Celebrating 100 episodes of this podcast, Charlie is joined by Elissa Soave, Jenni Keer, and Chloe Timms for a general bookish chat. This one is big on writing, branding, and marketing, and, if Charlie dares says herself, is one of the most fun episodes of this entire show.

Please note there is a mild swear word in this episode.

General references:
Confessions Of A Debut Novelist
Groundhog Day
Elissa episode with me is number 80
Elissa’s episode on Chloe’s podcast
Chloe’s writer’s club
The Lake House

Books mentioned by name or extensively:
Chloe Timms: The Seawomen
Daphne Du Maurier: Rebecca
Elissa Soave: Ginger And Me
Elissa Soave: Graffiti Girls
Eliza Clark: Penance
Guillermo del Toro: The Shape Of Water
Janice Galloway: Collected Stories
Janice Galloway’s The Trick Is To Keep Breathing
Jenni Keer: The Secrets Of Hawthorn Place
Jenni Keer: At The Stroke Of Midnight
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood: The Testaments
Roget’s Thesaurus

Buy the books: UK || USA

Release details: Recorded 7th March 2024; published 15th July 2024

Where to find Elissa online: Twitter

Where to find Jenni online: Website || Twitter || Facebook || Instagram || TikTok

Where to find Chloe online: Website || Twitter || Facebook || Instagram

Where to find Charlie online: Twitter || Instagram || TikTok

Discussions

02:21 What is your genre and what does it do, what’s it for?
11:31 If you wrote in another genre, which would it be?
17:47 How is your social media strategy?
27:22 What’s the best reader or fan encounter you’ve had?
33:01 If you could have written someone else’s book, which book would you choose?
37:17 What is the best writing advice you’ve ever been given?
43:56 All three tell us what they’re currently writing, soon publishing (in two cases), and Elissa also tells us about her November 2024 release

Transcript

Please note that this transcript has been edited for legibility and is not a 100% accurate representation of the audio. Filler words and many false sentence starts have been removed, and words have been added in square brackets for clarity.

Charlie: Hello and welcome to The Worm Hole Podcast! This is the third of a few milestone episodes to celebrate episode 100. These are different to the usual episodes – we’re talking casually and there’s more than one author; you can consider this a party! So, I’m your host Charlie Place and today I am joined by three authors who all write in different genres – yep, we’re mixing it up this time! They’re going to introduce themselves so that you can get an idea for their voices straight away.

Elissa: Hello. My name is Elissa Soave. As you can probably tell, I’m Scottish, so I’ll be easily distinguishable from the other guests! I have written a book called Ginger And Me, which is about the story of a friendship between two young, working class Scottish girls. My next novel is called Graffiti Girls, and it’s due out in November.

Jenni: Hi, my name’s Jenni Keer. I have written six novels, and nobody is more surprised than me by that! My first two were contemporary… I hesitate to say romance, they had a romance in them, but contemporary commercial women’s fiction. But my last four have been historical; I’ve embraced my love of history. And I would describe my books as historical, but with a twist. So quite often a little bit of a spin on something, maybe a magical realism element or twisting reality a little bit. My latest book is At The Stroke of Midnight, which came out on March 12th. And, yeah, very happy author here with lots more books on the horizon!

Chloe: Hi, I’m Chloe Timms. You might know me from my debut novel, The Seawomen, or my podcast, Confessions Of A Debut Novelist. The Seawomen came out in June 2022, and the paperback in May last year. And it is a speculative novel described as The Shape Of Water meets The Handmaid’s Tale, and it’s about a young woman named Esta who lives on an island cult, and she is trying to navigate that lifestyle, but has a longing to leave and explore the outer world.

Charlie: So, first question, what is your genre, and what does your genre do, effectively, what does it do and what’s it for, if that makes sense? Do you want to go first, Elissa? [Charlie and Elissa laugh.]

Elissa: Well, if anybody could see this, you would see my face looking on in horror! Genre; now, I’ll be quite honest with you – that’s a word that I didn’t use at all when I was writing my novel and in fact, haven’t even thought about as a hugely voracious reader for years. I wouldn’t say that I have a particular genre that I like to read, or, even now, a genre that I write in. When I submitted my novel to my publisher, they told me that I had written a cross-genre novel, part mystery, part coming of age, and I thought, how clever of me! I have written a cross-genre novel. But it was completely news to me. So this whole idea of genre and writing to a genre and writing within a genre, I don’t think it’s anything to do with the writer particularly. I think we just write the stories that we want to write. And in terms of defining where they fit, what genre do they fit into? I think that’s for the marketers and the people who sell the book. It’s just really a way of placing it so that the reader can find whatever it is they’re looking for. For me, as a writer, I certainly don’t write to a genre or attempt to write to a genre. I don’t know if it’s different for you guys?

Jenni: I was going to say exactly the same thing, actually, Elissa. I think that’s been – I was gonna say part of my problem, not necessarily that it’s a problem – but I do write cross-genre, so it has been difficult for example, when I’ve been nominated for awards, my publishers struggled to think what category to put me in, because there is the magical realism element so is it like a little bit of paranormal or whatever, or there’s the romance. There’s always a romance, but now there’s the historical. And At The Stroke Of Midnight, which was heavily influenced by my love of Agatha Christie, is actually a cosy crime. So, I mean, bring it on, [laughs] I’ve practically covered every single genre in one book! And you’re absolutely right – I think it’s the publisher and the bookseller and the librarian who need to be able to display their wares, as it were. I mean, you do – you go into a bookshop, and you want to read a book. So you wanted a romance, for example, you need to know where to go in the bookshop to find that. So I absolutely understand. Or if you’re looking online for a book, you need to know how to refine your search to look for the type of books you’re interested in. So I absolutely understand that, but I think you’re right – authors, we don’t think like that. We write the stories that need to be told, or we feel inside us need to be told. But, yes, we do have to tick various genre boxes in order to market our books, but I think it sounds like you, Elissa, have the same issue as me – we’re ticking more than one box.

