Transcript
Speaker: Hello, Jamie here.
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Speaker: Let's get back to it.
Speaker: So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
Speaker: Are these your notes?
Speaker: These are your notes about what we're going to say.
Speaker: Anything.
Speaker: Nailed it.
Speaker: It's a short answer.
Speaker: So how many novels did you not finish?
Speaker: Oh my God, so many.
Speaker: It was perfect.
Speaker: What are you talking about?
Speaker: This is not a difference.
Speaker: Ooh, a spicy question.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: This is it, guys.
Speaker: The big secret to getting published is you have to write a good book.
Speaker: You had it here first.
Speaker: We're going to
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
Speaker: In this week's episode, I'm very lucky to be joined by Vanessa Fox O'Loughlin, who is the founder of writing.ie, the Inkwell Group, a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts and a board member of the Society of Authors.
Speaker: But many people will also know her as number one bestselling crime author, Sam Blake.
Speaker: Hi Vanessa, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker: Hi, Jamie.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: It's my absolute pleasure.
Speaker: There's so many things that you've done.
Speaker: Just doing my research, in preparation for you to come on, I was a little bit mind boggled by the amount of things that you are doing, have done, and probably will do.
Speaker: So let's start with something simple.
Speaker: Some recent news, which is your newest novel, The Mystery of Four, came out 5th of January.
Speaker: How's your elevator pitch for it?
Speaker: How's my elevator pitch?
Speaker: Well, it's a country house mystery set in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland.
Speaker: And it features a girl called Tess Morgan who buys a house called Kilfenora.
Speaker: This is going to be a long elevator pitch.
Speaker: I talk to authors all the time about trying to get their one line together in case they get in the lift with Stephen King.
Speaker: But yeah, so basically it's a book set in the Wicklow Mountains.
Speaker: Tess buys this country house called Kilfenora.
Speaker: And she spent two years restoring it.
Speaker: And we meet her on the Monday before the grand opening weekend.
Speaker: So we've got the week to go.
Speaker: She's got one week left.
Speaker: She's planning all sorts of things.
Speaker: And the first thing that happens to her is a journalist gets in touch to tell her that he thinks her body has been hidden on her property.
Speaker: So that's the first thing that goes wrong.
Speaker: But really it goes downhill from there because bodies start popping up all over the place.
Speaker: Oh gosh, it's not what you want.
Speaker: No, exactly.
Speaker: It's not quite what she planned.
Speaker: She was looking forward to sort of a vintage car rally in a craft market and children running up to the ice cream van to get their ice creams and
Speaker: She's more worried now that she's going to have guarded crime scene tape and TV cameras all over the place.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Well, a great setup for a novel.
Speaker: And it hit the number one spot on the Easton's Top 100, right?
Speaker: It did.
Speaker: And it got to number one.
Speaker: Actually, I managed to outsell Prince Harry in one shot.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Dun Laoghaire.
Speaker: In Debray books in Dun Laoghaire, I outsold Prince Harry.
Speaker: So I have a picture to remind me of that forever.
Speaker: Well, very, very well done.
Speaker: And is that, this is your, am I right in thinking it's the eighth book that you've published?
Speaker: Yeah, this is the eighth one.
Speaker: It's the seventh one in print.
Speaker: I've got one that's just in digital, the one we mentioned actually before we came on, High Pressure, which is Kindle and audio only.
Speaker: Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker: So the eighth book out and two more on the way?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: I've got Something Terrible Happened Last Night, which is my YA debut coming in May.
Speaker: And that's going to be, that's very exciting.
Speaker: And then my 2024 book is done and dusted and hasn't been edited yet, but it's written.
Speaker: And that's about a facial reconstruction expert.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: That's a new take.
Speaker: Yeah, a bit more forensic, a bit more backed in.
Speaker: It's not procedural in the same way that the first three books were procedurals, but it's a new character, lots of lovely forensic stuff.
