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#154 - Hester Musson
493 Plays1 year ago
Gothic historical author, Hester Musson joins us this week to talk about her debut novel 'The Beholders', her approach to writing and how she signed with her agent, Juliet Mushens. (Photo by Jess Shurte)
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Transcript
Importance of Quality Writing & Plot Holes
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?
00:00:04
Speaker
You can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:00:12
Speaker
So it's kind of a gamble.
Introduction of Hester Musson
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 former actor and autocue operator, now full-time writer, Hester Musson.
00:00:24
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:25
Speaker
Thanks so much for joining me.
00:00:26
Speaker
Hi, thank you very much for having me on.
00:00:28
Speaker
Oh, it's my pleasure.
00:00:29
Speaker
So just to clarify, I did introduce you as now full-time writer, and some people might be confused as I'm about to ask you about the debut novel, which is not yet out.
00:00:41
Speaker
So anyone listening, if you're confused by that, stay tuned.
00:00:44
Speaker
We'll get into Hester's other writing work later.
00:00:47
Speaker
But right now, The Beholders, your gothic historical fiction is out 18th of January.
00:00:54
Speaker
Tell us a bit about it.
Overview of 'The Beholders'
00:00:56
Speaker
Well, it's set in 1878 and it begins with the trial of a woman who is the wife of an MP and she's accused of murdering their baby son.
00:01:06
Speaker
But the story then flips back a few months and is told completely through the diaries of a housemaid called Harriet who goes to work for them at their country estate.
00:01:15
Speaker
And Harriet is, she's not happy.
00:01:17
Speaker
She doesn't want to go home and marry her childhood sweetheart.
00:01:20
Speaker
And that's really the only sensible option open to her.
00:01:24
Speaker
but she doesn't want to be a full-time domestic servant either.
00:01:28
Speaker
She's looking for a higher purpose and she thinks she's found it in this house.
00:01:32
Speaker
She's blown away by the grandeur of Fintan Hall, where even the other servants are all beautiful.
00:01:37
Speaker
And especially in her mistress, Clara,
00:01:40
Speaker
who she seems to see something in Harriet that nobody else ever has.
00:01:43
Speaker
And she's captivating in herself.
00:01:46
Speaker
She has this extraordinary singing voice and she fills the house with it.
00:01:49
Speaker
So Harriet thinks she's landed on her feet.
00:01:51
Speaker
But then she begins to realise that there are secrets at Fintan Hall.
00:01:56
Speaker
Everything isn't quite as it seems.
00:01:58
Speaker
And she begins to doubt her decision.
00:02:01
Speaker
And eventually she has to make another choice about how far she's willing to go, what she's willing to risk to do what she thinks is the right thing.
00:02:09
Speaker
So it's about ideas around service and power and how power presents itself to be sometimes what it isn't, and especially when it's been abused.
00:02:22
Speaker
And in that way, crimes can become hidden in plain sight.
00:02:25
Speaker
Amazing.
00:02:26
Speaker
That, I mean, it has all the, all the kind of trimmings of a, of a great kind of thriller mystery drama.
00:02:33
Speaker
And also I'm aware, not just from the cover, which is wonderful, but the kind of Gothic aspect of it all.
00:02:40
Speaker
That was also, that was, are you sure this is your debut?
00:02:42
Speaker
That was such a good summary of the whole thing.
00:02:46
Speaker
It's not my first summary.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:50
Speaker
Most writers, they try and explain your book in a few sentences and it's, yeah, it's not easy.
00:02:55
Speaker
My experience with writers, and this is me as well, is you can talk about someone else's book at length with ease.
00:03:01
Speaker
And then when someone asks you about your book, you're like, oh, what is my book?
00:03:05
Speaker
Yes, because it's so big in your own mind that you can't, it's sometimes difficult to whittle it down to the verbose.
00:03:12
Speaker
That's true.
00:03:13
Speaker
I'd not thought about it like that.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's much larger.
00:03:16
Speaker
Because there's what you put on the page and then there's everything else that's kind of ancillary that you left out.
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:03:22
Speaker
It's like saying, describe the country.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:03:28
Speaker
And it would be easier to describe a country to another person who's native to that country.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yes, yeah, exactly.
