Transcript
Speaker: Oh, a spicy question.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: So it's kind of a gamble.
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
Speaker: On today's episode, I am joined by a young adult fiction writer who has had over 50 short stories published across multiple countries and now also a novel.
Speaker: It's Sue H. Cunningham.
Speaker: Hi, welcome.
Speaker: Hi, thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker: Thanks for coming on.
Speaker: So as of recording this now, your debut novel, Totally Deceased, has been out for almost a week.
Speaker: How does it feel having it out there in the world, knowing that all these people are reading it?
Speaker: It's really weird.
Speaker: To be honest, it's been a bit of a mad weekend.
Speaker: So I've not had a great deal of time to process, but it's just starting to calm down a little bit now.
Speaker: So it's sort of a bit scary, but a bit lovely as well to think that people are reading it who don't actually know me.
Speaker: and starting to get early reviews back which is again very odd people that writing reviews that don't actually know me and haven't seen the book from early days so yeah you've had a number of like over 50 short stories published does that sort of
Speaker: Does that make it a bit easier, do you think?
Speaker: Because you've had that experience of people, other people reading yourself.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's quite anonymous, really.
Speaker: I used to write short fiction for what they call women's magazines or WOMGs.
Speaker: And that's quite a while ago.
Speaker: since I was doing that.
Speaker: And, you know, there were lots of different markets for short story fiction, or there used to be.
Speaker: It's become really reduced now, the market for short stories.
Speaker: A lot of magazines just carry celebrity storylines instead.
Speaker: They don't have as much short fiction.
Speaker: But for a little while, it was a really sort of cute thing to do.
Speaker: And I used to do it when my kids were little.
Speaker: And it was...
Speaker: probably not as time consuming as trying to write a whole novel when you've not got very much time.
Speaker: But yeah, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: And yes, we, you know, I used to sell to the UK and to magazines in Australia.
Speaker: And very weirdly, there's a magazine in Sweden called Alas, which buys a lot of English fiction and translates it, which is fascinating.
Speaker: You think they have a lot of great writers in Scandinavian countries, but they do translate a lot of English fiction.
Speaker: So you could sell it to one country and then sell it again somewhere else.
Speaker: That's very interesting.
Speaker: I didn't know that.
Speaker: So getting back to the novel itself, Totally Deceased, murder, mystery, comedy.
Speaker: Tell us a little bit about it.
Speaker: So it's a funny sort of supernatural YA murder mystery.
Speaker: 17-year-old Jess wakes from an emergency heart transplant to find that she's being haunted by the ghost of her donor, who is a sort of high-maintenance trust fund socialite who's convinced that she was murdered.
Speaker: And she refuses to rest in peace until Jess agrees to help solve the mystery behind her untimely death.
Speaker: It sounds great.
Speaker: I was thinking, we just mentioned the short stories.
Speaker: Was this your first run at doing a novel, doing a long form narrative?
Speaker: No, I wrote quite a bad sort of triplet rom-com, which was a bit cathartic, which, you know, I really enjoyed writing and I got some feedback on that.
Speaker: So he said, it's really lovely, but, you know, this character has no character arc whatsoever.
Speaker: And it was sort of a series of funny anecdotes, I think, that I'd just sort of strung together for my own life.
Speaker: But, you know, no sort of really overarching sort of plot or character arc.
Speaker: So it was fun to write, but it wasn't ever going to go anywhere.
Speaker: And then I've written a couple of young adult books before this one.
Speaker: So, yeah, this is the third young adult book that I've written, but the first to be published.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: When you talk about, and this is a common mistake that a lot of people, I think the first novel that I ever wrote had insane character development and things like that, where it was non-existent or too much and it just didn't make any sense.
Speaker: But I wonder if, as someone who had a lot of experience writing short stories, where you don't necessarily need to go through a whole arc, there's a lot more freedom to leave things open-ended.
Speaker: Was that something that you kind of learned moving from short form into long form?
Speaker: I don't know, actually, because I think in a short story, you still have to have a beginning and a middle and an end.
Speaker: And I think the thing about short stories is the magazines make you write through very strict word counts.
Speaker: So it's really good practice, I think, for writing concisely.
Speaker: Some of the magazines just have a one-page fiction, so it would be like 600, 650 words.
Speaker: Some of them, it might be like 2,000 words.
Speaker: But because of the way the magazines are formatted, you couldn't send in a story that was, say, 1,600 words.
