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#145 - Katie Ginger a.k.a. Annabel French & Emma Royal
401 Plays1 year ago
Contemporary romance and historical fiction author Katie Ginger is on the podcast this week talking about her pen names, writing in different styles and all of her publishing adventures.
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Transcript
The Art of Writing: Plot vs. Depth
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question.
00:00:02
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:02
Speaker
Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
00:00:04
Speaker
You can fix plot holes, but if the writing... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:00:11
Speaker
So it's kind of a gamble.
Introducing Author Katie Ginger
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:18
Speaker
On today's episode, I am joined by an author writing across multiple genres and under multiple names.
00:00:26
Speaker
I'm very excited to have Katie Ginger.
Why Use Pen Names?
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello, Katie.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, lovely to be here.
00:00:31
Speaker
Thank you for having me on.
00:00:33
Speaker
It's my pleasure.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm excited to have you on.
00:00:34
Speaker
I've never, I don't think I've ever interviewed an author with so many published names under their belts.
00:00:44
Speaker
Just the way it goes sometimes I think in publishing.
00:00:48
Speaker
Well, usually I always start off with the latest publication, but I feel like we might need a bit of context here.
00:00:54
Speaker
So I think in this case, it might be good to first talk about your pen names and the names that you are published under.
00:01:05
Speaker
So am I right in thinking when you first started publishing, your writing was all under your actual name, which is Katie Ginger?
00:01:13
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's right.
00:01:14
Speaker
I was published originally by HQ Digital, part of HarperCollins.
00:01:21
Speaker
And I had a number of books with them.
00:01:25
Speaker
And then I switched, not last year, the year before, to Avon, still part of HarperCollins.
00:01:34
Speaker
And my books with HQ had been very much kind of romance genre, but kind of
00:01:40
Speaker
community focused.
00:01:41
Speaker
So it was lovely little villages and coastal towns in England.
00:01:46
Speaker
And then when I started writing for Avon, we switched to more sort of dreamy holiday European destinations.
00:01:56
Speaker
And so because of that kind of that slight change in direction with the romances, but with a different focus, we decided to go under the name Annabelle French.
Pen Names and Writing Styles
00:02:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:08
Speaker
So was that a sort of decision that you kind of came together with the, presumably the marketing team that said this might be better if we do it under a different name?
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, it was something that we discussed from, from the beginning and something that I was more than happy to do because they were really understanding and that I didn't want to be running several different social media profiles because it's hard enough to balance a
00:02:36
Speaker
writing and promoting your books and being on the socials and growing your platform.
00:02:42
Speaker
So they were quite happy that it would, you know, that I could say it was me just writing under a different name.
00:02:47
Speaker
So I could just keep the social media channels that I had already.
00:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense as well because it's whilst, as you mentioned, one of them's a sort of like within sort of local UK areas, sort of, it's a sort of cozy contemporary thing that that's Katie Ginger.
00:03:05
Speaker
And then even though the other ones like now destination romances, as it were, they're both sort of contemporary cozy-ish romance.
00:03:12
Speaker
You'd imagine there'd be a lot of crossover between the readers.
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:03:16
Speaker
But it's still, it's still kind of,
00:03:19
Speaker
designates that they're slightly different so if readers you know they want because I always write slow burn I'm I mean there's there's the ones the Annabelle French are slightly spicier but but really not much I'm really really bad at writing uh sex scenes and things like that I just blush at the idea of doing it so so everything I write is is sort of slow burned
00:03:43
Speaker
But yeah, it was just kind of with the Annabelle Frenchies have a slightly different focus, but more of an international appeal, I suppose.
00:03:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:03:51
Speaker
And then in August of this year, you released your first novel under the name Emma Royal, which is historical fiction.
Managing Multiple Writing Personas
00:04:01
Speaker
Yes.
00:04:01
Speaker
So I started to branch out into historical fiction and we wanted...
00:04:09
Speaker
a completely different name for that because the books are so different.
00:04:14
Speaker
Like they don't always have romance in them.
