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#168 - Sandie Jones
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Psychological thriller author, Sandie Jones drops by the podcast to talk about her latest novel, her writing process and the excitement of being a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick!
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Transcript
Ad-free Listening on Patreon
00:00:00
Speaker
To listen without ads, head over to patreon.com slash rightandwrong.
00:00:04
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question.
00:00:06
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:07
Speaker
Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
00:00:08
Speaker
Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:00:15
Speaker
So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:18
Speaker
Hello
Introduction to Sandy Jones
00:00:19
Speaker
and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:21
Speaker
On today's episode, I'm joined by journalist turned New York Times bestselling author, Sandy Jones.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:29
Speaker
How are you?
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm very well, thanks.
00:00:31
Speaker
How are you?
00:00:32
Speaker
I'm very, very good.
00:00:33
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:34
Speaker
So good to have you on.
00:00:35
Speaker
Let's get straight into it, starting with the upcoming novel, which will be out by the time this airs, your sixth published book, The Trade-Off.
00:00:46
Speaker
Tell
Themes in 'The Trade-Off'
00:00:47
Speaker
us a little bit about it.
00:00:49
Speaker
OK, so, yes, this is this is actually probably my favourite book so far.
00:00:55
Speaker
Not just to write, but also, as you mentioned, because it's a deep dive into the world of being a journalist, which my sins I used to be.
00:01:04
Speaker
And specifically the links that a tabloid newspaper will go to get a story.
00:01:11
Speaker
At the heart of the book are two very strong-willed women.
00:01:14
Speaker
We have Stella, who is the deputy editor of The Globe, and she will stop at nothing for a headline, whilst Jess is the rookie reporter and is led very much by her moral compass and only wants to report the truth.
00:01:30
Speaker
So she's appalled by the underhand tactics that are employed by the tabloid.
00:01:36
Speaker
And when a celebrity she's chasing takes her own life because she can see no way out from the pressure that the media is forcing upon her, Jess is then determined to hold the newspaper accountable.
00:01:48
Speaker
You know, she wants to right the wrongs and change the narrative.
00:01:52
Speaker
But Stella won't go down with a fight.
00:01:54
Speaker
And Jess, I guess, has to decide whether the truth is worth dying for.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:00
Speaker
You know what?
00:02:02
Speaker
It's so kind of real.
00:02:05
Speaker
This is fiction, of course, but psychological thriller as a genre, what makes it so compelling is when it's so close to the truth.
00:02:12
Speaker
And this is like real things that really happen.
00:02:15
Speaker
You're always hearing about the kind of most recent kind of terrible thing that a certain journalist has done to get a crazy story and stuff like that.
00:02:23
Speaker
So yeah.
00:02:24
Speaker
And then it, to be honest, Jamie, it wasn't actually supposed to be, I wasn't hope, I was hoping rather that it wasn't going to be as relevant now as, as when I started writing it a year or so ago.
00:02:35
Speaker
It was inspired by events a few years ago when, you know, a TV personality found that they couldn't carry on under the pressure and the scrutiny of the media.
00:02:49
Speaker
And I honestly genuinely thought that by the time,
00:02:53
Speaker
I'd written this and it was being published, I thought that that would be, you know, something of the past and it, and the book actually wouldn't be as relevant and as apt as it was once was.
00:03:05
Speaker
But unfortunately, even, you know, the events of just last week alone, you know, I just, it's, yeah, I don't know what the answer is, but it is not, it's not getting any better and it's not going away, unfortunately.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yes, you're referring to the royal family stuff that happened a couple of weeks ago.
00:03:24
Speaker
Just wild, insane things that were happening there.
00:03:28
Speaker
Just crazy.
Freelance Journalism Influence
00:03:29
Speaker
But you also mentioned you spent many years as a journalist.
00:03:34
Speaker
Was a lot of the kind of setting and placement of this, was that drawn directly from your experience in that?
00:03:42
Speaker
Not directly.
00:03:43
Speaker
I was always freelance.
00:03:45
Speaker
I was never staff.
00:03:48
Speaker
You know, I spent time on a newspaper and on magazines and things like that.
00:03:53
Speaker
But I never, I was always, you know, whatever I wrote was verbatim.
00:04:00
Speaker
So as in, you know, I would have, I would line up celebrity interviews and, you
00:04:05
Speaker
I'd go there with every word that they said would be printed or certainly be, hold on, let me take that back, would be in my copy.
