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#211 - Lila Cain a.k.a. Marcia Hutchinson & Kate Griffin
257 Plays11 days ago
Historical fiction co-authors, Kate Griffin and Marcia Hutchinson have teamed up as Lila Cain for 'The Blackbirds of St. Giles'. Tune in to the episode to hear all about their writing process, how they ended up meeting and writing together and much more!
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Transcript
Introduction & Importance of Writing Quality
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? You can fix plot holes, but if the writing... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of a gamble. Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong Podcast. On today's episode, I have two guests, a writing duo who have a whole host of accolades to their names separately, but together they have written a novel under the name Lila Kane. It's Kate Griffin and Marcia Hutchinson. Hello.
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello. Hello. Welcome. Great to have you both on. um Let's jump right in, as we always do, with the novel The Black Birds of
Meet the Authors: Lila Kane Duo
00:00:39
Speaker
St. Giles. Which one of you has the better elevator pitch? Marcia. I heard her do it recently. She was brilliant. Okay. Thanks for the hospital pass, Kate. Yeah, so, Daniel, ah and escaped enslaved person um ends up in London and he and his sister Pearl navigate the horrors of George and London while trying to claim their inheritance. That's the elevator pitch. Oh, but you also had another elevator pitch which involved Peaky Blinders.
00:01:16
Speaker
That was my favorite one. Oh, that one. Yeah. Elevator pitch two. Peeping Blinders meets Bridgerton. Yay. Oh, okay. That's the commercial one. That's the yeah the quick sell one. I like that one. Yeah. The the gritty underbelly of Jordan, England.
00:01:32
Speaker
Yeah, it is yeah and it's very different to Bridgerton in that it is kind of totally the flip side of that
Origin Story: How the Writing Duo Formed
00:01:38
Speaker
world. But um when Marcia said Peaky Blinders meets Bridgerton, and that was a light bulb moment for me, I thought, yes, she's so clever.
00:01:46
Speaker
if okay Okay, so what I'm really you interested in, and I've had a few kind of writing duos on the podcast in the past, is it's quite a the specific idea, like a specific concept. At what point do you did you guys kind of have this idea? Was there like a back and forth? Were there different ideas? How did how did it kind of how did you settle on this?
00:02:08
Speaker
Do you want me to start Marcie? Yeah, off you go. we were We both share an agent and um she had heard kind of in passing ah that there was a ah group of black men and women who lived in Georgia and London and that they were known as the blackbirds of Covent Garden and that was all she had and so she came to us both and said oh I've heard this kind of like historical idea, can you write a book about it?
00:02:33
Speaker
and um so she kind of introduced us and um with nothing more than the Blackbirds of Covent Garden really as as a kind of her elevator pitch um and we both I think we both were were slightly kind of surprised to be honest and we we sort of I think padded around each other like a couple of cats and thought wow you know would this work and kind of where would we go with this? And and I think we discovered that we we share us a sense of humor. And I think we found that we liked each other quite a lot. And then we started talking about what you could do with the idea of the Blackbirds of Covent Garden. And when we first started to research it, we found they weren't even the Blackbirds of Covent Garden, they were the Blackbirds of St Giles, which is very specific. um And then we agreed that, you know, there was a story here that we could totally um create
00:03:18
Speaker
And we, it was at least during the second lockdown.
Research & Character Development
00:03:22
Speaker
So we didn't, we met up once in London. And then we did these incredible Zoom sessions every week where we'd go away, do a bit of research, share it with each other. And then we created all these characters that moved in this world that we created. And then once we'd done the characters, I don't know if you want to go on to plot, we kind of needed to put them in. Yeah, because in terms of what we each bring to the table,
00:03:45
Speaker
Kate has obviously written four historical novels based in London. And for 16 years, are I ran an educational publishing company that was exploring black history for children. So I brought the black history element. Kate wrote the London history element. And together, it was actually really quick in terms of coming up with the plot, the characters, the rough story arc, or the kind of what would happen.
