Novelist Gill Paul takes iconic women of the 20th century – from Wallis Simpson to Diana, Princess of Wales, from Jackie O to Maria Callas – and spins a magic story that combines fact with imagination to give readers new insights into famous lives. . . .

Hi there. I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and in this week’s Joys of Binge Reading episode Gill talks about the romance of the Romanovs, and her crazy passion for cutting ice to go swimming. 

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

Where to find Gill Paul: 

Website: http://gillpaul.com/author

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

 Twitter:  https://twitter.com/GillPaulAUTHOR

What

Jenny: Hello there, Gill, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you

Gill: Jenny. It’s wonderful to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Jenny: Now I know that you did do other things before you started your writing, so was there a Once Upon a Time moment where you thought, “I’ve just got to write some fiction or my life won’t quite be complete,” and if so, what was the catalyst?

Gill: That’s a great question. In fact, I wanted to write from probably when I started reading, but my parents steered me in a different direction, towards studying medicine at university  and then  I switched and  worked in publishing for a while and all the time I was trying to write novels. 

I have to say in my teens and early

But in my thirties I discovered a little

She was amazing. Three years after I started

Jenny:  And what was that first book?

Gill: Oh gosh, that was ages ago, and it’s terrible. It’s called

Jenny: In your most recent book, The Lost Daughter, you returned to the Romanov family.  (the Russian Imperial family of the Czars.)  Now you’ve really made a name for yourself with these novels that are apparently based in fact with interesting people, but also a very lovely story spun around them.

And this is the second time you’ve used the Romanovs as a basis for a story. Another of your best sellers, The Secret Wife also treated an aspect of the Romanovs. Tell us how you became interested in this royal line.

Gill: Oh, that’s a teenage obsession of mine, actually.  When I was a teenager, the graves of the

There were some very good books along those lines. I was really excited about this missing Royal family. Of course, then the graves turned up, first of all, in 1991 and then the second grave in 2007 and the DNA tests were pretty conclusive early on, so that was a disappointment, but it’s just really gets under your skin.  The fact that they felt that they could wipe out an entire Royal family. You can understand them killing Nicholas the Second who’d been a particularly bad ruler. You can understand them wanting to get rid of the heir Alexi so that nobody could come and try and put them back on the throne.

But these four girls . . . It’s just so

And in the most recent one, The Lost

So that’s my two Romanoff novels.  I’m not planning on doing another one at the

Jenny: Yes. Tatiana, was there any truth in the possibility that she may

Gill: No. I’m afraid in reality the guards who executed them have a left

We know that they were all there. I mean,

Jenny: The murders were also was a little bit of an embarrassment even to

Gill: They are. When the graves were first discovered in 1991 Boris

And Putin himself nowadays is quite

They haven’t yet given their full consent to recognize them. There are two factions in the church, and they haven’t yet agreed that definitely the bodies of Alexi and Maria were in the second grave, so they haven’t yet been able to be buried with their parents, which is so sad. Just because they’re wrangling, even though they’ve been canonized as martyred saints.

The church argument is that they’ve got to

Jenny: So The Lost Daughter is a dual timeline story that’s spread between

Gill:  I did indeed, yes, just to St

There’s gold everywhere. There are precious

And they are exquisite, really, really

I was there for a couple of months and

Jenny: Oh, I’m sure you’d like us.

Gill: Oh yes!  I do have New Zealand

Jenny: You’ve also tackled quite recently, another Royal romance, the Wallis Simpson saga. And in your recent novel, Another Woman’s Husband, you’ve tackled two of the most famous women of the 20th century, Wallis Simpson and Diana Princess of Wales, in another dual timeline story, which was really, really fun.

The Wallis Simpson side of it was very

Gill: Do you know I’ve always wanted to write about Wallis Simpson because

She had to have every man fall in love with

But I decided to write about her and I wanted to look to make her more relevant to the present day. And then I found out that Princess Diana had visited her house just hours before she died in Paris in 1997 and that seemed extraordinary because of course, there’s so many parallels between the two women.

They were both married to the Prince of Wales. They were both fashion icons of their day. They were both incredibly thin, with borderline eating disorders on both sides. And they were victimized, they were bullied by the media. There was a lot that they had in common.

And I thought I would try and wind two

Jenny: Yes. It is funny. That visit, of course Mohammed Al Fayed was

Gill: Maybe it was Dodi’s trainers, that’s a really good idea. But after

So it doesn’t really look as though she was

And also that house is completely wrong for

Jenny: In your book there’s a suggestion that Wallis was almost forced by

Gill: Well, that’s certainly my opinion and that of several biographers. I

So much so that his parents got MI5 to put

She’d been poor and reliant on other people

But you know, on the other hand, there was

And I’m sure she didn’t enjoy that at all

Jenny:  No. It sounded also as if she

Gill: Yes, indeed.  Mary Kirk has

A very odd book that I tracked down in a

Jenny: Yes, she came over as, as a very sympathetic character. I was sad to

Gill: Yes. No, I wish she had. That was a real shame.  This is the problem. I seem to have slipped into this writing about real people and so I feel a certain responsibility to be true to the facts.

But, it doesn’t always make it into the right shape for a story. So for example, if I’d been making up that story, of course I wouldn’t have had Mary die. She’s a lovely character, but because she’s a real person, I really felt I had to reflect that in the story. We have given away the ending of this now, Jenny.

Jenny: Sorry, I’ll have to put a spoiler alert! So you’ve written a

Gill: Well, of course, yes. I mean, you know, the person that you love and

But, the scrutiny that, for example, Meghan

You know, Harry couldn’t have married

Jenny:  Yes, yes. You seem to have a

And that’s The Affair, the one based on the film set of the making of Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. How did that one came about? It sounds particularly fascinating.

Gill:  Oh, I love Elizabeth Taylor.

I knew I wanted to write about her. And I’m

And so, yes, it was definitely a story I

And sending off emails to see if I could

Jenny: And did you learn anything about them that surprised you while you

Gill: Cleopatra was the film that nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox

So that was crazy, the money that they were throwing at it really did nearly bring down 20th Century Fox. They tried to cut back on stupid things like criticizing actors with the number of paper cups they were using in the canteen. So that did make me laugh.

I have to say. I tried very hard to contact everybody who worked on the film and sent a lot of the emails weren’t returned and it was very hard to find people.

But after the book was published, I had an email from Rosemary Mankiewicz who’d worked on the film, and she’d actually met her husband. Joe. – Joe Mankiewicz –  who was the director there, and they got together on the set. It was very, you know, all these actors, and film people together for 16 months. There were a lot of romances that went on out there, and not just Elizabeth and Richard, and Rosemary’s was one of them with Joe.

And she came across my book, and so I got

Jenny: Oh, that’s fantastic. Turning to your wider a career, just moving

I wondered if you had any little health

Gill: Oh my gosh, I would love to give you a secret potion that I’ve

And I use it for when I’m feeling very

Jenny: Oh yes, you can get up here. In another life, I had a health

Gill: I don’t think I’m a great example. I’m a real hot swot. I spend

I work ridiculously hard. For example, a

It’s not very attractive quality of mind,

Jenny: Oh. I think that’s putting a very negative cast on it. That sounds

Gill: Yes, and I’m quite perfectionist about my words and I even go

There are some people that do two or three

Jenny: Yes. Reading it aloud though, as a very good suggestion. If you want

Gill: But it does help and it’s amazing what you spot when you’re reading

Jenny: Our show is called The Joys of Binge Reading because we do like to

Gill:  Oh, I binge read so much historical fiction, British, American, from all of the world. Really.  One of my favorite authors is Hazel Gaynor. 

One of her latest books is called The Lighthouse Keepers Daughter. It’s about Grace Darling, who was the daughter of the keeper of a lighthouse off the north east of England when there was a huge storm.  This is way back in the Victorian era, and she helped to rescue some people from the boat and she became a local heroine and it took over her life.

It’s a wonderful story, but Hazel will go in and take this woman about whom not much is known and really make you love her. She makes the character come to life. You understand everything about her. So definitely I would say, look up Hazel Gaynor if you haven’t read her already. And there’s another book, if I can slip it in that I’ve just read this week by a woman called Elisabeth Gifford, and this is not coming out until next March.  It’s called The Lost Lights of St Kilda.

For those who don’t know, St Kilda is an

 I

I’ve always got at least one book on the go

So yes, reading is still my hobby.

Jenny: That’s wonderful that you can do it at the same time as you are.

