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#171 - Karen Swan
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Sunday Times bestselling romance author, Karen Swan joins us this week to talk about her writing, how she chooses her locations and how she loves to schedule and plan out each novel.
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Transcript
Introduction & Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question.
00:00:02
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:02
Speaker
Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
00:00:05
Speaker
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.
00:00:12
Speaker
So it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:17
Speaker
On today's episode, I am joined by international bestselling romance author, Karen Swan.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hi, Jamie.
00:00:25
Speaker
How are you?
00:00:26
Speaker
I'm great.
00:00:27
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:27
Speaker
How are you?
00:00:28
Speaker
Very well, thanks.
00:00:29
Speaker
It's lovely to be here.
00:00:31
Speaker
Yes, so nice to have you.
00:00:32
Speaker
Thanks for coming.
The Lost Lover and St. Kilda
00:00:33
Speaker
Let's jump straight in with your, you have multiple upcoming releases, but let's talk about the big one and that being The Lost Lover, which is the third and final novel in your Wild Isle series out July 18th.
00:00:47
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about the series and this final entry.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yes.
00:00:51
Speaker
So actually, The Lost Lover is the third book in four for the series.
00:00:56
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:00:56
Speaker
So unfortunately for me, I've still got another one to write, which I'm about to start next week, actually.
00:01:03
Speaker
But The Lost Lover is the third book in what we're calling the Wild Isles series.
00:01:08
Speaker
And the Wild Isles is actually...
00:01:11
Speaker
archipelago in the North Atlantic called St Kilda and it's basically the outermost of the Outer Hebrides it's about 100 miles off the Scottish mainland and the islands were inhabited for 2000 years until the summer of 1930 when the islanders asked to be evacuated they petitioned the British government for help because basically their
00:01:38
Speaker
numbers had dropped below critical mass.
00:01:42
Speaker
There was only 36 islanders on the island at that point.
00:01:46
Speaker
And the reason survival was so difficult for them is that St.
00:01:51
Speaker
Kilda really isn't like any normal island.
00:01:54
Speaker
If you went to the rest of the Outer Hebrides, if you went to Skye or Lewis or Harris or Bembecula, you would be able to, you know, get there on a rowboat and drop anchor at a beach
00:02:07
Speaker
and make your
St. Kilda's History & Karen's Inspiration
00:02:08
Speaker
way in.
00:02:08
Speaker
St Kilda is entirely different.
00:02:11
Speaker
As I said, it's 100 miles off the coast, so it really is off on its own deep in the Atlantic.
00:02:17
Speaker
And it's basically surrounded by sea cliffs.
00:02:21
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It's got the highest sea cliffs in Britain.
00:02:23
Speaker
And it's surrounded on all sides by these sea cliffs.
00:02:27
Speaker
And it's only two miles long.
00:02:29
Speaker
So if you can imagine...
00:02:31
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that it's got these really, really high mountains in it.
00:02:34
Speaker
And you can imagine the steepness of them if you've only got two miles of land mass and then these enormous mountains.
00:02:41
Speaker
And there's really only one landing point on the whole island, which is called Village Bay.
00:02:48
Speaker
And there's an approach way there.
00:02:51
Speaker
And so because it was such a, it's so extreme geologically, it's,
00:03:01
Speaker
It meant they suffered very high winds.
00:03:04
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No trees were ever able to grow there or crops.
00:03:07
Speaker
So they've got no shelter in that regard.
00:03:10
Speaker
And because they weren't able to grow crops either, because of the sea spray and the wind and the exposure, the only way really they could survive was by scaling the cliffs and catching the seabirds and living off them and their eggs.
00:03:25
Speaker
So in order to survive and in order to be able to climb these cliffs, you obviously need
00:03:30
Speaker
able-bodied people, uh, within a certain age range.
00:03:35
Speaker
And with only 36 Islanders, um, half of whom were old, some of whom were children, you can imagine that there just weren't enough bodies, um, to go around in order to be able to, uh, keep the food coming in.
00:03:49
Speaker
And so they had to request evacuation in the summer of 1930.
00:03:52
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Um, and, and I just had never heard of St.
00:03:56
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Kilda until I came upon, um,
00:03:59
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a tiny little mention of it in the Times newspaper one random Saturday morning.
00:04:05
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And it had this extraordinary photograph, black and white photograph of these, this group of men staring at the camera.
00:04:11
Speaker
They were quite, I don't want to say feral, because I don't want to make them sound like they were wild beasts, but they were clearly lived a very hard, rugged outdoor life.
00:04:22
Speaker
They were very weather beaten, very bearded, and they had these beautiful blue eyes and they were very arresting.
00:04:31
Speaker
It was a very arresting image.
00:04:33
Speaker
And the headline was 90 years since St.
00:04:36
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Kilda gave up.
00:04:38
Speaker
And it was sort of the gave up that piqued my interest because I thought, well, why not just say 19 years since St.
00:04:46
Speaker
Kilda evacuated or since they left?
00:04:48
Speaker
And it was only really when I did a quick Google and saw quite how extreme their circumstances were and how difficult it was to scratch out an existence there that my interest was piqued.
00:05:01
Speaker
That's so interesting.