00:04:11
Speaker
And I think we were both surprised at how quickly it came together. um Because we were sort of blurbly, oh yeah, and this, we can do that, and then that character. And I was really clear that we didn't want, I suppose, slavery porn. yeah You know, sort of repeated depictions of whippings, et cetera. You know, it's really important that these characters were fully rounded human beings. And also, one of the things you sometimes see in in and books or films of that period is all the black characters are angelically good and all the white characters are just evil and it's like the some nuance here. yeah So we've got a thoroughly evil couple of other characters who are just wonderful, yeah some ways my favorite characters.
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think they're our favorite. I think they are both. are I mean, our villain is wonderful. He's called Elias. um And he's got a pet cheetah. I mean, of course he has. He's a villain. He lives in a better prison in in kind of Georgia and London that was a former convent with his pet cheetah.
Setting the Scene: Georgian London
00:05:10
Speaker
You know, why would you not love him as a villain? exactly But Marcy is right. We tried really hard to make it kind of feel authentic and to feel fair. And obviously you have to push things a little bit too far. So in some ways it becomes a caprice, but it's a caprice that's based on truth, real truth. So the the the world in which our characters moves is very gritty, very harsh and very authentic. And I think very true to what people would have experienced at that time, especially black people. yeah Hence the Peaky Blinders, but we didn't want to so sanitize things. Yes.
00:05:46
Speaker
um You know, so so that there's this sort of happy slave trope of, oh, they didn't mind being enslaved. And it's like, well, actually, I believe believe people objected to this. yeah And so we sort of look at some of the realities of being, you know, working for the rest of your life for no pay. And why would people do that? And it's because they were terrorized. yeah And the terrorization was an essential essential component of it.
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, and when they move into the the Rookery, the St. Charles Rookery, which is a kind of character in itself. And the St. Charles Rookery was probably the most feared and desperate slum in Georgia and London. It was an appalling place. And when they move into the Rookery, our two main characters, Daniel and Pearl, um they find other black characters in the Rookery, but they find other totally dispossessed people at the bottom of the social
Themes of Poverty and Freedom
00:06:34
Speaker
pile. And I think think partly one of the things our book tries to make clear is that poverty you know poverty and freedom ah kind of like two sides of different coins. If you have money, you know, you you can be free and the poor were really kind of oppressed no matter the colour of their skin or their particularly for black people. It was incredibly hard. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you guys as a ah have done an incredible amount of research into this and I know you both came from like his historical sort of looking back backgrounds, but
00:07:04
Speaker
When you said and you were just mentioning how you kind of first came to this, you would both go away separately, do research and then come back and kind of share what you'd found. How do you, how do you each, and this would probably be like a one at a time kind of thing. How do you each approach research? Like what what's your kind of favorite way to get into that world and we'll get into the past?
00:07:23
Speaker
Marcia, do you want to, or shall I? I read really widely. i read um I read fiction, historical fiction a lot. um So when we were writing this book, I kind of really immersed myself in a lot of um fiction that kind of covered the Georgian era really. But ah frustratingly, what you tend to find in historical fiction written about the Georgian era is that it concentrates on the upper echelons of society and very rarely do you get the view of the people that we were dealing with? um So obviously you you then kind of look at primary sources. So I looked at lots of, there's very little um extant information about the St. Giles' Rookery, to be perfectly honest, because it's that hoary old trope that history is written by the victors.
00:08:06
Speaker
um And the the the lives of the people who lived in the rookery were so cheap that they weren't worth recording. But what we did find out was that the rookery was desperate. It was the size of two football pitches. It was a tiny space. But through a ah quirk of inheritance, it was kind of ah ah an area of land that had never been controlled by anyone and people had had no interest in it.
00:08:26
Speaker
So um it was run by leaseholders who just kind of actually sublet hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dwellings on the site to people. And and then the people subletting the dwellings would sublet the dwellings. And it became it just became the place of last resort for poor people who could find nowhere else in London.
Research Methods & Creative Process
00:08:43
Speaker
And that was one of the starting points of our story.
