Latest / The Book Deal / Kate Mildenhall on publishing and resilience, publicity tips and what it means to be a good industry citizen

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Kate Mildenhall on publishing and resilience, publicity tips and what it means to be a good industry citizen · The Book Deal

• 0:09
  Madeleine Cleary: This is the Book Deal podcast where you will discover the inspiring stories behind your favorite books.
• 0:15
  Natasha Rai: We interview seasoned and debut authors, as well as publishing industry professionals to bring you the best tips and advice on how to get that elusive book deal.
• 0:25
  Natasha Rai: So no matter what stage of writing you're at, we've got you covered.
• 0:29
  Natasha Rai: I'm Tina Strachan.
• 0:30
  Natasha Rai: I'm Madeleine Cleary.
• 0:32
  Natasha Rai: And I'm Natasha Rai.
• 0:34
  Natasha Rai: And join us as we pull back the curtain of published authors one deal at a
• 0:38
  Madeleine Cleary: time.
• 0:43
  Madeleine Cleary: The book Deal Podcast acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters, which it's recorded on.
• 0:48
  Madeleine Cleary: And pays respect to their elders past, present, and emerging.
• 0:56
  Madeleine Cleary: It's Madeleine here.
• 0:57
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm not sure that author, writing teacher and Festival Fairy, Kate Milden Hall needs much of an introduction.
• 1:03
  Madeleine Cleary: You may have come across Kate hosting book launches or floating around writing festivals, or perhaps you may have listened to one or more of her 200 plus interviews on the first time podcast or during her big book tours for a highly acclaimed and award listed novels, Skylarking, the Mother Fault, the Hummingbird Effect, and her Delightful Picture Book To Stir With Love.
• 1:25
  Madeleine Cleary: Kate is probably one of the most generous writing industry citizens I have ever met.
• 1:31
  Madeleine Cleary: Not only is her advice on point, but she champions and pitches our staple authors far and wide.
• 1:37
  Madeleine Cleary: I spoke with Kate a couple of months before the launch of her fourth novel, the Hiding Place Out Now with Simon and Schuster, which I may have gushed over at length.
• 1:46
  Madeleine Cleary: This episode went way over time, but I didn't have the heart to cut it.
• 1:50
  Madeleine Cleary: So settle in with a couple and your post-it notes and enjoy.
• 1:57
  Madeleine Cleary: Kate Mildenhall.
• 1:58
  Madeleine Cleary: Welcome to the Book Deal Podcast.
• 2:00
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, thank you so much for having me, Madeleine.
• 2:02
  Madeleine Cleary: It's delightful to be here.
• 2:04
  Madeleine Cleary: Someone actually once said to me that you are the queen of this industry.
• 2:07
  Madeleine Cleary: What are you thinking about
• 2:09
  Kate Mildenhall: that?
• 2:09
  I do
• 2:10
  Kate Mildenhall: not think
• 2:10
  I'm
• 2:11
  Kate Mildenhall: the queen of this industry at all.
• 2:13
  Kate Mildenhall: I think, um, you know, I get about a lot.
• 2:16
  Kate Mildenhall: I certainly get about a lot.
• 2:18
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I will happily take on Festival Fairy because I do quite like being a festival fairy and I get around to a lot of festivals.
• 2:26
  Kate Mildenhall: But I also think there's a bit of, um, you know, exte mother hen eldest daughter, eldest grandchild in there that I like, you know, I like everyone to come along to all the parties and everyone to feel included.
• 2:40
  Kate Mildenhall: So there's something about that, but Queen, definitely not.
• 2:43
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I just, I take very seriously that idea of, of being a good industry citizen.
• 2:51
  Kate Mildenhall: And I think Madeleine, you know, when I started like you, I.
• 2:55
  Kate Mildenhall: I didn't come up through lit journals or, or anything like that.
• 2:59
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I came into writing later in my life when my kids were little through RMIT and I didn't know anyone, um, I didn't know any writers and, um, I am forever grateful to the people who did a bit of that kind of taking me under their wing or, um, telling me what it looked like behind the scenes or giving advice, you know, all of those things.
• 3:25
  Kate Mildenhall: So I just, I like to give that.
• 3:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, I think you've definitely inspired a lot of people, I think, to, to give back to the industry.
• 3:32
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause this is what it's all about, being part of the industry and you are a very special part of our industry.
• 3:37
  Madeleine Cleary: So you are also a published author of five books.
• 3:40
  Madeleine Cleary: You're a writing teacher, a coach podcaster.
• 3:43
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, you were a podcaster.
• 3:45
  Madeleine Cleary: Still are.
• 3:45
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 3:46
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 3:47
  Madeleine Cleary: And you are, you like, you just self to self described yourself.
• 3:50
  Madeleine Cleary: You are a fair, a festival fairy.
• 3:53
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, you also facilitate lots of book events for many authors as well.
