Transcript
Speaker: Oh, a spicy question.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
Speaker: You can fix plot holes, but if the 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: On today's episode, I am joined by former actor and autocue operator, now full-time writer, Hester Musson.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker: Hi, thank you very much for having me on.
Speaker: Oh, it's my pleasure.
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.
Speaker: So anyone listening, if you're confused by that, stay tuned.
Speaker: We'll get into Hester's other writing work later.
Speaker: But right now, The Beholders, your gothic historical fiction is out 18th of January.
Speaker: Tell us a bit about it.
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.
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.
Speaker: And Harriet is, she's not happy.
Speaker: She doesn't want to go home and marry her childhood sweetheart.
Speaker: And that's really the only sensible option open to her.
Speaker: but she doesn't want to be a full-time domestic servant either.
Speaker: She's looking for a higher purpose and she thinks she's found it in this house.
Speaker: She's blown away by the grandeur of Fintan Hall, where even the other servants are all beautiful.
Speaker: And especially in her mistress, Clara,
Speaker: who she seems to see something in Harriet that nobody else ever has.
Speaker: And she's captivating in herself.
Speaker: She has this extraordinary singing voice and she fills the house with it.
Speaker: So Harriet thinks she's landed on her feet.
Speaker: But then she begins to realise that there are secrets at Fintan Hall.
Speaker: Everything isn't quite as it seems.
Speaker: And she begins to doubt her decision.
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.
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.
Speaker: And in that way, crimes can become hidden in plain sight.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: That, I mean, it has all the, all the kind of trimmings of a, of a great kind of thriller mystery drama.
Speaker: And also I'm aware, not just from the cover, which is wonderful, but the kind of Gothic aspect of it all.
Speaker: That was also, that was, are you sure this is your debut?
Speaker: That was such a good summary of the whole thing.
Speaker: It's not my first summary.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Most writers, they try and explain your book in a few sentences and it's, yeah, it's not easy.
Speaker: My experience with writers, and this is me as well, is you can talk about someone else's book at length with ease.
Speaker: And then when someone asks you about your book, you're like, oh, what is my book?
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.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: I'd not thought about it like that.
Speaker: Yeah, it's much larger.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's like saying, describe the country.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And it would be easier to describe a country to another person who's native to that country.
Speaker: Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Because they would just get a lot of the things you wouldn't have to explain.
Speaker: Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Describe another planet, maybe.
Speaker: So you mentioned that it starts in the trial and then it moves back and you get a different point of view.
Speaker: The book actually starts with a, you have like a fictitious newspaper excerpt from the, is it the Evening Standard?
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
Speaker: There weren't specifically.
Speaker: They're not based on actual people.
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.
Speaker: So it was...
Speaker: There's nothing I can point to and say it's definitely that.
Speaker: There are some things.
Speaker: It does talk about baby farming quite a bit.
Speaker: And I did a lot of research into that.
Speaker: And some things were taken directly from that.
Speaker: But the characters are completely fictitious.
Speaker: Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker: Because generally, when people do historical stuff, there's a lot of research involved.
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?
Speaker: Well, I've always it's an era that I've always just been very drawn to.
Speaker: I love its literature and I find it fascinating historically because it's like you can never quite pin them down.
Speaker: Sometimes it feels like they're just completely separate, so outdated.
Speaker: And sometimes it's startling what you discover is they had, which you think could have come later.
Speaker: And some of the views and the progressiveness of them.
Speaker: It's startling.
Speaker: It's very hard to kind of find your footing, I think, with the Victorians.
Speaker: But I didn't, I never actually wanted to write a book set then.
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
Speaker: comes to fruition in the present plot.
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.
Speaker: So that's why that's really why it started.
Speaker: But then when I actually started writing that subplot, and Harriet's voice came through, it just took over.
Speaker: And I eventually realized that this has just got to be the entire novel.
Speaker: So then I started thinking, so when exactly is it going to be?
Speaker: And now I'm not tied to it anymore.
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.
Speaker: And yeah, I found that everything worked very well anyway.
Speaker: So I didn't have to go and research too much at a different time.
Speaker: So this really started off as something quite different.
Speaker: Totally different.
Speaker: Yeah.
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
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
Speaker: Yeah.
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?
Speaker: I did quite a lot because it was originally a subplot.
Speaker: I'd kind of, that story came together a bit more quickly, I think, than the main one.
Speaker: So I had the 10 poles as it were,
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.
Speaker: So there's only so much I can do.
Speaker: And sometimes it all goes to plan.
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.
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
Speaker: plot a bit more.
Speaker: But yeah, this one, this book did not behave at any point in any way.
Speaker: It was such a convoluted writing journey.
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.
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.
Speaker: There was too much going on.
Speaker: So that had a big impact on the final story as well.
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.
Speaker: So it sort of exists in the back of their mind, but there's nothing tying them to it.
Speaker: They're not referring to it to stay completely on the track.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's really nice because then you get the fun of just writing to see what happens.
Speaker: But the first novel I wrote, I didn't plan at all.