00:05:03
Speaker
It's crazy to me that that's real because it sounds like something a fantasy author would come up with in a world building process of their novel.
00:05:11
Speaker
Having people scale the cliff sides to sort of catch birds.
00:05:16
Speaker
It's one of those stranger than fiction things.
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, it really is.
00:05:19
Speaker
So the islands were inhabited basically since the Bronze Age.
00:05:25
Speaker
There was actually genetic modification of the St.
00:05:29
Speaker
Kildans over that 2000 year period.
00:05:31
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And because they would climb barefoot, they actually developed over the generations and frankly, the millennia to have
00:05:39
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longer big toes for grip on the cliffs.
00:05:44
Speaker
So it's actually the St Kilden toe is actually a thing.
00:05:48
Speaker
Because, you know, that they in order to survive, I mean, it was Darwinism at its, you know, at its simplest, you know, in order to survive, they had to adapt.
00:05:59
Speaker
And so they effectively grew these long toes for gripping the cliffs.
00:06:04
Speaker
But, you know, genuinely, it is like something out of a fantasy novel.
Karen's Visit to St. Kilda
00:06:08
Speaker
I mean, I'd obviously looked at loads of photographs and books and I'd found old films and, you know, you can see it.
00:06:15
Speaker
But nothing really prepares you for that first journey over.
00:06:21
Speaker
Because it's a UNESCO World Heritage site now, there's only a certain number of permits given to...
00:06:28
Speaker
sort of operators to be able to go and land in Village Bay.
00:06:32
Speaker
There's only about six companies and they have very small little sort of 12 seater boats.
00:06:38
Speaker
So, you know, obviously they don't want the island to be overrun.
00:06:41
Speaker
So it's very strongly regulated and you can only sail between May and early September because the seas are just too rough the rest of the year.
00:06:52
Speaker
And so you're in this tiny little boat and out you go.
00:06:55
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And it takes four hours to make the crossing from sky, even now with these, you know, super duper engines.
00:07:02
Speaker
And, you know, you're going for four hours.
00:07:05
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And then after about the third hour, you see it come up on the horizon.
00:07:10
Speaker
And of course, there's nothing else to see, like 360 degrees round.
00:07:13
Speaker
It is just
00:07:15
Speaker
It is just horizon with nothing on it.
00:07:18
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You're in the middle of the sea, of the ocean, and suddenly this rock appears.
00:07:23
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And it's sort of like a cathedral that suddenly just rises from the sea.
00:07:29
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And the only way I can really describe it is to say it's like it's out of the Games of Thrones set.
00:07:35
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And genuinely, it is gothic, the rocks are black, and then you've got...
00:07:41
Speaker
thousands upon thousands of seabirds wheeling in the sky above you.
00:07:46
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And that is a sound that you just don't hear anywhere else.
00:07:50
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I mean, that density of seabird life is so extreme that it's sort of an assault of the senses.
00:07:59
Speaker
And you're coming in on this tiny boat, on these big waves towards these rocks and all these birds.
00:08:06
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And it really is extraordinary.
Writing Challenges in a Unique Setting
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:10
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:08:10
Speaker
It sounds amazing.
00:08:11
Speaker
I can see why it grabbed your attention and you suddenly wanted to set, you know, a whole series of books.
00:08:18
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Yes.
00:08:19
Speaker
I mean, on the one hand, it's brilliant because it just feels so raw and sort of primal and it allows a lot of scope dramatically, you know, high passions, secrets, things like that.
00:08:32
Speaker
But on the other hand, I mean, I've basically got 36 islanders in some fields with mountains, you know, and in terms of it makes it very difficult as a writer to create scenes that feel differentiated, to create tension, because I've really got...
00:08:52
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nothing at all to work with other than the relationships between these people and their environment.
00:08:58
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You know, I don't have any props I can rely on.
00:09:01
Speaker
I can't have them going out to the shops or leave, you know, going somewhere else.
00:09:07
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There's nowhere else to go.
00:09:08
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They're all stuck there.
00:09:10
Speaker
So there were definitely times during the writing process when I felt really quite furious with myself for deciding that I could sustain four books and
00:09:21
Speaker
um, with 36 Islanders in, in, um, on an Island with nothing to do.
00:09:26
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Uh, but it did concentrate the mind.
00:09:28
Speaker
That's for sure.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I guess also that you can't bring in a sort of stranger because presumably everyone knows each other.
00:09:37
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:09:38
Speaker
You know, there's only, I say there's only one place to land.
00:09:41
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There's village Bay, which is the place to land if, and the prevailing wind direction is, um,
00:09:47
Speaker
not south east so if there's a south easterly wind you can't drop anchor at St Kilda but luckily that isn't the prevailing wind direction but when the wind does change you then can't land there and there is a very very tiny cove on the other side of the island on the north side which does give you an approach in that in that rare circumstance that the wind has flipped round but yes so you know 99% of
00:10:16
Speaker
of landings would have been in village bay.
00:10:19
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So all of the islanders would see anytime anyone came into the bay.
00:10:23
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There's no hiding.