00:08:46
Speaker
in terms of the history of it. and But then what Marcia brought to it is your historical knowledge of of the Black experience in in this country. Yeah, so when i when I was running an educational publishing company, I i edited effectively textbooks.
00:09:01
Speaker
And I wanted to bring the stories of the people who you haven't heard, but but to primary age children. So people like Otoba Kaguano and Alado Equiano, who are people nobody will have heard of, but they both wrote books about their experience and they were set in this period. So we decided to bring them in as as characters, even tangentially. And things like when I was researching um textbooks, i'd I've been to the Houses of Parliament because they've got some brilliant and primary resources and researched the case of the Zong, which was a ship, a a slave ship that sank and the owners tried to claim on the insurance for their cargo.
00:09:42
Speaker
And the question was, was it cargo or were they people? Because they were deliberately thrown overboard. and Because they were running low on water and thought basically they were worth more dead as insurance, as an insurance claim. And that's the sort of detail that um we wanted to get into the book. So in terms of my research, a lot of it I kind of already done for previous projects. And it was just pulling it out and thinking how it could link with this particular book. Because when kids do the Georgians,
00:10:10
Speaker
um you know you don't really hear about where all the money came from, you just see all these stunning houses, and it's it's almost like the elephant in the room, you know where the wealth of of Britain in that time came from. Yeah, yeah no it sounds like that between the two of you you, you've sort of gone to other ends and brought it all together. It sounds great, it sounds like you've captured a really kind of broad spectrum of the sense of that time.
00:10:37
Speaker
We really loved it. We would have a zoom every week and we really loved kind of saying, oh, and did you know and did you know? And I found out this and then then one of us each time would make notes just because we we we're both kind of very fast speakers and I have a tendency to talk over people so I have to kind of like restrain myself quite a lot. um But I was trying to note everything down so that because the Marcia pops, you know, with like like a champagne bottle with ideas and I was trying to get all her great thoughts down because I said, yeah, we can do that. We can take that and run with it. and then so But I used to really look forward to those, I mean, partly it was during lockdown. So, you know, kind of life was very kind of like repressed. And then when we met up to talk about the book, it felt like a huge world was opening before us every time. And it was really fun. And it
Marcia's Career Journey
00:11:20
Speaker
was something Yeah, it was it was surprisingly enjoyable, because like cases I put like, I just ideas are just coming and I'm just yeah burbling. And if I was doing it by myself, I couldn't get them down on paper. But because there's somebody with you,
00:11:33
Speaker
You can throw ideas literally like throwing a ball and they're catching every single one of them. And I'm like, this is perfect. yeah all those years as a journalist really helped. I can write very fast. That's great. Yeah. It sounds like you guys sort of through this almost match made, uh, duo have ah found like a really good balance. Um, I'd love to ask a bit more about kind of your individual experiences. So so we're kind of, I wanted to start with master just cause you were talking about the, the, the publishing company that you set up. That was, um, primary colors, right? That's right. Yeah. So, um,
00:12:06
Speaker
I had my daughters, and when the youngest one was three, she turned round to me and said, Mummy, I don't want to have black skin. I want to have white skin. Just as blunt as that. And I thought I'd been this really supportive parent reading all the right books. And it really got me thinking. And when I had my second daughter, I decided not to go back to work as a solicitor.
00:12:25
Speaker
and to try and basically create more books with positive images of black children. And that's effectively how Primary Colors was born. Then we expanded it and thought, the kinds of parents who are going to buy these books, you kind of preach into the converted. So if we if we worked with schools, we would get to everyone.
00:12:43
Speaker
So we started specialising in working with schools. So as well as over the period, we published maybe about 20 teaching packs. We also did theatre in education, did inset training, and it was it was really good fun just really working hard with schools to say there is a way to teach this area of history. So we would develop some of the stories into play. I actually turned up app schools with a full length whip.
