Latest / The Two Authors’ Podcast / Property as Protagonists with Louise Candlish

Transcript

Property as Protagonists with Louise Candlish · The Two Authors’ Podcast

• 0:00
  All right, Doug, what's the first book that made you cry?
• 0:02
  Oh, shoot.
• 0:03
  Um, I do not know.
• 0:06
  Mine was the dictionary.
• 0:07
  My dad hit me with it.
• 0:13
  Oh my gosh.
• 0:17
  Welcome to the Two Orphers podcast, an entertaining chat show
• 0:21
  hosted by bestselling mystery and thriller authors Douglas Pratt
• 0:25
  and Nicholas Harvey in lively, humorous and informative conversation with distinguished
• 0:31
  guests who share their thoughts and experience about forging a successful author career.
• 0:39
  Hello.
• 0:41
  Hello.
• 0:42
  To the two authors podcast with myself, Nicholas Charles Harvey and Douglas Peterson Franklin
• 0:51
  Bobby Joe Pratt.
• 0:54
  I'm Joe.
• 0:56
  I don't know.
• 0:57
  I feel like I'm Taliban nights now.
• 0:59
  Yeah.
• 1:00
  What are your middle names?
• 1:01
  I don't know this.
• 1:02
  My middle name is Douglas.
• 1:03
  Oh, that's right.
• 1:04
  It is.
• 1:04
  My first name is Jeffrey.
• 1:05
  So that's right.
• 1:06
  Jeffrey Douglas.
• 1:07
  I always forget that.
• 1:08
  Yeah.
• 1:09
  He's coming about a bank account one time.
• 1:11
  Your middle name is Charles?
• 1:12
  It is.
• 1:13
  Chuck.
• 1:13
  I didn't know that either.
• 1:15
  Look at that.
• 1:15
  Yeah.
• 1:15
  40 years of doing this.
• 1:19
  Then we just learned something.
• 1:20
  We are so great about interviewing other people, but we don't even know each other
• 1:24
  - Yeah, no.
• 1:26
  - Big thank you to our supporters of Vellum.
• 1:27
  Thank you so much for supporting the show.
• 1:30
  - You know what Vellum's middle name is?
• 1:33
  (laughing)
• 1:35
  - It's Vellum Vellum.
• 1:36
  - Fantabulous.
• 1:37
  - That's true.
• 1:38
  - Fantabulous.
• 1:38
  - Vellum, fabulous Vellum.
• 1:41
  Many people now are writing in Vellum.
• 1:44
  - Absolutely, yeah.
• 1:44
  - Absolutely, right in Vellum.
• 1:46
  And when you think about it,
• 1:48
  why not?
• 1:49
  - Right, something.
• 1:49
  - Got the spell checker in there, right?
• 1:51
  It exports to Word, so you just export it into Word
• 1:53
  and send it off to the editor and then import it back in again.
• 1:56
  So it's actually a really good writing tool for building a manuscript in.
• 2:03
  And then it's one less place you're housing them along the way.
• 2:06
  I do one, two, three.
• 2:08
  I have three places my manuscripts actually, location, software they go through.
• 2:12
  So scrivna, word, and then vellum.
• 2:14
  So it cuts out one of them.
• 2:16
  And then EPUB, if you, once you transfer it over, then you've got it in EPUB too.
• 2:19
  So you've got that in a PDF, you're going to have it all over the place.
• 2:22
  Lots of things to do, but no, that's pretty awesome.
• 2:24
  Yeah, I would like to I wouldn't mind writing in William.
• 2:26
  I just I don't have a Mac laptop.
• 2:29
  So I don't have it on my laptop.
• 2:31
  I have it on my desktop.
• 2:32
  So yeah, I could it's it's yeah, it just doesn't have some of the stuff that Scrivener has.
• 2:38
  Although Scrivener is clunky as hell to use to be honest.
• 2:41
  I can be honest with you.
• 2:42
  I can't room.
• 2:43
  I don't even know half the time I'm like, I don't know how to fix this in Scrivener.
• 2:46
  And I have to do a massive search or ask somebody who's a Scrivener genius.
• 2:51
  And I don't know that many square root pieces.
• 2:53
  It's a cool tool, but it's a wee bit clunky.
• 2:55
  And there goes their sponsorship of the show.
• 2:57
  [LAUGHTER]
• 3:00
  We both use them.
• 3:01
  I'm not knocking them.
• 3:02
  I love square root.
• 3:02
  I think it's great.
• 3:04
  Sometimes I'm like, I don't understand
• 3:05
  why I have to do it this way.
• 3:06
  It's got so many features.
• 3:09
  There we go.
• 3:09
  Big thank you to our Patreon supporters.
• 3:12
  Thank you so much, guys.
• 3:13
  We're accumulating a huge bank of cool extra stuff in there.
• 3:17
  Every year, I guess we have on the show,
• 3:19
  So it does an extra question that we drop in the Patreon there.
• 3:21
  So if you want to get on the building and be part of that, it's a very small subscription.
• 3:27
  It's $3 a month.
• 3:28
  That's it.
• 3:28
  $3 a month.
• 3:29
  Not a show a month.
• 3:30
  That's it, people, and you get plenty of extra stuff.
• 3:33
  So it's good fun.
• 3:34
  Go over there.
• 3:35
  Check it out at Patreon.com.
• 3:37
  Our guest today is the marvelous Louise Gantlisch, who's a huge bass seller over in the UK.
• 3:44
  She's a major force here in the US as well.
• 3:47
  She has several books up and made into TV shows back in the UK.
• 3:52
  And we're looking forward to chatting with her.
• 3:54
  But first, we have a listening question from our recent guest, JT Ellison.
• 3:59
  Welcome again, JT Ellison.
• 4:01
  Thanks for coming back and just asking us our listener question this week.
• 4:05
  It's been great.
• 4:06
  Well, I'm not going to ask you where you get your ideas.
• 4:08
  Okay.
• 4:10
  I'm going to ask you.
• 4:11
  Most of the time, they come off of bathroom walls.
• 4:13
  So, sister.
• 4:15
  1-900, call Doug.
• 4:18
  (laughing)
• 4:23
  - I get mine from a sub-stack called the creative edge.
• 4:26
  - No, excellent, well done.
• 4:29
  So my question is, if you could only read one book
• 4:34
  for the rest of your life, what would it be?
• 4:36
  - Oh, shit.
• 4:37
  Oh, that's a really good question.
• 4:39
  - Oh, wow.
• 4:41
  - That's a good question right there.
• 4:42
  Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
• 4:45
  - Oh, now that's an excellent book.
• 4:47
  That made me cry.
• 4:48
  That's like the first book I think that ever made me cry.
• 4:51
  - Ah, I'm gonna go with the Mark Twain
• 4:53
  and probably pick Huckleberry Finn,
• 4:55
  but 'cause it's got a little bit of good moments
• 4:57
  and not all down, not all up,
• 5:01
  but that's a good question 'cause I'm not sure.
• 5:03
  There's a lot.
• 5:04
  I was like, I ran through a whole list.
• 5:05
  I'm like, yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna read
• 5:07
  that more than four times, so.
• 5:08
  - Yeah, yeah.
