Transcript
Speaker: This is the Crime Board Podcast.
Speaker: You're listening to the Crime Board Podcast.
Speaker: This is the Crime Board Podcast.
Speaker: With Sam West.
Speaker: Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, and welcome to the Crime Board Podcast, a podcast dedicated to all things crime fiction, and of course, the brilliant minds behind some great novels.
Speaker: I'm Sam West, and thank you for taking the time to join us, whether that's on your way to work, or back, or on a run, or simply sitting down with a cup of tea.
Speaker: Really glad to have you on board.
Speaker: Now, today's guest has secretly been a part of the show from the very beginning.
Speaker: Her voice is actually in the intro.
Speaker: The one and only Lucy Hoved.
Speaker: A very big welcome to you.
Speaker: How are you doing?
Speaker: I'm very well.
Speaker: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker: It's the real, yeah, I've been looking forward to this since the beginning as well.
Speaker: Yeah, it's actually, it's really cool because as I've said, you've kind of been involved from the very beginning in the intro, which is really great.
Speaker: Every time the intro comes up, I'm like, I'm so glad that I actually had someone to do that because it sounds so much better than what I could have done.
Speaker: It's the first time I've ever been asked to use my voice to do anything.
Speaker: So I really enjoyed it too.
Speaker: Honestly, I think you should do audiobooks.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd love to do my own, actually.
Speaker: That'd be great, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll line up for that.
Speaker: But I think it'd be really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, it'd be a great fun thing to have as well.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: So you're the first person in my author friend circle who lives closest to me.
Speaker: And by that, I mean, not on the opposite end of the world.
Speaker: So you're originally from the UK, but you live in Namibia.
Speaker: Could you tell us a little bit about what you do?
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, so we're sort of in the neighborhood for you, but it's obviously a very, very big neighborhood.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I'm in Leritz, Namibia, which is on the southwest coast.
Speaker: Namibia is a very, very big, very empty country.
Speaker: It's second least populated in the world.
Speaker: And the southern half of Namibia is the emptiest bit.
Speaker: So it is it does feel very remote down here.
Speaker: But it's also extremely beautiful.
Speaker: It's where the desert meets the ocean.
Speaker: So we've got kind of big rolling sand dunes that come right down into the coastline.
Speaker: We're here because it's the best place in the world to grow giant kelp.
Speaker: And my husband is setting up a startup to grow, to cultivate giant kelp forests offshore in the cold waters of the Benguela current here.
Speaker: And we're also setting up a school.
Speaker: There wasn't really any obvious schooling options for our kids when we arrived here that were close enough to a system they'd been in before.
Speaker: So we're setting that up with a school with a special focus on the ocean and oceans literacy and understanding this amazing place and the uniqueness of its environment.
Speaker: Wow, that's brilliant.
Speaker: That is so cool.
Speaker: Yeah, I will link the website and all of that information as well.
Speaker: I think it's a really cool thing to check out.
Speaker: And I think it's a really great thing that you're both doing for the environment, but also for the kids and educating future generations.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker: Being involved in a startup is, you know, you eat, sleep, drink, breathe, kelp, and you're all, you know, probably is hook, line, and sinker in the project.
Speaker: But it's a really exciting project, and it's trying to do something that's certainly number four.
Speaker: And we've got a brilliant team of very young, passionate, enthusiastic, mostly Namibians, certainly down here.
Speaker: And yeah, it's just a great, fun adventure.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll definitely link that and I'll link the videos that you've also edited, which is really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a recently found sort of love and a bit of skill, I hope, is making short videos.
Speaker: And for me, it's very linked to novel writing because it's really about storytelling.
Speaker: You know, anyone coming up.
Speaker: work a camera and anyone can learn editing software but to be able to communicate a message and really grab people in and you know get to people's emotions you need that storytelling element and that's the bit I most enjoy in in making these oh absolutely
Speaker: That and the fact that the raw material is so beautiful and amazing that you can't really go very far wrong when you've got these gorgeous shots of underwater kelp and just the amazing environment here.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: That resonates with my soul.
Speaker: Yeah, that's brilliant.
Speaker: And yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker: That definitely is a storytelling element to it.
Speaker: And yeah, I can definitely confirm the skills are there.
Speaker: I've really been enjoying looking at those little videos and like learning more about what you do, obviously.
Speaker: But yeah, like me as an editing film nerd as well, I'm like, wow, that was really well done.
Speaker: Like the drone shots are really nice.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I can't take credit for the drone shots.
Speaker: We've got a guy from the north of Numbia who has come down and he's our drone operator.
Speaker: And that's been a real game changer to be able to see, to put the kelp farm, or to see the real extent of the farm as it grows and to be able to put it in its context.
Speaker: It's just beautiful.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll link all of that.
Speaker: So please do have a look at all of those.
Speaker: So you've written two novels, spy thrillers more specifically, which is very, very exciting.
Speaker: I absolutely love that, that entire world and the genre itself, or sub-genre, I should say, very exciting.
Speaker: So what is your series about?
Speaker: So my series follows a young female spy, Sarah Black, and it follows her career from sort of innocent beginner to hardened operative as she works her way up the greasy pole of the world of espionage.
Speaker: So the first book, The King's Pawn, is very much her opening gambit.
Speaker: She's very young.
Speaker: She's very naive.