00:10:26
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And also, of course, I couldn't have people coming and going as they pleased throughout the year, because again, you can only get access to the island even now between late April, early May and
00:10:41
Speaker
end of August, early September.
00:10:43
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After that, the seas are too big and, you know, a big whaling ship could make it or, you know, the big fishing boats, but certainly not the sort of craft that the islanders would have had or any sort of leisure craft.
00:10:55
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It's just not viable.
Writing Career Reflections
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:59
Speaker
Well, that's cool.
00:11:00
Speaker
I mean, it sounds amazing.
00:11:01
Speaker
It's such an interesting setting.
00:11:02
Speaker
And before we, before we hop onto something else, just to, I mentioned there were multiple releases, obviously the new ones coming out, but also the paperback of book number two, The Stolen Hours, that is coming out on the 9th of May as well, in case anyone was interested in getting that.
00:11:17
Speaker
I'd love to talk about your books kind of more universally.
00:11:20
Speaker
You've written dozens of books now.
00:11:22
Speaker
Do you know how many books it is?
00:11:25
Speaker
I've sort of stopped counting.
00:11:26
Speaker
I think it's about 26.
00:11:29
Speaker
My husband's in the council, so he's very good at telling me exactly what I have and haven't done.
00:11:35
Speaker
He has spreadsheets at his fingertips that could tell me anything.
00:11:40
Speaker
So I think I'm at about 26 because I do two books a year.
00:11:43
Speaker
So I haven't actually been writing for 26 years, but...
00:11:48
Speaker
It's a fairly hectic, intense schedule, but I also do quite like it that way.
00:11:57
Speaker
I think that otherwise I would just, I'm more productive if I've got stuff to do.
00:12:02
Speaker
The less I have to do, I just sort of begin to rot.
00:12:05
Speaker
I just sort of sit down and, you know, and I don't achieve anything.
00:12:09
Speaker
It's not like I'm particularly productive in those down times.
00:12:14
Speaker
So I've sort of worked out that it's better to just keep busy.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, no, I totally understand.
00:12:19
Speaker
Sometimes it's like the more time you have, the less you actually get done.
00:12:24
Speaker
Is this the first time that you've done a series?
00:12:27
Speaker
Am I right in thinking the rest of your books are standalone?
00:12:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:12:30
Speaker
And oh my God, I've so done it the hard way.
00:12:34
Speaker
I wish there was some sort of book about how to write books and specifically how to write a series.
00:12:43
Speaker
Because I suppose as with any author, you're constantly learning on the job.
00:12:47
Speaker
And of course, it's very public if you fail.
00:12:50
Speaker
If you make a mess of it and it still gets published, then of course the whole world is a critic and everyone's there to judge you.
00:12:57
Speaker
So it's a difficult thing anyway, being a writer and sort of trying to perfect your craft, so to speak, as you're going along.
00:13:07
Speaker
But writing a series is a whole other adventure.
00:13:12
Speaker
And with hindsight,
00:13:14
Speaker
I don't think that next, if I was to do it again, I wouldn't do a series that was contemporaneous.
00:13:20
Speaker
So what I've done with the Wild Isles series is I have a central mystery as to the fate of a man on the island, a very powerful man on the island.
00:13:32
Speaker
And each of the four books of the series, each one concentrates on a different young woman from the island.
00:13:40
Speaker
So in The Stolen Hours, the protagonist is Varee McKinnon
00:13:44
Speaker
And in The Lost Lover, it's Flora McDonald.
00:13:48
Speaker
And in the first book, The Last Summer, it's a girl called Effie Gillies.
00:13:52
Speaker
And they're all very different.
00:13:54
Speaker
And in each book, we see their life on the island.
00:14:01
Speaker
And each book is split into half of pre-evacuation and then post-evacuation.
00:14:06
Speaker
And we see their lives before and after the island life, but also their own involvement in this central mystery.
00:14:13
Speaker
which ties all the books together.
00:14:16
Speaker
And it's been really interesting to write it in this way because effectively we've got a bit of a murder mystery told from four different perspectives.
00:14:26
Speaker
And so it gives you that unreliable narrator feeling of, well, where is the truth?
00:14:31
Speaker
What can I rely on?
00:14:33
Speaker
Because what I've done is we might have a scene in book one with Effie in the last summer, and we think we know what we know in that scene,
00:14:43
Speaker
But then in the third book with Flora in The Lost Lover, we see that scene from another character's perspective and it's either added onto or it's preceded by action before that.
00:14:58
Speaker
Do you see what I mean?
00:15:00
Speaker
We're coming in all the time and giving further context and perspective to things that we think have been established as fact.
00:15:08
Speaker
So it's really fascinating
00:15:11
Speaker
for me, from an intellectual standpoint, to write a book in that way, to keep changing what we think is the truth.
00:15:21
Speaker
It's limiting because it means that if I have written a scene in book one or book two, then in book three, if I show that scene again, it has to be absolutely, like the dialogue, for example, has to be exactly as it was in the previous scene.
00:15:38
Speaker
So I'm very tied into that.
00:15:40
Speaker
But then, of course, I add on the other character's perspective, you know, there.
00:15:46
Speaker
But it's very limiting.
