It's really hard to stop writing, isn't it? In some way, it's really hard to stop. It can be hard to do it when you need to do it as well, but it's hard to stop doing it when you love it. So I think once you hold on to that, you never really know what's going to happen.
Welcome to Rights for Women, a podcast all about celebrating women's voices and supporting women writers. I'm Pamela Cook, women's fiction author, writing teacher, mentor and podcaster. Before beginning today's chat, I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the Durra Wal People, the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is being recorded, along with the traditional owners of the land throughout Australia and a quick reminder that there could be strong language
and adult concepts discussed in this podcast. So please be aware of this. If you have Children around, let's relax on the convo couch and chat to this week's guest. Hi, everyone, Pam here, welcome to another episode of rights for women. It is April 30 as I record this, and today we have a great chat with Be Carroll all about her new book, One of us is missing. It's a fantastic book that I really enjoyed and had such a great time talking
to be about. It's a crime thriller, but kind of on the softer end of the thriller genre and really includes a lot of family drama. There's a lot of secrets. There's so much tension. It's a real page turner. So it was fantastic to talk to be about her new release. But also there's a lot of talk in here about her experiences over 20 years as a published author and but kind of downsides of that, too, in terms of what happens when you are out of contract and
the publisher doesn't pick you up for another book. How Burr has actually managed to navigate that in over 20 years of publishing and really just kind of reinventing herself at different points, staying the distance, continuing to write, which is just the important thing that really comes out of this conversation, I think is just the importance of writing for the love of it and writing the next book and just being optimistic and thinking, OK, what can I do next? Where can I go? Who
might be interested in publishing this book. Will I publish it myself? There's a whole lot of options now, as we know in terms of publishing. So it was really great to chat to be and to hear her experiences in this kind of area, And, uh, it was really optimistic. I thought, uh, lots of chat in there about how to stay published, but also lots of chat in there about the new book one of us is missing. I'm not gonna go on too long in this introduction.
This is quite a long episode. We did have a few Internet glitches, so there's in places, some very minor little glitches with the video and with the audio, but
they're super minor. So do keep listening, because there is so much gold for both readers and writers in this episode, I also wanted to flag that I'll be taking a break for the next two weeks after this episode, there won't be any new rights for women episodes, so that means you'll be able to catch up on any of the fabulous episodes from this year or from the previous years, and the backlist that you may have missed uh, I'm taking a break because apart from being extraordinarily busy with
writing and everything else, I'm just taking the two weeks off because next week I'm going to the stock horse Nationals in Tamworth to do a little bit of hanging out with my daughter and son in law as they ride there. And also mind the grand boys. So I'll be, uh, doing some family things, but also writing while I'm up there and getting the workshops all ready for the next chapter retreat, which is happening in
two weeks time from today. I can't believe it. I've got 12 fabulous writers coming on the retreat, and, uh, I really have a lot of work to do to get ready for that. So won't be in your ears. Won't be seeing you on YouTube for the next couple of weeks, but stay tuned for what's coming up next. After that, we have a great interview with Mary Lou Stevens interviewing Julie Bennett about her new book, The Lost
Letters of Rose Carey. And also Mayor Linnell will be coming up in June, talking to Katherine Centre about her new book, The ROM Comma. Hope that you're really enjoying the podcast. If you are as always, it would be fantastic. If you can leave some reviews, it just means that more people will get to hear about the podcast. It pushes the S in the rankings and, uh, shout out again to all the people following along on the diary of a procrastinator for patreon
that is, uh, rolling along behind the scenes. And I'm putting out about three very short videos a week to the Patreon family supporters talking about my writing process, the obstacles that I'm finding and how I'm overcoming them, and any of the things I'm doing to push the new novel forward. So Diary of a Procrastinator You can sign up for that $5 a week at rights for Women.com/patreon. So now on to the chat with be See You in a couple of weeks,
be Carroll. Welcome to the rights for women convo Couch.
Thank you, pal. It's really lovely to be here. I don't think it has been on your convo couch before. I
know it's amazing, and of course it's a virtual couch, but we actually caught up a little while ago. I think it was at Maxine Fawcett's launch for everything is perfect. I think that was when I last saw you. Yes, it was a
really memorable
evening. Yeah, it was fabulous. And of course, we're so lucky that we get to go to all these brilliant launches. And very soon it is going to be your launch for this fantastic book that I can't wait to tell
everyone about. One of us is missing so much in here be that I want to talk to you about and also just about your whole publishing career in general because I feel like you are such an inspiration and there's writers out there who are going to be tuning in and I think are going to learn so much from this conversation because you've been around for a while now in the publishing industry, as have I. And there's so many things I want to chat to you about.
I hope I can answer those questions when I look back on. I think it's 20 years of being published and just as confused as ever. But I think I'll be able to provide some insight.
Let's go back in time be Let's start, First of all, with when was the time that you thought I really want to write a book or I want to be a writer. Are you someone who has written all your life, as many authors are, or did it come to you later in life?
I wouldn't say that I was somebody who wrote all my life, but I really I've read all my life. I've been an absolutely compulsive reader. Have to always have a book with me, can eat a meal without reading At the same time. When I was a kid, I was always missing whenever anything needed to be done. I was in a far corner of the house reading a book, so I was a real bookworm, and I think in the back of
my head I always wanted to write a book. And as soon as I finished university and I guess had a proper job, that's when I started writing and I. I didn't think it would end up here, but in my head I thought I'd like to write one book. I'll get it out of my system and then I'll move on with my life. And as you and I know well, writing isn't that simple. It's very addictive, and it's very hard to stop at just one.
Definitely. So that book that you first wrote was that an idea that you'd had brewing in your head for some time and you thought, Yeah, I really want to get this story out. Or was it like you made the decision to write a book and then started thinking about What is it that I want to write?
