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136 Ruth Heald | Psychological Thriller Author
416 Plays2 years ago
Best-selling psychological thriller author, Ruth Heald joins us this week to talk about her latest novel, her approach to writing and her partnership with Bookouture.
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Transcript
The Role of Writing in Plot Development
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question.
00:00:02
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:02
Speaker
Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
00:00:04
Speaker
Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writing... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:00:11
Speaker
So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Introduction
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 a bestselling psychological thriller author.
00:00:23
Speaker
It's Ruth Yield.
00:00:24
Speaker
Hi, Ruth.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome to the show.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi, Jamie.
00:00:27
Speaker
It's really good to be here.
00:00:29
Speaker
Thanks for coming on.
Ruth Heald's Novel and Character Exploration
00:00:31
Speaker
For people listening, just to give a sort of better sense of what you write, other than me just saying psychological thriller, why don't you tell us a little bit about your latest novel, The Party on Laurel Street, which came out in June this year?
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:00:47
Speaker
So the party on Laurel Street is about, well, 25 years ago, there were three little girls aged 10.
00:00:55
Speaker
And there was a New Year's Eve party on their street that all their parents were at.
00:01:00
Speaker
And they decided to escape and have their own party in the woods behind the kind of country estate where they all live.
00:01:09
Speaker
Now, at that little kind of midnight feast type party, one of them then disappeared and was never seen again.
Inspiration from Past Events
00:01:17
Speaker
And now, 25 years later, the two other girls, women now in their 30s,
00:01:25
Speaker
are both living back in that street.
00:01:28
Speaker
So Mel, who's the protagonist, has just inherited her grandmother's house in the street.
00:01:34
Speaker
And her friend Gabby, who was also at the midnight feast, is already living there with her husband.
00:01:40
Speaker
And at the time that the girl went missing, their friend, the maintenance man who did a lot of work on this country estate, he was the main suspect.
00:01:49
Speaker
Now Mel's moved back to the street.
00:01:51
Speaker
He seems to be making a reappearance in the shadows and she feels he's following her.
00:01:56
Speaker
Her friend also feels like that.
00:01:58
Speaker
And then her friend...
00:02:00
Speaker
also disappears so now two of the three and also after a party um so now two of the three girls um are not there and what happened to them what will happen to mel kind of what what kind of role can she play in finding a friend what what happened in the past etc etc so so that's the kind of basic premise
00:02:23
Speaker
It's a very interesting set.
00:02:24
Speaker
I'm fascinated to know where that story begins for
Starting Stories with Past Events
00:02:29
Speaker
you.
00:02:29
Speaker
Like, do you start with the thing that happens in the past or do you start with the characters in the present and think, oh, what's the thing that is like holding them back that happened to them that scarred them from when they were younger?
00:02:42
Speaker
Hmm, that's such an interesting question.
00:02:46
Speaker
So for that book, it was definitely the thing in the past.
00:02:51
Speaker
I like the idea of children kind of slightly, not neglected, but not watched properly and what they might do, the fun they might have, but also the danger they could get into and the complexity of that.
00:03:02
Speaker
So that one certainly started in the past with a kind of image of the woods.
00:03:09
Speaker
And then I think as I kind of move forward in my career and have written more of my books, I'm trying to match different ideas that
Community Settings in Storytelling
00:03:15
Speaker
I have.
00:03:15
Speaker
So for the setting for that of a kind of, it's a country estate.
00:03:19
Speaker
So there's a former big house and then cottages that would work as cottages around it on the lane.
00:03:27
Speaker
So I wanted to use that kind of quite evocative setting in the middle of nowhere, a close knit community, trying to match kind of different, different things that I want to do, I think.
00:03:38
Speaker
So the setting came quite early on as well.
00:03:42
Speaker
And then it was actually quite a hard book to write.
00:03:45
Speaker
I think the present day aspect of it proved quite
Challenges in Storyline Matching
00:03:50
Speaker
difficult.
00:03:50
Speaker
I'm not quite sure why.
00:03:51
Speaker
Sometimes books come out really, really simply and easily.
00:03:55
Speaker
And sometimes they don't.
00:03:57
Speaker
And it's hard to know the difference, really.