Speaker: I just sort of threw myself at it.
Speaker: I didn't really think I could write a novel, so I just wrote anything.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Nothing was in order.
Speaker: It was just different.
Speaker: I had an idea about it.
Speaker: I'd start writing, which was really, really fun, but it did take forever.
Speaker: And then eventually you have to go back and say, right, what is this?
Speaker: And sort of make it behave and make it neater.
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.
Speaker: You still get that fun of thinking, oh, this has happened.
Speaker: I need to go in this direction instead.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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.
Speaker: Two others.
Speaker: Two others, okay.
Speaker: And one of them, I keep going back to try and write.
Speaker: So I've written that one about four times.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: But yeah, there were two that I got to completion.
Speaker: Yeah, the first one is the one that I still stand by and I would really like to crack.
Speaker: And I will keep going back to it.
Speaker: And the second one was a totally different experience.
Speaker: I planned that much more.
Speaker: And I did more thinking about things like markets and how you submit to people.
Speaker: And that's the one that did actually get me an agent.
Speaker: But then this is the book that's got all the way.
Speaker: Oh, I see.
Speaker: So Beholders is not the book that you signed with Juliet Mushins.
Speaker: Yes, that's right.
Speaker: It was the one before which...
Speaker: And yeah, it's so great.
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.
Speaker: And thank goodness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because the one before, it did actually sell to an Italian publisher.
Speaker: But then I think the editor left, there was a shakeup and it got shelved.
Speaker: So it never actually got published.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, which I didn't really, apparently it happens a lot.
Speaker: I hadn't realized that.
Speaker: So that was a bit disappointing, but it actually worked out great because,
Speaker: this is now my debut.
Speaker: So we can publish it with all the bells and whistles of it being a debut.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get all the extra marketing buzz and things like that.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: Since we're on Juliet anyway, and Juliet's career is really like blowing up.
Speaker: She seems to be taking over publishing.
Speaker: It's extraordinary, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Was it through open submissions that you connected and signed with Juliet?
Speaker: Yes, it was.
Speaker: And I very nearly didn't
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
Speaker: We're actually shutting down now, moving on to other things.
Speaker: So yeah, I was like, oh, but they said, but we just met Juliet Mushins.
Speaker: You must submit to her.
Speaker: She was so lovely.
Speaker: And so I thought, oh, well, at least if, at least I can say I've met someone she's met now.
Speaker: So you've got that kind of, you know, you're just desperate for a toehold, just anything to connect you with someone.
Speaker: So yeah, so I just submitted it and yeah, thank goodness.
Speaker: Did you have a lot of agents getting back to you?
Speaker: I had, I submitted to a lot and a few came back asking for the full manuscript, but not, not loads.
Speaker: And actually Juliet was the last one.
Speaker: I was doing it in tranches of 10.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if, I don't know if it's different now.
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.
Speaker: And I think that's probably even more the case now.
Speaker: So I don't know if I'd,
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
Speaker: Well, that's good.
Speaker: Gave you time to really think about, ponder what it was overnight.
Speaker: Yeah, just sort of putting your armour on for, you know, what am I going to do if this one is?
Speaker: Get ready for it.
Speaker: And once you'd signed with Juliet, presumably she, like most agents nowadays, is she quite editorial?
Speaker: Yes, yes, she is.
Speaker: She's a brilliant editor in her own right, actually, which is fantastic.
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?
Speaker: But I actually really lucked out with Katie Bowden as well.
Speaker: She's fantastic.
Speaker: But yeah, she's very, there was a lot of work that we did before submitting it to publishers.
Speaker: You mentioned that you signed with the previous novel.
Speaker: When you started sort of conceptualising The Beholders, were you kind of bouncing ideas around with Juliet for the whole thing?
Speaker: No, no, not at all.
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.
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?
Speaker: Yeah, no, I don't think I did that.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: which is perhaps just as well as it would have been completely different from what I eventually said to her.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: Your process was to write a book and then find another book within the first book.
Speaker: Yes, basically.
Speaker: It's like Russian dolls.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Is that more a kind of you preference?
Speaker: Is that you would like to be sort of left alone and just to write a thing?
Speaker: And then when the thing is complete, that's when you want to kind of share it and talk about it?
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: Because it's such a strange and complex process to write a novel.
Speaker: I want it to be what it is with just me doing it without any sort of interference.
Speaker: It wouldn't be interference, but you know, without any other influence in it.
Speaker: To see what I'm writing, I think you could very quickly get knocked off track.
Speaker: I've tried...
Speaker: there was a time I tried a few different writers groups and I didn't find that useful for novel writing.
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.
Speaker: You have this world in your head which other people can't access if they're reading a couple of pages.
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
Speaker: So I do like to sort of keep it in-house.
Speaker: I like talking about the ideas.
Speaker: I like talking about the novel as I'm writing it.
Speaker: That can be really helpful, but not actually having someone read it.
Speaker: So, yeah, I suppose I could have talked about it more, but I don't know.
Speaker: I feel...