Chloe: I had a similar issue with my novel because it is speculative, it’s exploring a society in the future, but there’s a slight fantastical element as well. But it’s not a fantasy novel and I didn’t want it to be marked as a fantasy novel because I’m not someone who reads a lot of fantasy, so it would feel wrong for that book to be placed in that category for me. And I think it would probably disappoint the fantasy readers as well when they picked it up. I always remember my agent giving me some really interesting food for thought when I met her and she said, ‘if you’re going to a book festival, let’s say, who would be on the same panel as you? If there was a theme that you were discussing, who would be sat next to you?’ And that was a really interesting way for me to think about where my book would be placed, rather than necessarily speaking of genre or category of book. It’s who are the authors that you are… not trying to emulate, but people who you think share the same space as you. And I think as well, that shifts, because if you have a favourite author, unless they’re writing the same book all the time and they’re just kind of churning out loads of books that have similar titles and similar themes, they’re bound to explore different avenues. Because I don’t know about you two, but I don’t want to write the same thing all the time. I want to explore different avenues and think, ‘what am I interested in now? What books are inspiring me? What have I seen or heard or experienced myself that has made me want to explore different avenues?’ And I haven’t published lots of different genres, but I have experimented with different things. But I guess there are always genres where we think, ‘that’s not for me, I couldn’t do that’. I was speaking to a crime author this morning, and the way she was telling me how intricate her plotting has to be, I was like, ‘not for me. I can’t do that. Don’t have a brain for that.’

Charlie: Who were the people that you would have said you’d be on a panel on?… with, I mean. Sorry.

Chloe: Oh, goodness me – it’s a long time ago, Charlie. You’re not asking me to, you know, go through the recesses of my mind! [Laughs.]

Charlie: I expect you to remember these things, I’m sorry! [Laughs.]

Chloe: Well, one of my favourite novelists is Kirsty Logan, a brilliant Scottish author who writes slightly weird fiction, sometimes slightly exploring in the fairy tale. And she was actually a mentor for me when I when I wrote my first novel, The Seawomen, and gave me amazing advice. I think to be on a panel with her would be my absolute dream. Obviously, I said Margaret Atwood, because The Handmaid’s Tale was a huge, huge influence on me. Although being on a panel with Margaret Atwood, I mean, that’s kind of dream fantasy level. She’s not going to turn up to the same book festival as me, let’s be honest [Elissa laughs.]

Elissa: You wouldn’t be able to speak! You’d be like, [draws in a sudden shocked breath].

Chloe: I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t! I think, that novel. I mean, I’ll just be honest – and this will probably stop Margaret from ever appearing with me ever again – but I wasn’t keen on the sequel, I have to say! But the original is in-credible. Like, it was such a formative novel for me when I was at school. And so, yeah, probably Margaret Atwood. There’s so many people now that I just think… and I’m one of these people, that when I read an amazing book, I don’t sit there and go, ‘I’m never going to be this good’. Like, it doesn’t upset me because I read that novel and think, ‘I want to be this good. I want these authors to think, “oh, okay, this person’s got something”’. Another novelist that I looked up to, it’s more because I just think, ‘oh, I would love to be as good as you, really’. That’s what I’m thinking in my mind.

Elissa: Chloe, it’s really interesting to hear you talk about, that you think about other authors and you think, ‘oh, to be as good as them’ [Chloe agrees]. I genuinely try not to think about other authors at all [Chloe laughs], because one of the things that really hampered me when I first started writing was this idea that, you know, I’d read a really good book or have an author that I really, really looked up to, and I would try to write like them. And so, initially, that meant for me that I was trying to write the most impressive words I could possibly use. You know, the Roget’s Thesaurus was never off my desk [Chloe laughs]. I thought I had to write about posh people, certainly not Scottish people, doing exciting things in big, exciting cities, because that’s the kind of book that I was reading. And doing that meant that anything that I wrote was a sort of second rate version of what I was really liking. When I’m writing, I try not to think of other authors; I try to remember that my voice is my voice, and I really just want to try and be as authentic to my own voice as I can. And I found that when I was thinking about other authors and books that I loved, it was really hampering any sort of authenticity I had, because I couldn’t help but compare myself and think, ‘well, my voice is just really not that great in comparison to those voices. So I really can’t use my own voice’. But of course, you have to use your own voice.

Chloe: I wonder partly whether it’s the imposter syndrome, lack of confidence, where I almost see those books as, like, I don’t know, sustenance or drink. And I will – when I’m feeling very not very confident in myself, or I have a moment where I just think, I can’t write, or my writing is just very flat and awful – I will pick up a book by an author that I love and I’ll almost drink it down as, like that’s my sustenance to keep me going, rather than necessarily take on their voice. But I know what you’re saying; I know people that said that as a child, they wanted to be a writer and they’d be reading, like, I don’t know, Dickens, and suddenly they’re writing would turn into some sort of Victorian prose, you know? [Elissa laughs.]

