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#195 - Edward Carey
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Best-selling author and illustrator, Edward Carey joins us to chat about writing fantastical historical fiction across age groups and the ups and downs of his long writing and publishing career.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything. 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 am joined by critically acclaimed novelist, illustrator, and playwright, Edward Carey. Hello, welcome.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello Jamie, thank you very much for having me. Great to have you on. Let's jump right in with the new novel coming out 9th of October. It's called Edith Holler. Tell us a little bit about it.
00:00:38
Speaker
ah So it is set in Norwich in 1901, just after the death of Queen Victoria, and it's it it it's about ah it's about a theatre in which there is a there is a child who's been cursed and she's told she's not allowed to ever leave the theatre, whether this curse is true or not. We don't quite know that her father is an actor manager who ah who who obviously who runs the theatre but he gets great he gets great audiences for his theatre because of this child who's not allowed to leave the theatre and she walks around the audience dressed in grey and she's not allowed to speak to them and it's the story of this child um and it's about how older generations generations can
00:01:27
Speaker
repress ah repress younger generations. But it's also, it's a love it's a love ah um letter to the city of Norwich um and to theatre as well. I wrote this during the pandemic and I was sitting in Austin, Texas, very far away from home. I was born in Norfolk and I was sort of longing to get back home. And of course, all the theatres in all the world were were dark. and There was no theatre going um during the pandemic, of course. And I was just sort of combining two loves, really. Okay, that's nice. It's kind of trying to put your foot back in memories and back kind of where you came from. Right. that that Your description of it as a sort of story of generations ah reminds me of that. I don't know if you've ever seen the the the phrase, ah tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.
00:02:23
Speaker
ah Your novels are always set across a variety of time periods and historical events. What was it about this specific time period? It's 1901, right? And like setting it around a theatre, what was it that kind of drew you into that specific thing?
00:02:38
Speaker
I wanted to, to to in some to some extent, to really think about England and home. i I live in America now, I have done for a long time, but I i will always be English wherever I wherever i happen to live. um But um I deliberately wanted to set it just after Queen Victoria died, the theatre right at the beginning is all covered in morning crepe. And I was thinking about, you know, then, Britain must have been questioning itself, what are we? We've lost this huge archetypal figure, who who are we now? And I was actually, you know, I was really thinking of Brexit, which I detest.
00:03:17
Speaker
and and thinking of the harm it's done. And I thought this was a way of actually in sort of through camouflage of looking at at um ah Englishness. And I use a lot of um folklore in the in the novel from from East Anglia. And I grew up there, as I said, and and had all these stories in my head since I was a child.
00:03:39
Speaker
And so it was ah it was about identity. it was about then i Queen Elizabeth II was still alive, but she was in you know she was very old. I knew, obviously, she wasn't going to last forever. None of us do, alas. um but But so that thought of change and and of uncertainty, of going forward and not quite knowing who we are anymore.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to ask what the timeline was for the the Queen's death, because obviously that's that would seem very poignant as an inspiration for setting it just as Queen Victoria died. Yeah, I mean, I was I was thinking about that. And I do you know remember, but you know, obviously it was very recently, but when Queen Elizabeth II died, I was I was in in Austin, Texas, and I was just like, oh, my God, i could that even happen? It seems like it was never going to happen somehow.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's bizarre because it's, you know, for probably most people in the UK, there has been no other monarch. And it's weird when like institutions change like that, like they've literally changed the money, you know, they've changed. The national anthem is different. Like anything that was Her Majesty's something or something is now His Majesty's. And so you feel uncertain. Yeah, it's kind of weird. Everything that you had as a sort of, you know, very solid A solid part of your life is is no longer there, whether you're a royalist or or not. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was talking about James Bond the other day with a friend of mine and we were suddenly both aware that it was now His Majesty's Secret Service and not Her Majesty's Secret Service. I thought it was a strange one.
00:05:19
Speaker
yeah ah Getting back onto you, ah historical fiction, this is obviously historical fiction, but also your other novels are kind of steeped in historical fiction. It always comes with, um as a genre, it comes with a lot of research. What does that kind of part of the process look like for you?
