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#144 - Sue H. Cunningham
436 Plays1 year ago
Young adult author Sue H. Cunningham is on this week's episode to chat about her debut novel, 'Totally Deceased' as well as the manuscripts that came before but never made it to publication.
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Transcript
Writing Challenges and Reader Expectations
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 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 a gamble.
Meet Sue H. Cunningham: A YA Fiction Writer
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 young adult fiction writer who has had over 50 short stories published across multiple countries and now also a novel.
00:00:28
Speaker
It's Sue H. Cunningham.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hi, welcome.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hi, thank you very much for inviting me.
00:00:33
Speaker
Thanks for coming on.
Debut Novel: Totally Deceased Release Experience
00:00:35
Speaker
So as of recording this now, your debut novel, Totally Deceased, has been out for almost a week.
00:00:43
Speaker
How does it feel having it out there in the world, knowing that all these people are reading it?
00:00:47
Speaker
It's really weird.
00:00:51
Speaker
To be honest, it's been a bit of a mad weekend.
00:00:53
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.
00:00:58
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.
Transitioning from Short Stories to Novels
00:01:07
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
00:01:26
Speaker
Does that make it a bit easier, do you think?
00:01:27
Speaker
Because you've had that experience of people, other people reading yourself.
00:01:31
Speaker
I don't know.
00:01:31
Speaker
It's quite anonymous, really.
00:01:33
Speaker
I used to write short fiction for what they call women's magazines or WOMGs.
00:01:39
Speaker
And that's quite a while ago.
00:01:42
Speaker
since I was doing that.
00:01:43
Speaker
And, you know, there were lots of different markets for short story fiction, or there used to be.
00:01:50
Speaker
It's become really reduced now, the market for short stories.
00:01:54
Speaker
A lot of magazines just carry celebrity storylines instead.
00:01:57
Speaker
They don't have as much short fiction.
00:02:00
Speaker
But for a little while, it was a really sort of cute thing to do.
00:02:03
Speaker
And I used to do it when my kids were little.
00:02:06
Speaker
And it was...
00:02:08
Speaker
probably not as time consuming as trying to write a whole novel when you've not got very much time.
00:02:13
Speaker
But yeah, I really enjoyed it.
00:02:15
Speaker
And yes, we, you know, I used to sell to the UK and to magazines in Australia.
00:02:21
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.
00:02:33
Speaker
You think they have a lot of great writers in Scandinavian countries, but they do translate a lot of English fiction.
00:02:41
Speaker
So you could sell it to one country and then sell it again somewhere else.
00:02:44
Speaker
That's very interesting.
00:02:45
Speaker
I didn't know that.
Overview of Totally Deceased: A Supernatural YA Mystery
00:02:46
Speaker
So getting back to the novel itself, Totally Deceased, murder, mystery, comedy.
00:02:53
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about it.
00:02:55
Speaker
So it's a funny sort of supernatural YA murder mystery.
00:03:00
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.
00:03:12
Speaker
And she refuses to rest in peace until Jess agrees to help solve the mystery behind her untimely death.
00:03:18
Speaker
It sounds great.
00:03:20
Speaker
I was thinking, we just mentioned the short stories.
00:03:23
Speaker
Was this your first run at doing a novel, doing a long form narrative?
00:03:29
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.
00:03:44
Speaker
So he said, it's really lovely, but, you know, this character has no character arc whatsoever.
00:03:50
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.
00:03:57
Speaker
But, you know, no sort of really overarching sort of plot or character arc.
00:04:03
Speaker
So it was fun to write, but it wasn't ever going to go anywhere.
00:04:06
Speaker
And then I've written a couple of young adult books before this one.
00:04:12
Speaker
So, yeah, this is the third young adult book that I've written, but the first to be published.
00:04:18
Speaker
Oh, okay.
Character Development in Novels vs. Short Stories
00:04:20
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.
00:04:33
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.