Gill:  I suppose in the daytime I’ll

I just stick little bits of Post It notes

I don’t have to be sitting at my desk and

Jenny: But for your personal reading, do you still like to use paper or do

Gill: I do use paper for personal reading for fun, but digital readers

I always have a book in my handbag wherever

People like Barbara Kingsolver for

Jenny: We’re starting to come to the end of our time together. Circling

Gill: It’s a very good question. And I don’t really think there is. I mean, I have some author friends, for example, who won big prizes with their first novel and then it’s quite hard to live up to that afterwards, whereas I feel that I’ve kind of gradually built my ship. 

I really hope that I’m getting a little bit

It’s just so privileged to get paid to make

Jenny: Yes. What is next for Gill, the writer? What projects do you have

Gill: Well, I have another novel coming out next summer, which is called Jackie

So I’ll be broadcasting that. I haven’t

Jenny:  You certainly like to focus

Gill: Well, that was, it’s actually been the hardest book that I’ve

I treat them turn about, Jackie first and

One of them clearly you feel massive

You’ll find out next summer. I’ll send you

Jenny: What is the challenge for you of choosing these people who are

Gill: That I think there are lots of questions in both of their lives.

And Maria was still with them at the time.  I just tried to explain the action. I mean,

You can presume to know their thoughts. So

Jenny: That’ll be fascinating, and I certainly would be very keen to see

How do you interact with your readers and

Gill:  I am so easy to find.  I’ve got a website, Gillpaul.com that I’ll answer any message that you send me through the website, I’m on Twitter. I’m  @Gill Paul author. I’m on Facebook @GillPaulAuthor, I’m an Instagram, @GillPaul.1 So yes,  all over the place. I think I’ve got a blog site somewhere, but I have to confess, I haven’t blogged for a while. But I love hearing from readers and I always reply to them as well. It’s just fascinating. Having some communication, you know?

Otherwise you’re just sending your book out

Look it’s been really such fun. For someone like me who’s been a journalist, I do love books that combined fact and fiction. There’s something special about knowing that there is a basic  historical accuracy about them. So yes, it’s really, really fun. It’s the best of both worlds.

Gill: Thank you very much. I do love doing it. So that, that was great to hear. Thank you.

Jenny: Now this just before we go, this business of swimming every day. Do I understand that you swim every day in an outdoor pool in England?

Gill: Yes. It’s a natural pond on Hampstead Heath and it’s women only, which is really nice.  And it’s got ducks and heron and a Kingfisher and moor hens and fish, and we just get in the water.

It’s becoming quite popular, it’s got better known. There have been a couple of films about it, and in the summer it’s quite busy now, but in winter . . . .  And at the moment, the temperatures right down to 11 C, which is about 52F, so the numbers are thinning out under 12C.

You have your warnings  that there is a risk of Sudden Immersion Syndrome,   (SID) ) which can be fatal if you’re not a climatized It’s just the biggest buzz when you get into water and when you know when, when the pond is iced over, we will melt a strip, so we can still swim up and down in it and a not for very long, I’d say five minutes max at that time of year, but it’s a real buzz.

It’s a real serotonin high and  a great thing to do in the middle of the day and the dark cold month of January when you’re not getting much sunlight to zip up there and, and have a swim in the ice.

Your head is down at the level of the ice

Jenny: Wow. Perfectly amazing. Amazing.

Gill: It’s quite an eccentric bunch of us that do the all year swimming. But  they’re all interesting women in different ways.  So that’s part of the fun.

Jenny: Look, that’s lovely. I must just do it sometime to hear the ice singing. Again. thanks so much, Gill. It’s been such fun.

Gill: Thank you. Bye Bye.

If you enjoyed hearing about Gill’s work you might also be interested in Chanel Cleeton’s Cuban histories or Renee Rosen’s historical fiction recreating America in the 50s and 60s.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20

Joanna

Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and Joanna talks about feisty women, ostentatious wealth, dinner parties on horseback and how so often truth is stranger than fiction.

Six

Where to find Joanna Shupe

Website: http://www.joannashupe.com/

Facebook: @joannashupeauthor

Twitter: @JoannaShupe

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/joanna-shupe

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/joannashupe/pins/

What

Jenny: But now, here’s Joanna. .  Hello there Joanna and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Jenny: Hello there Joanna, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you

Joanna: Hello, and thank you so much for having me. I’m so honored.

Jenny: I always like to ask the ‘Once Upon a Time question’ because people always like to the answer. How did you get started? Was there a moment at some stage where you thought, I’ve just got to write fiction, even if you were already doing nonfiction or was it something you always wanted to do?

Joanna: Well, I’ve always been writing. I went to college to get a

People like Johanna Lindsey, and Amanda Quick and Jayne Ann Krentz.  That’s how I came into romance.  So when I graduated college, I came home, and I didn’t have a job yet, and I was reading a lot of romance while I was job searching and trying to keep my stress levels low.

And my oldest sister said, you know, you

 So

And that was really the catalyst for me, to

Jenny: That’s lovely that your husband would be so encouraging, isn’t it?

Joanna:  Yes. I’m lucky because he

Jenny: Sure. Now you mentioned that it was romance. Was it historical

Joanna: I kind of bounced around, but really in those days it was the heyday

Jenny: But this first book that you did, was that a Regency?

Joanna: It was. He was a Naval captain. 

Jenny: Stephanie Laurens was great in that space. I don’t know if she’s

Joanna: Yes and I believe she does still publish.

Jenny:  I must look her up again

Joanna:  Oh, wow. That’s daunting, but

Jenny: Yes. So tell us about your first book that got published.

Joanna: So, I had a game plan when I came to publishing. I knew that Regency

And I had to find someone who was willing

Jenny: That’s great, because that’s where we’re going.  I think at least the last two series have been

Joanna: Yes.

Jenny: And that’s the period in New York, probably just in the early years

Joanna: Right. It starts in the 1870s and continues on to just around the

Jenny:  Right.  I was aware of the Knickerbocker series, and

Joanna: Correct. Yes. So you’ve got JP Morgan and the Astors and the

And so you have big mansions and you get

Jenny:  That sounds like a

Joanna: I grew up reading Edith Wharton. 

But I read her so late that it just didn’t

It was the processing center, and my

Jenny: You’ve also made a name for yourself, doing some great unusually

You think, Oh man, you could just see it

Joanna:  I do try. I mean, my whole

I was doing Strangers On A Train, but the

I mean they dined on horseback and I

Jenny:  Yes. It is funny how

Joanna: Absolutely. I mean, there are so many things that I couldn’t make

Jenny:  And also, your woman, have

Joanna: Yes. We have to remember that in the 19th century, prior to the

But in the Gilded Age, with the rise of

So they were able to move into the cities.

We see women pushing forward in the Gilded

I think New York, the cities generally –

Jenny: Just mentioning a couple of the books in your most recent series,

And Florence also, she’d got her own

Joanna: Right. I mean, they have been raised in a certain way. They’re of a

I wanted to write a series where these

Jenny: Frank Tripp, the hero of The Rogue of Fifth Avenue, the lawyer that

Joanna: Yes. He’s like the fixer. 

Jenny: Yes. Script guru Robert McKee has said that to make a a period

Joanna:  I agree. I mean, some things

Jenny: Yes. Is there a lot of original material that you can draw on  for your research?

Joanna:  One of the really great

Jenny: That’s fantastic. Moving away from the individual books to your

Joanna:  One thing that I do, even

So I will look, not only in my own books to

Jenny: Can you think of an example of something that you wouldn’t have

Joanna:  Usually it’s witty dialogue, and

Jenny: Yes. So you’re giving them a little surprise somewhere.

Joanna:  Yes, I’m trying to. Sometimes

Jenny: Yes. Is there one thing you’ve done more than any other that’s

Joanna: Probably starting something new. I mean, starting something

So they didn’t even really know what to

So then for the second cover, we went to a

Jenny: And have other writers now following in your footsteps? Are there

Joanna: Maya Rodale http://www.mayarodale.com/books/

Jenny: Yes. You’ll be able to take the credit if it does.