Speaker: She's pretty over trusting.
Speaker: She's got that kind of
Speaker: confidence of the youth that you think you're immortal and you think you can do anything the kind of pippy long stopping I've never done it before so I must be good at it but she's got no real training she's got no real experience she's very much kind of thrown in the deep end
Speaker: And then as the books go on, obviously she'll be more experienced.
Speaker: She'll have more behind her.
Speaker: She'll be forced to make more of the difficult kind of moral trade-offs in the first book and a bit in the second.
Speaker: She's very kind of black and white.
Speaker: This is right.
Speaker: This is wrong.
Speaker: But as her world gets more complicated, she will be forced to realize that it's not always that straightforward.
Speaker: And you do have to make calls that are difficult and uncomfortable to keep your eye on the greater goal.
Speaker: Yeah, so where did the series start for you?
Speaker: What was the inspiration behind it?
Speaker: It started when I was, it's quite a silly story, when my first child was born, he was really, really slow at feeding.
Speaker: And I was kind of going slightly insane at having to sit in the nursing chair for a while.
Speaker: And so my husband used to give me little prompts, little writing prompts, and I would sit with the baby in one arm and the iPad in the other and I could do it on the iPad and I would write these little stories while feeding this incredibly slow baby as a way of just not going mad.
Speaker: And so we got up and one day the prompt was, you are a young spine, you've just graduated from Oxford and you've been approached by MI6 and your father's in the cabinet office and, you know,
Speaker: I can't remember how the rest of it went, but the 500 word story just became a five book novel series.
Speaker: And part of the reason why it resonated so much was because I had had this career in the UK government and I had lived and worked in all these amazing, unusual, strange places and met all these interesting people.
Speaker: It was a really nice way of being able to record that and to remember the best bits.
Speaker: I didn't want to write a memoir, but it was a really fun way to relive these things and also to capture the best bits of that.
Speaker: But one is set in Georgia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus, which is where I had my first posting working for DFID, the UK Department of National Development.
Speaker: Book two is set in Sierra Leone, where I also worked.
Speaker: Book three is in China.
Speaker: Four is going to be Jordan.
Speaker: So yeah, they're a way of capturing the best bits of things that really happened, but making them much more exciting to a reader by giving them a plot.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: I actually had no idea that you did that for real.
Speaker: Everybody always assumed I must be a spy because I did languages at university and then I went off to the former Soviet Union and then Beijing and then Sierra Leone.
Speaker: So people just assumed, well, obviously I was a spy, but I was actually working for GIFID.
Speaker: And so the books are a sort of, what if that had been true?
Speaker: You know, what might it have looked like if in fact that's what I was doing?
Speaker: That is brilliant.
Speaker: I had no idea.
Speaker: And I think this is by far the most unique origin story, I guess, of like where a book began for you.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I mean, they say, you know, write the book that only you can write.
Speaker: That's brilliant.
Speaker: Yeah, gosh, because yeah, okay, we'll get to because I have a question about research later.
Speaker: But obviously, if you've sort of lived it, then that's, that's all the evidence I need.
Speaker: Yeah, although, you know, obviously, you're there at one point in time, and you have one view on it.
Speaker: Yeah, very true.
Speaker: The story of the King's Pawn is set in the time that I was living and working in Georgia.
Speaker: So I didn't have to do that much extra research.
Speaker: But the head of the snake is set during the civil war in Sierra Leone.
Speaker: And when I was there, it was five years later, seven years after the events in the book.
Speaker: And it was a totally different world.
Speaker: It was peaceful and happy and everyone was friendly and calm and you just couldn't imagine that brutality had happened in the recent past.
Speaker: So that required a lot of research to sort of put the pieces together.
Speaker: So I had, if you like, the stage set.
Speaker: I knew what it looked like.
Speaker: I knew what people were like.
Speaker: I knew...
Speaker: the locations but to turn that into what it would have been like during the chaos of war took quite a lot of work and planning and research.
Speaker: yeah that's actually funny um because I I made notes while reading for myself because I I do that especially with with authors that I love and books that I love I make notes I'm like wow you're actually really descriptive and I need to be more descriptive in my writing and stuff like that like um I think the one thing that really stood out to me aside from obviously the story which was great was your attention to detail and um really fleshing out the world or even just the space that she's in like the room that she's in or wherever she is
Speaker: And for me, that was like, it's, it's a kind of goes without saying, like, it's kind of something you should know as a writer, but I didn't really think about it to that extent.
Speaker: Like you've done it so brilliantly that I had to make notes.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: That is incredibly kind.
Speaker: It's always been very important to me that the setting is very, you know, I've always thought of the setting of each book as sort of being one of the characters.
Speaker: um so the king's porn is very much my love sum to georgia it's an amazing country it's very little known and i wanted people to sort of fall in love with it through the book um and of course it's a bit of a um difficult line to tread when you're writing genre fiction because um you know a spy thriller any sort of crime thriller you've got to make sure that the pace and the tension and the um
Speaker: You know, the getting on with the plot takes precedence because that's what readers are expecting.
Speaker: You know, getting the balance right that you're not spending too long doing the beautiful descriptions of the landscape or somehow making sure that those that do make it in make it in for a reason, I guess, is the...
Speaker: What a lot of my editing time consists of.
Speaker: Cutting out beautiful scriptures, beaches, and mountains, and forests.