00:04:44
Speaker
Was that something that you kind of learned moving from short form into long form?
00:04:50
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.
00:04:57
Speaker
And I think the thing about short stories is the magazines make you write through very strict word counts.
00:05:04
Speaker
So it's really good practice, I think, for writing concisely.
00:05:09
Speaker
Some of the magazines just have a one-page fiction, so it would be like 600, 650 words.
00:05:15
Speaker
Some of them, it might be like 2,000 words.
00:05:18
Speaker
But because of the way the magazines are formatted, you couldn't send in a story that was, say, 1,600 words.
00:05:25
Speaker
You'd have to send in, it would either have to be a
00:05:28
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
00:05:54
Speaker
Rather than cutting, when I'm editing, I tend to add and embellish.
00:05:59
Speaker
I have quite a tight first draft with not as much detail in it.
00:06:04
Speaker
And then you can, you know, sort of have a bit of room to play around and add.
Sue's Writing Process: Editing and Drafting
00:06:10
Speaker
So when I first submitted this story, I...
00:06:13
Speaker
I think it was about, totally deceased, I think it was about 55, 56k.
00:06:20
Speaker
And we, you know, over the editing period, I did like another 10,000 words.
00:06:27
Speaker
So it's nice to have the freedom to do that.
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:29
Speaker
I think there's a lot to be said for, um, what do people call additive editing?
00:06:35
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.
00:06:43
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:06:44
Speaker
That's really interesting.
00:06:46
Speaker
And was this totally deceased?
00:06:47
Speaker
Cause you won right mentors 2020 novel award and you were long listed for baths in the same year.
00:06:53
Speaker
Was that totally deceased?
00:06:55
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.
00:07:06
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...
00:07:12
Speaker
and YA wasn't doing very well at the time.
00:07:15
Speaker
I think it was just not the right time, really.
00:07:18
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.
00:07:24
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.
00:07:30
Speaker
And that's when I started writing Totally Deceased, which...
00:07:33
Speaker
I wrote over the next year and it was from an idea that I'd had for a previous novel.
00:07:39
Speaker
Um, but I completely kind of rehashed it and edited it.
00:07:43
Speaker
And then that went out.
00:07:46
Speaker
Oh gosh.
00:07:47
Speaker
Trying to think when it was, it's been 2021.
00:07:48
Speaker
And, uh, yeah.
00:07:50
Speaker
And I, I,
00:07:55
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.
00:08:05
Speaker
Ah,
Sue's Writing Journey and Awards
00:08:06
Speaker
okay.
00:08:06
Speaker
So Totally Deceased went into the anthology, the 2022 anthology.
00:08:11
Speaker
And is that how you got in contact with Rachel Petty, who is now your literary agent?
00:08:20
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.
00:08:33
Speaker
So there were 12 writers chosen for the anthology and they're all really lovely, talented people.
00:08:38
Speaker
Really, really amazing.
00:08:40
Speaker
Lovely to be chosen for that.
00:08:42
Speaker
And because there is normally an agent party in February, and because of COVID, it was cancelled.
00:08:50
Speaker
Although the UK was pretty much open up by that time, I think, because Scooby is ultimately the US.
00:08:57
Speaker
And they were, you know, really taking the pandemic very, very seriously, still, understandably, and they just didn't want...
00:09:05
Speaker
the agent party to go ahead.
00:09:06
Speaker
So that was all done virtually.
00:09:08
Speaker
And I did get quite a bit of interest when the anthology went out from agents and publishers.
00:09:13
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.
00:09:24
Speaker
So I did some cold submissions as well.
00:09:27
Speaker
So Slush Pile.
00:09:28
Speaker
And that's how I got my agent, Rachel Petty, who is absolutely wonderful.
00:09:32
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.
Finding a Literary Agent and Collaboration
00:09:42
Speaker
And then she sort of swapped sides and started, I think it was only...
00:09:47
Speaker
March last year.
