with an exhibition somewhere, one of the art museums in London, and it was called Elegance in an Age of Crisis. It showed all these gorgeous gowns. I was just shocked that this was wartime, but people were still dancing. They had to be more careful about it, but there was also the romance of it – the men in uniform.

We always like to romanticize war. There’s nothing less romantic than war, but back then I guess maybe it was that edge of danger and they would go to the Café de Paris, which is in the book and that’s a real place and it really was hit by a bomb and lots of people died, and they continued to dance.

 It was the thing to go out and be glamorous. It really was an exciting time, and I was mesmerized by both these books, that this glamorous life could continue in such a fraught time, such a dangerous time.

Jenny Wheeler: In the book it almost feels that way – celebrating and continuing to look beautiful is a way to respond to Hitler, to show him that they’re not going to give in. There’s definitely that undercurrent in it, isn’t there?

Karen White: Absolutely. And the red lipstick, because Hitler hated makeup on women. I’d like to think that was part of the British people’s way of saying, go away. I wanted to say an expletive, but I won’t because of the general audience.

But the whole of Europe was looking at England as their last hope. There’s a fabulous book that I read, Last Hope Island by Lynn Olson. It is non-fiction, but it was all about how Europe fell, how the exiled governments were all in London and Winston Churchill was like, okay, so we’re being bombed, just keep calm and carry on.

And the people did that. That meant putting on your red lipstick, it meant curling your hair. It meant, if you can’t get nylons, same in The States, you’re going to draw the line down the back of your legs and you would make do, because you were doing it for the boys basically.

It’s very sexist now, but back then women were not allowed into combat so that was our way of showing Hitler and showing our support for the boys and also doing our part. By ‘our’, I mean females. They played such a large part in the war effort and did their best to look good while doing it.

Jenny Wheeler: There’s even a hint that the government is in favor of this because of the improved morale when there are lovely women around.

Karen White: I know, and again very sexist, but it worked. Vogue magazine continued to put out magazines throughout the war, even with the paper shortage and everything else, because the government knew that keeping women excited about fashion – they might make their own clothes out of whatever they had to look fashionable, but they knew that keeping up the women’s morale would also help with the war effort because they were looking good for the guys.

It would also keep the economy going because they would try to buy what they could and then make do, trying to look like these fashion models in Vogue magazine.

Jenny Wheeler: One of the things I loved listening to in Falling Home on audio particularly, although it’s the same in this book, is your good way that you pick up on colloquial speech. Of course, there are wonderful southernisms in Falling Home, but in The Last Night in London you’ve got the same thing with the British, the little British ways that they talk.

With Falling Home, it was things like dagnabbit, which I’d never heard before, and that dog won’t hunt, that kind of thing. Do you have a particular ear for conversation? Are you one of those people who sits in cafés and eavesdrops?

Karen White: Most definitely. Maybe because I’m a musician. I’m one of those people who could sit in a crowded café and there could be some faint music playing on the sound system, and I will be able to pick it out, sing along to the lyrics, tell you when it came out and what the title of the song is and who sings it. I have a good ear and I think it is because I’m a musician.

I also can mimic accents. I’m not going to try my Kiwi accent right now because it’s not practiced, but I can do a Cockney really well. When I lived in London – my goodness. Not only do I listen to what they’re saying, but how they’re saying it. My favorite was from commercials, Wall’s pork sausages. I could do a whole commercial with my Cockney accent. I’ve actually been complimented by a London cab driver.

My mother’s family and my dad, they’re both from Mississippi and you don’t get any more southern than Mississippi. I lived all around the world. Even though I’ve lived in Georgia now for almost 29 years, when I’m around Southern people my accent gets a little twangy but oh my goodness, listening to my cousins.

I remember a copy editor from New York was doing the copy edits for Falling Home. Sam says something like – this is kind of rude, but it’s in the book and it is a thing – he’s like a booger you can’t thump off. And the copy editor was like, there’s no way somebody would say this. And I’m like, yeah, call my cousin Nathan, because that’s where I heard it.

And another one – I got a comment from this book – when they’re back in Georgia, somebody, I think it’s Maddie, says, is a frog’s butt watertight? This reader loved it so much she sent me an email and I made coasters with that and now I’m going to send her some.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Jenny Wheeler: This one also – he’s slicker than pig snot on a radiator. That sounds like it was in The Last Night in London or Falling Home.