00:13:07
Speaker
And I could crack this whip within six inches of the kid's feet in assembly and they'd all scream and I'm like, yeah, this is what it was like. You never told me that before. Oh, I can literally crack a whip. Wow. Wow. That's that's so interesting. Did you have any experience ah with the publishing industry prior to doing that? Or did you just jump in?
00:13:31
Speaker
I just jumped in, so I'd always been into creative writing and not really got anywhere in my, that was sort of my thirties. And I think I sort of migrated to writing adjacent. So by running a publishing, it was a small indie educational publishing company, but by doing that, so we commissioned writers, most of our writers were teachers who created these packs, created the lesson plans, posters, um and we did, some of some of them had videos and stuff.
00:13:58
Speaker
um So, it was, I kind of wandered into this niche market of working with schools, um which was, I mean, it's hard to work with schools because you've got to have DBS checks on everyone, this kind of thing. um But you really I really felt we were getting somewhere. I mean, even now, I'll bump into kids and go, I remember when you came to my school and the child investment is 20. And I'm like, okay. like um So, you know, you sort of had had an impact.
00:14:25
Speaker
but when um The government changed in 2010 and funding dried up schools didn't have any money to pay for our services anymore. um So eventually the organisation had to close, but it was fun while it lasted. Yeah, I bet an incredible learning experience as well for you.
00:14:48
Speaker
um Going back onto your own writing, The Blackbirds of St. Charles, obviously with Kate here, it's out imminently. And then um you have a ah solo novel coming out, The Mercy Step in July. And yeah you are the sole author on that, Ian? I am the sole author on that, yeah. So that's under my under my own name. Did you start writing that after you and Kate started working as Leela Kane, or was it before? Oh, long before. I'd started writing that on and off.
00:15:19
Speaker
um maybe about 10 years earlier. Oh, and it started as short stories. I didn't know that i had this I didn't know if I had the stamina to write an entire novel. So it started off as a series of short stories, and I'd go to various writing groups. Part of me hadn't given up on being a novelist started going to writing groups, so I've got really positive feedback. um And eventually,
00:15:43
Speaker
went on an arvon course And the tutor was just raving. He was so positive. And I thought, maybe, maybe I could do this. And, yeah, gradually turned it into ah into a full novel. And, um yeah, I mean, it was hard writing because it's auto fiction. So it's loosely based on my childhood that very much fictionalized. But, yeah, it's been there's been such a lot of fun writing it.
00:16:10
Speaker
Okay. And that was, um, I was going to ask later on, but we may as well ask now is, um, so you guys said that you were put together by, you haven't, you share an agent. Is that right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And the the agent also represents Lila Kane.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yes, she does, yeah. Yeah, so I've got a separate agent for my solo work, but we've got one agent for our joint work. Ah, okay, right, right, right, right. And The Mighty Sep, that was with your
Kate's Path to Publishing
00:16:39
Speaker
solo agent that was negotiated and is being published? Oh, okay, okay, okay. It's a complicated world to publish. Yes, it is, yeah. To to authors with many agents. um Many names.
00:16:51
Speaker
Exactly, many names. And but in in a similar time, moving on to you, Kate, will this be your sixth published novel? No, it's my, I did two for children, then I did four for Faber and Faber, these are all historical, a standalone book called Fine Shade, which was a Gothic book. and And this will be my eighth but Okay, i I had, I missed your children's ones. I had your four kitty pack ones and then fine shade. Yeah, the the two children, it was the same actually, the children's ones were also historical and they were about, um well, they were about magic at the time of the Great Fire of London. um And the public
00:17:33
Speaker
show was subsumed into another big, bigger, it was a little publisher, but a really sweet, independent one. And and he it soon became apparent that they wanted the illustrators and not the writers. So all the books that had on their slates disappeared. um So it was supposed to be a trilogy and the third book never got written, but that was fine because at exactly the same time, the Kitty Peck series um kicked off. um And that happened because I i won the Faber and Faber and Stylist magazine writing competition.
00:18:00
Speaker
um So, and that that became a book. That first, right you had to submit 6,000 words. um And the only criteria was it was a strong female character in a crime story. And my 6,000 words rose to the top of the pile. but Oh, wow. Okay. And was the prize for that a publishing deal?