00:05:40
Speaker
um Well, this was a way of, for this novel, for Edith Holler, that this was a way of of of traveling when we weren't allowed to travel. And so it was a way of going home. And I kept thinking of the the book by Xavier Domestre, a voyage around my room. which I don't know if you you know his work, but he was ah he was a soldier and he was placed under house arrest. And so he wrote a sort of guidebook to the room he was imprisoned in.
00:06:08
Speaker
And I think we were all rather doing sort of versions of that during the the pandemic. And so this was I steeped myself in Norwich history. um And of course, you could use eBay or whatever books could be delivered to you. And so I just got lost. I couldn't go there. um I was longing to go there. And I discovered new things about my home city. And it was just it was like it was a joy of discovery. And and in the novel, the um that the The narrator is is Edith Hollow, this 12-year-old girl, and and she can't travel. As I said, she's stuck inside the theatre. And so she has she eats Norwich, basically, to keep herself going. She goes up to the roof of the theatre and looks across at the city and is you know it is inspired by it, loves it. There's never set foot in it, but is actually a real expert in it.
00:06:58
Speaker
so ah So we were having sort of, the character was having a similar ah experience as i was as I was, you know, discovering more about the city and and in the novel Edith discovers this terrible secret about about the the city. but But I will say it was all using theatres and and um there's so much theatre in it. And I did some research in inter-theatre, but I worked in different theatres, you know, for for for many years in in Romania and Lithuania and and with a shadow puppet master in Malaysia. But most of all, I was a stage doorkeeper of the comedy theatre, now the Pinter Theatre. And
00:07:39
Speaker
ah on Panton Street in London. And I used to bike in in the morning with the keys to the theatre and unlock it, the old Victorian theatre. And it was like, this is my theatre. Nobody else is here. It's mine. And I used to go and stand on the the stage where nobody else was in the in the theatre and I would lock it up.
00:07:57
Speaker
the whole theater at night. And the sounds inside were so strange in in that sort of empty cavern. Nobody else is there. And the the sounds were distorted from people ah you're walking by, coming out the street or you know screaming out of pubs or whatever. um And so I kept that. That research was was sort of lived research, but that I used that um in the book. But in in in other books, there was one ah novel that I've written called Little that took me 15 years to write, which is ridiculous.
00:08:29
Speaker
um And that was based um on the life of Madame Tussauds. And she lived very dramatically through the French Revolution and so I had to do tons and tons of research for that um and and I got very bogged down in it and I had to sort of leave the novel behind because I think the the research had started to eat me um rather than me eating it and I couldn't focus on the story there was too much stuff ah you know, you can't read every book on the French Revolution, you' you're not alive long enough. um And so, um so it was actually stepping away from the research and remembering, remembering, you know, actually what I really wanted to ah tell what story, what the story really was, once I could get back to that, then I could make the novel work.
00:09:20
Speaker
um I used to, I was very lucky to visit the novelist John Fowles when he was still alive and um in Lyme Regis and I would go and see him and and he said um ah his piece of advice was um write the book, then do the research, which is an exaggeration, but as he was saying, it was amazing to meet him. But this was his way of saying, keep your eye on the story. Remember what it is that you're trying to say.
00:09:54
Speaker
That makes sense. So doing something which was based on the place that you came from and also set around theatres, which you've had like lots of experience with, even though it was set in 1901, there was a lot of frame of reference that you already could like pull on from your past. did that Was that a conscious decision in terms of picking a place and a setting after doing Little, which was obviously a very broad topic, which I imagine you had less experience with?
00:10:22
Speaker
ah Yes, so it it was, I wanted, you know, and and i I miss theatre as well, and almost during the pandemic, and I really wanted to, I've always wanted to write um a novel set in the theatre. um ah And so this seemed like to to be the time and, you know, rather like a, you know, camel with a hump, I had had all that experience in the theatre before, and I could use, I could use that. um ah Quite a few years ago now, I worked in a theater in in Romania, in ah in a city called Cryover. And I lived inside the theater while while we were rehearsing it. And as an experience, it was very strange because you you'd have the, you know, you'd get out of your room and you were there already in the theater. And the actors, there were many actors but but who, you know, had but almost no money. They were living in dressing rooms.