Karen White: Once you get into deep South. That dog won’t hunt, I’ve heard that recently. That’s like, it’s not gonna work, you know?

Jenny Wheeler: It’s great that we’ve moved on to talking about the South because you’ve got a whole lot of very popular mysteries, the Tradd Street Mysteries. Tradd Street, with a double ‘d’ for those who aren’t familiar with Charleston and the South. It’s Southern fiction with a paranormal twist and Tradd Street is one of Charleston’s most historic streets.

It features a psychic realtor called Melanie Middleton, and you have said online – I thought it was amusing – that you can’t confirm or deny that Melanie is an exaggerated version of yourself.

Karen White: I will neither confirm nor deny, no.

Jenny Wheeler: It was quite striking to me that I saw it described as low country. To me immediately, low country means The Netherlands. I didn’t realize that part of the States also had that description. So it’s quite low lying obviously.

Karen White: Very, yes. It’s below sea level, which is why it does have a tendency to flood. That’s why hurricanes are always so feared in that part of the country. Except, instead of having the lovely areas that you’re familiar with as being low country, low country means lots of mosquitoes, lots of snakes, alligators. But I think that just makes it so much richer.

Maybe it’s my Southern heritage, but I love the smell of the swamp. I love all of that. There a thing called pluff mud, which is basically the marsh mud at low tide. It has this very pungent smell and my husband, who’s from New York, says it smells like sewage. To me it smells like home. So I guess we’ll never live in the low country.

Jenny Wheeler: Is Tradd Street still continuing or has it come to an end?

Karen White: Well, here’s the story. It was only supposed to be two books at the beginning, and then it was so popular they asked me to write more and more and more and more. The seventh and final book, called The Attic on Queen Street, will be out this November 2nd, so I have two books out this year.

It will be the last in the Tradd Street series, but we were getting so much, not flack, but just, oh please tell me it won’t be the end of this series. I was like, I need to let Jack and Melanie and all those characters rest and have a good life and let them alone, because I keep on messing with them. So I talked to my editor and my agent and we were, you know what, let’s do a spinoff and let’s set it in another fabulous Southern city.

 It’s going to be set in New Orleans and I’m taking one of the major secondary characters in the series, Nola, who’s Melanie’s stepdaughter, and she’s going to be the main character in the spinoff series. The first is called The Shop on Royal Street and it will be out in the Fall of 2022. That is the book I’m working on right now.

Jenny Wheeler: Do you find when you do a spinoff like that, that it gives you a whole fresh flush of creative energy to have a new character to work on?

Karen White: Oh, yes. I’m having so much fun. I have not had this much fun writing a book in a while. I think also because I went to Tulane University in New Orleans. I lived there for four years. I have lots of friends there.

It’s like with London, I’m coming home again, so I’m very excited about writing about it in a post-Katrina world. I lived in New Orleans before hurricane Katrina, so because I believe in suffering for my craft, I’ve already planned a getaway trip with my husband to New Orleans, to do “research”, eat at all the restaurants and do all that tough stuff.

I need to get a feel of what it’s like today, because it’s not the same as it was but it still has that charm. New Orleans has a vibe just like Charleston has a vibe – very different but very pungent and very tangible. And I love exploring.

Jenny Wheeler: You have a wonderful way of creating place, so I’m sure it’s as good as going there for people who can’t travel.

Karen White: I hope so.

Jenny Wheeler: We are starting to come to the end of our time together, so turning to Karen as reader. I always like to include this section because we are The Joys of Binge Reading, and I’m hoping that people listen to us partly to get suggestions for new books they’re going to love. What are you reading at the moment and what would you recommend to listeners?

Karen White: Oh, my goodness. I’ve been doing so much reading, loving everything. Where do I start? I just finished Stephanie Dray’s The Women of Chateau Lafayette – amazing historical fiction, if you love historical fiction. I also just finished reading Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig, also historical fiction but World War I, a true story that she discovered while researching All the Ways We Said Goodbye.

