Celebrating 100 episodes of this podcast, Charlie is Joined by Liz Fenwick, Emma Cowell, Ronali Collings, and Tammye Huf, for a general bookish chat. We start off with an excellent conversation on the industry’s use of ‘women’s fiction’ when the genderless ‘commercial fiction’ would do very well.

Please note there is one use of ‘damn’ in this episode.

General references:
Leonard Cohen’s Bird On A Wire
The ‘Women in Love’ panel Liz was on was part of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2015
The Constant Gardener (film)
Desert Island Discs
Escape To The Country

Books mentioned by name or extensively:
Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
Elissa Soave: Ginger And Me
Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights
Emma Cowell: One Last Letter From Greece
Emma Cowell: the House In The Olive Grove
Emma Cowell: The Island Love Song
John Le Carré: The Constant Gardener
Kate Atkinson: Life After Life
Liz Fenwick: One Cornish Summer
Liz Fenwick: The Secret Shore
Paul Auster: The Brooklyn Follies
Paul Auster: The New York Trilogy
Ronali Collings: All The Single Ladies
Sarah Winman: A Year Of Marvellous Ways
Tammye Huf: A More Perfect Union

Buy the books: UK || USA

Release details: Recorded 6th May 2024; published 5th August 2024

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

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

Where to find Ronali online: Website || Twitter || Instagram

Where to find Tammye online: Website || Twitter || Instagram

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

Discussions

04:02 What is your genre? (The authors discuss labels in terms of gender expectations and marketing in this vein.)
08:25 How do you books do overseas?
10:40 If you wrote in another genre, which would it be?
15:14 If your book was turned into a film or TV show, who would you want cast in it?
20:33 If you could’ve written someone else’s book, whose would you choose? (Some interesting discussions on individual writing styles here.)
26:01 What is the best fan or reader encounter you’ve had?
31:50 What do you wish you’d known before you became a published author? (Turns into a longer conversation about the difficulty of writing to a deadline.)
41:28 Can you remember any particularly interesting fact that you discovered in your research that couldn’t be included in the book?
44:54 Tell us about what you’re currently writing

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 fifth and final of the milestone episodes to celebrate episode 100. I’ve enjoyed doing these so much, I’m going to have to have more bonus episodes in the future, watch this space. Before we begin, may I ask you listeners, please do rate and/or review this podcast, if you can, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Podcast Addict. So, I’m your host, Charlie Place, and today I am joined by four authors who I think will make a good group, and I think we’ll get them to introduce themselves so you can get an idea for their voices straight away.

Liz: I’m Liz. I write books set in Cornwall, and my most recent book, The Secret Shore, has two covers, depending on where you buy it from. It is full of intrigue, espionage, and passion, and it tells the story of the secret flotillas that left the Helford river during the war and provided a vital link to France for people and information. But more importantly to me, it tells the story of the map girls, the many women who worked in geography and have been unsung for their role helping the war effort in World War Two.

Emma: Hi, I’m Emma Cowell, and my third novel has just been published; so my debut, One Last Letter From Greece, The House In The Olive Grove, and my latest, The Island Love Song. As you might be able to tell from the titles, they’re all set in Greece – which I’m having a long term love affair with – and all of my stories are love stories from women’s point of view. And there’s also loss, family secrets, and my latest is set on the beautiful island of Hydra and is about two sisters who are dragged back there and forced to confront their past. And one sister is haunted by a love song that changes everything.

Tammye: Hi, I am Tammy Huf. I am the author of A More Perfect Union. A More Perfect Union is about Henry O’Toole, who leaves Ireland during the Irish famine. He comes to America during the period of American slavery. He meets Sarah, who is an enslaved woman in Virginia. And the too fall in love. And therein lies the problem, because, of course, at that time, that was illegal and dangerous and just not a thing that could happen in that society. And so it follows their story, and their story is inspired, actually, by the real life story of my great-great-grandparents. He was from Ireland, and she was enslaved, and they met and fell in love, and he bought her freedom to marry her. And so A More Perfect Union is then inspired by their story and is an imagination of what that could have been for them.

Ronali: And I’m Ronali Collings, and I’m the author of All The single Ladies, which is a character-driven book about three women who are older. Two of them are in their forties and they’re best friends, and one of them is in her sixties. And they’re all looking for love on their own terms. And it’s really a book about second chances and second chance at love. And it’s also looking at the dynamics of families, particularly a mixed race relationship. The reason I wrote the book was because I don’t really see people like me; I’m a British Asian woman represented in commercial fiction – it’s usually really the stuff of literary fiction. And I wanted to write a love story, love stories about women who looked like me, because it’s not something that I ever grew up with. And particularly for older women, where often when you get past the age of 40, you’re expected to just desiccate in a corner [chuckles], and we have full, rich lives, which include love. And I didn’t want us to be left out of that story. So that’s why I wrote that book.

Charlie: So what is your genre and what does it do? What is it for? Who wants to start?

Liz: I’ll start.

Charlie: Go for it, Liz.

Liz: My genre is commercial fiction. I refuse to be pinpointed any more than that. This last book has been historical fiction, I have written dual timeline and I have written contemporary. I was batted on the head by Charlie Hickson one time when I said I wrote women’s fiction, and he said, ‘no, excuse me, you write fiction. Do not put yourself in a box like that’. So I write commercial fiction!