00:04:15
Speaker
Okay, rephrase.
00:04:17
Speaker
It would be in my copy.
00:04:18
Speaker
It would be sent off to said editors of certain establishments.
00:04:23
Speaker
And, you know, when I first started writing, it was for what I would call like the friendly magazines, you know, the woman's weeklies and that kind of thing.
00:04:31
Speaker
And it was all good.
00:04:32
Speaker
But as time went on,
00:04:35
Speaker
my words or, you know, the celebrity words were taken out of context or they would be
00:04:42
Speaker
created in such a way to to for an inflammatory headline um and it you know and it really changed the way I felt about it and I think that's well I'm pretty sure that that is a very very big part of of why I've you know ditched it and I'm now doing something completely different because it just wasn't um it just wasn't how I like to work you know I don't I don't want to go sort of
00:05:08
Speaker
looking through people's dustbins to try and find secrets.
00:05:11
Speaker
And, you know, and that's kind of where, where it's getting to now.
00:05:15
Speaker
And I just don't want to be a part of that world anymore.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:19
Speaker
It's the kind of clickbait era of journalism.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:24
Speaker
But interesting to know that you were, you know, the thing, your kind of focus was largely on celebrities and sort of interviews and talking to them.
00:05:32
Speaker
So you are kind of related to the aspect of the book, which is a focus on sort of the hyper fixation the media has on some celebrities.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:41
Speaker
And as I say, even more so now, I think social media, although it came to us for all good reasons, I'm sure I just don't understand where the road it's taken us down now.
00:05:56
Speaker
Certainly, as far as the media are concerned, they are purely...
00:06:00
Speaker
reliant on celebrities' social media now.
00:06:03
Speaker
And I think, you know, that's the only way they're getting their stories.
00:06:07
Speaker
And again, they're still twisting.
00:06:09
Speaker
You know, you could see a post on Instagram or Twitter and read it for exactly as it is, how the celebrity wants it to be framed.
00:06:16
Speaker
And then, you know, the next day's paper, you see exactly the same story and the same post, but completely twisted around to create, you know, an entirely different story.
00:06:27
Speaker
And it's just...
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, nothing is, I'm not quite sure, as I say, I'm not quite sure what is going to change things, but it still feels at the moment we're going down the wrong road.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:06:42
Speaker
It's almost, it's information overload, right?
00:06:43
Speaker
It's too
Social Media and Journalism
00:06:44
Speaker
much.
00:06:44
Speaker
Everyone has an opinion and they're not necessarily being fact-checked or anything like that.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:49
Speaker
No, of course you can say, yeah, you can say whatever you want, can't you online?
00:06:53
Speaker
Exactly.
00:06:54
Speaker
And also I think, you know, from somebody that's in the public eye, it's like all of us, you know, you get a thousand positive comments and one not so.
00:07:04
Speaker
And it's the one that you kind of, you know, the one that
00:07:07
Speaker
troubles you and it's the one that you think about it's um and i think that's just human nature unfortunately but there's just there's just no getting away from it from for those people you know it's it's it is in our homes it is our bedrooms it's you know it's there's no you can't escape it anymore no you can't we're all plugged in um
00:07:26
Speaker
Welcome to you.
00:07:28
Speaker
Spending a lot of time doing those kinds of things, doing those kinds of interviews, you must have really honed that craft.
00:07:33
Speaker
I'm wondering if those sort of lines of questioning, do you implement that in your writing process when you're designing your characters?
00:07:43
Speaker
Ooh.
00:07:46
Speaker
Possibly, yes.
00:07:48
Speaker
Possibly.
00:07:48
Speaker
I haven't actually ever thought of it in that way.
00:07:52
Speaker
No, you could be onto something there, Jamie, actually.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah, because it is like you when you're preparing for an interview.
00:07:59
Speaker
It's a very, very different discipline, isn't it?
00:08:02
Speaker
It's very.
00:08:03
Speaker
And I guess also from certainly from my personal perspective.
00:08:07
Speaker
um experience i love for me the almost the best part of an interview would be the research i would love going off and doing all the research and you know getting under the skin of the person i'm about to kind of meet just so not necessarily that i'm then going to ask them about it but just so i can go in you know i used to have nightmares about going to interviews where i wasn't prepared you know that would be my worst oh that would be i couldn't imagine anything worse
00:08:35
Speaker
So, yeah, I think that from the research point of view, that has definitely shaped what I used to do and kind of, yeah, I've definitely brought that into what I do now, actually.