00:04:17
Speaker
They're much more drama based.
00:04:21
Speaker
Like if you imagine like a Sunday night drama in a book that is, so it's, it was so, so different that we definitely needed a different name and a different brand.
00:04:31
Speaker
So we went with Emma Royal, which was the name that my editor at my agent, Kate Nash and I,
00:04:39
Speaker
came up with.
00:04:40
Speaker
Emma is my middle name and then Royal because the books are set at Buckingham Palace and we thought that was quite a nice tie in.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:48
Speaker
It's so interesting having so many different, do you ever kind of lose track or forget which name is under which thing or are they so kind of compartmentalised that it's quite easy to know what's going where?
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, they are quite easily compartmentalised for me because they feel like two very different parts of my personality in a way.
00:05:11
Speaker
Because the Annabelle Frenches are rom-coms, so there's a lot of humour in them and obviously the romance.
00:05:18
Speaker
And then with the historical fiction, they're just much more serious.
00:05:23
Speaker
They have light moments in them.
00:05:25
Speaker
They're not completely doom and gloom, but they are kind of
00:05:30
Speaker
And they require so much more, the historical fictions.
00:05:33
Speaker
There's so much research in terms of where the royal family are, what they're doing.
00:05:39
Speaker
So they just feel very different sort of personalities in a way.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:45
Speaker
So for everyone listening, just to sort of round that all up, Katie has originally published under her own name, Katie Ginger, and those were sort of local, cozy, contemporary romances.
New Release: 'Christmas at the Chateau'
00:05:58
Speaker
Then first pen name, Annabelle French, Destination Romances, and the second pen name, Emma Royal, historical fiction, period drama sort of stuff.
00:06:10
Speaker
Is that about summed up?
00:06:12
Speaker
Perfect.
00:06:13
Speaker
I might have to steal that for the next time I have to write a biography of myself or something.
00:06:19
Speaker
Okay, amazing.
00:06:21
Speaker
Now that we all understand that, we all understand the context, am I right in thinking the most recent publication is actually an Annabelle French novel that came out beginning of October?
00:06:34
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:06:35
Speaker
Christmas at the Chateau, written as Annabelle French, came out on the 12th of October.
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Speaker
It was such a lovely book.
00:06:43
Speaker
I love writing Christmas books.
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Speaker
You just get to put so much heart into them.
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And obviously it's, you know, Christmas is just a fantastic time of the year.
00:06:51
Speaker
So you get to include all those wonderful Christmassy tropes, like, you know, snowball fights and decorating the Christmas tree and stuff.
00:06:59
Speaker
They're just such fun to write.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:01
Speaker
You can get away with a lot of Christmas as well.
00:07:03
Speaker
Like just when you look at how Christmas movies have evolved, where it's almost like the sillier they are, the better, like in quotes, Christmas movie it is.
00:07:13
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I feel like there's so much leeway you can really, you can really have fun with it.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:07:17
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Absolutely.
00:07:18
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Like in Christmas at the Chateau, my main character, she can't ski and she's gone to this ski resort in the Swiss Alps that's owned by her best friend and she can't ski at all.
00:07:27
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And the hero tries to teach her and she's so bad that he takes her to a children's class and she's so humiliated and she thinks that, oh my God, I'm so bad, I've got to learn to ski with the children.
00:07:40
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But it's not actually the children's class.
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He just wants the tutor from the children's class.
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But it's such a lovely moment because there's all this kind of angst and banter and embarrassment.
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You can get away, like you say, you can get away with so, so much in a Christmas book.
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You can really play on these tropes and have fun with them.
From Twitter Pitch to Book Deal
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Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:01
Speaker
It's always a good time.
00:08:03
Speaker
So original releases at HQ digital, as you mentioned, which is one of Harper Collins' imprints.
00:08:10
Speaker
And then you said you moved over to when you went to do the Annabelle French stuff.
00:08:14
Speaker
That's also with Harper.
00:08:16
Speaker
Was that like, was there any connection within that?