00:03:34
Speaker
Because they would just get a lot of the things you wouldn't have to explain.
00:03:37
Speaker
Yes, yeah, exactly.
00:03:39
Speaker
Describe another planet, maybe.
Inspirations Behind the Novel
00:03:43
Speaker
So you mentioned that it starts in the trial and then it moves back and you get a different point of view.
00:03:49
Speaker
The book actually starts with a, you have like a fictitious newspaper excerpt from the, is it the Evening Standard?
00:03:55
Speaker
uh yes i can't remember yes it is well i was wondering because obviously the first thing i did when i when i saw the book i was like well let me see if this actually was a real newspaper thing um because i'm like that yeah no i did that with a book recently oh were there any like real life events or characters that you drew inspiration from from the period or whatever
00:04:20
Speaker
There weren't specifically.
00:04:22
Speaker
They're not based on actual people.
00:04:24
Speaker
It was more an amalgam of all sorts of different cases, not just in the 19th century, but right up to now, human nature hasn't changed that much.
00:04:35
Speaker
So it was...
00:04:37
Speaker
There's nothing I can point to and say it's definitely that.
00:04:39
Speaker
There are some things.
00:04:40
Speaker
It does talk about baby farming quite a bit.
00:04:45
Speaker
And I did a lot of research into that.
00:04:46
Speaker
And some things were taken directly from that.
00:04:50
Speaker
But the characters are completely fictitious.
00:04:54
Speaker
Okay, that's interesting.
00:04:55
Speaker
Because generally, when people do historical stuff, there's a lot of research involved.
00:05:00
Speaker
So I'm guessing you... What was it about the 1800s that drew you in that made you want to say, oh, I want to write about this era specifically?
Evolution of Novel's Setting
00:05:09
Speaker
Well, I've always it's an era that I've always just been very drawn to.
00:05:13
Speaker
I love its literature and I find it fascinating historically because it's like you can never quite pin them down.
00:05:18
Speaker
Sometimes it feels like they're just completely separate, so outdated.
00:05:22
Speaker
And sometimes it's startling what you discover is they had, which you think could have come later.
00:05:29
Speaker
And some of the views and the progressiveness of them.
00:05:32
Speaker
It's startling.
00:05:33
Speaker
It's very hard to kind of find your footing, I think, with the Victorians.
00:05:36
Speaker
But I didn't, I never actually wanted to write a book set then.
00:05:41
Speaker
That happened because I was writing a story in the present and I had a historical subplot and I thought, oh, well, it was just quite a minor one, just dropping in letters or diary entries for a kind of background mystery that's going on that
00:05:55
Speaker
comes to fruition in the present plot.
00:05:58
Speaker
And then because I needed it to work out with the generations for my modern heroine, I sort of got back to the 1870s.
00:06:05
Speaker
So that's why that's really why it started.
00:06:11
Speaker
But then when I actually started writing that subplot, and Harriet's voice came through, it just took over.
00:06:17
Speaker
And I eventually realized that this has just got to be the entire novel.
00:06:21
Speaker
So then I started thinking, so when exactly is it going to be?
00:06:24
Speaker
And now I'm not tied to it anymore.
00:06:25
Speaker
But I think because I'd already done quite a lot of research about the 1870s, I just shifted it to the right year.
00:06:32
Speaker
And yeah, I found that everything worked very well anyway.
00:06:35
Speaker
So I didn't have to go and research too much at a different time.
00:06:41
Speaker
So this really started off as something quite different.
00:06:43
Speaker
Totally different.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:45
Speaker
wow okay that's that's so cool i wanted to ask about you know the the kind of dotting of letters and snippets and things like that throughout whether that was always kind of part of the plan not really no i i can't remember when i put the first newspaper article in because when i started writing and thought oh okay this is going to be the whole book i was a bit do i really want to write a whole book in diary form because that is um
00:07:14
Speaker
amazingly challenging yeah as it turns out but I ended up just doing that and I think I had a couple of snippets in and then actually because it falls very naturally into three sections it was my editor who said oh let's let's drop more in at each section which was great because then I could go in and explore different types of things it wasn't just newspapers so that was that was nice
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah.