She was looking at Christmas customs in World War I France, and she found mention of this relief unit from Smith College and a huge cache of letters, which is a researcher’s dream, and was able to create this lovely, lovely, amazing book.

And then I just finished listening to an audio book, because I’m a huge audio book fan. It’s called Ghosted by Rosie Walsh.

My goodness, what a great writer, I had no idea. The characters – you’re feeling everything, and there are so many twists and turns, but it has such an amazing ending. You have no idea until the last page where it’s going. I’ve never read her before. I’ve got to find more books because it was fabulous.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s exactly what the binge reading thing is all about. When people find an author, they can then go and look for their backlist.

At this stage of your career, if you were doing it all over again, what would you change, if anything?

Karen White: You know what, even though I’ve been through some downturns in the beginning of my career, I wouldn’t change a thing because with everything in life I think you need to have those down spots to really know, to really figure out what you want, and your own worth. You have to fight for it, and if you’re not going to fight for it, you’re never going to get out of that trough.

But I did. Do I ever want to go through that period again where I was dropped by my publisher, I didn’t think I’d ever write again, but my agent was like, no, no, that’s them not you. You’ve got this great book and I’m going to sell it. And she did. That was my first book with Penguin, and that’s when my career really took off.

I’m so grateful for that, but it was disheartening. I almost stopped writing because I’d had four books under my belt, hadn’t really gone anywhere and I was disheartened. But I learned from it.

Jenny Wheeler: What was that book that saved your career?

Karen White: The Color of Light. That was my first Low Country book set in Pawleys Island, South Carolina.

Jenny Wheeler: Wonderful. What is next for Karen the writer at this stage? What are you working on in terms of your current projects?

Karen White: I’m starting that new series set in New Orleans and I have another idea. I’m in between contracts with Penguin, because they were like, okay, we’re ready for your next single title, and I was having some other stuff going on in my life. I’m like, I can’t think right now. It was coronavirus. It was 2020. I’m like, all I can do is think about this series.

But when you’re not thinking about something is when my best book ideas come to me and I have a doozy that I’m ready to start.  I’m going to put a phone call in to my agent and see if we can go on. I can’t tell you anything about it because before I’ve started, I can’t share anything.

Jenny Wheeler: No. Of course. I understand.

Karen White: At least we’ll have two books from that series, and they will be boom, boom, 2022 and 2023. Those are my next two books.

Jenny Wheeler: Wonderful. Thank you. I’m sure you enjoy hearing from readers because everything you’ve said indicates your readers love to respond to you. Where can they find you online?

Karen White: The easiest place is my website, karen-white.com. And on there are all the links to my Instagram, which is at karenwhitewrite. My Twitter’s also at karenwhitewrite, and Facebook, which is author Karen White.

Jenny Wheeler: Are you active on social media?

Karen White: You have to be, yes. If I had nothing to do all day but be on social media, I would love it, I would have so much fun. But it is the rabbit hole of the day because once you get started, that’s it. You look up and it’s four hours later and you’re like, what have I just done?

Jenny Wheeler: That’s so true. Thank you so much. It’s been fabulous talking today and we will look forward to that New Orleans series with a great deal of anticipation.

Karen White: Thank you. Thanks again.

If you enjoyed Karen’s World War II story you may also enjoy Natasha Lester’s Paris Secrets, another World War II story involving the fashion industry.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with.

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]

Nicola Moriarty’s latest book You Need To Know centers on a family of three brothers, all writers, caught up in a traumatic Christmas Eve road smash.

It’s Nicola’s way, perhaps of having a bit of a laugh at herself because she’s from a well-known Australian writing family and has two sisters, Liane and Jackie who are also best-selling authors.

Hi there. I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler. And in Binge Reading today, Nicola talks about learning to accept the rough with the smooth, finding her niche in popular fiction and how having two best-selling sisters has fostered her development as a writer.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Where to find Nicola Moriarty: 

Website: https://nicolamoriarty.com.au

Instagram: @NicMoriarty

Facebook: @NicolaMoriartyAuthor

Twitter: @NikkiM3

What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

But now here’s Nicola. Hello there, Nicola and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. 

Nicola Moriarty: Thank you so much for having me.

