Transcript
Speaker: To listen without ads, head over to patreon.com slash rightandwrong.
Speaker: Ooh, 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 writer... 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: I'm very excited to have with me today best-selling romantic comedy author, Alexandra Potter.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: Hello!
Speaker: Thanks for inviting me on.
Speaker: So great to have you.
Speaker: Jumping right in, the latest novel just came out a few weeks ago, More Confessions of a 40-something F-Up, an aptly named sequel to your hugely successful book of 2022, Confessions of a 40-something F-Up.
Speaker: Tell us a bit about the sequel in the series.
Speaker: Well, the sequel came about because my editor actually said, oh, I think we could do with a little bit more Nell and Cricket, who are the main characters in the book.
Speaker: And it had been so kind of well received by readers that I was thrilled to be able to write sort of part two because...
Speaker: When you spend a year with characters, they kind of become like friends.
Speaker: And these were great friends of mine.
Speaker: So I got to hang out with them for like another year.
Speaker: And the idea behind this book was that you can read it as a standalone.
Speaker: You don't need to read the first one because I kind of do a sort of recap.
Speaker: But it was the idea that sort of when you finish a book and you sort of tie up the ends, well, real life's not like that.
Speaker: So, you know, you never really get the happy ending because you've got another, you know, hopefully 40 years to go.
Speaker: And it's kind of what happens is
Speaker: after Nell, who's my main character, meets the guy and gets the job and everything sort of seems sorted out.
Speaker: And I wanted to explore the idea that in life, there isn't a sort of magical place that you get to
Speaker: where everything's sorted out and figured out.
Speaker: It's not like that.
Speaker: Life throws constant curveballs at you.
Speaker: So I wanted to take these characters on another year and show exactly what happens to them.
Speaker: And it was quite good because I then got to delve into everybody else's backstories because the characters, I've been able to establish them and I knew them better.
Speaker: And hopefully there's some more funny stuff in there and some poignant stuff and some kind of life lessons and stuff.
Speaker: And, you know, fingers crossed so far, readers love it because there's always a pressure with a second book that it won't be as good as the first book.
Speaker: I think it's a harder with any kind of sequel to anything because the first book is always original in that space.
Speaker: And then the second one is like, it's building upon, you already have the fan base, but at the same time, it's like, it's no longer an original concept.
Speaker: So like people already know what to expect.
Speaker: Very much so, yes.
Speaker: And in the first book, she is doing an anonymous podcast, which is the title of the book.
Speaker: And everybody sort of finds out about this podcast at the end.
Speaker: So moving into the next book,
Speaker: it's kind of like, okay, so where do we go from here?
Speaker: And I was able to take it in a new direction because I think it's almost as if you're watching a television show and you have the first season and then you have the second season.
Speaker: So, you know, you can take characters in different directions and create new conflict.
Speaker: But like you say, the original idea is
Speaker: has been done.
Speaker: So it's how can I build on that?
Speaker: How can I make it better?
Speaker: How can I keep readers interested?
Speaker: It has its own challenges.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's about overcoming this.
Speaker: The one that always stuck with me was, I don't know if you remember that there was a show many years ago called Prison Break.
Speaker: And in season one, it was, it was as the title would suggest a prison break, but then they'd already broken out of the prison.
Speaker: So all subsequent seasons were not breaking out of prison.
Speaker: So I was like, Oh, well, it's like with many shows, isn't it?
Speaker: It's, um,
Speaker: I mean, you know, there's multiple shows I can think of that it's kind of like, how do we keep this going?
Speaker: Same with movies.
Speaker: If you think of something like The Godfather and then you have the second Godfather Part II, which actually I think is a better movie in many ways.
Speaker: But it's just about how you do that.
Speaker: And so people thought that writing a sequel –
Speaker: is easier.
Speaker: And it's actually, it's not easier.
Speaker: It's definitely got some unique challenges.
Speaker: Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker: I guess also there's a challenge with, and you've written a lot of, it's romantic comedies, but especially within romantic books with, which, which are sequential, there will be a part, and you get this in television series as well, things like friends and stuff where you, the couple gets together and then to continue the whole premise, you need to break the couple up again.
Speaker: You need to have an argument, right?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Well, yeah, because you need conflict.
Speaker: So you need to have a character being challenged and overcoming some kind of obstacle.
Speaker: And I think that if you watch anything like something like Friends or there was a really popular series called Cold Feet, which I watched it back in 20 years ago.
Speaker: And then I think they redid it again when the characters were older.