Speaker: I'm really interested in forensics.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Like you said, very exciting.
Speaker: Your first young adult novel.
Speaker: Can you tell us anything about it?
Speaker: Yes, I can indeed.
Speaker: It's called Something Terrible Happened Last Night.
Speaker: And it's set in an elite girls boarding school in Ireland.
Speaker: It's a day and boarding school.
Speaker: So there's people coming and going.
Speaker: And basically, there's a party.
Speaker: It's Katie's 17th birthday party.
Speaker: Her parents have gone away for the weekend, which is never a good thing.
Speaker: And the party gets out of control.
Speaker: There's a huge fight.
Speaker: between rival rugby teams from two different schools.
Speaker: When Katie's friends come back, when the house is cleared and they get rid of everybody, and when Katie's friends come back to help her clear up, they discover that there's a body behind the sofa.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: First, YA, but it feels like you are leaning into the strengths that you have from all of the crime novels that you've written previously.
Speaker: Very much so, yeah.
Speaker: No, it's definitely still in crime.
Speaker: And I've got a couple of 16 – the characters in it are 16, sort of 17, and I have a couple of 16-year-old characters in previous books.
Speaker: So Remember My Name features a great girl called Emily Jane, and she has quite a big part in that book.
Speaker: And then previously I had in one of the Cat Connolly books there was a 16-year-old as well.
Speaker: So it was an age group.
Speaker: I felt very comfortable writing and really enjoyed writing.
Speaker: And, yeah, I absolutely loved doing it.
Speaker: It's a whole different – a lot of different –
Speaker: sort of ways of doing things much much bigger cast so the mystery of four has quite a big cast it's got a big cast and some of the other books i've written because it's set in a village and it has an amateur dramatic society theme going through it so there's quite a lot of people in it um but when you're writing ya and it's a school you need to give that sense of you know the school i suppose environment so you're you're yeah it's a lot more characters
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So you, it sounds like you've kind of been leaning towards maybe doing something YA for a while now, uh, with your previous books.
Speaker: Do you think you'll do some more YA after this one?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm actually literally writing the next one now.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, it's two book contracts.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, the next one's coming up.
Speaker: Um, and it's about, um, the same similar characters, um,
Speaker: Yeah, same three, core three, but from one of slightly different points of view.
Speaker: So yeah, I love it.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It's nice.
Speaker: It's nice to write.
Speaker: There are a bunch of girls who are feisty and sort of see themselves being a detective.
Speaker: So that's really what it's all about.
Speaker: Okay, sounds great.
Speaker: So that'll be book nine and then book 10 in 2024.
Speaker: It's called Three Little Birds.
Speaker: So it's got a title.
Speaker: Oh, very good.
Speaker: That's a facial reconstruction one.
Speaker: Yeah, I did that.
Speaker: It's like Bob Marley.
Speaker: Yeah, been doing loads of research on that to try and make sure that right.
Speaker: Again, another one I enjoyed writing.
Speaker: I think it's, I really enjoy stretching myself with each book and trying to do something a bit different.
Speaker: So Mystery of Four is very much playing into the golden age.
Speaker: And I was really interested in Agatha Christie and lock room mysteries and trying to get a sense of maybe something a bit more cosy.
Speaker: Remember My Name, which is the previous book, is very urban and gritty and it's about cyber security and blackmail and all sorts of exciting things.
Speaker: So The Mystery of Four is a complete contrast from that.
Speaker: And then the YA is a contrast again and then
Speaker: we move on to the forensics girl, Carla Steele, Dr. Carla Steele.
Speaker: And yeah, so each one is different, but it's, what I'm trying to do is I suppose grow as a writer.
Speaker: So hopefully I can, the voice is the same and the twists are the same.
Speaker: And so my readership will hopefully come with me, but I can, you know, really enjoy each one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was going to say, does that really sort of inspire you while you're writing it by having a sort of new place or a new sort of area of stuff to research?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: I think, and standalones are interesting.