Jenny Wheeler: Look, it’s really lovely. You’re on your sixth book here with You Need To Know. You’ve made contemporary drama with a happy ending a bit of a niche for yourself and you’ve really gathered pace as you’ve been writing.

I really admire the way that you’ve kept on going at it after what was perhaps just a weeny bit of a knock back at the beginning, you’ve got to you’ve got international deals, Amazon best sellers and The Fifth Letter has been optioned for TV.

So are you feeling vindicated I hope after that slightly shaky start where you got one rough review in The Age newspaper in Melbourne and took it very much to heart.

Nicola Moriarty: I guess I am feeling a bit vindicated.  and I think more importantly, I’ve learnt now to not take reviews to heart and to accept that there’s there’s no way you’re going to get everybody loving your books. So I’ve just gotten much better at taking the good with the bad.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, that’s good. You live northwest of Sydney, and for some of our audience outside of Australia, we have quite a big audience outside of Australia, they may not realize that you are already part of an Australian family publishing dynasty. because you’ve got sisters, Liane and Jacqueline who are also top selling authors.

This must have increased the challenge for you a little bit at the beginning.

Nicola Moriarty: I think it’s been better for me actually, because I’ve got the benefit of having my two sisters there for me to ask questions and get advice from and, you know, guide me through what the industry is like. So on the one hand, there are reviews that will compare us directly.

And again, that’s something I’ve had to accept and get used to. But I think the good outweighs the bad. I feel very lucky to have them as sisters.

Jenny Wheeler:  Yes. Was Liane the first one who got published?

Nicola Moriarty: Jackie was first.

Jenny Wheeler: Jackie was first.

Nicola Moriarty: Yeah, Jackie then Liane, then me. Jackie started with young adult books and Liane will always say in her talks that it was Jackie who spurred her on. It was seeing her youngest sister get published that made her think, hang on a sec, this was something we both always wanted to do and she’s gone out and done it.

And she’s the younger sister. So, yeah, it really pushed her to the leap.

Jenny Wheeler:  Your new book You Need To Know centers around Jill, her three sons and a traumatic road crash. As they travel in convoys as a family for a Christmas break at their beach house.

And I thought it was fascinating given that little bit of background that we’ve just gone into, that you’ve made these three brothers in the story all of them are writers in varying degrees of competition with each other, and it will immediately invite some personal comparison from readers who read it. won’t it? So you must’ve been prepared for that when you created this.

Nicola Moriarty: Well, I was thinking about these characters and what their lives were and what careers they might have. And I started thinking, you know, it’s good to write what you know.  And then I, had this sudden idea of ‘what if I made all three of them writers’ and I figured it might be a bit of a tongue in cheek joke about the fact that it was three brothers as writers.

And I also thought, okay, it might be a chance to write some parallels, but as it went along, they very quickly became their own people and very different to the three of us. It became a much bigger part of the story as well.

So it took off in its own way in the end, but yes, I’m definitely I’m expecting questions about it.

Jenny Wheeler: Great. It felt a bit tongue in cheek. Darren is a very likable character of the three brothers. He’s probably in a way the most, attractive. And he’s also a good model for fatherhood.

And I have heard you speak in another interview about the fact that there may be quite a lot of your own husband in the Darren character. So there’s more personal parallels there. Isn’t there?

Nicola Moriarty: Yes. Actually that’s Pete. Pete is the one that is more, along the lines of my relationship

Jenny Wheeler: So sorry I got that wrong.

Nicola Moriarty: No, no. That’s okay. Yes, Darren, I find as well, a very likable character. But he’s the single one. Pete, as a father, I definitely drew on some personal experiences here and there of what my marriage is like with my husband, which, again, it’s nice to sometimes put a bit of yourself into your writing.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. And you are the mother of two girls who you describe as “small, but remarkably strong willed.”

Nicola Moriarty: Yes. They’re not as small anymore. The eldest is almost 13. I probably should update my bio, but I guess they’re still small to me.

Jenny Wheeler: Your books have been praised for their complex plotting. And yet I understand that you don’t really start out with a detailed plot line beforehand. You’ve said You Need To Know started with the idea of the accident, but you didn’t really have an idea at the beginning about how that accident came about. Is that right? Tell us a bit about the process.

