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#161 - Nuala Ellwood a.k.a. Iris Costello
385 Plays1 year ago
Best-selling thriller author Nuala Ellwood a.k.a. historical fiction writer Iris Costello is on the podcast talking about her latest historical novel, her experiences with writing and publishing over the years and the differences between writing thrillers and historical fiction!
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Transcript
Introduction and Ad-Free Listening
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To listen without ads, head over to patreon.com slash rightandwrong.
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Ooh, a spicy question.
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I love it.
00:00:07
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Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
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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.
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So it's kind of a gamble.
Meet Nuala Elwood, AKA Iris Costello
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Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
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On today's episode, I am joined by a best-selling writer of both historical fiction and thrillers.
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It's Nuala Elwood, aka Iris Costello.
00:00:31
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Hello, welcome to the podcast.
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Hello, thank you for having me.
The Story Collector: A Multi-Timeline Novel
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Such a pleasure.
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Let's start, as we often do, with the latest publication, the story collector, Azaris Costello.
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Tell us a little bit about it.
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Okay, well, The Story Collector is historical fiction and it is set across three timelines.
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So we have the London of 1915, where we're introduced to Katerina, who's a tarot reader.
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And she is hiding quite a dark secret behind the quite magical world that she's created in her bakery in the center of London.
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We're also taken to a German prisoner of war camp in 1918, where there's a very, based on true life, this is actually, I'll discuss a little bit later, but there's a linguistics project taking place here.
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And we have Miriam, who has been introduced to a mysterious mute British soldier.
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And kind of tying all these stories together, we have the present day story of Edie, who is a recently widowed artist who buys a cottage in Cornwall.
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And as she's renovating it, she discovers a mysterious box in
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hidden in the wall that contains a set of tarot cards and a vinyl record and a black and white photograph.
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And as she starts to dig and investigate the contents of this box, she finds that the secrets that she uncovers are very close to home and close to her own family life.
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And we find kind of all these mysteries of the ages all coming together towards the end.
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And all three of the stories are about preserving voices and stories, hence the title, The Story Collector.
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And that's my way of kind of describing it without giving away too many spoilers, which is always very difficult.
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But yeah, that's it in a nutshell.
00:02:41
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Well, that was perfect.
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You're clearly well practiced at doing these little blurbs without doing any spoilers.
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You mentioned that there was a sort of backstory to this linguistics part of it.
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I was going to ask, you know, when you're running across three different timelines, three different characters, where do you get the kind of inspiration for something as sort of far reaching as this?
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It's strange, really, when you're writing novels, because sometimes an idea that you've had years ago will suddenly come and be very relevant to something that you're working on years later.
Inspirations from Edwardian Linguistics
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And for me, the kind of germ of the idea for The Story Collector came probably about...
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Seven or eight years ago, I was listening to, there's a BBC Four documentary called How the Edwardians Spoke.
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And it was really interesting.
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I've always been fascinated with that period of history, World War One and fiction and poetry related to that.
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And they talked about a linguistics project that took place in German prisoner of war camps during World War One.
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It was two linguistics professors, Durgan and Brandl, who were working as part of the German Phonographic Commission.
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They'd been working on this project, recording the voices of ordinary people.
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Then, of course, as war broke out, all of the academic projects were put on hold.
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As they were working out what to do next, they realized that within these prisoner of war camps, there was a ready
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group of people waiting to be recorded really, as in the prisoners, the British prisoners.
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And so they carried on with this project and they recorded the British soldiers usually reciting extracts from the Bible and that the aim was to take the recordings home after the war.
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and to analyse them in a linguistic sense, you know, for dialect and what have you.
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And a lot of those dialects, the British dialects, had actually become obsolete over the course of history.
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But for me as a novelist, as I was listening to this,
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It just started to kind of bring some ideas to mind.
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I was thinking, you know, what would happen if you were to stumble across one of these recordings, you know, and what, when you hear a disembodied voice, you automatically, or I do at least, start to piece together a story behind that voice.
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Who was it and why were they there?
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You know, particularly when you're reciting a piece from the Bible, because it's quite stark and you're not getting a sense of the person behind that story.