Plotting Process & Character Development
00:07:39
Speaker
When it comes to the, and we've already just established that this was originally something very different, but how much planning did you do ahead of like sitting down and beginning to write the story?
00:07:52
Speaker
I did quite a lot because it was originally a subplot.
00:07:56
Speaker
I'd kind of, that story came together a bit more quickly, I think, than the main one.
00:08:01
Speaker
So I had the 10 poles as it were,
00:08:04
Speaker
but I find I really love plotting, but there's only a certain point I can get to when I know that I have to stop and start writing because so much of the plot will come out of character and I have to write to really get to know the character.
00:08:17
Speaker
So there's only so much I can do.
00:08:19
Speaker
And sometimes it all goes to plan.
00:08:21
Speaker
Other times I start writing and it actually veers off completely and I just let myself go with it and then have another plotting.
00:08:29
Speaker
At some point, if I get really stuck, I realize it's because I need to go away and think about the whole story more and
00:08:34
Speaker
plot a bit more.
00:08:35
Speaker
But yeah, this one, this book did not behave at any point in any way.
00:08:40
Speaker
It was such a convoluted writing journey.
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, that she wasn't, it's set in Fintan Hall for a lot of the book, but originally that wasn't going to be the plan at all.
00:08:51
Speaker
There was actually going to be a very different kind of story arc, but I just couldn't get her to leave the house.
00:08:57
Speaker
There was too much going on.
00:09:01
Speaker
So that had a big impact on the final story as well.
00:09:06
Speaker
You're not the first author to, whether accidentally or on purpose, who I've spoken to, who likes to write out a sort of plan and a plot and then just put it to the side.
00:09:19
Speaker
So it sort of exists in the back of their mind, but there's nothing tying them to it.
00:09:23
Speaker
They're not referring to it to stay completely on the track.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's really nice because then you get the fun of just writing to see what happens.
00:09:34
Speaker
But the first novel I wrote, I didn't plan at all.
00:09:38
Speaker
I just sort of threw myself at it.
00:09:39
Speaker
I didn't really think I could write a novel, so I just wrote anything.
00:09:42
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:09:45
Speaker
Nothing was in order.
00:09:45
Speaker
It was just different.
00:09:46
Speaker
I had an idea about it.
00:09:47
Speaker
I'd start writing, which was really, really fun, but it did take forever.
00:09:52
Speaker
And then eventually you have to go back and say, right, what is this?
00:09:57
Speaker
And sort of make it behave and make it neater.
00:09:59
Speaker
So I think, yeah, to plan, which is fun in itself, but then to not be really strictly tied to it is kind of the best of both worlds in a way.
00:10:08
Speaker
You still get that fun of thinking, oh, this
Publishing Journey & Editorial Process
00:10:11
Speaker
has happened.
00:10:11
Speaker
I need to go in this direction instead.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:10:14
Speaker
Based on what you've just said, I am going to guess that you've written multiple kind of full novel length manuscripts before The Beholders.
00:10:23
Speaker
Two others.
00:10:25
Speaker
Two others, okay.
00:10:25
Speaker
And one of them, I keep going back to try and write.
00:10:28
Speaker
So I've written that one about four times.
00:10:30
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:10:32
Speaker
But yeah, there were two that I got to completion.
00:10:36
Speaker
Yeah, the first one is the one that I still stand by and I would really like to crack.
00:10:40
Speaker
And I will keep going back to it.
00:10:43
Speaker
And the second one was a totally different experience.
00:10:45
Speaker
I planned that much more.
00:10:47
Speaker
And I did more thinking about things like markets and how you submit to people.
00:10:53
Speaker
And that's the one that did actually get me an agent.
00:10:56
Speaker
But then this is the book that's got all the way.
00:11:00
Speaker
Oh, I see.
00:11:00
Speaker
So Beholders is not the book that you signed with Juliet Mushins.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yes, that's right.
00:11:06
Speaker
It was the one before which...
00:11:10
Speaker
And yeah, it's so great.
00:11:11
Speaker
Juliet's such a great agent in that because she's the sort of person who picks a writer and then will stay with you, which is really lovely.
00:11:18
Speaker
And thank goodness.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:20
Speaker
Because the one before, it did actually sell to an Italian publisher.
00:11:25
Speaker
But then I think the editor left, there was a shakeup and it got shelved.