• 3:58
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, so back when you were publishing Skylarking for the first time in 2016, is this something you planned for?
• 4:04
  Kate Mildenhall: No, absolutely not.
• 4:05
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I went back to uni when the kids were small because, and I always say this because there was this weird gap that I'd never, um, kind of considered before, which sounds ridiculous, but that, that kind of maternity leave was the first time that I'd been, um.
• 4:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Out of full-time work for a really long time.
• 4:29
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, I guess I'd been a teacher before that, that was the first time that I had time maybe to let this urge to write, bubble up inside myself.
• 4:40
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but the deeply pragmatic person inside my head who probably was still informed by that careers teacher who told me that, you know, um, people aren't right, people don't become writers, didn't think that I was going back to study writing to be a writer.
• 4:58
  Kate Mildenhall: I had told myself that I was going back to study writing to, you know, write educational, um, texts or to edit, um, to do some website editing for educational things, which is what I've been doing at State Library.
• 5:11
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so even the fact that I wrote Skylight anything longer than a short story, which I'd never done in my life, was a surprise to me.
• 5:21
  Kate Mildenhall: Really?
• 5:22
  Kate Mildenhall: Yes.
• 5:22
  Kate Mildenhall: That's a surprise to me.
• 5:24
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 5:25
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I had only ever written, you know, 3000 word stories, like that's what short stories are, and that's what I'd written.
• 5:32
  Kate Mildenhall: And when it got bigger than that, it still kind of flumes me.
• 5:36
  Kate Mildenhall: And it's why we all talk about that idea that the first novel is in many ways the easiest.
• 5:41
  Kate Mildenhall: 'cause you've got no idea what you're doing or how hard it's going to be.
• 5:46
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, there's part of it that just comes from the energy and the heat.
• 5:50
  Kate Mildenhall: And I think that in a way that's what we're always trying to get back to, uh, is that feeling of, of writing your first novel.
• 5:58
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but yeah, so the, so the process itself was a surprise.
• 6:02
  Kate Mildenhall: And as I've talked about a lot, you know, it happened through the course and the idea of having to turn up each week with a new piece of writing to workshop.
• 6:10
  Kate Mildenhall: So that's how I got the words down at the start.
• 6:13
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and then it was when I had 30 or 40,000 words, I was like, holy moly, this is a novel.
• 6:19
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um.
• 6:21
  Kate Mildenhall: And, you know, the publication of Skylarking was a lucky break that I'm still extraordinarily grateful for.
• 6:30
  Kate Mildenhall: And I know that parts of it, parts of it were luck that I made myself.
• 6:35
  Kate Mildenhall: So I'm, I'm not just gonna say that it was lucky, but it, um, was an unusual path to publication and I'm so grateful for it.
• 6:44
  Kate Mildenhall: Madeleine,
• 6:45
  Madeleine Cleary: do you wanna talk about some of those unusual parts then?
• 6:48
  Kate Mildenhall: So, um, the, the way that, uh, Skylarking was published in short is that I had submitted a short story to a competition at that stage.
• 6:59
  Kate Mildenhall: It was through the Emerging Writers Festival and a university, maybe through Monash.
• 7:04
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I didn't place, but I, I was shortlisted and, or I dunno, commended or something.
• 7:12
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but one of the.
• 7:14
  Kate Mildenhall: Judges was Aviva Tofield, who at that stage was editor at Black Inc.
• 7:19
  Kate Mildenhall: Fiction editor at Black Inc.
• 7:20
  Kate Mildenhall: And she contacted me via email and said, have you got a manuscript?
• 7:24
  Kate Mildenhall: And I said, my goodness, no.
• 7:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Like I only write short stories,
• 7:27
  Madeleine Cleary: but what a question to be asked as well.
• 7:29
  Madeleine Cleary: Like, that's yeah's like a dream, isn't it?
• 7:31
  Kate Mildenhall: It was a dream.
• 7:32
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and so, you know, it must have been a year later or eight months later, um, I saw her at an event and I went to this event, it was at the Wheeler Center and I went because the teachers at RMIT told us to get involved, uh, in the writing industry.
• 7:47
  Kate Mildenhall: And, you know, at that stage join Twitter and, um, get along to events and see what was happening.
• 7:54
  Kate Mildenhall: And uh, Aviva was there and at the end in that bit where everyone's milling around, I went up to her and said, oh, you know, hello, my name's Kate.
• 8:03
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, you sent me an email once and I actually do have a manuscript.
• 8:07
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm working on something at the moment.
• 8:10
  Kate Mildenhall: And I think I was trying, I think I was, um.
• 8:13
  Kate Mildenhall: Applying for Una or something like that.
• 8:16
  Kate Mildenhall: And uh, and I dunno, I asked her about that and she said, oh, you should send it to me.
• 8:22
  Kate Mildenhall: And I did.
