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SPOILER BOOK CLUB: Kate Mildenhall on The Hiding Place · The Book Deal

0:09
Tina Strachan: This is the Book Deal podcast where you will discover the inspiring stories behind your favorite books.
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Natasha Rai: We interview seasoned and debut authors, as well as publishing industry professionals to bring you the best tips and advice on
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x: how to get that elusive book deal.
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x: So no matter what's.
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x: Stage of writing your at.
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x: We've got you covered.
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x: I'm Tina Strachan.
0:30
x: I'm Madeleine Cleary.
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x: And I'm Natasha Rai.
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x: And join us as we pull back the curtain of published authors
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Madeleine Cleary: one deal at a time.
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Madeleine Cleary: The book Deal podcast acknowledges the traditional owners, the land and waters, which it's recorded on and pays respect to their elders past, present, and emerging.
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Speaker: Welcome to the Book Deal Podcasts, first spoiler book club where we dive between the covers of your favorite novels.
1:02
Speaker: In this episode, I chat with bestselling and highly acclaimed author, Kate Mildenhall, and a few other readers and writers about Kate's latest novel, the Hiding Place, and as the name of this book Club suggests, switch off now unless you're happy with all the spoilers.
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Speaker: Also, a language warning for this episode in case you've got little ones in the car.
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Speaker: Enjoy.
1:27
Madeleine Cleary: Kate Mildenhall, welcome back to the Book Deal podcast.
1:30
Kate Mildenhall: Thank you so
1:31
Kate Mildenhall (2): much, Madeline.
1:32
Madeleine Cleary (2): Now a warning for our listeners.
1:34
Madeleine Cleary (2): If you've missed all our spoiler tags and warnings, this is your last chance to get out.
1:39
Madeleine Cleary (2): Now, if you have not read Kate's novel, the Hiding Place, or you don't want to be spoiled, then this is your time to leave.
1:46
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, so don't blame us you've been warned.
1:48
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
1:49
Kate Mildenhall: You have been warned.
1:50
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, so we've got a lot to cover tonight, Kate.
1:52
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, namely Death by Star Picket Fence, uh, death cap, mushroom gravy, mine shafts.
1:59
Madeleine Cleary (2): Highly questionable decision making, and Phil's Bloody Lamb
2:03
Kate Mildenhall: Ah, that is such a great way to introduce it and a way that no one has before because they're all spoilers.
2:10
Kate Mildenhall: I love
2:11
Madeleine Cleary (2): Boilers.
2:11
Madeleine Cleary (2): This is Spoiler Book Club.
2:13
Madeleine Cleary (2): All right.
2:13
Madeleine Cleary (2): So I wanna start first about, uh, using your friends' book in spo.
2:18
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
2:18
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, so you've said quite publicly before that the Willow Creek Camping crew is not your, your own camping crew friends.
2:26
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, so I'm just double checking that you and your friends definitely have not covered up any dead bodies.
2:32
Kate Mildenhall: We have not, or if we have, I am not privy to this infor information.
2:37
Kate Mildenhall: So we have not, we have, I have to say on various occasions we have.
2:45
Kate Mildenhall: Hypothetically discussed as a group, mostly as the, my, like my girlfriends, if we're away on a girl's weekend, that if for some reason we killed a body, we killed someone in or came across a body, how would we deal with it?
2:59
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, so we have had that kind of discussion about who would bring what qualities to the table
3:04
Madeleine Cleary (2): What would you bring to the table?
3:06
Kate Mildenhall: generally, just, um, you know, having everyone's back.
3:10
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, I'm not a scientist.
3:11
Kate Mildenhall: There's one in our group who is the scientist who we decided could deal with the forensics and there was one person who self-declared that, uh, they would go to the cops as well.
3:20
Kate Mildenhall: So, you know, there there was, we are a varied bunch.
3:25
Madeleine Cleary (2): I, I actually know that because at your book launch, uh, at read, oh, you are looking horrified.
3:31
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, I was sitting right next to your camping crew.
3:35
Madeleine Cleary (2): They were against the wall, all of them.
3:37
Speaker 5: They were literally,
3:39
Madeleine Cleary (2): they were literally against the wall.
3:40
Madeleine Cleary (2): Every time you said something about the book characters plot arcs, um, they would all give each other shifty ice.
3:49
Madeleine Cleary (2): So I'm just.
3:51
Kate Mildenhall: What has been discussed is, and I think that this is really interesting because there's that idea of, um, and, and this is for all writers of what we don't recognize, um, what might be our blind spots.
4:04
Kate Mildenhall: And, and so what I do know has, has happened is that there are various offshoot conversations between my friends where they are saying, oh, that's me.
4:14
Kate Mildenhall: Do you remember when I did that?
4:15
Kate Mildenhall: Or that's you, or that's someone else.
4:17
Kate Mildenhall: And then a, um, a little sister of, of the gang of the kind of extended gang who sometimes does camp with us, um, sent her sister a message saying, is everyone really angry with Kate?
4:29
Kate Mildenhall: So there is clearly enough in there, um, that, that people feel, um, it's familiar territory.
4:37
Kate Mildenhall: But I think the other thing that's been delightful during the tour.
4:40
Kate Mildenhall: What's made me feel a little bit more comfortable is how many random people who are in no way related to me are identifying strongly with the, with the group dynamics, um, which is what I was going for.
4:53
Kate Mildenhall: So, you know, hopefully that's the way, but it, it was one of the most stressful parts of, of writing the book, of making sure that, um.
5:03
Kate Mildenhall: That idea that I've talked about, I think I talked about it when we recorded previously, Madeline, that the idea was that I wanted to take the piss outta myself first and not out of friendship itself.
5:14
Kate Mildenhall: So that the idea of kind of us, of us all being in on the joke and not feeling like someone or someone's particular character trait was the butt of a joke.
5:22
Kate Mildenhall: So it, it felt like a difficult line to tread.
5:26
Kate Mildenhall: Maybe I'll go back to historical fiction like you.
5:29
Madeleine Cleary (2): You are always welcome, Kate.
5:31
Madeleine Cleary (2): I mean, you always dabble in across genres, so I'm sure you'll be back.
5:35
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, who was the, so talking about that kind of difficulty and the challenges, who, which character did you find the most difficult and challenging to write?
5:42
Kate Mildenhall: I guess the characters, Phil and Lou, um, and Nest to a degree.
5:51
Kate Mildenhall: Were the easiest to write because they had kind of so much to do, if that makes sense.
5:57
Madeleine Cleary (2): Yes.
5:58
Kate Mildenhall: Um, um, I found getting into Josie's kind of science brain, which is something that I really wanted to do.