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So for me, in the Story Collector, what I wanted to do here was to kind of give faces and character to those disembodied voices within that section of the novel in The Prisoner of War Camp.
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And also from a wider perspective, once I brought in my other characters and the other storylines, which incorporated tarot, which again was something that
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had a bit of a resurgence during the war years where you have bereaved families trying to find some sense of closure and contacting psychics and mediums and consulting the tarot cards.
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And I thought what kind of unites all of this is this sense of a voice.
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We're trying to hear and connect with people through the voice.
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So it kind of all blossomed really from that one program.
Writing Complex Multi-Timeline Novels
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And as I said, that's the thing for me.
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That's what I find so magical about writing is that what can be just a germ of an idea can suddenly, as you start to evolve it, become something much, much bigger.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So this book has three timelines that are concurrent.
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Your first book as Iris Costello, The Secrets of Rochester Place, that spanned across two timelines, right?
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That's right.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Was it always your intention to have multiple timelines in this book, even kind of from the early inception?
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I think so, yes.
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I think with my historical novels are mainly really kind of time slips.
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So you have a present day protagonist usually investigating something that pertains to the past.
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So rather than it just being purely in one place.
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timeline in, for example, 1915, the purely past.
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You've got the past and the present, which is quite nice, actually, because then you get to explore a contemporary voice and the historical voice within one novel.
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But
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With the three strands, yes, it becomes a little bit more complicated because at first I was going to just have a two strand as I'd had with Rochester Place.
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But then I realized that the story of Miriam and Katerina, who are the two past characters, were so strong in themselves.
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And then to have these three very strong female protagonists, I thought it's going to really work to have three strands.
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But in doing that, you almost have to, you know, then it becomes quite complex.
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And you're weaving together a lot of different voices and timelines and characters.
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But it was a challenge, but I think it needed to have that.
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And it's all the better for it, I think, to have the three.
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Yeah, definitely giving yourself more to kind of make sure it all lines up in terms of like the pacing of the story, like as it's read, they all kind of come to the peaks and troughs at the right places.
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Yes.
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You know, with that added layer of complication, do you map everything out for your novels before you start writing?
Outlining and Editing Strategies for Complex Stories
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I tend to now, um, I, you know, I've written this, this, um, is my eighth novel.
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So when I first started writing, it was very much a case of just beginning to write without any kind of plan, you know, to have an idea and just see where it would take me.
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But now particularly once, um,
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you get published and you start working with an editor it really helps both you and and your editor to come up with not just a synopsis i think for me i tend to do a brief chapter plan as well because you have all these strands it really helps to get some sort of order and and and invariably as the novel progresses and as you're writing that chapter plan
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will alter, you know, it's not set in stone, but you have, you can see just by looking at it, you've got the basic structure there.
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And then to kind of show that to your editors so that they get a sense that there is a story here, that there is a, you've got the right amount of drama and climax and balance and pace.
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And you can see that within a chapter plan.
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You can describe that even though, yes, it will change.
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So I do tend to do that.
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But then again, once you start writing it, all sorts of surprises start to happen.
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But you've got generally and much to my head still, oh, once you've done that.
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But that's great.
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That's part of the process of writing.
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But I think to have just a basic structure in place is really helpful.
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You don't feel then that because, of course, if you start writing,
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you know, the bulk of the novel or the first half.
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And then you find that actually, um, things aren't balancing up from a timeline perspective or a certain background.
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And, you know, you have to go back and, and start again.
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So it does help to have that structure in place, however loose it may be.
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Oh, okay.
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And is that something that sort of over the years and several books that you, you've written and published now, is that something that you've kind of learned and sort of honed down?
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It has, yes, definitely.
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And I think also another aspect of being published, as opposed to when you're a first-time novelist and you're at the point where you're writing a novel to pitch for the first time, is that once you're published, you then have deadlines.
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So you have to work to a certain kind of time frame.
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And I think having...
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some kind of structure, some sort of chapter plan or plan in place can help from that perspective as well.
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So you can kind of look at it and say, right, okay, I can have such and such amounts completed by this date and what have you.
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So it gives you that sense, but it is something that I have learned and acquired over the period, definitely.