Nicola Moriarty: Yes I generally always just start with a vague idea of what the big climax of the book is going to be, but I never really know how it’s all going to happen, how it’s all gonna work out afterwards. I find that doing a lot of planning doesn’t work for me because if I plan it all out, it usually changes anyway.

So I prefer to just start writing and sometimes I’ll panic a bit and think, ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t know what’s happening. I should be planning,’ but I’ve learnt that I just have to trust in my own process, which is to just keep writing.

Usually it’s while I’m writing that something will suddenly come about and I’ll, realize, ‘Oh, it, it should go this way or this should happen.’ I just seems to work better for me that way. So we’ve gotten used to doing it that way now, I think.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. Flying by the seat of your pants a little bit, but it keeps it interesting for you as well, doesn’t it?

Nicola Moriarty: Yes, that’s true. Actually it does, you know, although also terrifying at times when the deadline’s starting to loom and I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to pull it all together. But I do like the fact that it means the writing gets to surprise me. Sometimes I’ll be writing and, something just seems to happen on its own. I love that feeling. It feels really good.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. You Need To Know also asks the question of how well do you know the people who are closest to you? How well does a mother know her sons or a wife know her husband? And that seems to be a theme of yours because the tagline for The Fifth Letter was ‘How well do you know your friends?’

Do you live in a world where you’re struck by the feeling that sometimes we generally don’t really know those closest to us.

Nicola Moriarty: I think it’s got to be true for most people. I think everybody has either secrets, not necessarily the big dramatic secrets, but I think everybody has parts of themselves that they keep hidden from the world.

When I look just at my own, either family or circle of friends and all the things that are going on in their lives that they will only tell their closest friends and then consider the person that they present to the world.

I guess it fascinates me because it means that anybody you meet and when it’s just acquaintances and people you don’t get to know well, you have no idea what’s going on beneath the surface. I think it’s more just a case of feeling that that’s the case for everybody.

Jenny Wheeler: And I guess we almost by mutual agreement, with our family and close friends, we agree to avoid certain subjects because they’re too touchy or you know the other person doesn’t really like to have them mentioned. We collaborate together sometimes don’t we?

Nicola Moriarty: Absolutely. I think that’s very true. We avoid things, either purposely or not when needed. It’s very much like that.

Jenny Wheeler: One of your couples in terms of the issue of whether they’re going to have children or not. That’s the kind of touchy subject that they skirt around, but find it difficult to actually really address upfront. Isn’t it?

Nicola Moriarty: I think that can be true as well in close relationships. I guess maybe it’s more, if you don’t want to know the answer you’ll skirt around it.

Jenny Wheeler: Your books have also got an edgy urban feel to them. They’re certainly not in the cozy mystery genre. Social media is a large part of people’s lives. In another of your books, Those Other Women, you use satire about an online rivalry between Mums and non-Mums that spills dangerously over into the real world.

I wondered what prompted that and whether there were things you saw happening with your own peer group at the time that helped to prompt that story.

Nicola Moriarty: Definitely. Discovering the world of Facebook Mum’s groups prompted it a bit and seeing how, when it comes to social media, the different opinions you can get and how harsh people can be, on the simplest of matters as well.

Somebody might put up the most innocent post asking for advice about parenting and would get all sorts of abuse hurled at them, because it seems when it comes to social media, all of a sudden people say things that you would never say in real life.

I quite often I pulled back from those groups for that reason because I was quite sensitive. I remember I put up a post once in a group when my daughter started primary school and I still had the youngest at daycare.

And we were just a bit hopeless with getting out of the house on time and we’d often run late. There was a notice in the school newsletter about parents running late and how detrimental it was to the kid’s school life.

And I put up a post on this Facebook group, just kind of more asking for people to reassure me, saying how awful I felt about this note in the school newsletter and it felt like it was directed at me and just kind of wanting some support from other mums.

Looking for them to say it’s okay. you’re doing a good enough job. and some people did, but what I also got was these people jumping on there saying, well, actually I agree with the school. You don’t know how disruptive it is when you drop off your child late.

I remember feeling shocked at how harsh people could be. Definitely seeing that prompted me to write about that world in that book.