00:08:45
Speaker
But I hadn't put the two and two together until you mentioned it.
00:08:48
Speaker
Well, glad I could enlighten you on that part of your process.
00:08:55
Speaker
And on from that then, and this is something that's always interesting to me when you, you know, you're writing psychological thrillers, which it's par for the course that you'll have twists and turns along the way, sometimes very dramatic.
00:09:07
Speaker
How
Sandy's Writing Style and Plot Twists
00:09:08
Speaker
much do you plan ahead for your stories versus just kind of have an idea and run with it?
00:09:14
Speaker
Oh, I don't plan at all.
00:09:16
Speaker
I really, I really want to plan.
00:09:19
Speaker
I really wish I could plan.
00:09:22
Speaker
And it drives my publishers absolutely crazy.
00:09:25
Speaker
But I, I, I don't, I have a, I will have a beginning.
00:09:30
Speaker
I will have a very, very vague middle.
00:09:33
Speaker
And I have absolutely no idea what the end is going to be.
00:09:36
Speaker
Really?
00:09:37
Speaker
So, yeah, I and I just and I have tried to to work differently because I do see huge advantages of knowing what your end is.
00:09:48
Speaker
I think that puts you in great stead.
00:09:50
Speaker
But it just doesn't happen, Jamie.
00:09:51
Speaker
I just can't.
00:09:53
Speaker
It's just not the way my brain works.
00:09:55
Speaker
You know, I have to start at the beginning.
00:09:57
Speaker
I write chronologically.
00:09:59
Speaker
you know, every character.
00:10:00
Speaker
And even if I'm kind of chopping between timelines, I still write chapter by chapter.
00:10:06
Speaker
You know, somebody said to me the other day that they kind of slot the past chapters in, you know, they do one set of chapters first, as in present day, and then they do the past.
00:10:16
Speaker
And I just, I have to do it literally as I go along.
00:10:20
Speaker
Otherwise, yeah, I don't know.
00:10:22
Speaker
I don't know how other people do it, but I really want to be them.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, lots of people have said similar things.
00:10:29
Speaker
But at the same time, I think there's people who don't plan and you've tried and it hasn't worked for you.
00:10:35
Speaker
There's a level of authenticity that comes with that in terms of the decisions that the characters make and things like that.
00:10:43
Speaker
Do you ever get sort of surprised when you're writing a book and you reach a point and you think, oh, wow, I didn't realize this was going to happen, but this is where we're going?
00:10:51
Speaker
Every day.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:10:53
Speaker
Every single day.
00:10:54
Speaker
And that's what I love about this is that, you know, you could wake up in the morning, have no idea where you're going.
00:11:00
Speaker
And by the evening, your story has completely turned on its axis and you had no idea it was coming.
00:11:06
Speaker
And I love that part of it.
00:11:09
Speaker
And I suppose, going back to whether I'm a planner or a pantser, I suppose for me, that's
00:11:14
Speaker
If I was a planner, that actually wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't kind of get me excited because I'd know exactly where I'm going.
00:11:21
Speaker
But with this, I do genuinely, I love the turns.
00:11:25
Speaker
And it sounds really kind of, you know, but I do love the turns that my characters take that I don't, I genuinely don't feel in control of.
00:11:35
Speaker
They do, they just, they just run, run amok.
00:11:38
Speaker
And I just kind of sort of let them go and see, see where we end up.
00:11:42
Speaker
I love it.
00:11:43
Speaker
It's great.
00:11:45
Speaker
Do you always know kind of what the twist is or at least sort of which character is like the one that did it kind of thing?
00:11:53
Speaker
Or is that?
00:11:56
Speaker
No, this isn't going very well.
00:11:57
Speaker
I'm not coming across very professional at all.
00:11:59
Speaker
No, this is great.
00:12:02
Speaker
No, I haven't got a clue and I will change.
00:12:05
Speaker
I mean, certainly with The Other Woman, my debut, the ending was wholly different to where it ended up, completely different.
00:12:14
Speaker
And even with the trade-off, the...
00:12:16
Speaker
baddie, as it were, was somebody completely different.