I had made that decision. I wanted to write a book and I had recently arrived in in Sydney, and I guess that was a big life change for me. Going from a very rural part of Ireland. I grew up in Blarney, as in Blarney Castle. It's a tiny village outside of Cork City, which is a small city in Ireland, which is not a big place to arrive into Sydney in the in the mid
19 nineties. It was a fairly drastic change, and it was a really exciting time here, and I got a job in a multinational IT company with some very interesting people. There were some really interesting people I was working with, and I thought to myself, Oh my God, this is what I'll write. A book about an Irish girl coming to Sydney and getting a job in an IT company, I. I threw in a little bit of fraud, and but when I look back, I think half the people who purchased that book purchased
it to see if they were actually in it. My Exco and I completely denied it was way about me, but of course it was completely. But I can assure everyone now, being 20 years along, I no longer write books. I do write them a little bit about sometimes things that happen to me, but they're no longer quite as blatantly based in my own life as one point. I think a lot of books are like that. I think that's how they start.
Definitely. So. The first book was that executive affair. Yes, that was
executive pair. Even the title makes me cringe. It was so much a product of its time. Like on the front cover, the girl is wearing a white suit pants that is such a product, it's not.
But that was the thing. And that is the thing with publishing, isn't it? There's trends. Yeah,
and at the time Everyone was really proud of that cover. They loved it. They loved it. Initially in Ireland they saw the Australian cover and like, drawn or cover because we need to have that cover. That cover is amazing. And now I'm looking at the cover and I'm like, Oh, my God, it's so dated looking at them.
So that was 12 books ago, wasn't it? Be because I think one of us is missing is your 12th book. Yeah. So when was the executive affair published?
That was published in 2004. So exactly 20 years ago.
So yeah, you've definitely been doing this longer than me. My first book was published 2012. Wow. OK, OK, so what genre would you say? Executive affair is. At
the time, it was labelled women's fiction and a lot of us had issues with that label. I think at the time, because there was no such thing as men fiction. Today we would just say contemporary fiction. But in in truth, there was elements in executive affair that were quite crime. There was a corporate fraud essentially in the book, and in my second book, there was also a crime and in my third book was probably
more women's fiction and my fourth. But there were crimes. Actually, there was somebody stabbed to death in my fourth book. But there was always probably. And I do remember an early editor saying to me, because at the time women's fiction was extremely popular, it was selling really well. And I remember an early editor saying to me, What's with it with you and the intrigue? Why are you keeping things back from the reader? That's not part of this genre? Can you lay off
on that? So it's funny how if I had received different advice back then, maybe I would have found myself in this genre a little bit sooner. Yeah, so it was interesting. Yeah, yeah, interesting. I guess what comes and goes In terms of popularity at the time, books like Marian Keyes and Cathy Kelly were selling truckloads. They still do, but But they were the number one type of book that was selling. And a lot of us that were signed back then were signed to deliver to that particular genre.
Yeah, so you continued writing for publication. Who was your publisher? Back in at that time. I think
I've got surely got out the Guinness Book of Records for the most publishers in Australia.
I really want to hear about this because I think this is brilliant and you and I were talking about this when we spoke at Maxine's. I think it's really good for authors out there to know even if, uh, aiming for publication or if you've had one or two books published is that the publisher you're with now might not be the publisher you're with in two or three years time or five years or 10 years like it's It can be a bit of a kind of merry around, can't it, where you're off
on a different horse each time. So really interested to hear about how that has evolved for you be
it's I mean it Fundamentally. It's a very tough industry, and at the end of the day, I'd love to say it was me publisher hopping, but it really wasn't for somebody who has a background in business as I do. The publishing industry is extremely and a lot more hardcore and brutal than anything I've ever come through in business. When they aren't done with you. They are done with you and it can be quite brutal and sometimes not
anything you've done wrong. It's just time. Timing can work in your favour, and it can hold the work against you. So that very first book was published here by Hachette, and at the same time it was picked up by an Irish publisher on a three book deal. But, uh, I didn't last for Hachette very long. They didn't take up their option for the second book. For a while, I was published in Ireland, and I wasn't published here. So that was the case for my second novel and
my third novel and then my fourth. My third novel did really well, and when it got to number four and then suddenly, publishers were once again interest here in picking me up. And then I signed a deal with Pa MacMillan and I published my fourth book with Pa MacMillan and I back published my first three books with Pa
MacMillan. OK, even that first one that had been out here with a different
publisher, it had a It got a new cover, a much nicer cover that a bit more contemporary and and so in all, I had five books with Pa MA Me, But they were some of my earlier books. And in retrospect, I don't know if it was the right thing to resign those books, and at the time there was a lot of money involved because somebody else was bidding for that book. And so there was a lot of money on the line, and I guess that's not always a good thing, either, because it was in advance that I
could never really earn back then. So my fifth book came out with Pat Mill, and but I already knew that I was quite shaky ground because the print run wasn't great and it was a much more reduced publication, and I could see I was on very shaky ground. And then they rejected my sixth book, which was ready to go, and at that point I reached it. It was probably my first really big crisis point where I was like going,
What am I doing? I don't have a publisher. Nobody's interested because I guess I'm not a writer virgin anymore. When you're a new debut author gets excited, but when you're when you've been around for a while. It's hard to get people excited and I'd have just because the book was written and I knew it was a good book. I said, Oh, well, selfish it. I didn't really want to self publish it.
I've got to say And I do remember my agent at the time saying to me that self publishing was a K of death, which was not very helpful at all, because I said to him, That's not going to do with it. Nobody wants to publish it. And so I self published it, and it did. Yeah, OK, and all the libraries picked it up because they had all my back lists. So I guess it. And it also picked a proper distributor. So
it was even though it was self published. It had a lot more backing, perhaps, than a normal self published book because it had a distributor and it was on. It was as professional as what you could get. Got the same designer to do the cover. I got it professionally typeset. It looked good, and so when it went into libraries, it looked like just like any other book turns apart.
Book six. Yeah, with the next. I guess I had a bit more interest, but and there was a few points where we almost got publishers over the line and we didn't quite manage it. And again I was there and I had a finished book. And so I self published that as well, because nobody in the end of the day, nobody signed a contract despite trying very hard to to achieve that. And then I guess the kind of miracle happened, then a traditional publisher. This time it was Penguin, UK said. Oh, actually, we
really these books we really like. And I had written another book, and it seems to me that when I'm at my bleakest doing sports, I seem to write more. It's almost like who care. It's all lost anyway. I might as well just write a book. Shit.