Speaker: When you write a series, my first three books were a police procedural series featuring a guard called Cat Connolly.
Speaker: And when you write a series, it's like, I suppose, going down to the pub with a bunch of friends because you know everybody really well.
Speaker: And each of those characters has to have obviously their own character arc and each story has its arc.
Speaker: And then the trilogy has an arc as well.
Speaker: But what you're really doing is you do really know everybody.
Speaker: So you're sort of applying plot each time and trying to ramp up with that.
Speaker: But with the standalones, everything's totally different.
Speaker: Yes, a different location, new characters, new story.
Speaker: And trying to be original, trying to make sure that each one is absolutely different, that they are different stories.
Speaker: It's quite, I suppose, not easy, but you can fall into a trap of things being a bit too similar.
Speaker: Especially, I have a lot of female characters in my books and they tend to be all quite strong women.
Speaker: So Mystery of Four features Clarissa Westmacott, who is a much more mature lady than I've written before.
Speaker: So yeah, you're trying to make things a bit different each time.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: And that keeps it interesting for you, keeps it interesting for the readers.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you mentioned that you're always trying to grow with each book.
Speaker: You're kind of trying to go slightly out of your comfort zone to learn something new, I imagine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you feel, looking back to when you wrote your first books, the procedurals, do you feel like the way that you approach the writing, the way that the kind of books come out has changed a lot since then?
Speaker: Yeah, it has actually.
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: Because when I first started writing, I'm quite one of these organized people who I used to really like plotting and planning a lot.
Speaker: And so Little Bones, which was the first book, was plotted in a really, really detailed way.
Speaker: I've sort of developed a way of plotting.
Speaker: I have this sort of grid system, which is in columns and each chapter is a column.
Speaker: And there's sort of six, six, six, usually around 30 when I start out.
Speaker: which is mad because I never have 30 chapters in any book.
Speaker: It's usually about 75, but at least it gives me the structure, basic structure.
Speaker: So I'd start off with that.
Speaker: If the chapters are columns, what are the rows?
Speaker: Oh, they're just chapter one and then underneath is just a blurb as to what goes into each chapter.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker: So it's not really a grid system as such, but as I say, they grow.
Speaker: So I start off like that and little bones would have been a very, very detailed one with
Speaker: you know, different colours for different characters so I could see the flow and who came in where and who went out where and all that type of thing.
Speaker: And as I've progressed, I think I'm plotting less.
Speaker: I need to know what happens so I know what the reveals are and I know what the big issues are.
Speaker: But I suppose I'm writing much more instinctively.
Speaker: I think I've probably learned that I can write instinctively, if you like, and I can trust the process.
Speaker: And so I have a much briefer outline and I might outline the first, say, 10 chapters to see where I'm going.
Speaker: If I'm not sure about a book and I'm not sure about a story, then I'll do a lot more detail planning and I'll try and get the 30 chapters down because I've had a couple where I did have one in this.
Speaker: Before I actually wrote Mystery of Four, I started a book
Speaker: And I had it plotted out, but it wasn't really a whole book.
Speaker: It was a good idea, but it needed a bit more to make it work.
Speaker: And it really, I didn't feel it was working.
Speaker: So I think I wrote about 10,000 words of that and then gave up.
Speaker: And then I had the mystery of four.
Speaker: It was sort of burning at that point.
Speaker: So I went on to that one.
Speaker: So it's a good test to see whether something's actually going to work as a book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But certainly in terms of, say, the kids' book now, I've plotted out the start of it.
Speaker: And the Carla Steele book was the facial reconstruction one was really the one where I really changed because I got to chapter five in that, having plotted it out and decided at chapter five that the woman I was going to kill, I really liked and I felt the reader would like and therefore she couldn't die.
Speaker: And therefore that made nonsense of everything else I'd written in my plan and
Speaker: And I didn't really want to go back in.