Emma: I love that. I think it’s really hard because I’m early in my journey compared to Liz, who’s been a real mentor and supports me as I battle my way through this lonely authoring lark. But I think when you begin, you’re encouraged to put yourself in a genre, so when you’re trying to get an agent and then when you’re out in submission to publishers, you have to describe what box you’re writing in, and so you have to put yourself there. And as you learn, there are these snobberies then in the world about romantic fiction, women’s fiction, and then you don’t know really what to say for the best when someone asks the question, that you’ve just asked Charlie, you think, ‘I don’t know what to say’. So I’m going to copy what Liz says from now on. But I think it’s really difficult because people are making a judgement about your response to that.

Tammye: Yeah, that’s interesting and that’s well said, commercial fiction. So for me, I think it’s easier to say historical fiction because it’s set in the past. And then beyond that is when it gets tricky, because it is obviously based on a love story. So then you get into ‘are we getting into women’s fiction? Are we getting into romance? Are we getting into…’ you know, what are we getting into there? Interestingly, my UK publishers, they’re an independent imprint that publishes literary fiction. They were like, ‘well, we don’t really do commercial. It’s as commercial as we would go,’ because we’re really literary. And in the US, I’m published with a full on, absolutely 100% commercial [laughs] imprint. I think a lot of that is the interpretation of whoever is reading it. If you read it and you’re pulling out of this, ‘oh, I’m really connecting with the history, or I’m really connecting with this love story, or I’m really feeling the commercial elements of it,’ or not. I think so much of what we write is determined by how the readers receive it.

Ronali: I’d have to agree with everyone, to be honest. I think that for me, I write commercial fiction for my publishers, I write women’s commercial fiction. And I don’t want to limit myself in terms of what I’m writing. I mean, I would say I’m probably veering a bit further towards romance in what I’m writing but it’s not your usual type of romance – I don’t know what that is, there’s loads of different types of romance out there, aren’t there? But people do tend to look down on you when you say that you write romances. And even when you say that it’s women’s fiction; I would say I write books that are not that dissimilar – not as good, obviously – as David Nicholls. And you will never hear him being described as writing chick-lit or women’s fiction. It’s just fiction, you know, and I would say I write something very similar. It’s very character driven, it’s about relationships, contemporary relationships. So, yeah, I’ll stick myself in the commercial fiction box as well. I will follow Liz. I think that’s very good advice.

Liz: I think one of the things that struck me, listening to that, you were saying, Tammye, that the reader decides what it is. The problem is the publisher decides first and they put you in that box with the cover and the marketing that they give you so that the book shops know where to put you on the shelves. So it is one of those really interesting things that they try and narrow you down. Historical fiction is a really comfortable thing, because people don’t look down on historical fiction. They look down on women’s fiction, they look down on romance, they look down on any genre. Love stories are kind of okay at the moment, you know [Emma chuckles] and David Nicholls does fabulous love stories. In fact, I sat on a panel at a lit-fest with him, and the title of the lit-fest was called Women In Love, and he does fit very nicely into that same umbrella that we probably all write in, which is relationship stories.

Charlie: Something else Tammye said that isn’t quite on the subject, but still – how do your books do overseas?

Tammye: I mean, for me, the audience is larger in the States than in the UK. I think probably largely because it starts in Ireland, but it is primarily set in the US, and that the history, the period that I’m talking about, is very much identifiable with an American audience. There’s a large Irish-American population that connects with that side of it, and obviously, the African American population is very big in America, connects with the other side of it. So there’s a much more natural connection in the States for my book. So the audience there is definitely larger.

Charlie: I’ll open that question to the rest of you as well.

Liz: I’m a bestseller in Sweden. I earn more money from Sweden than I do from the UK, which is my primary market. Although born in Boston and lived the first 26 years of my life in the States, my books are considered too English for the US market which is fascinating. You would think, because the Germans love Cornwall, that Germany would be my biggest market, but it’s actually Sweden.

Charlie: Goodness. Okay.

Emma: So interesting being unable to predict that. I think, happily, my books are set in Greece, and my debut was published last year in Greek, and this year, my second book has been published in their bestsellers in Greece, which is a huge relief, actually, because I’m writing about a culture that’s not mine, and I do it with the greatest love and respect that I can. So it’s wonderful to have that welcomed. And I’m a bestseller in Malta as well. But I think one of the thrilling things, as you go along your journey, if your agent manages to sell a foreign right to receive your words in another language, it’s just thrilling. So I am seven languages in. Yeah, it’s lovely, and I wish I could speak them all that they’re published in, but yeah, it’s a real treat.

Ronali: I think for me it’s very much a UK market; it’s a very UK-centric book. And just because of the way that it’s been published, digital first, I don’t think that the market overseas has been as large as it is at home. And when I say large, it’s not large, but, you know, people have read my book [Ronali and Emma laugh].

Charlie: Okay, so on genre then. If you wrote in another genre – and obviously you can interpret that however you want, given we’ve had this conversation – but if you wrote in another genre, which would it be?

Liz: Golden age crime.

Charlie: I can see that, yeah.

Liz: Yeah.

Tammye: Contemporary family sagas.

Emma: Psychological crime thrillers, which is such a U-turn [Charlie chuckles], but I’ve got a dark side that’s desperate to leap out and it’s probably healthier to get it out at some point [all chuckle].