Have you found that when you're doing that, it's like you're writing the book that you really want to write because you're not writing the contract? So you're just writing genuinely. You know what's coming out from your heart sort of thing?
Yeah, So that book that I completely wrote from my heart was the missing pieces of Sophie McCarthy because at the time I had already self published two books. I had no intentions of self publishing any of the books, and I just thought, I'm just going to write this. I sort of want to dabble with having a character who's not as likeable as my previous characters. I want to dabble with something darker, and that was the book that really got me back in the game.
I guess it was picked up by Penguin UK, and then it was published, distributed here by Penguin Australia, and I was S in mainstream publishing. But I don't think I would have ever written that book. Hannah not been out of contract and had my back wall as such. Isn't
that interesting? How did that come under the radar of Penguin UK
you my agent, because I'm still really struggling here to get over get past my reputation really does, even though that sounds terrible, right? When you're no longer published and if you're not selling very high numbers, it's really hard to get a publisher to pick you up here.
I'm hearing you, you
know that, right? And sometimes thing to do with the book and in the end, with the missing pieces of Sophie McCarthy. There was quite a lot of interest from a number of overseas publishers, and I know now it was a good book at the time. I was like, No, I wrote what I wanted to write, but it was It didn't matter what I wrote here. There was no convincing a publisher at the time to publish me here.
How did you cope with that kind of mentally and emotionally that you mentioned Book six, I think, is your first crisis or whatever. But now how did you find that kind of having been traditionally published and all that sort of thing? And then suddenly you can't get a publisher here interested in your books? How did you cope with that? Mentally and emotionally? Look,
there was days when I was very stoic and just got on with the job and kept driving and did the best I could do. And then there were days when I was sobbing and get a complete mess. And I guess you see, the thing is, you do feel like a failure. It's you're you're so invested in it, and it's funny because now I can look back over, I guess the last
20 years and laugh at myself a little bit. And though I think it's Kate Milden Hall has said, it's not a matter of life and death these books, So we're not like paramedics trying to save lives. It feels to us, and we have a lot invested. But a bit of perspective is is really useful. But it is, I guess when you love what you're doing and you want to keep doing it and realising that you might not be able to keep doing it, that is is a bit devastating, too, and you can't pretend
that it's not devastating. And I think you know how that feels. And a lot of authors know how that feels. And I guess the truth of it is that every new debut book publisher signs they're probably dropping a mid list author to make room for that debut book. And that's the industry. But you don't know that when you are being signed or being dropped.
No,
you don't have a perspective and it took me many years to learn that perspective and sometimes you hear that perspective from other authors who listen to a lot of podcasts and really study what's happening. I learn a lot from being around other authors, and I'm still learning every day, every
day and things change change. Don't they changed so drastically over the years? And I think, But I'm the same. Even looking back, I don't think I realised at the time how much not getting another deal with Hachette after four books with them? No, not that we've got anything against a shirt personally, but, um, you know, I had a great relationship with my publisher there, like really, And I know that she was devastated that
she they weren't going to publish another book. But I think what I didn't grasp at the time and it took me a long time to grasp is it's a numbers game. It's a business. They're in the business of making money. And when the books aren't making the money, yeah, they're not meeting the financial expectations that the publisher had. It's not really anything to do with whether that book is well written or not, or whether the readers who did read it loved it or whatever. It's just purely
we're not making enough money out of you. So see you. We're gonna find somebody else. That's really the reality, isn't it? It
is the reality, and publishers aren't necessarily honest with us. I don't know if it's good to be honest or bad, to be honest, though, because I think if they were, if they really told us the how they make decisions we might not write
book through. But I think we're getting up to book number eight in a minute. Sophie McCarthy, I think. Right. But how did you mentioned you had you put two books out, Self published two books. You didn't really want to do it again. How did you find the whole experience of self publishing? Were there kind of things that you did love about it and other things you didn't love? What was that like for you? I didn't in the
end, even though I didn't want to do it because my published my agent made me feel like it was the wrong step. I learned an awful lot about the industry and the process. I never really knew that type setting. I never knew much about cover designs. All the platforms were just starting to come into play all the different online platforms and alerts. I learned a lot and I ended up enjoying it, and I think it ended up saving my career. In actual fact, it saved my career because it kept my
out there and in particular over that period. The librarians were very supportive of me and book books got selected for a together G programme based librarian and that felt extra special because they were books that had been entirely produced by me down to even using the cover with lots of help, mind you, because I did hire all the right help I knew, and at that time there was a lot of self published books that you pick it up and you knew immediately that
it was self published. I wanted somebody picking up my book not to know that it was self published. I wanted it to look exactly like my other books, and they did so it. It's self publishing. It really did save my career. I guess it kept my name relevant and out there. Otherwise I would have had I think the missing piece of Sophie McCarthy finally was released in 2018 and less than perfect. My traditional novel was released in 2011,
I think, or 12. So I had a period of about six years to seven years there where I wouldn't have been heard of if I hadn't self published those books. And I would you know, any kind of readership that I had built up would have gone and dissipated. In that time, I
was exactly the same. I had crossed my heart out and I was the same as you be. I just wanted it to look exactly the same as every other book on a shelf. And I think that's so important is to do it really professionally, have it professionally edited, great cover, all that sort of thing. And like you, I learned so much in that process, and I'm certainly not sorry that I've done it, and I would do it again. Yeah, I and
I said I wouldn't do it again because it was all a positive experience. It saved
a lot of work. It
is a lot of work, and maybe it's harder now as well to I think we might have hit a sweet point where you could successfully publish a book and sell a few 1000 copies. I'm not sure if that's as easy anymore, but it's also, ironically, when I self published, I got invited to so many more things because people wanted to know how to do it. So I got invited to all these festivals and book events that I had never been invited to. While I was traditionally published. It was, That's
great. Like you say, It kept your name out there. You had books circulating. Your readers were still finding your work. So was that first book that you self published. Was that Sophie McCarthy?