• 5:09
  Okay, JT, what do you got?
• 5:11
  What's yours?
• 5:12
  - Fourth wing.
• 5:13
  I'm gonna just wanna escape.
• 5:15
  I want to, if I'm stuck reading something over and over again, I want, I want a big set piece,
• 5:20
  which that has, it has a good romance, it has a good lesson, it's got a bunch of reversals
• 5:26
  in it and love and death and all kinds of stuff.
• 5:29
  I'm a huge Romantic fan right now.
• 5:31
  It's really fun.
• 5:32
  Oh, cool, cool, cool, cool.
• 5:34
  All right, Doug, what's the first book that made you cry?
• 5:36
  Oh, shoot.
• 5:38
  I do not know.
• 5:40
  Mine was the dictionary.
• 5:42
  My dad hit me with it.
• 5:46
  (laughing)
• 5:47
  - Oh my gosh.
• 5:51
  - Wow, we teed that one up.
• 5:53
  - You did, you did.
• 5:55
  That was nice.
• 5:56
  - I ain't scared to swing if you're gonna tear that.
• 5:59
  All right, JT, thank you very much.
• 6:02
  I'm sure you're regretting it at this point,
• 6:03
  but thank you very much for coming back
• 6:05
  with a list of the question, we appreciate it.
• 6:07
  - Oh, no, this has been great.
• 6:12
  Louise, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you?
• 6:16
  I'm really well. Thank you. It's a bit sticky in South London where I am right
• 6:20
  now, but otherwise good.
• 6:22
  Define sticky.
• 6:25
  Yeah.
• 6:25
  We should get you over here in 10c.
• 6:27
  I live in the tropics, so give us your sticky ocean.
• 6:31
  Okay. Sticky is when you don't have aircon.
• 6:34
  Yeah.
• 6:34
  That's all I need to say. There's no aircon in London or very little and
• 6:39
  Definitely not in houses. So, you know, you're just walking around all sweaty. So it's really horrible
• 6:45
  But actually the temperature, you know, the outside temperatures probably, you know, you guys would would snare it
• 6:51
  It's near it such a low a low number, but for us, it's terrible
• 6:55
  That's what people don't kind of get about the UK and we were over at a conference in London a couple of months ago
• 7:01
  And then we were there between the two big heat waves
• 7:05
  I was there in the heat
• 7:07
  Yeah, I stayed and everybody was like miserable for that little bit or like I mean they were like oh, it's so hot
• 7:13
  Yeah
• 7:16
  Definitely about the air con. I think that you know
• 7:18
  It's absolutely fine if you know you can escape it
• 7:22
  But it's when there's no escape at night and you can't sleep but you know, it's it's you know, it's not too bad
• 7:27
  It's that we're coming out of it now. I think do they not have window units in the UK
• 7:33
  I'll say, "Man, we need to, oh, we should be starting shipping those over there, Nick.
• 7:36
  We can make a fortune."
• 7:37
  Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 7:39
  No, there's none of that.
• 7:40
  Bizarrely, some of the train lines and buses, you will get some nice cool air, but not so
• 7:47
  much in buildings.
• 7:48
  Yeah, those portable AC units are brilliant, where you just run the duct to the window.
• 7:53
  They work really well.
• 7:54
  So if you find any of those over there, that would be the thing to start importing that
• 7:57
  dog.
• 7:58
  Oh, that's a good tip.
• 7:59
  Yeah, thank you, because I think this is going to happen again.
• 8:02
  I don't think this is going to be the last hot summer.
• 8:04
  Yeah.
• 8:05
  It's going to keep getting hotter, unfortunately, the way we're going.
• 8:08
  So yeah, it's just great.
• 8:09
  Candlesh Industries will go like holistic, make millions,
• 8:13
  importing portable aircon into.
• 8:15
  Hey, that is not that hard.
• 8:17
  I mean, don't joke.
• 8:18
  This time next year, there'll be no book to discuss.
• 8:21
  There'll be a billion dollar business.
• 8:25
  And in fact, at this point, we'll just thank you for coming on the show
• 8:27
  and talking about English weather, which is what we'll do.
• 8:30
  And that was it, folks.
• 8:31
  All right, everybody tune out right there.
• 8:33
  It's perfect.
• 8:34
  We wouldn't be English if we didn't talk about the weather.
• 8:36
  All right, let's talk about some books, Louise.
• 8:39
  So give us a little bit of background
• 8:40
  on how you got started in writing
• 8:41
  and when you were first published.
• 8:43
  - Well, I was first published.
• 8:44
  I was in my early 30s and I had just gone traveling.
• 8:48
  I'd taken a sabbatical.
• 8:49
  I was a copywriter and advertising copywriter
• 8:52
  and needed a break.
• 8:54
  So I took a couple of months off and went to Sicily.
• 8:57
  And no sooner had I been on my own for, you know,
• 9:00
  day or two than, you know, I was bored because I was just so used to working. So I started
• 9:06
  writing a novel and I wrote a kind of, you know, very slim first draft in the couple
• 9:12
  of months that I was away, set in Sicily. So it was very inspired by the traveling
• 9:18
  odyssey that I was on. And when I came back, I typed it up, I made it a bit longer and
• 9:24
  then I sent it to Agents and that was published, that book, that was my first book. So it was,
• 9:30
  It couldn't have been easier.
• 9:32
  I was going to say, that's like it.
• 9:34
  It's not the usual.
• 9:35
  That's what you'll find.
• 9:37
  I know.
• 9:40
  Just look around, feel inspired.
• 9:43
  But I will say though that when it came out, it was, you know,
• 9:46
  a baptism of fire because the editor who had acquired the book
• 9:50
  and, you know, had this fairy tale start,
• 9:52
  she was fired a couple of weeks after she made the acquisition.
• 9:56
  And, you know, I wouldn't say that the team were quite so enthused about it and it bombed
• 10:01
  and it was quite upsetting.
• 10:03
  And then when that book deal ended, they didn't want to renew it.
• 10:07
  So it kind of, it's, it's felt like it started like a dream.
• 10:11
  But quite quickly, you know, I was back down to earth with a bump.
• 10:14
  And, you know, since then I've had such a roller coaster of a career that, you know,
• 10:18
  I'm actually quite grateful for that start because it made me realize that you just cannot
• 10:22
  believe the dream.
• 10:24
  You are only as good as your last book and your last sales figures and your last reviews
• 10:29
  and you just cannot be believing your own publicity.
• 10:32
  There is no sitting back on your laurels after you.
• 10:34
  No.
• 10:35
  You've got to keep working.
• 10:36
  Yeah, I mean it's disappointing because I would have loved to be resting on my laurels
• 10:40
  by now.
• 10:40
  That would be nice.
• 10:42
  It would be fabulous.
• 10:43
  I think I'd be really good at resting on my laurels as well.
• 10:47
  I think resting on my laurels is what I was called to do.
• 10:50
  I think that was like, you know, God put me in this sort of feeling.
• 10:52
  I think I'm just gonna let him rest on his laurels.
• 10:54
  - Absolutely. - He just didn't give me enough
• 10:56
  laurels to really rest on, so that was part of my problem.
• 10:58
  - I can't find my laurels. - We need it on our gravestones.