Speaker: Just because it doesn't mean it needs to stay in the book.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you kind of don't want things to turn into purple prose.
Speaker: And then people are like, what is this?
Speaker: Yeah, I completely get that.
Speaker: But at the same time, it's really fun, I think, especially when, I mean, for me, the locations really came alive.
Speaker: And obviously, I've never been there, but I could feel what she was feeling.
Speaker: And that's really brilliant.
Speaker: I mean, because I could actually feel what she was going through and sort of
Speaker: see the environment and where she was location people she was with and that really came alive off the page um so yeah very well done oh wow well thank you very much that's a really nice comment glad it worked very nice but it definitely worked
Speaker: We obviously, we meet Sarah, well, not in chapter one, but very, very close to the beginning.
Speaker: And it's obviously her brilliant debut as our leading lady, but also as an MI6 agent.
Speaker: And our initial encounter with her is at a rather intimidating dinner with Michael.
Speaker: which I found really cool.
Speaker: I love the fact that he just kind of acts like he doesn't care.
Speaker: You know, he's got all this experience and she's kind of sitting there like wide-eyed and she doesn't know if she wants to tell him that she wants to quit.
Speaker: But before she can, he's kind of...
Speaker: figured out a way to get her back in without her even realizing and things just sort of happen so quickly.
Speaker: But she's really, really young.
Speaker: She's like 22.
Speaker: So why was it important that we meet her at this point in her journey and not later on?
Speaker: So I really wanted to, you know, like I say, I've always pictured it as a five book series and that each book in that series would be a different kind of step on her journey.
Speaker: So I wanted the first one really to be, she's a beginner, she's a rookie, she's very young, she's very inexperienced, she's very naive, she thinks she knows it all in that way that you do when you're 22.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: but actually she knows very little.
Speaker: And, you know, just to see, well, how does she respond to this?
Speaker: You know, she's then kind of thrown in the deep end pretty much without with very little by way of help and support and training and safety net.
Speaker: You know, does she sink or swim?
Speaker: How does she react?
Speaker: I was interested in what's it like to be a kind of young woman in a man's world?
Speaker: How do people respond to you when
Speaker: yours is totally not what they expect you to be.
Speaker: And how do you use that to your advantage?
Speaker: I think she does use the fact that people are deaf and we look at her and underestimate her because she's young and female and little and she's not a kind of tough action hero.
Speaker: And she uses that to her advantage.
Speaker: And so that's why I wanted her to be sort of quite green around the ears in this first book.
Speaker: Because, yeah, it's the opening.
Speaker: It's the first act.
Speaker: And as the books go on, she gets tougher.
Speaker: She gets more cynical.
Speaker: She gets sort of definitely more experienced.
Speaker: But she will, I hope, keep a lot of that kind of wide-eyed,
Speaker: um principles 22 year olds and it would that would be kind of her her lodestar that'll be the thing she comes back to to prevent herself from ever turning into a michael which is i mean i love i love writing michael and i do quite love michael even though he's kind of awful um i do as well yeah
Speaker: and old-fashioned and full of himself and he's sort of insufferable in so many ways but he does always manage to just about redeem himself just at the point that you want to throw him out of the book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, that's her role model.
Speaker: That's the model that she's been presented with, with, you know, this is how to be in this world.
Speaker: And she will eventually come to say that is, you know, you're a dinosaur, you're something of the past.
Speaker: That's the old white male stale model.
Speaker: And I'm going to do something completely different.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's why it's so refreshing.
Speaker: Although I must say, I really do... I don't know what it is with me liking characters like him, but I think he really intrigues me.
Speaker: No, and that's why, you know, I didn't want it to be, you know, that all the female characters are brilliant and the men are awful and, you know, I just think that is a really...
Speaker: It's a pointless narrative.
Speaker: The story I wanted to tell is about a young female taking her place in the world and kind of unseating the image of the old stale bonds and smileys from the public imagination.
Speaker: But I wanted to do that while bringing everyone along.
Speaker: Michael is a great character.
Speaker: I do love it.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: It's not that he's awful and therefore Sarah has to take over.
Speaker: It's just, well, Sarah has a different way of doing things and it's her turn.
Speaker: What I do appreciate, and I'm sure a lot of people would with this is that you didn't immediately sort of throw them at each other into some sort of relationship because, oh, he's essentially her boss.
Speaker: And, you know, I don't I feel like that's almost sometimes it's almost been expected.
Speaker: And it's refreshing to see that that's that's not the case from the get go.
Speaker: No, I mean, I think there's always a sort of slight pre-song of something between them, as I think there often is.
Speaker: Any man and a woman who are working together, there's always that sort of sniff in the air of, oh, well, that could be a thing.
Speaker: But it definitely doesn't have to be a thing.
Speaker: And yeah, between these two characters, I wouldn't want it to be a thing.
Speaker: A friend of mine, I do have, there is a character in the King's Porn who is very, very closely modeled on my husband.
Speaker: Elias is basically Daniel when I met him.
Speaker: No, obviously he's not, but he's very similar in many ways.
Speaker: And so a friend of mine was reading it and she knew this and she'd got to this scene with Michael.
Speaker: She thought, oh gosh, it's Michael then.
Speaker: But yeah, so I think instincts were right that that's not meant to happen.