00:15:48
Speaker
So if I've said it was raining in that particular scene, I can't suddenly come in and it's, you know, it's a blue sunny day.
00:15:55
Speaker
day.
00:15:56
Speaker
So that's just a really basic way of describing it.
00:16:00
Speaker
But it's a very limiting, it means that with each book I'm writing in the series, I have fewer and fewer options with the scenes that I revisit.
00:16:11
Speaker
And so that sort of restriction means I have to do a certain amount of forward planning, obviously, but it's very difficult to predict three books in advance to that level of detail.
00:16:25
Speaker
Um, so it's been challenging and there have been times when I've written, literally written a chapter and then I've gone back to one of the other books and realized that, oh no, oh no, I said something in that book and, and now that, that means that this can't stand and I've had to take it out or change it.
00:16:42
Speaker
And that's frustrating.
00:16:44
Speaker
Um, but it's pleasing when it does all come together.
00:16:49
Speaker
Listening to that,
00:16:51
Speaker
I know how difficult it is just to maintain continuity in a single book.
00:16:56
Speaker
You'll often go back and redrafts and just think, ah, this thing that I said now completely contradicts the thing that happens later.
00:17:02
Speaker
To juggle that between three or four different books must be so complicated.
00:17:08
Speaker
Do you have a kind of mind map kind of plan somewhere, which just kind of highlights where you can and can't do and go?
00:17:15
Speaker
Yes, I do have a lot of mind maps written down because those do help me a lot.
00:17:21
Speaker
And I do skim through the other books before I start writing.
00:17:27
Speaker
But still, you know, you can still miss a tiny detail.
00:17:31
Speaker
And there's a lot of flipping backwards and forwards, trying to make sure that I'm covering all of the bases.
00:17:37
Speaker
um it's definitely the hard way to write a series and what I should have done was still I could have still had the same story over four books but I could have spool I could have had split narrative throughout all the books and had them running consecutive consecutively um um rather than
00:17:59
Speaker
having them as standalones, but connected by a central mystery.
00:18:04
Speaker
So I think if I do a series again, I will probably do it in a different way, just because now I've done this this way.
00:18:12
Speaker
And hopefully once I finish the fourth book, and I hopefully pull it off, I'll be like, okay, I've done that.
00:18:18
Speaker
Now I'll try and do something new because that is something I try and do in all my books because I write so many.
00:18:27
Speaker
I have this real fear of sort of falling into patterns or tropes or just sort of a formula, I suppose.
00:18:39
Speaker
And so I,
00:18:41
Speaker
one thing that I do just to shake it up for me so that I don't rest on my laurels is I will change the structure of how I do each book.
00:18:50
Speaker
Because I do two books a year, I do the summer book, which is currently the St.
00:18:55
Speaker
Kilda stories.
00:18:56
Speaker
But I also do a Christmas book, which is completely standalone.
00:19:02
Speaker
So I will try to, either I might have a past present storyline.
00:19:07
Speaker
I might have a he said, she said story.
00:19:09
Speaker
I might have a prismatic experience with multiple narrators.
00:19:14
Speaker
So I'm trying all the time to change how the book reads so that the readers don't feel like, oh, yeah, I've read this book of Karen's before.
00:19:23
Speaker
You know, I want them always to feel fresh.
00:19:25
Speaker
But, yeah.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:29
Speaker
I guess that's something with the, you know, and you've written 25 plus books at this point, I guess the more books that you have, the more front of mind it is that you are actively trying not to retread the same ground to bring a new and original experience.
00:19:44
Speaker
Definitely.
00:19:44
Speaker
And to the extent where I don't like to repeat a name that I might have used or if I had twins in a book or if I had, you know, someone died in a fire or, you know, just details like that, I really try not to repeat.
00:20:02
Speaker
But, you know, obviously at a certain point, you know, when you've written as many books as I have, you know, there's going to get to be a point where there is, I'm going to echo that.
00:20:12
Speaker
something like, like a detail or a name.
00:20:15
Speaker
Um, but that, that's about as, you know, as far as I'll, I'll allow it.
00:20:20
Speaker
Um, I really try really hard to keep them fresh and new.
00:20:24
Speaker
Um,
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:25
Speaker
I mean, it's obviously something you're very conscious of.
00:20:28
Speaker
So I presume you will actively go out of your way to do that.
00:20:32
Speaker
Is that also something that when you get to the sort of editorial phase of a book, will your editor flag something and maybe say like, oh, you actually used a similar name or there was a similar kind of thing that happened in a previous book?
00:20:45
Speaker
Do you know, they haven't, but I think that's just because I've had about three editors over the course of my
00:20:52
Speaker
tenure so far.
00:20:54
Speaker
And funnily enough, it comes more from me.
00:20:58
Speaker
So I'll be much more aware that I've, and I'll sort of say to my husband, oh God.
00:21:02
Speaker
And he's like, no one is reading it forensically.
00:21:06
Speaker
No one's going to care if you put twins in book two and now you've got them in book 18, you know?
00:21:11
Speaker
And I'm like, he said, I care, you know?
00:21:13
Speaker
And I put a lot of pressure on myself with it.