• 11:01
  - You can't find your laurels?
• 11:02
  - Yeah, who stole my laurels?
• 11:04
  I have no laurels.
• 11:05
  - That's the problem for all of us.
• 11:07
  Where are the laurels?
• 11:09
  - Where are the laurels?
• 11:10
  - That's a t-shirt.
• 11:11
  Every show we come up with a new t-shirt.
• 11:13
  - No, we gotta... - All right, all right.
• 11:15
  So, a neighbor's guide to murder is your new release,
• 11:19
  which is not a new release in the UK.
• 11:21
  about a year ago to great success. But it is a new release in the US, just came out in July,
• 11:27
  I believe. So first of all, why the long gap? They have to translate it. They have to translate it.
• 11:33
  Oh, they have to translate it. Yeah, that long Americanization process.
• 11:39
  Take all the views out. It's not uncommon for me, actually, and I think a lot of writers,
• 11:45
  if you don't have an established relationship with an American publisher, then you're likely
• 11:51
  to have a staggered publication. So I think we were still submitting the book to US publishers
• 11:58
  when, I'm trying to remember the timeline actually because you know there've been so many books and
• 12:02
  so many publishers but I think we were still submitting it when the book was already edited
• 12:07
  and finished and about to come out in the UK. So inevitably there was going to be at least a year's
• 12:12
  lag and you know I was really pleased to get a new publisher in Grand Central and we did a new
• 12:18
  edit actually. And what I'm learning with my books is because they have quite a lot of social
• 12:23
  commentary, a little bit of politics in there. There's different sensibilities in the US. So,
• 12:29
  you know, a few, a few bits had to be cut. Actually, it was a really fantastic edit. My US
• 12:35
  edited a fantastic editor. I was really pleased with it. So yeah, by the time it comes out,
• 12:39
  it's a year later, it's quite weird to be talking about a book for so long. I think that's the main
• 12:45
  thing because in that time I have done all sorts of other different projects.
• 12:49
  And so it's about kind of sustaining the enthusiasm really and just kind of keeping up to date
• 12:55
  with that original book.
• 12:57
  Because it's so, I mean I will forget characters names and I'll forget things.
• 13:00
  I would say does that mean forgetting things because I forget everything from my previous
• 13:04
  books.
• 13:05
  Yeah, no absolutely.
• 13:06
  I mean before doing something like this I will remind myself I'll do a little refresher
• 13:11
  update on what are the themes of this book.
• 13:14
  have people responded to? Because otherwise, my head is just filled with more recent projects.
• 13:19
  So that's the tricky thing. I think keeping it current in your own creative space.
• 13:25
  Right. Interesting. So is there anything you do different for or you think about differently
• 13:32
  when it's launched to the UK audience versus the US audience? Do you feel like you have
• 13:37
  to present things in a slightly different way to the two audiences?
• 13:40
  Well, I think as I'm so much better known in the UK, there's a lot of shorthand.
• 13:46
  Readers already know me, I'll do events and people will already have read my books and
• 13:49
  be familiar with my work.
• 13:51
  But in the US, I'm not well known, so I need to go back to basics and say, "This is the
• 13:56
  type of book I'm writing.
• 13:57
  These are the ingredients you'll find in my books."
• 14:00
  There's lots of them to dip into, should you like this one.
• 14:05
  I didn't have a book published in the US until our house, which was, I think, my 12th book,
• 14:10
  if I'm right.
• 14:11
  And so, you know, it was celebrated as a debut, a very accomplished debut, funnily enough,
• 14:17
  having, you know, 11 books worth of experience behind me.
• 14:21
  I kind of knew what I was doing, finally.
• 14:24
  It's much more about not presuming any knowledge of my work, whereas I can make that sort of
• 14:29
  assumption here in the UK.
• 14:31
  So then for our listeners who are meeting your neighbor's guide to murder fresh, why don't
• 14:35
  you give us a little setup like what pulls wind into her neighbor's lies and where does
• 14:39
  it start to go wrong?
• 14:40
  Absolutely.
• 14:41
  So it's domestic suspense and I'm known as a sort of queen of suburban noir here in the
• 14:47
  UK and generally there will be a beautiful property involved or you know an extremely
• 14:53
  powerful sort of domestic setting.
• 14:56
  So in this book there is a lovely building called Columbia Mansions, a mansion block
• 15:01
  of apartments.
• 15:02
  And our narrator Gwen lives in one of them and she lives alone or she has been living
• 15:07
  alone.
• 15:07
  She's 70 years old so she's an unusually older narrator for me.
• 15:11
  I'm normally dealing with middle-aged, middle-class people.
• 15:15
  And she develops this very unlikely age gap friendship with the lodger to her neighbour.
• 15:22
  And so this young lady's called Pixie.
• 15:24
  in her 20s and they just hit it off as friends do and all should be well.
• 15:31
  That should be the end of the story but of course this is a thriller and we discovered
• 15:36
  that Gwen has all kinds of things in her past, regrets, secrets, traumas that lead her to behave
• 15:45
  with Pixie in an unusual way and pretty soon she gets involved in Pixie's relationship with her
• 15:52
  Landlord Alec. Let's just say she sort of overreaches and before you know it a scandal has erupted in the building and then as the
• 16:00
  title suggests a murder takes place.
• 16:03
  It's well titled and themed on a
• 16:07
  You know the only what it's the only murders in the building. Yes. Yes. I've never actually seen that show
• 16:13
  But I was brilliant. Yeah, is it?
• 16:16
  Yeah, it seems like there are parallels. I mean, my books are quite dark, I would say.
• 16:21
  You know, there is humor, but they're fairly bleak sometimes in theme. So, you know, the theme,
• 16:28
  one of the main themes in this book is the practice of sex for rent, which is, you know,
• 16:33
  a kind of not as well known as it should be. But, you know, in these days of rental crisis in
• 16:39
  capital cities and big cities and the shortage of properties, you know, that sometimes there's more
• 16:44
  more than money, changing hands for young people to get a roof over their head.
• 16:49
  So that was kind of my starting point.
• 16:51
  But, you know, there's all kinds of other stuff in the mix as well.
• 16:55
  And now a quick word from this episode's sponsor.
• 16:57
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• 17:02
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• 17:07
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• 17:14
  Now we'll get back to the show.
• 17:16
  Okay, we'll come back to some of the crafty stuff that you touched on there in a bit.
• 17:21
  But let's talk about, you had, as you mentioned, Our House was what your 12th book, you had
• 17:26
  a whole run of books before that, but you were writing in a slightly different genre,
• 17:31
  right?
• 17:31
  There was a definite switch.
• 17:33
  So talk about that a little bit.
• 17:34
  They were relationship dramas, is that right to say?
• 17:37
  And I think it's the sudden departure of the phrases was maybe the first one that moved
• 17:41
  to the suspense?
• 17:43
  Yeah, or maybe, yeah, I mean, it's really, it's quite hard to talk about it because it
• 17:48
  wasn't deliberate.
• 17:49
  It wasn't a sort of conscious switching.
• 17:50
  If anything, it was a very gradual creep as darker elements started to find their way
• 17:57
  into my books.