00:12:20
Speaker
And yeah, and that kind of, in my first draft, I deliver a first draft and I genuinely think that that's ready for the shops now.
00:12:27
Speaker
That's going straight in.
00:12:28
Speaker
I won't need to touch that.
00:12:30
Speaker
Obviously, I'm completely delusional because it comes back about four or five times.
00:12:35
Speaker
And, you know, from the structural ed, it's a huge.
00:12:39
Speaker
And it's at that point that I invariably change things around quite radically.
00:12:44
Speaker
And my goodie becomes my villain and vice versa.
00:12:47
Speaker
That happens all the time.
00:12:49
Speaker
That's, you know what, you're not actually the first author I've spoken to who writes in and around this genre of thrillers who doesn't know who it is and is kind of shocked by the time they find out who, you know, who done it.
00:13:04
Speaker
And I think there's a, there's a certain sort of, I think there's, it's positive in many ways, because if you, the author while writing it, don't even know who did it,
00:13:14
Speaker
you would hope then that also the reader wouldn't like, how would the reader know if you don't even know?
00:13:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:13:21
Speaker
That's why I do.
00:13:22
Speaker
I knew there was a reason.
00:13:23
Speaker
That's why I do.
00:13:26
Speaker
Just trying to keep the reader on their toes.
00:13:28
Speaker
Exactly.
00:13:29
Speaker
And you know, it's, if it's shocking to you, it has to be shocking to the reader.
00:13:32
Speaker
And a lot of, a lot of the kind of joy of these things is to have that moment where you go, Oh goodness, it was that person all along.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:40
Speaker
And I think also, you know, you are you are slightly on a disadvantage when you're writing psychological thrillers, because I think, you know, the reader is waiting and looking for those twists.
00:13:51
Speaker
And it's it's you're under a lot of pressure, you know, to deliver and to satisfy.
00:13:57
Speaker
And I think that's sometimes when you say if the writer doesn't know what's coming, then hopefully that will kind of satisfy the reader a little bit more when it when they do eventually happen.
00:14:08
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:14:08
Speaker
It's like, it's like if you see an M. Night Shyamalan movie, and it's like, well, we've all seen The Sixth Sense.
00:14:14
Speaker
We've all seen a couple of other movies.
00:14:15
Speaker
We know there's going to be a massive twist.
00:14:17
Speaker
And I'm looking at every detail.
00:14:19
Speaker
I'm trying really hard to see where this twist is.
00:14:23
Speaker
And are you disappointed when you do actually find it?
00:14:25
Speaker
Or do you beat them to it?
00:14:27
Speaker
You know what?
00:14:28
Speaker
The twists that if I'm watching a lot of time, a movie or a TV show or something, you can predict the arc of the thing.
00:14:35
Speaker
I'm pretty good at not guessing.
00:14:38
Speaker
I guess I'm bad then at guessing the twists in sort of psychological thrillers and stuff.
00:14:43
Speaker
I think I feel like I'm always, I'm always just like, wow, I never saw that coming, which is great.
00:14:51
Speaker
Exactly.
00:14:52
Speaker
That's exactly what I want from that genre.
00:14:53
Speaker
So yeah.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yes, absolutely.
00:14:55
Speaker
I'm happy to not be good at guessing the twist.
00:14:59
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:15:02
Speaker
So you mentioned that you don't plan these out in such thorough ways.
00:15:07
Speaker
As far as I know, publishers love when you can present them with a pitch, which will be kind of the outline of the story.
00:15:19
Speaker
Do you do that with the publisher?
00:15:22
Speaker
Is it always based on a pitch?
00:15:24
Speaker
It is, which is why I don't think I'm their favourite author.
00:15:28
Speaker
And I also think the difference between writing my first book was an absolute piece of cake because I didn't have to do that and I wasn't having to fulfil a brief.
00:15:40
Speaker
I was just literally writing for myself and just seeing where it took me.
00:15:45
Speaker
But obviously, as soon as you become a published author and then hopefully get another contract, they do
00:15:51
Speaker
understandably, want to know what they're getting.
00:15:54
Speaker
And I really would much prefer to write a 100,000 word novel than a three-page synopsis because, as I've said, I have no idea
00:16:05
Speaker
what I'm going to write until it's written.
00:16:07
Speaker
So, you know, I kind of, you know, I faff about an awful lot on my synopsis and I'm really, really vague.
00:16:14
Speaker
And it's all for me.