Speaker: oh gosh okay can you imagine though um wow yeah I mean I really do like him I do like him but he's not he's not my favorite he's not my first choice but I do find him really interesting um and obviously in book two we see how that relationship has changed uh because she's obviously more sure of herself and she's she's done this now she's been through the trenches and um
Speaker: she's kind of no longer puppy dog but she's kind of standing up to him more um yeah I really appreciated that as well you know she's she's kind of just like oh well if that's what you want to do then sorry I don't have time for you which I really loved
Speaker: Yeah, no, I like, I mean, in book two, she's a lot tougher.
Speaker: She's a lot more, you know, in the end, it sort of shows that she's a bit gung ho and blinkered and actually, you know, she does better to work together than on her own.
Speaker: But yeah, no, it was great fun allowing that kind of more independent side of her out.
Speaker: She's a bit more badass.
Speaker: And in book three, that only continues to grow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: oh that's exciting i'm interested to see who's actually going to stick around for book three um yeah i guess yeah well i mean other than the sort of obvious loss that i don't want to be getting older yeah yeah yeah but i think everyone else yeah yeah exactly yeah no spoilers
Speaker: But yeah, otherwise Chris, Michael, Beverly, obviously Sarah's father.
Speaker: I love him.
Speaker: And Sarah's best friend, Jenny, who has sort of a tiny role in The King's Porn and a tiny role in The Head of the City.
Speaker: And she always had a bigger role in both of the books and always got edited out because of the need to just cut and get tighter and make things happen quicker and up the pace.
Speaker: So the scenes with her always got edited out, which I was always really sad about because I really liked the idea of this female friendship.
Speaker: And certainly for me at that age, my female friendships were the most important thing in my life.
Speaker: And it's one of the things that makes Sarah's role and position so difficult that she can't share this huge thing in her life with the person that she shared everything with up until that point.
Speaker: So she has a big role finally in book three that can't be cut out.
Speaker: So I was really pleased to be able to give her her moment.
Speaker: I'm really glad you didn't just throw away side characters that really didn't have a big role.
Speaker: Because I've done that in the past where I'm like, okay, is this character actually relevant?
Speaker: I think it's so lovely to see them come back and actually have some more screen time, as it were.
Speaker: Because, yeah, I think her friendship, especially in the beginning of the first book, is also really important.
Speaker: But then when she realizes that she's going to have to leave and she obviously can't tell...
Speaker: tell everybody where she's going or what's happening.
Speaker: I think that must have been a really big hit for her, you know, having to sort of keep things quiet, but she's also stepping into essentially uncharted waters.
Speaker: And yeah, I think that would have been really terrifying.
Speaker: Yeah, no, exactly.
Speaker: That's exactly sort of why it was important to me that she was there and why I kind of fought to keep her.
Speaker: And also what I found really interesting about this, because this isn't really a genre that I've, or sub-genre that I've rarely read before, not really to this extent.
Speaker: And of course, I don't know why, because I absolutely love it.
Speaker: It was very exciting.
Speaker: But I just think that, especially that opening scene, and that's what got me, not the opening scene, but the first time she's, we sort of meet Michael when they're sitting down for dinner and she's kind of not sure if she wants to carry on with this.
Speaker: And he just brings these photos to the table.
Speaker: And the world's just carrying on around her completely oblivious as to what's happening.
Speaker: And I just found that contrast really riveting because I think for me, what really stood out was that you never really know what's going on with people around you and their hearts and their minds and the stuff that they're busy with.
Speaker: And you can kind of miss things or you do miss things, obviously, because you're oblivious to it.
Speaker: I think that was a really powerful introduction for us.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think people think of spies as, you know, being in overcoats and dark glasses and hiding around corners.
Speaker: But actually, you know, most espionage work is done by really very normal people.
Speaker: And they, you know, they have their meetings in cafes because who's listening?
Speaker: No one's listening.
Speaker: Everyone's busy on their own, well, doing their own thing.
Speaker: You know, obviously, like Michael, they'll be an absolute pro at choosing exactly the right table to make sure that you've got all the angles, that you can see what's what.
Speaker: But
Speaker: In fact, you know, the sort of hiding in plain sight is the best way to be anonymous.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love how he just knows that she's like cycled in, in the rain, she's soaking wet.
Speaker: He doesn't even offer her a lift home.
Speaker: He just disappears and she has to go back and get wet again.
Speaker: Yeah, which is typical, Michael.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just, you know, I'll rock up.
Speaker: You sort yourself out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But also because he knows that if he offered her, she'd be offended.
Speaker: You know, if he said, surely you want to get in my daxy, she'd be outraged.
Speaker: So I think, you know, he's wise enough to know to let her struggle at home in the rain as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, like, who are you to offer me a lift?
Speaker: Yeah, I get that.
Speaker: She's very independent.
Speaker: I mean, even at that age, obviously, at that point, she had a lot to learn still.
Speaker: But yeah, I think I really love how you've set her up.
Speaker: Because from the get go, we kind of know what she's about, and what she wants, even though she's kind of not shown herself yet until that moment happens.
Speaker: And I think what I really was looking forward to, and obviously, you're ready to deliver on was just a really strong female character.
Speaker: And I know,
Speaker: It's almost become like a cliche at this point, like for fathers to be like, oh, I have a strong independent female character.
Speaker: But I think she really is a role model.