00:04:00
Speaker
But thinking about my other books, so The Nanny...
00:04:04
Speaker
that's about a baby who goes missing this time in Thailand and the nanny looking after the baby is accused and I think that definitely the nub again was that past story and not so much for present day story so I think I'm trying to think about my other books
00:04:25
Speaker
I think generally it's the past story is the most interesting and then the present day bit for me is the jigsaw of who is this person now?
00:04:34
Speaker
How does their past influence them?
00:04:38
Speaker
What kind of threat are they under today?
00:04:41
Speaker
Because I feel like there always has to be something, a threat in the past and a threat today.
00:04:45
Speaker
It's a combination of those things and how they relate that kind of drives the story forward.
Character Development Through Past Events
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really interesting structure to write stories with because on the outside, it's like, oh, there's a thing in the past which catches up to them.
00:04:58
Speaker
But then I guess you also use that very cleverly to sort of be like, this is actually the character study.
00:05:05
Speaker
And the thing that happened in their past is just the sort of
00:05:07
Speaker
uh, the events that informed the character that they are today.
00:05:11
Speaker
So it kind of, you're, you're blending the two of like the, the literal action that's happening with the sort of subconscious character development that, that, and you, the sort of origin of where that character has come from and why they are the way they are now.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:25
Speaker
So depending on when the past was, it can be something their kind of flaw in the first place may have influenced what they did in the past, say if they're an adult.
00:05:36
Speaker
And then they kind of go on a journey sometimes to learn from that flaw and those events and to kind of almost rectify it in the present.
Planning Process in Writing
00:05:46
Speaker
And at other times when it's like not their fault at all, then it's much more about how it's affecting them today.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:55
Speaker
Going off what we've just talked about, I'm going to guess that you are someone that plans novels.
00:06:02
Speaker
Um, well, yes and no.
00:06:05
Speaker
So I always write a plan.
00:06:09
Speaker
I really, I really enjoy writing plans.
00:06:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:12
Speaker
I love doing a spreadsheet.
00:06:14
Speaker
I love laying it all out, color coding it, all of that stuff.
00:06:17
Speaker
But well, the other side of my personality is I really hate following plans.
00:06:24
Speaker
Unfortunately, so I always have a plan.
00:06:27
Speaker
I'm always quite happy with it.
00:06:27
Speaker
I'm always pleased with it in and as itself as a plan.
00:06:32
Speaker
But the reality is the book that comes from that plan is very rarely anything to do with it.
00:06:38
Speaker
Or like it can be, but the premise and the subject will probably remain the same.
00:06:43
Speaker
The ending often remains the same or similar, but the stuff in the middle is,
00:06:49
Speaker
I think it's hard, you know, with a plan because a summary can never capture what happens in the book, really, a chapter-by-chapter summary.
00:06:58
Speaker
And you just don't know how those points are going to turn out or, like, your character might...
00:07:04
Speaker
you're writing on about a birthday party in one chapter or something, and it turns out they do something completely different to what you'd expect.
00:07:10
Speaker
And then lots of drama can come from that.
00:07:13
Speaker
And if you go back to your plan and the next scene might be something quite, you know, you haven't really thought about it, it sounds a bit dull.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:20
Speaker
It easily goes off track, I think, from a plan quite early on.
00:07:23
Speaker
And you really have to, well, in my experience and the way my mind works, I really have to let it go off track.
00:07:29
Speaker
Because if I'm trying to force it back onto the track that I've planned, then it comes out quite stale, I think, with writing.
00:07:36
Speaker
It's much harder to work like that for me.
00:07:40
Speaker
Writers that I've spoken to or that I know who go for a more like pantser, like make it up as you go approach, that's the issue that they always have the planning is that like it doesn't feel organic.
00:07:51
Speaker
Like they can't make it work with a plan and keep it the way that they want to write it.
00:07:56
Speaker
I'm wondering what, when you, so you have your plan and then you start writing it.
00:08:00
Speaker
Presumably you do stick, you know, as you, as you start, you are on the plan and then eventually you'll go off the rails.
00:08:05
Speaker
When you do veer away from the planned route, do you literally just, does the plan just sort of, you know, it's like you just chuck it out the window at that point, or is it always there as like a reference?