Joanna: Well, I mean, the readers will be able to take the credit if it

Jenny: Great. Yes. What sort of comment do you get from them in that

Joanna: You know, it’s kind of a mixed bag. I mean, most readers will say,

 I’m

Jenny: Particularly as in the mid 20th century, the teaching of history was

Joanna: Right. Correct. So a lot of the history that’s been taught has been

Jenny: Yes, that’s absolutely true. Turning to Joanna as reader, because

Joanna: So because I write historical, I tend to read more contemporary

That’s writers like Helena Hunting, Sierra Simone, Kresley Cole,  Naima Simone, and Elle Kennedy Those are contemporary authors that I just automatically buy and read. For historicals, I read Sarah Maclean and Lisa Kleypas and Alyssa Cole and K.J. Charles.  Those are some of my historical favorites.

And if you want to talk about series books, some series recommendations. Well, I don’t know if you’ve read the Winston brothers series by Penny Reid. That’s a contemporary series set in Appalachia. I believe it’s Tennessee. A series of seven siblings and of course they each get a happily ever after (HEA).

These books are a little fluffy. They’re

And another series that I really love is Alexa Martin’s Playbook series. It’s set in the world of the National Football League here in America, because Alexa is married to a former football player. So it’s set in the world of the NFL wives and the girlfriends. The WAGs so-called of the football players and they’re delightful. I mean, she is funny and they’re hot and no one else could write these books,  I don’t think, other than Alexa, because she’s got such a unique perspective on football and the players and what it’s like to really be a wife and a girlfriend of a football player.

I think the third one in the series is coming out in a few weeks. The other series that is just getting underway that I’m also excited about is Wicked Villains by Katee Robert. She has just released the second book in the series, which is called Learn My Lesson.

And the first book was called Desperate Measures.

The first book was about Jafar and Jasmine

Jenny: Sounds

Joanna: I

So, yeah, I would probably. Slow down.

Jenny: Are

Joanna:  I’m trying, I’m trying.  That’s my goal for 2020

Jenny: I know

Joanna: It

And so normally I write two books a year,

Jenny: Well,

Joanna:  I hope so.

Jenny: So

Joanna: So

Jenny: That’s

Joanna: I

Jenny:

Joanna: I

 I am on Twitter is @Juliashupe  I have two Facebook reader groups. One is called The League of Extraordinary Historical Romance Authors that has a bunch of other romance authors on it. And then I have my own Facebook group called the Gilded Lilies.

Jenny: That

Joanna: It

Jenny: This

Joanna: Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

If you enjoyed hearing Joanna talk about her Gilded Age romance you might also enjoy Grace Burrowes’ Regency best sellers.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20

Anna Willet writes nightmare thrillers it’s best not to read before bed – and that’s the way her readers love them.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny

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

Where to find Anna Willet: 

Website: https://www.annawillett.info/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Anna-Willett-1732961043643247/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com.au/AnnaWauthor/

What

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

Anna: Thank you Jenny. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Jenny: I always start with a predictable question, but I do know it’s one

Anna: I don’t think there was any one catalyst, but I’m always wanted to write. Even as a child, I would write short stories. But then marriage and studying and having children and working eclipsed all of those ideas for many years. And so it wasn’t until my daughters were older and I had time to actually consider what is it that I want to do, that I decided to take writing seriously and I started writing short stories.

 And

Jenny: Fantastic, so now you’ve got to nine suspense thrillers that have

Anna: That genre has always appealed to me.  I don’t really know what that says about my personality, but I do enjoy being able to examine the character’s emotional state. I feel it’s a meaty genre for me because I’ve always been interested in what motivates people in terms of their behavior.

So it’s fascinating for me to write psychological thrillers. They allow you to dig into unstable emotions in a character and I feel like when I’m doing a good job with that I can create a sense of fear and paranoia and claustrophobia in my reader and it sounds crazy, but for me, that’s kind of the fun of the psychological thriller.

Jenny: Yes, and I’m sure it is for the readers, the ones who like those

Anna: Yes, yes, and as a reader, that’s what I enjoy when I’m reading

Jenny: Yes. And maybe there’s a little bit of a psychological aspect of you also facing your own fears. I saw it suggested about one of the books –  The Woman Behind Her  – that the theme of it was facing your own fears. And I guess this question comes up quite often from readers, but where do you come up with those ideas? Is it like thinking of the most horrifying thing you could think of that would happen to you and writing about it.

Anna: Thinking about the most terrifying thing really allows you to get a reaction from the character. It peels back the layers.  It has worked for me, in that I’m able to understand why people feel things, and why I feel things, and what motivates that fear.

But for me as a writer with quite a vivid imagination, it hasn’t helped any of those fears, because in every situation my mind races ahead to what’s the worst possible thing that can happen in this situation.he very worst that’s coming

Yes, and so even for me in my personal

Jenny: And I guess there is also an underlying sense of being satisfied

Anna: There is, and I always liked them to come away from it having grown, having learned something.  They might be scarred and changed in some ways, but it gets under the skin of the character and reveals who they really are. And even though sometimes it’s fun to have them do very silly things in dangerous situations, by the end of the story. I hope that the readers feel satisfied that the characters have come on a journey and they’ve learned something about themselves or they’ve grown or they’re stronger.

Jenny: Yes. And has your approach to writing this kind of story changed over time?

Anna:  It has, it certainly has had

I write out some outlines for chapters, and

Jenny: Yes. I thought the scenario that you established for the book called Cold Valley Nightmare was one that many women would identify with.  It’s the story of a woman’s four-year-old son who has been kidnapped and then her husband is suspected of being involved and I think she hired a private detective to try and prove his innocence.

A little bit like that TV show The Fugitive

Anna: It is a little bit like that. That was inspired by quite a well-known case here in Australia of a little boy that’s gone missing and hasn’t been found. It’s not that story, but it was inspired by this idea. I think I had the idea of “this is what I think could have happened.” And yes, that’s where that story came from.  But as a parent myself that is the most terrifying situation you could be in.

Jenny: Totally. And in Unwelcome Guests, which I must say, I’m part way through at the moment – that’s described on your website as your best seller – it’s a weekend getaway in the country that goes terribly wrong.

We won’t have any more spoilers than that. But what sets this one apart do you think, in terms of popularity?

Anna: Well, it has been my most successful so far and that’s something I often say to my husband. This one always seems to be the most successful and the only thing I can think that sets it apart is that the story has a connection to my own life and my past.

Some parts of the story are inspired by what happened when I was 14 years old. A classmate of mine was abducted in broad daylight and the main character in the story has had a similar childhood experience. And so I drew on what happened to the girl  I knew and her close friends. And to me as her classmate, and her family, and the community.  I think there’s an authenticity to it. To what I write about and the impact that’s had on the people that are left behind.

Jenny:  That’s a terrifying scenario

Anna: Yes, it was a terrifying scenario. I think maybe in some ways that drew me to this crime genre perhaps, because you know, it was one of those situations that you never think you’ll find yourself in?

Jenny: Yes, and without wanting to go into details, did you find a

Anna: We did. Nine years later her body was discovered about a hundred meters from where she went missing under a concrete slab at the back of one of the shops.

Jenny:  How strange. ..

Anna: Yes. One of the shopkeepers was arrested and convicted of her

Jenny: Amazing that could happen without anybody really witnessing it.

Anna: On a Saturday afternoon. So my best friend and I  – my best friend lived around the corner from where it happened. We spent many years thinking “that could have been you, that could have been me,” because we were always together. 

We saw what it did to her family. Her father took his own life and her mother was on a lot of antidepressants and different things and ended up on dialysis and losing her life. So the entire family was decimated and I think it’s something that has always stayed with me – this sense of “what are the repercussions of these crimes?”

Jenny: Yes and that leads nicely on. I also observed that your work is really about gritty reality.  And in one of some of your book descriptions you specify that they’re non-supernatural and I get the feeling that perhaps you feel that resorting to supernatural  plot devices, is almost  an easy way out. You want to really face up to the gritty reality?

Anna: That’s it. Yes. For me as a reader and as a writer, the grittiness is important when writing about crime, because I don’t want to shy away from the starkness of violence and how it impacts on the victims and the perpetrator. So I don’t like to gloss over the reality of that side of it, the emotional side.

As a reader, I’m sort of drawn to that hard-hitting story. And so I suppose because I write the stories I like to read, that’s the way I write. It’s not glamorous. Violence is not glamorous. And I want that to be in my books.  I don’t put it in there to make them more frightening. I think it just adds to the realism.

Jenny: Yes. I don’t think  that you

Anna: No. I hope not. That’s not what I’m aiming for. But I’m not ruling out supernatural horror at some stage.

Jenny: It would  probably be a different series wouldn’t it?