• 17:59
  So I had a book, my fourth, was it my fourth book, possibly, or fifth book was called The
• 18:03
  Second Husband.
• 18:05
  And I would say that was pretty dark.
• 18:07
  And you know, I'm even talking about it now with TV people because it's very much in the
• 18:11
  sort of the mode of my more recent books that are being adapted. It's about a woman whose
• 18:19
  teenage daughter has a relationship with her new husband, so it's kind of got a
• 18:24
  lillita vibe, I suppose. And so I think those quite unsavory, dark elements have been there for
• 18:30
  much longer than people realise. But I think it was with a change of publisher, and I think,
• 18:35
  you know, listeners who are authors will recognise this, that sometimes it's when you change publisher
• 18:39
  that you are repositioned more formally in the market. And I think that's what happened
• 18:44
  with the sudden departure of the phrases. I had had books before that that were a bit
• 18:49
  darker. The Disappearance of Emily Ma, I would say, was one of them. But it wasn't
• 18:55
  till phrases that I think I was being positioned with reviewers and readers as someone who
• 19:00
  moved into the domestic noir sort of space. But from my point of view, I've never written
• 19:08
  consciously including any ingredients.
• 19:11
  I will always just write the story I want to write.
• 19:14
  And I've been really lucky that publishers have been
• 19:16
  quite flexible about that.
• 19:18
  It causes issues with branding and sort of getting
• 19:22
  a consistent brand look when one might be very hitch cocky
• 19:26
  and then the next one might be more like white lotus.
• 19:29
  But I do switch around a little bit and do what feels right
• 19:32
  for the story I want to tell.
• 19:34
  And interestingly, the US Publication of Neighbors Guide
• 19:38
  it's positioned it very much as something that could be a funny book. You know, it's
• 19:42
  got that kind of cartoony brand cover very much. I love. Yeah. And when you look at the
• 19:48
  British cover and I've just received in the post today, the Dutch edition, it's very dark.
• 19:54
  You know, the Dutch one's super dark, you know, it could be vertigo or psycho or something.
• 19:59
  And then the British ones more generic property led. And then the American cover is, you know,
• 20:06
  going to have some giggles with this. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, so it's interesting.
• 20:11
  The Dutch are kind of dark anyway. So, we're just over here just la la la.
• 20:20
  Well, this is it. I mean, you know, the editors and the marketers, they know their market. So,
• 20:24
  well, I would never, ever interfere with an overseas market, the British market,
• 20:29
  I obviously know quite well. But yeah, so it wasn't a conscious switch. But, you know,
• 20:34
  I found myself suddenly invited to crime events and festivals and I'm really pleased because
• 20:41
  before that I hadn't done any events.
• 20:43
  There wasn't really a community that I was a part of.
• 20:46
  And so for all kinds of reasons, it's not least sales.
• 20:50
  It's been really good for me to go over to the dark side.
• 20:54
  I mean, obviously this repositioning, often people will talk about this genre change.
• 20:58
  You might leave your existing readers behind, but did you lose any of your previous audience
• 21:04
  any of this repositioning that you went through in genres or do you think that now that you've added
• 21:09
  the crime events that might have actually brought in more? I think that I think I've brought quite a
• 21:13
  few with me and interestingly you know on my social media I'll do a lot of you know on this day in
• 21:20
  you know 2008 or 2013 and you know this was the book that came out to to introduce new readers
• 21:26
  to my backlist because you know one of the things I've found with having had quite a long career
• 21:32
  is that you're always being propelled forwards. You're always talking about your current book
• 21:37
  or your next book. It's always about the next deal, how we're going to improve and
• 21:43
  smash new targets next time. And you never, ever look back. And so this year, I've actually taken
• 21:49
  a year off writing a book. And I'm focusing on TV projects, but I'm also focusing on my backlist
• 21:55
  and just always trying to reflect on everything I've achieved and bring some of those older books
• 22:01
  to audiences. And you know, my big thing is that I just would never want anyone to be misled.
• 22:06
  So if I say to someone, there's a reissue or there's a ebook deal on my first book, I'll always
• 22:11
  give a little bit of background, but of context, don't expect a twist. Don't expect a murder. This
• 22:17
  is just a fun romp. You know, you could read it on your son, Lange by the pool. And so it's really
• 22:23
  just about repositioning some of those older books. I've enjoyed that process of kind of almost
• 22:28
  taking control of my own backlist. I think a lot of times people forget about those backlists.
• 22:33
  We have those books out there and you probably want to keep selling them to keep making money off
• 22:37
  of what you've already done. So I think that's an important thing to consider is how to handle
• 22:43
  and manage your backlist. I think so and you need time because we're also time poor. We're all
• 22:48
  expected to do so much to help promote the current release. And there isn't that much time, but
• 22:58
  done that and it's, you know, I would really recommend it to other authors. It's really
• 23:02
  satisfying to take, stop and think, hang on a minute, those books were really good. You
• 23:06
  know, no one is talking about them now. So why don't I? Because they're good reads.
• 23:12
  As indie authors and we're series writers, it's the model. I mean, we're always promoting
• 23:17
  Book One and the new release. And then the idea is you're pulling people into Book One
• 23:22
  and then they read through the series. That's how you, the only way we get to return on
• 23:26
  investment is marketing book one and getting the read through.
• 23:29
  So it's the same for you.
• 23:30
  You're just, instead of selling a series, you're selling a brand, you're selling you,
• 23:33
  you're selling the type of stories that you write.
• 23:36
  Yeah, that's so interesting.
• 23:37
  I mean, I've always wondered about a series because it is such a risk and it's a risk
• 23:41
  for a traditional publisher to take one on because if you don't get that fantastic start
• 23:48
  and that engine going, then it's hard to then persuade people to buy book two, book three,
• 23:54
  book four.
• 23:55
  But yeah, but once you do get people hooked, then that's wonderful.
• 23:59
  So a lot of our listeners, fellow authors, were always weighing this idea of a genre
• 24:04
  switch.
• 24:05
  Maybe I should try this over here.
• 24:06
  Maybe I should move over there.
• 24:08
  And Doug and I have both done it to a smaller extent to widen our audience.
• 24:13
  Looking back now, it wasn't a conscious decision necessarily to switch to that darker vibe.
• 24:19
  But looking back now, what advice would you have for other authors in doing a genre switch?
• 24:24
  What do you think of things they should keep in mind?
• 24:27
  Well, I think you need to get advice from your agent and your publisher.
• 24:31
  Because to be pragmatic, you need to figure out whether your publisher is going to support
• 24:37
  that switch and whether you might need to change publisher.
• 24:39
  I would imagine that an agent would support a switch because generally agents want you
• 24:44
  to write the story that you're passionate about.
• 24:47
  They know that that's the best story to go for, the one that you are so compelled to
• 24:53
  do.
• 24:54
  I think you just need to be prepared to make some changes and maybe step back a little
• 25:00
  bit on sales and start again.
• 25:03
  But ultimately, I just don't believe in sort of cynical writing.
• 25:06
  I believe in just writing the story that you want to tell at that time.
• 25:11
  And if it happens to be in a different genre, so be it.
• 25:13
  And you can always have another name.
• 25:15
  You can always use a pen name.