No. And that was one apart. And then there was once lost and and then then was the missing pieces of Sophie McCarthy, which was picked up by Penguin UK and sold in here, distributed by Penguin Australia. And then I hit another hiccup because I was no sooner feeling, Oh my God, this has been really good. I'm back. And then my publisher left Penguin UK. And then also, when your publisher leaves, that's
a big thing. You've lost your champion within that particular publishing house, and it wasn't even that bad, or it became worse because the person who replaced her then left and the person who replaced her then left had an
option for a second book with them. And they said, We don't have anyone who can even look at a second book at the moment, and we need to hire and you can either wait for six to 12 months to two years or and I guess I didn't want to wait because I thought, Oh, I don't even know who you're going to get or if you're going to get someone or if you're that's another thing that happens to a lot of authors their publisher moves on.
And sometimes they they've lost their biggest supporter when the publisher moves on. So then I was had to go back to market again. But this time I did pick up another publisher, and this time it was profile UK and pro profile. UK published two of my books, and then they distributed those books here through Alan and Unwin. I'll summarise all the Australian publishers when I'm done, because I yeah,
it's really interesting,
you know, to Alan and UN. But both of those books came out during Covid and and I think the second of those books, you had it coming, didn't even in the UK didn't even make it out of the warehouses. Even Amazon was closed down. It was an entire shutdown. Yeah, So at the end of those two books, I was once again without a publisher. But I then signed with a firm here in Australia, and I was back with a mainstream publisher in where I live, which felt really important. Yeah.
In the meantime, I lost my UK publisher. So yeah, that's quite a story, isn't it? She McMillan two sub published books that were distributed by Dennis Jones at the time and then a Penguin UK book distributed by pens Profile books distributed by Allen and Unwin and then affirm. That's how many different people my books have been brought.
Yeah, but like I was saying, I think this is a great lesson for everyone out there. Look, if you get in with a publisher and everything's going well and there isn't any rocky patch like fantastic. But you know, as we both know, we know so many people that have been with one publisher and then maybe have not been published for a while and find another publisher like it is actually quite a normal thing, isn't it?
Like at the time when it happens to you, you feel like Oh, God, I'm the only failure that this has happened to. But when you talk to a lot of people in the industry, this is actually quite a normal thing, isn't it? Look, I think all of that is so true. So with a firm, you know, you mentioned that some of your earlier books while they were women's fiction, had this
kind of mystery in element of intrigue. And it seems that in your most all your most recent books have been going that way and more and more into that crime genre. So when you got the contract with a firm, was your agent still just shopping your books around here? Or even though you had the books out in the UK and and all that sort of thing
was shopping my books around here and again, I was at a crisis point because I could see with the UK that things weren't going particularly well, and I didn't know if I could sell the book here. So it was a real save by the Bell one again to get the books in with
the firm. But the books had got steadily, I guess darker and You Had a Coming, which was my second book with Profile, Got shortlisted for the DAS and the Ned Kelly's, which made me really think I thought, Oh my God, I really crime now because up until that point, I wouldn't have entirely classified myself as crime. I'm still not really hardcore crime, as I'm sure you'd agree. It's how much softer offering.
Yeah, so did that kind of then change your perspective on when you're going in to write a book? When you started thinking of yourself, even though it may be on the lighter end of the spectrum or whatever of crime, did it change the way you approached the writing or thought about what you were writing?
It did because my publisher had a firm Martin Hughes was. He's very honest. He's a very honest view of it, and he and look, he said, you need in my particular niche of crime fiction you're after maximum tension. Minimum bodies, right? We're not talking about lots of dead bodies. We're talking about maximum tension. But by the same token a few times, and particularly with my recent book, one of us is missing, he went, Oh, burry, You've written a contemporary drama this this two family drama.
This needs way more attention. I was waiting for ages for this to happen, and you need to turn this book completely back to front because there's not enough tension. And so I guess I was still doing my same old thing.
Yeah, it's definitely got that family drama element, but I have to say we'll get on to actually talking about the book in a minute, but it is loaded with tension. So whatever you did when you went back, you did brilliantly because there is so much tension in it. The funny thing
was, I didn't change the story at all. It was one of those weird things where I didn't change the story at all, but I completely changed the structure.
OK, hold that. We're gonna come back to that. Yeah, So it
has changed how I write. And now I'm working on a draught book and I can hear his voice in my head saying and an eye roll I can see the eye roll going. This is very nice and everything reading about this family. But is the tension Burt? And so I immediately went, OK, I won't start there. I'll put in a dead body here. And so I've changed what I'm doing. I suppose I
have changed what I'm doing. But at the end of the day, I guess my thing that I won't ever change is that I want to write about people that I like and that I'm interested in and that I want them to be everyday people. And sometimes I pick up a crime book. And particularly in this genre, there's a lot of unlikable people and I, I think so, unlikable. They're not real. So I. I still want them to be real, and I want them to be somebody that you can
relate to. But I have tried to up the attention to deliver to this genre.
Oh, you've done it magnificently. So now that we are here, let's talk about one of us is missing. Amazing, like I absolutely loved it could not put it down. Uh, I have obviously an advanced reader copy here, but the real thing will be out very soon. So can you tell listeners, What is this book about? Who is the family that we meet and what's the kind of setup?
OK, so the book is. It's about a family of four who go to a stadium concert, and parents Rachel and Rory Sullivan bring their Children, their teenage Children to a fictional Coldplay concert. And it's a one we've all been to. Many of us have been to those concerts this year. It's the the 60 odd 1000 people at this concert, and while they're at the concert, one of the family goes missing thing. And that's the premise of the book. And each of the four family members
has a reason to go missing. They've each been going through different thing, and as the top ticks down, we we find out the secrets that they've been keeping from each other. And also we find they find out that they have enemies, that they didn't even realise that they had, and they realised that life is never going to be the same again after this particular night. But do you want to hear? I came up with the premise I
started reading this not long after I'd been to the Taylor Swift concert. And I've been to quite a few big concerts in that Allianz Stadium. Adele Ed Sheeran and one of the things that freaks me out is that kind of when, especially when you're coming out because everyone arrives at different times, but everyone leaves at the same time. So one of the things that always freaks me out is walking out, particularly
if you're getting public transport. Is that walking out in this mass Absolute mass of people and just that sensation of having so many people around you And I don't know, I guess in the back of my mind, occasionally I have thought, What if something happened here? What if you know, someone went crazy or whatever, and this isn't to give any spoilers away to the book because we're not talking about that, But it really struck a chord with me. That was where
it was set because I could picture it. And I knew that feeling of that mass number of people and what it would be like to try and find someone in that crowd. But yeah, please tell me what the inspiration was for it OK,
so the inspiration happened quite a number of years ago. It was in 2019, and it was a U two concert and my Children were a bit younger then. My oldest was 17, my youngest was 14 and while I was trying to get tickets to this concert, first of all, they were really keen to go because I guess music is a very intergenerational thing. We grew up liking the music that our parents listened to. Our
Children grew up liking some of the music. We listen to some of their music because you're in the car with each other all the time. You're at home with each other all the time. Concerts are intergenerational, I think, and they're a great way for families to bond. So anyway, the kids did want to come to this UT concert. They were really keen, and I was trying to get four seats to the concert and I couldn't. There was only two seats slept.