00:08:16
Speaker
And like, even though you're sort of very far off it at that point, are you still sort of vaguely referring to it to see if maybe you can bring this back on track?
Adapting Plans Based on Character Development
00:08:25
Speaker
Well, funnily enough, I'm writing my book nine, my ninth psychological, oh no, book eight.
00:08:31
Speaker
Sorry, I'm getting confused.
00:08:32
Speaker
Book eight of my psychological thrillers at the moment.
00:08:35
Speaker
And I wrote a plan and I was happy with it, more or less.
00:08:41
Speaker
Um, and then I started writing, I'm not writing in order.
00:08:44
Speaker
I'm just writing the scenes that come to me.
00:08:48
Speaker
Um, I've decided I'm not going to look again at that regular plan until the end.
00:08:54
Speaker
Um, and then see if there's anything from a plan that I want to put in because often, so one page synopsis has so little detail in it.
00:09:01
Speaker
We'll just have the key twists and the kind of key points.
00:09:05
Speaker
But you can't, I don't think you can really write a book of that.
00:09:10
Speaker
It's quite hard.
00:09:11
Speaker
I mean, you can try and write to the midpoint.
00:09:13
Speaker
You can try and write to the twist.
00:09:15
Speaker
But actually, as you're going through, you think of better twists.
00:09:17
Speaker
You think of better midpoints.
00:09:20
Speaker
Your midpoint ends up being like three chapters in instead of in the middle.
00:09:23
Speaker
Because actually, if you've only thought about those points, you haven't got anything else to put in.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:09:28
Speaker
So I don't...
Synopsis vs. Final Outcome
00:09:32
Speaker
I don't think it's too tricky to go at the end and look at the synopsis and see if there's a few more things that I need to plug into the story to make it just a few little extra twists that might not be the main twists anymore.
00:09:46
Speaker
In fact, I've no idea how much this has gone off the rails.
00:09:49
Speaker
It may not have done.
00:09:51
Speaker
But the point is, when I start to look at those plans, it's often confusing because you're trying to then shoehorn in plot points
00:10:01
Speaker
that works in a kind of 200 word synopsis, but actually your characters have done, they've got slightly different personalities, behaving slightly differently, more interesting things have happened.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:14
Speaker
That it's kind of like you're then almost putting together two separate stories and forcing them together.
00:10:20
Speaker
And I don't think that works particularly well because over the years I've tried to do that kind of thing.
00:10:26
Speaker
Um,
00:10:27
Speaker
And it just makes life harder and you end up deleting so much.
00:10:32
Speaker
So this time I'm not looking too closely at it.
00:10:36
Speaker
But when it comes to the end and when I have to submit that, I'll just double check to see if there's anything I can kind of put in from it.
00:10:43
Speaker
I think the point for me is that with my editor,
00:10:47
Speaker
The exciting points and the premise that we talk about and we get excited about and chat about those are the points that still have to be there.
00:10:54
Speaker
When I then go away and write the synopsis, I'm kind of trying to perform to a structure and
00:11:02
Speaker
Not every point in that synopsis is the point that excited me and my editor.
00:11:06
Speaker
Sometimes those points are just to fill the synopsis and make it a sensible structure that will kind of keep the reader reading.
00:11:12
Speaker
So if you still, I feel like as long as I've still got the points that excited us in the first place, it's okay to deviate.
00:11:20
Speaker
That's my personal view.
Balancing Planning and Flexibility
00:11:22
Speaker
I don't know.
00:11:24
Speaker
I'd be interested to hear my editor's view, actually, if you may.
00:11:27
Speaker
feel entirely differently.
00:11:29
Speaker
But I think you just have to keep the excitement and the passion and the reason you both decided that that was the right plot more than the detail of how that plot is executed.
00:11:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:11:42
Speaker
That's really interesting.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
Sort of a hybridization of you like to make a plan, but you're very happy to go off the plan and sort of make it up.
00:11:49
Speaker
That's, that's, it's, I've not heard, people probably do that approach.
00:11:53
Speaker
Maybe they haven't told me, but I've not heard anyone explicitly explain it like that.
00:11:58
Speaker
It's an interesting process to do.