Speaker: And if you watch a show like that, you're constantly seeing sort of everything great with the characters and the relationships.
Speaker: And then things always go wrong.
Speaker: And they have to kind of go wrong because otherwise it would be kind of boring if you were just watching a really happy, contented couple.
Speaker: There's no sort of entertainment value in that and there's no stakes.
Speaker: You need to raise the stakes, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Because there needs to be some kind of tension or some kind of like, what are we building towards if we're just watching resolution play out?
Speaker: So talking about the Confessions novels, you'd actually written a lot of books before that.
Speaker: Your debut came out in the year 2000, the millennium.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: Is this new one, More Confessions, is this your 15th novel?
Speaker: The one I'm currently writing is my 15th.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So this is the 14th.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, you know, I lose track, but somebody did ask me that the other day.
Speaker: So I counted them up.
Speaker: So yeah, it's the 14th.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And this one, this series, which has been made into a television series as well.
Speaker: Does it, did this have a much bigger splash on launch than, than your kind of previous expectations?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it had no splash whatsoever.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Nothing at all.
Speaker: I came out during the pandemic.
Speaker: The book, the hardback, it was my first hardback and I was super excited and we had all these publishing plans.
Speaker: And it was supposed to come out in April 2020.
Speaker: And then obviously we had the pandemic.
Speaker: And so they pushed, everything got cancelled.
Speaker: We pushed the book six months to come out in December.
Speaker: And the day it came out, which was New Year's Eve, December the 31st, everything went into another lockdown.
Speaker: So every single bookstore closed.
Speaker: I could do no events.
Speaker: So apart from posting some stuff on social media, the book just came out to nothing.
Speaker: It was really weird.
Speaker: And then it sort of...
Speaker: It started to sell by word of mouth.
Speaker: So the initial sales were quite small.
Speaker: And then it sort of started to gain a little bit of traction as people liked it and they would share things on Instagram.
Speaker: And then I think when the paperback came out...
Speaker: It became really popular then.
Speaker: It was at the airports.
Speaker: People took it on holiday.
Speaker: They really liked it.
Speaker: And so I think it was sort of a snowball effect.
Speaker: But it's really ironic, actually, that my best-selling book had pretty much no PR at all.
Speaker: That's, I mean, I guess as an author, there's nothing more validating than knowing that your book and this kind of bestseller success came largely because of word of mouth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Huge compliment to you as a writer to be like, wow, people really connected with this and resonated with this.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's a huge compliment.
Speaker: And I think it's quite an unusual thing to happen in the publishing industry.
Speaker: I do always tell writers, would-be writers or fellow authors that, you know, it's kind of a really sort of inspiring story, really, that you don't need to get a lot of promotion for a book to do well.
Speaker: It can sort of
Speaker: sell by word of mouth and it can have a life of its own.
Speaker: And I think there is a belief that a book has to do well on its opening weekend kind of thing, you know, almost like a movie.
Speaker: It's like, how does it do when it first comes out in the first week's sales?
Speaker: And that traditionally has been your book's best sales the first week or the first few weeks.
Speaker: But if you look at Confessions of a 40-something F-Up, the first one, that was just not the case at all.
Speaker: In fact, it's selling
Speaker: I would say it's selling better now in 2024 than it sold in 2020.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Which is kind of crazy when you think about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that kind of, the kind of fanfare and the PR push, did you, have you got to have that this time around with the, with the Z-Q?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I got to have, I got to definitely have, um, I did a Waterstones event, which was really fun.
Speaker: I've been doing some podcasts, which are great.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So I've definitely had a lot more of a PR push this time around.
Speaker: Though with paperbacks, people kind of always want to sort of review a hardback.
Speaker: And so when the paperback version comes out, which actually I find a lot of readers like the paperback because it's easier to put in a bag, it's lighter, it's a bit cheaper.
Speaker: But the sort of newspapers and the magazines, they like to review the hardbacks.
Speaker: So I think even though this paperback just came out on April the 11th, the reviews for it came out last year.
Speaker: Because that's when the hardback was published.
Speaker: It kind of works like that.
Speaker: But it's kind of nice, really, if you have a hardback, because it's almost like getting two bites of the apple.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I guess it does act as a sort of like preview review thing.
Speaker: And if majority of people are waiting for the paperback, they have like a kind of source of reviews to be like, yeah, this will be something you like if you like this, that, that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I also think these days, the sort of traditional reviews that appear in magazines and newspapers aren't necessarily...