Anna: Yes. Completely different

Jenny: It’s interesting mentioning that word “series” because I see two of them – Small Town Nightmare and Cold Valley Nightmare are described as being in a series. The Lucy Hush series. It did occur to me that with this type of book, where you put people through such a traumatic set of experiences, it might be quite hard to do a series because you’re then turning around and subjecting them to the same sort of horrible stuff all over again. Is it hard to write a series in this form of genre?

Anna: It is hard on the characters, but I think also that the experiences

And so when I’m writing something new, I can draw on what happened to them. I can explain this is why they feel the way they do and why they’ve changed and they can no longer handle it like they used to. It has helped in that way. I’m just wrapping up the third in the series at the moment so I feel like I know the characters really well.

I always feel almost mean putting them through some of the things that have happened to them at this stage. But only “almost.”

Jenny: That’s great. I notice that quite a few of them are available free on Kindle if people want to have a chance to taste some of your work. There’s quite a number of your books that are available for free on Kindle. Is that part of a long-term marketing strategy?

Anna: Well my publisher is The Bookfolks, which is a small press in the UK.  This is their marketing strategy. I believe they put some of them out free for a short time and then some they’ll put out at 99 cents and I think this is their strategy and it certainly seems to be working. I couldn’t be happier with everything they’ve done for me and how much effort they put into my novels and making them successful.

Jenny: That’s a wonderful endorsement to hear. So you went that route of finding a publisher then?  Have you got an agent as well.

Anna: I haven’t got an agent . I thought about it, but I don’t know if I need one. Perhaps not at the moment. I’m so happy with what The Bookfolks are doing for me, but I’m not ruling out getting an agent at some stage.

Jenny: And how many books do you write in say a year. Are you doing more

Anna: I’m writing three a year, at the moment.

Jenny: Gosh that’s a lot.

Anna: It is a lot. I take probably about a two week break between books and and start the next one. I’m writing every day. So yes it is a lot, but I feel like I’m almost un-bottling after years of having all these ideas.

Jenny: Yes. And do you think you’ll stick with the psychological thriller or

Anna: I probably will stick with the psychological thrillers as I’ve said, I’m not really ruling out supernatural horror at some stage. Some of them are action thrillers, some of them mystery thrillers, some of them are more psychological thrillers. A lot of people call them horror thrillers

So within that one genre, there’s quite a

Jenny: Turning to your wider career, away from the specific books. Tell us

Anna: So before I became a full-time writer, of course, I’m a wife and a mother and I was a teacher and it has impacted on my writing in that. I think I’ve lived and I’ve experienced and I’ve lost and I’ve been through a lot of different things in my life.

Nothing as tragic as anyone in my books, but I don’t think I could have done what I do now when I was younger. I think it’s taken all this life experience to be able to bring as much emotion for the characters and and understand them the way I do. I don’t think I could have done that say, 20 years ago.

Jenny: Yes.  Is there one thing

Anna: Yes, actually. I think I’ve been open to a lot of advice and help. Every step along the way I’ve had help from the people that I’ve dealt with,  editors and  different people. I’ve always been given a lot of advice and help and I’m very open and flexible to those sorts of things. I don’t feel rigid about “No, my way’s the best way and I’m not compromising what I do.”

I like to take on board what people are

Jenny: Yes. And do you do much rewriting?

Anna: I do a lot of editing. Sometimes I’m rewriting the same paragraph for two hours and then other times I’m flying along. Sometimes the publisher has me rewrite some things. I’ve even taken chapters out and put new chapters in and rewritten the ending. I don’t mind doing any of that if I feel like they’re telling me this is going to make the story better. I’ll do whatever they tell me to.

Jenny: Your stories are set in Australia, but the settings are quite neutral aren’t they? They don’t madly push Australia down your throat. Do you think that a lot of readers don’t even really understand that they are Australian?

Anna: I guess a lot of readers might not be so sure they’re Australian. I’ve had a lot of comments that people didn’t realize they were Australian until they mentioned something like a Kookburra  or something like that. So I’m not pushing it down people’s throats. I don’t want people to go away with that stereotypical image of Australians.

The way we speak , and the things we

And as we know that’s not the same thing

Jenny: That’s wonderful.  Have you

Anna: I’ve lived in Western Australia since I was six. I came from the UK

Jenny: Aha! So what does the typical working day look like for you?

Anna: So on a typical working day, I prefer to write in the afternoons or

Jenny: Yes, it does. Yes.

Anna: But yes, so I’m usually writing for about three hours a day two to

Jenny: Do you have to do research on weird subjects sometimes for your stories?

Anna: Yes, I do. Sometimes I think if you looked at my browser history,

So I research the settings quite a lot.

Jenny: Also I guess there might be things like working out what poison would work best or macabre ways of killing people. Is that all part of it?

Anna: It is! I’ve spent a lot of time looking at head injuries, looking at open fractures, at  how that would look, and  how that would be addressed by a doctor. What sort of emergency medical response, you’d have to certain injuries. Things like that. Yeah, there’s a lot of that sort of thing. You know about how would you store a body. Fortunately for me. I know a retired police detective very well. And so I asked him a lot of very weird questions, but he knows what they’re for.

Jenny: Oh that’s great. That’s very handy to have that online isn’t it?

Anna: So handy!

Jenny:  Turning to  Anna as reader. I imagine that you probably

Tell us about some of your favorite binge

Anna: Oh my favorite binge read recently has been Karin Slaughter. Oh, yes. The Grant County series. I love those. I think there are six in that series. So if readers are looking for something to binge read start with Blindsighted, that’s the first one and an absolutely wonderfully written thriller and then you can move on from there to the Will Trent series Karin Slaughter also writes.

I read all of those, I absolutely love them. And I also like Michael Connolly’s Harry Bosch series. Yes at the moment though. I’m reading Margaret Atwood. The Testaments.  (Booker Prize winner 2019))

Anna:   I recently read The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time. I was so fortunate that it came out in 1985. I finished reading it and Margaret Atwood released a sequel finally. It’s very dark and disturbing so it’s right up my alley.

Jenny: Yes, that’s great. I’m thinking about police procedurals. At the moment in New Zealand we’ve got the Scottish writer Val Mcdiarmid here. She’s doing three months at one of the New Zealand universities teaching creative writing. Have you come across her work?  They are police procedurals, but she’s a very fine thriller writer as well.

Anna: I know the name but haven’t read any of them.

Jenny:  I guess that’s all another very much specialist area, isn’t it?

Anna: It’s a specialist area and it’s quite difficult in Western Australia. I mean, I might be incorrect here, but there’s not a lot of information out there on police procedure in Western Australia.

As I say, I’m fortunate I can ask someone because when you’re writing about how the police investigate crimes, I feel like it has to be authentic. It has to be believable –  the way they investigate and what they do  – and so there’s not a lot of places even online where you can find those sorts of things out. You can find it out about America and the UK, Yes, but not Western Australia.

Jenny:  Western Australian police have got such a

Anna: That’s

And while our justice system is based on

Jenny:  We’re coming to the end of our time together.

Anna:  I don’t think I would change anything. I’ve

But in terms of where I’ve gone with my

Jenny: That’s

Anna: Well,

Jenny: And the Lucy Hush series – Will that be a trilogy or you thinking there might be still more to come?

Anna: I planned

Jenny:  Yes that’s an

Anna: It happens

Jenny:  How interesting. So how do you handle that?

Anna: It

Jenny: It keeps

Anna: It does

Jenny: Yes,

Anna: That’s

Jenny: How

Anna: Well,

Jenny: Do

Anna: I have done that. I have traveled down to Collie and places like that for Writer’s Festivals and done a panel and things like that, but. A lot of the writing gatherings that go on in my area seem to be a lot of romance writers and while they’re gorgeous and I know they would welcome me in, I know my writing is a little bit different from theirs and I so I feel like I might not be a good fit. Plus I’m a bit of a solitary person.

But I do love hearing from the readers and

Jenny: That’s

Anna: Oh,

If you enjoyed hearing about Anna’s work

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20

When Cassandra Clark publishes a new book in her Abbess of Meaux series, medievalists rejoice. The ten-book series was sparked by a dream, and it focuses on the remarkable Cistercian nun Hildegard, during the turbulent reign of the boy king, King Richard II.

Hi there. I’m your host Jenny Wheeler

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

Where to find Cassandra Clark: 

Website: http://www.cassandraclark.co.uk/

Facebook: @authorcassandraclark

 Twitter: @Nunsleuth

What

Jenny: And now here’s Cassandra. Hello there Cassandra and welcome to the

Cassandra: Hi, Jenny. Thanks for inviting me.