Jenni: It’s finding your own voice, and I think that’s something we definitely do when we’re starting out, we’re emulating our heroes, aren’t we? [Chloe agrees.] But it’s fake somehow. And you do find your own voice eventually and realise what people are talking about when it’s genuinely coming from you. But again, going back to how publishers market us, they will do this list, like Chloe said – if you enjoyed Lucinda Riley, you will enjoy… whatever. And I always find that quite amusing and quite flattering [Jenni and Chloe laugh] when they list the authors that they’re comparing me to. My latest book was described as, ‘Rebecca meets Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day’. And I thought, ‘oh, yes, it is a bit!’ But I don’t think I’ve been conscious of that… the Agatha Christie, yes, but I don’t think I’d necessarily been conscious of that when I was writing it. So, yeah, I think it’s them trying to market your book – which is their job at the end of the day. Yeah.

Charlie: So, if you wrote in another genre – and I know we’ve been discussing genre, but go with this one – which would it be?

Elissa: My answer is a genre I definitely would not ever write in, and that’s historical. I know, Jenni, you’ve got historical books – I mean, to me, the level of research that is required for that is off the scale. I mean, you hear people talk about… I think it was Hilary Mantel I heard being interviewed, and she was saying she might do research for, like, four or five days, and then use half a sentence. To me, that is just off the scale – I couldn’t even contemplate it. So I’m hugely admiring of historical novelists, but I could never, ever, do it.

Jenni: Yeah, that’s absolutely the case. And you heard me say at the beginning of this podcast that the first two novels I wrote were just sort of contemporary women’s fiction. And it’s precisely for that reason, Elissa, I just didn’t think I was clever enough to write historical; I just thought it’s going to involve so much research. I do have a history degree, incidentally, but it’s one thing reading history, and it’s another thing writing it. And it does, she’s absolutely right! I can research for 2 hours to write one sentence, I kid you not. And it’s knowing whether the person can walk into the room and switch on an electric light. It’s knowing how long a journey might take. It’s knowing what they’re wearing, which, obviously, when you’re writing something contemporary, or in Chloe’s case, maybe something a little bit more not of this world, if you’re creating your own world, if you’re world building, for example, then you can make that stuff up. So, yeah, I was slow to write historical because of that, and in fact, the first novel where I did that, which was The Secrets Of Hawthorn Place, I did as a dual-time, almost to dip my toe in and think, ‘can I do this? I’ll just do a little bit of historical and see if I can get away with it!’ And it was so well received that I followed on from that. So, yes, I’ve had a lot of people say to me, writing historical is quite the challenge, and it does take me perhaps longer to write my books than some of my author friends. I would say if I was going to write a different genre, Charlie, it would be crime, but there would be a caveat on that because it would be the cosy crime and not police procedures or whatever for exactly the same reason – if it’s something that you don’t feel confident writing about, if you don’t have that level of knowledge; I mean, obviously there are things that you can research, you know, know what you write, not necessarily write what you know. But, yeah, I would like to write crime because I think it’s just such fun to read; I’m all about the twist.

Chloe: I’m going to use this podcast as a bit of an accountability for myself [Elissa and Charlie laugh] because I am writing… well, I’m kind of writing two books at the moment, but I’m having fun experimenting in a different genre for me, which is romantic comedy and very, very different from anything I’ve ever written before. But it’s a book that is really important to me, and I’m not going to say too much about it because I don’t know whether it’s going to happen yet because obviously, who knows what the future holds. But it’s something I’m really excited to write, I’m having real fun with it. I get to be funny, which I don’t get to do in my other book, so that’s entertaining to think about how to make things funny and write witty dialogue and let my characters have a nice time rather than put them through torturous times like I normally do. So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. And as I said, yeah, I’m using this as accountability, because I know this episode is going live a few months after we record, so hopefully, by the time this goes out, I should have something to show for it. Let’s hope so anyway.

Charlie: If not, I suppose I can go on Instagram and say, ‘X number of months ago, Chloe, you said this, X number of months’ [all laugh].

Chloe: And she didn’t do it! Yeah, but no, I hope so. It’s difficult because when your readers expect a certain thing from you, it feels sometimes a bit daunting to suddenly go, ‘do you know what? I really fancy having a go at something else’. But I’d like to think that people who know me or people who have followed me online, or are interested in what I do will find this book really interesting because it has certain parallels with my own life, and so I always think putting yourself into books is important, we do it all, whether we do it consciously or not, anyway, we always put ourselves into our books a bit. But, yeah, you can nag me – if this episode comes out and you haven’t heard anything about I’m writing, then please feel free to come and tell me off and say, ‘why aren’t you writing?’

Elissa: I’m going to come onto your writers sprint club [Chloe laughs] and say, ‘well, Chloe, you’re here – how much have you written?’

Chloe: Yeah, exactly.

Jenni: So I think you brought up an important point about brand, actually, about what the reader expects. And again, somewhere where I’ve not necessarily conformed, it is that if you pick up a book with Agatha Christie on the spine, you know what you’re going to get in that book, don’t you? And I think there’s an expectation with publishers as well that you will be producing more of the same, with your books, because they like to brand you. You know, ‘what is brand Jenni Keer? Well she writes this’. You know, ‘this is the genre that she writes and this is the style she writes. And this is what you can expect from a story’. And I’m currently writing a book that’s got quite a lot to do with witchcraft, I’m springing about all over the place and that, I’ve been really lucky to get away with. And also with my publishers not had to have pseudonyms, because quite often they’ll want you to tweak your name or write under another name if you’re changing genre. Yeah, I thought that was quite an interesting point you were raising; it is about that brand and about what readers expect.