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Yes.
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We're always, I mean, writing like any craft, the more you do it, you're always learning and the more you do it, the more you learn.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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We're always getting better.
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Definitely.
00:11:24
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Speaking of publishing, this is the second book by Iris Costello, but under your given name, Nuala Elwood, you have published many more books than this, multiple bestselling thrillers.
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Was historical fiction something that you'd always been wanting to branch into?
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It is, yes.
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I mean, growing up and as a teenager, the books that I loved were mainly historical fiction, really.
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As I said, I've always had a fascination with Edwardian fiction and Pat Barker, who wrote, read
00:12:00
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the regeneration trilogy was a huge inspiration to me.
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Um, and so it was a case of really, but then again, I also love thrillers and I love that, that this writing contemporary fiction and the drama and, and, and that kind of thing.
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Um,
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So within my novels, there is a semblance within the thrillers, there is a semblance of, you know, the historical elements to some of them.
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But I wanted to kind of go a little bit further and have, you know, have it be purely historical.
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And I thought to do that would probably mean, um,
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a pen name because I think it gives you much more sense of these are the thrillers and Newt Elwood thrillers and these are the Iris Costello historical fiction.
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But yes, I've always loved historical fiction.
00:12:50
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I'm really enjoying writing these.
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It's been wonderful.
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I'm a real history buff and I love the research element as well.
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This is where I have to really be, again, talking about starting to write the novel.
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I could lose myself in the research process and
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And they come to a point where you think you have to start writing the novel now.
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Start writing, put it down.
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But it's just so fascinating.
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And it's been wonderful and very different to kind of the stories that I wrote within the thrillers.
Thriller Techniques in Historical Fiction
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Yeah.
00:13:23
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But I imagine there's, I mean, and just based on the way that you were kind of pitching it and you were saying, you know, that's my, that's my roundup without giving any spoilers, which is with thrillers, that's like every single pitch for a thriller is you trying to tell them the thing without actually telling them the thing.
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Yeah.
00:13:40
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Yeah.
00:13:40
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Do a lot of your kind of the, the stuff you've learned over the years, writing many thrillers, has that kind of bled into the process of writing your kind of historical fiction?
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From a perspective of the not giving away spoilers and things like that, do you mean with the craft?
00:13:58
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Yes, absolutely.
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I mean, it gives you such a grounding and you don't want to spoil the experience for readers either.
00:14:05
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I think...
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we've all as writers seen sometimes in, in reviews, uh, where, you know, spoilers have been given away accidentally on the kind of, um, online reviews and it's like, Oh no.
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Um, but yes, um, that is something that, that I've, I've, I've learned a lot from.
00:14:25
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And even just, um, there's, there's still the, the, the pacing, um, of writing a thriller and, and, and,
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can inform historical fiction also.
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Because I would say that my novels are all very much suspense, mystery, and it's learning what to hold back.
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I was talking there about the research as well.
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How much of the research do you actually put in?
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The temptation is to just flood all of the historical detail, and particularly, as I say, with this genre.
00:14:59
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So it's holding back, not just in terms of plot,
00:15:03
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And keeping people guessing, you know, at the end of each chapter, keeping, you know, the reader hooked, but also, you know, just how much of the backstory and the research to hold back on as well.
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And that's something that, yes, it's definitely you learn as you go, really, over time.
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Yeah.
00:15:22
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I've had a few, um, historical, uh, authors on and it's, there's, there's definitely a trap with the research part of it specifically where it's like, you can really get into the weeds of it and start kind of being like, Oh, but are the buckles on their shoes correct for the time?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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When you know, you're going to get a message from somebody, from a reader who will spot that as well.
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Definitely.
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And you think, ah!
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So you do tend to, and of course, and with dialogue as well, certain terms, phrase and mannerisms, what have you, that just weren't used at the time.
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And that's very important for me that, you know, you can't, there's only so much you can do, as you say, you know, every little point can't be perfect.
00:16:10
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But also with novels, it's very cinematic, really.
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We are
00:16:16
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encountering these characters at a certain moment in time, it's like a snapshot into their lives.
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So you can't include every single detail about them either.