6:06
Kate Mildenhall: So Josie's the one, you know, who's, who's planting the Acacia.
6:10
Kate Mildenhall: Um, that was a bit trickier for me, uh, because I wanted to reflect.
6:15
Kate Mildenhall: Her scientific thinking.
6:17
Kate Mildenhall: It's something that I did with mim in the Mother Fault.
6:20
Kate Mildenhall: I wanted to kind of reflect the, the experience and the profession.
6:24
Kate Mildenhall: Profession.
6:25
Kate Mildenhall: so, so she was hard for that reason and, and Stella was a joy to write.
6:31
Speaker 9: Mm.
6:32
Kate Mildenhall: Stella, the teenager.
6:33
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but I was also very conscious of getting that right.
6:37
Kate Mildenhall: So there's one scene in there, the scene where she's talking about what's happened with the, um, hockey girls and getting called into the welfare person's office at school.
6:47
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, that one I checked really carefully with my eldest daughter and she went over it with me And checked that it was, that I had, um, that I'd got that right.
6:56
Kate Mildenhall: The other thing too.
6:57
Kate Mildenhall: in terms of feedback that I got, which is was really interesting and really important, Teagan Bennett Daylight, uh, amazing writer and um, and mentor and manuscript assessor.
7:09
Kate Mildenhall: She did a really early read, which is before the one that Mark FL Russell did for me, which was amazing.
7:14
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and her feedback was about Wendy and sell in the general store.
7:20
Kate Mildenhall: And it didn't have to change much, but she said, just be really careful that you don't caricature these characters because these characters are the ones that you have to get absolutely right.
7:32
Kate Mildenhall: Because, she quite rightly picked up what my intent was, which was, to make fun of the city slickers, but not to make fun of the people who lived in that place.
7:44
Madeleine Cleary (2): You did.
7:44
Madeleine Cleary (2): I think you did that really well.
7:46
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, let's talk about Phil though, because I think Phil's just his cha, his chapters are just a joy to read.
7:53
Madeleine Cleary (2): Like they're, they're so fun and so funny.
7:57
Madeleine Cleary (2): Did you enjoy writing from
7:58
Kate Mildenhall: I so enjoyed him and actually, um, I've just been going, I was saying to you, I've just been going back through my journal today.
8:04
Kate Mildenhall: So I keep a, a journal of each book that I write since my second book, and they end up like, I'm looking at this one.
8:10
Kate Mildenhall: This is 106,000 words, the one for the hiding place.
8:13
Kate Mildenhall: And it's got all of my notes and my questions to myself and my research and, um, when things go wrong, et cetera.
8:20
Kate Mildenhall: And I found the section where I was at my kids' basketball training and sitting upstairs.
8:25
Kate Mildenhall: Where I start writing Phil,'cause he's a basketball coach and I knew that I had this guy there, you know, that there was a couple and, um, but I literally have started like, you know.
8:36
Kate Mildenhall: It's this kind of guy.
8:38
Kate Mildenhall: Um, he's a chewer.
8:40
Kate Mildenhall: He's got a really square head.
8:42
Kate Mildenhall: Um, he is almost military in his movement.
8:46
Kate Mildenhall: He was attractive at one time, but he doesn't realize this, that that spark's gone.
8:50
Kate Mildenhall: He's an old footy player who still has tickets on himself.
8:53
Kate Mildenhall: Like, these are all the notes that I've got in my journal.
8:56
Kate Mildenhall: And that's, and, and, and, you know, so after that, that's where Phil came from.
9:00
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and really early on too, I knew.
9:04
Kate Mildenhall: I knew that food, food, when you're camping for any campers here, other than my mom and dad,'cause I know they are, you know, and on holidays, I guess group holidays and at this time of year, food is such a central joy and concern of families and big groups, you know, and, and I think for us, when we are camping, it always feels like you are kind of always preparing for the next meal or cleaning up after it or thinking about the next one.
9:29
Kate Mildenhall: Um, so I knew that that was gonna feature.
9:32
Kate Mildenhall: As a key dynamic or tension, you know, on each of these three days.
9:37
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and I knew that I wanted a lamb.
9:44
Kate Mildenhall: And I knew that Phil was the guy to do it that exact kind of.
9:47
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I watched like Phil watches, uh, the YouTubes to see, um, other guys doing their lamb spit.
9:53
Kate Mildenhall: I watched a lot of YouTube and um, TikTok, lamb spit men, um, getting ready with their little brushes and all their little things.
10:01
Kate Mildenhall: And uh, so I really knew I wanted that and, and I really knew that I.
10:08
Kate Mildenhall: I, I wanted that to become a key moment where, where they, you know, where he has to kill the, where he stuffs up killing the lamb.
10:17
Madeleine Cleary (2): I think it's interesting'cause I felt like I related to a lot of the characters and that actually scared me a little bit.
10:22
Madeleine Cleary (2): But I could also see Phil in so many blokes that I know as well.
10:28
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
10:28
Kate Mildenhall: And I think, you know, I think one of the things is that, that.
10:33
Kate Mildenhall: Tension.
10:33
Kate Mildenhall: And I've had so many guys who've read it and said, oh, am I a little bit, am I a little bit like Phil?
10:39
Kate Mildenhall: Um, I hope I'm not, but maybe I am.
10:42
Kate Mildenhall: But also people who who come to have, as I did some empathy for him he's very, um, I guess he's in a way.
10:52
Kate Mildenhall: Honest with himself about what he's trying to do.
10:54
Kate Mildenhall: He's the shit steerer, you know, and, and people will have that friend who, who likes to poke the bear and wants to be the one who makes arguments or who wants to say, oh, you know, to be honest, but to speak frankly and that, those kinds of things.
11:09
Kate Mildenhall: Um, it's definitely not me'cause I'm, I'm more of a peacekeeper or I like to think I am.
11:14
Kate Mildenhall: Um, so I, I guess in a sense I admire that quality.
11:19
Kate Mildenhall: Of him.
11:20
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but he was also very easy to, to make fun of.
11:26
Madeleine Cleary (2): Oh, for sure.
11:26
Madeleine Cleary (2): And he is, he is a bit of a, you know, poke the bear, stir up things, but he's also a people pleaser in the end too.
11:32
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:34
Kate Mildenhall: I also did really when I, I, I, I remember now, I haven't found this point in the journal yet, but I remember when I decided that he was gonna be the one who was off the booze that I was like, yes.
11:44
Kate Mildenhall: Yes, that's exactly who Phil is.
11:47
Kate Mildenhall: 'cause he is also gonna be, um, you know, very smug about it.
11:51
Kate Mildenhall: A bit of a martyr about it.
11:52
Kate Mildenhall: And then again, these are these things that sometimes and the writers in the who are here might know this.