00:16:17
Speaker
It's I'm just forcing it all the time, which is not a good place to be.
00:16:23
Speaker
So I think now we're kind of six books in and I think my editors know that about me.
00:16:30
Speaker
And they kind of, they do get kind of a very airy fairy sort of sketchy idea.
00:16:36
Speaker
But I really try to hone, but I think we all know, although we don't say it, that it's actually going to bear very little relevance to the final result.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:47
Speaker
But it's really hard.
00:16:48
Speaker
I think writing a synopsis for something you've not written is really hard.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's a sentiment I've heard from lots of authors.
00:16:57
Speaker
It's the, a lot of people say that they find writing the kind of, once they've been published, then writing the follow-up, the second novel can be a real challenge because of, because it's totally different.
Challenges of Writing a Second Book
00:17:08
Speaker
The context, like you said, the context with which you're writing it is you don't have that freedom.
00:17:11
Speaker
You don't have all that time.
00:17:12
Speaker
You don't have room to kind of do whatever you want and then cut it back and then do whatever you want.
00:17:16
Speaker
You're on a time schedule.
00:17:18
Speaker
You're writing to a brief, you know, there's a lot more pressure in some ways.
00:17:22
Speaker
And obviously it also is the notorious second book, isn't it, that you do have to hopefully live up to the success of your first.
00:17:29
Speaker
And so you've got that kind of piling on as well.
00:17:32
Speaker
So yeah, that's a little bit of a tricky moment, but it's a good one to have.
00:17:37
Speaker
It's a good problem to have.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yes.
00:17:39
Speaker
I mean, and especially I would say in your case, your first novel, The Other Woman, published in 2018, New York Times bestseller, translated into 14 languages, Reese Witherspoon's book club pick of the month.
00:17:52
Speaker
That must have been both amazing, a bit surreal.
00:17:56
Speaker
And then, like you said, coming into a second book, following up the success of that one must have been a little bit terrifying.
00:18:03
Speaker
Completely.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely terrifying.
00:18:07
Speaker
But actually it's,
00:18:08
Speaker
when I think back to that time now, I know you say it was so surreal, um, what happened with the other woman that it didn't actually feel like it was happening to me.
00:18:19
Speaker
Um, and I really do mean that.
00:18:21
Speaker
And it still doesn't actually, I mean, it's just ridiculous.
00:18:24
Speaker
It's,
00:18:24
Speaker
you know, to nobody was supposed to read my book, you know, not my husband, my mother.
00:18:28
Speaker
And then all of a sudden we've got Reese Witherspoon reading it on the other side.
00:18:31
Speaker
I mean, it was just, yeah, it's totally crazy.
00:18:35
Speaker
So, yeah, I think the only pressure I felt the second book was purely, I think, probably the pressure I put myself under because it really didn't feel like,
00:18:47
Speaker
all the events surrounding the other woman had happened to me and you know therein lies the kind of whole imposter syndrome um problem that I always seem to struggle with that doesn't seem to be getting any easier to deal with um and I'm not quite sure how how you overcome that but um
00:19:04
Speaker
It just doesn't feel real, Jamie, to be honest.
00:19:08
Speaker
This was a really flighty idea that I had.
00:19:11
Speaker
I'm finding myself here talking to you and having written six books.
00:19:19
Speaker
I still can't get my head around it.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:22
Speaker
So even after six books, you're still sort of not entirely sure that this isn't just a dream.
00:19:27
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:19:29
Speaker
I'm still waiting to be found out.
00:19:30
Speaker
Exactly.
00:19:32
Speaker
Well, I think you're in good company there because I've spoken to many authors in the same time.
00:19:37
Speaker
I spoke to Katie Ford, who's been writing romance for forever, I think, and is a total legend in that genre.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:44
Speaker
and she she said exactly the same thing and she said yeah it's every every time every time you know she's on like 20 plus books at this point and it's like every time i write a new book i have the doubts and i have and i think they're going to find out you know the gig's going to be up why do we do it to ourselves i don't know it doesn't make any sense either because it's like you're proven already even if you wrote a dud at this point
Audiobook Narration and Children's Books
00:20:07
Speaker
it wouldn't change anything i'd get away with it i don't know i mean
00:20:12
Speaker
People would just be like, ah, you know, she just, she didn't land it with this one, but the others were all great.