• 25:17
  There are authors out there with seven or eight different names, different genres.
• 25:23
  I think it's anything goes really.
• 25:26
  It all depends on what it is you're protecting
• 25:28
  in the first place.
• 25:28
  If you are a huge seller in one genre,
• 25:32
  you do need to weigh up what you might lose
• 25:35
  if you step away from that and start again
• 25:37
  because you're essentially only going to take
• 25:39
  a portion of those early readers with you.
• 25:42
  So I think you just have to hold your nerve,
• 25:45
  but I think that about almost everything in this game.
• 25:47
  I just think be, have the value your own work,
• 25:52
  even if others don't appear to, and then hold your nerve.
• 25:56
  But if you've weighed up what you've got to lose
• 25:57
  and you're perpetitating that risk, then go for it.
• 26:00
  - That's smart, smart decision making.
• 26:02
  It's good thinking about what your career is,
• 26:04
  that kind of thing.
• 26:05
  So let's talk a little bit about TV then,
• 26:08
  'cause you've got, our house has aired
• 26:10
  and you've got two more projects filming right now,
• 26:12
  I believe, and one in a development.
• 26:15
  - Yes, they both just wrapped actually by coincidence.
• 26:18
  I mean, we know how hard it is to get an adaptation,
• 26:21
  So it does feel very greedy to have two that happen to, you know, come get green lit at
• 26:26
  exactly the same time.
• 26:27
  I'm being greedy.
• 26:28
  Just be grateful.
• 26:30
  I am grateful.
• 26:31
  I am grateful.
• 26:31
  But yeah, so they were filmed at the same time and they wrapped about a week or two apart
• 26:37
  and now they're both in post-production and I'm hoping they'll both be on air by the end
• 26:41
  of the year but the transmission dates aren't confirmed yet.
• 26:45
  So one is the heights and that was actually one of my favorite of my books.
• 26:50
  came out in lockdown and did it come out? Yes, it came out in lockdown. Well, I wrote
• 26:54
  it in lockdown, I think, and it maybe came out just towards the end of that COVID period.
• 26:59
  So, you know, it was such a personal private time where we were all incarcerated and I,
• 27:04
  you know, the characters in this book were my friends. That's the one about a very unusual
• 27:09
  feud where a mum called Ellen takes an intense dislike to her teenage son's new best friend
• 27:17
  and this feud develops and tragedy strikes and Ellen is out for revenge.
• 27:22
  So Ellen is being played by Anna Freel, who I've seen,
• 27:26
  I've seen some early cuts of the Heights and Anna is extraordinary.
• 27:30
  There's an amazing cast actually in both shows.
• 27:33
  Both shows have a lot of new talent and I've surprised myself by being most excited about that.
• 27:40
  Just seeing these young actors, you know, sort of getting maybe their first big mainstream show
• 27:45
  or consolidating, you know, a couple of smaller roles.
• 27:50
  The actor who plays Lucas, who's Ellen's son, in the Heights,
• 27:55
  it's his first job, and he's phenomenal.
• 27:57
  So, yeah, it's been lovely, and it's been really busy.
• 28:00
  It kept me very busy because I've been very involved with the scripts.
• 28:04
  I've been sent all of the footage to watch and the early cuts.
• 28:07
  So it's taken up quite a lot of time, and yeah, it's been great.
• 28:11
  So for those of us who've not had a chance to have been optioned before or anything,
• 28:16
  so can you kind of walk us through what actually happens between the, hey, someone optioned
• 28:20
  it to, oh, it's on screen?
• 28:22
  Right, okay, well, that's a whole hour in its own right.
• 28:26
  But basically, it usually will be at least a year where a writer is being found and a
• 28:35
  writer is writing the treatment or the pitch and they're starting to talk with the person
• 28:41
  commissioners about the project, that whole process could take years and years and years.
• 28:46
  So the heights is actually when I think that the company who made it were actually the second
• 28:51
  company to option it. So there were a good two or three years where another company tried to get
• 28:55
  it made first. So there's constant discussions where Zendaya's reading the script is that's
• 29:04
  where it starts and then it ends with we're not going to renew the option, we've run out of ideas.
• 29:09
  So that's the norm. So when it works, it's really a question of the patience and the hustling power
• 29:15
  of the producers to just not give up and to just get this project over the line. It's not really
• 29:22
  anything to do with me or the story. It's to do with how good they are at selling this show to the
• 29:29
  right person at the right time. So as with everything, timing is a huge factor. And sometimes it can
• 29:35
  happened quite quickly. The heights happened extremely quickly, I would say, happened within a year.
• 29:39
  The only suspect, the other one, which is one that stars Kevin McKidd, that took about four years
• 29:45
  to get over the line. Once you've got a commissioner interested, they will usually fund or support
• 29:52
  a pilot. And so the writer will then write the pilot and then that will be read and then you'll
• 29:57
  get the green light, hopefully, for the full series to be written and then everything cranks into gear.
• 30:02
  The thing that's most interesting about TV i think is that everything feels so painfully slow and then when it actually happens you just cannot believe.
• 30:11
  The hard work and efficiency and speed of these people who all work together in this sort of high and everyone knows you know everyone knows their role and doesn't overstep and there's such harmony there's no difficult characters or.
• 30:26
  There's just no time for that. It's such an expensive process. Millions is on the line.
• 30:31
  And they just do it so quickly and so efficiently. And they work these incredibly long hours.
• 30:36
  And the actors who, you know, I initially expected, you know, kind of actors, you know,
• 30:41
  having hangovers and being really deep, deeper-ish, then they're not like that at all.
• 30:47
  That's more like authors, right? Just more of the authors.
• 30:50
  I know, I know, I'm thinking about, you know, the kind of olivary types that's all in the past.
• 30:57
  That's all in the past. They are so wholesome. They work so hard. They are well rested. They're
• 31:02
  all gym-honed and you just couldn't ask them. That's what they say about me. They call me gym-honed too.
• 31:09
  Oh no, I'm sorry. Gin, gin-honed. Oh, there we go. That's good. So you're missing some element there.
• 31:15
  I misspelled it, sorry.
• 31:17
  That's my category as well.
• 31:18
  I'm more Jim Hone, absolutely.
• 31:20
  This is why we're writers.
• 31:22
  Yes, so it becomes very, very exciting.
• 31:24
  And I find visiting the set quite surreal initially.
• 31:28
  It feels quite frightening to think
• 31:31
  that all of this money is being spent on a story
• 31:34
  that I wrote on the sofa with a coffee by my side.
• 31:38
  It suddenly feels like, oh my God, am I
• 31:40
  accountable for all of this?
• 31:42
  And then after a while, you relax into it.
• 31:44
  and you almost stop making that connection
• 31:47
  and you just enjoy it for what it is
• 31:49
  because it's such a different format from the book.
• 31:52
  You know, I always think with a book
• 31:54
  it's such a collaboration between the writer and the reader
• 31:57
  and the reader is doing such a lot of the imaginative work
• 32:01
  taking our words on the page
• 32:02
  and the pictures arriving in their minds
• 32:05
  are their own creation.
• 32:07
  But with TV, all of that is done for you.
• 32:11
  It's the director's format.