I had a clock ticking down and my son was like, We'll go on, we'll go on the field, we'll go on the field And there was still a few seats left on the field and I was like going, But you're only 17 or 14 and that's not the whole purpose of this, but literally. I had 30 seconds left to make this to do this transaction and and even it ended up. You know, it was
either that or nothing, really. And I ended up getting two stand tickets and two field tickets, and I thought to myself, Oh, God, I don't know if that's a good idea. And look, I know that probably sounds very helicopter, and I'm a very I'm a self confessed helicopter parent. I'll say that straight up. But when you're in a crowd like that, you're talking about relatively inexperienced teenagers. They doesn't. They're not familiar with a stadium familiar with that side of the city. Yeah, if it was
in our local suburbs, they would be fine. But they're not familiar with the city or navigating their way around the And I guess I had a 17 year old who was extremely overconfident. I know everything about everything. Yeah, and then a 14 year old who literally is just the worst sense of direction you've ever seen in your life. And so
I knew it was probably a bad idea. And of course, when it came to the night and we were walking there and there's thousands and thousands of people walking there, all I could think was like, What have I done? Oh my God. And I was trying to convince them I was like, OK, Ash, you come in the stands with me. Connor, you go to be with your dad. I was trying to reorganise, and they weren't having any
of it ever. Anyway, we as we got there and then there's also that thing when you come out of the stadium and I think you particularly notice this when you're out at home. Bush, they're huge, right? And when you come out, you don't know where you're going to come out, and
it's that kind of circular thing and let's come out this side or do you go like, Where did you enter? Where are you leaving at the point?
That and you particularly don't know that when you're 14 and 17, right, that you don't know the area. So anyway, during this whole concert, I was up in the stands worrying myself sick, particularly about my 14 year old down in that wash pit worrying myself. Absolutely sick, and that's where the idea of the novel came from. And of course, it's great to have an idea for
a novel. That's a really good premise. But then you've got to figure out, OK, someone is missing what's happened and and really not easy to figure
out what's happened. But how do you go from there? Be like you. You've been this crime genre. You've got this idea. Can you remember where you went with that idea? Like, how do you sit down and then nut out? What's your process in Nutting out the plot?
I never really not at the plot, Pa. Make life really hard for myself by not planning anything but I with this story I just started Initially. I started the book four months before, and I guess I got to know each character just through each character and figuring out what was going on in their lives that could have led them to the point of one of them not turning up at the meeting place after the concert. And so I explore that by writing it in that form, and when I
got to the night of the concert. I guess I knew which one of them wasn't going to turn. And then I was immediately had written myself into another problem as to what had happened to them. And I don't know, I'm the kind of writer, I there's some areas of crime writer I didn't wanna go. So I kept thinking, I don't want to go into this, and I don't want to go into that. And that's just far too gruesome. And no, I can't do this and I can't do that. And I was everything I
thought of. I was like, Oh, no, that's too dark. So it took me a long time to figure out what it was that had happened. And I guess I I just fighting until I figured it out.
So you very much, uh, learn things as you go writer.
Yeah. Yeah, As soon as I tried to plan the books, they're just boring. I'm just so bored. I'm like going Oh, this is just boring. And I keep telling myself my life would be so much easier if I planned. And I think all of us pans say that our life would be so much easier if we planned, but there's something about for me. How I come up with ideas is when my fingers are on the keys. That's what generates ideas in my head. It doesn't matter if sitting there with a whiteboard I could look at it all
day long. I wouldn't be able to think of a single idea. I have to be type to come up with
ideas. I'm exactly the same I find, and I should have realised this years ago. But I said to my husband the other day, actually about horse riding, I said, I'm just thinking I'm a really slow learner he said, which he probably nailed it. He said, No, you just don't have enough confidence in your own ability. But anyway,
that's a whole other story. But I find with writing and what I'm working out with, this one I'm working on now is that part of the whole thing, for with the pants thing for me is being in that character's skin in that moment, or at the end of that scene that you've just written and thinking, What am I going to do now or what would she do next? Or what could happen that would really throw her world into turmoil. But I've got to be in that moment to work it out. Yeah,
I'm the same, and I think that's why I do it. It's And then, at the end of the day, I Oh my God, who knew who knew that would happen? I certainly didn't, and and I'm addicted to that feeling.
And I guess if you're creating that feeling for yourself, then you're also creating it for your readers, aren't you?
Yes, but then I went and I had to turn this book back to front because my publisher said It's too much of a contemporary. So
tell us about that. How did you go about doing that?
He wanted a plan, Pam. Oh, no. And I was like a plan. And so I do. I have pulled out the spreadsheet in the past during editing, when I'd been asked to do trick tricky things in editing because when I'm writing, I have a very firm hold on what's happening, where and what's happening when, and I have a really good hold in it. But as soon as you start shifting things around, you lose that hold you, you become confused really quickly about and crime
is different. It's You can ruin the book, really. But if you move things around in the wrong way, you can completely ruin the book. So he insisted on a plan. So I had to do a chapter. I did a spreadsheet just with chapter summaries for him, and it was really reorganising my chapters. But it was like I was like, I can't believe I'm doing this. I cannot believe it doing a plan for this edit where normally I would just dive in, I would normally
dive in. But in retrospect, it was very good advice, because what I was trying to do was a lot more complicated than what I thought it was. I said to myself when he said, Oh, I think you need to start at the concert. We need to start at the concert and then flash back in time and I was like, That's easy. I've done that before. I've done flashbacks before. That's easy, but actually wasn't easy at all, and in fact, it turned out to probably be one of the most difficult rewrites I've ever
done. Wow. So you'd already written the draught were you shuffling scenes that you already had? Did you then have to add new bits and new perspectives and heaps?