Speaker: You'd have to send in, it would either have to be a
Speaker: a 650 one pager or a 2000 word or a you know that all the magazines have got their own house style in their own um so it's it's quite good practice really at sort of getting you to almost write to a um to a remit and to be concise because you've got to get it all in there so i think when i started writing longer fiction i probably learned to cut a lot of the padding so i tend to write and then
Speaker: Rather than cutting, when I'm editing, I tend to add and embellish.
Speaker: I have quite a tight first draft with not as much detail in it.
Speaker: And then you can, you know, sort of have a bit of room to play around and add.
Speaker: So when I first submitted this story, I...
Speaker: I think it was about, totally deceased, I think it was about 55, 56k.
Speaker: And we, you know, over the editing period, I did like another 10,000 words.
Speaker: So it's nice to have the freedom to do that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think there's a lot to be said for, um, what do people call additive editing?
Speaker: I think because there's, there's almost like a positive connotation with it as opposed to, Oh, I have to choose the thing that I have to trim.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That's really interesting.
Speaker: And was this totally deceased?
Speaker: Cause you won right mentors 2020 novel award and you were long listed for baths in the same year.
Speaker: Was that totally deceased?
Speaker: No, that was another book called 49 Sisters, which was a kind of, again, it was a sort of magical realism, supernatural, but it was about kind of modern witches.
Speaker: It was really nice because I had quite a lot of interest with that, but we were just going into the pandemic, so it was...
Speaker: and YA wasn't doing very well at the time.
Speaker: I think it was just not the right time, really.
Speaker: And it sort of did the rounds a little bit, and I got quite a few full requests for that manuscript, but it just wasn't going to go anywhere.
Speaker: And in the end, I just had to put it on one side and say, right, I'm going to have to write something new.
Speaker: And that's when I started writing Totally Deceased, which...
Speaker: I wrote over the next year and it was from an idea that I'd had for a previous novel.
Speaker: Um, but I completely kind of rehashed it and edited it.
Speaker: And then that went out.
Speaker: Oh gosh.
Speaker: Trying to think when it was, it's been 2021.
Speaker: And, uh, yeah.
Speaker: And I, I,
Speaker: I was shortlisted for Northern Writers with this book and then I was very lucky to be chosen for the Scooby Undiscovered Voices anthology.
Speaker: Ah, okay.
Speaker: So Totally Deceased went into the anthology, the 2022 anthology.
Speaker: And is that how you got in contact with Rachel Petty, who is now your literary agent?
Speaker: It isn't, but it's how my eventual editor, Yasmin Morrissey, saw the book because she was one of the judges on the Undiscovered Voices anthology.
Speaker: So there were 12 writers chosen for the anthology and they're all really lovely, talented people.
Speaker: Really, really amazing.
Speaker: Lovely to be chosen for that.
Speaker: And because there is normally an agent party in February, and because of COVID, it was cancelled.
Speaker: Although the UK was pretty much open up by that time, I think, because Scooby is ultimately the US.
Speaker: And they were, you know, really taking the pandemic very, very seriously, still, understandably, and they just didn't want...
Speaker: the agent party to go ahead.
Speaker: So that was all done virtually.
Speaker: And I did get quite a bit of interest when the anthology went out from agents and publishers.
Speaker: But it was one of those things that was sort of like, it was really lovely to have a lot of interest in it, but I still had a kind of wish list of agents that I wanted to send it to that perhaps hadn't seen the anthology.
Speaker: So I did some cold submissions as well.
Speaker: So Slush Pile.
Speaker: And that's how I got my agent, Rachel Petty, who is absolutely wonderful.
Speaker: And she'd only just started agenting, so I was really lucky with the timing because you might know she used to be editorial director at Macmillan Children's.
Speaker: And then she sort of swapped sides and started, I think it was only...
Speaker: March last year.
Speaker: So I was probably one of her earliest submissions.
Speaker: I'm very lucky because she didn't have a huge backlog.
Speaker: So she got back to me really, really quickly.
Speaker: And yeah, it was a really lovely time because I had quite a bit of interest and it was lovely after all these years to be in a position of being able to have a choice and be able to talk to different agents.
Speaker: And Rachel was definitely the right choice for me.
Speaker: She's brilliant.
Speaker: Yeah, because it's a huge decision because it's in many ways, it's such a it's such a close relationship that it sort of goes beyond the sort of mechanics and the business aspect of it.
Speaker: I think it's very important that authors and agents do have like a friendly relationship.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Because you've got to see eye to eye, right?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And Rachel's really down to earth, really professional, really laid back.
Speaker: And I just had to chat to her and I felt really at home with her.
Speaker: And then we did a little bit of work on the manuscript together.