00:20:19
Speaker
You know, they're not all, they can't all be bangers.
00:20:21
Speaker
But am I right in thinking, getting back to the book at hand, the current, the trade-off, am I right in thinking you narrated the audio book for this one?
00:20:33
Speaker
I had a little go.
00:20:34
Speaker
I just read the prologue.
00:20:38
Speaker
But no, then it was taken over by an expert and professional because as much as I enjoyed being in the studio, I mean, that's a really hard job.
00:20:47
Speaker
That is a really, really tough thing to pull off.
00:20:51
Speaker
And I was useless at it, even though I knew every single word that was coming next.
00:20:55
Speaker
You know, my mouth dried up.
00:20:57
Speaker
I kind of got all blurry eyes.
00:20:58
Speaker
I didn't have, you know...
00:21:00
Speaker
The speech wasn't right and the expression wasn't right.
00:21:03
Speaker
And I kept getting kind of, no, stop that.
00:21:04
Speaker
Start that.
00:21:05
Speaker
Start again.
00:21:05
Speaker
No, stop that.
00:21:06
Speaker
And it was, I was literally just doing the prologue.
00:21:08
Speaker
So hats off to, you know, those narrators because they are absolutely brilliant.
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:14
Speaker
And it's hard work and it's very long.
00:21:16
Speaker
I actually had a narrator on the podcast a few months ago and it's very long hours.
00:21:21
Speaker
You know, they're in the booth for basically all day reading these lines and working to get the best take to do it all with as few cuts as possible.
00:21:31
Speaker
It is very taxing and I'm always impressed by
00:21:37
Speaker
When you listen to all your book and it's just a really great narrator and you think, wow, this probably took a lot of time, many takes, and they've just done such a good job with it.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:45
Speaker
And then, then you do get in the studio and you see actually that the, you know, the, the really good ones, they don't, they just don't miss a beat.
00:21:52
Speaker
They just kind of just, you know, they go and switch in and out of all the accents between male, female.
00:21:57
Speaker
They just, it just, it just flows.
00:22:00
Speaker
They could just do chapters and chapters at a time without being pulled up.
00:22:03
Speaker
I just think, I think it's really incredible.
00:22:06
Speaker
It's incredible to watch actually.
00:22:08
Speaker
And that, well, if you ever look at the,
00:22:10
Speaker
The limited experience I've had sort of speaking with people like in the, in this area is you look at their, they'll have their own kind of version of the document and stuff, and it will just be covered in notes and notations.
00:22:22
Speaker
And you can see the amount of work that's gone into this before they've even got into the studio.
00:22:27
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yes, that's what I found so fascinating the first time was all the kind of the color coding and, you know, so that they knew before they started a sentence where the intonation was and how they needed to finish that sentence.
00:22:40
Speaker
And I, yeah, I just thought that was, as you say, it was a lot of what you forget how many hours they're in the studio for.
00:22:47
Speaker
It's days worth of prepping for something like that.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:51
Speaker
And it's, you know, they've read the book multiple times and then done all the notes and then reread it with the notes and this, that, the other.
00:22:57
Speaker
And it's like, it's like musical notation at a certain point.
00:23:00
Speaker
They're literally like annotating the whole thing with a series of coded symbols that you're not entirely sure what they mean.
00:23:06
Speaker
It is.
00:23:07
Speaker
It's brilliant.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's absolutely brilliant.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:10
Speaker
Oh, it's really cool that you read the prologue though.
00:23:13
Speaker
That's a nice touch.
00:23:14
Speaker
And I kind of connect you with the audience when they come to listen to it.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yes, hopefully.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yes, I did enjoy it.
00:23:19
Speaker
But that page and a half was about my limit.
00:23:24
Speaker
Amazing.
00:23:26
Speaker
Before we get to the Desert Island question, there's a fun little question I'd like to ask, especially when I have an author on who has been doing this for a while, has many books out.
00:23:34
Speaker
And that is, you have written primarily psychological thrillers.
00:23:40
Speaker
Are there any other genres or maybe even age groups that you've thought, maybe I'd like to try writing that someday?
00:23:48
Speaker
I really would love to write children's books at some point.
00:23:53
Speaker
I know it's complete departure.
00:23:56
Speaker
But yeah, I'm very involved in a children's book charity and where we kind of give pre-loved books to children that wouldn't otherwise be able to own a book.