00:08:20
Speaker
Like, was it part of a team that sort of moved you over between HQ and Avon or were they sort of separate things?
00:08:27
Speaker
They were kind of separate.
00:08:28
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It's kind of the way things go in publishing.
00:08:31
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Sometimes, you know, HQ felt that I'd sort of hit a bit of a ceiling with them and they hadn't managed to break me out as much as they hoped.
00:08:40
Speaker
And then Kate was talking to Avon and then I moved across to them and started with the Annabelle French name.
00:08:47
Speaker
So sometimes it's just the way things go in publishing.
00:08:51
Speaker
Sometimes you get moved about.
00:08:53
Speaker
So were you with, uh, the amazing Kate Nash, who's, who's been on the podcast before, were you with her before you signed with HQ digital?
00:09:02
Speaker
No, I actually started writing for HQ, um, just as just by myself.
00:09:08
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I didn't have an agent.
00:09:09
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Um, and I secured my contract through a Twitter pitch.
00:09:14
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Oh, wow.
00:09:15
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Yeah.
00:09:15
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So, um,
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It was so weird.
00:09:18
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I mean, I can actually remember the moment that I saw that they wanted it.
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I was scrolling through Twitter.
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My children were quite young.
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They were both still at primary school.
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I think they were about five and seven.
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Speaker
And I had one under one arm and one under the other as we sat on the sofa in the evening watching like CBeebies.
00:09:37
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And I was scrolling through my phone and I saw HQ pitch us your story.
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So I pitched them –
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Speaker
the idea that became snowflakes at mistletoe cottage, which is a food technician working for a celebrity chef who gets sacked and ends up moving home and starting her own kind of food blog.
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And, you know, the, the adventures that happen as she's doing that.
00:10:04
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And obviously she falls in love back in our hometown.
00:10:06
Speaker
Um, but, and this was when Twitter was, you know, 140 characters.
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So you had to be really succinct.
00:10:13
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And, and I thought, well, I've got nothing to lose.
00:10:15
Speaker
You know, I'll just, I'll just do it.
00:10:17
Speaker
And then literally the next day HQ contacted me on Twitter.
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They DM me and said, we'd love to know more.
00:10:25
Speaker
So I sent them a little bit more of an outline and then they responded and said, we'd love to see this.
00:10:32
Speaker
Can you send us the full manuscript?
00:10:35
Speaker
Which I hadn't actually written.
00:10:37
Speaker
I don't know.
00:10:38
Speaker
I think I'd written a really, really bad first draft.
00:10:43
Speaker
And my first drafts tend to come in quite short generally.
00:10:46
Speaker
So I think it was only about 50,000 words or something like that.
00:10:51
Speaker
And I thought, oh my God, I've got so much work to do because obviously you don't want to leave it too long to send them the full manuscript in case they forget who you are and that they've even
Taking Chances in Publishing
00:11:01
Speaker
asked for it.
00:11:02
Speaker
And I then was like madly working on this draft and I managed to send it about, I think about three weeks later.
00:11:09
Speaker
But then I didn't hear anything.
00:11:11
Speaker
I didn't hear anything at all.
00:11:13
Speaker
So that was like September.
00:11:16
Speaker
And then I didn't hear anything.
00:11:17
Speaker
And like January, I thought, I'll be brave enough and prod them.
00:11:23
Speaker
And it just turned out it got lost in an inbox somewhere.
00:11:26
Speaker
And they asked me to resend it, which I did.
00:11:29
Speaker
And then literally like a few days later, I had an email somewhere, Hannah, who worked at HQ at the time, Hannah Smith.
00:11:37
Speaker
saying, can I give you a call at three o'clock this afternoon?
00:11:39
Speaker
And I was like, oh my God, oh my God, what's this?
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Speaker
It was just absolutely bonkers.
00:11:45
Speaker
And then she rang me and offered me a two book deal.
00:11:47
Speaker
Wow.
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Speaker
There was you panicking, thinking you had to send it off as quick as possible.