Speaker: And she had a great idea for an edit, which we implemented.
Speaker: And then because Yasmin Morrissey from Scholastic had already seen the manuscript, or she'd seen the opening chapters,
Speaker: And she actually got in touch and said, you know, when it's ready, you know, I'd love to have it on submission.
Speaker: But Scholastic only take agented submissions.
Speaker: At the time, I didn't have an agent.
Speaker: So I said, well, I've not got an agent yet.
Speaker: And, you know, she said, well, let me know when, you know, when you have.
Speaker: So, of course, I spoke with Rachel and said, you know, Yasmin is already interested.
Speaker: And it did go out widely, but we had an early offer from Scholastic within the week.
Speaker: So it was just like so lucky, really amazingly lucky because I'm not very good at waiting.
Speaker: I'm an instant gratification girl.
Speaker: So it was really good to have that early offer.
Speaker: It was brilliant.
Speaker: Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker: Cause I know that a lot of authors can really, um, and you can really start affecting your kind of mental health when you're in that.
Speaker: Cause obviously you've, you know, once you, you've spent lots of time submitting to agents, you have an agent and then there's this sort of part of it where now the agent is going to take your work and they're going to go to the publishers and the editors, but you don't, as the author don't really have any interaction.
Speaker: You don't have any kind of like, other than asking your agent, you don't really have any idea how that's going.
Speaker: And I have to say, the agent doesn't know how that's going because the editors are so busy and it's,
Speaker: it can it can be a long time so it's amazing that it was really quick for you it really was yeah it was uh yeah I was very very lucky so as we mentioned the kind of way these things work you sign with the agent then the agent takes your book out on submission um it was very quick for you which is amazing then once once you've agreed to sign you're you're now with an edzer yeah I mean you were in a wonderful position where you'd sort of already had an interaction with Yasmin and and
Speaker: And so that was kind of, that must've been a pretty smooth transition, um, sort of meeting her and then immediately getting on with the work.
Speaker: How did you find the editorial steps?
Speaker: Yeah, I really good.
Speaker: Um, it was, it was lovely actually, because I felt like we were on the same page.
Speaker: Um, and because I've always had sort of critique partners and I've always kind of, you know, set my work out to people and you kind of get used to getting feedback and there was, um,
Speaker: There was nothing sort of deal-breaker-y about it at all.
Speaker: You know, sort of in a debut group at the moment, I hear lots of people talking about how they're asked to make quite big changes or lose a character or add a character or change the ending or take a huge chunk out, add a big chunk in.
Speaker: The editing was all very kind of mutual and very quiet.
Speaker: if I say an easy process, it was, you know, it was, it wasn't, it wasn't sort of as scary as I thought it was going to be.
Speaker: The hardest part really was that, was that when the book was just sort of at the final editing stage is that Yasmin actually sort of left Scholastic to work with Simon and Shuster because she was promoted.
Speaker: And so she, she's moved on.
Speaker: And I know this, this happens.
Speaker: It was, that was like, oh my gosh, you know, she's, she's gone, she's gone somewhere else.
Speaker: And I have a new editor, Julia Sanderson, who is absolutely lovely from Scholastic.
Speaker: All the team at Scholastic are so lovely.
Speaker: But that was probably the biggest trip, really, in the whole thing, is that she wasn't going to be with me right until the very end, until the book was published.
Speaker: But she has continued to support me.
Speaker: She's been really lovely and stayed in touch.
Speaker: And the rest of the team at Scholastic have sort of picked me up and carried on with me.
Speaker: And it made the transition very, very smooth.
Speaker: But I think this is something that you realise you have to get used to because the staff do move around and they do get promoted and move elsewhere.
Speaker: And this is part of the normal process.
Speaker: So it's something you're perhaps not expecting.
Speaker: Rachel is a perfect example.
Speaker: It's not uncommon that a lot of editors, people that work in editorial, do become agents.
Speaker: That's a pretty normal path now for literary agents.
Speaker: Yeah, and she's great at it.
Speaker: That was one of the things that really
Speaker: appealed to me was that she had that, you know, editorial background because I, you know, I love input.
Speaker: I'm very open to input and I'm, you know, I'm not overly precious.
Speaker: I don't think about my writing.
Speaker: I like to get ideas and input from as many people as possible.
Speaker: I've always had lots of critique partners and
Speaker: I'm quite greedy, so I would say as many people as possible help, you know.
Speaker: And I like to feed back on other people's work as well.
Speaker: And I think that, you know, hopefully it does make you a better editor of your own writing to do that for other people.