00:12:00
Speaker
And it's not like the plan is valueless because I'm not saying I'm making a plan just for the sake of making a plan.
00:12:05
Speaker
I get a lot of value of my, in making that plan because it makes me think of lots of alternatives.
00:12:10
Speaker
plot points and sometimes I'll write one version and actually I want to change something and I'll realize subconsciously and then go back to something in the original plan but I had to kind of go through that process to realize that that point worked rather than something else or one of the other threads will have changed and it will make that make more sense so I guess it's like a jigsaw puzzle but with like lots of different pieces that sometimes fit but when you change like you're changing the jigsaw all the time it's not the same picture like you're starting and you're trying to make
00:12:39
Speaker
one picture and then you change it to a slightly different picture.
00:12:41
Speaker
And then the picture at the end is a combination of a plan and the first draft, but it's neither.
00:12:48
Speaker
If that makes any sense.
00:12:49
Speaker
If anyone followed that, you understand how Ruth's process works.
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:55
Speaker
So it's not entirely, um, logical perhaps, but it works.
00:13:01
Speaker
So yeah.
00:13:01
Speaker
you've obviously honed this in over many books and lots of writing so that like you get it and this is what you figured out the thing that works for you, which
Writing Sequels vs. Standalone Books
00:13:10
Speaker
is great.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:12
Speaker
And as you mentioned, you are working on your, uh, did we, it was eighth book.
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:18
Speaker
Eighth psychological thriller.
00:13:19
Speaker
It's my ninth book.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:21
Speaker
But yeah.
00:13:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:24
Speaker
And all of your thrillers, they are standalone stories, right?
00:13:27
Speaker
You haven't done any sequels.
00:13:29
Speaker
Would you ever do sequels?
00:13:32
Speaker
Um, I find it quite hard in this genre to do a sequel.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that's true.
00:13:39
Speaker
Because the way my books off, because they're so often about past secrets, then they're kind of used up in the first one.
00:13:49
Speaker
Um, I think, um, I know some people have successfully done really good sequels.
00:13:54
Speaker
Um, I think for me, the way to do it would be to follow a character, like just one character.
00:14:01
Speaker
character into a sequel rather than the whole cast, if you see what I mean.
00:14:06
Speaker
Because you need to have a new cast to make mistakes, to develop all of that kind of thing.
00:14:13
Speaker
So I think it is possible.
00:14:14
Speaker
I don't think any of my books as they stand would suit a sequel.
00:14:21
Speaker
No.
00:14:22
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:14:23
Speaker
I wouldn't rule it out in the future.
00:14:24
Speaker
But at the moment I haven't designed them in that way that that would suit really.
Same Universe and Character Crossovers
00:14:31
Speaker
Do you think of your books as all existing in the same universe?
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
I mean, my books are present day, kind of usually West London.
00:14:43
Speaker
So yeah, they're definitely...
00:14:46
Speaker
They're definitely in the same, similar settings and similar universe.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:50
Speaker
Do you ever, um, I actually spoke to, uh, Mark Edwards recently.
00:14:54
Speaker
He's also a psychological thriller author.
00:14:56
Speaker
Yes.
00:14:56
Speaker
Yes.
00:14:57
Speaker
And he, same as you, like all his books are standalones, but he, he, he loves to do like, uh, he'll have like a character or like, um, one of his, the stories that he wrote about is, is being made into a Netflix movie in the universe.
00:15:11
Speaker
And he does all these just really small kind of Easter egg crossover things.
00:15:15
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:15:16
Speaker
Do you ever do anything like that?
00:15:17
Speaker
I do not.
00:15:18
Speaker
No.
00:15:19
Speaker
But I can do, but do you mean, what do you mean like putting a character from one book into another book?
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, but not as like, I don't, it's never as like a main hairdresser or something like something kind of really inunders.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:32
Speaker
I think he said, yeah, one of his books, the plot of that book was being made into like a true crime doc on Netflix.
00:15:39
Speaker
And in one of his other books, one of the characters was watching the true crime doc of the story that he told in the other book.
00:15:46
Speaker
Oh, I love that.
00:15:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's good.
00:15:48
Speaker
Just fun stuff like that.