Elissa: Look at Hilary Mantel; I mean, she was the absolute queen of reinvention [Jenni agrees]. You know, she did autobiography – historical, obviously is what she became best known for latterly. But her early novels are really black contemporary humour. It’s not that I wouldn’t change genres; I don’t really think I can! [Chloe laughs.] I can’t really imagine myself writing – particularly historical, I can’t imagine myself writing anything like that. But, I like to think anyway, I don’t feel constrained as to what I could write. I think if I wanted to write something, I would [Chloe agrees]. I would write it. Just to see how the land lay.

Charlie: I actually have a question that I added to this yesterday that I think actually might be quite fitting for this episode. I’m going to ask you all, how is your social media strategy? You’ve been talking about marketing [Chloe laughs].

Chloe: You make it sound like we’ve all got business plans and folders and charts [Elissa and Jenni laugh, then Chloe joins in].

Charlie: You may well do! I’m not sure [laughs].

Chloe: I am just… well, I’m a Twitter – I refuse to give it its false name – addict. I love Twitter, basically because I am a chatty person. I’m a nosy person. I like to know what’s going on in people’s lives and I’m more of a writing person than I am photography or taking videos or anything. So for me, Twitter is my haven and I used it before I became published, I used it years ago. I think I had started an account in 2008. Well, not the account I’ve got at the moment, but an old account which was 2008. So I’ve been on it for a long time. I just love it; I just spend far too much time scrolling and clicking on hashtags and all the rest. But it’s mainly just because I’m a chatty person and I’m a nosy person; I like to hear what other writers are up to. My strategy is really just use it for whatever I want! I don’t really think about it too much. I think one thing that I would say, if you are a writer starting out or you haven’t been published or anything, being part of the community is a fun thing, but also, if you don’t enjoy social media, then just don’t worry about it, like really just ignore it. If you’re not interested in it, do not bother, because people will be able to spot that you’re not using it genuinely. You want to be able to have conversations on there. If you follow book bloggers, follow people who are reviewing books, or people who just love books, or follow other writers and just chat to them. I don’t mind if people talk to me who I have no idea who they are. Unless you write something inappropriate, I’m probably going to reply to you or thank you, or whatever it is. I don’t have a strategy, it’s literally just be myself, probably post too much about my life. I wouldn’t go into like, graphic details about personal things, but just show people a glimpse of everyday life, things I’m interested in. But it’s not really… I can’t remember the last time I posted about my book [chuckles] which is probably really bad, my publisher’s probably not so happy about that. But I just think actually if people get to know you, they’re probably interested in you as a person. And just going, ‘my book, my book, my book’, is not going to sell copies anyway. So my strategy is just be myself, really. That’s about it.

Jenni: I would say I had very little interest in social media until the writing became an important part of my life. And I very quickly realised, particularly because my first book deal, because it was a digital-first book deal, I quickly realised that, and it’s still true to this day, that the majority of my sales, 95% or in excess of 95% of my sales, is going to be ebooks, Kindle product – then my audience is online, so I have to engage with them, and that’s where I’m going to find them, to engage with them. I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I’m a very chatty, personable person in real life. I’m the sort of person that starts talking to the checkout assistant, much to whichever son happens to be doing the weekly shop with me, and much to their horror [laughs]. I just embark on a conversation with the person next to me on the bus. I love that. So to transfer that onto social media, that’s great. That’s no issue for me. But also, there’s a side where there’s something I really don’t feel like it is a bit… as a very good friend of mine, another author, Ian Wilfred, said, it’s a bit tits and teeth, and sometimes you just don’t feel like that, and it’s a false view that you’re putting out. I’m not taking Instagram photos of the corner of my bedroom where all my dirty laundry is piled up; I’m arranging flowers and putting my book in front of the lovely vase to make it look beautiful. And that takes effort. And it takes effort sometimes to be cheery and to do the little videos that, say, my publisher might have asked, ‘oh, can you do a 1 minute video?’ And sometimes I really don’t feel like that. Sometimes there’s things going on in my life that are hard. And I step away from social media because it becomes another pressure, it becomes another thing to do. And for a busy person, it’s not my priority. So I think it is important if you’re an author. The publishers often say it’s not essential, but I do think it is important for the reason I said at the beginning. But, yeah, you’ve got to want to do it, and you only put as much of yourself out there as you want to, you shouldn’t feel pressured to be on it.