00:24:09
Speaker
And certainly in London and that kind of thing.
00:24:11
Speaker
So I would love to write.
00:24:13
Speaker
I've no idea what it would be about or what the message would be.
00:24:17
Speaker
But I would love to try that at some point and get a really cool illustrator on board and do a collaborative project.
00:24:25
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:24:25
Speaker
So, Illustrator, I'm guessing you're thinking like younger, like picture book?
00:24:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:31
Speaker
I was going to say, Thriller's very big in YA right now.
00:24:36
Speaker
Right.
00:24:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:37
Speaker
It stays kind of in your lane, but also moving a bit.
00:24:42
Speaker
Is it really?
00:24:42
Speaker
Is it a big deal in YA at the moment?
00:24:44
Speaker
Oh, huge, yeah, yeah.
00:24:46
Speaker
Is it?
00:24:46
Speaker
Cynthia Murphy and people, yeah, lots of stuff happening with sort of teenagers murdering each other in sort of borderline supernatural circumstances.
00:24:57
Speaker
Right, okay.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, see, I don't think I could go there.
00:25:00
Speaker
I don't think I could do supernatural.
00:25:02
Speaker
I'd like to think I could, but I don't think I've got that kind of imagination.
00:25:06
Speaker
I guess it doesn't have to be supernatural.
00:25:10
Speaker
A lot of them are dark academia.
00:25:12
Speaker
So like boarding schools where people are getting murdered and it's kind of whodunit, but it's very dark.
00:25:19
Speaker
Right.
00:25:20
Speaker
Well, how cool that young adults are still reading.
00:25:23
Speaker
That's great at that kind of level.
00:25:25
Speaker
If there's still a demand for it, that is really good news.
00:25:28
Speaker
It's great news, isn't it?
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:29
Speaker
And that brings us to the desert island question, often considered the most difficult question of my interviews.
Desert Island Book Choice
00:25:37
Speaker
So Sandy, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:25:44
Speaker
I would hope that it was I Let You Go by Claire McIntosh.
00:25:50
Speaker
Would you like the why?
00:25:52
Speaker
I would love the why.
00:25:54
Speaker
Only purely because it was the book that made me fall back in love with reading.
00:26:00
Speaker
You know, I'd gone a good 10 years really without picking up a book.
00:26:05
Speaker
And it made me fall back in love with reading and ultimately has led me or did lead me to try my hand at fiction writing.
00:26:13
Speaker
So it's, yeah, in my world, it's a pretty big book.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, and that's what I would like to, if I ever needed inspiration, if I ever need, that would be the book that I would like to be on a desert island with.
00:26:28
Speaker
Wow.
00:26:29
Speaker
So that book was a real kind of moment for you.
00:26:32
Speaker
It really kind of changed the course of your life in many ways.
00:26:35
Speaker
Completely, yes.
00:26:36
Speaker
And I think also it was not just the fact that it made me fall back in Love is Reading, but it just, the first time I felt a real buzz around it.
00:26:46
Speaker
And I think I'd talked myself out of even trying something like this because
00:26:51
Speaker
Just going back to what we were saying, I didn't think there was still the demand for it.
00:26:55
Speaker
I didn't think that people were still reading books to the level that they used to.
00:26:59
Speaker
It was a bit of a dying trade, as it were.
00:27:01
Speaker
And yeah, there was a real buzz.
00:27:05
Speaker
And people, my friends and family, they were all kind of picking it up somehow.
00:27:11
Speaker
And they were finding it, reading it, and we were all kind of talking about it, which we hadn't ever done before.
00:27:17
Speaker
with a book.
00:27:18
Speaker
So yeah, it was, it was a, it was a really big turning point for me, that book.
00:27:22
Speaker
Wow.
00:27:23
Speaker
That's, I mean, the one thing I have here from people who were working in publishing is that publishing is always in quotes dying and like books are always dying, but at the same time it's bigger than it's ever been.
00:27:35
Speaker
So it's just a kind of weird thing that hangs over publishing all the time.
00:27:38
Speaker
I think that's not really true.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:27:41
Speaker
It's that constant contradiction, isn't it?
00:27:43
Speaker
All the time.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:45
Speaker
I think I think apart from the kind of scene is that there's certainly in terms of book slots, you know, in supermarkets and Smith's and stuff.
00:27:53
Speaker
I think that's a bit of a concern.