Speaker: as influential as somebody reviewing your book on Instagram.
Speaker: So bookstagrammers are hugely influential.
Speaker: Readers posting, if you get a celebrity posting, those kind of things are the things that really spread the word.
Speaker: And I think in the old days, it was definitely you had to get a review in a newspaper or a magazine.
Speaker: And it's changed now.
Speaker: The climate has completely changed, which I think is a really good thing.
Speaker: Because if you're a writer and you don't get those reviews, you can feel...
Speaker: really disappointed and sort of downcast about your book coming out.
Speaker: You shouldn't because all it takes is some people to love it on social media.
Speaker: And you can really gain traction with that.
Speaker: And you can have a book that does become a word of mouth bestseller and people will read it.
Speaker: So I like the way that things have changed actually, because I've been doing this such a long time now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
Speaker: Because a newspaper only has, there's only so much space on the page, you know, even if they wanted to, they can't put a review for every single book that comes out every month.
Speaker: Whereas something like Instagram or TikTok or whatever it may be, there can be as many posts as people want to make.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Do you have, I know we talked a bit about this before we started recording.
Speaker: I know you don't have a TikTok, but like, have you, are you aware of your books kind of getting any traction on TikTok or BookTok?
Speaker: Do you know, I have absolutely no idea about TikTok and BookTok.
Speaker: I know that it's a really popular way of finding books.
Speaker: And I know that, I mean, I've been into airport bookshops and seen they have a whole BookTok section.
Speaker: But I just found that there's only so much social media I can handle.
Speaker: And so I have a few platforms I'm on, but I just, I can't look at everything because I just wouldn't have any time to write.
Speaker: So, and I, I joined it briefly and then sort of deleted my account because I was so overwhelmed by all these kinds of videos sort of
Speaker: coming at me.
Speaker: Um, I don't think my algorithms have kicked in yet.
Speaker: So, uh, no, I, I don't, I'll be honest.
Speaker: I don't know much about TikTok.
Speaker: No, that's, that's absolutely fair enough.
Speaker: It does seem to be, I'm just curious because there definitely does seem to be within certain genres and within certain ages for books, different social media platforms seem to really like reach people.
Speaker: So I imagine for your book, which is for like adult rom-com kind of area, um,
Speaker: Instagram probably has a community that's going to resonate more with that.
Speaker: Whereas BookTok tends to be more like young adult crossover, sort of the younger end of adult.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I think there's a genre now called, is it romanticcy?
Speaker: Romanticcy, yeah.
Speaker: Which is taking the bestseller charts by storm.
Speaker: And I think that's
Speaker: really popular on TikTok.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: Let's go back to you.
Speaker: I'd love to talk about, continue talking about the Confessions books because hugely popular worldwide and inspired a whole television series starring Jane the Virgin herself, Gina Rodriguez.
Speaker: What was it like having one of your books turned into like a live action extravaganza like that?
Speaker: What was it like?
Speaker: Do you know, it's difficult to put into words what it's like because it's so dream come true stuff.
Speaker: It's the kind of thing that you sort of allow yourself to dare dream about, but just so rarely happens.
Speaker: I've had books optioned before for television and film.
Speaker: Um, nothing's ever happened, but this one, um, this one happened.
Speaker: It was just, this one happened.
Speaker: And I, I actually went to, um, I used to live in LA for a number of years and, um, I actually went back to LA and I visited the studios and went onto the set and I met all the actors and I watched them film a scene and I met the producers and it was, um,
Speaker: It was like a Cinderella moment.
Speaker: It really was.
Speaker: And it was sort of, it was just, it was unbelievable.
Speaker: And I still have to kind of pinch myself.
Speaker: I mean, sometimes I think, wow, I've got a TV show.
Speaker: You know, there is a TV show made, adapted from my book and it is different and they have changed it.
Speaker: And that's absolutely fine because that's what they do when they make a TV show.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Especially if it's,
Speaker: especially if it's going, it's a half hour sitcom.
Speaker: It's an American television show.
Speaker: It's a completely different way of writing.
Speaker: I love the show and I watch it, but they have to cram so much into, I think it's like 24 minutes of television show because obviously you have the ad breaks.
Speaker: So it's a completely different way of writing.
Speaker: But I love it.
Speaker: I love watching Nell and Cricket and Edward and all the rest of the gang get up to stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker: And, you know, every time it comes on every episode, it says, you know, best based on the novel Confessions of a 40-something Effort by Alexandra Potter.
Speaker: And I get a little producer credit at the end.