Speaker: I understand that.
Speaker: It's very much, I think it's a preference for you as a writer.
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.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think that would be okay because you're all the time sort of being nudged by other influences.
Speaker: But I think it can make you confused is what I found.
Speaker: It can sort of make you doubt.
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.
Speaker: being a much bigger thing.
Speaker: I've got lots of in my notebooks, lots of sort of swearing of what the hell is this?
Speaker: Who is this character?
Speaker: They don't seem to serve a purpose, but I can't get rid of them.
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.
Speaker: I think you can then miss the opportunity.
Speaker: You sort of need to look back and decide that rather than do it in process, which...
Speaker: which, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that makes a lot of sense for sure.
Speaker: Let's get onto, uh, mentioned at the start, you, you do have sort of other writing, uh, exploits.
Speaker: Uh, you, namely you write for the, uh, National Charity Art Fund, um, and, and its magazine.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, that's, um, I've actually, I've got full time on the novel now, but before, um,
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
Speaker: Eventually they gave me more to do and eventually they sort of, yeah, there was a job going, which I applied for.
Speaker: That's great.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: I think it's, I think my life up until now has been basically searching for the perfect day job.
Speaker: Um, and, and actually while working for Art Fund was great, it was lovely.
Speaker: It's a really lovely, brilliant organization.
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.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: which is part of the reason why I went back to freelancing for them and sort of left the main job.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a difficult one because I did think, oh, you know, I'm not getting anywhere.
Speaker: I'm doing jobs, which, you know, they're all fine in themselves, but it's not writing.
Speaker: And I just,
Speaker: I feel like a writer.
Speaker: So I wanted to go and get one.
Speaker: But then when I did, it was like, oh, I'm not writing what I want to write.
Speaker: I'm too tired at the end of the day to think about constructing another sentence.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: I watched, I often talk about Brandon Sunson because he has a series of lectures on YouTube that I watched all of.
Speaker: And he talks about,
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: He said,
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.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker: I went in, it was during the first lockdown, the second one, whenever it was, when you were allowed to travel to study.
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
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.
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.
Speaker: And it was that was fantastic.
Speaker: But what actually happened was they asked me to write a blog.
Speaker: And I think all I wanted to do was write about nature and regenerative farming.
Speaker: I just wanted to write again.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So before we get on to the final question, we are days away from the book coming out, releasing into the world.
Speaker: How are you feeling about it?
Speaker: I'm just in a constant state of amazement now, I think.
Speaker: It was kind of numb shock.
Speaker: And yeah, I'm astonished and excited as well.
Speaker: And a bit nervous.
Speaker: Is there a part of you that still doesn't think it's going to happen?
Speaker: Like it still doesn't think it's real?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker: I thought by now I'd have kind of got used to it.
Speaker: But no, I'm still slightly sort of jaw on the floor about the whole thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it is surreal.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, I think actually seeing it in a bookshop is going to be another sort of thudding moment.
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.
Speaker: It's something I've dreamt of.
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.
Speaker: It's like, it doesn't seem real.
Speaker: In fact, one of my friends recently had like a very weird moment.
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.
Speaker: And it's just, she's like, I never in a million years
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
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Well, I'm very excited for it.
Speaker: Very excited for you.
Speaker: And I hope everything goes amazingly and it's a wonderful time.
Speaker: Thank you.
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?
Speaker: Well, I had been going to say Possession by A.S.
Speaker: Byatt because she is my sort of mothership for writing.
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.
Speaker: Okay, it's interesting.
Speaker: I only bought it this year and I wish I'd bought it much earlier because it's brilliant.
Speaker: It's written in a really conversational style.
Speaker: So it just feels like someone chatting to you knowledgeably about words and grammar.
Speaker: And that's my kind of party.
Speaker: So I think it would be like really good company.
Speaker: And there's also, there's so much in it that the snippets that it uses to illustrate a point are all real.
Speaker: They're all taken from the world.
Speaker: And they're quite often really intriguing sentences.
Speaker: You want to know the background of it, the rest of the story.
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?
Speaker: It's not just reading.
Speaker: Well, if you can, if you can fashion yourself some kind of writing implement.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I mean, maybe just a stick in the sand.
Speaker: It would just, you know.
Speaker: A helicopter flying over can read your limericks.
Speaker: Yeah, not help save me, just some really nice metaphor.
Speaker: They'll start an Instagram page of words written in the sand.
Speaker: That's mystery.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also, it's just so interesting.
Speaker: There's so much in it.
Speaker: And you could be stuck on an island, but improving your vocabulary.
Speaker: I mean, why wouldn't you?
Speaker: Brilliant.
Speaker: I wasn't familiar with this book before, but it sounds fantastic.
Speaker: I'm going to have to look into it.
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
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: It's been really fun.
Speaker: Thanks.
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.
Speaker: And to make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
Speaker: You can support the show on Patreon.
Speaker: And for more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
Speaker: Thanks again to Hester and thanks to everyone listening.
Speaker: We'll catch you on the next episode.