Speaker: This was an extra book I wrote in lockdown.
Speaker: So it wasn't under contract or anything.
Speaker: I was sort of testing myself, I suppose.
Speaker: And I didn't want to go back in and spend hours and hours plotting out again.
Speaker: So I just kept writing, really.
Speaker: And it worked.
Speaker: I mean, it did need more editing at the end and playing around and fixing bits.
Speaker: But I really enjoyed that part of the process.
Speaker: So as I say, yeah, it's growing with each one.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: So do you think for the, is it very much dependent on a sort of story by story basis or do you think for the next one you will go much lighter on the planning and just kind of let it be more free?
Speaker: The next adult one, yeah, is less planned.
Speaker: I've got some detail.
Speaker: I want to really take that up a notch.
Speaker: So I'm going to, yeah, I will be planning it out a bit, I think.
Speaker: I'm not sure, actually.
Speaker: I'll have to wait to see until I get stuck into it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Talking about first to most recent novels, going back a bit further, is writing always something that you've wanted to do since you were younger?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I always knew I'd write a book.
Speaker: I didn't ever think that I couldn't or that I wouldn't.
Speaker: It was just something I thought I'd do, but I didn't really think about... It wasn't burning inside me or anything.
Speaker: It was just one of those things I would do at some point.
Speaker: I always loved creative writing in school.
Speaker: I was a massive, massive reader, and I'm very creative generally in lots of different ways.
Speaker: I did art school and all the rest of it.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: I think I always thought I would.
Speaker: And then what really happened was my husband went sailing across the Atlantic for eight weeks.
Speaker: I'd moved to Ireland and settled down here and it was November.
Speaker: And so I had some very, very long, dark evenings to fill.
Speaker: No kids then.
Speaker: So I was on my own here, me and the cats.
Speaker: And I had an idea and I just thought, well, now's the time to write it.
Speaker: So literally started writing that down.
Speaker: longhand at the time because I didn't even have a computer at home.
Speaker: And I was going into the office.
Speaker: I was working for an event management company then.
Speaker: I went into the office in the evenings and at weekends and stuff to type it up.
Speaker: And by the time he got back, like the bug had absolutely bitten and he bought me a laptop for Christmas and that was it.
Speaker: I think it was pretty much the last he ever saw of me.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: So did you kind of feel a moment during that where something kind of switched in you and you thought, you know, I'm actually really going to, I'm going to give this a go.
Speaker: I'm going to really try and take my writing to the next level and then maybe get published.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I think when I started off writing, I didn't know it was hard.
Speaker: I didn't know anything about publishing.
Speaker: I didn't know it was hard to get published.
Speaker: I thought you just wrote a book and then you sent it out and then people published it and that's how it works.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Most people do.
Speaker: I think a lot of people think that.
Speaker: So, you know, I made all the rookie mistakes, finished the first draft.
Speaker: I mean, it was a terrible book.
Speaker: I mean, the first half was definitely terrible.
Speaker: The second half, I know there was a point where it started to take off and come together and
Speaker: it was really, I think it definitely stepped up, but it was pretty terrible.
Speaker: So it, I mean, and definitely should never be published.
Speaker: So I was, I sent it out everywhere, absolutely convinced it was going to be the next bestseller.
Speaker: And obviously it was rejected absolutely everywhere.
Speaker: But the thing was the bug had bitten at that point.
Speaker: And I think when you discover the magic of writing, you know, when you put your head down to start on something and,
Speaker: it's 12 o'clock and you look up and it's four o'clock in the afternoon and you've no idea where the time has gone um that you can't I think it becomes addictive you can't stop so I just kept going really um and I'm a positive thinker so obviously I decided I'd written a bestseller so it was going to happen um and it was just a case of just keeping going until it did happen um and
Speaker: But I mean, it took a long time.
Speaker: It took, what, 15 years, I think.