00:09:50
Speaker
So I was probably one of her earliest submissions.
00:09:55
Speaker
I'm very lucky because she didn't have a huge backlog.
00:09:57
Speaker
So she got back to me really, really quickly.
00:10:00
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.
00:10:11
Speaker
And Rachel was definitely the right choice for me.
00:10:15
Speaker
She's brilliant.
00:10:16
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.
00:10:27
Speaker
I think it's very important that authors and agents do have like a friendly relationship.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:10:34
Speaker
Because you've got to see eye to eye, right?
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:10:36
Speaker
And Rachel's really down to earth, really professional, really laid back.
00:10:41
Speaker
And I just had to chat to her and I felt really at home with her.
00:10:46
Speaker
And then we did a little bit of work on the manuscript together.
00:10:49
Speaker
And she had a great idea for an edit, which we implemented.
00:10:53
Speaker
And then because Yasmin Morrissey from Scholastic had already seen the manuscript, or she'd seen the opening chapters,
00:11:02
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.
00:11:07
Speaker
But Scholastic only take agented submissions.
00:11:11
Speaker
At the time, I didn't have an agent.
00:11:13
Speaker
So I said, well, I've not got an agent yet.
00:11:14
Speaker
And, you know, she said, well, let me know when, you know, when you have.
00:11:18
Speaker
So, of course, I spoke with Rachel and said, you know, Yasmin is already interested.
00:11:22
Speaker
And it did go out widely, but we had an early offer from Scholastic within the week.
00:11:26
Speaker
So it was just like so lucky, really amazingly lucky because I'm not very good at waiting.
00:11:31
Speaker
I'm an instant gratification girl.
00:11:35
Speaker
So it was really good to have that early offer.
00:11:40
Speaker
It was brilliant.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing.
00:11:42
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.
00:11:47
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.
00:12:01
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.
00:12:07
Speaker
And I have to say, the agent doesn't know how that's going because the editors are so busy and it's,
00:12:10
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
00:12:35
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.
00:12:42
Speaker
How did you find the editorial steps?
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah, I really good.
00:12:46
Speaker
Um, it was, it was lovely actually, because I felt like we were on the same page.
00:12:51
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,
00:13:01
Speaker
There was nothing sort of deal-breaker-y about it at all.
00:13:05
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.
00:13:21
Speaker
The editing was all very kind of mutual and very quiet.
00:13:26
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.
00:13:32
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.
00:13:45
Speaker
And so she, she's moved on.
00:13:47
Speaker
And I know this, this happens.
00:13:49
Speaker
It was, that was like, oh my gosh, you know, she's, she's gone, she's gone somewhere else.
00:13:54
Speaker
And I have a new editor, Julia Sanderson, who is absolutely lovely from Scholastic.
00:13:58
Speaker
All the team at Scholastic are so lovely.
00:14:00
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.
Navigating Editorial Changes with Scholastic
00:14:09
Speaker
But she has continued to support me.
00:14:10
Speaker
She's been really lovely and stayed in touch.
00:14:14
Speaker
And the rest of the team at Scholastic have sort of picked me up and carried on with me.
00:14:18
Speaker
And it made the transition very, very smooth.
00:14:22
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.
00:14:30
Speaker
And this is part of the normal process.
00:14:34
Speaker
So it's something you're perhaps not expecting.
00:14:39
Speaker
Rachel is a perfect example.
00:14:42
Speaker
It's not uncommon that a lot of editors, people that work in editorial, do become agents.
00:14:49
Speaker
That's a pretty normal path now for literary agents.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, and she's great at it.
00:14:55
Speaker
That was one of the things that really
00:14:57
Speaker
appealed to me was that she had that, you know, editorial background because I, you know, I love input.
00:15:04
Speaker
I'm very open to input and I'm, you know, I'm not overly precious.
00:15:08
Speaker
I don't think about my writing.
00:15:09
Speaker
I like to get ideas and input from as many people as possible.