Ronali: I think for me it would be fantasy because it would just be quite nice to let go of all of the constraints that I feel that I might have in terms of narrative and to build worlds that are completely different to the ones that we live in. I love that thought and I have tried it. I’m not published in it because clearly I’m rubbish at that [Ronali and Liz chuckle]. That’s the only other thing I would want to write, I think something that’s completely different to what I do now. And I don’t have the discipline to write crime. I don’t have the imagination to write psychological thrillers, I think [chuckles]. Both are really difficult to write. And historical fiction, I certainly do not have the discipline to write and the detail required for that. So I think I would love to just build my own little world and write that.

Emma: I love that, it’s really interesting, Ronali, but the discipline you mentioned, I do not have the process that’s plot-driven. So whilst I may have aspirations to write psychological crime thrillers, I would be a disaster [Ronali laughs] because I’ve got post it notes everywhere. And just today my husband was reading my work in progress, which isn’t finished, and he said, ‘oh, I can’t wait to see what happens next’. And I thought, ‘yeah, me neither, because I haven’t a clue!’ And so that’s the way I roll. So I would be terrible and undisciplined at writing my aspirational genre [Ronali laughs].

Charlie: Right, well, Ronali, I mean, you said you’ve tried fantasy. Have you like, pitched it to anybody or have they read it?

Ronali: Oh, gosh, no. No, no, no. I think it was… I lost my job a few years ago and I was looking after smallish children, I was thinking, ‘what on earth can I do?’ And I thought, I’m just going to write something. And I built this whole world and wrote a fantasy – part of a fantasy novel because my speciality is not finishing writing novels. So I started it and I loved it so much, but it was not good. It’s not where my strength lies. And I think for me, doing my masters was a really good opportunity for me to try lots of different genres. And the one that fitted me the best is the one that I write in now, to be honest. It was the one where my voice was the most natural, and I wanted to write for pleasure. I wanted to write because I have stories to tell, and if I’ve got stories to tell, it should be really the easier way for me rather than something that is a bit forced and other people do a lot better than I do.

Charlie: Liz, have you got a Dorothy Sayers-esque novel in you?

Liz: I probably do [laughs]. The question is when to have the time to write it. But I think I’d probably start out not doing a full length novel in that style. I’d start out with shorter. I’d probably work towards a long short story or a novella to play with it, to see how I could succeed without giving myself the burden of 100,000 plus words in order to achieve it [Charlie agrees]. But I’d love to do that. I’d love that challenge.

Charlie: It would be very, very different. Emma, I’m seeing a book set in Greece in this new genre.

Emma: Oh, what? A crime, psychological thriller in Greece [Charlie: yeah]. Don’t, Charlie, because you’ll start my brain ticking away [everyone laughs] and I will just put down what I’m supposed to be writing and start something else and then get in a terrible state because I can’t plot. So, I mean, I would love to do that, but I think also the historical fiction appeals to me because setting something back in Greece; Greece is fascinating. And where my latest book is set on Hydra, they didn’t have electricity until quite late; when the singer Leonard Cohen was living there and he wrote Bird On A Wire because suddenly there were these electricity wires and there were birds perching on them, so it inspired him to write. So I love going back to an island that has no really basic things like electricity that we take for granted, but that’s island life. And I don’t know how far back I’d go, but that’s more realistic than what I keep talking about and the idea you’ve just given me. So never say never [Liz and Charlie chuckle].

Charlie: All right, so if your book – let’s say, your latest book for ease, but you can also pick something else if you’d prefer – but if your book was to be turned into a film or a TV show, who would you want cast in it?

Liz: Well, to be honest, I’m actually thinking that through because The Secret Shore has just been optioned [Charlie and Tammye exclaim, Liz chuckles]. So I have actually been asked to put together a sort of dream list. But it’s hard. It’s hard to find characters, particularly when you’re looking for historical, that will meet the story, fit the bill and so forth. But I was thinking, if it gets made, because, of course, option is only step one of a very long journey, because the love interest in the story is an American and tall and from the Boston area, I was thinking of, um… god, I’ve gone blank on his name. The actor who played Captain America.

[The next four lines happen at once.]

Tammye: Oh, Chris…

Ronali: Chris Evans.

Liz: Um, Chris…

Tammye: Evans.

Ronali: Chris Evans, yeah.

Emma: Yeah.

Liz: Yes. He could play a rower, so that would be that. But I’ve had trouble trying to cast Merry, trying to find somebody that could be young enough, serious enough. I would put Aidan Turner as John Baker in the book. I’ve had a lot of fun with it [Liz and Emma laugh], so I wish everybody else would have the opportunity. Go ahead. I’ve spoken enough!

Tammye: Well, for me, that’s a relatively easy one for one character. My daughter, as it turns out, is an actor [chuckles] and so I would definitely want to cast her in something, in probably the lead role. Beyond that, I don’t know. I mean, it’s one of those things that you think, yeah, it would be great. And congratulations, that is great, if it’s optioned. But it’s the putting together of all sorts. I think for me, it’s limited. The lead male would have to be Irish, obviously. Clearly. And there are so many great Irish actors out there that I–

Liz: You’re spoiled for choice!

Tammye: Spoiled for choice, exactly. At the end of the day, it’s the producer’s decision, it’s the director’s decision, but, if it were optioned, I would whisper into somebody’s ear to have her audition in it.