00:16:25
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So whereas we as the writer will know the backstory to that person, the reader doesn't necessarily need to be privy to everything.
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And that's, again, something
00:16:35
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And that's the redrafting process helps with that as well.
00:16:38
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I think that, you know, that first draft is the chance to get everything down, including all of the historical detail.
00:16:46
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And then you get to the second draft and you think, no, you can really allow yourself to shred a lot of this and to hone it.
00:16:55
Speaker
definitely yeah yeah for sure and I mean speaking of backstory I'd love to go back to to a kind of earlier time in your life um your first novel my sister's bones was published in 2016 yes thrillers yeah and
00:17:10
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Was that one of the first full manuscripts that you wrote or had you written much prior
Journey to Becoming a Published Author
00:17:16
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to that?
00:17:16
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Well, actually, yes.
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I was published before as Nuala Casey with Quirkus.
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My Sister's Bones was my first thriller.
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I did an MA in creative writing about 15 years ago now and I started to write.
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a novel called Soho 4am, which was set in between the 24 hours between London winning the bid to host the 2012 Olympics and the 7-7 bombings.
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And I was actually living in Soho during that period and remembered that very strange 24 hours vividly.
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And I wanted to encapsulate it.
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And it followed four characters as they were walking through the streets of London during those 24 hours.
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And it was with that that I approached Madeleine Milburn, my agent, just after graduating from my MA.
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And so I had those two.
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They were kind of very quiet novels.
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They weren't thrillers.
00:18:14
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And I knew after that that there was this big idea that I had that I wanted to explore, which was My Sister's Bones.
00:18:22
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It was just something I'd always been fascinated by.
00:18:26
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It was the story of a female war reporter who was suffering from PTSD.
00:18:32
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And she goes back to her hometown and she starts to...
00:18:37
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see things in the garden, next door garden of her parents' old place.
00:18:42
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And we don't know whether what she's seeing is real or a manifestation of her PTSD.
00:18:47
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And it was just something that had been, my dad was a journalist and he'd reported from Beirut during the civil war.
00:18:54
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We had family friends who worked in that
00:18:58
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uh, field and it had just fascinated me from a, from a writing perspective, from a psychological perspective.
00:19:04
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And, um, so yes, that was the one that I was really wanted to, um, to, to write.
00:19:12
Speaker
Oh, I see.
00:19:12
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Yeah.
00:19:13
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And so that was kind of the, the, the first, uh, the first thriller.
00:19:18
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And that was when I got my, my publishing deal with Penguin for that.
00:19:22
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And I'm still with them, um,
00:19:24
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with my historical fiction.
00:19:26
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So it all began with, with that novel.
00:19:29
Speaker
Oh, that's so interesting.
00:19:31
Speaker
Presumably that you were submitting to agents, that it was an open submission that you submitted to Madeleine Milburn and then started with her as your agent.
00:19:38
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Yes.
00:19:39
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Yeah.
00:19:39
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Okay.
00:19:40
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That's interesting.
00:19:42
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Am I right in thinking you were, you worked with the Arts Council to help
00:19:46
Speaker
That's right.
00:19:47
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Yeah.
00:19:48
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I spoke to Madeline and she said, I'd really like to pitch this idea to publishers and we were going to take it to the London Book Fair.
00:19:59
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But at that point, I just had the outline of it in the synopsis.
00:20:03
Speaker
And she said, do you think you could get a full draft written?
00:20:07
Speaker
Sure.
00:20:08
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And at that point, I thought I really need to immerse myself in this story because of the research element, looking into PTSD, particularly PTSD within war reporting.
00:20:23
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I thought I'm going to have to really invest in this.
00:20:29
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And so there was an arts council funding stream at the time called Time to Write.
00:20:37
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which allowed you to, if you could apply for funding, to give you the time to write your novel and to research it, to go on field research.
00:20:49
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And so I applied, I got the funding, and I went off to Herne Bay, where the novel's set on the Kent coast, and did a lot of research and writing there, spoke to psychologists who had worked with...
00:21:05
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war reporters and war reporters themselves.
00:21:10
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It was just a wonderful opportunity to fully research a book.