00:15:50
Speaker
And I'd love to ask you something I asked him actually, because I always think it's so interesting with authors who have written several books at this point.
Ensuring Freshness in Psychological Thrillers
00:16:00
Speaker
You know, you've almost written, you've almost published 10 books
00:16:03
Speaker
books at this point, which is, which is a hell of a lot.
00:16:05
Speaker
How do you tackle, um, and this is especially difficult because, uh, as you say, they're all standalones.
00:16:12
Speaker
So every new book you write has a new set of characters and it's a new story.
00:16:17
Speaker
How do you tackle the challenge of making sure that it's like fresh and new, and you're not retreading the same kind of things that you did in previous novels?
00:16:27
Speaker
I think that is a real challenge, actually, especially in this genre where I think it's getting tighter and tighter and the requirements are getting higher.
00:16:35
Speaker
more specific certainly over the years that I've been with Bikature that they certainly have more of an idea of what what they want that's more prescriptive um and there are only so many stories um within that I think um so so it gets harder and it gets harder to think of um original twists and
00:16:57
Speaker
But so far, I would say I haven't struggled with the overarching ideas.
00:17:03
Speaker
I always have quite a lot of ideas just bouncing around in my mind.
00:17:08
Speaker
So that's not like the premise.
00:17:10
Speaker
I have lots of those.
00:17:11
Speaker
So that's not any trouble, really.
00:17:14
Speaker
The trouble comes when you're writing the scenes and you want something interesting.
00:17:18
Speaker
you know, how many people have been pushed down the stairs in my novels a lot because you want something that could be an accident or could have, you know, or it could have really someone that could have pushed you.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
There's only, I don't know, maybe I need to watch more movies, try and think of more, but I feel like some of those kinds of things where you need that device, there's only so many ways that,
00:17:41
Speaker
you can do it um and other scenes like sometimes I need like a scene in a club where everyone's getting really drunk or something like that and sometimes when I go to write that scene I feel like oh I think I've written this before so it's more a scene by scene basis
00:17:58
Speaker
that it's kind of hard to, I find it a little bit difficult to, you know, a coffee shop scene, like how do I make it different from a coffee shop scene?
00:18:06
Speaker
I've written a different book, like in terms of describing the background, what's going on.
00:18:10
Speaker
So that level I find hard personally.
00:18:15
Speaker
I'd love to speak to people who've written like 30 books or something like that and work out how do they do it?
00:18:20
Speaker
How do they make those scenes work?
Creating Diverse Characters and Scenes
00:18:23
Speaker
different in in future books because you kind of remember i think subconsciously even though i haven't read those books for a long long time my other books i remember subconsciously and i feel like maybe i'm not writing this isn't fresh maybe i'm almost rewriting the scene that i had in the previous book yeah i don't know i'd love advice on how to do that to make it those scenes individual scenes different every time and then of course the other thing is character um
00:18:50
Speaker
I think psychological thrillers require a certain type of character as well because you have to have someone who's made a mistake usually or some kind of mistake is helpful.
00:19:00
Speaker
They've got to be a bit flawed.
00:19:03
Speaker
Often for all the plot twists to happen, they've got to be a bit gullible.
00:19:09
Speaker
So, you know, and how many variations on that can you have?
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it is difficult.
00:19:18
Speaker
I try to make my characters reasonably different from each other, but usually they're women in their kind of 30s and...
00:19:29
Speaker
usually with kids.
00:19:29
Speaker
Because I mean, to be honest, I've thought a lot and have started books writing about women without kids.
00:19:37
Speaker
But kids are such a good device.
00:19:41
Speaker
Because, you know, there can always be a threat to the kids.
00:19:43
Speaker
You know, if you need another plot point, you can put a threat to the kid.
00:19:48
Speaker
So yeah, I do really want to write more about women who don't have kids, you know, living a single lifestyle.
00:19:59
Speaker
But at the moment, I found that I've started books like that.
00:20:03
Speaker
And then I've kind of cheated a bit and added in a kid later on.
00:20:10
Speaker
It's just another layer of tension because there's a threat to the person, obviously, the protagonist.
00:20:15
Speaker
But, you know, if you add a kid and also because animals, you know, like the number one rule is you can never hurt an animal.