00:11:52
Speaker
It turns out you could have just spent a few months doing it.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yes, absolutely.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:57
Speaker
And then, and then, you know, once I got the email, can I give you a call?
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Speaker
And it just sort of all seemed to happen really super quickly.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing.
00:12:05
Speaker
Also, you see a lot of the, obviously the Twitter pitching competitions happen every now and again, and I see a lot of them, but it's one of those things that sort of seems like a lottery.
00:12:15
Speaker
It's like, you think, oh, I've seen a thousand pitches.
00:12:18
Speaker
It's like, no one ever really wins these.
00:12:20
Speaker
It's great to hear that people do actually find great success off the back of those and that sort of launched and started your career in publishing.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:30
Speaker
I mean, I think you just have to take your chances.
00:12:33
Speaker
I think, I think there's that famous quote, isn't there, that like a successful author or, you know, a successful author is one who doesn't quit, basically.
00:12:41
Speaker
And I think that's really, really true.
00:12:43
Speaker
You just have to find every opportunity you can and grab it with both hands because you never know, you know, it might, it might
Crafting the Perfect Book Pitch
00:12:51
Speaker
work.
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Speaker
It might not, you know, you never know where it's going to take you.
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:12:55
Speaker
I mean, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, right?
00:12:57
Speaker
Yes, I love that quote.
00:12:59
Speaker
I love that quote.
00:13:02
Speaker
Also, what a great test of, they've changed it now, Twitter's, I mean, it's X or whatever you want to call it, whatever they're calling it next week.
00:13:10
Speaker
Back when it was 140 characters, when it had that limit, what a great way to kind of shore up your concept.
00:13:17
Speaker
Like if, when you're forced to have such a small word count to, to be able to put your concepts so succinctly, that's such a great test for how kind of quick and, and, and smart you can, you can do your, you can deliver that idea.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:32
Speaker
It's like, you know, it's like the tightest log line ever.
00:13:36
Speaker
And actually, it's something that I still try and do for my books before I start writing them.
00:13:42
Speaker
Because like you say, you have to nail what the core of the story is in one very short sentence.
00:13:50
Speaker
And I try and do that before I start writing because then I can always come back to it when I feel like I'm writing the first draft and it's maybe going off piste a little bit.
00:14:02
Speaker
then I can go back to that one line, that one statement and draw myself back to the core of the story.
00:14:09
Speaker
It can be a really,
The Role of an Agent in Publishing
00:14:10
Speaker
really useful exercise.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good idea.
00:14:14
Speaker
Keep it so tight and then just refer back to it and think, oh yeah, I need to get back on course because I've veered wildly away in a strange direction here.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:14:23
Speaker
So you actually, you released, was it nine books with HQ?
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, it was, yeah.
00:14:30
Speaker
At what point in that period
00:14:32
Speaker
you know, writing and releasing all of those books.
00:14:34
Speaker
Was it during that time that you teamed up with Kate Nash or was it after that?
00:14:40
Speaker
Uh, it was, no, it was, uh, after I think I'd had about six books out with HQ.
00:14:46
Speaker
I kind of, I started to feel like an agent would be really useful.
00:14:53
Speaker
I know agents aren't for everybody, you know, some people self publish, some people traditionally publish, some people want agents, some people don't.
00:15:01
Speaker
Um,
00:15:02
Speaker
I'm quite a forward person.
00:15:05
Speaker
I'm quite happy to say when I'm not happy about something.
00:15:08
Speaker
But even then, I do think it's really useful to have an agent in your corner.
00:15:15
Speaker
Because what I found was I was in my own little bubble with HQ because I'd gone in through the Twitter pitch and I'd been really lucky and got with HQ, but I didn't know anything about any other publishers.
00:15:31
Speaker
So I felt like there was this massive sea out there and I was just on a tiny, my little raft.
00:15:37
Speaker
And I, you know, I didn't know what else was out there, what else was happening.