Emma: Such a funny concept, isn’t it? Because when you’re writing, you’ve cast everybody in your head, not as, I guess, real life actors, but you see your characters so clearly. And then were one lucky enough to be in Liz’s shoes to have it optioned, producers may have seen your characters differently and have a very clear idea that may not align with who you dreamt up. In a former life I was a journalist at the BBC, and I interviewed John Le Carré and I asked him about how he felt about the casting of The Constant Gardener, and he said precisely that, you’ve furnished every room you write, you know what the paintings are, you know how heavy the chairs are, you know how everyone looks and what their energy is like. And then someone comes along, ‘Hollywood comes calling’, as he said, and they just put it wherever they want with whomever they want. Luckily enough, The Constant Gardener was pretty fantastic and he was very happy with it and was involved on set. But I think it’s interesting when we, as writers, see everything and everyone so clearly, and the reader, they have a very different idea about what everything looks like.

Tammye: Yeah, I think that’s a – sorry, I’m going to jump in before you – I think that’s a really interesting point, because when you create the work, the book, it’s all you. Everything is you and the way that you see it. But then once you give it out into the world, in the first instance, you have the reader’s interpretation of how they see it. And if that reader is the producer or whoever’s optioning the book and they’re seeing this differently than you, then, yeah, it comes out differently. And I think that’s the unique and fascinating thing about film and TV and all of that, because then you get the actor’s interpretation and you get the director’s interpretation, you get the people who do the props – ‘oh, no, no, no. This would look so much better if we did not do what’s in the book, but we did this other thing!’ And you get this, it’s a communal effort, really, that at the end of the day, is similar to your book, but might not be [laughs] exactly what you had in mind.

Ronali: Yeah, I mean, I would have to say it’s not something I’ve given any thought to, particularly because I’m writing the type of book in commercial fiction that you haven’t seen a lot of before in the UK, certainly; people like me weren’t really published that much before, maybe, like the Black Lives Matter movement happened back in 2020. You didn’t see a lot of us in commercial fiction writing contemporary love stories. Equally, you don’t see a lot of people who look like me, who are actors, actresses. So it’s very difficult to really think about it in those terms. I’ve not given it much thought and particularly for the reasons that everyone else is brought up, you know, if my book were to ever be optioned in the same way as once it’s published, it’s no longer yours; you really don’t know what other people are seeing or thinking about when they’re reading it. And so really it would be entirely up to a producer, production company, as to who they wanted to cast. I don’t know whether it would ever get made because it is so very specifically British, and very often these movie producers want to make things very American. So I don’t know how well that would translate. Yeah, so it’s not something I’ve ever really given much thought to.

Charlie: That all sounds very reasonable. If you could have written someone else’s book, which book or whose book would you choose? It is potentially a difficult question.

[The next four lines happen at once.]

Liz: It’s not potentially a difficult question [Charlie laughs].

Ronali: It’s a very difficult question!

Emma: It is!

Liz: It’s a bit like the question, ‘what’s your favourite book?’

Emma: Yeah.

Liz: It depends on the day, the hour, the minute.

Tammye: Yeah, I think there are far too many books that I would love to have written to say, ‘this is the book I would love to have written’. And as Liz is saying, you read a book and it captures you. Oh, yes! And then the next week you read another book and you think, [high pitched and laughing] oh, yes! And then comes the next book. So there’s so many. I mean, there are so, so many great books out there that resonate with you on different levels. And some you think, ‘yeah, that was good’. And so I think, for me, it’s every single book that I have responded to with, [with feeling] ‘oh! That was so good!’ Rather than, ‘yeah, I like that’. All of the really, really emphatic, ‘ahh!’ books I would love to have written.

Emma: I agree.

Tammye: But I also know there are so many of those books that I, me, Tammye would never have written [Ronali agrees]. Like, my brain either won’t go that way or, I never would have come up with this concept or, you know, I’ve learned so much reading this book, it has opened my mind to things or, you know, I’ve just loved these characters and the way this other writer has conceived it and has thought about it, because I suppose you just really enjoy the minds of other writers when you’re reading, enjoy the things that you yourself didn’t do and maybe would never have done. And I suppose that’s part of the pleasure of reading for me. So I would love to have written so many books [Tammye and Emma laugh].

Emma: I think it’s that thing, it is about how you’re feeling. And recently, with the news that Paul Auster died, I went back to my shelf with all of his novels and picked them back up again. And the first time I read Brooklyn Follies or the New York Trilogy, it felt like life had changed forever. And so I wanted to go and revisit that. But also thinking about when I was at school, about the first time I read Wuthering Heights, the noise that Tammye made, that noise I made. I just thought this love affair, this brutal, awful, dysfunctional, love, all-consuming, passionate affair with Heathcliff and Cathy, that obviously has resonated for me to write about love and relationships way down the line. But I think all of those books that make you have an emotional and a physical response to those books, I couldn’t pull out one. Impossible.