Loads of new bits, No new perspectives but loads of And the story in itself didn't change except for the who did it. The who did it did change, but the story in itself didn't change. But the changing the timing of the story meant that there was a lot of back and forth. So even if you look at how the book starts that very first chapter, I had to say who all the people were that were involved, even though there's a lot of names early on because I can't pretend they
don't exist. Whereas with the previous version, I was able to introduce the characters in a much more gradual way. Yeah, that type of thing where I can't deny there's a big thing. There's a few big things happening here. I can't just show them getting ready for the concert without showing their concern about these big things that are happening. And so it was extremely tricky to was extremely tricky not to trick the reader, really.
I had to be honest with the reader about what was going through their head at the time while they were getting ready for the concert. And then also there was necessary repetition. There was necessary repetition because I had to help the reader navigate back and forth
with the time frame with the
time frame and and I think to the rewrite I must. I think I added at least 20,000 words that then later axed in different places. But it was much more complicated than it was initially. That's not a problem. No problem. I can do this and then ive
written 11. I can do this.
Yes, I was definitely overconfident and underestimated what was involved in it. I very quickly I realised, Oh, I'm going to start with a new file and the file is going to be blank. And I will copy and paste, but I'll only copy and paste once I know that is that's belongs in there. So I did build it up from
Wow, that was gonna be my next question. Actually. How did you practically manage that? Like I was at my writing group today at the in, the lovely Joan Mill was there, So she has seen cards where she writes a summary of what's happening and because now she's on book number six or whatever. So she knows roughly the kind of structure that she's using. So you'll have index cards, and I have used index cards a lot in the past myself. But yeah, so you started
with a black document. You had your draught And was it then a matter of just pulling things out and moving them around
Page one? And I said, OK, it's the day of the concert. What can I use? And then I massaged it, and once I was happy with what I had massaged, I then went OK, Now they're walking to the concert. What can I keep? And then I brought in that, and then I massaged it to change it and and I built it up like that. And then it became very obvious. OK, I need this extra scene here, and I need this extra scene there, and I put those in as I went. I didn't allow myself go forward or go back
without OK putting in what I needed. And even if it meant new writing, yeah, because
it does move around in time like we go back. But then it comes back to the concept like there's a lot of time shuffling. I'm terrible with timeline. It's my worst nightmare. But how did you work out how far back to go and when to put in a scene from three weeks ago, as opposed to a scene from three hours before they went to the concert? That was the
easier part. The going back was the easy part because I had written that kind of in a more intact, I guess in. That's how the novel had originally started. It originally started four months before the concert, so when you're flashing back to four months, that was needed, massaging and needed fixing and a few extra things put in and but it was largely written.
But it was the current time that caused me the biggest trouble, because I had to elongate what was happening at the concert, and I had to do that in a way that didn't give away what was going to happen in the next novel. A lot of what's happening at the concert is new, and a lot of what you flash back to was, Pre-existing
did you have to kill a lot of darlings. Were a lot of darlings left out?
No, actually, I had to. No, I didn't have to kill any darlings. And I know I'm the worst person ever for having too many characters. Honestly, Every time I write a book, I'm like going, Oh my God, can you just cut out the the number of characters? It's I drive myself mad, but I just don't know how to make it real.
Yeah, it didn't confuse me. The number of characters
I didn't have to kill A and Dave Darlings, but I did struggle with, I guess, the introduction of those darlings because of the structure they came, all came at once, and they needed to all come at once because we are at the climax of the book at the start, and so you can't pretend that they don't exist.
You have to. You had to change the structure in order to up the tension. What were some of the other things that you did at a page or chapter level in terms of really making sure that there was plenty of tension in there? I had a lot of
this in there, But it was in It was delivered in a more gentle way. And I do remember my publisher saying to me, he said, You've gone there anyway, Burr. By the end of the novel, you have gone fairly dark. So you're I don't know what you're trying to avoid. And so I guess that was really interesting. One thing I would say I did have to do was I had to miss those red herrings of which there was quite a number. Actually, I think I'm learning how to write crime as I go. I
don't know all the rules. Do you know what I mean? Which
might be the thing that you don't know. The rules,
the rules, I don't know. And so apparently I had. And this is from an old friend, Govern, who is really a bit like your inky She's like my inky Her opinion means a lot. And she's very you won't kill off any of these red herrings. I should point. And I was like, Ok, yeah, I guess because you really write crime and you really know what you're doing. I didn't really know what to do. I am a bit of a novice. I think when it comes to writing this genre, it didn't
read like you're a novice, but and one of the things that I loved were the kind of, particularly at the beginning. There is different lengths of chapters, but those really short, snappy chapters I found were really compelling and just really helped add that tension and that sense that Oh, I want to read the next chapter to find out what happens for the next character.