00:15:42
Speaker
And I think that's one thing that you get from an agent, from a great agent like Kate, you get that understanding of the industry, that knowing, you know, all the different things, the ins and outs of, you know, translation rights and TV rights and all these sorts of things.
00:16:00
Speaker
There's that aspect, but also just that general understanding of the publishing industry, which is something that at the time I lacked.
00:16:08
Speaker
So then, again, it was through Twitter.
00:16:11
Speaker
Twitter has been my friend, or X as it is now.
00:16:14
Speaker
They were doing an Ask Agent thing, the Kate Nash Literary Agency.
00:16:20
Speaker
And I asked the question, if you're an established author or if you're already published, do you need a new book?
00:16:29
Speaker
to try and attract an agent or will they take you based on your backlist?
00:16:37
Speaker
And they said, you know, it can be useful to have a new book because that's what they can take out and sell.
00:16:43
Speaker
But likewise, to get in touch if I was looking for representation.
00:16:49
Speaker
So I did.
00:16:49
Speaker
And I was very lucky that they took me on.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:53
Speaker
And it's an interesting way of putting it too, I think.
00:16:56
Speaker
You were sort of already in the industry at that point and there's a sort of vastness to it where it's like, oh, you have all of these options, but it's scary to kind of try and go in any one direction.
00:17:07
Speaker
But agents with all the kind of experience and knowledge that they have,
00:17:11
Speaker
The great thing that I think that agents offer to authors is that ability to sort of scoop up all the vastness and then say, okay, so here are your options and just lay it out quite simply in front of you and be like, here's what we can do and here's why we can do it.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:17:25
Speaker
And just knowing that, you know, this is selling, this isn't, you know, all that knowledge, which then can play into how you choose to steer your career going forwards.
Creating 'The Palace Girls'
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:37
Speaker
So once Kate was on board, I'm assuming that Kate was very much involved with the Annabelle French submissions and working with Avon on that.
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah, she was.
00:17:49
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:17:50
Speaker
And then with the Emma Royal book, which is actually out with Penguin, that's obviously something that you and Kate worked on together.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:00
Speaker
So that was...
00:18:02
Speaker
That was really mad because I'd never been a huge follower of the royal family, really.
00:18:09
Speaker
I've got a history degree and a history master.
00:18:12
Speaker
So if I'd read anything about the royal family, it was like Henry VIII, you know, and it was the big kings and stuff like that, and queens, and not sort of the modern royal family.
00:18:25
Speaker
But then I was absolutely gripped to the TV when that day –
00:18:32
Speaker
they were reporting that Queen Elizabeth was poorly.
00:18:36
Speaker
And then they announced that she died.
00:18:37
Speaker
And I was like, I was literally sobbing in the corner watching.
00:18:42
Speaker
Like I had it on my husband's computer.
00:18:44
Speaker
I was watching it.
00:18:45
Speaker
And my kids were looking at me like, mum, what is wrong with you?
00:18:49
Speaker
And I was like, oh my God, the Queen's died.
00:18:51
Speaker
This is so sad.
00:18:55
Speaker
And then I was talking to Kate a few times.
00:18:58
Speaker
I think about a week or so afterwards, it was after the funeral and I had literally sobbed through the entire funeral as well because I'm a great big wimp and just a very emotional person.
00:19:10
Speaker
And we were talking about the royal family and Queen Elizabeth and the funeral and watching history be made.
00:19:17
Speaker
And we kind of then came up with this idea of working class people at Buckingham Palace and
00:19:26
Speaker
Millie, who's the main character in The Palace Girls.
00:19:29
Speaker
She's a cleaner at Buckingham Palace.
00:19:32
Speaker
Her story started to percolate in my mind.
00:19:37
Speaker
Kate nailed it when she said to me something like, The Crown meets Downton Abbey.
00:19:44
Speaker
I was like, oh my God, yes.
00:19:45
Speaker
Oh my God, yes.
00:19:47
Speaker
We came up with a synopsis.