Speaker: It's just amazing.
Speaker: I mean, I can't, yeah, I can't even really describe how
Speaker: how sort of unreal it's surreal.
Speaker: That's a good word.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Did you have any beyond like visiting and sort of, uh, meeting some people, did you have any involvement with the adaptation?
Speaker: It didn't actually.
Speaker: When I sold the idea, sorry, sold the book, a friend of mine had said to me, you mustn't get hung up on sort of being involved with the television show because it's a completely different medium.
Speaker: They'll have TV writers and
Speaker: Really good TV writers in there.
Speaker: And I could have sort of... You know, you don't want to...
Speaker: What's the word I'm looking for?
Speaker: You don't want to sort of try and claim this thing as your own because the book was mine.
Speaker: I created the book, but the television show is somebody else's.
Speaker: And so I didn't have anything to do with the adaptation.
Speaker: I didn't have anything to do with the writing.
Speaker: I met the head writers.
Speaker: They were lovely.
Speaker: They are fantastic writers.
Speaker: They've worked on some amazing shows.
Speaker: And I knew that I was in really safe hands with them.
Speaker: And I just didn't need to worry.
Speaker: And actually they can do a way better job than I could of writing a television show because I've never written one.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a very different skill set.
Speaker: It's a completely different skill set.
Speaker: I've had a go at writing TV pilots with a friend and, you know, a little screenplay here and there, but writing, writing for a US network show is, is, it's completely different.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So that's a very long answer to your question of was I involved?
Speaker: I would say no.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Would you maybe one day like to be involved if there were more adaptations of your work?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I would like to be involved in that it's really fun to try new things, especially with writing, because I've just spent my entire career writing all different kinds of things.
Speaker: I started out writing features for magazines.
Speaker: Now I'm writing novels.
Speaker: I've written, I mean, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker: I once wrote a radio play.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: It would be fun to try and write a television show.
Speaker: It'd be fun to write a film script.
Speaker: That would be an extra thing for me.
Speaker: I think I've been writing novels for nearly 25 years now, and I've kind of figured out how that works, even though every single book I write works.
Speaker: is a challenge.
Speaker: And I'm like, gosh, it's, am I ever going to be able to do this?
Speaker: And you think that every single time.
Speaker: And then I just have to remind myself, well, yeah, I've done it before.
Speaker: I can do it again.
Speaker: So, but yeah, no, it would be fun to, would be fun to try and to definitely to adapt one of my novels, I think.
Speaker: But sometimes you can be quite close to it, too close.
Speaker: So you don't want to cut scenes out.
Speaker: I think that would be quite hard.
Speaker: Yeah, that's, I guess, because you wouldn't be so familiar with the medium.
Speaker: When your editor takes your book and says, okay, so we need to do a bit of reshaping here, maybe this could be moved around, you're a bit more open to it because you understand the medium.
Speaker: But with screenwriting, they'd be like, no, we have to get rid of this whole character because we don't have time to do that.
Speaker: And you'd be like, but wait, it's so important.
Speaker: Yes, I know.
Speaker: Well, there's a phrase, isn't there?
Speaker: You've got to kill your darlings.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think if you're adapting for a film or a television series, there's got to be an awful lot of that.
Speaker: And you've got to look at it dispassionately.
Speaker: And I think if you're very close to your characters and your story, that would be quite hard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe, um, maybe like a consulting role on the next adaptation would be, so you could just sort of give some input, but be like, actually, you know, you guys, you guys know what to do here.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I think that would be probably quite nice.
Speaker: Um, and you mentioned that you lived in LA for some, for some years.
Speaker: I was curious because I saw that, am I right in thinking your agent is us based?
Speaker: Yeah, that's really interesting, actually.
Speaker: I've had the same literary agent since the beginning.
Speaker: And she was originally based in London at William Morris.
Speaker: And then she moved to America.
Speaker: And I just moved with her.
Speaker: I actually was living in America at the time, but it didn't really make a difference to
Speaker: where my literary agent was based.
Speaker: And now she actually works for an agency that has an office in New York and one in Paris and one in London.
Speaker: So she moves around a lot.
Speaker: But I don't think, I don't really think it matters where your agent is based, especially not now when there's so much remote working.
Speaker: You know, they can still have meetings.
Speaker: They can still speak to people on the phone.
Speaker: They can still do deals.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I don't really think it matters, to be honest.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's always interesting to me because there's lots of authors that do have agents and that relationship works internationally.