00:15:14
Speaker
I've always had lots of critique partners and
00:15:16
Speaker
I'm quite greedy, so I would say as many people as possible help, you know.
00:15:21
Speaker
And I like to feed back on other people's work as well.
00:15:23
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.
00:15:30
Speaker
I think it definitely does.
00:15:31
Speaker
I think giving feedback...
00:15:34
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
00:15:49
Speaker
I've just done exactly the same thing that I've just told that person not to do.
00:15:54
Speaker
It's like writing your own synopsis though, isn't it?
00:15:56
Speaker
It's like so hard.
00:15:58
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.
00:16:04
Speaker
We just cut this bit and this bit.
00:16:06
Speaker
And if it's your own, it's like, oh no, you can't leave that bit out.
00:16:08
Speaker
And that bit's really important.
00:16:10
Speaker
And perhaps it isn't.
00:16:12
Speaker
So it's nice to have input.
00:16:14
Speaker
Yes, no, it's great.
00:16:15
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.
00:16:32
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:16:33
Speaker
And hopefully your editor and you are on the same page.
00:16:37
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.
00:16:45
Speaker
This is really good.
00:16:46
Speaker
I mean, there were sort of...
00:16:48
Speaker
things that we changed.
00:16:50
Speaker
And I think it just made things tighter, really.
00:16:54
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?
00:17:10
Speaker
My novel happens over quite a short period of time.
00:17:14
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?
00:17:23
Speaker
And probably it's overly researched, but, you know, then you know that it would actually work.
00:17:28
Speaker
And there was a problem at the beginning where I'd had, you know, something happen.
00:17:32
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.
00:17:43
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
00:18:12
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.
00:18:36
Speaker
And that was really, Dante Yasmin really helped me with that, to making sure that
00:18:40
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.
00:18:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:49
Speaker
Because they're both teenage girls.
00:18:50
Speaker
So it's – and I'm not.
00:18:52
Speaker
So it was like –
00:18:54
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.
00:19:05
Speaker
And I think that was something that I really, you know, really the editing really helped me with.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:10
Speaker
And I think it gives you skills, transferable skills that you think right next time I will do that.
00:19:15
Speaker
And you'll do it from scratch.
00:19:16
Speaker
You'll do it from the start.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:17
Speaker
And there'll be, the voices will be even more distinctive.
00:19:20
Speaker
I think that's an incredible skill.
00:19:21
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.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:30
Speaker
You just know it within like three words.
00:19:32
Speaker
You're like, Oh, it's this character because it's so like defined and things like that.
00:19:36
Speaker
It's amazing.
00:19:36
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
00:20:02
Speaker
I really, you know, I knew that there were bigger edits and then sort of copy it.
00:20:07
Speaker
I think that the thing that surprised me was about the final edits.
00:20:12
Speaker
I just thought that was going to be sort of commas and typos and things like that.
00:20:15
Speaker
And it's really not.
00:20:16
Speaker
And I think one of the things with children's publishing as well is a lot of sensitivity
Language Sensitivity in Children's Publishing
00:20:22
Speaker
issues.
00:20:22
Speaker
You've got to be really careful with the language that you use.
00:20:26
Speaker
which is true of adult as well.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's just that, as you say, with children's and young adult is put into that children's bracket.
00:20:37
Speaker
It's sort of under a magnifying lens.
00:20:39
Speaker
There's much more scrutiny put on it.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
Desert Island Book Choice: Emma by Jane Austen
00:20:42
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?
00:20:58
Speaker
Well, it sounds very literary, but it would be a Jane Austen and it would be Emma.
00:21:04
Speaker
It's my real comfort read book.
00:21:06
Speaker
I do love to read books again and again if it's something that makes me feel happy and makes me feel comforted.
00:21:13
Speaker
I am a big rereader of books.
00:21:15
Speaker
And when my children were little babies, I probably didn't read a new book for about a year.