Speaker: And along the way, I had to learn the craft because I didn't realize there was all these techniques that I didn't know when I started out.
Speaker: And so I set up something called Inkwell, which was writer's workshops, actually, primarily to learn how to write myself.
Speaker: I wanted to hear from bestselling authors and there was nothing out there that suited me.
Speaker: So I started my own workshops and they were hugely useful because, I mean, even today,
Speaker: when I'm interviewing authors, I learn something new every single time I listen to somebody speak, you know, whether it's Joanne Harris or Linwood Barclay, or I was chatting to Lisa Jewel at Murder One, my festival there back in October.
Speaker: And you learn something every time and there's a little ping in your head and it's like, oh yes, that's really interesting.
Speaker: And then you're able to use those and develop your process.
Speaker: I think that's something else people don't explain when you start out that creativity is unique and, you
Speaker: I mean, that's why all our books are different and all our voices are different.
Speaker: But that means our process is going to be different too.
Speaker: And learning what works for you and sort of, I suppose, mining from all the others out there, the bits that work for them and that then will work for you and creating your own process is really important in that mix.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: It's all about finding the thing that works for you.
Speaker: I think George R. R. Martin describes it as architect writers and gardening writers, which is basically a fancy way of saying pantsers and plotters.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: He's brilliant.
Speaker: I went to an interview with him and it was one of the best author interviews I've ever been at in my life.
Speaker: He's an amazing man.
Speaker: When was that?
Speaker: It was in, he won, he was awarded the International Recognition Award by the Irish Book Awards and they had a private event in the GPO, our General Post Office in O'Connell Street.
Speaker: And it was really interesting actually because it was, we're going back into Irish history here now, but at one point in Irish history in the 1920s, the
Speaker: was attacked by the British and there was a standoff in the post office.
Speaker: And I'm cutting Irish history.
Speaker: Anybody who's listening now who's Irish will be trying to shoot me down because obviously I'm British.
Speaker: I'm cutting Irish history really short.
Speaker: But, you know, George, the whole point of this is that George R.R.
Speaker: Martin described it as being like being in the Alamo, which was just amazing.
Speaker: So it was just, yeah, it's an incredible building and incredible interview.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: Oh, very cool.
Speaker: Well, getting back to you, we were talking about when you first got that bug and then you started throwing yourself into the publishing world by creating Inkwell and other things like that.
Speaker: At what point in that process did you end up signing with your agent, Simon Truen?
Speaker: So Simon, I met through an event.
Speaker: I basically set up Inkwell, set up writing.ie, I think at that point, and was working a lot with different agents and different publishers and scouting people.
Speaker: for the authors who were on my sort of network.
Speaker: And so I'd placed an awful lot of different books of different people and I really understood the business.
Speaker: So there was an event at the Mountains to Sea Festival in Dunleary and Simon was invited to come and speak at it and do like a one-to-one agent clinic and with another guy, Bill Swainson from Bloomsbury.
Speaker: And they realised while everybody was busy talking, they were doing sort of one-to-ones with everybody that,
Speaker: The rest of the group needed somebody to talk to.
Speaker: So that's when they brought me in to talk about the Irish publishing industry and how it all works from that end.
Speaker: And that's how I met Simon originally.
Speaker: So he met me sort of as a publishing professional as opposed to a writer.
Speaker: And it wasn't until...
Speaker: probably a couple of years later that we met for coffee in London and we were talking about scouting and different bits and pieces.
Speaker: And I had a copy of one of Alex Barkley's books on the coffee table.
Speaker: And he said, oh, you know, you're reading Alex Barkley.
Speaker: And I said, oh, yeah, she's been very influential in my writing because...
Speaker: It was her grid system for plotting that I've stolen and adapted for myself.
Speaker: And he said, oh, do you write?
Speaker: And I said, yes.