00:19:52
Speaker
She said, how quickly can you write
00:19:55
Speaker
10,000 words because I want to get this sent out as soon as possible and I said give me a week so I wrote sort of 10,000 words the first three chapters which I always I always find the first three chapters kind of the easiest anyway in any book that I'm writing because you're setting the scene and you know you're kind of just introducing the characters to the readers so I always find those the easiest anyway but I wrote these
00:20:24
Speaker
first three chapters, sent it to Kate and she sent it out on, I think it was a Thursday afternoon.
00:20:34
Speaker
And she emailed me the list of editors that she'd sent it to.
00:20:38
Speaker
And then she rang me the next day, Friday lunchtime, asking me if I was sat down because we already had an offer.
00:20:46
Speaker
So it was incredibly quick.
00:20:48
Speaker
It was incredibly quick and just blew my mind.
Historical Fiction and Research
00:20:52
Speaker
Absolutely blew my mind.
00:20:54
Speaker
That's such a good pitch though.
00:20:55
Speaker
Downton Abbey meets The Crown.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:58
Speaker
I mean, it sells itself in many ways, isn't it?
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:03
Speaker
And you think of that kind of Sunday night drama, kind of episodic drama, which I wanted to capture.
00:21:11
Speaker
in the books and we were lucky enough to get, um, three books to get a three book contract.
00:21:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
As someone who, so all of your kind of previous stuff up to this has been, um, contemporary romance as someone who, uh, you have a master's degree in history.
00:21:29
Speaker
Was it, was it fun to sort of get back into a sort of, uh, doing a bit of research, doing something from, you know, a long time ago?
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, I absolutely, absolutely loved it.
00:21:40
Speaker
We, um,
00:21:41
Speaker
We'd said when we were talking, Kate and I were talking and we were thinking about the pitch, we thought taking it back to when Queen Elizabeth came to the throne would be a great place to start.
00:21:54
Speaker
And I've got a massive love of the 50s anyway.
00:21:58
Speaker
I just think it's a really interesting period in history because you still have all the fallout from the Second World War, but also...
00:22:07
Speaker
you're really heading towards the swinging sixties and you know, it was just a period of quite intense change.
00:22:14
Speaker
So we wanted to set it in the fifties.
00:22:18
Speaker
And then I started researching, um, King George, the sixth and sort of how Elizabeth came to the throne because I didn't really know an awful lot about it.
00:22:28
Speaker
Um, and then through my research, I just had such a soft spot for King George, the sixth queen Elizabeth's father.
00:22:35
Speaker
So we decided to set the book.
00:22:37
Speaker
King George VI had a lung removed in September 1951.
00:22:42
Speaker
And he took a long time to recover from that.
00:22:45
Speaker
And he was really, really poorly.
00:22:47
Speaker
And that Christmas was the first time that the Christmas Day address had been pre-recorded.
00:22:56
Speaker
They'd never done that before.
00:22:57
Speaker
It had always been live.
00:22:58
Speaker
But because he was so weak and he couldn't speak for long periods of time, they pre-recorded it.
00:23:05
Speaker
which, you know, that's such an interesting fact in itself.
00:23:09
Speaker
And then he died in February 1952.
00:23:12
Speaker
So it's quite a short period of time where obviously they must have just been terrified.
00:23:20
Speaker
You know, this is, he was loved by the nation, King George VI, because he took over when his brother abdicated to marry Wallace Simpson.
00:23:31
Speaker
And then he steered the country through the wall and he was loved.
00:23:35
Speaker
So it was quite a hard act for Elizabeth to follow.
00:23:38
Speaker
And she was really young.
00:23:39
Speaker
She was only, I think, 25.
00:23:41
Speaker
So we just decided that would be the place to start the series with her actually
00:23:48
Speaker
coming to the throne and then the pressures that that brings.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:52
Speaker
And that's especially given that you did this in the wake of her death as well.
00:23:57
Speaker
So you kind of balancing out two sides of that
Writing About the Royal Family
00:24:00
Speaker
coin.