Elissa: I don’t have a social media strategy. The only social media that I’ve ever engaged in has been Twitter. At one point, I was quite a prolific Twitter user, but I’ve hardly been on it at all, recently. I went on it today. Big mistake, I don’t know if anybody’s on Twitter at the moment, but there’s a complete bonfire going on there at the moment, and I find that when I do go on there, I’m not doing anything productive on there, I’m just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, occasionally being annoyed by things that I see. So for the last month, I haven’t been on Twitter at all, and the amount of writing I got done was unbelievable [laughs] because what I tend to do with Twitter – so I’ll be writing, writing, writing, and then if I hit a difficult point I just think, ‘oh, I’ll leave that and see what’s happening on Twitter’. And then I spend an hour scrolling through Twitter. I mean, it’s just such a time suck and for no productive reason [Chloe and Jenni both agree]. For me, anyway, Chloe, because you’re a content creator, I don’t really create content for Twitter, I more consume other people’s content and most of the time, it’s a lot of crap [Chloe laughs]. So if you’re just scrolling…

Chloe: Yeah. Oh, I agree. I agree. And I was just thinking there, I was like, I wish I had your restraint because… [Jenni: me too!] I just find it really hard to get away from it once I’ve started. I agree with all the negative points, it’s just there’s so many people on there that are funny or I enjoy. And this is me who uses it for books and writing, I try to stay away – of course I read the political stuff or whatever else is going on – but there is a corner of it, you can create the bubble, let’s say, that you want to create, but then you have the danger that it’s so addictive. They make social media addictive, that’s the whole point of it. But then you don’t get any writing done, which is the downside. And yes, I think I need to take a leaf out of Elissa’s book and actually do some writing rather than just scrolling Twitter and seeing what everyone else is doing! Plus, I also think there are days where if I’m not writing and I’m looking at Twitter and I’m seeing people announcing book deals or their next exciting book, or their book’s doing brilliantly, I just then start to feel really guilty that I’m not writing. And I just start to think, ‘God, this is not going to be me because you’re not actually writing, you’re just on Twitter’. So there is that side of it as well.

Jenni: Also, sorry, I was just thinking, it’s valuable because what we do is quite a lonely profession, we are stuck at home. I work from home, largely doing all my writing. And I can find that three days go past and I’ve gone nowhere, probably not even out of my house [laughs], which is not good because I want to have experiences to be able to write about them [laughs]. I mean, that’s the whole point of being a writer, interacting with people. But I do think there’s a side where some people actually get a lot out of social media because they are housebound, or they live abroad, or they live somewhere where it’s very difficult for them to meet the author or reading community. And I think that is a very nice and sometimes underrated side of social media [Chloe agrees], it’s connecting people [Elissa: yes]. As long as you’re in control of those connections – I think that is quite important.

Elissa: And sticking with positive things about social media, I do think it has made the publishing industry – for example, because that’s the one we’re interested in – more accessible. When I was younger – I mean, I’m not from any sort of publishing background, writing background, anything like that – I just wouldn’t even have known – let’s say I did finish a novel, which I never did, but let’s say I did finish a novel. I would have had no idea what came next. An agent, publisher, where to go, who to send it to, nothing [Chloe agrees]. Whereas now, if you look on Twitter, you can be scrolling for the best part of an hour, and you could come up with three or four agents who are interested in whatever it is you’ve written or who potentially could be interested. You can find other new writers that you can engage with, and you can find publishers who are open to submissions. You can find journals that are open, you can find competitions that you can enter. So these are all positive things. So I don’t say there’s nothing positive about social media, but in terms of how I use it, I don’t really think that publishers require it.

Jenni: I was going to say, you said more accessible, but also more accountable, it’s making publishers more accountable. So if you think back to 30 years ago when authors were really totally isolated, we are now talking to each other [Chloe agrees]. We’re talking to each other in group forums, in private chats. We’re connecting with people. There are places we can go if, say, I don’t know, your agent isn’t replying to your emails. You know, ‘is this normal? Should I expect this from my agent?’ Even talking finances, which is something that is our personal business, is your publisher offering you a fair deal? Is that the going rate? It’s things like that, I think, that social media has connected people and forced, I have to say ‘forced’, the industry to be more transparent. That is only a good thing for authors.

Elissa: Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Charlie: What can next go here? I’ve got a list [Chloe chuckles]. Let’s see. Oh, actually, yeah, okay. What’s the best reader or fan encounter you’ve had?

Chloe: For me, I’ve had some lovely encounters with readers and messages and things, but one of my favourites was a young woman from Australia who live-Instagrammed – I suppose you would say – her experience of reading my book and was taking photos of her face with tears running down it and passages of the novel where she’d highlighted. And then when she finished the book, she sent me a picture of her tear-stained face with her thumbs up [Elissa laughs] and I was just like, this is the best kind of response I could ever hope for [Jenni: aww]. So, yeah, I’ve saved that picture of her crying face with her thumbs up to my computer just to remind me that there are people out there who really appreciate my work. And I would have to say as well, going to festivals and literary events is amazing. And if anyone gets the opportunity to go to them, even as a fan or a reader and not a writer, they are just the most wonderful experiences to be around – people who love books as much as you – but as a writer, to have people come up to you and say, ‘oh, I loved your book, and I stayed up till 03:00 AM’, or there was one girl that showed me her battered copy and said, ‘I’ve got 80 pages left and as soon as this is over, I’m going to go and read them and please don’t tell me the ending!’ and all that sort of stuff. And that’s when it feels real. That’s when it feels like, okay, my book has done something and moved someone in some way, and it’s not just that thing that’s living in my head or as a file on my computer, and that’s what’s the most special part, I think.