00:21:16
Speaker
And because I've had that break in,
00:21:20
Speaker
you know, continuity of care, so to speak, with three editors over, say, 15 years, they won't know the entirety of my backlist in the same detail, obviously, that I do.
00:21:35
Speaker
They'll just know the books that they work on.
00:21:37
Speaker
So I sort of have to hold myself accountable, really.
Publication Schedule & Career Milestones
00:21:43
Speaker
So you mentioned two books a year and you write a summer book and a winter book.
00:21:50
Speaker
Is that, I mean, presumably it's partially to give you time to actually do them because you've picked sort of two opposite ends of the year.
00:21:58
Speaker
But is that also like an industry thing?
00:22:01
Speaker
Are those the sort of popular seasons?
00:22:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, do you know, it's sort of funny how the way it happened.
00:22:09
Speaker
And it was all triggered really by the Christmas books, which was that I'd written, when I first started out, I wrote two, I had a two book contract and I wrote these two books and they were published, I think in the January slot.
00:22:27
Speaker
And they did fine.
00:22:28
Speaker
They didn't make the top 10, but they did well for a debut novelist.
00:22:33
Speaker
But they weren't, I was, you see, the thing was, I never really thought I was going to become an author.
00:22:39
Speaker
I was a journalist before and I loved writing, but I'd never, and I was obsessive about reading, but I never thought I would become a fiction writer.
00:22:47
Speaker
And I sort of fell into it by accident.
00:22:50
Speaker
An agent sort of said to me, you must give it a go, give it a go.
00:22:54
Speaker
So I did and suddenly went, oh, I'm sorry.
00:22:56
Speaker
That makes total sense of my brain.
00:22:58
Speaker
That was so easy for me to do.
00:23:00
Speaker
Like I've been telling stories in my head my whole life, but I just thought everybody did that.
00:23:06
Speaker
So I'd fallen into writing.
00:23:11
Speaker
And the first two books I wrote
00:23:12
Speaker
I didn't really know the sort of books I wanted to write.
00:23:15
Speaker
I was sort of looking at market trends and what was selling well at the time.
00:23:19
Speaker
And I slightly copied those, but they weren't really the sorts of books I wanted to read.
00:23:24
Speaker
So I'd had this two book contract and I was coming up for renewal and I thought, right, well, I've got to have an idea for a new book.
00:23:31
Speaker
And I came up with this book idea and my editor immediately saw the potential for it and said, oh my God, yes.
00:23:39
Speaker
And it was a slightly different market to where I'd been before, which was a bit of a punt for me because they'd signed me to be on a certain place on their list.
00:23:48
Speaker
And now I was slightly pivoting off that.
00:23:51
Speaker
But luckily they loved the idea and that book became known as Christmas at Tiffany's.
00:23:56
Speaker
And so they moved me from the January slot to the November slot.
00:24:00
Speaker
And it did incredibly well.
00:24:02
Speaker
It went top 10.
00:24:03
Speaker
It did amazingly well internationally.
00:24:07
Speaker
And it was sort of my first experience of a really successful career.
00:24:11
Speaker
book.
00:24:12
Speaker
And so because of that, I then ended up in the Christmas slot and I suddenly became known as like, you know, writing these Christmas books.
00:24:18
Speaker
But actually Christmas at Tiffany's in and of itself isn't really a Christmas book.
00:24:24
Speaker
It starts at New Year's Eve and it ends the following Christmas, but it's based around, it's set around the course of a year.
00:24:33
Speaker
But anyway, it was called Christmas at Tiffany's.
00:24:35
Speaker
So I then got put in the Christmas slot and
00:24:38
Speaker
And it was after I wrote Christmas at Tiffany's that I wrote my next book called The Perfect Present.
00:24:44
Speaker
And luckily, I was pretty much finishing that when Christmas at Tiffany's was published, which was good because it meant I didn't have time to panic about the fact that this book had done so well and how was I going to follow it
Overcoming Writing Challenges
00:24:59
Speaker
up?
00:24:59
Speaker
So when I handed it in to my editor...
00:25:02
Speaker
And she read it and she came back to me and she said, oh, my God.
00:25:06
Speaker
And basically what had happened was there was a book that had been adapted.
00:25:12
Speaker
It had been bought by Hollywood and it was going to become this major film with Nicole Kidman and like all these major stars in it.
00:25:19
Speaker
And unfortunately for me, the backstory, it wasn't even the backstory.
00:25:24
Speaker
It was just a bit of a twist that,
00:25:27
Speaker
of my book was really close to the premise of this book that was being adapted into this film.
00:25:35
Speaker
And the book had only come out in hardback at the time.
00:25:38
Speaker
I hadn't read it.
00:25:38
Speaker
I didn't know anything about it.
00:25:39
Speaker
It was just a really unfortunate fluke.
00:25:43
Speaker
And she said to me, look,
00:25:45
Speaker
I know you have not copied this book, but she said, because you've been writing this for a year, the other one's only just come out.
00:25:52
Speaker
It's not out in paperback yet, but it's going to be massive because it's gone to Hollywood and it's going to be this huge film.
00:25:58
Speaker
And she said, you're going to have to change it.