11:59
Kate Mildenhall: There's things that you put in.
12:01
Kate Mildenhall: I call them portals because when you come back you realize that they were like a gift you gave yourself early on, and you didn't know what they were there for or what they were meant to be.
12:11
Kate Mildenhall: And so the fact that I'd made him the, the, the one who wasn't drinking when everyone else is drinking so much, and then realizing that that allowed.
12:21
Kate Mildenhall: For a point where he does start drinking again over the weekend was such a joy because I was like, oh, yes, I, I gifted myself this part of the plot or this little kind of moment.
12:31
Madeleine Cleary (2): Clever.
12:32
Madeleine Cleary (2): That's, I think that's an a really good tip.
12:34
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, all right.
12:35
Madeleine Cleary (2): I wanna talk about death by star picket fence.
12:38
Madeleine Cleary (2): I had to like write that term down.
12:39
Madeleine Cleary (2): I didn't know what it was, so I Googled it.
12:43
Kate Mildenhall (2): What did you find?
12:44
Madeleine Cleary (2): Oh, I saw it.
12:45
Madeleine Cleary (2): Yeah.
12:45
Madeleine Cleary (2): I had the, the poking up and I was just imagining Jacob, you know, sort of pro feet scurrying in the dirt and everything.
12:52
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, okay.
12:53
Madeleine Cleary (2): Jacob, how, how, what was the process of working out your not murder victim, but
13:00
Kate Mildenhall: Oh yeah.
13:01
Kate Mildenhall: Well, that, that was a massive process first.
13:04
Kate Mildenhall: So, so many people died at various times, uh, in one draft.
13:09
Kate Mildenhall: Um, multiple people
13:11
Speaker 9: who
13:11
Kate Mildenhall: Um, um, like the Hunter,
13:15
Madeleine Cleary (2): Oh, Aiden,
13:17
Kate Mildenhall: Aiden died, but he wasn't Aiden at that stage, but he died as well.
13:20
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and at one stage here, here's all the spoilers.
13:23
Kate Mildenhall: At one stage it was Avril who killed him at the end to protect her daughters.
13:28
Kate Mildenhall: Um, uh, at one point.
13:31
Kate Mildenhall: At one point, it's hard to say this because then what if all of you say, oh no, that would've been better.
13:36
Kate Mildenhall: Um, at one point, the kids, for a really long time, the kids lured Jacob into a mine shaft.
13:44
Kate Mildenhall: And then they, um, and then they left him in there.
13:47
Madeleine Cleary (2): who was the Mastermind?
13:49
Madeleine Cleary (2): Stella
13:50
Kate Mildenhall: the mastermind, but all the kids, a little bit Lord of the flies.
13:53
Kate Mildenhall: Um, they had, yeah, they were angrier at him.
13:57
Kate Mildenhall: Um, he'd been more cruel to them directly.
13:59
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but what I realized, and the reason that I moved away from that, it was this thing of circling the idea that I knew that the kids were central and that the, the kids, um.
14:10
Kate Mildenhall: Kind of as a block led by Stella.
14:12
Kate Mildenhall: Were, were really central to the plot.
14:15
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and there was a point when I realized I can't make the kids do it.
14:20
Kate Mildenhall: And it was sometimes, I don't know if others writers do this, but sometimes I would do these exercises where I'd like pitch ahead, even though I knew that I would not put this in the book.
14:28
Kate Mildenhall: So I'd pitch ahead like 10 years or 20 years and trying to write.
14:33
Kate Mildenhall: The kids knowing that they had lured someone into a hole and and killed them when they were kids was too much for me.
14:39
Kate Mildenhall: So I decided the kids couldn't do it.
14:42
Kate Mildenhall: And then, and then a little bit inspired by the dear, the high country murder that was happening.
14:48
Kate Mildenhall: Um, I decided that they would burn the body.
14:53
Kate Mildenhall: But again, this is where you, where your research really works well because, um, I realized that they couldn't get the fire hot enough and dad, maybe, I think you helped with this CFA man and mom.
15:07
Kate Mildenhall: Um, I realized that they couldn't get the fire hot enough over that period of time to get rid of the body.
15:13
Kate Mildenhall: Um, at one point.
15:16
Kate Mildenhall: Mark May even have read this version.
15:18
Kate Mildenhall: At one point they moved the body multiple times to different places over the weekend.
15:24
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I really liked that one as well, but it became even more of a fast and I kind of, I couldn't fit everything in.
15:31
Kate Mildenhall: At one point death was by Crossbow.
15:34
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but really hard to accidentally kill someone with a crossbo.
15:39
Madeleine Cleary (2): I
15:39
Kate Mildenhall: Because you have to kind of pull it right back.
15:43
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, so then decided on pick, fence and tractor.
15:47
Kate Mildenhall: So the star picture, um, was most joyously acted out for me, um, by my husband and, the guy he landscapes for where I, and I didn't even ask for this, but one day they sent me, um, a picture from site where they were testing out how far the star pick would go in, um, how far the T-shirt would go up.
16:13
Kate Mildenhall: Um.
16:13
Kate Mildenhall: I, I remember talking to people at length about, um, how much blood there would be, um, the kinds of, the kind of max of how the tractor would have to move, um, for these things to happen.
16:27
Kate Mildenhall: Because the thing that was most difficult for me, aside from killing someone, which was a little bit difficult and working out who to kill, was trying to make sure that the reader would come along with me, that they would buy it.
16:44
Kate Mildenhall: They would be like, yes, I see how everyone is angry right now.
16:49
Kate Mildenhall: I see how this, um, moment has come into being.
16:53
Kate Mildenhall: I see how Ness is kind of clamoring on the tractor.
16:56
Kate Mildenhall: I see what happens.
16:58
Kate Mildenhall: I see it and I buy it.
17:00
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, so I needed them to buy that part, and then I needed them to buy what happens next and the terrible decisions that everyone, everyone makes, um, but also the joy.
17:13
Kate Mildenhall: Of knowing that this book was about property and boundaries and, uh, fence lines specifically, and that it was the fence itself that would kill Jacob was another one of those moments where I was like, of course the fence is what kills him.
17:30
Madeleine Cleary (2): Of course that makes total sense.
17:33
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, and yes, I could very visually picture this.
17:36
Madeleine Cleary (2): I think we, I said to you, um, I.
17:38
Madeleine Cleary (2): First read this book when I was on the beach and I got to that scene and uh, my husband was next to me and I was making these like gruesome, kind of like, ooh noises.
17:48
Madeleine Cleary (2): So you did it.
17:49
Madeleine Cleary (2): You did it well, Kate, um, death cap mushrooms though.
17:53
Madeleine Cleary (2): That was another possible, death.