00:21:16
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It was just amazing.
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It was an amazing opportunity.
00:21:23
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By the end of it, I had that first draft ready.
00:21:26
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I think it shows that for me, I felt very confident with the amount of detail and research because I think it needed that.
00:21:35
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the nature of, of, of the subject matter.
00:21:38
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And, and, uh, yeah.
00:21:40
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And, um, and on the back of that, I, um, was signed by Katie Loftus at, uh, Penguin and she was my, my first editor and, uh,
00:21:52
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she'd fallen in love with the manuscript.
00:21:53
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We really clicked, which I think is so important when you're working with an editor.
00:21:58
Speaker
So, cause you work so closely, um, and they have to really understand you and, and, and your work and what you're getting at and, you know, what your motivation is.
00:22:07
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And we really did click and, and that was the, yeah, that was the first of the thrillers, which is amazing.
00:22:13
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Have you had different editors or have you always been the same one throughout the years?
00:22:18
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Well, Katie left.
00:22:20
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She left Penguin.
00:22:21
Speaker
And I'm currently with Vicky Moynes, who is excellent.
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I've been with her since we started working together on The Perfect Life, which was my fourth thriller.
00:22:34
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And we've worked through The Secrets of Rochester Place and The Story Collector together.
00:22:41
Speaker
And, yeah, she's a brilliant, brilliant editor.
00:22:44
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We get on very well.
00:22:45
Speaker
And it's...
00:22:47
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as I said, it's a case of both understanding each other as well when you're working so closely like that.
00:22:53
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It's really quite important to have that rapport.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:58
Speaker
And if you can work with an editor, you know, on multiple books, that rapport is kind of like just grows and grows and grows.
00:23:06
Speaker
And I think there's, people tend to do very well when they work with the same editor over and over again.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
00:23:12
Speaker
Definitely.
From Page to Screen: My Sister's Bones
00:23:14
Speaker
Before we get on to the Desert Island question, I saw that, very exciting, My Sister's Bones, which we were just talking about, your debut thriller, is being made into a film.
00:23:26
Speaker
Not only that, am I right in thinking it's now wrapped?
00:23:30
Speaker
Yes, yes, it's wrapped.
00:23:31
Speaker
And it's very, very exciting.
00:23:35
Speaker
I went down to, I spent one day in Whitstable, we were filming in Whitstable, and I was invited to go and watch parts of it being filmed.
00:23:43
Speaker
And that was the most exciting.
00:23:45
Speaker
incredible feeling to see.
00:23:47
Speaker
I mean, I had the headphones and I could hear some of the dialogue and it was just, oh my God, this, it was a very familiar scene as well.
00:23:54
Speaker
And I thought that this idea that I just had, um, one day as I was sitting at my desk is now, you know, being acted out with Anna Friel and Jenny Seagrove and it was, oh my goodness.
00:24:06
Speaker
But that's, it's very exciting.
00:24:08
Speaker
And, um, Bill Kenwright actually, he, he bought the rights to the film and,
00:24:13
Speaker
And he optioned it back in 2016 when the book came out.
00:24:18
Speaker
So it's a long process.
00:24:20
Speaker
And I met Bill several times.
00:24:22
Speaker
He's an amazing character.
00:24:23
Speaker
He passed away sadly in October of last year.
00:24:27
Speaker
And he was just the most passionate, amazing figure anyway.
00:24:33
Speaker
But to have him, you know, be so enthusiastic about the story was just magical.
00:24:39
Speaker
So it'll be a...
00:24:41
Speaker
when it comes out, it'll be a lovely tribute to him as well, which is just fantastic.
00:24:46
Speaker
It's very exciting.
00:24:47
Speaker
I can't, can't wait to, to see what it, what it looks like.
00:24:52
Speaker
And yeah, amazing pinch me moment.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:57
Speaker
Surreal in some ways.
00:24:58
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:24:59
Speaker
Were you involved at any point or was it, they just, they kind of took it and people worked on the adaptation and things like that.
00:25:06
Speaker
And you kind of were just there for the one day.
00:25:08
Speaker
Naomi Gibney, she wrote the script, which is fantastic.