00:26:01
Speaker
And I was like, oh my God.
00:26:02
Speaker
And out of like a hundred thousand word manuscript, I'm going to have to change it.
00:26:06
Speaker
I basically had to cut about 70,000 words.
00:26:09
Speaker
Wow.
00:26:10
Speaker
And I had to completely reconfigure my characters.
00:26:14
Speaker
So who had been a villain before was now a hero and vice versa and all of this.
00:26:20
Speaker
I had to completely rethink that.
00:26:23
Speaker
this story, which was a disaster.
00:26:26
Speaker
And I was crying.
00:26:27
Speaker
I couldn't stop crying.
00:26:28
Speaker
And they said to me, look, if you want this book to be on the shelves for next Christmas, and bearing in mind, this is coming straight off the back of Christmas at Tiffany's.
00:26:37
Speaker
She said, if you want this book to be out, you've got to rewrite it in six weeks.
00:26:41
Speaker
And I was like, there's no way I can do that.
00:26:43
Speaker
How am I going to do that?
00:26:44
Speaker
It's taken me a year to write this book.
00:26:47
Speaker
Anyway, they gave me six weeks and I wrote it in five.
00:26:52
Speaker
And it was so much better than the first version.
00:26:57
Speaker
And it made me realize how much drifting around I would do and how much dead time I would have.
00:27:05
Speaker
And I just wasn't focused in the same way.
00:27:08
Speaker
I just wasn't as productive.
00:27:10
Speaker
Whereas give me, you know, there's the journalist in me, give me a deadline and I'll turn it around.
00:27:16
Speaker
And so that was how I ended up writing two books a year, because I realized that I could actually write very quickly when I was super focused.
00:27:26
Speaker
And so because I had the Christmas slot, and that was obviously, you know, doing incredibly well for me, it sort of meant that if I was going to do two a year, then have to be the summer, you know,
00:27:38
Speaker
summer period in order to make the timings work for editing and getting covers and sell through and all of that.
00:27:47
Speaker
So I sort of ended up with those slots off the back of a disaster.
00:27:56
Speaker
That's funny.
00:27:56
Speaker
It's funny how we end up in the kind of places that we do.
00:27:59
Speaker
Obviously, we're talking about you're writing a book every six months, give or take, and that's where you're kind of thriving.
00:28:07
Speaker
But do you have a strict routine?
00:28:09
Speaker
Is there like a day-to-day where you're like, I start working at this time, I stop working at this time, I do this, that, the other?
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah, I do have to be really disciplined about it.
00:28:18
Speaker
It's easier now because my kids are in their late teens and early 20s.
Daily Writing Routine
00:28:23
Speaker
I'm not doing school runs.
00:28:26
Speaker
Everything is much easier in terms of demands on my time.
00:28:29
Speaker
I'm sort of sitting alone in the house with the dogs.
00:28:33
Speaker
So my time is my own.
00:28:35
Speaker
So I'll get up in the morning, walk the dogs.
00:28:38
Speaker
I live in Sussex in the Ashdown Forest where Winnie the Pooh was written.
00:28:42
Speaker
And so I have these lovely walks every morning.
00:28:45
Speaker
And I consider that my commute.
00:28:48
Speaker
And it just gives me time.
00:28:50
Speaker
My mind just goes on a, you know, a bit of an amble.
00:28:54
Speaker
And if I am in the process of writing, I'll be thinking about what I'm going to write that day so that when I sit down, I already know what I'm doing rather than sit down and stare at the screen blankly.
00:29:06
Speaker
So I sort of use that.
00:29:07
Speaker
I use walking and driving as my thinking time for the books.
00:29:12
Speaker
And then I will really just sit down all day and, and,
00:29:18
Speaker
work, which, you know, I've actually had to buy a treadmill so that I get up in the day and I walk.
00:29:26
Speaker
I do more walking because I am so sedentary.
00:29:28
Speaker
And I think it's really bad for me.
00:29:30
Speaker
So I've bought and I now I now insist on doing 10,000 steps a day, just so that I know that I'm moving because I'm otherwise all I'm doing is sitting down.
00:29:40
Speaker
And I will
00:29:41
Speaker
when I'm coming in towards the deadline, invariably I have to start working weekends as well.
00:29:48
Speaker
With each book, probably I will do about three months of thinking and research before I start actually writing.
Book Writing Process & Goals
00:29:57
Speaker
But while I'm in that thinking and researching period, I'm also editing the previous book that I've just handed in.
00:30:07
Speaker
I have copy edits and page proof edits to do.
00:30:11
Speaker
Those will take about eight weeks, eight to 10 weeks.
00:30:15
Speaker
So that sort of straddles that thinking and researching period.
00:30:19
Speaker
And also in that period, I'm likely to be promoting the book that's just coming out as well.
00:30:25
Speaker
So I've sort of got three books in my head.
00:30:29
Speaker
twice a year like that.
00:30:32
Speaker
And once I'm actually writing and I'm sort of clear of the other books, you know, they're edited, all the thinking is done, I'm just writing now and all the promotion is done.
00:30:44
Speaker
When I'm actually just sitting down and writing, I'll probably, for the St.