17:55
Madeleine Cleary (2): I actually thought Josie was gonna let it go when she was doing that.
17:58
Madeleine Cleary (2): I don't know if others, I was just going, no, no, no, no, no, no.
18:01
Madeleine Cleary (2): Josie, what are you thinking?
18:03
Madeleine Cleary (2): Whatcha doing?
18:05
Kate Mildenhall: I'm so glad.
18:06
Kate Mildenhall: I'm so glad.
18:08
Kate Mildenhall: It's the, it's the most joy when you get messages and sometimes you get messages from people, like while they are reading and getting those ones where they're like, oh my God, what is she doing?
18:18
Kate Mildenhall: What is she doing?
18:20
Kate Mildenhall: They were some of the best.
18:21
Madeleine Cleary (2): tell us about the mushrooms.
18:23
Madeleine Cleary (2): And I know that everyone's probably really interested in mushrooms, in particularly living in Melbourne at the moment too.
18:29
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
18:30
Kate Mildenhall: So the mushrooms came in originally because, I think the way it happened is that I wanted a, a, an oak tree.
18:37
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and then I realized that death caps often grew under them in this place at this time.
18:43
Kate Mildenhall: I was like, okay, there's gonna be death caps, there's gonna be all of these threats.
18:46
Kate Mildenhall: I just wanted to keep, the river is a threat.
18:48
Kate Mildenhall: The mind charts are a threat.
18:50
Kate Mildenhall: The mushrooms are a threat.
18:51
Kate Mildenhall: The people obviously are The, biggest threats.
18:54
Kate Mildenhall: Again, it was one of those things I knew that, um, Josie's loyalty to Lou, um, I wanted that to keep amping up during the book to an extent where she would also do anything.
19:07
Kate Mildenhall: You know, we, we've got this kind of dynamic where they will all do anything for each other to a certain degree.
19:14
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and then of course.
19:16
Kate Mildenhall: Again, it was one of those things.
19:19
Kate Mildenhall: She had the mushrooms, she had them, uh, she hadn't put them in the fire.
19:24
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and for a while I thought that just the threat of it alone would be enough.
19:29
Kate Mildenhall: And then when I realized that I was kind of, I guess, amping up the, um, the funny and the satire and a bit of the theatrics, I already had the, um.
19:41
Kate Mildenhall: The idea of the, the show to finish it.
19:45
Kate Mildenhall: I always knew that that's the way it was gonna finish.
19:46
Kate Mildenhall: I wasn't quite sure how, but I knew that that was how it was gonna finish.
19:53
Kate Mildenhall: Um, yeah, it, it was like, oh, this is this.
19:58
Kate Mildenhall: She's gonna go, she's gonna try and do it.
19:59
Kate Mildenhall: She's gonna try and get rid of, um, she's gonna try and get rid of Aiden and, and Dave and Libby as well, because, you know, maybe that they have to go too.
20:07
Kate Mildenhall: Um, I didn't ever think that it would happen.
20:11
Kate Mildenhall: I didn't, I, I never intended for them to die as well.
20:14
Kate Mildenhall: Um, so yeah, I always knew she was gonna pull back from the edge, but it was fun to make her go there.
20:19
Madeleine Cleary (2): Oh yeah, yeah.
20:20
Madeleine Cleary (2): Nerve wracking for all of us.
20:22
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um.
20:23
Madeleine Cleary (2): It's interesting because slowly the, so what happened to Jacob is revealed.
20:29
Madeleine Cleary (2): So all the campers are starting to all find out slowly, slowly, slowly, incrementally, and not one of them really ever waves about trying to help cover it up.
20:39
Madeleine Cleary (2): All of them just go,
20:40
Speaker 5: Yeah.
20:41
Madeleine Cleary (2): okay, no worries.
20:42
Madeleine Cleary (2): Let's, how are we gonna do this?
20:44
Madeleine Cleary (2): How are we gonna do it?
20:44
Madeleine Cleary (2): Is this an old friends thing, do you think?
20:48
Kate Mildenhall: I think also the, the fact that it happened slowly.
20:51
Kate Mildenhall: Um, so I think had, had there been 15 people in a round table right at the start, somebody that you know.
20:59
Kate Mildenhall: Would've convinced everyone else, no, we can't do this.
21:03
Kate Mildenhall: But that idea of, of the incremental stuff ups and the small decisions that people make, and then you're like, okay, well I guess if everyone's already made the decision, then I'll just go along with that.
21:17
Kate Mildenhall: Um, that's really what I wanted to play on because as each new person finds out, it's.
21:24
Kate Mildenhall: I'm like, wow, we've lost that opportunity.
21:27
Kate Mildenhall: Now someone's gonna be implicated.
21:29
Kate Mildenhall: You know, everything after the first moment means that, um, you know, either ness or Lu are gonna be implicated.
21:35
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, so that, that was, that was kind of fun to play with, but I did have to have a spreadsheet, particularly when I gave it to the editor.
21:45
Kate Mildenhall: Of who knew at what time, which secret, you know, I think it's called the secret spreadsheet, and it's like, well, who knows about the affair?
21:52
Kate Mildenhall: Who knows about the, um, who knows about the body?
21:56
Kate Mildenhall: You know, all of these things to try and make sure that I had that right because it was important to me that one of the adults and, and, you know, kind of had to be Marni, that she never knows until, until the end.
22:07
Kate Mildenhall: That that was important as well.
22:10
Madeleine Cleary (2): So in terms of, um, you, you said you had this idea of what the end would be, um, and you also have like multiple perspectives as well, and so you've got this secret.
22:20
Madeleine Cleary (2): Spreadsheet.
22:20
Madeleine Cleary (2): How else did you map all the multiples perspectives?
22:23
Madeleine Cleary (2): Did you plot out this novel?
22:25
Madeleine Cleary (2): 'cause often thrillers are plotted.
22:29
Kate Mildenhall (2): Yes.
22:29
Kate Mildenhall: I don't, I've actually got something I can show
22:31
Madeleine Cleary (2): Oh, oh.
22:32
Madeleine Cleary (2): We're gonna get show and tell.
22:33
Madeleine Cleary (2): This is exciting.
22:35
Kate Mildenhall: I didn't have, so this is the way that I, like people might've seen these before.
22:39
Kate Mildenhall: This is the way that I do like just the contents chapter outline.
22:42
Kate Mildenhall: But this, I think was the first one where I color coded the characters.
22:45
Kate Mildenhall: 'cause I didn't really plan it.
22:47
Kate Mildenhall: I didn't plan it to go in order necessarily.
22:50
Kate Mildenhall: so I'm holding up, um, a, a kind of an outline document with chapter headings.