00:24:00
Speaker
I think my, my, most of my knowledge about that period comes from the King's speech and then the crown.
00:24:06
Speaker
So I'm not too knowledgeable about it either.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:10
Speaker
But I I've been watching, obviously I loved the crown anyway.
00:24:14
Speaker
And to see, to see these figures, you know,
00:24:17
Speaker
represented on the telly and stuff and dramatized.
00:24:22
Speaker
It was quite strange, wasn't it?
00:24:24
Speaker
Like when the queen was alive, you were watching her, a character of her in The Crown.
00:24:30
Speaker
And actually when I was writing the book, I had to keep sort of reminding myself that this is fiction and that I'm okay to kind of put words in the queen's mouth.
00:24:42
Speaker
That she can treat her like a character because I wanted it to be respectful.
00:24:48
Speaker
of the royal family, but still to be, you know, to have all those moments of drama that you do in a book.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:24:55
Speaker
I've seen some of the, there's some sort of leaked footage of them filming the latest season of The Crown.
00:25:03
Speaker
And I think it's going to be even more bizarre to see they're doing like grown up William and Harry.
00:25:08
Speaker
And I was thinking like, they're not much older than what you're
Future Writing Plans
00:25:12
Speaker
showing them.
00:25:12
Speaker
It's sort of bizarre to see.
00:25:15
Speaker
It's going to be so weird.
00:25:16
Speaker
It's going to be so weird.
00:25:19
Speaker
But those early seasons of The Crown, I particularly love.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:23
Speaker
They're brilliant.
00:25:23
Speaker
And that original cast, the cast has always been good as they've changed it, but that original cast were something special, I think.
00:25:30
Speaker
Getting back onto you, going forwards, are you going to sort of stop producing books under Katie Ginger?
00:25:39
Speaker
Is the plan to stick very much with Annabelle French and Emma Royal as your two kind of brands?
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
00:25:46
Speaker
I think so.
00:25:47
Speaker
What would my absolute dream be?
00:25:50
Speaker
would be to write screenplays as romantic comedy screenplays as Katie Ginger.
00:25:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:57
Speaker
You know, because it's good to have a dream.
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26:01
Speaker
But yeah, definitely focusing on Annabelle French and Emma Royal going forwards because I've still got,
00:26:09
Speaker
There's one more Chateau book.
00:26:11
Speaker
So one more book is Annabelle French to come out in April next year.
00:26:18
Speaker
And then I've got two more Emma Royal books, August 2024 and August 2025.
00:26:23
Speaker
Okay, great.
00:26:25
Speaker
Lots coming out.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's exciting.
00:26:28
Speaker
I've just got edits for the second Palace Girls book.
00:26:33
Speaker
So I'm diving into those at the moment.
00:26:36
Speaker
Okay, very exciting.
00:26:37
Speaker
You must be very busy with
A Day in the Life of Katie Ginger
00:26:39
Speaker
this.
00:26:39
Speaker
This writing schedule seems pretty intense.
00:26:41
Speaker
Is that three books next year?
00:26:45
Speaker
Well, so it's been intense this last year with the first Chateau book, then the first Palace Girls book, then the second Chateau.
00:26:55
Speaker
Chateau book and then the second Palace Girls book.
00:26:58
Speaker
So I have been writing sort of back to back, but I've been very lucky that the way it's fallen, they've kind of dovetailed one after the other.
00:27:08
Speaker
So I've not had, I've not been, what I find difficult is writing two first drafts at the same time that I find really difficult, but I've been lucky that I've been writing a first draft while editing something else.
00:27:23
Speaker
And they're just such different stages in the process that sort of mentally I can cope with that.
00:27:29
Speaker
I can switch between one thing and the other.
00:27:32
Speaker
I bet that's even helpful as well, sort of being able to escape one thing and jumping into another and then going back to the other thing.
00:27:40
Speaker
So like before you kind of get bogged too much down in one thing, you're already moving on to something else.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:46
Speaker
So I like to write in the morning and then edit in the afternoons because I find that I'm more creative in the morning and can sit down and just let my imagination go.