00:20:21
Speaker
People don't even like animals being threatened to be hurt.
00:20:24
Speaker
So you can't really add an animal and threaten them.
00:20:26
Speaker
But you can threaten a kid and people don't complain.
00:20:29
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:20:31
Speaker
So it's quite interesting the kind of boundaries you end up operating within, I think, because they're kind of genre rules.
00:20:37
Speaker
And obviously you don't have to obey every rule.
00:20:39
Speaker
It doesn't work like that.
00:20:41
Speaker
But I think you want to obey most of them if you can.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:47
Speaker
I think it's interesting now that you've mentioned adding children as this, because obviously, yeah, there's the threat of the children being in danger, which is, and then your MC will, you know, it's drop everything because the children are the most important.
00:20:59
Speaker
But there's also an interesting thing with children
00:21:02
Speaker
where the adult characters often don't want to tell them what's happening because they don't want to put that on them.
00:21:09
Speaker
So you get a sort of freebie of why you can have miscommunication because they're young children and you don't want to tell them about the bad person or the killer or whatever.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:23
Speaker
That's that as well.
00:21:24
Speaker
It just adds a few more layers really.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:27
Speaker
Um, that's interesting.
00:21:29
Speaker
Um, I wonder if we can change topic a little bit here, move on to a bit of more, more sort of industry publishing
Experience with Digital-first Publishing
00:21:34
Speaker
stuff.
00:21:34
Speaker
You are with Bookature, as you mentioned, um, very interesting imprint because I feel like they're, they're part of a sort of evolution of, of changing a little bit how publishing, how publishing works.
00:21:48
Speaker
Um, have you always been with Booker Joe throughout your, your whole publishing career?
00:21:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:53
Speaker
So how did you first, um, find them?
00:21:56
Speaker
How did you, how, how did that kind of partnership come about?
00:21:59
Speaker
Well, it was a bit of a coincidence in a strange sort of a way.
00:22:04
Speaker
So I went to the York Festival of Writing, I think it was in 2017.
00:22:11
Speaker
And I'd signed up.
00:22:13
Speaker
You got these two talks with like an agent or publisher as part of your 10 minute kind of pitch sessions as part of your ticket price.
00:22:21
Speaker
And one of them was with a lady called Catherine O'Hara.
00:22:24
Speaker
I think that's how I pronounce her name.
00:22:27
Speaker
And she, at the time I signed up, she was with a different publisher.
00:22:32
Speaker
But by the time I saw her, she'd moved to Bookature.
00:22:35
Speaker
And so I realised she'd moved to Bookature before I went.
00:22:40
Speaker
And did a bit of research.
00:22:43
Speaker
And I got really super excited, actually, by what Bookature was and what it stood for and how it was different.
00:22:50
Speaker
So I'd self-published one novel before.
00:22:52
Speaker
And I'd kind of struggled with the marketing, really, and hadn't got very excited by the marketing.
00:22:58
Speaker
And it felt to me that Bookature just had this great combination of the kind of skills and mindset of self-publishing, right?
00:23:09
Speaker
And also the traditional publishing element as well.
00:23:14
Speaker
All the editing they do.
00:23:16
Speaker
And it just seemed like a perfect fit for me.
00:23:19
Speaker
And then luckily, I was really lucky because she just, she liked the pitch that I gave for my book.
00:23:26
Speaker
Her list was full.
00:23:27
Speaker
So she gave it to another one of her editors who also liked it.
00:23:29
Speaker
And then I got signed.
00:23:31
Speaker
So it was a bit of a coincidence because I hadn't heard of Bookature until I happened to be meeting her and then looked them up.
00:23:38
Speaker
And I really did feel like I'd felt when I self-published that there was a gap in the market for that kind of publisher who can do the marketing for you and is much quicker and prioritizes digital and has these advantages on traditional publishers in that space.
00:23:58
Speaker
So, yeah, so that's how it happened.
00:24:00
Speaker
I hear only good things about literature.
00:24:03
Speaker
All of the authors I've had on talking about people to say how supportive they are and all of this stuff like that.
Working Without a Literary Agent
00:24:10
Speaker
Do you have a literary agent?