00:11:15
Speaker
And it was just, it was not a beautiful theater by any means. It was this awful, you know, Chowchescu era monstrosity. um But I do remember, you know, just walking around the theater and it felt like if you never left it, that house of dreams seemed to sort of enter into you and you you were quite confused as to what was reality and and what wasn't.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah, like you say, it sounds like, yeah, there's a lot of lived experience in this, which must have cut down a lot on the research. When talking about Little, and that was ah the French Revolution, Madame Tussauds, would you ever take on a sort of project that size in terms of research again, or has that kind of made you assess things more acutely before you you jump into them?
00:12:02
Speaker
So, I mean, to write if I was to go back and write another big historical novel, I think I would. I mean, I feel like I'm gearing up to get ready and there's a particular subject that I might um focus around it. and ah You know, the process of research is it's a lot of fun and I feel like though each time I start a novel, I go,
00:12:22
Speaker
How do you write a novel? I've completely forgotten. and And I feel like that every single time is as if you have to learn again every single time. But I think with the in the question of research, i feel like I feel like I did learn something from that last time. And it's to keep it's to keep your eye on the story, on the characters, and let them lead you through the story, and not to get drowned.
00:12:48
Speaker
um in the research. And I think actually writing about Madame Tise, what gave me confidence in going back to it is in her own autobiography, she lies terribly. I mean, all the time, she gives you these extraordinary, but you know,
00:13:04
Speaker
bombastic um reports of her existence, and which aren't true. um So I thought, well, if she can lie, I can lie too. And in America, they didn't do it so much here. but in But in America, they always say such and such a novel on the cover as if they're warning you um that it's full of lies. um And so I felt I had a certain freedom in the end and that freedom gave me gave me, you know, just just let me write the story as I wanted to write it. Yeah, the artistic license, I guess. Yeah. And you also alongside the writing, you are also an illustrator is that did those two things always come hand in hand for you? Or did one come first and the other followed?
00:13:50
Speaker
They always together, always right from the start. When I was a you know kid, if I was writing stories, I would always draw the characters too. i It's my way of getting to know the character. If I can't see the character, if I can't physically understand them, I feel I don't know them.
00:14:08
Speaker
um And so it's also ways I'm drawing the characters. I'm thinking about the writing, and the drawing makes me think of things that I wouldn't have otherwise considered about the characters and how they would interact with ah with each other and with their world. And so it's um yeah it's absolutely, I can't do one without the other. And I do both in tandem whenever I'm doing a book. There's always a certain amount of one and then the other. and And writers are always looking for ways to not write.
00:14:38
Speaker
um And this is this is one of my ways of doing it is to is to draw and pretend that I'm working on a project while while I'm at it. Okay, that's really interesting. So ah there are there a lot more drawings and sketches that get done that don't end up in the final copy? Yes, helping absolutely. And sculptures and you know all sorts of different things. and So I did notebooks and I draw all over the notebooks. um And um I've made small busts of the the principal characters for for Edith Holler just so I could I felt like I could understand them. And so that was part of the process. And at home um back in Austin, I have ah i I carved a ah wooden woman who's who's four foot three or four tall. um
00:15:28
Speaker
ah who which was the exact height of Madame Tussauds. She was very small. um And and um she's fully articulated this wooden doll. You can move her arms and legs. And my wife had a haircut so that she could have some hair. And she sits with us at home. And that was also part of the process. And and for for for Little, I also um i i made a ah wax death mask of one of the principal characters because I needed to understand how to work in wax.
00:15:57
Speaker
um right that I you know needed to fully understand her profession. And also actually doing it, one of the things that I hadn't properly realized, of course, is smell is a major part of it, that the the smell of the wax. and And so then I felt I could put in the writing that process of making wax figures, of of putting in hairs, etc., etc.