00:27:56
Speaker
Oh yeah, I'm the same.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:57
Speaker
And then by the afternoon editing is, I find editing better because you have to be a bit more analytical, don't you?
00:28:03
Speaker
So, um, yeah, so it's worked out really well, actually, whether it carries on doing that, I'm not sure, but, um,
00:28:10
Speaker
Both my editors, Katie Lownden at Penguin and the lovely Alicia London at Avon, know that I have the other pen name and they're always really fantastic.
00:28:23
Speaker
And I know that if I did have a problem with a deadline, obviously Kate would help me negotiate it all.
00:28:29
Speaker
But my editors have been fantastic.
00:28:31
Speaker
So luckily, touch wood, no problems yet.
00:28:34
Speaker
So far, so good.
00:28:35
Speaker
Do you have emails which are Kate, Kate and Katie or CC do?
00:28:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, we do.
00:28:41
Speaker
We were like team Kate for Penguin.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:44
Speaker
So Katie Lowne and me, Katie Ginger and then Kate Nash.
00:28:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:47
Speaker
So it's yeah.
00:28:49
Speaker
Reading an email from from my editor, Katie and seeing a Katie at the top and a Katie at the bottom.
00:28:53
Speaker
It's it's just it is a little bit bizarre sometimes.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah, I imagine.
00:28:58
Speaker
Amazing.
00:28:58
Speaker
Well, it sounds like it's, as I said, so far so good, all working out nicely for you.
00:29:04
Speaker
And that brings us to what is always the final question of every episode.
00:29:09
Speaker
And that is, Katie, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you want it to be?
00:29:17
Speaker
It's going to have to be Pride and Prejudice.
00:29:19
Speaker
Nice.
00:29:20
Speaker
Jane Austen, because, you know, she just invented every single romance trope.
00:29:26
Speaker
She did, yeah.
00:29:27
Speaker
It's just the best book in the world.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah, she really made enemies to lovers the thing as well.
00:29:33
Speaker
She did.
00:29:34
Speaker
Every single one of her books covers a romance trope.
00:29:37
Speaker
It's the basis of all romantic fiction.
Desert Island Book: 'Pride and Prejudice'
00:29:40
Speaker
If I took anything other than a Jane Austen, I think the romance community would throw me out.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah, she's the original gangster of romance and rom-com tropes.
00:29:52
Speaker
She is the OG.
00:29:53
Speaker
She's also hilarious.
00:29:54
Speaker
She is.
00:29:55
Speaker
She, she just, she is the rom-com queen.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
She, yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
We have, we have a lot to thank Jane Austen for.
00:30:04
Speaker
Amazing.
00:30:04
Speaker
Well, a great choice.
00:30:06
Speaker
Another Austen.
00:30:08
Speaker
Austen proves to be the most popular and relatable book to choose to take on the desert island once again.
00:30:15
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Katie, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your various different names, your various different projects that you're working on, all the different books and series.
00:30:27
Speaker
It all sounds great.
00:30:28
Speaker
It all sounds exciting.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:30:29
Speaker
I hope one day to watch a movie or television show by screenwriter Katie Ginger.
00:30:36
Speaker
That would be great.
00:30:38
Speaker
But yeah, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
00:30:39
Speaker
It's been great chatting with you.
00:30:41
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:30:42
Speaker
It's been brilliant.
00:30:43
Speaker
And for anyone wanting to keep up with what Katie is doing, you can follow her stuff, which is with Katie Ginger or Annabelle French on Instagram at Katie underscore Ginger underscore author or on Twitter at Katie G author to follow the Emma Royal stuff.
00:31:00
Speaker
All socials, you can find her at author Emma Royal.
00:31:04
Speaker
And to make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:31:09
Speaker
You can support the show on Patreon.
00:31:10
Speaker
And for more focus chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:31:14
Speaker
Thanks again to Katie and thanks to everyone listening.
00:31:17
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.