Jenny: I’m sure that when one of your books is published, you could

 So I

Cassandra: Well, that’s really funny question because someone else asked me

I just felt it was magic. I’d learned to

So that’s when it started, but it took a

So I wanted to write for theater and that’s

I wrote contemporary romance, which I’d

And she said yes, it’s quite well paid but

With no other means of support so it was it

Jenny: You sound as if you are very modest. I’m sure it took more than “luck”

Cassandra: Yes, and then I took a year out when both my girls had left school.  One was at drama school in London, and the other one was at Cambridge and I thought “huh. My daughter’s are students. I think I’ll be a student again.”

So I did Malcolm Bradbury’s creative writing degree, an MA at Norwich,  and I re-found my love of theater. So I thought right. I’m going to change direction. I’m going to be a playwright.

But then I had 10 years of disaster, which

It wasn’t quite a comedy. It was about dark

I didn’t know what to do. I had just

And then I had a dream. People who like the

I hadn’t smiled for about a year, and I woke myself up one night laughing my head off. And I thought “Ohhh  it’s a dream.” These three people having a good old Yorkshire banter and it was so funny. I wrote it down on. I always keep paper and pencil by my bed.

I put it under the pillow and next morning when I woke up, I’d forgotten all about it . And then I rolled over, and found it….Wow! There was this little scene between these three strange people and it turned out that they were wearing medieval clothes.

One was a nun. I knew nothing about nuns.

 They’re having a drink but what are they

It was one of those Victorian endowed

The Peasants Revolt really intrigued

And then lots of them were hanged and they dispersed, they went to live wild in the woods. There’s no record really of what happened after, and it really interested me.

So I started to research that whole thing and I thought I don’t want to start with The Peasant’s Revolt because I’m not an historian and there are so many sides to it.  It’s such a massive topic. It’s too much for one novel.

So I thought, I’ll start a little bit later,

Jenny: That’s Richard II that we’re talking about, isn’t it?  But just let pause for a  moment. this place Melsa you are talking

Cassandra: That’s right. That’s the Latin name for Meaux.

Jenny: And you knew about Meaux already didn’t you?

Cassandra: I knew about Meaux, I didn’t know it was called Melsa.

Jenny:] But how did you know about Meaux? 

Cassandra: Well, it’s close to where I was brought up – in the East Riding, four miles from Beverly.  And five miles from Beverly is the village I was brought up in, called Cottingham.

It’s now been absorbed by the University of Hull but when I was a child, it was surrounded by woodland and it was very beautiful. It’s very old place. At one end was the Gothic church, endowed by the Black Prince, Richard II’s father, and at the other end of the village was the moated castle owned by the Wake family

The Wakes are famous for one thing.  Lord Wake had a very beautiful wife

He’s going to take my wife. Apparently he

Jenny: Do you think your dream, that somehow it had been seeded in your

Cassandra: Yes, isn’t that strange how these things can come out later? Because

So this was a total segue from what I

Jenny: Amazing,

Cassandra: Maybe yes. Maybe a mistake. Who knows?

Jenny: Well you’ve now got ten of these books. So it’s something that’s

That seems to me to be fairly cutting-edge.

Cassandra: Mmm, yes, I think well childbirth was really dangerous in those

Jenny: Yes.

Cassandra: Also the choice would be, you know, some other military fellow,

It’s been called the Blue Chip company of the age. I don’t remember who said that but it implies that they were at the forefront of economic life in England. England was based on the wool trade in those days and the Cistercians owned vast acres of land for sheep farming. And they had a huge hand in what went on, and women were more or less equal in that sort of trade.

The Prioress at Swine, it’s a little priory

Jenny: Really? In that Chronicle in the Williams Library?

Cassandra: Yes, yes, and it’s all there. The Abbot who wrote it makes no comment at all. But there’s one particular case where the prioress, who I’ve modeled my prioress Hildegarde on . . . . . She sounds terrific. She staged the very first sit-in that I know of.  The monks wouldn’t pay rent on some land. So she took them to court.

Firstly to the archbishop’s court in York. The Archbishop found against her so she thought right. I’ll take it to the King’s Bench in London. So she went down to London to court and won, but the monks contested it. So she thought “right I’ll go to the Pope.”

So she went – amazingly at this time when

So, what the monks did was dismantle it,

So the monks had to walk all the way back

So I think she actually beat them. But such

Jenny: I know that in your books Hildegard goes off to the Continent – to continental

Cassandra: Yes, there’s a road that goes from London to Canterbury then across

Yes. I always do thorough research as far as I can. I met some people called Pilgrims to Rome in London and they meet once a year, but they are totally intrepid.  I’m very much in awe of them because I would never do what they do, but they just set off walking with hardly any equipment.

We were having a drink once and a phone call came through and it was from a lady in her sixties. She was walking alone. And she was just approaching Jerusalem. She’d done the Pilgrim Route.  It’s so stunning. She said “I’m almost there.” And I said, “Where is she?”  And she said “I’m just outside Jerusalem.”

There’s a very interesting document written by a monk in the 1350s about the route to Rome from Canterbury and how they did, it because it was sign posted and there was a retreat at the top run by monks, the St. Bernard’s.

They had an open signposted route and everyone who stayed there left with some wine and some bread and some cheese to keep them going to the next staging post. But to get down the side they slide down on the hides of animals and this fellow described it all in immense detail.

Jenny: That’s so interesting. At the center of these books is Richard II,

Cassandra: That’s right. He was the son of the Black Prince, one of the most famous warlords in Europe at the time. His mother was known as Joan the Fair Maid of Kent because she was very beautiful. So these very glamorous parents had three children.

They had an elder son called Arthur who died when he was five. And the second son was was Richard, who was really not brought up to be King and he then became king, not expecting to rule until his father reached a fairly advanced age.

But tragically his father contracted a disease, something to do with wearing armor, and how it affects the skin. One or two Plantagenet war lords had the same sort of thing.  He had to be taken into battle in a litter towards the end, but he died in his very early 40s.

Richard was left at 10 years old as king of England.  His grandfather Edward III had five sons and the Black Prince was the eldest. And then there’s one called Lionel who married an Italian daughter of the Duke of Milan call Violante.

And then there was John of Gaunt, who was

Jenny: Yes, you do say that history is  written by the winners and Richard has come out badly there because he was more or less pushed aside by was it one of John of Gaunt sons.

Cassandra: Yes. It was John of Gaunt’s son Henry Bolingbroke. And he was about

There they were, both six or seven years

Jenny:Yes, and there were first cousins weren’t they?

Cassandra: They were first cousins, yes.

Jenny: He did reign for 22 years, but how did he meet his end?

Cassandra: Oh, well, this was extraordinarily well-managed. I’ve just written

Bolingbroke came back and usurped the crown. Well what did actually happen? And what was it like for ordinary people?  You really have to search through the Chronicles to find out. That’s because the first thing Bolingbroke did when he became Henry IV was sent his chaps around, much like Henry the 8th to all the monasteries.

Henry sent them around to check out how much they got, and so how much money he would get if he took them over.  Bolingbroke went round to have all the Chronicles kept in the monasteries checked and if anything that was at all sympathetic to Richard II was recorded, it was taken out.

Only two chronicles escaped and they are

 What

He went over to Ireland to make a peace treaty with them. So for that reason, I quite admire him. He was so much against the grain at that particular period when society was intensely militaristic. While he was in Ireland, Bolingbroke was in exile at the same time as Thomas Mowbray because the two of them had been plotting together with the Earl of Arundel to depose Richard.

They wanted war to continue and they want

Bolingbroke hired a couple of ships and a few

His father, John of Gaunt was said to be more wealthy than the king of England back in the 1380s. So he had access to huge amounts of money. He could pay archers for instance three times the going rate.  So he started to march down England without telling anybody where he was going.  This is where I’m getting now into first book of the new series – The Hour of the Fox…

It’s very complicated to tell you the entire story. I wonder if I should just stop there. Richard was duped totally because Bolingbroke kept saying that all he wanted to do was come back to claim my inheritance. In fact, he clearly had his eye on the crowd. an English King starved to death

So he captured Richard II at Flint Castle, and took him as a prisoner to London put him in the Tower and it’s a complicated story, but eventually sent him up to Pontefract Castle where he was apparently allegedly starved to death. Nobody actually knows how he died.