00:11:29
Speaker
So it never actually got published.
00:11:32
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, which I didn't really, apparently it happens a lot.
00:11:35
Speaker
I hadn't realized that.
00:11:36
Speaker
So that was a bit disappointing, but it actually worked out great because,
00:11:40
Speaker
this is now my debut.
00:11:42
Speaker
So we can publish it with all the bells and whistles of it being a debut.
00:11:46
Speaker
Yes.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:47
Speaker
Get all the extra marketing buzz and things like that.
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:11:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:11:51
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:11:52
Speaker
Since we're on Juliet anyway, and Juliet's career is really like blowing up.
00:11:59
Speaker
She seems to be taking over publishing.
00:12:00
Speaker
It's extraordinary, isn't it?
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:04
Speaker
Was it through open submissions that you connected and signed with Juliet?
00:12:09
Speaker
Yes, it was.
00:12:11
Speaker
And I very nearly didn't
00:12:13
Speaker
submit to her because she just had the miniaturist out and that had obviously gone stratospheric uh so i thought oh she'll be absolutely inundated and reading her blog online i thought i'm not sure she'll be really interested in my book anyway so i just thought oh perhaps she's not one to submit to but then um i was talking to two women who had their own publishers um little publishing indie house so they were very interested in the novel but they said you know we'd love to but
00:12:40
Speaker
We're actually shutting down now, moving on to other things.
00:12:44
Speaker
So yeah, I was like, oh, but they said, but we just met Juliet Mushins.
00:12:47
Speaker
You must submit to her.
00:12:48
Speaker
She was so lovely.
00:12:49
Speaker
And so I thought, oh, well, at least if, at least I can say I've met someone she's met now.
00:12:52
Speaker
So you've got that kind of, you know, you're just desperate for a toehold, just anything to connect you with someone.
00:12:59
Speaker
So yeah, so I just submitted it and yeah, thank goodness.
00:13:03
Speaker
Did you have a lot of agents getting back to you?
00:13:07
Speaker
I had, I submitted to a lot and a few came back asking for the full manuscript, but not, not loads.
00:13:17
Speaker
And actually Juliet was the last one.
00:13:19
Speaker
I was doing it in tranches of 10.
00:13:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:21
Speaker
That's good.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:24
Speaker
I don't know if, I don't know if it's different now.
00:13:26
Speaker
I think then, cause even then it would take such a long time for them to get back to you just because of how many they're reading.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I think that's probably even more the case now.
00:13:33
Speaker
So I don't know if I'd,
00:13:35
Speaker
do that again but it was it worked at the time um but she was the last one of that section of you know of sending them out right and had asked for the whole novel so yeah that she was and she actually sent talk about her work ethic she sent me i saw she sent me an email at 10 o'clock on a friday evening and i was like i thought i can't this is another rejection i can't face it just before i go to bed so i didn't open it oh yeah didn't read it till the morning
00:14:05
Speaker
Well, that's good.
00:14:06
Speaker
Gave you time to really think about, ponder what it was overnight.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, just sort of putting your armour on for, you know, what am I going to do if this one is?
00:14:16
Speaker
Get ready for it.
00:14:17
Speaker
And once you'd signed with Juliet, presumably she, like most agents nowadays, is she quite editorial?
00:14:24
Speaker
Yes, yes, she is.
00:14:25
Speaker
She's a brilliant editor in her own right, actually, which is fantastic.
00:14:29
Speaker
I was quite nervous once I did get a deal of getting another editor because I was like, what if she's not as good as Julia?
00:14:36
Speaker
But I actually really lucked out with Katie Bowden as well.
00:14:38
Speaker
She's fantastic.
00:14:39
Speaker
But yeah, she's very, there was a lot of work that we did before submitting it to publishers.
00:14:47
Speaker
You mentioned that you signed with the previous novel.
00:14:50
Speaker
When you started sort of conceptualising The Beholders, were you kind of bouncing ideas around with Juliet for the whole thing?
00:15:00
Speaker
No, no, not at all.
00:15:03
Speaker
And I did ask her at one point if she wanted to read anything halfway through and she said no, she preferred to just get the whole manuscript.