22:54
Kate Mildenhall: It's three pieces of, um, a four papers stuck together and it's color coordinated with, uh, six different colors and they're all the different character names.
23:05
Kate Mildenhall: And this was a really good one I remember because it was when I realized that I had them about right.
23:10
Kate Mildenhall: I've kind of got 14, 12, 13 sections.
23:15
Kate Mildenhall: Speech.
23:16
Kate Mildenhall: So I was like, oh, instinctively I've given them a kind of the right amount of space on the page.
23:22
Kate Mildenhall: I had to move a few things around.
23:24
Kate Mildenhall: Um, I did a lot of, uh, like at various times, and Mark was incredibly helpful.
23:28
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and you probably remember this differently even than I did do.
23:31
Kate Mildenhall: Mark.
23:32
Kate Mildenhall: Mark was incredibly helpful.
23:34
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and Haley Scribner was incredibly helpful and Anna Downs, um, three writers who I sought advice from at different points in the shape.
23:43
Kate Mildenhall: Of what, um, a crime thriller needed to reveal at what time.
23:47
Kate Mildenhall: So what Mark was really, really good at, um, was explaining that for a long time, the death kind of happened more in the middle of the book.
23:57
Kate Mildenhall: And he quite rightly said, you know, a reader is gonna anticipate it either being upfront or at the end.
24:04
Kate Mildenhall: They're kind of the two places that you could do it.
24:06
Kate Mildenhall: And of course, as he quite rightly said, you can do whatever you want.
24:10
Kate Mildenhall: These are the kinds of shapes that a reader will expect.
24:15
Kate Mildenhall: And I remember Anna doing a similar thing with me at one point where I couldn't identify what was wrong with the pace of it.
24:22
Kate Mildenhall: I had all the characters, I had the, the space, I had all these things going on, but there was something that wasn't kind of working about it.
24:28
Kate Mildenhall: So working out where those kind of climactic scenes were and how each day was gonna finish and where the stakes were at each point was really important.
24:38
Madeleine Cleary (2): Because a lot of times as well, some of the thrillers are like the who done its as well.
24:42
Madeleine Cleary (2): But this is very much, you know, upfront who's done it and it's just that slow reveal, which is really cool.
24:48
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
24:50
Kate Mildenhall: And how is it going to resolve?
24:53
Kate Mildenhall: And I think, um, at one point my editor said it goes too fast.
24:58
Kate Mildenhall: You know, like there's, there's the, the pace is too fast.
25:01
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so trying to get it.
25:05
Kate Mildenhall: To work up towards the ending so that, you know, with only maybe 10, 15 pages to go, I don't know, you can tell me readers if this is how you felt.
25:13
Kate Mildenhall: Um, you're still not sure what's gonna happen.
25:17
Kate Mildenhall: And the other thing that I wanted you to feel is conflicted about what you wanted to happen.
25:24
Kate Mildenhall: Did you want them to get away with it?
25:27
Kate Mildenhall: I can see you laughing, Jack.
25:28
Kate Mildenhall: Like do you want them to be able to.
25:32
Kate Mildenhall: Pack up and roll on out of there and everything to be okay, or did you want them to get found out?
25:40
Kate Mildenhall: And that, I, I think that's a really interesting question.
25:43
Kate Mildenhall: That's the kind of question I like being asked as a, as a reader, I guess.
25:46
Madeleine Cleary (2): Mm.
25:47
Madeleine Cleary (2): And maybe.
25:48
Madeleine Cleary (2): 'cause we know that Jacob is not a good person.
25:50
Madeleine Cleary (2): We kind of assume that at the end.
25:53
Madeleine Cleary (2): It does help the things you go, oh, I kind of wish they got away with it at the end.
25:57
Madeleine Cleary (2): I dunno.
25:58
Madeleine Cleary (2): I don't know.
25:58
Madeleine Cleary (2): Maybe we are gonna open up questions very soon, so if you have some comments about this, we'd be very, very keen to hear your views and your thoughts.
26:06
Madeleine Cleary (2): Let's talk about the end.
26:07
Madeleine Cleary (2): 'cause you said that you always had that scene of the play at the end, and then obviously the.
26:12
Madeleine Cleary (2): End Stella uploads the video.
26:15
Madeleine Cleary (2): She's edited with all the hijinks from that weekend.
26:18
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, and like you said, I think when Stella uploaded that video, I was both cheering her on, but also going, why would you do that?
26:28
Madeleine Cleary (2): Like, just, oh.
26:30
Madeleine Cleary (2): So I think it's a, it's a mixture of both.
26:32
Madeleine Cleary (2): So why do you think she did it?
26:35
Kate Mildenhall: Right.
26:36
Kate Mildenhall: So it's a mixture of both.
26:37
Kate Mildenhall: And I think there are a couple of things.
26:40
Kate Mildenhall: The, the idea of cameras and surveillance, like in one part that's been something I've been interested in.
26:46
Kate Mildenhall: My other works as well.
26:47
Kate Mildenhall: But when I went to visit this property, um, at Cooper's Creek, the original property that it's, it's based on, and we were coming like down the mountain exactly as it's described in the book.
26:59
Kate Mildenhall: There were all these cameras in the trees and I was like.
27:03
Kate Mildenhall: That is so weird.
27:04
Kate Mildenhall: But also, oh yeah, well maybe people are doing dodgy things out here, you know, or, or whatever they've got'em for.
27:09
Kate Mildenhall: So I always had this idea of cameras and surveillance and then the deer hunter and I knew about trail cameras and all of those things.
27:14
Kate Mildenhall: So that, that kind of, um, that wasn't an idea at the start.
27:20
Kate Mildenhall: It was just bubbling along underneath.
27:22
Kate Mildenhall: I think stellar acts in a way that I can certainly recognize.
27:30
Kate Mildenhall: In 15-year-old, 16-year-old me, which is deeply principled, thinks she's absolutely right and justified and has no concept of thinking past the moment and what is the potential fallout of what she's about to do.
27:48
Kate Mildenhall: So with that kind of, you know, huge rush of, of fury or indignance or self-righteousness that.
27:57
Kate Mildenhall: One can get, I, I imagine at any age, but particularly in those teen years that she just goes with it.
28:03
Kate Mildenhall: I will make you all pay and I will show you what incredible hypocrites you are.
28:10
Kate Mildenhall: Um, I, the actual, when I say I always had the ending, I knew that, that were gonna put on a concert.
28:16
Kate Mildenhall: Because that was a big part of my growing up and a big part of, you know, the camping thing of the kids doing their show and all the adults sitting around and not wanting to watch anymore, but they have to.