00:24:13
Speaker
No, I don't actually.
00:24:14
Speaker
So at the time I had the offer from Bookature, I also had two offers of representation from agents who were really good agents.
00:24:23
Speaker
I really enjoyed talking to them, liked them.
00:24:26
Speaker
They both shared my vision and it was really exciting talking to them.
00:24:29
Speaker
But I was also so excited by Bookature and I felt at the time, and probably to some extent still do now, that there's not
00:24:42
Speaker
as much they can add in that relationship with Bookature as they could with it.
00:24:48
Speaker
There's loads.
00:24:49
Speaker
They would be absolutely incredible and invaluable with a traditional publisher.
00:24:53
Speaker
There's no doubt about that.
00:24:55
Speaker
But I think in that relationship, and bear in mind I already have the author, I just...
00:25:02
Speaker
I felt I was happy to go it alone.
00:25:03
Speaker
I think I wanted that direct relationship with the editor.
00:25:06
Speaker
I didn't really want a third person necessarily involved.
00:25:11
Speaker
And to be honest, I haven't, I don't think I've had, there's been some scenarios where I think, oh, an agent might be useful, but there's not been any big ones where I've thought, oh, I really need an agent.
00:25:22
Speaker
Certainly not yet.
00:25:24
Speaker
That could all change, of course, but yeah.
00:25:27
Speaker
For me, dealing with Bookature Direct has been a pleasure, really.
00:25:31
Speaker
I've had two editors, I'm about to get a third, and everyone has been amazing.
00:25:37
Speaker
There just haven't been the issues where I feel like I'd need a third party involved.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's also the vibe I get just with the way that Bookature operates as well.
00:25:49
Speaker
And they, cause obviously they are, they have open submissions.
00:25:52
Speaker
You can submit directly to them as a querying writer.
00:25:56
Speaker
So it all makes sense.
00:25:57
Speaker
Awesome.
00:25:59
Speaker
So far, a hundred percent of the reviews I've heard for Bookature are good.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not surprised.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:06
Speaker
Um, and as we move towards the end of the episode, um, I do just want to ask, uh, as someone who has, has been doing this for a while, who has many books out, um, what advice do you, do you give to authors and the like when, when people ask you, Oh, I'm trying to get into
Resilience in Writing and Publishing
00:26:22
Speaker
publishing.
00:26:22
Speaker
I've, I've written some stuff.
00:26:24
Speaker
I'm trying to get my work out there.
00:26:26
Speaker
Uh, what should I do?
00:26:27
Speaker
Gosh, I mean, it depends at what stage they're at, really.
00:26:33
Speaker
I mean, I think most of the people that I know who are published certainly wrote a lot of books before they were published, me included.
00:26:43
Speaker
And I think that aspect of just resilience is...
00:26:47
Speaker
It's so important.
00:26:48
Speaker
Like not take, well, when I say not, I was about to say not taking no for an answer, but I don't mean when an agent says no, don't take that for an answer.
00:26:55
Speaker
I mean, when someone says no, don't take it as a reflection on you or your writing, particularly unless they have specific feedback.
00:27:03
Speaker
because it's so subjective.
00:27:06
Speaker
And more don't take it on a reflection of whether you should continue to write, because everyone can improve.
00:27:13
Speaker
Usually it's just subjective.
00:27:15
Speaker
And it's just kind of keeping going and submitting the manuscript to lots of agents, to lots of publishers.
00:27:21
Speaker
If that doesn't work, writing another manuscript is
00:27:24
Speaker
you know, trying again a year later, trying again five years later.
00:27:28
Speaker
It's all of that, I think, is sometimes underestimated by people.
00:27:32
Speaker
It's not as straightforward as someone has a brilliant book, everyone's going to want to pick it up at all.
00:27:37
Speaker
I mean, it's so, so subjective at every stage, at the agent stage, at the publisher's stage, at the reader's stage even.
00:27:45
Speaker
And all publishers and agents are doing are trying to predict what readers...
00:27:50
Speaker
will want um and everyone knows I guess it's a reader themselves what they want so so so I think you just have to have a really thick skin and be able to kind of bounce back from from every setback and to know I mean the thing that we all have in common I think we write as I know is that we've kept going and that's probably the main thing we have in common obviously we can all write but but it is a skill I think
00:28:18
Speaker
that probably, I don't know, but probably can be learned.