00:16:19
Speaker
um So that was, is you know, it's always, it's always, it becomes an obsession. And but I think you have to be obsessed with that with your work. um ah You know, you need to you need to have a close relationship with your material. And with Edith Holler, the illustrations are all of a of a Victorian toy theater, you know, those card theaters that you can cut out and you put in different backdrops and push your characters back and forth across the card stage um so that you could actually cut the novel out and make the card theater. um Or you could just go to my website and download it and knock out the novel out. But but but ah you know, that was the other thing that just as a as a pandemic was starting,
00:17:05
Speaker
i the The last bit of human interaction before I fled back to Austin and and my family was sitting in a in a cafe just by the British Museum talking with ah with a great illustrator, Clive Hicks Jenkins. And we talked about Victorian toy theaters as the world was beginning to close down. And I sort of fed on that last conversation for for you know months and months and months. And I knew that that then when I was going to illustrate this book,
00:17:34
Speaker
that I would do it as a Victorian toy theater. And in the first illustration that I did of it, even before I'd i'd written her voice fully, was a ah card theater illustration of Edith Holler, the character herself.
00:17:50
Speaker
Oh okay, that's so interesting that you're kind of creating all these different pieces of art in different mediums whilst you're writing. When it comes to actually like the story itself then, do you have it planned out or are you just kind of doing all of these different creations whilst the narrative is kind of figuring its own path? I'm not a huge planner because I want to be surprised by what happens but I need to have some sort of structure to understand what's going on and with With Edith Holler, I knew right from the beginning it would be it would be in five parts. It would like have a 5X.
00:18:26
Speaker
structure like Shakespeare. I was was very certain that and that the final act, Edith, in in end writes a play about what she's discovered about Norwich, and the final act is basically the play on stage um with all sorts of things going wrong, but but pushed um but push right at the end. So sometimes I have i have an idea. I wrote a trilogy set in a sort of slant-wise Victorian London, and and and I knew that the final part of the trilogy would be in um the Houses of Parliament as sort of Queen Victoria again came to came to open Parliament. And I knew that all of my characters would come then, but even as I was writing it, I didn't know which characters were going to survive this event.
00:19:14
Speaker
ah okay And so it was, you know, it was, I've got to get them there and then we'll see what happens. ah but And I knew that right writing the first book. So years before I would actually get to to to Parliament um right at the end. So and that's about as much planning as I do. What happens in between, i I want to have some sort of experiment. And even when I get to the end, I don't know necessarily what's going to happen. But with something like Madame Tussauds, it's already, you know, decided because it's she's so she was a real person. Yeah, of course. Okay, so it sounds like you your plan is essentially you know where it starts, you know where it ends, and then everything in between is discovered as you go.
00:19:59
Speaker
Yes and but also I'm open to but to be surprised by by the end um and I never I don't try to to stick with with exactly what happens. I want to you know so much of writing is about improvisation and it's about you need to surprise the reader and you but you need to surprise yourself um as you're writing to keep it alive. I'm i'm always i'm I'm always surprised by those authors who plan everything you know to such detail, but it's it's what works for you. you know so exactly i love the fact there's no There are no rules in writing, but but except for you know what works. that's um
00:20:39
Speaker
That's the rule. Yeah, what works for you. like yeah any any like If anyone ever talks about like a rule or anything in terms of crafts, I always think of it that they're much more like guidelines that you should you could try and see if that works for you.
00:20:55
Speaker
No, I think that's right. And I think you you work it out. But also, you know, what works for you at one stage of your life may not continue being that. And I think you have to really keep reassessing the way you do things and actually open up to trying things in a different way, because I think otherwise we can get stuck in a sort of repetitive pattern. And I think actually breaking that can be very liberating liberating as well.
00:21:20
Speaker
Yeah, always evolving, always learning something new from the last thing that you that you wrote or or whatever. create I guess it's the same with most creative disciplines, right? um Before we head over to the desert island, I did want to ask, um your novels are all historically based and set. Would you ever or have you ever thought about writing something with a contemporary setting?
00:21:45
Speaker
and My first novel is set sort of, I mean, they're they're old and somewhat eccentric people, um but set in ah in an unnamed city, um okay which is sort of contemporary. And my second novel is set in a city that doesn't exist as a sort of 24 hour a day guidebook to this place that doesn't exist, which includes if you go to cafes holding the book in that city, you can get a 20% ah reduction in costs and things like that. um but But that city was sort of destroyed by by an earthquake, and that's as modern it's a modern city. um ah but i'm not very But having said that, I'm not terribly good at modern stuff. um And um ah as as was which was shown when I tried to connect with you to get onto this podcast. um But but um I ah love going back back into history. And i as I've said, I live in in um in in Texas, and I'm i'm not a Texan that I can't write about.