Speaker: And I thought to myself, I've obviously, my communication skills are obviously extremely poor here that we haven't, I'm with, you know, sitting here with one of the biggest agents in London and I haven't managed to communicate the fact that I'm an aspiring writer too.
Speaker: But he asked me about the book and it was Cat Conley, it was Little Bones.
Speaker: It wasn't called Little Bones then, but yeah.
Speaker: I said to him, it's about a guard who finds the bones of a baby hidden in the hem of a wedding dress.
Speaker: And he said, oh, I'd like to see that.
Speaker: And I then was, oh, I thought, oh my goodness me, I'm going to have to send him this.
Speaker: I hadn't looked at it for a good while at that stage.
Speaker: I'd been busy doing other things.
Speaker: And it was a bit terrifying, to be honest.
Speaker: I thought if I send it to him and he hates it, is my entire credibility as a scout and everything else going to be blown out of the water?
Speaker: So yeah, I read it over.
Speaker: very hurriedly and he was texting me saying where is it where is it where is it and sent it over and he really liked it thank goodness um amazing i found a home for it uh mark smith and bonnier was he founded bonnier at that point it was in its early days um also loved it they had lunch together and it was sold by you know two o'clock in the afternoon so um i yeah so he found me a publisher it was great it's great oh wow
Speaker: What a lovely little story as well.
Speaker: Oh, it's mad, isn't it?
Speaker: And you've obviously known each other for a long time as well.
Speaker: Yes, a long, long time.
Speaker: Oh, that's so nice.
Speaker: And you and Simon do a Facebook Live series every week called Winning the Writing Game, Fridays at 12 for anyone listening.
Speaker: It's really, really, really, really interesting.
Speaker: You guys get a lot of amazing guests on there.
Speaker: I was watching the episode you did with Owen Colfer recently.
Speaker: Oh yeah, that's hilarious, isn't it?
Speaker: The postman calls at the door and runs off the computer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we did that during lockdown.
Speaker: So that's really something that we did when everybody was stuck at home.
Speaker: We haven't done one for ages.
Speaker: I have to do another one soon.
Speaker: But there's some great interviews on there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, when I was talking about learning something new, you really do literally listen to people.
Speaker: Yeah, Owen's hilarious.
Speaker: Yes, yeah, he's a very funny man.
Speaker: And Artemis Fowl was extremely influential on me when I was younger.
Speaker: I wasn't really into Harry Potter, but Artemis Fowl reached me in a way that other books didn't.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: No, he's an amazing writer.
Speaker: And he's a lovely, lovely person too.
Speaker: So yeah, just for anybody who's listening, basically we were doing the interview and Owen's postman called.
Speaker: And so he picked up his laptop because we were doing a Zoom and picked up the laptop and trotted off to the door and answered the door and was chatting to his postman while we were broadcasting.
Speaker: That was hilarious.
Speaker: It was very funny.
Speaker: these things happen.
Speaker: That's the, that's the wild lockdown life.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I do want to ask because it's always interesting when people have, and it almost seems like something that's going out of fashion is having pen names.
Speaker: I think probably because we're all so used to the internet and just having all of our kind of information on the internet.
Speaker: But I did want to ask, why did you decide to write under a pen name?
Speaker: Why did I?
Speaker: That's another good question.
Speaker: When you, Jamie, I think are the first person I have met who's managed to pronounce Lachlan correctly, who does not have Irish, who's not coming from this island.
Speaker: So, yeah, one of the big issues is having a name that nobody can pronounce.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like it's fine here, but literally in the UK, people get to the O and then they freeze because they don't know how the GH works.
Speaker: And all sorts of things happen.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: And Vanessa Fox O'Loughlin is my full name.
Speaker: And it's because there's another Vanessa O'Loughlin here, just to confuse things, who's also a journalist.
Speaker: And obviously, if we're both in writing, it gets in a bit of a muddle.