Speaker: I think it definitely does.
Speaker: I think giving feedback...
Speaker: in my experience sort of opens up a level of self-awareness to your own writing when you see someone because when you read your own writing you don't see a lot of if you do like a repetitive mistake but if you see that same mistake with someone else's writing then you go back to yours and you think oh wow
Speaker: I've just done exactly the same thing that I've just told that person not to do.
Speaker: It's like writing your own synopsis though, isn't it?
Speaker: It's like so hard.
Speaker: And if I look at somebody else's synopsis, I'm like, yeah, I can just tweak that for you and I can make that a bit tighter.
Speaker: We just cut this bit and this bit.
Speaker: And if it's your own, it's like, oh no, you can't leave that bit out.
Speaker: And that bit's really important.
Speaker: And perhaps it isn't.
Speaker: So it's nice to have input.
Speaker: Yes, no, it's great.
Speaker: It's also a sort of, I think it's a really important skill that you can, you almost like practice, like you practice not just giving critique and receiving critique, but also just knowing when to trust yourself versus when to trust like different things that are kind of thrown at you.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And hopefully your editor and you are on the same page.
Speaker: From what most of the time I hear people are, or if they're not at first, they make the change and then reading it back, they're like, oh no, this is great.
Speaker: This is really good.
Speaker: I mean, there were sort of...
Speaker: things that we changed.
Speaker: And I think it just made things tighter, really.
Speaker: All the suggestions that they made were just tweaking things and tightening things up, timelines and just picking up things where you've been a bit lazy or you've been a bit remiss and sort of, you know, would that really work in that timeline?
Speaker: My novel happens over quite a short period of time.
Speaker: And it's, you know, I end up having to sort of write things out on a calendar of, you know, if they've got a week to get from this place to this place, you know, which train would they get?
Speaker: And probably it's overly researched, but, you know, then you know that it would actually work.
Speaker: And there was a problem at the beginning where I'd had, you know, something happen.
Speaker: And when we actually worked it out from starting the week on a Tuesday and then finishing the week on a Wednesday or whatever it was, I'd had them doing something on a Sunday, which wouldn't have been possible.
Speaker: you know yeah yeah the you know that premises wouldn't have been open on a sunday so it's it's things that really really people another eye on it and and looking out for for things like that where you've just been a bit sloppy maybe and not sort of tighten things up with those sort of details that usually comes in the copy editing stage right so that wouldn't have been the primary editor right um i guess if they spot it they're going to flag it yeah i mean there were probably
Speaker: I think the thing that Yasmin really helped me with was just to make sure, because although it's the first person narrative and there are two main characters in the book, and it's just to make them really, really distinct so that without putting a speech tag on, you knew who was speaking at any one time because the two characters have such distinct voices, or I would hope that they have now.
Speaker: And that was really, Dante Yasmin really helped me with that, to making sure that
Speaker: we had a really clear – it's quite a dialogue-heavy book and that, you know, it was very clear who was speaking at any one time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because they're both teenage girls.
Speaker: So it's – and I'm not.
Speaker: So it was like –
Speaker: Trying to make sure that you're getting into that teen speak, but also giving them their own distinct speech patterns and making sure that it's clear whose voice is.
Speaker: And I think that was something that I really, you know, really the editing really helped me with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think it gives you skills, transferable skills that you think right next time I will do that.
Speaker: And you'll do it from scratch.
Speaker: You'll do it from the start.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there'll be, the voices will be even more distinctive.
Speaker: I think that's an incredible skill.
Speaker: I read a lot of, um, Joe Abercrombie's fantasy author and his, the way that he doesn't even need to tell you which character is speaking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You just know it within like three words.
Speaker: You're like, Oh, it's this character because it's so like defined and things like that.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: yeah i mean that is that is what you want really want to aim for yeah exactly so you've been through the process now the book's out it's all been very exciting going into this i'm just wondering how much did you sort of know about publishing how much did you know about all the different steps uh before you got into it um well considering how long i've been sort of doing the rounds of the slush pile um surprisingly little really um
Speaker: I really, you know, I knew that there were bigger edits and then sort of copy it.
Speaker: I think that the thing that surprised me was about the final edits.
Speaker: I just thought that was going to be sort of commas and typos and things like that.
Speaker: And it's really not.
Speaker: And I think one of the things with children's publishing as well is a lot of sensitivity issues.
Speaker: You've got to be really careful with the language that you use.
Speaker: which is true of adult as well.
Speaker: It's just that, as you say, with children's and young adult is put into that children's bracket.