00:22:52
Speaker
Texas, I feel, because it's not my material. But then at the same time, I'm not sure if I could really write about England now because I haven't lived in it. I'm back, you know, two or three times a year, but I don't live here. um And so actually stepping back in the past, ah then I find and I'm in a place where I where I can write where I can um feel free to write.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah. And you have the resources you can't that you you know you have access to lots of different um books or whatever it might be to reference things that did happen. Yeah. and and the And one of the books that I go back to again and again, not just for for for specific research, but actually just for the pure joy of it is London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew, in which he interviewed um while the poor of London doing various different jobs including working in sewers or there's an amazing um ah interview with ah with a man who made um glass eyes for dolls. um But suddenly London comes amazingly alive in those interviews that he did and the voices are also separate.
00:24:05
Speaker
and real um and very exciting. And actually, when you read when you read Mayhew, you you understand that perhaps Dickens didn't exaggerate quite as much as you might have thought. um Okay, so so it sounds like you are very much comfortable and happy within the historical space and doesn't like you doesn't it like contemporaries on the cards for you.
00:24:29
Speaker
It might never say never. I mean, I'm trying to work on something at the moment, and that might be more contemporary. But but I just think, you know, if I open a novel, which is terrible prejudice, if I open a novel, and it's got something like ah a mobile phone in it, that that seems that seems dispiriting to me.
00:24:48
Speaker
I understand, yeah. And mobile phones, it's an entirely different discussion, but mobile phones ah cause a whole host of problems for writers in terms of like tension and drama and things like that. right But yeah, that's an entirely different discussion. um We are at the point of the episode where we head over to the desert island and I will ask you, Edward, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:25:14
Speaker
Well, I mean, I thought about this and and I had an immediate but answer. I thought, oh, gosh, that's so obvious. and but but But I can't come up with anything better. And and I think i I would be very happy to to have the complete works of Shakespeare, I'm afraid. that and that's good I'm sure but many of you many of your um interviews probably interviewees have probably said the same thing, but but during the pandemic, ah i was I read Shakespeare an awful lot, and there's a lot of Shakespeare references in in ah
00:25:46
Speaker
Edith Holler, and they're mounting a production of Titus Andronicus in the background um of the play. And I just think that there's still, you know, just I go back and read King Lear, which is my favorite play again and again and again and again. And I keep finding, of course, there's new new stuff that I hadn't seen before. And so, you know, that that that would be a big fat book. And you could just, you know, you could just get lost in his world. There always seems, ah you know, one of the wonderful things about theatre is you can just pick up dead people, you know, who've been dead for a long time, like Richard III or Henry V or people like that, and put them on stage and they're alive again. um And I think, you know, if you sat there on your desert island and you could sing, you know, call out, blow winds and crack your cheeks or something like that, um it might, it might help.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah. i And it's been picked before, definitely on the podcast, but not as much as ah as you would think, actually. Not as much as Jane Austen. I'm afraid she gets a lot more play. Right. Yeah, that wouldn't that wouldn't help me on a desert island. Fair enough.
00:26:55
Speaker
um next up we are going to chat about breaking into publishing literary agents and if and how things change after publishing several novels and that will all be in the extended episode available on patreon um Don't ever let anything else but persuade you away from that. Yeah, that's great. and would ah What a great way to to to round things off there. Thank you so much, Edward, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your your latest novel, novel Edith Holler, and your experiences in writing and publishing and everything that you've you've kind of gone through on your on your publishing journey. It's been really, really cool chatting with you. oh Thank you, Jamie. This has been an absolute pleasure.
00:27:38
Speaker
And for anyone wanting to keep up with what Edward is doing, you can follow him on Twitter at EdwardCarry70, or on Instagram at EdwardCarryAuthor, or you can head over to his website, EdwardCarryAuthor.com. To support this podcast, like, follow, and subscribe, head over to the Patreon for all the extra stuff over there, and check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes. Thanks again, Edward, and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.