00:30:47
Speaker
Kilda books, they take about three to four months to write.
00:30:52
Speaker
And
00:30:54
Speaker
And that's pretty much seven days a week because I have to go quite slowly because I'm having to do so much cross-referencing with the other books.
00:31:03
Speaker
With the Christmas books, I can write them in six to eight weeks.
00:31:07
Speaker
And I'll have a word count of 3,000 words a day, five days a week.
00:31:15
Speaker
And that then means that if I make my 15,000 words a week, then I don't have to work the weekend.
00:31:23
Speaker
And that's sort of my incentive to make that target.
00:31:27
Speaker
And of course, if I do have a bad day at the office and I don't get the words down, then I know I've got to sit at the weekend and do it.
00:31:35
Speaker
But it sort of helps keep me very calm because it can be very overwhelming stuff.
00:31:40
Speaker
I hate that the week before I start a book, I feel quite anxious because it feels like a mountain to climb.
00:31:46
Speaker
And you think, oh my God, where for me, the hard bit isn't, what do I write about?
00:31:52
Speaker
It's always, how do I tell this story?
00:31:55
Speaker
How am I going to reveal it?
00:31:57
Speaker
How am I coming in on it?
00:31:59
Speaker
And
00:32:00
Speaker
I find that having the structure of saying by, I'm going to start on Monday and by putting my diary on the Sunday, 15, and then the following Sunday, it will say 30.
00:32:13
Speaker
And then the Sunday after that, it will say 45 and then 60.
00:32:16
Speaker
And I can literally plot that.
00:32:20
Speaker
where I will be in the book in my diary, to the extent that if my editor rings and she's like, oh, you know, how's it going?
00:32:27
Speaker
I could say to her, I'm at 60,000 words.
00:32:30
Speaker
I will have finished this book on this date.
00:32:33
Speaker
And I think she finds it a bit freaky that it's so specific.
00:32:37
Speaker
But it actually, by breaking it down into these chunks, it makes it feel much more manageable.
00:32:44
Speaker
I think that if I was to simply go, right, well, I'm going to write a book now and then just sit down without any shaping, without something different.
00:32:56
Speaker
to guide me, I think I would just, I would lose shape.
00:33:02
Speaker
I would just have good days.
00:33:04
Speaker
I'd have bad days, but I would, I would feel quite chaotic because I wouldn't know.
00:33:07
Speaker
I would feel at the mercy of the process really.
00:33:12
Speaker
And I'd be like, well, when will it finish?
00:33:15
Speaker
I just don't know.
00:33:16
Speaker
It'll get finished when it finishes.
00:33:19
Speaker
And unfortunately my deadlines don't allow for that.
00:33:22
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of people
00:33:25
Speaker
who cannot do their job unless I do mine.
00:33:27
Speaker
So I have to be able to say, yes, I will get the book in on this date so that everyone else can do their jobs.
00:33:36
Speaker
So it's not for everyone.
00:33:38
Speaker
It's a very tough discipline to do 15,000 words a week, every single week for two months.
00:33:47
Speaker
But it does allow me to have weekends off and
00:33:51
Speaker
And it does allow me to sort of have a bit of peace of mind knowing that I'm getting there bit by bit.
00:33:58
Speaker
I think I would just have a breakdown otherwise.
00:34:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, it makes sense.
00:34:02
Speaker
I mean, that's the, it's, you know, setting manageable goals for yourself and sort of being like, no, I'm going to get this much done and then I'm good and then I can, then I can stop for a bit and I'll do the same onwards and onwards.
00:34:14
Speaker
No, I think that's, I think that's great advice.
00:34:16
Speaker
And hopefully anyone listening who's, who's sort of struggling to find a rhythm or a pattern can sort of take at least some part of that, whether it be like the same thing or something slightly different.
Favorite Books & Characterization
00:34:25
Speaker
But that brings us to
00:34:27
Speaker
the half hour mark-ish, which is the desert island question.
00:34:32
Speaker
So Karen, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:34:40
Speaker
Well, I mean, so it's a question of, would I be allowed a series or just one book?
00:34:47
Speaker
Could you get the series in one large anthology?
00:34:51
Speaker
Do you know, I bet I could.
00:34:53
Speaker
I bet I could.
00:34:54
Speaker
I think I could.
00:34:55
Speaker
So I'm obsessed with Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, the Neapolitan series.
00:35:04
Speaker
It was such an eye-opener for me, that book, when I read it, because...
00:35:10
Speaker
To see it's based around two women's friendship from childhood throughout the course of their lives.
00:35:20
Speaker
They're both very intelligent women.
00:35:22
Speaker
They're growing up in impoverished Naples in Italy in the 1950s and 60s, and it follows them through their lives.
00:35:32
Speaker
And they're both very intelligent women with ambition, but not resources.
00:35:39
Speaker
And their lives diverge.
00:35:41
Speaker
One of them is able to sort of pursue her academic dreams and the other one isn't.
00:35:48
Speaker
And there's this really fierce, intense rivalry between the two women.
00:35:53
Speaker
And they love each other, but they hate each other as well.
00:35:57
Speaker
And it was so fascinating for me.