Speaker: But yeah, it's always interesting because I think people's first thought, if they're aspiring writers looking to reach out and query agents, is that they need to get someone who is in the same country as them.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I think at the beginning that's nice because obviously you want to, it's nice to go in and see your agent.
Speaker: It's nice to be able to sit in their office.
Speaker: It's nice to go and have a nice lunch that your agent pays for.
Speaker: It's nice to, it's definitely nice to have that face-to-face relationship.
Speaker: But actually, I think once you
Speaker: once you've been published and once hopefully you get another book deal, it doesn't really matter where your agent is and if you're seeing your agent a lot.
Speaker: And to be honest, there are vast periods of time where you don't have much contact with your agent.
Speaker: If you've got a book to write and you've got a year to write it,
Speaker: You might get a few emails, but really you're on your own.
Speaker: And it's the same with your editor.
Speaker: You are left for vast amounts of time by yourself writing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I guess also if you're on contract, so the book has already signed, that kind of stage that people would have with their agent, which is the kind of editorial phase, you wouldn't have that because you would just go straight to your editor.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: As opposed to your agent.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Well, some people, some authors I do know, I actually send my manuscript, my first draft to both my agent and my editor, and they both read it.
Speaker: I do know some authors that send it to their agent first and get their feedback before they send it to the editor.
Speaker: And I know some people that don't send it to their agent and send it straight to their editor.
Speaker: So there's all different ways of doing it.
Speaker: I think it's whatever works best for you and how involved your agent is.
Speaker: Probably at the beginning, definitely the beginning stages of your career.
Speaker: And I know with my first novel, my agent was heavily involved with really shaping the manuscript to be the best book it could be before we sent it out to publishers to try and sell it.
Speaker: Yeah, they're really, really hands on at that stage.
Speaker: So I think that's why you need to get an agent that you feel that you can work with closely and who has, you know, has the same view as you about the book and is hugely enthusiastic and is and is a real cheerleader for you.
Speaker: Because I think at that initial stage, you know, you've you've never been published before.
Speaker: You don't know how it works and you want somebody to hold your hand.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Whilst we're talking about your kind of early years and what it was like with your debut when you first started getting into the publishing industry, I'd love to know, like you said, almost 25 years doing this now, you must have seen, and we touched on it earlier with the newspaper stuff and the social media stuff, but you must have seen a lot of evolution within the industry.
Speaker: Are there any like
Speaker: big changes that stand out to you as an author from when you first debuted up until now.
Speaker: Yeah, there's some big changes.
Speaker: E-books.
Speaker: E-books weren't really a thing when I started at all.
Speaker: And I remember there was a whole sort of scary thing about e-books were going to come along and print books would disappear, which hasn't happened.
Speaker: You know, there's a lot of kind of scaremongering about that.
Speaker: And I definitely think they were...
Speaker: There were a lot more bookshops around.
Speaker: I remember things like Borders was a huge bookshop chain where I actually had my first book launch on Oxford Street.
Speaker: That's gone.
Speaker: So, you know, we still have the Waterstones and WH Smiths and some of the high street branches and obviously all the, yeah, Foils, Daunts, and a lot of the independent bookstores who were just amazing.
Speaker: But I think the sort of,
Speaker: I see Amazon.
Speaker: Amazon.
Speaker: Was Amazon even around?
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: I don't think Amazon was even a thing 25 years ago.
Speaker: I think it was, but it was not what it is.
Speaker: Because Amazon originally just sold books, right?
Speaker: Did it?
Speaker: That's how it started.
Speaker: Did it?
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: I didn't know that.
Speaker: I think that's why it's called Amazon.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I didn't realise, but I do know the way that we buy books has changed.
Speaker: You know, there was no social media.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There was no way that you could promote your own book as a writer.
Speaker: There was no way that you could get any feedback from any readers unless they wrote a letter to your publishers and your publishers forwarded it to you.
Speaker: I mean, now it's fantastic because people...
Speaker: People can share posts of your book reviews.
Speaker: They can direct message you.
Speaker: So that's really nice as a writer because it can be quite isolating.
Speaker: You sit in your bedroom or you go to the library, but you're not ever really having contact with the people that are reading your books.
Speaker: So I think that's a really positive change.
Speaker: And I think when you've just been around for so long and I've seen...
Speaker: I've seen the highs and the lows of the publishing industry.
Speaker: I've had some books that have sold really well.
Speaker: I've had some books that just haven't.
Speaker: I've seen some writers come along and they've been hugely successful and then they just disappear.