Bolingbroke did everything he could after

Writing too. That’s how Chaucer’s involved in this. He fell foul of that sort of repression.

Jenny: The

Cassandra:

Jenny: Do

Cassandra: You know, I thought Number 10 was probably going to be the final one. But I’m talking to people at Bewdley Abby and it was a Cistercian Abbey and had some weird connections with Meaux. Bewdley used to trade with Meaux. So there was a very lively young connection. And when I first moved to Lymington in the New Forest I saw a big sign Meaux Ales and I thought, how strange that’s a coincidence.

And I did a bit of research and found out that there was this trade but also up in Meaux, when I went up there to have a look around, I spoke to somebody living in the Grange there and they were called Bewdley. I thought that’s so extraordinary.

There was clearly people going down and settling you know, and they took the name of the place they came from. So I think Hildegard will go on and I think she’s going to come back to Bewdley in Book 11. She’s definitely going to go to Bewdley

Jenny: You’ve

Cassandra: What

Jenny:  I don’t know what can happen but there’s

Cassandra: I

Jenny: We’re

Cassandra: Not

I think that’s a really interesting idea. Also

 I

Jenny: What

Cassandra: How

Jenny: You

Cassandra:  I just really surprised that you’ve heard of

Jenny: Of

Cassandra: Yes. Strangely I did my first research outside of The Chronicle when I was in Sydney. I found an amazing book about trade in the Middle Ages by chap called Peter Spufford . It was all about trade and profit in the Middle Ages.

It went through every single thing – where

I was deciding whether to go to New Zealand

Jenny: We do

Cassandra:  I haven’t done much reading this year because

I like Henry James. I know a lot of people

It’s quite heartbreaking and amazing and he

And then there is E.L Doctorow, the

 Jenny: Mmm. It wouldn’t be exactly be binge reading for most people would

Cassandra: Yes.

Jenny: It

Cassandra: Yes, I did. I was working on the final draft and it was actually done at a theater up in Newcastle, as a rehearsed reading, but I didn’t go. I couldn’t bear it.  I just didn’t go, That was stupid. I regret that. Yes, I regret that. I should have been there and got it done properly. I haven’t written another play since then, since the Twin Towers.

It was something so unbelievably awful. Although we were on Long Island. We were on the fringes and people were walking up the Island, covered in dust to escape. The planes were going over all night for fortnight or so, and we went out in a boat one day and the navy intercepted us. We had to prove who we were. It was a really horrible war.

It was a war and I think it’s been

Jenny: That

Cassandra:  Hmm. Well, it depends on how things are received as you know. I’ve just sent off the final edits of The Hour Of The Fox last Thursday. So I’ve just got a copy editing to do next and anything that comes up from that and then depending on how things are if they do want another one and I hope they do, I’ll start researching that but in the meantime, I’m going to finish the one about The Towers.

It is called Falling Through Water and it’s something I really just very much need to do. I’ll also look at this play. I’d love to get that done. I think it had a reading of it few years ago and it sounded really okay.  All the actors seemed to enjoy it so I may have a look at that.

I’m little bit outside the theater scene living

Jenny: The

Cassandra: I

Jenny: So

Cassandra: My

Jenny: That’s

I did read somewhere that you once said you

Cassandra: This

Jenny: Well,

Cassandra: Oh,

Jenny: Thank

Cassandra: Thank you Jenny.

If you like Cassandra’s medieval mysteries maybe you will also enjoy Candace Robb’s medieval mysteries set in York, also on the Joys of Binge Reading podcast.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20

Jenny: Welcome to the 100th episode of The Joys of Binge Reading podcast. Yes! We’ve reached 100 episodes. I can hardly believe it!

Hi there. I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and

I’m absolutely thrilled. We talked to a hundred fantastic mystery, thriller and romance authors, recording their wins and losses and giving you, their readers, a chance to discover new books you’ll never want to put down. All to be found on the website with links in perpetuity.

To me, that’s an exciting achievement. And I’m just as enthusiastic about adding the next 100 new Authors to the list. But we’re pausing just for a moment to celebrate by doing something a little different for our centenary podcast. 

For our 100th birthday. I’m swapping seats with thriller author Annie Seaton and she’s going to ask me the questions for a change.  Annie was on Episode #62 of the podcast talking about her romantic-eco thrillers.

So when we met up again and got talking at a writers conference recently, she seemed like the perfect guest host to put me in the firing line, asking about how we got started, what we’ve learned and where we might go next.

And just as a cherry on top of the cake, we’ve also got an exciting Giveaway. Five ebook copies of my latest book Unbridled Vengeance, out this week, is offered in a draw for lucky readers and listeners. Here’s how to enter:

Harvey: A harsh land, a bitter rival. Will a vicious double murder destroy a Sacramento rancher’s hard fought legacy? Strong on suspense, light on romance, Unbridled Vengeance is Book #5 in Jenny Wheeler’s Of Gold & Blood old California series, easily read either as a standalone or as part of the series.

Enter the draw on  The Joys of Binge Reading.com or on the Binge Reading Facebook page. We’ll select one winner a week for the next five weeks. Offer closes November 19th.

Six

Where to find Jenny Wheeler:

Website: http://jennywheeler.biz (for Books)

And of course, www.thejoysofbingereading.com (for podcast)

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

AND @JennyWheeler.Biz

 Twitter: @Jenny_Biz

Instagram: @Jenny’sBingeReading

Pinterest: JennyWheeler Books

What

Jenny: Thanks for that. And now, here’s Annie. Hello there Annie, and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Annie: Hi Jenny. Thank you so much for letting me sit in your chair today. It’s lovely to be on the other side and to be asking the questions.

Jenny: That’s great. I’m sure you do really well.

Annie: ]So shall we start?

Jenny: Yes, let’s.

Annie: Okay. So Jenny tell me what made you to want to begin a podcast?

Jenny: Well Annie, when I started in this writing game nearly four years ago now, it took me a couple of years to basically understand what the new publishing landscape looks like.  I was starting to get all of this information about how you had to do blogs and have this thing called an author platform,  I’d never really heard of author platforms before that, and I’d done lots and lots of blogs in the past for a business that I was associated with.

Nearly a thousand blogs for a business that I was associated with and the idea of trying to start another blog just left me absolutely cold. I couldn’t summon any enthusiasm for it at all. So I thought maybe I could do a podcast and that would work in the same way as a blog. It would help me to just get a little bit more credibility in the publishing scene, but it would be a lot more fun and a lot more interesting.

So it honestly was a bit of a blatant

Annie: Well, it’s certainly been successful to be up to our hundredth episode of The Joys of Binge Reading it. So what I’m interested in here, is how did you come to decide on the format that you using, interviewing mystery authors from the viewpoint of readers?

Jenny: When I looked around at what podcasts were out there and I was already listening to a few podcasts myself, the market seemed to be very well supplied with people who were giving other writers advice about how to write books. Many of the writing podcast were in that vein, they were from writers telling people how to write and market their books and although that’s a fantastic area to be in, # 1 it seemed to be well catered for, and #2 i was just starting out so I didn’t really feel as if I had enough knowledge myself to  be able to give other writers advice.

 And but by the same token quite a few of the reader podcasts seemed to me to be very serious and they mainly tackled literary fiction and I thought wouldn’t it be great to do something that tackled genre fiction, which is the area that I’m working in. 

I guess I’ve got a little bit of a bandwagon in that I really think genre fiction has been undervalued in terms of the level of skill and craft that’s that’s put into it and especially in New Zealand.

We still seem to focus more on the literary

So I thought that’s where I’d focus it and

Annie: That’s fabulous and certainly good for those authors. So what have been the high points of doing your the podcast.

Jenny: I think that it is really honestly talking to the writers. Every single person that I’ve spoken to, I’ve loved the interview, and  I feel as if I’ve learnt something.

In some cases I’ve had a real sense of making a friend that I could sit down and have wine with somewhere in the world. And every single one, I’ve learnt something from them. So actually, even as I go along it has helped with the writing and craft side of things. And also I make a rule  that I will read at least one book of everybody I interview.

I 

Annie: That’s great, and I’m sure that other authors will be listening too, and I have had many authors, colleagues of mine, say that they have listened to it and got a lot out of it. So, that being said, do you see yourself carrying on for another hundred episodes?