Jenni: I wouldn’t say there’s a standout fan encounter for me, but it is just this wonderful feeling that these readers think I’m special when I really don’t feel that I am [laughs]. So I think, for example, at a private party, it was a ruby wedding anniversary and some woman came up to me in the buffet queue and said, ‘are you Jenni Keer? I’ve read your book’, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, wow – that for me was really weird to be recognised because we’re unlike other ‘celebrities’ in inverted commas; we’re not associated with our product. Like, if you’re a TV star, everybody knows what you look like, an actor on Coronation street or whatever, even a musician, you would know their face. And we have a kind of an anonymity [Elissa: Thank god! Chloe laughs] you might see inside the cover of the book; we’re not really known. So it’s lovely to be at, an event or, like as Chloe says, at a book festival or something, and people, like I say, they make me feel like I’m special. They feel intimidated – I can tell from their body language, and it’s like, ‘oh, wow, you’re Jenni Keer’, and that is wonderful, but at the same time, I am just me. And it’s very much this – if I can do it, and I am just an ordinary mum of four, you know, living in the middle of the Suffolk countryside – if I can do it, you can do it. And that feeling that they are somehow, you know, in awe of me, is wonderful. Yeah, it’s wonderful, but totally undeserved [laughs].

Charlie: Well, I don’t know. I disagree with that. Yeah.

Jenni: Well, there you go. [Charlie and Jenni laugh.]

Elissa: I don’t have any fans apart from my mum; we can’t really count her [Jenni laughs]. So I completely misunderstood this question; I thought this question was, ‘who have we seen, you know, that we are fans of?’ So I’m just gonna answer like that. So I don’t know if you know quite a famous Scottish author called Janice Galloway? I don’t know if you know her? She’s very highly critically acclaimed here in Scotland. Anyway, her most famous novel, I think, is The Trick Is To Keep Breathing. Anyway, highly recommend if you haven’t read it. So I was in Tesco Extra in Uddingston, and who did I see but Janice Galloway! And the only reason I know what she looks like is because I happened to be a lecture that she was giving in Edinburgh on Muriel Spark a couple of weeks earlier, so I knew exactly who it was. So I went up to her, and I said ‘hello, hello’. However, it all went downhill because, did I say, ‘I really love your writing’? Did I say, ‘you’ve been such an influence on me’? [Chloe chuckles.] No, I said, ‘I read your short story collection, it’s full of typos.’ [Charlie chuckles.] And I don’t know where that… I mean, it is full of typos. And she agreed with me. But why, why would I?… I don’t know why that was the first thing that I thought of to say. So then we had a conversation about copy editing and how to spot typos in your books. Nothing at all about how inspiring she is, how fantastic a writer she is. And then I just walked away.

Charlie: Janice, if you’re listening, Elissa really, really likes your books [Charlie and Elissa laugh].

Elissa: Her husband came over actually, and said in sort of a deadpan voice, ‘is this a fan?’ And I think she thought, probably not really [laughs].

Charlie: Well, Elissa, in terms of you saying you don’t have fans, I’ve had you on my podcast. I really liked your book. I know Chloe’s had you on her podcast. I think she likes your book!

Chloe: Yeah, I know you’ve definitely got fans [everyone chuckles], but I don’t know how many reviews; I can’t go and check the number now, but there are definitely a fair few on there as well.

Elissa: Oh, that’s kind. And actually there was the day that I was walking to Gregg’s for my cappuccino and when I got to Uddingston Cross, somebody shouted out a car window, ‘I’m listening to Ginger And Me on audio!’

Chloe: Oh, amazing. So there we go. You do have fans. In fact, my mum read your book and she really enjoyed it. So, she’s a fan.

Elissa: Oh, thank you! [Chloe laughs] Oh, that’s made my day, Chloe, that’s lovely to know. Thank you.

Charlie: Jenni, have you read Ginger And Me?

Jenni: I’m afraid I haven’t, but I shall look it out! [Jenni and Chloe chuckle.]

Charlie: I think you’d really enjoy it, so there you go, Elissa, there’s three fans just here, for you [Charlie and Chloe chuckle.]

Elissa: Aww, we’re a team now [Charlie and Chloe chuckle].

Charlie: So, okay, if you could have written somebody else’s book, which book would you choose?

Chloe: Wow, that is a hard question, but I don’t know, I feel a bit mean trying to steal someone else’s book now, but, well, actually, I’m going to change my mind now. I’m going to change my answer. There’s a book that came out last year by Eliza Clark, called Penance – I don’t know whether anyone’s read it?

Elissa: No, I haven’t, but I’ve heard of it.

Chloe: Oh, my goodness, it’s incredible. Because what I love about it is that it’s kind of pretending to tell the true story. And you get snippets of girls diaries that they’ve kept on Tumblr, online, and you get different versions of the same event. And it’s about a horrific crime, but it’s told as if it’s true, and it’s just amazingly constructed. And as I said, I don’t think I could write a crime novel, but it wasn’t a whodunnit, it was more just exploring the psychology of female friendship groups when they’re teenagers and incredibly written. And I don’t think I could ever have written it, but it’s amazing. And it’s one of those books where you read and you’re like, ‘maybe I should try writing a book like this’. Then you think, ‘oh, no, it’s too hard!’ [Chloe and Elissa chuckle.]