Speaker: I've seen people reinvent themselves from writing a certain genre to something completely different.
Speaker: And I think you do.
Speaker: I've seen how the business works more.
Speaker: I didn't ever really understand it much when I first started writing.
Speaker: I just wrote a book and then I kind of the magic happened somewhere else.
Speaker: You know, how do they get the books on the shelves?
Speaker: How do they promote?
Speaker: And I think I think I've learned a lot.
Speaker: So yeah, things have definitely changed, but people still love reading books, which is what I love.
Speaker: And what I saw during the pandemic is that the book sales went through the roof.
Speaker: People went back to books, not just for something to do, but I think that they offered them, which books always have done, an escape from real life.
Speaker: And it just showed how important books are to people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which was a really nice reaffirming thing because books are so important.
Speaker: You know, people love reading.
Speaker: I was on the tube the other day and everybody thinks that everyone's always on their phone.
Speaker: Well, they are, but there were plenty of people reading books I saw, which I thought was a really positive thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A lot of my friends who, um, for their commutes will not necessarily be reading a book, but they'll be listening to an audio book.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Or do you see audio books are huge now?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've been very lucky.
Speaker: I've had a great narrator in Sally Phillips to do my confessions books.
Speaker: And, um, I think audio books are just fantastic for listening to when you're commuting or you're doing stuff, or I listened to a whole one once when I was painting the living room.
Speaker: It was fantastic.
Speaker: That's perfect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what that, yeah.
Speaker: When you're doing something that's like, uh, requires your, your hands and things, but doesn't necessarily require too much, uh, thought it's, it's a great, uh, it's a great thing to, to, to have at your disposal.
Speaker: Um, and that brings us to the point in the episode where we ask, um, if you were stranded, Alexandra, on a desert Island with a single book, which book do you hope that you would be stranded with?
Speaker: Am I allowed to say, it was the single book, am I allowed to say a collected?
Speaker: Well, I've had someone go online and show me that they found a bound version of Lord of the Rings, which comes as like one edition.
Speaker: So theoretically, if it could be bound, I'll allow it.
Speaker: Okay, a bound version.
Speaker: Well, I was thinking today that was a very difficult question and I gave it a lot of thought because there are so many books that I love.
Speaker: And then I thought if I was on a desert island, I would want something that gave me a lot of comfort.
Speaker: And for me, it would be like the collected works of Enie Blyton because it was something, they were the first books I ever read as a child.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I will just never forget reading The Famous Five or The Magic Faraway Tree, all those books.
Speaker: And they are the books that got me into reading and wanting to write because I just entered this world of imagination and met all these different characters.
Speaker: And I...
Speaker: It was just unbelievable for me.
Speaker: I remember as a child, I had quite bad allergies.
Speaker: I used to have terrible hay fever and we lived near hay fields.
Speaker: And my sister used to play out with all her friends and I had to stay in.
Speaker: And I used to sit in my bedroom and read.
Speaker: And instead of feeling like I was missing out, I felt like actually my sister was missing out because I was the one reading all these fantastic stories about all these wonderful adventures.
Speaker: So that would be my one book
Speaker: It would be a very big book, but that's the one that I would take to the desert island.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The sort of the book that inspired it all, that made you what you've sort of, your career has become today.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I really, yeah, definitely.
Speaker: My childhood reading those books completely set me on the course that I'm still on today.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's amazing.
Speaker: A great choice.
Speaker: Something that really resonates with you.
Speaker: And I've got some more questions about writing process and how Alexandra tackles it.
Speaker: But we are at the end of the regular episode and into the extended cut exclusive to Patreon subscribers.
Speaker: So anyone listening who hasn't yet joined the Patreon, please do think about it.
Speaker: It goes a long way towards covering the cost of running this podcast.
Speaker: keep effing up with uh with now and on that note uh yeah exactly thank you so much alexandra for coming on the podcast and chatting with me and telling me all about um your your books and your adventures in publishing and your approach to writing it's been really really cool and fascinating chatting with you oh thank you so much it's been my pleasure thank you
Speaker: And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Alexandra is doing, you can follow her on Instagram at Alexandra Potter, on Facebook at Alexandra Potter Author, or on her website, alexandrapotter.com.
Speaker: Remember to like, follow, and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and follow along on socials.
Speaker: Join the Patreon for extended episodes ad-free in a week early and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
Speaker: Thanks again to Alexandra and thanks to everyone listening.
Speaker: We'll catch you on the next episode.