Jenny: Yes. Look it is time-consuming there’s no doubt about that. It really is. Probably fifty percent – almost – of my time –  is spent either trying to find new authors to interview –  and I have a great strike rate in terms of people saying yes, but every now and then you’ll get two or three in a row that you either don’t hear back from them or they say “No they’re too busy” and so it takes quite a bit of time to both enlist the authors and do the reading. But it’s really worth it.

And so yes, I will keep going but I’m not

I might even vaguely consider getting a

Annie: So you’ll certainly learning on the go as you continue with it. What other  lessons have you taken away from the experience?

Jenny: I think it’s interesting because you know, we very much in this digital marketing world as authors and there’s a very wide range of appreciation for that from the authors that I interview. Some are really switched on about digital marketing and  social media. They are comfortable promoting themselves, and  promoting the podcast. And some are not really on that page yet.

So it is a little bit of an introduction as

Annie: Well, you’re an author as well and you’ve been writing full-time for the whole time you’ve been doing the podcast. So let’s put you on the spot and ask you the question that you always begin with. And that is, was there a Once Upon a Time moment for your fiction writing and if so, what was the catalyst for it?

Jenny: Quite honestly no there wasn’t. I couldn’t  pick any particular moment, but I think I always had a little bit of a underground thought that someday I might try my hand at fiction. It wasn’t anything like I would die unfulfilled if I didn’t do it, but it was always there is a little subterranean thing.

I remember at one stage in my midlife when I took a holiday from being a newspaper editor and the minute I took the holiday. I got sick and was in bed.  I spent a week in bed and I started a novel in bed. And I thought the stop thing here that I feel as if I need to do, and the minute I get a bit of spare time, that’s what I do.

And then of course when I had to go back to work that novel never ever saw the light of day again.  But when I finally “quotes” retired, I mean, I’m not retired, but I sold a business.  Four years ago. I was in a business with my business partner for 17 years and when I sold that business, I thought now’s my chance to see if I can do this fiction thing.

I had one really close friend from school days and quite often when I meet her socially she’d say to me something like “Jenny, you haven’t written any books yet. I’m really surprised. I thought that’s what you do”.

Jane was like a little bit of a kind of a little prodder  in my side reminding me that actually all those years ago, we both thought  that’s what I’d end up doing and I hadn’t yet done it. So yes,that’s really what came about. So when I had time and space. I thought okay. I’m going to try this now. This is my next project.

Annie: And you certainly started. But of most interest to me, why historical mysteries and most particularly why old California?

Jenny: Well, I have spent years as a member of the Romance Writers of New Zealand. I’ve been a member  probably for 12 or so years.  I have attended their conferences and I’ve learned a lot of craft from their conferences, even before I started writing.

I originally thought I would write romance because that seemed the obvious area for a woman if you were looking at genre fiction, but over the years, I mean number one the romance scene changed a lot with 50 Shades of Grey and things and secondly, I became less and less enamoured of the idea of trying to do romance myself.

It just didn’t fit quite for me as the main thrust of a story. So I turned to thinking about other sorts of fiction and mystery was an obvious one mystery with a romance subplot.

I think the romance is absolutely necessary for the emotional content and I love having that but I didn’t want it to be the main point of the story and I think partly because I have never felt that getting a man is the main point of a woman’s life or that “quotes” getting a man is going to solve all your problems.

It’s probably going to create more problems than it actually solves, sorry to say. So I didn’t want to do anything that would promote the idea that the point of life was to find the right man.

Historical, because honestly the

But I didn’t feel comfortable about contemporary and I love history. I did a history degree. I’ve always loved history. So that was the historical mystery at all. And California? I grew up near a gold mining district in New Zealand  on the Thames Coast and my childhood we spent holidays there. 

It’s horrific to think of it now, with health and safety regulations, but as kids we used to just hive off in the hills and go into these old mine shafts, and I used to often lump home lumps of quartz.

I don’t know why. I just was quite fascinated by this quartz from this old gold mine. So when I started thinking about a historical period, the Gold Rush period really appealed to me, but I didn’t want to set anything in New Zealand. I felt California gave a wider canvas and I wanted an international audience. It was a strategic thing in terms of where I wanted to place myself as a writer.

Annie: It sounds very well planned for me and obviously successful for you. But you seem to have chosen right from the get-go beginning to Indie publish rather than seek it traditional publisher. Can you tell us why that is?

Jenny: I guess it’s because with all the other stuff I was doing.  The podcast and stuff. I was getting a sense of how the publishing landscape has changed and I came through newspapers and then through magazines and in each of those environments I was in a period of great disruption of the industry. I saw what happened. 

I was in newspapers in the 1980s and I could sense that newspapers were changing. I know they’re not quite dying, but the sort of newspapers we were doing were definitely dying. And then I moved into magazines and a similar thing started to happen there with digital competition. And so I came into it, I guess with a bit more of a mind as to how the industry was changing. 

When I first started going to Romance Writers annual conferences my utter goal would have been to get a contract with the people that you write for. Mira. I thought they had great books. I would have loved to have been a Mira author.

But by the time I got to actually writing myself, I just felt that that was a completely unrealistic and unsuitable goal for me because I because of my age. I need to start writing fast and getting a lot of books out there to establish a backlist. 

Traditional publishers mainly want one book

It’s a bit like having, you know, a prize bull or cow, you want to know how much how much production you’re going to get out of them and someone at my stage of life, they probably think the years are pretty limited and I’m not a good bet. So for all of those very realistic things. And also because indie actually is really exciting? It gives you so much more control, and after years in the corporate world, where I had to always be dancing to somebody else’s tune, I think that was also a great appeal to me.

So it’s certainly not easy and it’s probably even harder than I thought it was going to be, but I definitely think it’s the right choice for me.

Annie: Well, you certainly got a plan worked out for your writing which is fabulous. Now changing the subject again, why 1860s California particularly?

Jenny: Because the Gold Rush itself 1849  – that first 20 years of the Gold Rush, it was a very hard society where women had a very limited role. I mean the histories all say that the women were either boarding house keepers or soiled doves basically. And I wanted to be able to write about a society where women had a lot more agency. Where there were children, and  institutions were starting to be established like schools and hospitals.

So once again, I really wanted to have an era where women had more choices, had more respect; they weren’t just a sideline to what the men were doing. And the late 1860’s going into the 70s seemed like a really interesting time. California’s developing incredibly fast. They’ve had this huge influx of people.

The other thing I loved was that it was a very international society. When you give us what’s happening in the US at the moment that seemed like a lovely challenge. To present an international society, where although there were some very well-known conflicts, there was also a lot of acceptance of new people and a new nationalities.

So yeah all of those reasons that struck me as being extremely interesting. The thing I didn’t realize actually was that publishers and agents regard 1860s California as “the West”in capitals. I did make a couple of pitches to agents at conferences and they said “oh, you’re writing a western” and I said “no ,no, it’s actually not Western.”

But it gets categorized in a Western category and that has made it a little bit more difficult from the marketing point of view. I don’t understand why 1860s California isn’t a period a bit like Regency England which has got dozens and dozens of people writing in it. And I’ve realized as I go along that I’m almost trying to create a new exciting period in genre fiction as well as sell  my own individual books, but that’s a whole other story.

Annie: Well, you know start a trend where we’ll wait with interest. Now, you’re six books in the series. How many are you planning?

Jenny: I hope in this particular series that I’m doing to get to at least 10, maybe more, but I have got ten in mind and then I think I will stick in this period but maybe do some sort of spin-off.

I haven’t thought that far ahead, but I do love this period and it aligns itself a little bit, you know with what I was saying earlier. The fascination with Regency. how it’s so hard for historical romance authors to break out from that Regency period And yet I’ve discovered this author. Actually. I came across her at that last conference we went to, Joanna Shupe, who is having quite a lot of success at creating an interest in the Gilded Age, New York period and that’s another period that I think deserves just as much attention as Regency England and I hope that we see lots more writers pile in and look at Gilded Age New York.

And I think Gilded Age California also would be another very interesting time period so I feel as if we’ve got these time periods that haven’t yet really been mined for their stories. So there’s plenty of room for the younger ones coming on behind us to find new territory.

Annie: So many stories to be written.

Annie: Let’s move to your wider career. You had a very full and busy life as a journalist and a newspaper and magazine editor before you turn to full-time writing. How has that life experience helped your writing?