28:26
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but it was when I was at Varuna at the end of 2024, um, and I had this most magnificent crew there, including, um, Chris Ne and, um, their husband, Anthony Mullins, who's a screenwriter, um, and also Laura Elvey.
28:42
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and it was there that we were talking about, um, Hamlet and Shakespeare and the idea of a play within a play.
28:49
Kate Mildenhall: All of these kinds of ideas and of, um, how a play within a play might reveal the murderer, et cetera.
28:56
Kate Mildenhall: And I said, oh, I couldn't possibly do it like that though.
28:59
Kate Mildenhall: I couldn't do the play within a play.
29:01
Kate Mildenhall: And lo I can remember Laura saying, why not?
29:03
Kate Mildenhall: So I had.
29:05
Kate Mildenhall: Originally it was just the uploading of the kind of, um, look at what we made to celebrate that we were away this weekend.
29:11
Kate Mildenhall: But then I turned it into this idea of the, the play.
29:15
Madeleine Cleary (2): And I love it.
29:15
Madeleine Cleary (2): 'cause at the start everyone's laughing and thinking how, how, what great parents we are like, look at these children, look what they're performing.
29:22
Madeleine Cleary (2): It's so great.
29:23
Madeleine Cleary (2): And then as it just, it's, it's a masterful what Stella did.
29:26
Madeleine Cleary (2): It is, regardless of whether she should have done it or not,
29:28
Kate Mildenhall: yeah.
29:29
Kate Mildenhall: And.
29:30
Kate Mildenhall: And the joy in writing that too.
29:32
Kate Mildenhall: And that took a lot of editing to get right.
29:35
Kate Mildenhall: Um, originally I wrote the whole thing as it was kind of coming outta my brain.
29:39
Kate Mildenhall: I wrote it all from Stella's perspective.
29:41
Kate Mildenhall: But once I understood what the novel was gonna look like, I knew that it had to rotate through the perspectives, but also what a gift that was.
29:49
Kate Mildenhall: Because each character understands what's happening at a different point in time as well.
29:55
Kate Mildenhall: It's a cascade exactly like the cascade of disaster has happened to them.
29:59
Kate Mildenhall: But then there's kind of like this, I don't know what you would call it, like almost, I, I think of it as three endings.
30:06
Kate Mildenhall: So there's the end of the play, um, and then there's the, the killing of the deer, and then there's the general store.
30:15
Kate Mildenhall: So it was like these three endings, and that's a risky move to pull off.
30:18
Kate Mildenhall: And my publisher didn't necessarily want that, but I knew that I.
30:23
Kate Mildenhall: Again with this idea that I never wanted to satirize friendship itself, and I wanted to see, and I hope that this is what comes across that in the end, in that little tableau session section where they all kind of, when they realize that, um, Aiden's gonna kill the deer, they all leap in front of each other.
30:43
Kate Mildenhall: That was really important.
30:44
Kate Mildenhall: And I fought really hard for that because that was the bit where I was like.
30:49
Kate Mildenhall: They've done these terrible things.
30:51
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but in the end, this is how they will go down together kind of idea.
30:56
Kate Mildenhall: Um, so yeah, so it was like having these little kind of resolutions within the thing.
31:00
Kate Mildenhall: 'cause that I also wanted Wendy Incel to be going like, well, we could have told you that something like this would happen when these blow ins come into town.
31:09
Kate Mildenhall: You know, so like, just to have those three little bits.
31:13
Madeleine Cleary (2): It's perfect.
31:14
Madeleine Cleary (2): It was a perfect ending, um, to a wonderful book.
31:17
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, we are going to now open up to you if you've got any questions you would like to ask Kate and while you are warming up your brains, um, and feel free to ha come off mute or pop it in the chat if you'd prefer.
31:31
Madeleine Cleary (2): I'm gonna ask Kate one of our pre-submitted questions.
31:35
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um, so we've got a few actually.
31:37
Madeleine Cleary (2): Um.
31:38
Madeleine Cleary (2): So we might have actually answered this, but when you set out to write the book, did you know how it would end?
31:43
Madeleine Cleary (2): So I think you've answered that bit.
31:44
Madeleine Cleary (2): And how many people can, did you do a count?
31:47
Madeleine Cleary (2): How many people died before you landed on a final draft?
31:50
Madeleine Cleary (2): Kate?
31:51
Kate Mildenhall: Um, yeah, lots in, lots in different situations.
31:55
Kate Mildenhall: The other thing, so yeah, so Aiden died at one.
31:57
Kate Mildenhall: Point, um, because he was also shot.
32:00
Kate Mildenhall: There was also these IES in it for a long time and a shipping container.
32:04
Kate Mildenhall: Um, which, yeah, so, so that was my original thing.
32:09
Kate Mildenhall: There was this whisper when I went to visit the property, the original property, Cooper's Creek, there was this whisper of.
32:15
Kate Mildenhall: Bike is being involved and you know, you never wanna research too deeply with biking just in cases.
32:21
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but, uh, I did a little bit of talking around the place and, and realized that yeah, sometimes these big rural properties.
32:31
Kate Mildenhall: That's where Bies put their stuff in shipping containers, um, and maybe they grow their weed or various other things that they have.
32:39
Kate Mildenhall: And so for a long time, um, it was bies who were on the fence line or, you know, there was a shipping container that hadn't been moved when the property sold.
32:47
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and the key scene, and one of the first scenes that I wrote was that Josie, um.
32:53
Kate Mildenhall: Goes to plant the Acacia and she finds the shipping container and she's trying to look inside and she drops her phone inside and can't get it out.
33:02
Kate Mildenhall: And you know, so there's sometimes scenes where you write them and you're like, that's ace.
33:09
Kate Mildenhall: I feel stressed.
33:11
Kate Mildenhall: My characters are stressed.
33:12
Kate Mildenhall: This is a high stake situation, even though it's kind of not, but it really is like I am deeply stressed about this phone being in the shipping container.
33:19
Kate Mildenhall: And then as you move things along it, it doesn't work anymore.
33:23
Kate Mildenhall: And it's a really, it can be really hard to get rid.
33:26
Kate Mildenhall: This is the classic, kill your darlings.
33:29
Kate Mildenhall: You know?
33:29
Kate Mildenhall: It can be really hard to get rid of scenes.
33:32
Kate Mildenhall: Feel like they were integral to the draft.
33:35
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but yeah, the bies, the bies didn't made it make it, so some of them died at one point.
33:41
Kate Mildenhall: At one point, like I, I've just seen in my journal, I had, does one of the kids die?
33:45
Kate Mildenhall: And very quickly I said, no, that's not what happens.
33:49
Kate Mildenhall: Um, I couldn't
33:49
Madeleine Cleary (2): Actually, when I was doing my second read through, you do.