00:18:20
Speaker
Yes, it was. Yeah, there it was, which, amazing. And, you know, I kind of, like I think I was so naive at the time, because I i hadn't, no other books had been published, and I'd kind of like tinkered a bit. I was a journalist, so I loved writing, but I was always writing other people's stories, not my own.
00:18:36
Speaker
ah I'm saying when I went on to be a press officer as well, you know, I do like telling stories, but that you don't have control of them. So I think it was an output. um So yeah, the the the Kitty Peck thing, like i I wrote my 6000 words, won the competition. I went to this interview and they said, oh, so where's the rest of the book? And I said, well, I haven't written it yet. And I saw this like a panic on their faces, because they obviously had decided that that was going to be the winner. It was um it was a Victorian set book about a girl in a music hall.
00:19:04
Speaker
and a drug-addled crime baroness, basically. That's my animated pitch. And they said, well, do you think you can write it in... um and This was October. They said, do you think you can write it all by February? And I said...
00:19:16
Speaker
with the great kind of like confidence of naivety. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. um And I did. I wrote that first book, Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, in 14 weeks. And I've never worked so hard in all my life because I had ah another job before I was working four days a week at my other job. but And it was a really snowy winter. And I tell this people people this story because I write it in the basement of our house where I am now.
00:19:40
Speaker
um And I just used to look up occasionally, come up for air, and there would be people walking past with snow all over their shoes and boots. That's all I could see was their feet. And there's so much snow in that book because that was ah my only inspiration, I think. So yeah, that's how I started. Okay. And did you have, so when you won the, when you sort of applied for the competition and and won it, did you have an agent at that time or did you get an agent subsequently?
00:20:08
Speaker
um It was great, actually. um My editor at Faber and Fabus said that she wanted a series, and she said, if I was doing a series, I definitely needed to get an agent. right So she put me in touch with um Eugenie Furness, who has become a Marcia and I's agent for the Blackbirds books, because there are two of them. We're working on the sequel now, which is very exciting. um So yeah, and you Eugenie has been my agent ever since, and um yeah she's great.
Imposter Syndrome in Writing
00:20:35
Speaker
Okay, okay, that's great. Yeah, it's because it's I've spoken to a lot of people who I say a lot of people ah People who win competitions ah often if they're especially if there's a prize which is the deal is is like they are then It's highly suggested that they get an agent before they finalize that deal So I was just wondering if that was that was where you where you found that so that's cool I think one of the things that you do find, um if you are a competition winner, is that you never quite escape the shackles of Imposter Syndrome because you think, oh, um I'm not a writer who's been to loads of kinds of courses and honed her craft. I just happen to fall into this by mistake and one day somebody will find me out.
00:21:19
Speaker
and Don't worry, and I think in four of the books. If you were just a competition winner, you'd be a one-hit wonder, thinking well and truly. Oh, you're very nice. justpers yeah we all But I think last year we all feel imposter syndrome, I think to a certain extent. and you know Yeah, absolutely. i had um I was talking to Amanda Prowse the other day, who is an international bestselling author. And she she was saying, she when people ask her what she does, she doesn't say author because she she she doesn't feel confident enough to say it. Yeah.
00:21:51
Speaker
I know I listened to that one and she's written 30 odd books in 10 years. It's astonishing that she didn't feel she could be an author. Yeah, yeah, really amazing. um We are at the point in the episode where I ship you both off and maroon
Desert Island Book Picks
00:22:05
Speaker
you on a desert island and ask you if you were stranded with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be? And Massey, when you go first.
00:22:14
Speaker
Oh, our Beloved by Toni Morrison. She is just, and I kind of consider Toni Morrison to be the dong dada of writers. You know, you can read a paragraph of her writing, and in a sense, you you kind of can't distinguish the sentences, but it gets you viscerally. um I just loved her work, and still do. I mean, it's terrifying, is Beloved. And it's interesting, given what we've written, because it's about a child who's killed by their mother while they're escaping slavery because they would be caught if the people heard the baby crying and this child's ghost haunts them. And it's just the things you have to do to get by in in certain kinds of oppressive societies. Well, yeah. The powerful of choice. And and Kate, what would you what would you hope the book would be? I would hope it would be Great Expectations.