Speaker: Um, and yeah, so I'll just, people used to come up to me and they'd say, goodness me, I really enjoyed that article you wrote about kayaking down the Amazon.
Speaker: And I'd look at them thinking, do I look like somebody who kayaked down the Amazon?
Speaker: So anyway, that was the other Vanessa O'Loughlin.
Speaker: So we were always being mixed up, um, when I first got into the writing business and, um,
Speaker: apart from the name being unpronounceable and very long and not fitting on a cover.
Speaker: There were all of these reasons why a pen name seemed like a good idea.
Speaker: But one of the biggest ones is that there's this theory, which has been substantiated now, I think, with a bit of research, that men don't buy crime novels written by women.
Speaker: And so having an androgynous first name is a big advantage in this game.
Speaker: And yeah, with a name like mine, it seemed sensible for all of those reasons to come up with a pen name.
Speaker: So yeah, it took us a long time, but we came up with Sam Blake.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: I was wondering if it was a deliberate choice to have a name that was not gendered.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: No, it totally is.
Speaker: And also then I think when you're coming up with your own name, I was speaking to a librarian last night actually in an interview and we were talking, I was saying the B is very handy because you're on your eye level on those bookshelves and at the start.
Speaker: And certainly in Ireland, I'm British, I can often be between say Binchy and Benjamin Black, which is a nice place to be too.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: you know, you're thinking about everything when you're thinking about a pen name.
Speaker: And she was laughing because she said that when she's obviously a librarian, she was saying that if S is the thing, most people's surnames seem to start with S. So if you're an S, this is a good tip for anybody who's thinking of having a pen name.
Speaker: There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books in the S section.
Speaker: So it's very easy to get lost.
Speaker: So I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker: So yeah, you can pick it out and choose where you're going to be.
Speaker: wow, I'd not realized the layers that went behind pen names like that.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I'm one of these people that overthinks everything.
Speaker: But yeah, no, it's interesting.
Speaker: And then obviously lots of Googling to make sure there's not somebody else with the same name or, you know, that you're not going to get confused with another author.
Speaker: So yeah, lots of checking.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's so interesting.
Speaker: I'd not even thought about choosing the first letter of your surname as a sort of gauge of where you'll be placed on the bookshelf.
Speaker: I imagine that there's some authors who just because of their name are often not placed in the best possible spot.
Speaker: Well, this is it.
Speaker: I mean, it does depend on the shelf, but certainly if I was a Z, I'd be fairly near the end on the floor.
Speaker: and not everybody gets down on their knees in a bookshop.
Speaker: So it's good to be, you know, if you do have the choice to be able to take all these things into account.
Speaker: We need someone to go and do the data and take an average of all bookshelves in all bookshops and find out where the best letters are.
Speaker: Well, that's just what the thing about the S was so interesting from coming directly from a librarian who clearly had been shelving lots of books by authors whose names start with S. Fascinating.
Speaker: Yeah, that is so interesting.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Well, before we do get on to the final question, I always like to ask people who have been in publishing and writing for a long time, what advice do you have for any writers listening who are trying to break into the publishing industry for the first time?
Speaker: Well, the best advice I was ever given was on the writing side.
Speaker: And that was just keep writing.
Speaker: A friend of mine, Sarah Webb, who's written about 40 or 50 books at this stage, told me way back in the day, just keep writing.
Speaker: Because I think with every word you write, you get better, basically.
Speaker: It is a learning process.
Speaker: And once you get the writing right, and that's all working, then it's about the plot and about, you know, what happens in the book and making sure that it's the best that that can be as well.
Speaker: So that's really important.
Speaker: And then just don't give up.
Speaker: The thing about writing and publishing and finding an agent and finding a publisher and all those things is that books are really subjective.
Speaker: We all read books that we don't necessarily like that much.