33:54
Madeleine Cleary (2): Set it up that something will happen to a kid as well.
33:57
Madeleine Cleary (2): And I think the reader is constantly anxious when Eden goes
34:01
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
34:01
Kate Mildenhall: And that when Eden goes missing, and, and that's, that's kind of a catalyst for lots of things too.
34:07
Kate Mildenhall: Um, because that's where Stella really loses her shit too, because, you know, she's like, I shouldn't be the one who's has to look after the kids.
34:17
Kate Mildenhall: Um, so.
34:18
Kate Mildenhall: That was important, but I wanted that constant kind of threat to be there all the time.
34:23
Kate Mildenhall: Um, yeah.
34:24
Kate Mildenhall: So lots and lots of people died and, and I think maybe I, I've said this before, people might have heard me say that it was Hay Scribner who's who, when I said, how do you decide who to kill though?
34:32
Kate Mildenhall: Hay?
34:33
Kate Mildenhall: Like, that's so stressful.
34:34
Kate Mildenhall: And she said, you kill whoever, excuse my language, whoever the fuck you want.
34:38
Kate Mildenhall: And I was like, okay, that's fine.
34:40
Kate Mildenhall: Then I don't have to ethically.
34:42
Kate Mildenhall: Come to this point where I know that this is the right person to kill.
34:46
Kate Mildenhall: You know?
34:46
Kate Mildenhall: You can just kill whoever you want in fiction.
34:48
Madeleine Cleary (2): was, at least Jacob was a bad person, so it probably made him easier killing him.
34:52
Kate Mildenhall: Exactly.
34:53
Speaker 5: It, it was, it was,
34:55
Madeleine Cleary (2): do we have any questions?
34:58
Kate Mildenhall (2): Oh, there's Mark putting his hand up.
34:59
Kate Mildenhall (2): Hi Mark.
35:01
Madeleine Cleary (2): hi, mark.
35:03
Speaker 2: You know how much I love this, book.
35:05
Speaker 2: The, the thing I was really fascinated by,'cause you've got, um, multiple perspectives, quite a few characters to juggle.
35:12
Speaker 2: They've all got very different ideas.
35:14
Speaker 2: They're all kind of, um, complete, when they, they also tend to go on these kind of like internal monologues where they're talking about their viewpoint and they're very funny and stuff like that.
35:26
Speaker 2: Were you starting with, okay, I've got all these, I'm gonna have the, these archetypes, and suddenly here's the event and then kind of let them build their character through that, or with these rants kind of almost part of your character development, when you were writing it in the beginning.
35:42
Speaker 2: If, if that makes sense.
35:44
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah, it's a really good question.
35:46
Kate Mildenhall: Um, a lot of the rants, the internal stuff came out fully formed, um, but at different points was assigned to different characters.
35:58
Kate Mildenhall: So, yeah, the archetype of the characters didn't come first.
36:00
Kate Mildenhall: The other thing that was really interesting about this is that I wrote a lot of the conversations or the fights, especially the ones that happened around the campfire and there were lots more of them.
36:11
Kate Mildenhall: I wrote those pretty early on, um, without attributes sometimes so without dialogue tags.
36:18
Kate Mildenhall: So I would be writing them and know the gist of the argument.
36:23
Kate Mildenhall: And the gist of the different viewpoints, but not necessarily who was saying them.
36:28
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and so then that was part of the editing and a really hard part to get voices, right?
36:32
Kate Mildenhall: Because one, I remember one of the bits of feedback at one point was, um, sometimes in those bigger ensemble scenes, we lose whose point of view we're in because there's so much dialogue and you're not getting the point of view of the character.
36:46
Kate Mildenhall: So that, I had to work really carefully on that.
36:49
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah, so, so actually one of the things I would do is go, okay, well, I want them to talk about, um, you know, Marnie's political campaign.
37:00
Kate Mildenhall: What are all the possible opinions people are gonna have on this?
37:04
Kate Mildenhall: And then I would kind of stretch out from there.
37:06
Kate Mildenhall: So yeah, at different points.
37:07
Kate Mildenhall: And because originally there was like 17 adults, um, which was too many.
37:13
Kate Mildenhall: To have, even though that's how many I camp with, and I know that to be true of life.
37:18
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, like in many things, when you're writing a novel, um, it can't, it like with dialogue, it can't actually realistically represent life.
37:27
Kate Mildenhall: You, you're doing it in the novel form.
37:29
Kate Mildenhall: Um, I should say too, when like, I, I haven't said this enough and Mark, I didn't know necessarily Mark was gonna be here, mark.
37:37
Kate Mildenhall: Who was an extraordinary writer who wrote The Wolf, who Cried Boy, uh, was um, which is one of my books of the year, um, was also such.
37:46
Kate Mildenhall: A very particular joy, um, and, and insight giver in the drafting process for this and differently to what I may have done before is now I choose really carefully who I'm gonna get to do reads for me, and it's for really specific purposes.
38:04
Kate Mildenhall: So the fact that Mark and Haley both agreed to do it, I was looking for people who understood the genre.
38:10
Kate Mildenhall: Um, particularly Mark's screenwriting background as well.
38:13
Kate Mildenhall: So those were, so, I, I just wanna Yeah, just acknowledge that Mark, how influential you were, uh, in, in helping this book get to its final place.
38:25
Madeleine Cleary (2): Oh, and I'm just gonna echo that as well.
38:28
Madeleine Cleary (2): I was completely stuck in my book two or book three planning, and I had a beer with Mark and then suddenly, like it was all clear again, and Mark just asks very simple questions.
38:38
Madeleine Cleary (2): So maybe Mark, you need to set up some kind of service or something for writers who are,
38:43
Kate Mildenhall: Yes.
38:44
Kate Mildenhall: A beer with Mark.
38:46
Kate Mildenhall: That's what it is.
38:47
Kate Mildenhall: And I think it's the asking of questions.
38:49
Speaker 2: But it also relies on the fact that I, I loved your stuff.
38:53
Speaker 2: You know, like, it, it has to be stuff that I enjoyed because they're both, um, beautiful books.
39:00
Madeleine Cleary (2): I can also echo that.
39:01
Madeleine Cleary (2): The Wolf of Cried Poise.
39:02
Madeleine Cleary (2): My, one of my, I think it is my top book for this year.
39:05
Madeleine Cleary (2): I reckon, oh, I should say, I shouldn't say that.
39:07
Madeleine Cleary (2): While we're talking about the Hiding Place,
39:08
Kate Mildenhall (2): that's okay.
39:08
Kate Mildenhall (2): No, we share around.
39:10
Madeleine Cleary (2): No, they're both amazing books.
39:12
Madeleine Cleary (2): We haven't talked about mushroom lady, actually, Kate, I think one of the questions that we got was about.