Ronali: Yeah, I think I’m going to sound equally unoriginal because you do have a visceral reaction to the type of book that you honestly, probably, could never write yourself. That’s when you think, ‘oh, my God, I wish I could write like this’. There’s so many books that I read where I go back again and I get my highlighter pen out and I highlight these things. Like I’m ever going to look at that again! You know [Liz and Emma chuckle], it’s just like, I really appreciate this beautiful writing, and there’s so many authors across so many different styles and genres and time frames, I couldn’t possibly narrow it down. You know, I always think those poor people – poor people – who get invited onto Desert Island Discs, how on earth did they narrow that down to ten tracks that are so special to them at special times of their lives, at pivotal moments of their lives? I could not possibly do that for music or for a book. I couldn’t. There’s just so many books out there that I’ve absolutely loved. I would say for me, often I read these short lists of prizes, like the Women’s Prize or the Booker Prize lists. I find some of those titles really quite difficult for me to read quickly [laughs]. But, I read those and I go, ‘oh, my God, these are people who are amazing. I’m never going to write like this.’ So those are the people that I wish I could write like, but I couldn’t tell you who, particularly, because I couldn’t possibly narrow that down to one or two people. They’re generally books that I have a visceral reaction to. And I think, as you just said, Emma, I feel like it’s life changing sometimes. Like, I remember reading Jane Eyre, and because I am just very basic, like most people, I sat there and thought, ‘oh, God, this is me! I’m an only child. Here I am sitting reading quietly alone on a gloomy Sunday evening, and I am Jane Eyre. I’m so put upon!’ Everybody has those moments and yeah, I think I was about nine or ten when that happened. But there are moments there that you read books and you think, ‘yeah, this is something that I love. I love being in this other world’, and people who can create that – all of you – you all create these worlds that people want to live in. So I would never narrow it down to one person, or even two or even ten.

Liz: I can say exactly what they said. But while people were talking, I was thinking, there are probably two writers in particular that I would like to write like. Sarah Winman wrote The Year Of Marvellous Ways. The prose in that was so utterly beautiful, the magic realism, it transported me. It was phenomenal. The other person is Kate Atkinson. Her Life After Life – she broke every damn rule in that book and it worked beautifully. And both of those writers made me feel. So, yes, those would be two of the books, I mean, I could probably go on to list 100, but any book that evokes emotion in me, that’s what I’d do.

Charlie: That’s actually the one book by Kate Atkinson I’ve read [Charlie and Liz chuckle]. So I can relate to that one. So what is the best reader or fan encounter you’ve had?

Tammye: Well, I’ve got a bizarre fan/reader encounter story in that, because the book is based on family history and the family is a bit larger, and [chuckles] I’m way out here in the UK and have been for a quarter of a century… at any rate, my mother’s cousin, who she hadn’t seen since she was a child, was in a bookstore in the States, in Florida – my mother lives in Virginia – and she was picking up books on a table and she turned one over and read the back blurb, which was my book. And she’s reading it and she’s like, ‘who is this woman who is writing about my family?’ [Ronali and Liz laugh.] And so she starts calling all the cousins, finding out what’s going on here, and eventually she realises it’s me. And so, yeah, that was a fun reader experience that actually, through that, wound up having this whole little reunion of all the cousins who hadn’t seen each other in decades. And so that’s kind of a bizarre one, but a reader experience nonetheless. And certainly of all of the different – and there have been lots of different little fun reader experiences – but that’s definitely been the most meaningful for me.

Liz: Well, having written nine books, there’ve been a few along the way. The most recent one was a reader in Canada who saw me on Escape To The Country and then read my backlist. And she read, in particular, One Cornish Summer, which is the worst title ever. And it deals with early onset Alzheimer’s, and her husband had that and died from it. And her email made me cry in the middle of the Hall For Cornwall as I read it. She had never seen it portrayed so honestly and so truthfully, and particularly as the book is partially told from the person who has early onset. And she watched it as her husband went through the whole thing. And that was incredibly meaningful to me because I was writing about my best friend’s sister and to realise that I got it right, you know? And this book was published years ago. It was published in 2017. So finding a new reader and her finding her life on a page of a book and portrayed in a way that she felt validated, what she went through and everything else, was incredibly moving.

Emma: Mine’s in a similar vein that I had an email from a reader that made me cry. And it was after my debut, One Last Letter From Greece, was published. I didn’t have any expectations about receiving communications from readers, it wasn’t something I was prepared for, nor was it something I had even considered. And although I do write about beautiful Greece and love and friendship and relationships, there are women’s issues within that as well that are quite hard-hitting. And one of the strands in One Last Letter is about infertility and child loss. And two friends are supporting each other, one is going through an IVF journey. And a reader emailed me and said that the female friendship inspired her so much, and she’d had multiple miscarriages, three rounds of unsuccessful IVF, and she hadn’t ever told any of her friends because of this stigma and this shame and this taboo about assisting fertility. And she felt so inspired by the female friendship and support they were able to give each other, that she had told her friends, and she was just about to start her fourth round of IVF, and her friends were coming with her to all the various appointments that they divided those up; and she suddenly had a network of support that she just could have had, but felt too ashamed to reach out to. And that was heartbreaking because I wrote that element from my own personal experience of unsuccessful IVF and the network of support that I had gotten me through that repeated disappointment, and my heart broke for her, that she had gone through that alone, I couldn’t imagine. And so I thought, well, if that is all that book achieves, I feel pretty great about that. So I’m really happy for her.

Charlie: That’s lovely.