Jenny: I think that I mean, obviously the podcast was easier for me probably than it would be some people, because I was used to interviewing people and the reason I was a journalist is that I’m naturally curious and like asking questions. So and I think that as a journalist you develop a bit of a sixth sense for the things that people aren’t saying that that will produce some spontaneous  line  of enquiry that becomes really interesting you’ve discovered little things you didn’t expect.

But also I think the other major thing is, it trains you to write no matter how you’re feeling. And I mean, I don’t want to feel as if I’m attracting some sort of curse, but I truly don’t allow myself to ever think that I’m going to have writer’s block. I just know that I get up and write and I’ve heard a lot of journalists say the same thing; that the one thing journalism taught them was that they just keep writing.

That you don’t have to feel like it,you just have to do it.  That’s a real benefit on the days when it feels hard. You just can say to yourself. Look you doing this. It’s not whether you feel like it or not. This is what you do. It’s that work ethic kicking in.

Annie: Is there one thing you’ve done perhaps more than any other in your writing career that you see as a secret to your success?

Jenny: Look I honestly don’t think I’ve had that much success yet. I haven’t managed to sell many books yet. But I really live by a quote that I heard from romance writer Stephanie Laurens, who came to one of the early RWNZ conferences and I was really impressed with her. I think she’s an oncologist turned romance author.

She was a very smart lady and she says her

I’m reminding myself. Stephanie says, you

Book #5, Unbridled Vengeance, is coming out October 2019, and Book # 6 Hope Redeemed, A Spanish Novella, in November 2019. So I feel as if I will have reached some plateau at the end of this year and I can take stock and perhaps give a bit more thought to marketing.  I certainly haven’t mastered the marketing side of it.

Annie: Sounds like you’re going to be busy if you’re heading for another four or five. So when you’re not working  – if there is time for you’re not working – how do you relax?

Jenny: I love the outdoors.  I’d love to spend more time in the garden. I regard the garden as something that’s a reward I give myself if I worked hard enough and unfortunately I’m not getting in the garden as much as I’d like to. And I do quite a bit of outside exercise.  I do walks. Bush walks and that kind of thing, so yeah outside is what I love.

Annie: Sounds fabulous. Okay, let’s turn to Jenny as a reader. The series is called The Joys of Binge  Reading, providing inspiration for people who like to read in series. So turning to your taste in fiction. Who do you binge read? And do you have any recommendations for your listeners?

Jenny: Yes, I like that idea of people have got used to binge watching with Netflix. And so now they turn more to binge reading and also with digital books, you know, if you get a sudden urge to continue with the series at midnight, you can just download it and start reading it immediately.

So books are a lot more accessible than the days when we used to have to wait a year for our favorite author to produce the next one. I’ve been a real bookworm all my life. I started off with Enid Blyton and I’ve read all my life. When I was at University I remember finishing off University exams and binge reading on Ian Fleming and the James Bond series for about 2 weeks just as total relaxation.

In more recent times one of the people that really attracted me when I was thinking about writing was a writer called CS Harris who is still writing this terrific historical mystery series called the Sebastian St Cyr series and she was an inspiration for me when I was thinking about what sort of books I would like to write. I thought I would love to do something just like CS Harris.

I mean my voice is different from hers. So they’re not really like CS Harris, but she was a real inspiration for me and now since I’ve been doing the podcast there’s quite a few authors who I’d really like to continue to follow, although with the amount of reading I have to do, that’s a bit of a luxury.

I don’t get the chance to just read the books I’d like to sometimes because I’m prepping for the podcast, but  at the moment I’m reading the Scottish crime author Val McDermid and I think she is just fantastic. I’ve just got really gripped by her voice.

And there’s another, an English journalist living in France called Martin Walker who’s doing a Bruno Series in a little French village in the Perigord where this policeman is situated .  I love those sorts of mysteries and then some of the ones that I’ve talked to on the podcast,

 I loved Rhys Bowen and historicals like Nicola Upson  and her Josephine Tey series. They are magnificent. And I love Jessica Fellowes and the Mitford Murders. I like mysteries that weave in some real factual information, you know, like a little bit of the journalism coming in with the fiction

So things that have got real history, real life in them, that you learn information about places and people and events as you go along. They appeal to me. Julie McElwain’s Kendra Donovan series a time travel series where an FBI agent goes back to 1815 in London. I think she did that one very cleverl

So yes, there’s a whole lot of people that

Annie: Okay. So at this stage of your career, let’s circle back to the beginning. Now if you are doing it all again, what would you change or would there not be  anything you’d change?

Jenny: Look honestly, I’m one of those people who believe that you make the decisions that you have to make. You know when you’re faced with the range of options that you’ve got and so no, I don’t actually regret anything. I mean, you know, a lot of people would say. Oh, you’ve left your run too late.

It doesn’t matter to me really what happens

But you know, I have had my threescore

Annie: And that’s a great philosophy in life. So tell us. What’s next for Jenny’s the writer?. What are there any different projects in the works for the next 10 years or the next year? Let’s start small.

Jenny: The next year. I’m just going to be continuing with this Of Gold & Blood series .I’ve got #5 Unbridled Vengeance coming out in October 2019  and that’s actually just gone to the formatter. And so all the editing has finished. I don’t do my own formatting. I’ve got these lovely people in Tasmania, Polgaris Studios, who do my formatting at such a reasonable price and they’re so good at it

I don’t think it’s worth me trying to learn

I had a couple that I knew I wanted to write a novella about. They’re a couple that appear in Book #5. It was a natural progression. So I came back from Romance Writers in August and immediately plunged into this Novella, which is now just about finished, so I can say that I did two books in  2019. And I had what was going to be Book #6  which is another full length one, 

I’d already started quite a lot of plotting for that  earlier in the year. So I’ve got that to jump into in January and I hope to have that one through by about  March April next year. That’ll be Book # 7 now.  And then I do have to take a deep breath because I haven’t really thought much about Book # 8.

But Yes, I’ll keep powering on with Of

In the back of my mind I’ve got the thought

So I have a great place in my heart for

Annie: That sounds fabulous. Hey, let’s move on to Jenny the podcaster. Do you see forsee any changes coming up there with your podcast?

Jenny: I do think that you probably have to keep changing to be recognizable and interesting and I know that podcasting is changing hugely. The way it sounds on the web now is that it quotes “everybody is trying to get into podcasting” There’s  this huge surge of the interest in podcasting. So I haven’t really had the time to look at the whole podcasting field and try and analyze it and strategize about it. I’m just kind of plodding along with what I’m doing.

 But

Annie: Well, we’ll watch that with you too. So Jenny just to finish up tell us where readers can find you and your books online

Jenny: My website is www.jennywheeler.biz   Everything there is about my books. And then the podcast site is www.thejoys ofbingereading.com Every writer that I interview, we do an extensive transcript of the interviews with links to their books. So there’s now over a hundred authors there that listeners can have a look at, dig around see the ones that they might enjoy following up on it and find a new suggestion for what they’re going to read next.

So I’m found at both of those spots. I’m on social media and we’re just about to launch a Pinterest site. I’ve been really doing quite a lot of work in Pinterest because I think that the books greatly lend themselves to a Pinterest presence.

So that’s what I’m doing and I’m using an Australian author actually an Australian romance and mystery author called Lucinda Brant as my model for that.  She’s got a fantastic Pinterest page. And maybe it’s an ambition of mine to interviewer sometime. I haven’t yet looked at that. But yeah, so Pinterest is the next big adventure.

Annie: Well, you’re certainly one busy lady.  I admire your work ethic and I’m so looking forward to going and getting out your books and having a read when I finish my next deadline, so congratulations on your 100th podcast, and thank you so much for providing such a fabulous service to both readers and authors

Thanks, Annie. It’s kind of you to say

Harvey: A harsh land. A bitter rival. Will a vicious double murder destroy Sacramento rancher’s hard fought legacy? Strong on suspense, light on romance, Unbridled Vengeance #5 in Of Gold & Blood Guinea old California series is easily read either as a standalone or as part of the series.

Enter the draw on www.thejoysofbingereading.com or on the Binge Reading Facebook page. We will select one winner a week for the next five weeks. Offer closes November 19

If you’d like to hear Annie talking about her Australian romantic eco-thrillers head over to Annie Seaton and Eco-Adventures.

And check out her new thriller, Undara, set in spooky lava caves in Northern Queensland.

If you liked Jenny Wheeler’s historical mysteries you might also enjoy Rebecca Rosenberg’s story of Baby Doe Tabor, once one of the richest women in America, in the Golden Women episode of Binge Reading.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20