00:15:12
Speaker
Okay, so you didn't even sort of do kind of pitch stuff with her, as in like, this is what I'm thinking of writing?
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, no, I don't think I did that.
00:15:20
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:15:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:21
Speaker
which is perhaps just as well as it would have been completely different from what I eventually said to her.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
00:15:29
Speaker
Your process was to write a book and then find another book within the first book.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yes, basically.
00:15:35
Speaker
It's like Russian dolls.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:15:38
Speaker
Is that more a kind of you preference?
00:15:40
Speaker
Is that you would like to be sort of left alone and just to write a thing?
00:15:43
Speaker
And then when the thing is complete, that's when you want to kind of share it and talk about it?
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
00:15:50
Speaker
Because it's such a strange and complex process to write a novel.
00:15:58
Speaker
I want it to be what it is with just me doing it without any sort of interference.
00:16:04
Speaker
It wouldn't be interference, but you know, without any other influence in it.
00:16:09
Speaker
To see what I'm writing, I think you could very quickly get knocked off track.
00:16:13
Speaker
I've tried...
00:16:15
Speaker
there was a time I tried a few different writers groups and I didn't find that useful for novel writing.
00:16:22
Speaker
It was great in terms of talking about writing and improving sentence by sentence was really good, but I didn't find it useful for the novel because it's the same thing we started talking about.
00:16:32
Speaker
You have this world in your head which other people can't access if they're reading a couple of pages.
00:16:38
Speaker
And it is a real skill, I think, to do that and not sort of run away with your own ideas of what someone should do with a book
00:16:45
Speaker
So I do like to sort of keep it in-house.
00:16:47
Speaker
I like talking about the ideas.
00:16:48
Speaker
I like talking about the novel as I'm writing it.
00:16:51
Speaker
That can be really helpful, but not actually having someone read it.
00:16:55
Speaker
So, yeah, I suppose I could have talked about it more, but I don't know.
00:16:59
Speaker
I feel...
00:17:01
Speaker
I understand that.
00:17:02
Speaker
It's very much, I think it's a preference for you as a writer.
00:17:05
Speaker
Like some people I think thrive by having the whole process kind of back and forth with lots of other people and different opinions.
00:17:13
Speaker
But I understand, like it sounds like with you, if someone were to come in and say something, it might kind of subconsciously change one thing and then the butterfly effect would explode that later on, it could be completely, the whole thing could be completely different to what it would have been.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that would be okay because you're all the time sort of being nudged by other influences.
00:17:34
Speaker
But I think it can make you confused is what I found.
00:17:38
Speaker
It can sort of make you doubt.
00:17:40
Speaker
And if you've got some frail idea that you want to explore, if that sort of gets shoved out of the way, you've missed the opportunity to see where it's going to go and it might have ended up being confused.
00:17:51
Speaker
being a much bigger thing.
00:17:52
Speaker
I've got lots of in my notebooks, lots of sort of swearing of what the hell is this?
00:17:57
Speaker
Who is this character?
00:17:58
Speaker
They don't seem to serve a purpose, but I can't get rid of them.
00:18:01
Speaker
I think, you know, if it's too early, if someone says, no, that's not doing any, you know, that's not serving you, get rid of it.
00:18:06
Speaker
I think you can then miss the opportunity.
00:18:07
Speaker
You sort of need to look back and decide that rather than do it in process, which...
00:18:12
Speaker
which, yeah.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:14
Speaker
I think that makes a lot of sense for sure.
00:18:17
Speaker
Let's get onto, uh, mentioned at the start, you, you do have sort of other writing, uh, exploits.
Transition to Full-Time Novelist
00:18:23
Speaker
Uh, you, namely you write for the, uh, National Charity Art Fund, um, and, and its magazine.
00:18:30
Speaker
Uh, yeah, that's, um, I've actually, I've got full time on the novel now, but before, um,
00:18:37
Speaker
before the deal uh i was yeah i was racing for art fund which was really lovely um went to work for them for a while how do you how did you get into that um that actually was very luckily through a friend they just needed someone to come in and basically temp uh very last minute some sort of very kind of you know basic on the website work um so that's how i sort of got my foot in the door and then i just hung around and
00:19:04
Speaker
Eventually they gave me more to do and eventually they sort of, yeah, there was a job going, which I applied for.