Ronali: For me, I’ve not had an awful lot of feedback, to be honest, because I turned myself into a hermit quite soon after my book was published! But I’ve had some feedback from people that I didn’t expect would read my book. So I always think that my book is probably for maybe more mature, older people, but because I have teenage – well, one is no longer a teenager, but one that’s clinging on to teenage years – teenage children who get their friends to buy my book [Charlie chuckles], some of the reactions I’ve had from them have been really gratifying and really nice to realise how much my book can carry across a generation like that, and that they have seen those issues and they understand what I’m talking about. And I have got an LGBTQ relationship in my book as well, so I had quite a lot of positive feedback with regard to that. So that’s probably the most meaningful encounter. I mean, I mentioned earlier, I think when we were talking earlier, how many people say that they picked up my book and they didn’t expect to enjoy it. Often I’m not sure how to take that [Ronali and Liz laugh], but the positive that comes out of that is that they did enjoy it, but I think a lot of that had to do with the cover, I think they weren’t really expecting it to be as hopeful and joyful as it is. I think they were probably expecting a lot more of the tragedy that normally accompanies the type of narrative that people might expect from the cover of my book. So those are really the experiences I’ve had. I wouldn’t call them fans, but I would call them very kind people who spent their money on my book and read it [Ronali and Charlie chuckle].

Charlie: What do you wish you’d have known before you became a published author?

Liz: How little it pays. [Laughs.]

Charlie: That’s a very good answer. Yeah.

Liz: Yeah.

Tammye: Yeah, no, I did know that [Tammye and Emma laugh]. I did start this late enough in the game; I did know that [laughs].

Emma: How hard it is to write a whole novel and then do it again and then again and then again, and not lose your mind. I guess the contractual thing, it doesn’t take the joy out of it, it just changes your timelines and your schedules. So making yourself be creative is impossible. You can’t sit down, ‘right, I have to be creative today. Go.’ It doesn’t work like that. And I think that’s the thing that I’m finding hard four books in that I’m writing right now, is that sort of hamster wheel of creativity in finding the space to breathe and relax and then go back in again. So that’s a real challenge. But, yes, what Liz said.

Ronali: I think, for me, following on from what you were just saying, Emma, it was the contractual element of it. On one hand, you are incredibly fortunate to have a contract for more than one book. On the other hand, I found it really very difficult to write the second book. And I wish that I had known how much creative licence I had as the author. You know, I had completely forgotten about that. I had submitted a synopsis of this so-called second book and I felt that I had to stick to it. And I think, as everyone here knows, very often the book that turns out at the end bears very little resemblance to the synopsis that you had thought about when you first started writing. And that certainly happened to me with the second book. And with my second book, also I had quite a lot of life happen during that time, when my dad was really ill and then died, and I had my kid leaving home and there were just a lot of things happening at once. And I wish I had known that I could have turned around to my publishers and said, ‘this book really isn’t working and I can’t make it, I can’t force my voice out on this book’. And I didn’t do that because I’m a very deadline-driven, goal-oriented person; I produced a book and I sent it to them and they, in the kindest way possible, said, ‘no, this is not what we’re looking for, and it’s not what we thought you could produce’. And I knew that. So if I could go back and tell myself, I would have said, ‘you should have given up on that a lot earlier, and you should have just asked for the time’. And so with this second book that I’ve now written – I wrote a whole book that is now in a drawer – but with this book, I felt much more supported by my publishers because I’ve had other issues that I’ve had to deal with, and my publishers and my agent have been so kind. And really, I would turn around to my old self and say, ‘just be open and honest with people and ask for support, and they’re more than happy to give it to you’. So that’s what I wish I had known a year ago.

Emma: Yeah, totally agree.

Tammye: What do I wish I had known before? I suppose I had seen the world of being published, but from an outsider’s perspective, that I didn’t… you know, some of the things that surprise people, like you don’t make all that much money, that the big seven-figure deals you hear about are really quite few and far between. And the second book deal, things like that, I had taken out of the contract. So I do feel that I went into it very much eyes wide open. Although that said, even now, there are some things that I’m changing [chuckles], sort of negotiating now, that I wish I had had the foresight to say, ‘actually, no, we’re going to write that differently. We’re going to do that differently’, so that now I would have certain freedoms that I’m trying to now negotiate! Yeah, I guess there are still some things, but I do think, generally speaking, I did have a clear eyed view of what I was stepping into.

Liz: You know, people assume that the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etcetera, books are going to be easier, but they never are, because you’re always learning, trying harder. And the thing you were good at in your first novel, by the time you hit your sixth, that’s looking a bit weak because you’ve boned up and become better at other things. So it’s always an ongoing process.

Charlie: Emma.

Emma: I was going to say, I wish I’d possessed such courage. And, yeah, just awareness about what I was stepping into, as Tammye just described. And I think it does get harder. And any authors I speak to who are 20-plus books into their career say it gets harder and harder. So the idea of just removing that it’s going to be hard, and accepting that and not stressing about it takes away a little bit of that anxiety. And I work full time as well as write, and that carving out time to just sit and be in the right frame of mind to be creative, it’s hugely challenging.

Charlie: Well, I’ve obviously not been listening or reading the right interviews – that’s something I’ve not heard, that it gets harder or, after the first book, I suppose I assumed, as a complete non-writer in this respect – only blog posts, it’s nothing like a full book – that it gets harder. I guess I would have guessed it got a bit easier, if anything, or stayed the same, so that’s fascinating.