OK, Oh, that's good. That's good. Actually, that was one other thing that was very challenging. These two teen voices. I haven't done that before. I don't know if I will do that again, and that's not easy. Lucky I had some experts in the house. Yeah,
that's right. Yeah, I'd say you've got four point of view characters. Did you see any one of those characters as your kind of main character? Or do you feel that they were all pretty much equal in terms of the level of importance
to them When I started off, I think Rachel was my main character. She's the mom and al always, because you can identify with the mom more because you are a mom and she's closer in age to you. But I guess as the book went on, the other characters got stronger. They got stronger and and by the end, certainly Bridie has come to the fore a lot more. And the dad has come to the poor a lot more, and they've all garnered sympathy. And in some ways, Rachel, I guess because of some of her decisions,
some people judge her quite harshly. I didn't judge her harshly, but I think some readers do judge her harshly. So the different voices in this book were a challenge as well. And through every rewrite I was constantly trying to improve them. There was one discussion here one night where we had a big family debate about what you would call drug goes and druggies and what different age groups call them. And so even between my now 21 year old and
19 year old, there's different lingo. There's different. They use different words. It was that was an ongoing challenge throughout the noble, trying to channel as teen voices and also in a way that mature adults want to read because we don't always want to read from the point of view of much younger people. But I think
one thing that having those multiple point of view characters does, and you did distinguish their voices really beautifully. So we knew as each chapter moved on, we got to the next person. There was a really distinct sound to the voice, and Bridie's voice was different to her mother's and et cetera,
et cetera, the other two as well. But I think one of the things that that that does swapping point of views is it really does help with that, upping the tension because we get into one character's skin and one character's head and perspective, and we're empathising with that character. Uh, but then that stops and we're into the next character. So you automatically wanna know. No, I wanna go back and see what
what's happening with Rachel next. So it pulls you through the story because you are constantly shifting character, experience and I. I find that really compelling
as crime writers. Different point of view is our friend. It's different than our friend. It gives us a chance to leave someone in a real predicament and then go on to something else. and then write that person into predicament and then go back. And it helps us hugely in terms of writing the
novel when you finish that whole restructuring thing, Did you know, like immediately? Yes, that's it. I've got it. I
didn't know. Yes, I got it. And I was actually really nervous. I was really nervous because I'd gotten from a novel. I thought that I really knew what the kind of flash points were to a novel where I didn't know any more of what the flashpoints were. And so before I handed it back to my publisher, I gave it to more readers than what I've ever done before. Oh, really? Yeah. I. I think I gave it to about six or seven people to read it to see. Did they know who did it?
Did the bombing of who did it come at the right time? Did they believe it? And whilst their feedback reassured me, they all had very valuable things to say to say still, and I'm always extremely grateful for people who read your books and very kindly lend their intelligence to the plot and help you make you a better book and I. I think I had achieved the
main things I said I had to do. But obviously when you've done a restructure to that level, there's always some small things that you haven't addressed and you need fresh eyes on the book. And and so be. Before I sent it back, I had given it to six other readers. And so by the time I'd taken their feedback on board, which wasn't drastic by any means, but it made me feel a lot more confident with what I was heading back. And
was it a thumbs up from your editor? Then
it was a thumbs up, but they were horrified by how long the book had
become. Oh, really? Now it's too long. Go and cut
some of it I had to delete. I think they wanted me to delete 15,000 words, but I deleted 10,000 words in a line edit and then another 2000 during copy
Edit. Wow, think the that tightening that you did just improved it even further because I think one of the things with that Pacey sort of high tension reading is that there's no extraneous words, and I think you've really nailed that.
Oh, thank you. It's so hard to know when you've changed it that profoundly and again. As I said, I was trying to help the reader with the back and forth so that they wouldn't be confused about what was happening before and what was happening after.
So you have chapter headings for that, don't you?
I do have chapter headings, but the reader still needs reminding of the time and what's happening with time. You need to help them a little, and really honestly, Pam, probably it was the most, and I've done some hard rewrites in my day. I really have this book was it was very easy to write. That first draught was probably the most difficult restructuring I've ever done because normally when hard restructuring is deleting characters or combining chapters or doing all that sort of things can
all be very tricky. But this was just next to trick.
And were you working to a deadline? I imagine, too. But
yeah, and I don't sit at my desk. If I change the camera, you would see where I write, which is literally an armchair. It's very bad for my posture. I sit in an armchair with my laptop on my lap and again it's a bit something. I need to be in that position before I can write right. And if I try and write at a table or a desk, I can't do
it. Isn't that funny? We all have our little quirks. It's amazing.
Yeah, it's whatever releases that creativity in your head, it writes. But I sat in an armchair for so long, I got swollen ankles. Oh, no, I have never It was like being in a long haul flight. I was like, What has happened in my leg? So there's something. And then I realised it was because I've been sitting here for 12 hours a day. Moving. Yeah, yeah, that was a new That was a new thing. Thank you. One of us is missing for giving me swollen ankles.
I'm picturing you pulling on the compression socks or something, and
it was full on
Oh, we haven't talked a lot about the characters and things. I don't want to go too much into the actual story because there it's very hard to avoid spoilers. You mentioned earlier the secrets thing. So all of the characters have secrets. They're really important in kind of. There's some things that the reader knows at some points that the other characters don't know. The reader knows things about happening in the background for some of the other characters. That Rachel, for instance,
might not know. Was that Al already there in your initial story? Or did you deliberately plant some of those secrets? Are they some of the red herrings you were talking about?
I think IR stakes for some of those things, but they were all there, and that's what made the rewrite so weird. And that's why I was saying, Why was it so hard when there was no characters deleted, There was no scenes deleted. It was all adding it was adding to be able to accommodate the new structure. But I did increase the stakes with those particular secrets and and all the while trying to it was very important to me that this family was a likeable family and that they loved each other.
I was trying to make them a normal family that have just been struggling with various things rather than making them all toxic. So I was trying to try it all the time. Sometimes having that type of aim in crime fiction is all I
can imagine. You mentioned that word steak spur, and it's something that every book I have to really think about, and usually that's what I have to go back and really increase, I think, is what's at stake for this character. Can you talk a little bit about the importance or in writing in general? And maybe in this book, in particular for how important increasing those stakes are in terms of creating that whole arc where you can pull the reader through to the end of the story? I
think it's It's absolutely crucial, and the big thing we're struggling with is increasing the stakes in a believable way in a way. And also, if you manage to do that in a believable way, you will be, I guess they'll be hooked and they'll be invested in the character. They will like these characters
and they will be seriously invested in them. And I think when I was trying to increase the stakes and I thought about this afterwards and even though while I was doing it, I probably couldn't coherently tell you what I was trying to do. But I, I think what I did was I tried to increase the fear, their fears and that on the night, as each of them went into that stadium, they each had different fears that they were grappling with.