Speaker: And
Speaker: same applies to the industry in terms of people buying books they need to love it they need to be that that person that loves it um in order for your book to land so um you know it's and it's not personal it's you know if you get do get rejected it's not something it's not you being rejected it's just the work and it can be rejected for hundreds of reasons that are to do with the market and to do with length and to do with you know trends and all sorts of things that you have no control over so just keep going that's the best advice
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, it's, it's something I hear a lot is just persevere, keep doing it.
Speaker: Remember that you're doing it because you love writing.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: You have to love it.
Speaker: I mean, that's the thing you spend so long doing it, so many hours doing it, that it's that it's the creating and it's the, the, you know, working out the story and putting the words on the page.
Speaker: That's the bit you need to really, really love it because yeah, it could take a while.
Speaker: It's always going to be a labor of love.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And like you mentioned, I mean, it takes years to become an overnight success.
Speaker: It really does.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Well, that brings us to the final question of the episode, which as always is, Vanessa, if you were stranded on a desert island, but could take a single book with you, which would it be?
Speaker: It would be Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
Speaker: It's absolutely my favourite book and it's wonderful.
Speaker: It's multi-layered, it's a romance, it's a thriller, it's got clever twists, it's got absolutely everything.
Speaker: And it's one of those books where every time I go back and read it, I see more symbolism and imagery hidden in the text.
Speaker: I absolutely love it.
Speaker: Yes, I think Justin Myers also picked Rebecca and then didn't have good things to say about the film adaptation that came out recently.
Speaker: Yeah, there's some interesting.
Speaker: I've been watching film adaptations.
Speaker: I watched, what was it?
Speaker: The Orient Express the other day.
Speaker: And that was quite an interesting take too.
Speaker: The new one.
Speaker: The Ken Branagh one.
Speaker: The Kenneth Branagh one, yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it didn't really feel necessary to me because I loved the first one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The older one.
Speaker: I don't know what it was.
Speaker: I don't know if it was all done in one set and it felt like it was in a studio.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It was interesting.
Speaker: There were some fantastic people in it, but I felt like it missed a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I feel like when you're someone who loves books though, if any book is ever made into a film, it's so rare that you wouldn't say, oh, but they missed so many details.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: It's not how I pictured it.
Speaker: It's never as good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's, you know, how do you fit six hours into two?
Speaker: Well, indeed.
Speaker: Six hours reading and your imagination and then into Havalon.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And how can they compete with your own imagination?
Speaker: Well, that's it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, when you're at home with a book and it's just in your head, it's a whole different thing.
Speaker: That's a really interesting point though as well, actually.
Speaker: Anne Cleaves talking about nuggets of gold from authors.
Speaker: When Anne Cleaves was here for Murder One, she was
Speaker: One of the things she, point she made about it was leave room for the reader.
Speaker: And I thought that's really interesting.
Speaker: And that is, you know, that's the thing you can't do in film.
Speaker: You don't leave any room for it.
Speaker: You have to have it.
Speaker: It's all there in front of you, but with, with writing, you have to leave room for the reader.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause it's, it's almost a collaboration at a certain point between the reader and the writer.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: It's, you know, cause you're playing on lots of things that you don't know what, who they are or what's going on in their head and they're, and they're drawing different strands from your story.
Speaker: So yeah, no, it is very, that's really good advice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Well, well, thank you so much, Vanessa, for, for coming on and sharing all of your, your experiences as, as a writer and, and a sort of publishing professional and advocate of the written word.
Speaker: It's been really lovely chatting.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with all of the things that Vanessa is doing, you can follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Sam Blake books.
Speaker: And definitely check out the award-winning writing resource, writing.ie and the other things happening over at Inkwell.
Speaker: Head over to Vanessa's website, samblakebooks.com, where you can get a free book just for signing up to the Reader's Club.
Speaker: To make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
Speaker: And if you're after more bookish story discussion, then check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
Speaker: Thanks again, Vanessa.
Speaker: And thanks to everyone for listening.
Speaker: We'll catch you in the next episode.