Speaker: And I found a lot of things with her that I absolutely loved.
Speaker: That was a big part of what I wanted to do with Sarah, was to create a female character that people would, you know, empathize with and understand and look up to.
Speaker: And it sort of started like years and years and years ago.
Speaker: my now husband and I were watching Gladiator and the main character in Gladiator is like such an all-round great hero.
Speaker: He's like this model of manhood that every man would want to be and every woman would want to be.
Speaker: with and he's just clear like archetype of like that is the person that we should all be and i was thinking what is the female equivalent and i just couldn't at the time i really couldn't even think of one i think now um the world is different and we do have a lot of great female characters and role models and you know even the star wars franchise has gone into a totally female direction um
Speaker: And, you know, I think there are some, you know, I think really the world has changed and there are lots of examples now.
Speaker: But at that time, I just couldn't even think of one.
Speaker: And I really wanted Sarah to add to that list of examples that we now have of female characters who, you know, young girls can look up to, who young women can want to be.
Speaker: But that are not, you know, I didn't want to write a Wonder Woman.
Speaker: I didn't want her to be super...
Speaker: You know, I didn't want her to be Lara Croft.
Speaker: I wanted her to be quite in many ways.
Speaker: And, you know, the things that she goes through, she's in an extraordinary circumstance, but she's actually quite an ordinary person dealing with it.
Speaker: so that it would be relatable to modern readers and they would think, oh, okay, yeah, I could see myself in that.
Speaker: That was really something that I wanted to achieve because I think, yeah, the world needs more of those characters, especially young women.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yes, I'm a really big fan of the BBC One show that had been running for ages, Spooks.
Speaker: Now, I know it's not accurate, but as I've mentioned before, with shows like Line of Duty and Marcella, for me, it's about the drama more so than their accuracy, obviously.
Speaker: But I mean, of course, accuracy or some degree of accuracy is important.
Speaker: How important was accuracy in research for you while drafting these two first books?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, obviously the kind of, is it exactly how the world of espionage works?
Speaker: Well, I didn't want it to be completely outlandish, but I think actually the world of espionage is incredibly boring.
Speaker: It's mostly really quite mundane people doing things.
Speaker: So if you're going to go into the genre of spy fiction, you have to take with it the kind of slight fallacy that the James Bond world that really doesn't exist in real life.
Speaker: No one is out there doing all this stuff themselves.
Speaker: They're just running agents and sitting in offices.
Speaker: So from that side of things, you know, I'm quite happy to take artistic license.
Speaker: What I did want to get right was settings, people, historical detail.
Speaker: Because, you know, if you get that wrong, I think you can really kind of pull people out of the story.
Speaker: And I didn't want that to happen.
Speaker: And also with both books, I'm writing about a time that is quite recent past and the people who were there are still alive and, you know,
Speaker: I really didn't want to get it wrong.
Speaker: So like I said before, the King's Pawn was sort of easier because I was there at that time and I knew Georgia at that moment quite well.
Speaker: And I wasn't really writing about anyone real other than President Saakashvili appears as himself.
Speaker: But otherwise, it's mostly... Well, there were a few characters from the British Embassy that were quite true to life, but I knew them well enough to write them.
Speaker: And I hope they do.
Speaker: And the Hennessy was much more difficult because it was a period of time when I wasn't there and obviously a very different time because during the civil war, it was really all out chaos.
Speaker: And this is the end of the war.
Speaker: So this is 10 years into a really, really brutal conflict.
Speaker: And so I did a lot of research on that.
Speaker: I read memoirs by people who were there at the time.
Speaker: One of the ones that I based on very heavily, well, two books actually really inspired it.
Speaker: One was a book by Steve Heaney, who was a member of the Pathfinders, who were the kind of pre-SAS group.
Speaker: that went in and they were the ones that take on the rebels in the village in Lungi.
Speaker: And so it was actually his book, refinding his book in an Airbnb in Australia many years ago that gave me the hook that I wanted to set the story on.
Speaker: And the other one was General David Richards.
Speaker: He was Brigadier David Richards at the time.
Speaker: He's now Baron Richards of Hesse-Mausau.
Speaker: And he was the brigadier in charge of the UK military operation in Sierra Leone.
Speaker: And he went on to become the head of the UK army.
Speaker: And here's account of how things unfolded in this sort of slightly strange and unusual way of British engagement in the war, sort of slightly without anyone really planning it or agreeing to it, but because he saw the opportunity.
Speaker: That informed the account a lot.
Speaker: Both of them have read the book and been very kind enough to give me quotes.
Speaker: They both really enjoyed it and have given me lovely quotes to use in my marketing, which is just amazing to have someone who was actually there read it and not come back and say, what is this nonsense?
Speaker: But actually to recognize the historical period and enjoy the story that is obviously it is nonsense because Sarah was not there and she did not have an instrumental role in the war.
Speaker: But so to have that kind of confirmation from both of them was really, really lovely.
Speaker: I also, before it was published, I wanted a sensitivity reader to read it because obviously when you're writing about other places and other cultures, it's a bit of a minefield and you absolutely don't want to get it wrong and you don't want to end up.