00:25:13
Speaker
And it was actually really nice because throughout the process, I remember Bill would send copies of the script to see what I thought, which is really lovely.
00:25:24
Speaker
I felt part of it, which was great because I know that sometimes once it's out of your hands, that's it.
00:25:31
Speaker
And that's quite a scary thought too, because you think, oh my goodness.
00:25:34
Speaker
But it was wonderful to see, you know, what, what they'd done.
00:25:38
Speaker
And, and there's an amazing director attached to it, Heidi Greensmith.
00:25:42
Speaker
She's a wonderful director.
00:25:44
Speaker
And yeah, I think it's, it's going to be really exciting to see what it looks like.
00:25:50
Speaker
Definitely.
00:25:51
Speaker
Sounds like it's in good hands.
00:25:53
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah, really excited to see when it comes out.
00:25:56
Speaker
Definitely.
00:25:57
Speaker
That brings us to the desert island.
Desert Island Book Choice
00:26:00
Speaker
Right.
00:26:01
Speaker
So, Nuala, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you hope it would be?
00:26:10
Speaker
Well, it would have to be Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.
00:26:16
Speaker
And this is quite interesting because I thought to myself, it's a very short book because most people would say I need to take something really hefty to keep me going.
00:26:25
Speaker
The reason behind this is Mrs. Dalloway was the novel that made me want to write it.
00:26:32
Speaker
For me, again, as I said, I have this...
00:26:36
Speaker
quite nerdy obsession with that period of time.
00:26:42
Speaker
But I've always loved Virginia Woolf.
00:26:44
Speaker
And that story for me just captures perfectly what it is to be alive.
00:26:51
Speaker
And that is really why I write in the first place.
00:26:56
Speaker
It's
00:26:57
Speaker
writing stories from being a little girl has been my way of making sense of the world.
00:27:03
Speaker
Whatever is chaotic or unpredictable in the world, I feel that when I read a book or when I'm writing a story, I can begin to make sense of it.
00:27:10
Speaker
And the timeline, it takes place over 24 hours in London.
00:27:16
Speaker
The way that it just touches upon the past and the present as such a fluid thing just...
00:27:25
Speaker
Yeah, for me, it's just a wonderful book.
00:27:28
Speaker
And I've read it several times.
00:27:29
Speaker
And every time I read it, I get something else from it.
00:27:32
Speaker
I find I discover something new.
00:27:34
Speaker
And it just kind of reinforces this belief of, you know, being glad to be alive.
00:27:40
Speaker
And I think if I was...
00:27:43
Speaker
on a desert island I would want that reminder and I think it would only be a comfort to be surrounded by these very familiar now characters of the book so that would be that would be my choice
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:56
Speaker
Well, I mean, you speak very passionately about it.
00:27:59
Speaker
I have no doubts that it would be a wonderful choice.
00:28:02
Speaker
And yeah, it's nice to know that there's sort of something within reach where you can just kind of jump back in and be reminded of the good stuff and the nice things and why it all happens.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:14
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:28:15
Speaker
Amazing.
00:28:15
Speaker
Great choice.
00:28:16
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of the regular episode and into the extended cut exclusive to Patreon subscribers.
00:28:21
Speaker
So anyone listening who hasn't yet joined the Patreon, please do think about it.
00:28:25
Speaker
It goes a long way towards covering the costs of running this podcast.
00:28:31
Speaker
Amazing.
00:28:31
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Nuala, for coming on the podcast and sharing all of your experiences and telling us all about your work and the writing and the books.
00:28:39
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:28:40
Speaker
It's been lovely.
00:28:41
Speaker
Really great.
00:28:42
Speaker
The Story Collector is out now for anyone who wants to buy as of this episode airing.
00:28:47
Speaker
And if you want to keep up with what Nuala is doing, you can follow her on Twitter at Costello Stories or on Instagram at Iris Costello Words or Nuala Writes.
00:28:56
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on socials.
00:28:59
Speaker
You can get the extended episodes a week early and ad-free on Patreon.
00:29:03
Speaker
And for more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:29:07
Speaker
Thanks again to Nula and thanks to everyone listening.
00:29:09
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.