• 32:13
  It's the actors' work.
• 32:15
  And the words are very much a sort of vehicle.
• 32:19
  It feels so different.
• 32:20
  And it actually makes me really value books
• 32:23
  because I think that imaginative collaboration
• 32:26
  between reader and writer is really special.
• 32:28
  And you don't get that with TV.
• 32:29
  You're pretty much spoon fed everything.
• 32:32
  All of the gorgeous visuals are created for you.
• 32:35
  You don't have to do that yourself.
• 32:37
  So very, very different formats
• 32:39
  and both so satisfying in different ways.
• 32:43
  A quick word from this episode's sponsor.
• 32:45
  - Hi gang, it's me, Jamie Davis,
• 32:47
  the show manager from Author Nation.
• 32:49
  We're locking down the final details
• 32:51
  for this year's big event.
• 32:53
  So I hope we'll get to see you soon in Las Vegas.
• 32:56
  In the meantime, my wife asked me
• 32:58
  what was for dinner last Tuesday night.
• 33:00
  Well, I just told her we should talk about it.
• 33:04
  - Now back to the show.
• 33:06
  So it's interesting, you've got to be on the sets
• 33:09
  of now multiple productions,
• 33:11
  'cause a lot of writers don't,
• 33:12
  by the time it gets to that point,
• 33:13
  they're sort of pretty heavily disconnected from it.
• 33:16
  We hear about that in Hollywood a lot,
• 33:18
  but it's great that you get to be there.
• 33:19
  How do you find the people,
• 33:21
  apart from being polite and nice,
• 33:22
  how do you find like the director and the actors treating you?
• 33:25
  Do you find them come over and go,
• 33:27
  "Louise, what were you thinking here?
• 33:29
  "What was kind of in your mind?"
• 33:31
  Or it's the director like, "No, no, I got this."
• 33:33
  - The directors are normally extremely busy.
• 33:36
  They haven't got time to breathe,
• 33:39
  let alone indulge in planning my ego.
• 33:43
  But I do think that I think they're all quite different.
• 33:45
  And so some directors are actually really eager
• 33:48
  to talk about the book and to talk about the characters,
• 33:51
  even well into filming, either to get new ideas
• 33:55
  or just to feel they've captured the DNA.
• 33:58
  Because it's important to them to feel like
• 34:01
  they've captured the DNA of the book,
• 34:02
  because that's the whole point of adapting a book,
• 34:04
  is someone did all that heavy lifting for you.
• 34:08
  So some will want to go quite in depth and others are much more polite.
• 34:14
  You might get directors who haven't even read the book.
• 34:16
  You will get actors who haven't read the book.
• 34:18
  You know, the script is their book, the script is their Bible.
• 34:22
  And so then it is much more a polite exchange.
• 34:25
  You know, thank you for entrusting us with, you know, your wonderful book, you know,
• 34:29
  those sorts of lines.
• 34:30
  So it can vary a lot and either way is fine.
• 34:33
  I don't mind at all.
• 34:35
  I'm, you know, by that stage, you're so happy that yours has made it over the line and, you
• 34:39
  know, it's going to have this second life.
• 34:42
  And I'm always, always thinking from the point of view of the author.
• 34:45
  I'm always thinking, you know, I do want to protect the DNA of the book.
• 34:49
  I do want the readers to be happy with what they see while, you know, totally understanding
• 34:55
  that it's a different form.
• 34:56
  And then I also want, you know, to gain new readers when the, when the, when the show
• 35:01
  I want people to say, "Who created this story and has she written any other books?"
• 35:06
  I'm thinking from a book point of view all the time.
• 35:10
  You see an influx of new readers when our town was aired on ITV.
• 35:15
  You saw that in book sales as well, or it was almost like a whole new release to it?
• 35:20
  Yeah, definitely.
• 35:21
  Definitely.
• 35:21
  Or you might meet people at events who don't know your work and then if you say, "Well,
• 35:25
  did you see our house starring Martin Compton and Tappant's Middleton on ITV?"
• 35:29
  TV and they'll say, "Oh yeah, I saw that." And then I can say, "Well, that was mine."
• 35:33
  And so you can just get that connection in a new way. But absolutely, I mean, I personally
• 35:38
  don't watch a TV adaptation and then go and read the books. I feel like, "Well, I already
• 35:43
  know what happens." So it's much more just getting your name a bit more high profile
• 35:49
  and you might get more media. You might get more interest generally. And then when the
• 35:53
  next book comes out, you've got these great TV shows to talk about.
• 35:59
  I would assume maybe you get like a new lease with the cover, the TV, whatever the media
• 36:04
  cover that they put out to.
• 36:05
  So it's almost like a little more bookshelf space or a re-release.
• 36:10
  Yeah, re-release with the new cover and everything.
• 36:13
  Yeah.
• 36:13
  Yeah, sometimes they'll do a reissue with the TV branded cover.
• 36:16
  We did that for our house.
• 36:18
  We're not doing it with the next two, partly because I'm no longer with the publisher who
• 36:23
  published those books, but we have a great relationship and we'll be doing lots of, you
• 36:27
  We'll be doing the stamps, the roundels with the TV artwork and marketing the books during
• 36:37
  that period.
• 36:38
  So, yeah, everyone's on board.
• 36:39
  Everyone's really excited about these things.
• 36:42
  But a lot of TV dramas are from books.
• 36:46
  So most of the big publishers certainly will have, they'll be very practiced about the
• 36:51
  whole routine and they'll understand how late in the day they're going to have the transmission
• 36:57
  date confirmed and how late in the day that they're going to get the artwork that they
• 37:01
  need to do any of the branding bits and pieces. So yeah, everyone's very geared up. And again,
• 37:08
  you know, it's my job to make sure everyone in the mix gets what they need.
• 37:13
  All right, let's look back and talk about a little bit of craft stuff for a minute.
• 37:17
  So houses and properties have become a major focus in your books. Did that just happen?
• 37:25
  Or did you think there's something really exciting about a building and then bring
• 37:29
  you all the people into the building and killing of you?
• 37:32
  It wasn't really conscious.
• 37:34
  And in fact, it was only when I got involved in TV that it was pointed out to me that this
• 37:40
  was a key ingredient in all of my books for so long.
• 37:44
  It was all just very natural and instinctive.
• 37:47
  Isn't that nice when somebody tells you what you were thinking and you're like, "Oh, I
• 37:51
  didn't realize what your past is."
• 37:52
  Yeah, yeah.
• 37:53
  Thank you because actually it was very useful to hear what they thought.
• 37:57
  Yeah, that's a good point.
• 37:58
  Yeah, but I think it's just for me, it's the age I am in my 50s.
• 38:04
  I'm Gen X. It has been the defining issue, social issue of my entire adult life.
• 38:10
  People talking about property, people making money out of property, people on right move
• 38:17
  looking at property porn.
• 38:20
  It's just been such a huge, huge thing.
• 38:23
  (laughing)
• 38:25
  Really, I mean, I've been called the queen
• 38:28
  of property porn noir.
• 38:30
  I mean, can you imagine?
• 38:31
  50 years, some fat.
• 38:34
  - That is a title right there.
• 38:36
  That's also a t-shirt you need to have in the back.