Speaker: offending someone unintentionally and you want to make sure you capture it and it was really important to me to find someone who was actually there at the time but I wanted some Sierra Leonean who was in free time at the time to look at it and tell me have I got this right does it ring true is there anything that you know is wrong or cause a defense or it's not as it should be
Speaker: And I was amazingly lucky to find someone who was there and had this lived experience and is now in London and raced through the book and gave me some wonderful comments.
Speaker: And I had a great chat with them afterwards.
Speaker: So yeah, it was very important to me to have that authenticity and to as much as is possible, obviously it's never going to be 100% as it was, but as much as is possible, get it true to life.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And I think as authors, obviously, we do have artistic license.
Speaker: But I do think it's important, especially in our genre as well, not to stretch that too far beyond, you know, what people can expect or believe.
Speaker: Because obviously, it's a very intricate genre.
Speaker: And yeah, there's so much
Speaker: that you can get right but there's also a whole lot that you can get wrong um so yeah I think that's really great that that you really put the time and effort and work into to making it as good as it can be um because I've seen a lot of time as well that there were some novels I read that you just you kind of sit back and you're like yeah but that wouldn't happen I'm not even from there but I know that that wouldn't happen and you kind of just put the book down yeah
Speaker: No, exactly.
Speaker: I mean, I think, you know, small bits of, you know, where the suspension of disbelief, where that spell is broken, whether or not you enjoy the rest of the book, you can just think, oh, I'm, you know, I'm not into it anymore.
Speaker: I don't trust the author.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And so that is something that I really didn't want to want to happen.
Speaker: Most of us, most of us on here so far, we are indie authors, so obviously going the self-publishing route, which I know that you've published through Burning Chair, I think.
Speaker: What was that process like for you, the whole traditional publishing process and obviously from the beginning, from drafting the story right up until publication?
Speaker: So yeah, the route to publication was incredibly long.
Speaker: I did want to try the kind of traditional publication route.
Speaker: You know, there's obviously a lot of pros and cons to self-publishing versus traditional publishing.
Speaker: But I think the biggest thing that I needed that's missing in self-publication is the kind of validation, the fact that someone else has read it enough to say we really want to risk our business in putting this out in the world.
Speaker: And I always felt I was doing this on my own.
Speaker: I, you know, the, the imposter syndrome would kick in too hard and I would just think, no, no, it's not good enough and give up because it is a long and it is a grueling and it's a punishing process.
Speaker: The first book went out, it was on submission for ages, eventually got nowhere.
Speaker: The second book got rewritten and repackaged as a book too, was, uh,
Speaker: There was just an awful lot of almost but not quite moments where editors at the publishing houses really liked it, but then took it to their sales team who said, no, no, no, we don't know what to do with that.
Speaker: And of course, then it's really, really lengthy when you're going through this.
Speaker: Each person who almost is going to be the one sits on it for months.
Speaker: So I had sort of more or less given up on it.
Speaker: And then Burning Chair came along and were very keen on book two.
Speaker: And then I thought, well, actually, I'm not quite ready to give up on book one, because like I said, it's always been a five book series in my mind.
Speaker: And book one is the, well, two reasons.
Speaker: One, it is the beginning, it is her opening gambit, but also it's my love song to Georgia.
Speaker: And I was really sad to leave that in a drawer because it's such a special place in my mind and my heart.
Speaker: So I thought, okay, one last go.
Speaker: And I had taken it to a development editor.
Speaker: There's an amazing editor called Rebecca Miller.
Speaker: If any of you indie authors out there are listening, I need someone to give you a pair of eyes.
Speaker: She's brilliant.
Speaker: And so she had looked at it and she'd given me just as a top level editorial comments.
Speaker: Obviously her work is excellent and therefore expensive.
Speaker: And I hadn't been able to quite afford a full development edit, but just the kind of top level, what are the things I need to focus on in the next draft?
Speaker: And she was really good at pinpointing what was missing.
Speaker: So I had one last shot and I did a complete rewrite and it changed a lot, I think, in that last draft.
Speaker: And then I sent it to Burning Chair and they really liked it, luckily.
Speaker: And yeah, wanted to run the series.
Speaker: It has been, working with an independent publisher has been lovely because it's very human.
Speaker: So I know lots of writer friends who have, you know, the big deals with the big five and it's all looks very exciting from the outside, but actually they often feel a bit cut off from the whole process.
Speaker: They have no say in,
Speaker: what the cover looks like, they have no say in how it's marketed.
Speaker: You know, you essentially sign over and then it's no longer yours.
Speaker: Whereas working with a small independent publisher, it's a very collaborative process.
Speaker: And the cover designs I've always loved from the start, but I really was able to guide and input and work with them until we got something that I really loved.
Speaker: And yeah, the editorial process has been lovely.
Speaker: It's just very human.
Speaker: They're really, you know, they're real, really nice people.
Speaker: And there's no mysterious sales board hiding somewhere that I never get to talk to.
Speaker: It's just very human and approachable.
Speaker: Obviously, in terms of reach and having your book on the table of Waterstones and really being in all the magazines and the rest of it, then you do have to go for a big traditionally published deal.
Speaker: I did manage to get the head of the snake into the Financial Times, which was kind of...
Speaker: pinnacle of achievement for me.
Speaker: That was when I really thought, okay, this is now something that I can be proud of and happy with.
Speaker: And that was just because I saw that Adam Laborde, who does the thriller write-up, had made a comment in the couple of months before saying that he was really pleased to see these new female characters with kind of agency.