00:23:05
Speaker
okay i and I read it first when I was at school, we read it in class and you read it at school and you think it's a child story with little pip and the sound. I love a bit of Gothic, so you know that beginning with Magwitch in the in the cemetery and the behind the tombstones. And then I read it again in my when I went to university because I did English at university um and I realised it was actually much more adult than that and much more layered.
00:23:32
Speaker
um And I reread it often, and Great Expectations is such a fabulous title because it's actually about every character in that book is betrayed, and their expectations are undermined, and they let other people down. And and in the original version, which doesn't have a happy ending, which I always find much more satisfying than a happy ending, um it's appalling that that there's a desolate scene at the end of the the first draft of Great Expectations, where Pip goes back to Satie's house, hoping to meet Estella, and she's gone.
00:24:01
Speaker
and they never have a happy ending and they never kind of like you know get married and live happily you know live happily ever after. um It's I think it's a really brutal book actually and I don't know quite why it's considered to be a children's book in lots of ways. It's um and London you know London is so harsh in it people's lives are so harsh in it and Dickens is a fabulous kind of um recorder of what real Victorian life was like, as opposed to, you know, the kind of very lovely kind of drawing room version with Christmas trees and perhaps piano legs that were all covered up and things. So that would be my choice. Yes, I've heard Dickens described as someone was saying that he was probably the first person to do sitcom. Yeah, and yes, in many ways. That's the other thing.
00:24:48
Speaker
really funny.
Conclusion & Future Works
00:24:49
Speaker
He's subversively funny. And so his characters are just wonderful. They sort of, you know, they kind of like tumble into scenes. um And they're fully formed. And they have about four lines in that scene, then they disappear, and you never hear from them again. But they leave such a strong impression in your mind. He's a he's a comic genius as well. You're absolutely right. Yeah, I mean, two, two, two great choices. um Quite, quite on far ends of different spectrums. But they'd compliment each other. Well, I think you could mix it up if you were both there together with your books, mix and match. I think also they meet in our book.
00:25:19
Speaker
i think Yeah, me yes yeah one of the um one of the comment one of the reviews of the book said the the they say the book Dickens should have written but didn't.
00:25:31
Speaker
yeah yeah I think we've got that on the back of the book. Yeah, i think he or a publish it is yeah that's a good one. Dickensian. um Next up, I'd love to get into the writing process, how how the but the two of you kind of get down with your routines, how you plan out these books, how you work together to to kind of bring it all ah to one, and that's all going to be in the extended episode available on Patreon.
00:26:02
Speaker
um um Well, thank you so much, guys. It's been so fun chatting with you and hearing about everything that you've been doing together as well as a bit about what you've both done separately and in the past. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
00:26:15
Speaker
Thank you. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Jamie. Really nice. And so and I know you'll be editing it, so I don't know where the recording is, but presumably because it's my account, it will be somewhere at my end. So when I find it, I'll either send it to you or send you the link. It did say it's recording on my end, so hopefully I'll just have it.
00:26:33
Speaker
All right, OK, well, if you've got any problems, let me know. I will do. Let me just let me quickly read your telephone where they can find you online. um So if you want to keep up with what ah with with what Kate and Marcia are doing, as well as them together as Lila Kane, you can find Marcia on Twitter at Marcia, the writer and on Instagram at Marcia one. You can find Kate on Instagram and Twitter at Kate, a Griffin. And you can follow the Lila Kane account at Lila Kane Books.
00:27:03
Speaker
The Blackbirds of St. Giles comes out 30th of January, so you can go and get that in all the usual places. To support the podcast, like, follow, and subscribe. Join the Patreon to add free extended episodes and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and other tropes. Thanks again to Kate and Marcia, and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.