00:19:10
Speaker
That's great.
00:19:10
Speaker
I mean, that's those kinds of jobs, um, whilst not as glamorous obviously as being like a published full-time author, it's a great thing to have, like while you're in the process, while you're on the way to, you know, before you signed your deal and all of that.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:19:25
Speaker
I think it's, I think my life up until now has been basically searching for the perfect day job.
00:19:31
Speaker
Um, and, and actually while working for Art Fund was great, it was lovely.
00:19:36
Speaker
It's a really lovely, brilliant organization.
00:19:39
Speaker
Um, I did find that because it was writing, but not, not the novel writing, it kind of exhausted my brain and I was writing less of what I wanted to write.
00:19:50
Speaker
Um,
00:19:51
Speaker
which is part of the reason why I went back to freelancing for them and sort of left the main job.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's a difficult one because I did think, oh, you know, I'm not getting anywhere.
00:20:04
Speaker
I'm doing jobs, which, you know, they're all fine in themselves, but it's not writing.
00:20:08
Speaker
And I just,
00:20:09
Speaker
I feel like a writer.
00:20:11
Speaker
So I wanted to go and get one.
00:20:12
Speaker
But then when I did, it was like, oh, I'm not writing what I want to write.
00:20:15
Speaker
I'm too tired at the end of the day to think about constructing another sentence.
00:20:20
Speaker
It's funny.
00:20:20
Speaker
I watched, I often talk about Brandon Sunson because he has a series of lectures on YouTube that I watched all of.
00:20:26
Speaker
And he talks about,
00:20:28
Speaker
on the road to becoming an author, a lot of people are going to be working a full-time or part-time job beforehand.
00:20:35
Speaker
One of the jobs he recommended was, he was like, don't take a job that you think would make sense, but that involves lots of writing or things like that.
00:20:42
Speaker
He's like, something like bricklaying, something that's very menial and sort of almost therapeutic, and you're just doing the same thing over and over again.
00:20:50
Speaker
He said,
00:20:50
Speaker
those are kind of so good for just giving your brain space to switch off and think about your creative side whilst doing a job, which is ostensibly pretty easy.
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
00:21:03
Speaker
I went in, it was during the first lockdown, the second one, whenever it was, when you were allowed to travel to study.
00:21:11
Speaker
So I went and did a sort of a little traineeship on nature conservation on a farm in Devon, which it was like a sort of boot camp of conservation skills and
00:21:23
Speaker
And I actually went there thinking, oh, maybe if I sort of try all these different things out, because that's another area that I'm really interested in.
00:21:29
Speaker
And then maybe I could spend my days, you know, dry stone walling or hedge laying or something and then go home and write.
00:21:36
Speaker
And it was that was fantastic.
00:21:38
Speaker
But what actually happened was they asked me to write a blog.
00:21:41
Speaker
And I think all I wanted to do was write about nature and regenerative farming.
00:21:48
Speaker
I just wanted to write again.
00:21:53
Speaker
But yeah, I think the jobs I've had, which where you don't have to think too much, have definitely actually been the best ones for the writing.
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:01
Speaker
So before we get on to the final question, we are days away from the book coming out, releasing into
Anticipation for Debut Release
00:22:11
Speaker
the world.
00:22:11
Speaker
How are you feeling about it?
00:22:13
Speaker
I'm just in a constant state of amazement now, I think.
00:22:16
Speaker
It was kind of numb shock.
00:22:18
Speaker
And yeah, I'm astonished and excited as well.
00:22:27
Speaker
And a bit nervous.
00:22:28
Speaker
Is there a part of you that still doesn't think it's going to happen?
00:22:31
Speaker
Like it still doesn't think it's real?
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
00:22:33
Speaker
I thought by now I'd have kind of got used to it.
00:22:35
Speaker
But no, I'm still slightly sort of jaw on the floor about the whole thing.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is surreal.
00:22:43
Speaker
And especially if you're someone that has always been around books and you like to go into bookshops and stuff, the idea of seeing your book on a shelf, like in the window or something like that, it's just mind-blowing.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think actually seeing it in a bookshop is going to be another sort of thudding moment.