Speaker: popping up and I thought, great, he needs to read Zara and send him a copy.
Speaker: And I was lucky enough that he got it in his next roundup of thrillers.
Speaker: So that was a real moment of like, okay, you know, I can, this book can hold its own with the big traditionally published book.
Speaker: the thrillers that are in every WH Smith and in every airport and in every supermarket.
Speaker: And that was a really, really nice feeling because otherwise, as you'll know and as all self-published writers know, it's a long old puzzle.
Speaker: You are endlessly the marketing and, you know, have I posted now?
Speaker: How about is my website?
Speaker: And how am I curating my...
Speaker: email list and it is really exhausting and it's really distracting from what you actually want to be doing, which is just getting on and writing the next book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, gosh, it really is.
Speaker: And I think that that's across the board, just for authors in general.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think even, you know, even those who have the big fancy deals and the big publishing houses and a massive marketing budget behind them, they still have to do a lot of it themselves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That is just the truth of today's world.
Speaker: And it's funny because as authors, you know, most of us are by nature quite introvert.
Speaker: You know, we like being on our own, scribbling away.
Speaker: And it makes us really poorly suited to it.
Speaker: hitting these top stars.
Speaker: It's just like the worst in the world to be asked to do this.
Speaker: But yeah, we muddle through as best we can.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I'm really glad that you found publishers with that human aspect because like you said, and obviously not to paint traditional publishers in the bad light at all.
Speaker: I just, you know, I do think the process is so different.
Speaker: However, like you said, you still need to technically do your own marketing.
Speaker: You still need to ensure that that book succeeds despite having a name behind you or publishing house behind you.
Speaker: Because at the end of the day, you know, you still need to get that book sold.
Speaker: And I think the market is so, so, so, so competitive.
Speaker: I think especially in our genre, our genre is quite a big one.
Speaker: That, yeah, it is, it's difficult.
Speaker: And I think, as you mentioned, you know, I think for me, at least as an indie author, that's why I went the indie route initially, obviously.
Speaker: Firstly, being new to it, like a couple of years ago, I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker: And I thought maybe that's like the best way in because I've been writing for ages as well, but never really had the guts to try and push it further.
Speaker: And I think for me, and I know I've spoken to a few other indie authors,
Speaker: It's that the fear of the lack of control of not being in control of your cover or essentially signing your baby away and watching that change.
Speaker: And you don't really have a say.
Speaker: I think like for me, that's my biggest fear because you put so much work and effort and tears, like actual tears into it.
Speaker: That to see that completely changed and signed away, I think that's our biggest fear.
Speaker: So I'm really glad that you didn't have that experience.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think that is why the strongest pro that independent publishers have is that they take on a lot of the, well, even the financial risk.
Speaker: If you're wanting to do this really well on your own, you've got to pay for a good development editor.
Speaker: You've got to pay for a good copy editor.
Speaker: You've got to pay for a professional cover designer.
Speaker: And making that financial outlay when you don't know whether you'll even earn it back is a pretty risky and scary thing to do.
Speaker: So obviously, if you have a publisher, they take that risk.
Speaker: But with a small independent publisher, certainly with Burning Chair, they are really, really lovely people to work with.
Speaker: And they've been very open to it.
Speaker: At no point have I felt like I've given over control.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that.
Speaker: And I think it's never too late to switch sides.
Speaker: I think if you find down the road that you don't want to be independently published anymore, you can essentially...
Speaker: either pull whatever you've put up or hopefully start querying and finding out if there would be anyone interested.
Speaker: I think that's something I'll probably explore down the line as well.
Speaker: Obviously, if you've got a massive load of sales behind you, then that's very much in your favor.
Speaker: But if you've published independently and it hasn't sold that well, but your newest book is really good,
Speaker: that's what they'll be interested in.
Speaker: So I think, yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker: It's never too late to choose.
Speaker: And I think, you know, I don't know if you follow Jericho Writers, but Harry Bing, Jericho Writers, he's got a brilliant newsletter where he kind of goes through all the pros and cons of this.
Speaker: And he himself has sort of done everything.
Speaker: He's been self-published and traditionally published and small presses and
Speaker: And I think he still continues to do it that way.
Speaker: It's like a real pick and mix approach to a writing career, which I think that is probably the model of the future.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree.
Speaker: And I think, I think attitudes towards indie publishing has changed a lot over the years, because I remember in the beginning, you know, it was always seen as, oh, you're self published, like, it's probably really crap, like, you probably can't write, because you couldn't get a publishing deal.
Speaker: And I think obviously, you know, if you really put the work in, and you really try to better yourself, there's potential for actually having something decent and putting it out there.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: And I think, you know, I think people often underestimate that writing is a craft and it is something that you have to learn, but it's also something you have to constantly work at to get better at.
Speaker: You know, it's not like you can't just sit down and expect to write a symphony from, you know, having zero.
Speaker: Even if you're the most musical person in the world, you just couldn't do that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And writing a novel is the same.
Speaker: You've really got to put in the time and you've got to learn and you've got to read widely and you've got to, yeah, exactly like you say, look at how other people have done it and what can you learn from that and how you apply it to your own writing.
Speaker: So I started writing The King's Corn in 2014.
Speaker: So that's how long I've been in my apprenticeship.