Jenni: I wouldn’t say there’s any book I wish I’d written, because I wouldn’t have written it the same, just by virtue of me being me and the author being them. I think I quite often read a book or see a book advertised and the concept blows me away and I think, ‘darn it, I wish I thought of that!’ And it’s what we all search for, isn’t it? It’s that one line elevator pitch, that hook, that incredible ‘what if?’ scenario. And as somebody who’s always looking to subvert things and looking for a little something twisty, turny, to put into my books, yeah, I do quite often think, ‘oh, that’s incredible!’ Not a book, but, for example, The Lake House, the film with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, all of these time travel, twisty things that we’ve had in the history of fiction – and then to just have, what was it, a two year gap or something, was just genius! It’s like, okay, she’s not communicating with somebody from 100 years ago, she’s communicating with somebody from two or three years ago. That is genius! That is so clever. And obviously gives rise to -won’t spoil it for anybody that hasn’t seen it [Chloe chuckles] – but gives rise to some really interesting twists in the film. So it’s more the concepts where I think to myself, ‘oh, my gosh, I wish I’d thought of that’. But then that sets my little author brain ticking, and then I start trying to subvert things around it and similar to it. And it’s been said many times, we are magpies, we look for the shiny things around us in the world and we bring them back to our nests. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. You know, we’re not copying other people, but things are sparkling ideas. We’re seeing things and thinking, ‘what if?’ So there isn’t a book that I wish I’d written because that isn’t how it works. Even if you gave me the synopsis for a book and asked me to go and write it, I would write a completely different novel, I just would, because even with the same framework, like you say, it’s voice and humour and how we describe things in our prose. So, yes, concepts for me.

Elissa: I agree with you, Jenni – there isn’t a book that I… I think that’s a wee bit like people asking, what is your favourite book? Isn’t it? And that for me, changes over time and depending on how I’m feeling. So there isn’t a specific book. You were saying for you, it’s concepts. For me, it’s if I read particularly good writing, I’m not really that bothered about what the – not that I’m not bothered about what the plot is, but I don’t find myself being envious of a plot. But I find myself sometimes being envious of other writers’ ability to articulate what it is that they’re wanting to say. I’m particularly interested in reading about relationships, not just romantic, all sorts of relationships, you know, just the way that we relate to each other. The conflicts, the tensions, the compromises. I just find that fascinating. So if I read prose where the author has really got inside the intricacies of a relationship and how things are working, I just think, oh, that’s phenomenal. I wish I could do that.

Charlie: What is the best writing advice you’ve ever been given?

Elissa: Find your own voice. I’d written two novels before my debut, which I knew really weren’t working, and I couldn’t really put my finger on why. And it’s because, as we were saying at the start of this recording, I was trying to be somebody else. I was trying to tell stories I thought should be written in a particular way. And it was only really when I started to write as myself in my own voice – which is, I would say, contemporary subject matter with a dark humour – only when I started to do that did I achieve anything like authenticity. And that’s because somebody said to me, ‘look, you really need to find your own voice’. And I’ve always carried that with me and I do always think, ‘is this unique to me? Is this my voice speaking here?’ And I think for any writer, it’s not easy to find your own voice. And it probably won’t come when you first start writing. You just have to keep writing and keep experimenting until you find it. And once you find it, use it.

Jenni: Yeah, again, I wouldn’t say that there’s a best bit of advice. There’s so much advice out there and so much of it I’ve taken on board, but the one that springs to mind today, I think is finish the book. Because I’m passionate about supporting emerging writers. I want to encourage people, I want people to persevere. I really want them to know that if you want it badly enough, you will get there in the end. And one of the things, when I’m talking to aspiring authors, that I see happen quite a lot, or they tell me it happens quite a lot, is the number of unfinished novels they’ve got when they’re starting out. So they’ll have shiny new idea, they will write 20,000 words. ‘Oh, it’s going to be amazing!’ You know, we all have this vision of what the final book will be [laughs] when we start out and then it starts to get a bit sticky and things don’t go quite how you planned and the characters aren’t doing what you want because you’ve got to be true to the characteristics that you set them up with to begin with. It all gets very, very difficult. And then, what’s that over there? Oh, that’s a shiny new idea. Oh, let’s go and start that shiny new idea because that’s going to be so much better than the book I’m writing and it’s got a bit hard at 20,000 words, so I’ll shelve that, open a new document and I’ll start new book. And I’m really passionate about encouraging writers to finish that first book. Great, if you’ve got another idea, note some things down about it, start little documents so that you don’t forget what you’ve got and come back to it. And, yeah, that’ll be bubbling away in your brain whilst you’re writing the first one. But please, please, finish that first book. For so many reasons – I think it’s quite common with authors, we get to the sticky middle, we want to abandon it. It’s not turned out how we think it’s going to look. I always think of those Pinterest pictures where you’re trying to emulate some fantastic wedding cake and it turns out like a lopsided sponge. We get to the point where we are writing a lopsided sponge, but if you keep going, you can add tiers to it, you can ice it, it will look beautiful. And the whole process of finishing a book, of wrestling through these problems, of finding a plot problem that seems unsurmountable, but actually, if you persevere, you can write round it. Of learning how to edit, of having an ending, of tying everything up and having written 80-100,000 words with a beginning, middle and end, and then realising [laughs], rather disturbingly, that that isn’t the end because you then got to go back and edit it and make it even better. I think that is such an invaluable learning curve. It’s very unlikely to be the book that gets picked up by a publisher, which is awfully tragic, because there’s an element where you think, I’ve written all of that and no one’s even gonna buy it! But I think you need to finish a complete book, because then you have learned so much from that process.

Elissa: Jenni, can I just jump in there with a practical tip? I completely agree with you and what you’re saying – a practical way that somebody told me, and it seems so obvious that probably everybody is already aware of it, but I certainly wasn’t; I agree that when you’re writing a novel and you come to this sticky plot point or you don’t know what your characters are doing or whatever, the temptation is just to abandon it all together and start something else. Somebody said to me that what to do then is just put in a placeholder. So let’s say, you want your characters to get to a certain place, and they have to be there by midnight, and you don’t know how to get them there, but you know what’s going to happen after midnight. So put in the placeholder from here to midnight, and then carry on after midnight, and then before you know it, you’ve got most of your novel with little gaps, and then you can go back and fill in those gaps.