Rachel had a serious illness, a life-threatening illness, and obviously she was afraid for her future. She was afraid of her Children being left motherless, and Rory was afraid that his marriage wasn't the same after that illness, and and he was afraid of speaking up and rocking the boat in the marriage. And Emmett is afraid of failure, as many teens are and Friday is afraid of. She's lonely, essentially, she's really lonely, and
her family don't know the extent of her loneliness. And so they carried all those fears in there that night. And then when the worst thing happens, they realise. Actually, the big fear is the fear of the unknown and what has happened here and how. What have we done to cause this situation? And I guess once I grasped onto that fear that immediately I think raises the stakes
that's so important, but and just what you were saying then I think that's about the believability and the fact they are such an ordinary family. And I think that's what you relate to as a reader. Certainly what I related to is, even though you might not have been in exactly that situation as any of the characters, you've been in a similar situation or people who have been in a similar situation.
Dealing with a life threatening illness and or having a child who is having friendship issues at school and how much that can impact on them. And the other thing is also that sense of in a family of not saying anything about those fears because you don't want to upset others, or that you're afraid that you're revealing something about yourself that even your people closest to you don't know. You really captured all that thought so nicely. Thank you, thank you.
There is a fair bit of police kind of procedure at different parts of the book. How much research did you have to do be into some of those kind of technical aspects of policing that appear in the book?
I did have to do a fair bit of research and and I've found policing hard to search because a particular chief inspector who helps me and a detective who helps me, but they're really busy people said I have to choose my questions really carefully. I will ask one question and I will get a very quick response and then I have to say OK, that's not what I thought. I'd better alter this. I do have a criminal lawyer who helps me and who helped me, particularly towards the end
of the novel. There's a scene towards the end of the novel that had I written it the way I had written, it would have been completely inaccurate and he helped me fashion that particular scene. And he's helped me now with a number of my books and he always says to me, You need to stop stressing because if you look at what's on TV, it's so inaccurate that this is actually way closer to the truth.
Even in its inaccurate form, it's way closer to the truth than anything we watch on TV about crime that he has helped me with a number of my novels now, and I always imagine him in his kind of city office, laughing at the the questions. I sent them the very obscure questions at him, and and I did very luckily know somebody who works in security in a large stadium. And he and this was during Covid. Actually, he let me see what they can see through their CCTV and
how and their CCTV is a It's absolutely amazing. But of course, it's useless when you've got 50,000 people there because you can't see anything, but it is amazing. And so he was also very helpful. I think the thing when it comes to research now, with every single novel, I have nothing to draw on myself. So I have to read practically everything because everything is new and I'm trying to write something that's fresh. Yeah, every time. But you learn
something from every novel,
don't you? Oh, God. One thing. And I often think like what you said earlier. Am I just a slow learner? How am I still learning this crap? He set up to 20 years
in bubbles. Each time I do it, it feels like I'm doing it for the first time. And until I get to a point and I think I yeah, I do know what I'm doing. Yeah, sorry, but when is this book actually out
on the 30th of April
30th of April. Ok, yeah. This will be out probably the week that week or the week after. Now, I do believe you are going to a Coldplay concert later in the year. Yes, I am going
to a CO. So this is the funny thing about this book, right? It was written during Yeah, a lot of it was written during Covid. And we didn't even know if there was ever going to be musicals ever again, right? It looked pretty bleak there for a while. It really didn't. I think this is the first year they really come back and forth. And some Coldplay have been in Sydney for a number of years. And now suddenly they're coming in the same year that the book is coming out, which is quite ironic.
And so when they announced the concert, I was like, Oh, my God, I've got to get tickets. But oh, my God. And of course, the whole family wants to go. The whole family wants to go. But this time I'm going down on the field. You get a
hand on each hand.
Yeah, I was saying, but everyone's laughing because I been rubbish jinxed us. You totally jinxed us. In fact, I know lots of people are going to that concert because I think they're doing or because they are you going, pa? No,
I missed out on tickets. I can't believe
that. I think they're doing four consecutive nights. I know lots of people going to that cool pay concert, and hopefully they won't be thinking about my book and they'll be enjoying the concert.
There'll be some great promotional opportunities there. Be so make sure you take lots of photos. And I'm just seeing Chris Martin in the background and the yellow balls and your book in the world. Now bet this has been such a great chat and thank you for staying on so long. We've covered so much territory, but I'd like to finish up with a question which sometimes we've touched on. But what would you say is at the heart of your writing
Everyday people is at the heart of my rising. I'm not interested if they're super rich or super successful, or I'm interested in everyday people finding themselves in really hard situations and what they'll do in those situations. And I think I want you to essentially like my characters and believe in my characters.
You've definitely nailed that with this book and because we've been talking so much about the publishing industry and something that I did mean to say earlier, which I think might be a great kind of thing to finish on, is the thing that you have continued to do be all through all those 20 years and lots of disappointments and not really knowing who was gonna publish your next book or how it was gonna be published is you've kept writing and I think that's the key, isn't it?
It is the key, and it in many ways it's very liberating because once you've figured that out, you'll be happy. You'll be happy. And you know, this is really hard to stop writing, isn't it? In some way, it's really hard to stop. It can be hard to do it when you need to do it as well, but it's hard to stop doing it when you love it. So I think once you hold on to that, you
never really know what's going to happen. And once you don't expect a smooth ride, I think if you are prepared for a few bumps along the road, then you'd be well equipped for what's ahead.
Yeah, I think that's a perfect note to finish on. Thank you so much for all the best with one of us is missing. Great book, please everybody out there just as a great reading experience. But particularly also if you're a writer and wondering how to get tension into your writing through all those things we talked about on the page through the lines structure, the plot, everything fantastic read and I will see you be at war. A mole on the third of May I see you, Bye bye.
Thanks for listening to rights for women. I hope you've enjoyed my chat with this week's guest. If you did, I'd love it if you could add a quick rating or review wherever you get your podcasts so others can more easily find the episodes. Don't forget to check out the backlist on the rights for women website. So much great writing advice in the library there, and you can also find the transcript of today's chat on the website, too.
You can find details on the website on how to support the podcast through Patreon and you can connect with me through the website at Rights for Women.com on Instagram and Twitter at W for W podcast. The Facebook page writes for women or find me and my writing at Pamela cook.com dot a U. Thanks for listening. Have a great week. And remember every word you write you're one word closer to typing the end.