00:36:00
Speaker
to read a book about two women for whom actually the most important relationship in their lives wasn't their husbands, it wasn't their children, it was this friendship.
00:36:12
Speaker
And it was so nuanced and they were so flawed.
00:36:17
Speaker
But I just thought, my God, I have never seen this written like this before, women written like this.
00:36:25
Speaker
You know, no one's, no one's
00:36:29
Speaker
an arch villain.
00:36:30
Speaker
It's not about villainy.
00:36:32
Speaker
It's just about flawed humans and the best of them and the worst of them and fate and circumstance and luck and
00:36:45
Speaker
I just could pick it up any day of the week and I would be lost in it again.
00:36:51
Speaker
I mean, there would never be a time when I wouldn't want to fall into that world.
00:36:56
Speaker
And I felt sad that I didn't grow up in impoverished Neapolitan slums.
00:37:03
Speaker
I was like, oh my God.
00:37:04
Speaker
I mean, it was amazing.
00:37:06
Speaker
The BBC did actually adapt it into a series that
00:37:10
Speaker
And when I saw that, I thought, oh no, this is going to be terrible because the books are sublime.
00:37:15
Speaker
And actually, I have to say, it is an excellent production.
00:37:21
Speaker
The casting is so on point and I loved it so much.
00:37:27
Speaker
So if people don't want to read the book, and of course, everyone should always read the books, but if they don't want to, there is the BBC series as well.
00:37:35
Speaker
And it's absolutely fantastic.
00:37:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:40
Speaker
I know what you mean.
00:37:41
Speaker
Every now and again, you'll sort of read a book or watch a film or a television series where it's sort of inexplicable, but no matter what role a character plays, whether it's the protagonist or the antagonist, there's some things where I'll come away from it being like, wow, that was such an incredible story because I resonated with every single character.
00:38:01
Speaker
It's like I was sympathetic to the villains.
00:38:04
Speaker
I was sympathetic to the heroes and everyone in between.
00:38:07
Speaker
I felt
00:38:08
Speaker
they felt like real people and everyone felt relatable.
00:38:11
Speaker
And it also, it's kind of when a story is so well written that every character is a product of their circumstance and you get it and you're like, yes, I understand why you, why you made those decisions and why you are the way you are.
00:38:26
Speaker
Exactly.
00:38:27
Speaker
And I think I'm always really interested when, when I'm a reader, I catch myself.
00:38:32
Speaker
I'm always so prepared to, you know, even in a,
00:38:37
Speaker
a villainous character.
00:38:39
Speaker
I'm always so prepared to try and be on side with them.
00:38:44
Speaker
I'm always amazed at how much as readers we will try to forgive, we will try to like, we'll try to go on a journey with them unless they're presented ultimately as being completely irredeemable.
00:38:56
Speaker
And that's what Elena does so well.
00:39:00
Speaker
She does make them utterly hateful
00:39:04
Speaker
I mean, some of the things they do are unforgivable.
00:39:08
Speaker
I mean, you simply cannot say, yes, that was fine.
00:39:14
Speaker
They are very, very flawed, nuanced characters, but that's what just makes them feel like all of us.
00:39:21
Speaker
That's what makes these characters live and breathe.
00:39:24
Speaker
And I think readers are always prepared to go on that journey with you.
00:39:29
Speaker
You know, you don't need, I really buck against this, particularly in commercial fiction, there's real,
00:39:37
Speaker
sort of want for the characters to be really likable and really relatable.
00:39:42
Speaker
And that's great.
00:39:43
Speaker
I get that.
00:39:43
Speaker
But my books just always tend to be a little bit darker.
00:39:47
Speaker
I don't particularly feel the need for my protagonists to be hugely likable and sweet, as long as we can understand them, why they are the way they are.
00:39:59
Speaker
I think the reader will go with that and can relate to it.
00:40:03
Speaker
I mean, obviously you don't want it to be completely hateful, but, you know, it's, it's, I just think there's, there's room for allowing some of the shadows to come through as well.
00:40:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah.
Episode Wrap-Up
00:40:18
Speaker
We're going to keep talking about some of this stuff.
00:40:20
Speaker
I've got some questions about settings and imposter syndrome, but this is the end of the regular episode and into the extended cut exclusive to Patreon subscribers.
00:40:28
Speaker
So anyone listening who hasn't yet joined the Patreon, please do think about it because it goes a long way towards covering the costs of running this podcast.
00:40:35
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Karen, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your writing and your kind of publishing antics and everything that's been going on with you.
00:40:43
Speaker
It's been awesome chatting with you.
00:40:45
Speaker
Oh, thank you so much.
00:40:46
Speaker
This has been great fun.
00:40:47
Speaker
I've really enjoyed it.
00:40:49
Speaker
And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Karen is doing, you can find her on Twitter at KarenSwan1, on Instagram at SwaneeWrites, and on Facebook at KarenSwanAuthor.
00:41:00
Speaker
To support the podcast, like, follow, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and follow along on all socials.
00:41:05
Speaker
Join the Patreon for extended episodes ad-free in a week early and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:41:10
Speaker
Thanks again to Karen and thanks to everyone listening.
00:41:12
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.