00:28:21
Speaker
And certainly you can improve your writing.
00:28:25
Speaker
So yeah, so that's, that's the thing I would say, like, just don't, don't give up and don't let anyone make you feel like you should either as well.
00:28:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
Because the, all the, all everyone's journeys are so unique in that, you know, I've had people on the podcast who wrote their first book and then, you know, got accepted by the first agent they spoke to and then got published.
00:28:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:48
Speaker
But equally, I've had people who have been submitting various different iterations of books for like 10 years, sometimes more.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:56
Speaker
And I think that that story, that first version of a story is quite rare, really.
00:29:00
Speaker
When someone submits a first agent, I've only had that like a couple of times, maybe, whereas hundreds of times, I think I've had, you know, try, try, try, keep trying.
00:29:11
Speaker
So I think, I just think if you don't get accepted straight away, it's really not a reflection.
00:29:17
Speaker
It doesn't have to be a reflection on anything.
00:29:20
Speaker
And there's plenty of very successful, very famous authors around today who have talked about, you know, their manuscripts got rejected 50 times before anyone accepted them.
00:29:32
Speaker
So yeah, you never know this.
00:29:34
Speaker
You've got to persevere.
00:29:35
Speaker
That's great.
00:29:35
Speaker
Great advice all around.
00:29:37
Speaker
And that brings us to the final question of the episode, which as always is, Ruth, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you take with you?
Book Recommendation: 'Life After Life'
00:29:48
Speaker
Okay, so I've been thinking about this, and I think it would be Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.
00:29:56
Speaker
I don't know if you've read that, but it's basically about a woman, Ursula, and she kind of keeps living for a little bit and then is reborn as a baby again.
00:30:10
Speaker
And it sounds bizarre, but it's kind of about...
00:30:14
Speaker
It's so interesting because each time she takes, it's about the kind of small things that alter your path that you don't realise.
00:30:21
Speaker
So often in the iterations, it feels like she's learnt something.
00:30:27
Speaker
And so she makes a slightly, slightly different decision.
00:30:30
Speaker
And the life continues in a different way.
00:30:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:34
Speaker
And then in other iterations, it's something completely by chance has happened.
00:30:39
Speaker
Like someone's come back from London and then given the family smallpox or something like that, I think is one of the iterations.
00:30:46
Speaker
And it's just such an interesting, I think, reflection of,
00:30:50
Speaker
on on life and how much is in your control and how much is out of your control and like the small decisions that you make that you really have no idea that they've kind of created this domino effect to get you where you are so I just think that book could give me so much
00:31:08
Speaker
pause the thought and so much reflection on all her different lives um so yeah so I think that's a book that and also it would allow me to kind of extrapolate a bit and apply it to other people's lives it just starts it starts lots of different thought processes for me so I think if I was on the desert island I'd
00:31:28
Speaker
need that.
00:31:29
Speaker
So I had lots of different paths to kind of think about.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:33
Speaker
That's really interesting.
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:34
Speaker
It's a sort of like butterfly effect, sliding doors kind of thing.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:40
Speaker
That sounds really cool.
00:31:41
Speaker
That's really interesting.
00:31:42
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Ruth, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your, your writing and, um, working in publishing and all this, all this fun stuff.
00:31:51
Speaker
It's been really cool chatting with you.
00:31:52
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:31:53
Speaker
Thanks for coming on.
00:31:54
Speaker
Thank you so much for inviting me.
00:31:55
Speaker
It's been really interesting and fun.
00:31:57
Speaker
Thank you.
Social Media and Podcast Presence
00:31:58
Speaker
And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Ruth is doing, you can follow her on X, aka Twitter, at RJ Heald, or on Facebook at RJ Heald Author.
00:32:10
Speaker
You can also find her website, ruthheald.com.
00:32:13
Speaker
And to make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:32:19
Speaker
You can support the show on Patreon.
00:32:20
Speaker
And for more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:32:24
Speaker
Thanks again to Ruth and thanks to everyone listening.
00:32:26
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.