Jenny Wheeler: Also the topic of whether you decide to have children, or don’t have the luxury of even deciding because you can’t have children. You can see how that would raise some really passionate and, and perhaps even embittered, rivalries amongst women.

If somebody is able to just pop out babies without any particular apparent issue and another person is not unable to have children. It’s a breeding ground for upset and rivalry, isn’t it?

Nicola Moriarty: That was another thing when it came to those Facebook groups. I remember looking at the group and realizing that it was filled with all these local women, but that there were women who were being left out because it was all the Hills moms or the Kellyville mums or all the different suburbs and districts around, all these mums groups online.

I recall having this sudden feeling of I knew women who could use some of the information that’s in this group. It was information that wasn’t specifically Mum-focused. I discovered this great new restaurant, for example, and I remember thinking I know women who could benefit from this information, but because they’re not a mother, they’re not being included. And I think that sparked the idea for non-mom’s groups.

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Nicola Moriarty: Check on my dog was just barking. I don’t know whether that was coming over for you or if it was okay.

Jenny Wheeler: No, it hasn’t come through. I don’t worry. It’s fine. What sort of dog is it?

Nicola Moriarty: A Jack Russell Cross King’s Cavalier.

Jenny Wheeler: Sounds lovely. Earlier on you did write some romances before you found your way into this niche, which has become what you really enjoy.

You did a tragedy romcom, which won an award, so you obviously did it pretty well and you have other you’ve written other best-selling romance, but you’ve since concluded that romance isn’t your thing. What lead you to that conclusion?

Nicola Moriarty: Maybe it didn’t feel as natural for me. The first one, that tragedy rom-com, that one is closest to what I have right now. At least it’s still had the drama and the suspense in it. After my first two books I wrote a novella which was, a full romance novella to give it a try. it didn’t feel natural for me. It didn’t feel right. 

Considering it was only 30,000 words as opposed to my books that are normally a hundred thousand words, it was harder to write. You know, it was a slog getting through those 30,000 words and it didn’t feel like me.

Whereas the books that I’ve written since feel more natural to me and I like to write the kind of book that I like to read. So that’s what I generally aim for. The books that I’m writing now are the kind of books that I’d read.

Jenny Wheeler: There was an occasion when both Liane and you were on the Top 10 lists together at the same time, and I’ve seen a joke quoted in a magazine or newspaper that you’d like to see a day when all three of you might make the list together. And that sparked the thought.

Do you share much career talk on family occasions? Or do you kind of leave that aside and, and just get on with the other sort of family chat that we all have?

Nicola Moriarty: There’s a bit of both, actually. I think when we all get together, there is definitely some book talk. I don’t think it bothers our other sisters. We’re all big readers. One sister Kati is excellent at picking up things. We like to give her the manuscript towards the end and say, all right, let us know if there’s any mistakes in it, because she’s a very good proofreader.

My other sister, Fiona she’s very honest with her opinion. So again, she’s good to have as a reader because she’s not the kind of sister who will tell you. That it was good if she didn’t enjoy it, she’ll be honest. And I love that because it means that when she tells you something’s good, you know that she means it, so it feels really good.

And because they’re both big readers, if we all sit and talk about writing, they’re not left out. Especially with Liane having Hollywood connections now, it means we’re all interested.

We all want to hear the latest about that and ask her questions about, where she went to go on set. Most recently for Nine Perfect Strangers which was being filmed up in Byron Bay.

We all want to chat about that and find out what it was like when she went on set and who she met and all that kind of thing. There’s definitely. Industry talk when we get together, but then it also turns to the normal family talk as well. Because between been six kids in the family, there’s always plenty of other things to talk about too.

Jenny Wheeler: I’m just trying to imagine that family with five bookish girls. Did you have a mom and dad that were really into books as well? Did you have a lot of books at home?

Nicola Moriarty: Definitely. A family that was all big on reading and stories. Dad was less into reading but more into storytelling. He liked to tell stories, make up stories, you know, big on tall tales, that kind of thing.  They were very encouraging of reading and, writing and things like that. You’d definitely call it a very bookish household.

Jenny Wheeler: Turning away a little from the specific books, looking to your wider life, what did you do before you started writing fiction? And was there some sort of catalyst that made you decide to try your hand at fiction? I mean, you might’ve just looked at your two sisters and thought, I’ll give that a go too, but how did that happen?