Liz: A couple of things play into that. One is you have less time [Ronali agrees.] That first book, as has been mentioned, you have a lot of time to get it right, to tweak it, to do all those things, and then you’re in a contractual situation and you have either another book or another two books to write, and your space and time has diminished to this much. So, as Emma was saying, you have to put bum on chair and be creative when there’s nothing about you that’s feeling creative at all; it becomes harder. And because I think we all want to be better all the time, we’re all continually challenging ourselves saying, ‘okay, well, I did this really well in the last book, so the next book I’m going to tackle this and so forth. So it doesn’t get any easier.

Emma: And I guess if you’re writing stand-alone novels, if they’re stand-alone and they don’t follow on, you’ve got to come up with a whole world, a whole bunch of characters with a whole bunch of new problems and the way they interact and what happens if you’re writing something that leads on… I’m sure that is not easier, but at least you’ve got a baseline starting point, starting with that blank page and nothing. And then to get to 100,000 words at the end of the process feels like a mountain and a half.

Tammye: I think there’s also something slightly debilitating about doing well with your first book. So if your first book, it’s been read well and it’s sold well and people are saying great things about it and it’s making some fun lists and what have you, then you think, ‘right, the next time I’m going to do it justice’, and then you think, ‘I have to bring that level of accomplishment and is this going to be good enough?’ And I think there’s something slightly debilitating about that. And I know for me, not having the pressure of, ‘you have the second book to do for us’, for me I took quite a long time to get book one out of my head because for me, you live with these characters, they’re like your little invisible friends! And so to get them out of my head, it took a while to then now conceive of the new characters in the new book. And as Emma was saying, the whole new world, really. It’s done, now, my second book is actually just now going out on submission. So fingers crossed, guys. But it didn’t take the one year to write that publishers often want, it took three years to write, quite frankly. I took my time with it. I feel happy with that process and that experience. But I know I would have felt completely, as you were saying, I would have felt completely stressed and overwhelmed if there was a contract saying, ‘you’ve got to get this out in a year’.

Ronali: I think also the other thing that you were just talking about, was about how well your first book has done and thinking about things like that. I think if I were to wish that I had known something in advance, it would be to not worry about that. The only thing that we can control is our writing and the rest of it is really up to the publishers as to how they publicise it, how they market your book, how many people read your book, who sees your book when, how, all of those things, how well it’s selling – you can’t really influence any of that. The only thing you can do is write the best book that you can write in the time that you’ve got or the time that you take. And that’s something I’ve been telling myself for the last year when I’ve had to start from scratch – I can’t control any of this circus. Publishing is a little bit of a circus; you have to take a step back and think about what it is your role is, and your role is to come up with these new characters, these new worlds, to tell these stories. And you can only do it the best way that you can do and hope for the best. So I wish you best of luck, Tammye, on your submission as well, because you’ve done your bit, you’ve done the best that you can do, and that’s all that we can all do, I think.

Emma: Hope, that’s all!

Charlie: So what I’m getting, I mean, it’s that thing, with everything that you guys have been saying. When you do something you love as a job, it obviously changes. You’re not always going to love it – it becomes your job, it becomes almost, sometimes, a chore. So, yeah, it’s something that I think people should remember, you know as much as you love writing, you’ve also got to think about it in those terms. So can you remember any particularly interesting fact that you discovered in your research for any book that couldn’t be included in the book?

Ronali: I mean, for me, I don’t tend to do an awful lot of research because my books are very character-driven, so my plot is driven by the characters. So there’s not really a lot of research that I would do apart from checking where a street [laughs] is or what’s on a street. So I’m accurate. So, no, I’m afraid I haven’t got any little gems there.

Emma: No, I don’t either, Ronali. I think I do a lot of my research in Greece, mainly in tavernas, eavesdropping, so [laughs] I don’t tend to do a huge amount of searching and researching unless it’s a specific thing about the Greek culture, but that’s usually included. But no, I’m usually found in a taverna eating [Ronali and Tammye laugh]. That’s my research process.

Tammye: I do a huge amount of researching, an inordinate amount of researching, and I include quite a lot in the books of that research. I try to sort of hide it so that it’s not like, ‘here is the research!’ You’re supposed to sort of notice it but without noticing it, is the thing I’m going for. But to give you a fact or something… I can’t think of anything right now!

Liz: I had a little bit of trouble in how to present Ian Fleming in the book because he’s a major secondary character and how… he’s dead, so I can’t be libelled [laughs] but at the same time, how to portray him as a character… at times he’s very unsavoury and that wouldn’t necessarily benefit the book to portray that side of him. So I had to weigh that up in telling the book and choosing how he’d be presented.

Emma: I also learnt, can I just say, from The Secret Shore, why in Cornwall, which is where Liz and I both live, why daffodils grow on the top of hedges. And Liz educated me. Do share why Liz!

Liz: Oh, I had to share that because I’d always wondered. During daffodil season, you’ll drive along the lanes here and there’ll be daffs blooming on the top of these hedges and you’re thinking, ‘did birds move them? What happened?’ In the First and the Second World War, but more in the Second World War, the daffodil fields, because they’re grown as a market plant down here, were turned over to food and the land girls were told to just dig them up and ditch them. And they went into the hedges.