00:23:01
Speaker
I've got a copy which just sits around the house and every time I walk past it, I have a sort of little jolt because it's real.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's something I've dreamt of.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's pretty common for, I think I've spoken to a few authors who have, they said that, yeah, the moment when they saw their book in the shop, they cried because it's insane.
00:23:22
Speaker
It's like, it doesn't seem real.
00:23:23
Speaker
In fact, one of my friends recently had like a very weird moment.
00:23:26
Speaker
Melissa, she writes YA and she saw her book was on a table in a bookshop next to Twilight, which is obviously like a book that she as a teenager grew up with.
00:23:37
Speaker
And it's just, she's like, I never in a million years
00:23:41
Speaker
thought that I would write a book that would be on next to such a like massive kind of global phenomenon book that I read when I was a teenager oh what a brilliant moment yeah I think I think that is going to be the moment where it does come home I hope I keep it together yeah bring bring a box of tissues you'll be fine I know it's just suddenly this woman crying in waterstones I'm sure they're used to it they'll be like oh yeah
00:24:10
Speaker
Amazing.
00:24:11
Speaker
Well, I'm very excited for it.
00:24:13
Speaker
Very excited for you.
00:24:14
Speaker
And I hope everything goes amazingly and it's a wonderful time.
00:24:18
Speaker
Thank you.
00:24:19
Speaker
That brings us to the final question of the episode, which as always is, Hester, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope to have with you?
Desert Island Book Choice
00:24:31
Speaker
Well, I had been going to say Possession by A.S.
00:24:35
Speaker
Byatt because she is my sort of mothership for writing.
00:24:41
Speaker
But I would be, actually, I think I would be very tempted to take Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, to be honest.
00:24:49
Speaker
Okay, it's interesting.
00:24:51
Speaker
I only bought it this year and I wish I'd bought it much earlier because it's brilliant.
00:24:55
Speaker
It's written in a really conversational style.
00:24:58
Speaker
So it just feels like someone chatting to you knowledgeably about words and grammar.
00:25:04
Speaker
And that's my kind of party.
00:25:05
Speaker
So I think it would be like really good company.
00:25:10
Speaker
And there's also, there's so much in it that the snippets that it uses to illustrate a point are all real.
00:25:17
Speaker
They're all taken from the world.
00:25:19
Speaker
And they're quite often really intriguing sentences.
00:25:23
Speaker
You want to know the background of it, the rest of the story.
00:25:26
Speaker
So I think it would actually be a great sort of source of inspiration because we're going to still be writing on this island, right?
00:25:31
Speaker
It's not just reading.
00:25:33
Speaker
Well, if you can, if you can fashion yourself some kind of writing implement.
00:25:37
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, maybe just a stick in the sand.
00:25:39
Speaker
It would just, you know.
00:25:41
Speaker
A helicopter flying over can read your limericks.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, not help save me, just some really nice metaphor.
00:25:48
Speaker
They'll start an Instagram page of words written in the sand.
00:25:52
Speaker
That's mystery.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:55
Speaker
And also, it's just so interesting.
00:25:57
Speaker
There's so much in it.
00:25:58
Speaker
And you could be stuck on an island, but improving your vocabulary.
00:26:01
Speaker
I mean, why wouldn't you?
00:26:03
Speaker
Brilliant.
00:26:04
Speaker
I wasn't familiar with this book before, but it sounds fantastic.
00:26:07
Speaker
I'm going to have to look into it.
00:26:08
Speaker
it's it's it's pretty good yeah i recommend it pretty good the one book i would take with me yeah it's pretty good well that's amazing awesome choice uh totally unique choice as well never never had that before oh yes um nailed it uh thank you so much for coming on the podcast and chatting with me and telling us all about your your writing and the beholders it sounds amazing i can't wait for it to come out um it's been awesome chatting
00:26:35
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:26:35
Speaker
It's been really fun.
00:26:36
Speaker
Thanks.
Follow Hester Musson on Social Media
00:26:37
Speaker
And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Hester is doing, you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram at Hester Musson.
00:26:44
Speaker
And to make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:26:49
Speaker
You can support the show on Patreon.
00:26:50
Speaker
And for more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:26:54
Speaker
Thanks again to Hester and thanks to everyone listening.
00:26:56
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.