Nicola Moriarty: I did pretty much a bit of everything before. I finally settled as a writer. I worked in retail, in hospitality, marketing, advertising. I did door to door sales.  I was a swimming teacher. Swimming teacher the one that I did manage to do for a longer time after, you know, jumping from job to job for a long time.

But basically I’ve always loved writing when I was really little. I definitely wanted to be a writer when I grew up.  English was my favorite subject at school. when I was really, really little. I wanted to write and illustrate children’s books. That’s what I thought I would do, until I learned that I wasn’t very good at drawing so that wasn’t gonna work out.

You leave school and the idea of becoming a writer seems like the impossible path. I didn’t really know how you would do that. I set about jumping from job to job, never really finding the right thing for me.

And then seeing first Jackie, and then Liane get published made the idea of being a writer seem more real and more possible.

When I did sit down to write my first book, I didn’t sit down intending to write a book. I just sat down to write a short story thinking ‘I haven’t done any writing for a while. I miss it.’

I had this idea in mind and I thought, I’ll just write this short story. And when I finished it, I looked at it and went this doesn’t feel like the end. This feels like the start. What I’ve written isn’t a short story. It feels like a first chapter.

So I slowly kept going with it. Not at first, not wanting to admit that what I was doing was writing a book, because then there was the potential for failure. But along the way eventually I did think ‘All right. I’m trying to. write a novel here’ and I just kept going and going. And it took about three years to write the first book because, you know, there was no deadline in place.

I was still working and doing other things. When I did finally finish, it was a very. Nice feeling of accomplishment. Although also then a huge amount of fear that, I wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. Very happily in the end I was able to.

Jenny Wheeler: The fear of rejection might’ve been a bit stronger being in the family that you were in, I guess.

Nicola Moriarty:  Yes, there was, because I gave it to Liane and Jackie to read first and when they read it and they said that they loved it and said nice things about it, I didn’t believe them.

I was thinking you’re just being nice because you’re my sisters and you’re saying that cause you have to say that.

It wasn’t until a literary agent read it and gave me good feedback that I started to have hope that yes, that I might have something.

Jenny Wheeler: A perennial question I like to ask is, is there one thing you’ve done in your writing career, more than any other that you would create it with getting you this far?

Nicola Moriarty: Oh, that’s a good question. Around the same time as I was writing my first book, I enrolled in a uni degree because I never went to uni straight out of high school. I just wanted to get in straight into the workforce. Around that point where I was thinking, what do I really want to do with my life?

I decided that I would enroll in uni. My plan was to become a high school English teacher. And halfway through that degree was when I finished that first book and found out I was getting a publishing deal. And I ended up changing my degree from the teaching to an arts degree with a major in writing.

Doing that really helped with my writing, because it gave me the opportunity to try out all different kinds of writing that I wouldn’t normally have tried my hand at in different genres, doing non-fiction as well as fiction. It really has pushed me along and gave me a good grounding in a good start.

Because the scariest thing after getting that first publishing deal was going okay, now I’ve got to write another book and can I do it again?

That uni degree was a big help and having certain teachers along the way who – same as in primary school and in high school –  there’s always certain teachers that stand out to me as the ones who really encouraged me.

In primary school, there was a beautiful Year Five teacher who read one of my stories out to the class.

I remember that feeling of pride. And in high school, I did three unit English and there was a teacher who –  it was a very tiny class, so it was only three of us – and there was a teacher who really encouraged us and was very passionate about English.

And then at university, I had a tutor who, again, was encouraging. Great feedback just pushed me.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely.

Nicola Moriarty:  So in brief, going to uni, but also certain teachers along the way.

Jenny Wheeler: We’re called The Joys of Binge Reading and we do like to ask people about the things that they’re reading at the moment, and if they have been binge readers in the past, or even if they find any time to binge read today.

Turning to your taste in books. What do you like to read, particularly in fiction and have you got a current series that you’d like to recommend at the moment?

Nicola Moriarty: I don’t have a series at the moment that I’m reading, but I’ve been reading mostly as I mentioned, books similar in style to those I write. What I’m reading right now is Sally Hepworth’s The Good Sister.