• 38:38
  - Yeah, yeah.
• 38:38
  - Another one, no, I'll be sure.
• 38:39
  - Along with the laurels.
• 38:41
  - Yeah.
• 38:42
  - And a judge on the laurel.
• 38:43
  - Property porn queen resting on her laurels.
• 38:44
  - Resting on her laurels.
• 38:47
  - Yeah, so I think it happened naturally.
• 38:48
  And of course, not just me, but a whole genre, a domestic noir is based on this whole fear
• 38:55
  of not being safe in the domestic realm, losing the very thing that you should feel confident
• 39:01
  about being safe in your home.
• 39:04
  And domestic stories, we've had them for centuries, and just look at things like Madame
• 39:08
  Bovary and all of the stories that can be rooted in the home.
• 39:13
  But yeah, so even before our house, property had been a theme.
• 39:17
  in my books, I just hadn't really recognized it.
• 39:20
  You know, people had either been struggling to have a roof over their head, or they had
• 39:23
  been downsizing after a divorce, or they had been, you know, in one book, someone broke
• 39:30
  into someone's house in a village in France and squatted there.
• 39:34
  It's always been at the center of my stories, I think, but it's only in the last sort of
• 39:40
  five to ten years that I've been directly associated with property.
• 39:44
  But I never run out of ideas and I never run out of property-based stories because if anything,
• 39:51
  it's all just even more intensely relevant to the way we live now.
• 39:56
  The property crisis, I've just, a couple of books ago, I wrote about the second home owners
• 40:02
  in a beauty spot in the UK and the war between holiday home owners and locals who can't get
• 40:09
  on the property ladder.
• 40:11
  year there's more and more stories on these themes and it's not getting any easier for people.
• 40:19
  Another thing I would say is that, you know, the older I get and the more I, you know, I definitely
• 40:25
  identify as a workaholic, someone whose identity is really based on their work, but I do have friends
• 40:31
  whose identity is based on how beautiful their home is. And I think I've always been really
• 40:35
  fascinated by that tribe, which I'm not in, where just having the perfect sofa and the
• 40:42
  right paint color is kind of all they need to feel really, really satisfied with life.
• 40:48
  And so there's often a character in my books who is a bit like that, where they've almost
• 40:52
  placed more value in their home decoration than they maybe have some of their relationships.
• 40:59
  So yeah, there's just endless amounts of property related stuff.
• 41:02
  You've also got a kind of a map for adding like catching a live social issue besides
• 41:07
  just I mean obviously the property values is nothing but right mean kind of before it
• 41:10
  almost becomes a headline like you're kind of like prescient in how that is but do you
• 41:15
  go looking like to add that social comment to your books every time on on top of obviously
• 41:20
  we talk about the property values but you have some other social issues that you kind
• 41:24
  of like grab hold of such as the rent for sex.
• 41:28
  Yeah, yeah, sex for rent.
• 41:29
  I do. I mean, I'm really interested in politics. I read.
• 41:33
  Yeah.
• 41:33
  The other way around. That's quite different.
• 41:35
  Yeah, rent for sex. Yeah, that is different.
• 41:38
  Yeah. You can stay here if you'll just give me some.
• 41:43
  Isn't that the same thing as sex for rent?
• 41:45
  Yeah. Either way, it's floppy.
• 41:46
  Rent for sex.
• 41:48
  It's all about the order.
• 41:49
  Like, I've already got the rent there.
• 41:51
  If you sleep with me, I'll let you pay rent.
• 41:53
  It would be with me.
• 41:54
  Yeah. I think the answer you get is very different.
• 41:58
  - The pinning on the city, I might be willing to do that.
• 42:00
  I'm just saying.
• 42:01
  - One version gets a lot of no's and one version
• 42:04
  gets a fair number of uses.
• 42:05
  - Yeah, absolutely.
• 42:06
  - I've been fucked by landlords before,
• 42:09
  so it's not that big of a deal.
• 42:11
  - No.
• 42:11
  - All the way around.
• 42:13
  (laughing)
• 42:17
  - Metaphorically, obviously.
• 42:19
  - Metaphorically, well, yes.
• 42:21
  - Okay, so Louise, do you consciously try
• 42:23
  and put a social element into every book?
• 42:27
  Yes, I guess so. I'm writing about what I'm interested in. I'm very interested in the way
• 42:33
  we live now. I'm really interested in social and consumer issues. My dream is to listen to
• 42:38
  radio for consumer shows, things like Moneybox and You and Yours. That's my idea of a fantastic
• 42:45
  hour to hear about the latest scams and frauds. Fraud, of course, is the biggest growth area
• 42:52
  in crime, there's a lot of fraud in my stories and scams. I can't get enough of it. I mean,
• 42:57
  I don't enjoy other people's misery at all. It's not that kind of vibe, but I just want to know
• 43:04
  about it and I'm very attracted to those sorts of stories. And then they find their way into my
• 43:08
  novels because the way I construct my books is, you know, I'll have several themes or issues
• 43:15
  that I'm really interested in that, you know, aren't enough in their own right to be a whole book.
• 43:20
  And so I'll wait for enough of them to come along and then I'll tangle them up and then I'll think of a great way to structure it and that's kind of how I do it.
• 43:29
  So you know sex parental rent for sex whichever we're gonna call it that's not really enough.
• 43:36
  For a whole book I needed lots of other things that I wanted to explore and so you know neighbors guide that is the boomerang child so Gwen 30 something some has come back.
• 43:47
  to live with her and you know is a real pain in the ass and you know this is this is a big problem
• 43:52
  now with adults not leaving home you know you got done anything there Doug i wouldn't know anything
• 44:00
  about that are you a boomerang no no but i've got a boomerang they never left
• 44:10
  there's so many there's so many in fact mainly guys but also Gwen's daughter has gone
• 44:16
  into this full-on "Trad Wife" influencer sort of thing.
• 44:21
  There's a Nepo baby.
• 44:22
  In many ways, this, even though the narrator is 70 years old,
• 44:25
  in many ways, this book is my Zuma book.
• 44:28
  This is my Gen Z book, because all of the young characters
• 44:31
  are kind of typifying some kind of odd new way,
• 44:35
  odd to me, about living your life.
• 44:39
  And so in a way, that was why I had to create an older narrator
• 44:42
  to navigate it, because I didn't really understand.
• 44:45
  you know, it's quite hard to imagine being a Nepo baby, and it's quite hard to imagine
• 44:50
  bouncing back after divorce and living in your childhood room if you haven't done it.
• 44:55
  So I kind of needed someone to take a rye kind of observational position on all of those
• 45:02
  different young people, while also being quite compassionate because it's, you know,
• 45:06
  it's not easy to be young right now.
• 45:08
  So yeah, I think it's all, it all melds together, you know, my, the reading idea for pleasure,
• 45:14
  the fact that I'm very engaged with the newspapers and politics and everything that's going on
• 45:20
  in the world, it all finds its way somehow into a book.
• 45:24
  Okay, so a couple of things to wrap up. A couple of questions we ask everybody. And the first
• 45:28
  one is, what do you think is your author's superpower?