39:17
Madeleine Cleary (2): Given the release of the the mushroom tapes around the same time as this book, what's been the reader response to that?
39:24
Madeleine Cleary (2): And that's a really interesting question.
39:26
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
39:27
Kate Mildenhall: So I was, I was, um, super nervous once I knew I had the death caps and when all that went and point, I think I even said to my publisher, is this in bad taste?
39:38
Kate Mildenhall: Should I take out the, the death caps?
39:40
Kate Mildenhall: Like, this is quite a thing.
39:42
Kate Mildenhall: And I think even it wasn't, you know, it was already a big thing, but until the court case, it wasn't really apparent kind of.
39:49
Kate Mildenhall: How big it was.
39:50
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and uh, I decided that I was gonna leave them in.
39:56
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but I did decline to write about it.
39:59
Kate Mildenhall: You know, sometimes Madeline, mark, you'll know this too, Jack, you'll get to know this, um, that your publisher will ask you to write adjacent media articles about things for, you know, the Guardian or the monthly or whatever.
40:13
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I did say I will not write about.
40:17
Kate Mildenhall: Erin Patterson borough in relation to this.
40:19
Kate Mildenhall: And the other thing that I, at one point I had toyed with putting in the book was, was the idea of sovereign citizens.
40:25
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and that was another one where my publisher said, oh, do you wanna write on, you know, what's happened with Jessey Freeman?
40:32
Kate Mildenhall: And I said, no, absolutely, absolutely not.
40:35
Kate Mildenhall: I don't, because I think that this, you know, one of the important things to me was to.
40:41
Kate Mildenhall: Raise these, raise these issues which I care about.
40:44
Kate Mildenhall: You know, climate, emergency, property ownership, land rights, you know, um, feral animals, all these things that are important to me.
40:52
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but to hold it lightly this time and to not be, um, I don't feel like in my previous books I've ever been didactic, but a little bit less earnest is how I've been talking about it.
41:04
Kate Mildenhall: That to not kind of feel like I was, um.
41:08
Kate Mildenhall: Shifting in any way towards preachy.
41:11
Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and so thinking that I would have to kind of, um, go from that, satirical tone to seriously looking at something like the sovereign citizen movement and, and everything related to that was too much for me.
41:25
Kate Mildenhall: So, yeah, it's, I, I guess it's a fine line.
41:28
Kate Mildenhall: And there are other people, you know, and if you think about things like patruda advocate or the shovel who do it.
41:32
Kate Mildenhall: So brilliantly, and they can take that kind of stuff and they can twist it and turn it.
41:37
Kate Mildenhall: Um, but they have far more skills than I do in that area.
41:41
Madeleine Cleary (2): No, I think that's, yeah, that makes sense.
41:43
Madeleine Cleary (2): And I mean, in the end, this book, it's a really fun ripper read as well.
41:49
Madeleine Cleary (2): Like it, it touches on lots of different issues that we haven't covered in this chat tonight.
41:54
Kate Mildenhall (2): I
41:54
Kate Mildenhall: love what we have covered though.
41:57
Kate Mildenhall: That's, it's also, it's like taking a deep breath when you can actually talk about all the bits in a book, because so often, you know, you kind of.
42:06
Kate Mildenhall: Stressed.
42:06
Kate Mildenhall: I know, mark, you'll have had this experience too, because there's reveals in your books that you're like waiting to see if you're accidentally gonna say something, or if the interviewer is accidentally gonna say something, or you're kind of talking around in these weird circles to be able to say like, yes.
42:22
Kate Mildenhall: So anyway, so I looked at exactly how I was gonna fall on the star picket and where the blood was gonna come out from.
42:27
Kate Mildenhall: Like that's, that's a joy, even though it makes me look a little bit crazy.
42:33
Madeleine Cleary (2): I would've loved to have seen your Google searches as well during the.
42:37
Kate Mildenhall: Well, the other, the other, the only thing that I really declined,'cause you know, Madeline, that I quite like, um, you know, getting my hands dirty, Kind of figuratively when I'm doing my research.
42:47
Kate Mildenhall: So I got on the yacht for the mother fault, or I went and visited the abattoir for the, for the, hummingbird Effect.
42:53
Kate Mildenhall: The only thing that I decided was a step too far for me was to do the Acacia DMT Hallucinogenics this time.
43:02
Kate Mildenhall: So that acacia, the hallucinogenic that comes from the acacia bark, specifically the raspberry wattle, if anyone needs to know this, that came to me from the woman who lives down the end of my street.
43:13
Kate Mildenhall: Who is a gen, molecular genetic, something to do with biology.
43:18
Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I said to her, I want someone in my book to grow a crop and I don't want to weed.
43:22
Kate Mildenhall: What should they grow?
43:23
Kate Mildenhall: And she said, have you heard about this stuff with Acacia?
43:26
Kate Mildenhall: And I was like, okay, I'll go down that rabbit hole.
43:28
Kate Mildenhall: And um, at various times I did kind of have meetings set up with different people.
43:33
Kate Mildenhall: And I was like, you know what?
43:34
Kate Mildenhall: I don't need in the middle of writing this book to just have a massive kind of hallucinogenic trip and go off my head and not be able to get back to what's really important here.
43:44
Madeleine Cleary (2): It, it might've been a very different book,
43:46
Kate Mildenhall: It could've been
43:46
Kate Mildenhall (2): a very Exactly, exactly.
43:49
Madeleine Cleary (2): Are you going camping this summer, Kate?
43:53
Kate Mildenhall (2): Yes,
43:54
Kate Mildenhall: in only two weeks.
43:55
Kate Mildenhall: And I, I, you know, no one has put in the chat that, um, I'm not invited.
44:00
Kate Mildenhall: I was gonna get various t-shirts, ma, you know, people within the gang have made jokes about whether we should get, you know, I'm not Phil t-shirts made or anything like that, but we're going to, um.
44:14
Kate Mildenhall: We're going to not do that.
44:16
Kate Mildenhall: I think it will be really amusing'cause we camp at, at quite a big camping ground.
44:19
Kate Mildenhall: I, I think it will be very amusing if anyone else is reading the book there, that, that will be funny.
44:24
Madeleine Cleary (2): That would be amazing.
44:25
Madeleine Cleary (2): I feel like there's gonna be so many jokes throughout your entire.
44:28
Madeleine Cleary (2): Trip
44:30
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
44:31
Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
44:31
Kate Mildenhall: I, yeah, I, and I mean, I've, I have brought it on myself.
44:36
Madeleine Cleary (2): Thank you so much, Kate.
44:38
Madeleine Cleary (2): Thanks so much for joining us
44:39
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44:42
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