Jenni: Absolutely.

Elissa: You don’t have to write your novel chronologically, which is what I thought you had to do initially, which was why I had so many failed attempts [laughs].

Jenni: I was just going to say that, you don’t have to write chronologically. And now I say, ‘finish the novel’. I’m not dictating how you can do that. And I’m not a chronological writer, generally, but I try and write it chronologically, if it makes sense. But like you say, if I’m really getting stuck, I’ll jump ahead to a scene that’s so much more fun to write that I really know where I’m going with it, and if I need a massive chunk of research doing, and I don’t have the time or access to whatever I might need to research that particular section, yeah, absolutely agree with you, Elissa, yeah.

Chloe: My advice is just quite simple. Read your work aloud, particularly the dialogue, because that’s where you’ll hear sentences that don’t sound quite right. You’ll hear dialogue that just doesn’t sound like natural dialogue. Sometimes I’ve read books where the name of the character is used often in the dialogue, so it’ll be, ‘Hi, Charlie. How are you today, Charlie? [Elissa laughs.] Did you hear about that drama down the road, Charlie?’ And we’re guilty of that.

Elissa: Absolutely [Chloe laughs].

Chloe: This is not a call out for you, Elissa, don’t worry [Elissa laughs]. But people don’t use names in dialogue very often. And if you can avoid doing it, then it just sounds much more natural. I think I had some advice where it said we often use people’s names if we want to persuade them to do something. That’s often when we use it. Or I guess when we’re probably unsure or want their help or something. But yeah, reading your work aloud helps massively. When I heard my audiobook version of my novel was when it came alive for me. But I think if there had been any dodgy parts to the novel where I thought, ‘oh, I would rewrite that again’, the audiobook would have highlighted that for me, I think. And so I think if you can read it aloud before it gets to that point, you’ll find the bits that just don’t read as well. That would be my advice.

Elissa: Yeah.

Charlie: Excellent. So, Chloe, first, how much, etcetera, can you tell us about what you’re writing at the moment [Chloe chuckles], what might see the light of day, etcetera?

Chloe: Oh, difficult to say. As I said, I’m working on two different things. One of them is a rom-com. And yeah, it’s new territory for me, but I’m really enjoying it. I have no idea if/when it will see the light of day, because I’m quite a slow writer, I have to say. But I have a fantastic agent who has foreseen lots of exciting things in the future. But I can’t really say too much because I don’t know what’s going to happen in terms of what’s going to stay, what’s going to go, what’s going to be bought, what’s not going to be bought. All I can say is that there will be future books. I just can’t tell you what they are yet! [Elissa chuckles.]

Charlie: That’s the most important thing [Chloe chuckles]. Jenni, what are you writing at the moment?

Jenni: I’m editing my October book. And, just to give away a little bit about my age as well, I have got menopause brain [laughs] I’m absolutely really struggling. And this is when it’s not fun. So I’ve written the book and I’m trying to do some structural edits, and I am spending 2 hours trying to sort one paragraph out. And I can’t do that, I don’t have the time to do that. It’s just proving really, really tricky. So, a little bit of witchcraft and some Gothic vibes thrown in there, set in the 1880s, but let’s just hope that the brain flop – the brain fog – has cleared quite quickly to enable me to actually [chuckles] polish it, as I would wish.

Charlie: I’m kind of glad you said that because I think that’s important information to get that out there for people, isn’t it? Elissa, how is Graffiti Girls?

Elissa: It’s out on the 7th November [Charlie: yay!]. So it’s a novel about four women who hit their forties – in fact, you might relate to this, Jenni, well as you can see from my face, I also relate to it [Jenni laughs]. Four women who hit their forties and they’ve been lifelong friends and they realise when you look around them that actually life is not as great as we were promised when we were at school for women in their forties and older. And so they decide to embark upon a graffiti campaign in their local town where they graffiti anti-patriarchy slogans all over the walls to draw attention to these issues that are annoying them. So that’s my second novel and then my third novel, which I wrote in six weeks quite easily – no, I’m just kidding, Jenni!

[The following three lines happen at once.]

Jenni: [Laughs.] Ahh, you had me there!

Chloe: You made me die! You made me die when you said that!

Charlie: [Laughs.]

Elissa: No, it took me four, I’m just kidding – no [laughs], last week I submitted it to my publisher, so I’m highly delighted about that. And it’s in the same sort of world as Ginger And Me – in fact, you can tell your mum, Chloe, that Wendy makes a wee guest appearance – and it’s really a love letter to the lonely, the lovelorn, the misfits of this world. And all the action takes place on allotments round and about Uddingston. So that is due out the following year, or next year, it is now, yeah, next November. So, yeah, busy, busy.

Charlie: Wonderful. Thank you all, listeners for listening to us. And Elissa, Jenni, and Chloe, this has been an absolute pleasure having you back on the podcast here today. It has been lovely, I’m really glad you all said yes. Thank you for being here.

Jenni: Thank you for having us.

Chloe: Thanks, Charlie.

Elissa: Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been a great chat.

[Recorded later] Charlie: The Worm Hole Podcast Milestone episode 3 was recorded on the 7th March and published on the 15th July 2024. Music and production by Charlie Place.

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