Speaker: It's sort of under a magnifying lens.
Speaker: There's much more scrutiny put on it.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: And that actually brings us to towards the final question of the episode, which, as always, is, Sue, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you want it to be?
Speaker: Well, it sounds very literary, but it would be a Jane Austen and it would be Emma.
Speaker: It's my real comfort read book.
Speaker: I do love to read books again and again if it's something that makes me feel happy and makes me feel comforted.
Speaker: I am a big rereader of books.
Speaker: And when my children were little babies, I probably didn't read a new book for about a year.
Speaker: I just used to reread stuff that I was familiar with because...
Speaker: I didn't have to work too hard to read.
Speaker: And if I was tired or, you know, the kids were poorly, I could just read 10 minutes, pick it up and know where I was up to and put it back down again.
Speaker: And I have a few of these comfort books.
Speaker: But I love Jane Austen and Emma's probably my favourite because I just think it's really funny.
Speaker: I think her writing is really visual.
Speaker: it's just very witty.
Speaker: She makes a great joke about gruel, which still makes me laugh every time I read it.
Speaker: I've read it so many times.
Speaker: And what's really funny about this book is that...
Speaker: One of my favourite comfort films is Clueless, which is a retelling of Emma.
Speaker: And I probably didn't even realise until about the third time that I'd watched it.
Speaker: I didn't realise.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like even one of the characters has got the same name as in the Jane Oathenberg book.
Speaker: And it's obviously, you know, updated and modified.
Speaker: And it was in that era in the 90s when they were doing a lot of kind of Shakespeare retellings and, you know, classic retellings.
Speaker: But I absolutely love Clueless.
Speaker: And I think it's really funny.
Speaker: And I didn't actually realise until I'd watched it for about the third time that it was actually Emma, which is my favourite book.
Speaker: So that's the book I would take.
Speaker: So I'd want a comfort read.
Speaker: I don't think I'd do very well on a desert island on my own.
Speaker: So I'd want something to comfort me.
Speaker: And it's a really long book as well.
Speaker: I love a chunky book.
Speaker: I'm a fast reader.
Speaker: And I think she probably wouldn't get away with that these days.
Speaker: She would have been edited down, which would have been a real shame.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's some older books where I think, oh no, maybe they could use a sort of modern treatment, but then there's somewhere I'm like, no, there's a real beauty in the kind of taking the time to write something out and describe something and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But Jane Austen's great.
Speaker: Jane Austen, very popular pick on the podcast.
Speaker: Is it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's because the writing is just so relatable, you know, to so many people, kind of transcends so many barriers.
Speaker: Well, her dialogue is so good.
Speaker: And I just think, considering she had to write everything by hand, and I will sit there with a laptop, and eating one word, and like going, oh, if I just put this sentence before that sentence, oh, that sounds funnier if I do it that way.
Speaker: And, you know, I think my book is intended to be funny.
Speaker: And I think that comes out in the editing.
Speaker: I've come back and think, oh, that would be funnier if I did it that way around, or if I added this kind of humorous theme throughout.
Speaker: And I think she had to write everything by hand.
Speaker: And how many times did she write and rewrite before she got them right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, just drafting it the second time seems like so much work.
Speaker: You know, you just think, oh, she didn't even have a fountain pen.
Speaker: She'd be using a feather or whatever.
Speaker: I'm just thinking, yeah.
Speaker: Here we go again.
Speaker: You know, how much paper have we got?
Speaker: You know, everything would have been very expensive.
Speaker: And, you know, I just think it's an amazing skill.
Speaker: I think she must have been just very good from the off.
Speaker: And I know she did edit and re-edit things and change the names of things.
Speaker: But I think considering...
Speaker: you know, everything she had to do in her life and, you know, her short life, you know, to produce that work, that body of work is amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause it's, and it's, all of her books are just, are just brilliant as well.
Speaker: There's, it's, it's all killer, no filler.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Well, a great choice.
Speaker: We love a bit of Austin here on the podcast.
Speaker: And thank you so much, Sue.
Speaker: It's been really awesome chatting with you and hearing all about your experiences in publishing and the new book, Totally Deceased, which is out right now.
Speaker: Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker: And for anyone listening, if you want to make sure that you keep up with everything that Sue is doing, you can follow her on Twitter or X at Susie Writes or on Instagram and TikTok at Sue H Cunningham.
Speaker: To make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
Speaker: You can support the show on Patreon and for more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and other tropes.
Speaker: Thanks again to Sue and thanks to everyone listening.
Speaker: We'll catch you on the next episode.