Emma: They threw them over their shoulders, and that’s why in Cornwall…

Liz: Yeah. I was looking for something else and I came across that and I thought, ‘oh God, it’s always going to know why, this has to go in the book!

Emma: It’s so good.

Tammye: And I love that! I love that moment. I have so much of that where you’re looking for stuff and you find something that’s really fun and quirky and interesting and you think, ‘yeah, somehow that’s going in the book’. So, yeah, I do have loads of kind of those moments, the unexpected things that you wouldn’t think about.

Emma: And I love it as a reader when you learn those things [Ronali agrees] and then become a complete trivia ball with anyone who will listen to you. So you go [adopts a lofty voice], ‘do you know why?’ Or, ‘did you know how?’ But I love that, that you get to enjoy someone’s writing and learn some good things.

Charlie: What was I doing the other day?… I was playing something like Google Maps’ game where you have to guess where you are. And it puts you, like, in a field somewhere. And I worked out I was in Uddingston in Scotland, thanks to Elissa Soave’s book. So that was very useful! [Charlie, Ronali, and Liz laugh.]

Emma: Yeah!

Charlie: Okay, so go on then. Last question. Tell us about what you’re currently writing or what’s going to be published soon – Emma, I think it will have to be the book after The Island Love Song for you.

Emma: Yes, correct. So I’m just putting the finishing touches to the first draft of that will be published in May or June 2025. And it is about a Greek family who are based in London this time, but we do end up on an island in Greece, and it’s about twins, a boy and a girl. In fact, you might be able to see my mood board is just behind and there’s the twins in Greek mythology are here, Apollo and Artemis. So there’s elements of that, but it’s contemporary. And one of the twins, the boy Nikolas, has been killed in a car accident in Catarina, is putting life back together and they both inherit a house on a Greek island. But the uncle who’s died didn’t know that Nikolas has died. There’s a lot of family secrets. There’s love and there’s loss, and that’s all I can say about it because I’m still pulling bits out of the draft before I press send and have a complete meltdown about it.

Charlie: Mythology added – a little bit. Little bit, you say, but still, okay!

Emma: A little bit, I might play and completely rewrite the whole thing before I deliver it. You never know.

Charlie: Fair enough. Go on, Tammye, I want to hear about this new book.

Tammye: So, it is set in America, again, based on a brother and a sister who are – African American family, but he is very pale skinned and is often mistaken for white. So when Pearl Harbor is bombed in 1941, he joins the military. But because of his complexion and because there is segregation still in America, very strong, staunch segregation, series of events – he winds up having to enlist as a white man because the officer in charge has made an error, and then he doesn’t want to be called out on it and accused of trying to desegregate the barracks. And so he goes through World War Two as a white man. And it’s about then also his sister, who’s at home as still a black woman dealing with all of that. And it’s their war years together. And then also those post-war years of prosperity in America, at least there was this GI Bill that basically created this middle class in America after the war, and that was so beneficial to war vets. And it looks at his experience and her experience in that World War Two, post-war period, as now a white man and a black woman. And it’s their story of the family and how they come apart and come together again. As was my first book, this book is also inspired by family. It’s inspired by my grandmother and my great uncle, who did join the military in World War Two and who was re-classed as a white man during World War Two.

Charlie: Sounds phenomenal. Ronali, are you still big on your character development? How’s it going?

Ronali: Well, yes, my book has just gone to my editor, who says she likes it, so I’m just about to embark on my structural edits. It’s probably moving more into a romance area, but it is, again, a character-driven novel about a woman, a middle aged woman, who’s in the process of getting a divorce from her husband who has disappeared for a year to go and find himself. And she ends up in a relationship with a man who is 13 years younger than her. And the book looks at how her family reacts to this and how she really changes throughout the course of the book to become the person that she always has been, rather than the person that she became, which is a dutiful, obedient daughter who then doesn’t really live her life to the fullest. So it’s about a woman who is coming into her own later in life through this relationship.

Charlie: Lots of potential there. Liz, what are you working on in your plot walks?

Liz: I am in the second draft of the next book, working title A Portrait Of You, and dual-timeline. Historical timeline set in 1934 on the Orient Express and Venice, when Hitler meets Mussolini for the first time in person. And in the historical, it follows two women, one a young artist who is 20, and a married woman who is 31. And the modern day story is set in Penzance in an auction house. And a daughter is forced to come down because her father suddenly died and she’s got to sort out the family business of the auction house. And part of that involves doing the probate valuation on the estate of two esteemed ladies. So it’s great fun, kind of poking and prodding and, diving into the art world and diving into poetry and having lots of fun with it.

Charlie: Excellent. That’s four books to definitely look forward to.

Emma: I’ve just added three books as well to my three [Liz, Ronali, and Charlie chuckle]. So thank you for that, you three.

Charlie: Okay, well, yeah, thank you all for being here today. It’s been lovely to see you all again and to get the latest information about your books. It has been an absolute pleasure having you. Thank you very much for being here.

[These four lines overlap.]

Liz: Thank you.

Emma: Fab!

Tammye: Thank you. Thank you so much for having us here.

Ronali: Thank you so much, Charlie.

[Recorded later] Charlie: Thank you, listeners, for your support. And thank you to Amanda Geard for the initial idea of having a party. The Worm Hole Podcast Milestone Episode 5 was recorded on the 6th May and published on the 5th August 2024. Music and production by Charlie Place.

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