00:27:55
Speaker
But, you know, hopefully the Indies will start coming up strong to take their place.
00:28:02
Speaker
That would be good to see.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:03
Speaker
And
Growth of Digital and Physical Books
00:28:04
Speaker
it's also, I guess it's more the kind of evolution of how the medium is being distributed, because I know that audiobooks are like kind of growing exponentially and it's never been bigger, the audiobook market than it is right now.
00:28:19
Speaker
Right.
00:28:20
Speaker
And eBooks as well, obviously, you know, just the existence of audiobooks and eBooks, that's going to take books, physical books off shelves because so many people are just going to buy their, consume their books that way.
00:28:31
Speaker
So.
00:28:32
Speaker
How do you read your books, Jamie?
00:28:33
Speaker
Do you read audio or?
00:28:37
Speaker
I recently got into using a Kindle, but I have a lot of physical books.
00:28:42
Speaker
I try to go back and forth between using my Kindle and using physical books.
00:28:47
Speaker
But I read a lot of epic fantasy and some of those books are so big that I have to just like, if I want to read it in bed, I have to have it on my Kindle because I can't, my arms get tired holding these books.
00:28:59
Speaker
Right.
00:29:02
Speaker
Do I need a Kindle in my life?
00:29:04
Speaker
I'm really on the cusp of, is it?
00:29:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:08
Speaker
It's just very convenient.
00:29:09
Speaker
And I bought like a strap to go on the back so that I can just hold it with one hand.
00:29:14
Speaker
Wow.
00:29:15
Speaker
And they're all backlit, are they?
00:29:16
Speaker
Or you can get ones that are backlit because my iPhone's not great.
00:29:20
Speaker
But it's not, I don't know what the science is behind it, but it's not blue light.
00:29:24
Speaker
It's not like a phone light or a screen light.
00:29:29
Speaker
It's like a very kind of soft light.
00:29:31
Speaker
So it doesn't feel the same as looking into a phone or something.
00:29:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:36
Speaker
No, I could so easily be tempted.
00:29:38
Speaker
I'm literally sitting on the fence at the moment and I'm about to go away and I'm looking at my case with my six books and thinking this would be so much easier with a Kindle.
00:29:47
Speaker
So yeah, I could be tempted.
00:29:50
Speaker
If you have to go on a trip, it's incredibly, if you have to like travel, it's very, very useful because you can have all of your books.
00:29:57
Speaker
You can have a hundred books on this small little tablet that you just carry around with you, which is great.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's a no-brainer really, isn't it?
00:30:04
Speaker
When you put it like that, it's a no-brainer.
00:30:07
Speaker
This episode is not sponsored by Kindle, but it could be if they wanted to sponsor me.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yes, hello, Kindle.
00:30:15
Speaker
That brings us to the end of the regular episode and into the extended cut where I'm going to ask Sandy a bit more about agents, queries, submissions and Reese Witherspoon, exclusive to Patreon subscribers.
00:30:25
Speaker
So anyone listening who hasn't yet joined the Patreon, please do think about it.
00:30:28
Speaker
It goes a long way towards covering the cost of running this podcast.
00:30:33
Speaker
That's it.
00:30:33
Speaker
You just need it.
00:30:33
Speaker
Like, like with the book, six times the charm.
00:30:36
Speaker
I just need more practice and I'll be fine.
00:30:40
Speaker
Amazing.
00:30:41
Speaker
Well, that's awesome.
00:30:42
Speaker
And it's been great chatting with you, Sandy.
00:30:44
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming on the podcast and telling us all about.
00:30:47
Speaker
your writing and your books and your adventures in publishing.
00:30:50
Speaker
It's been awesome.
00:30:51
Speaker
It's been awesome chatting.
00:30:52
Speaker
Thank you.
00:30:52
Speaker
So good to talk to you.
00:30:54
Speaker
And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Sandy is doing, you can follow her on Twitter at RealSandyJones, on Instagram at SandyJones underscore author.
00:31:04
Speaker
or on her website, sandyjones.com.
00:31:06
Speaker
That's Sandy with an I and an E at the end.
00:31:09
Speaker
To support the podcast, like, follow, and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and follow along on all socials.
00:31:14
Speaker
Join the Patreon for extended episodes, ad-free, and a week early, and check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:31:20
Speaker
Thanks again, Sandy, and thanks to everyone listening.
00:31:22
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.