• 45:32
  Well, I think my strongest asset is that I can hold my nerve and I'm very confident
• 45:38
  about the books and I will, even if no one else feels the same enthusiasm, I will continue
• 45:45
  to feel that passion burning for them. So I just feel like I am willing to hold my nerve
• 45:50
  in difficult situations and stand by my work. In terms of the actual writing, I think probably
• 45:56
  my best thing would be my dialogue. I think my dialogue's quite natural and quite good.
• 46:02
  And maybe that's why, you know, one of the reasons the TV producers have fallen for quite
• 46:07
  lot of my stories. I think that the conversational elements are quite natural.
• 46:11
  Great, good answer. Okay, and final question will be a random question.
• 46:16
  Final questions, we have a wheel of questions here.
• 46:18
  Oh wow, look at that!
• 46:20
  Yeah, you didn't know you were on a full-on show game show.
• 46:23
  A game show!
• 46:24
  Yeah, I love this. I can't see any of the questions, so you could say anything.
• 46:29
  That's true. It's my handwriting. Even if you couldn't see it, you wouldn't be able to read it.
• 46:33
  Yeah, you wouldn't be able to decipher it.
• 46:34
  Most of them were kind of like, I have them as short hands.
• 46:37
  So, okay, oh, it's a good one.
• 46:40
  Who would be your favorite protagonist as you've written?
• 46:44
  - Oh my goodness, okay.
• 46:46
  I really like Alex in "The Only Suspect."
• 46:51
  I tend to prefer my male protagonists, actually.
• 46:53
  I've come to realize.
• 46:55
  And so he's this very jaded, cynical, Gen X guy.
• 46:59
  He's the one played by Kevin McKidd in the TV adaptation.
• 47:03
  But he is a very complex character
• 47:05
  because he's hiding a huge secret
• 47:08
  and it's prevented him from living life as he would like to.
• 47:12
  I love Alex.
• 47:13
  - That's cool.
• 47:14
  So is there gonna be another Alex book?
• 47:16
  - No, well, I've never done, I've never done a sequel.
• 47:20
  Let's see, let's see if the TV show is a hit.
• 47:22
  Maybe they'll, they'll ask.
• 47:23
  - If the TV show is a hit, they'll be wanting one.
• 47:27
  - Well, they'll be wanting season two.
• 47:28
  - Absolutely. - Season two, whatever.
• 47:29
  Yes, yes. - Yeah.
• 47:30
  - But we need to know whether he lives.
• 47:32
  I think, you know, if he lives--
• 47:33
  So yeah, he was saying that and I was just thinking, oh, he dies at the end.
• 47:36
  Yeah, no.
• 47:37
  That's just a rather...
• 47:38
  [Laughter]
• 47:39
  The younger life of Alex.
• 47:41
  I don't think she'd have picked one to eat.
• 47:42
  No.
• 47:43
  To kill all, all throughout the band, you know, yeah.
• 47:45
  No.
• 47:45
  I'm not going to say explicitly, but you know, we can feel optimistic for Alex.
• 47:49
  There we go.
• 47:50
  Perfect, perfect.
• 47:51
  Louise, thank you so much for spending the time with us.
• 47:53
  This has been brilliant.
• 47:55
  And Neighbour's Guide to Murder will be a huge hit in the US, same way it has been in the
• 47:58
  UK.
• 47:59
  And so best of luck with all the TV projects.
• 48:02
  Thank you so much and this was so much fun. Thank you.
• 48:12
  Thank you so much to Louise. That was brilliant. She was lovely.
• 48:15
  She was fun. That was a lot of fun. We were laughing hard.
• 48:17
  I always like the shows where we laugh a lot on them.
• 48:20
  I know. Yeah. I'm always happy.
• 48:22
  That's what we do it for, right?
• 48:23
  That's what I do it for. I just want to...
• 48:26
  I only want to entertain myself. That's the only reason I write.
• 48:28
  That's the only reason I do anything.
• 48:31
  And there's only so many times you can do it the other way you do it.
• 48:34
  So it's just not on air.
• 48:37
  All right.
• 48:38
  So hello, you might get the rent paid.
• 48:40
  Hey, you know, do it again.
• 48:43
  So it's interesting.
• 48:44
  I like the fact that, I mean, all her books have human protagonist in them, but that,
• 48:48
  you know, that a property or that property theme thing is a character in all of her books.
• 48:52
  And it's interesting that it just, it fell that way, you know, organically rather than
• 48:59
  being deliberate, which is really cool.
• 49:01
  I think it's, well, and sometimes I think that's what is.
• 49:03
  Something that you know about, that we're passionate about, that we think about on a
• 49:09
  regular basis, those are going to come out in our writing.
• 49:12
  And she's, you know, I think it's funny that somebody told her, "Hey, you know, you've
• 49:15
  been writing about property," and she's like, "Oh, I guess I have."
• 49:19
  Yeah.
• 49:20
  Oh, yes I do.
• 49:21
  You know, sometimes I think that's probably the case for a lot of us, is until you start
• 49:25
  realize and what you're doing and not what you're doing so much, but realize that you
• 49:31
  have a theme that seems to kind of flow.
• 49:33
  That's kind of an interesting way that...
• 49:35
  The other thing that's interesting, I think, is she's doing well in the States, but she's
• 49:39
  huge in the UK and won all kinds of awards and her books are best sellers over there.
• 49:44
  And now she's got these TV shows that are going, "You know, one of them is going to
• 49:47
  get picked up by Netflix or someone over here and get shown."
• 49:50
  So it'll be interesting to see how that goes and probably blows her up in the US, you know,
• 49:56
  to a lot bigger status on the author side.
• 49:58
  And it's interesting.
• 49:59
  And that's what it is.
• 50:00
  All these shows on Netflix and they are all like off of these books and stuff.
• 50:04
  So I am curious how it really affects book sales in the long run.
• 50:09
  So it'd be kind of interesting.
• 50:10
  That was a neat comment too because she said, "Do people go and buy the book because they
• 50:15
  just watched the TV show?"
• 50:16
  No, they kind of know the ending.
• 50:18
  But I bet the books around it and her backlist do really well.
• 50:22
  Oh, it's going to help.
• 50:23
  When that stuff comes out.
• 50:24
  Yeah.
• 50:24
  Cool.
• 50:24
  Very good.
• 50:25
  All right.
• 50:26
  Big thanks to our friends at Valom for supporting the show.
• 50:29
  We love you guys.
• 50:30
  We love the product.
• 50:30
  If you haven't tried Valom before, head on over to tryvalom.com/tourthers and give it
• 50:35
  a whirl.
• 50:36
  Thank you to all our Patreon subscribers.
• 50:38
  We really appreciate support.
• 50:40
  Another great nugget of a really cool bonus with Louise.
• 50:45
  Almost a full show.
• 50:46
  It was a pretty long one.
• 50:49
  Yeah, it was good.
• 50:51
  So yeah, thank you to our Patreon supporters and until next time, be cool to each other.
• 50:56
  Fair winds and fallen seas.
• 50:58
  You've been listening to the Two Authors podcast with Nicholas Harvey and Douglas Pratt.
• 51:04
  Subscribe on your favourite platform for new shows coming every week.
• 51:09
  (upbeat music)