00:21:21
Speaker
I just used to reread stuff that I was familiar with because...
00:21:25
Speaker
I didn't have to work too hard to read.
00:21:27
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.
00:21:33
Speaker
And I have a few of these comfort books.
00:21:36
Speaker
But I love Jane Austen and Emma's probably my favourite because I just think it's really funny.
00:21:41
Speaker
I think her writing is really visual.
00:21:43
Speaker
it's just very witty.
00:21:45
Speaker
She makes a great joke about gruel, which still makes me laugh every time I read it.
00:21:51
Speaker
I've read it so many times.
00:21:52
Speaker
And what's really funny about this book is that...
00:21:56
Speaker
One of my favourite comfort films is Clueless, which is a retelling of Emma.
00:22:02
Speaker
And I probably didn't even realise until about the third time that I'd watched it.
00:22:08
Speaker
I didn't realise.
00:22:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's like even one of the characters has got the same name as in the Jane Oathenberg book.
00:22:14
Speaker
And it's obviously, you know, updated and modified.
00:22:17
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.
00:22:24
Speaker
But I absolutely love Clueless.
00:22:25
Speaker
And I think it's really funny.
00:22:27
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.
00:22:34
Speaker
So that's the book I would take.
00:22:36
Speaker
So I'd want a comfort read.
00:22:38
Speaker
I don't think I'd do very well on a desert island on my own.
00:22:42
Speaker
So I'd want something to comfort me.
00:22:44
Speaker
And it's a really long book as well.
00:22:46
Speaker
I love a chunky book.
00:22:48
Speaker
I'm a fast reader.
00:22:49
Speaker
And I think she probably wouldn't get away with that these days.
00:22:52
Speaker
She would have been edited down, which would have been a real shame.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:57
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.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:10
Speaker
But Jane Austen's great.
00:23:11
Speaker
Jane Austen, very popular pick on the podcast.
00:23:14
Speaker
Is it?
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:15
Speaker
But it's because the writing is just so relatable, you know, to so many people, kind of transcends so many barriers.
00:23:24
Speaker
Well, her dialogue is so good.
00:23:26
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.
00:23:37
Speaker
And, you know, I think my book is intended to be funny.
00:23:43
Speaker
And I think that comes out in the editing.
00:23:45
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.
00:23:52
Speaker
And I think she had to write everything by hand.
00:23:54
Speaker
And how many times did she write and rewrite before she got them right?
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:59
Speaker
I mean, just drafting it the second time seems like so much work.
00:24:04
Speaker
You know, you just think, oh, she didn't even have a fountain pen.
00:24:08
Speaker
She'd be using a feather or whatever.
00:24:09
Speaker
I'm just thinking, yeah.
00:24:11
Speaker
Here we go again.
00:24:13
Speaker
You know, how much paper have we got?
00:24:14
Speaker
You know, everything would have been very expensive.
00:24:16
Speaker
And, you know, I just think it's an amazing skill.
00:24:19
Speaker
I think she must have been just very good from the off.
00:24:22
Speaker
And I know she did edit and re-edit things and change the names of things.
00:24:26
Speaker
But I think considering...
00:24:28
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.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:35
Speaker
Cause it's, and it's, all of her books are just, are just brilliant as well.
00:24:41
Speaker
There's, it's, it's all killer, no filler.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:24:45
Speaker
Amazing.
00:24:46
Speaker
Well, a great choice.
00:24:47
Speaker
We love a bit of Austin here on the podcast.
00:24:50
Speaker
And thank
Social Media and Podcast Promotion
00:24:51
Speaker
you so much, Sue.
00:24:51
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.
00:25:00
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
00:25:02
Speaker
Thank you very much for having me.
00:25:03
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.
00:25:15
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
00:25:19
Speaker
You can support the show on Patreon and for more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and other tropes.
00:25:25
Speaker
Thanks again to Sue and thanks to everyone listening.
00:25:27
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.