Prior to that, I finished The Serpent Skin by Erina Reddan and The Silent Listener by Lynn Yeowart.

I love nothing more than sitting down and reading and if I get the chance to not put down a book all day, then I’ll definitely, binge it, but it’s been a while since I’ve read an actual, series of books

Jenny Wheeler: Circling around because we are coming to the end of our time together at this stage if you were going to do it all over again, is there anything you’d change about how your writer career has progressed?

Nicola Moriarty: I don’t think I would. You know, when I look back at everything, even though there’s definitely been, Bumps along the way and ups and downs.

I suppose maybe I could go back and tell myself not to take those bad reviews to heart, but then again, maybe even that wouldn’t be a good idea because it’s all part of what’s shaped me and I’m happy with, where I’ve gotten so far.

I wouldn’t really want to change anything because it risks losing where I’ve landed. I’ve been okay with taking the bad with the good, and I think it’s all shaped me and I’m happy with how it’s gone.

I feel very lucky that I get to do a job that I love. It’s a lovely thing to be able to do. At the moment I’m still enjoying the ride and, and hoping that it doesn’t end.

Jenny Wheeler: The Fifth Letter  has been optioned for filming hasn’t it? How far along is that in development? Has it, has it got to a script stage yet?

Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.

Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books

Nicola Moriarty: It’s been very up and down. Originally it was optioned in America by Universal and they took it to NBC. And NBC said they loved it and asked for a pilot script, a script was written by wonderful screenwriter over in America, which I loved. And they took it back to NBC, but sadly they didn’t then green light it and it fell over there.

It’s more recently been re optioned over here in Australia now. The last I’ve heard is that they had two wonderful female screenwriters on board. The latest I’ve heard is that a few weeks back they were heading into a writer’s room together.

I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that it will make it, but also aware that there’s a lot that has to happen for these things to get made and, lots of bumps along the way.

I’m trying not to get too excited because I know how hard it is for these things to get made.

Jenny Wheeler:  Yes. Australia has been making some very good TV, so you’d be in good hands, wouldn’t you?

Nicola Moriarty: I think so. Yes.

Jenny Wheeler: Now what’s next for Nicola as a writer? Say over the next 12 months, what are you working on? Any new things that you’ve got in store?

Nicola Moriarty: Yes. I’m getting started on the next book now. I’m not very far into it yet. But I have the main premise, it opens at the moment with a woman. lying on a lounge room floor and, thinking to herself, being dead is not going to be ideal. And then thinking, well, there’s not much I can do about it, but what I can do is use these last few minutes to figure out who murdered me.

So that’s my opening at the moment. At this stage, I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go. I’ve got a few ideas, I’ve got characters, of this story and you know, I’ve got a husband and a school mum friend, and a uni friend and a daughter, and these suspects  and this woman does have a long line of suspects, because she’s quite an abrasive person who has made a few enemies along the way.

That’s pretty much as far as I’ve gotten, and I’m working on that one now.

Jenny Wheeler: Sounds great. So at this stage, you don’t know quite who’s responsible either. There’s a, there’s an array of possibilities?

Nicola Moriarty: Yes.

Jenny Wheeler: How exciting. Do you enjoy hearing from your readers and where can they find you online?

Nicola Moriarty: Absolutely. It’s lovely hearing from readers. It makes my day when I get a message from somebody to let me know if they’ve enjoyed reading one of my books. So I’m on Instagram as Nick Moriarty I’m on Facebook. I’ve got an author page, under Nicola Moriarty there. I’m on Twitter.

I think I’ve got my full name on Twitter. Yes. I think that’s the main ones. 

Jenny Wheeler: We’ll put links, all of those in the show notes for this episode. That’s fantastic. Nicola, it’s been wonderful to talk and all the very best with this book that is about to launch.

Nicola Moriarty: They are about to come out here in Australia.  It will be New Zealand as well, in one week. And, about to launch in the UK.

Jenny Wheeler: Lovely. Okay. Well, all the very best with that.

Nicola Moriarty: Thank you so much.

If you enjoyed Nicola’s edgy thrillers you might also enjoy Olivia Hadfield’s sly jokes about Tudor Kings and modern day media moguls. More sisterly rivalry.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with.

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]