Speaker: stage that's where i was learning um you know the first drafts were abysmal they were really dreadful because i just had no clue what i was doing um and it and it yeah it's taken a long time um of coming back and trying again and learning and trying again and getting feedback and
Speaker: Having good trusted beta readers I think is also really essential.
Speaker: Having people that you know will tell you exactly what needs to be fixed and not just come back and say, oh, it was really nice.
Speaker: You need to poke the hole.
Speaker: My first reader is always my husband.
Speaker: He's also my plotter.
Speaker: We always kind of dream up the plots together and then work out how to make them more outlandish and
Speaker: this sort of structural stuff we do together and then I'll go and write it and then give it back to him as first reader.
Speaker: But I've also got now almost like a team of people who've, some of whom have read all three that I've written so far and some have just wanted to, someone who hasn't read the others to see whether, okay, does this work as a standalone?
Speaker: Could you read it on its own?
Speaker: and that's great and they're almost all people that I don't know in real life which I think is really helpful because I'm not going to run onto the street they're not going to have to make polite conversation after they've just shredded my book I want them going that is what's useful to me you know the nice kind comments okay a few just so that I don't cry for too long but you know you want to know what's wrong and how to make it better and that's often a message that's much better delivered by someone you don't know
Speaker: So you've written two novels, the second of which has been out for a month now, which is huge.
Speaker: Can't believe it's been a month already.
Speaker: And yeah, I have read it.
Speaker: So I do highly recommend if any of you listening have enjoyed the first novel, please do pick that up.
Speaker: It's got all the thrills and excitement and danger from number one just ramped up, obviously.
Speaker: And yeah, it was really, really good.
Speaker: So what is the next step for you as an author?
Speaker: What do you have planned?
Speaker: So book three, I have actually just finished a pretty major draft.
Speaker: I mean, obviously it's not finished, finished because they never are until they're published.
Speaker: Yeah, that is on its way.
Speaker: It won't be coming out as quickly as the first book one and two came out, you know, hot on the tail one after the other because they were both ready at the same time.
Speaker: But yeah, this one will not be as close, which I'm actually quite glad about because it was a bit exhausting.
Speaker: It's a bunch of two books within form.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So I'm quite glad.
Speaker: to have a bit of a break before this one comes.
Speaker: And then, yeah, I'm busy with storyline of book four and book five.
Speaker: I know I've got a pretty good outline of what's going to happen in book four.
Speaker: And I'm just trying to sort of whip it into a shape that makes sense.
Speaker: And, you know, like an outline that has the right balance and the right moments of tension and that sort of thing.
Speaker: Book five, I'm still a bit unsure about where it's going, but I know vaguely that, you know, it's the end.
Speaker: and she reached the top of the bowl but yeah I don't know much beyond that I really look forward to that yeah well I guess we will um we'll wait and see then um wait in anticipation and see what happens next very exciting
Speaker: But yeah, thank you.
Speaker: Thank you so, so much for coming on today.
Speaker: So for any people listening who may not know where to find you, where can we find you?
Speaker: And yeah, where else can we get your books aside from Amazon?
Speaker: So they are both distributed by Ingrams, which means that in theory, you can order it from any bricks and mortar bookshop, certainly in Europe and the US.
Speaker: I think it gets, and Australia, it gets a bit more difficult in our part of the world.
Speaker: But in theory, they should be able to order it.
Speaker: Amazon, obviously.
Speaker: Kindle readers, they're there.
Speaker: I have a website, lucyhofe.com, which has links to all the books as well as a bit of sort of stories behind the stories, some behind the scenes.
Speaker: Just updated a new page yesterday of some behind the scenes photos from Sierra Leone.
Speaker: I'm on Instagram.
Speaker: I think it's Lucy underscore Hoved underscore author.
Speaker: And I do have a TikTok page, although I'm really rapidly falling out of love with it.
Speaker: I am still clinging on to Twitter because I've always loved Twitter.
Speaker: And it has been the place that I have found my writing tribe.
Speaker: And I really could never have got this far without the kind of community and support of writing Twitter.
Speaker: That's perfect.
Speaker: Yeah, I will add all of the links and also links directly to your books as well, which, yeah, if you've enjoyed this episode, please do pick them up.
Speaker: I really enjoyed them.
Speaker: Like I said, it's not something I normally read and I was very much hooked.
Speaker: So, yeah, I highly recommend it.
Speaker: That's great to hear.
Speaker: I've always sort of pictured them as spy novels for people who don't like spy novels.
Speaker: And yeah, certainly for a lot of the readers, that has rung true.
Speaker: People who thought, I wouldn't really read a bit like this, but it was great.
Speaker: That's the real answer here.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much.
Speaker: We will get into the novels in greater detail in later episodes.
Speaker: But yeah, thank you for coming on for the very first episodes, even though you've technically been here from the beginning of the intro.
Speaker: But yeah, this was official and I really loved it.
Speaker: It's been lovely talking to you.
Speaker: I've really, really enjoyed it.
Speaker: It's been really nice talking to someone who's obviously really read the books and thought about them and enjoyed them.
Speaker: And, you know, at the end of the day for an author, that is that's what it's all about.
Speaker: That is the best that someone has read your book and liked it and wants to talk about it is, yeah, puts a big smile on my face.
Speaker: So thank you very much for having me.
Speaker: It's been really fun.