• 8:23
  Kate Mildenhall: And, you know, not very long after that, she signed it.
• 8:26
  Kate Mildenhall: So it wasn't finished.
• 8:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Hang on, hang on.
• 8:28
  Madeleine Cleary: Had you hadn't even finished it, had you polished it?
• 8:30
  Madeleine Cleary: It No.
• 8:32
  Kate Mildenhall: You sent I sent it.
• 8:33
  Kate Mildenhall: I was like, I was vomiting.
• 8:36
  Kate Mildenhall: I still remember, I've probably got notes somewhere about like how scared I was and, but I didn't know any of the rules.
• 8:43
  Kate Mildenhall: Like I really didn't.
• 8:44
  Kate Mildenhall: Yes.
• 8:44
  Kate Mildenhall: Because everyone
• 8:44
  tells you you gotta have, it's, you get one.
• 8:46
  Yeah.
• 8:46
  And, and, and,
• 8:49
  Kate Mildenhall: yeah, so I didn't really know.
• 8:50
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I sent something and I remember I was on a weekend away with girlfriends and, um, Aviva must have called and, and it was really big and someone had just announced their pregnancy and, you know, like.
• 9:03
  Kate Mildenhall: I wasn't picking up my phone, I didn't realize about the momentousness of, uh, you know, an editor calling.
• 9:11
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, and then she must have messaged again the next day.
• 9:14
  Kate Mildenhall: And I said to my best friend, you know, like, do you think I should call her back?
• 9:18
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, and you know, she, she wanted to, she wanted, she was interested, she wanted to buy it.
• 9:26
  Kate Mildenhall: And um, and then when the, when she'd finally taken it through acquisitions, I remember I was at,'cause she, she was only new to Black Ink, so it was the first fiction, um, they'd signed.
• 9:38
  Kate Mildenhall: And I was at swimming with my two little kids and my dad, because you have to have another person come along to help, you know, with the toddler while you're in, with the baby in the pool.
• 9:48
  Kate Mildenhall: So we're all chlorine and, you know, getting the, I don't know, hot chocolates or something afterwards.
• 9:53
  Kate Mildenhall: And she called and she said, um, we'd like to, we'd like to make you an offer.
• 9:57
  Kate Mildenhall: And I'd still don't think, even to this day, I still don't think anything.
• 10:02
  Kate Mildenhall: Matches that moment, uh, in terms of my writing career and the kind of the highlights
• 10:09
  Madeleine Cleary: because you, you at that time, you don't really know much more, is it, you kind of feel like you've hit this pinnacle moment and that everything afterwards is gonna be rosy.
• 10:17
  Kate Mildenhall: Well, exactly.
• 10:18
  Kate Mildenhall: And you know, I was talking about this with, um, at Toni Jordan's launch the other night actually, Madeleine, because not long after that, or maybe around that time, she'd published a piece in, what was the, um, writer's Victoria publication at that time called the Victorian Writer.
• 10:34
  Kate Mildenhall: And it was all about how.
• 10:37
  Kate Mildenhall: Writers think that if they just get that publishing deal, then everything, they'll never want for anything again.
• 10:44
  Kate Mildenhall: They'll, they'll, they'll say, I'm happy now.
• 10:47
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and she was saying, of course, you know, that's ridiculous because then you want the next thing.
• 10:51
  Kate Mildenhall: You want the sales and then you want the movie deal.
• 10:53
  Kate Mildenhall: Then the good reviews.
• 10:54
  Madeleine Cleary: Why can't we just enjoy what we have?
• 10:56
  Madeleine Cleary: Why we always want more
• 10:57
  Kate Mildenhall: and we, we just, we just cannot.
• 10:59
  Kate Mildenhall: But I think, you know, what it's taught me to over time and getting to talk to so many writers is that there are some moments now, which I, I really do try and take a moment and say, ah, this is good.
• 11:13
  Kate Mildenhall: Like the getting of a new idea.
• 11:15
  Kate Mildenhall: 'cause I only get one at a time.
• 11:16
  Kate Mildenhall: So the getting of a new idea, um.
• 11:19
  Kate Mildenhall: That feeling of finishing a draft, um, even if it's only the first draft or or whatever.
• 11:27
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, those kind of moments, I really do try and sit in and say, Hey, remember this is the reason you're doing it.
• 11:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Like this is the good bit and you think it's gonna be launch night or the day you see your book on the shelf.
• 11:41
  Kate Mildenhall: And those, those are great, but they're often so caught up in a whole lot of, um, other emotions and complexity and expectation and nerves and all the other stuff that often it's those quiet bits where it's just you and your writing where you think this is a good decision I have made to do this thing.
• 12:02
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes.
• 12:02
  Madeleine Cleary: And I feel as well that I've always been trying to search for that feeling of play as well.
• 12:08
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 12:08
  Madeleine Cleary: Getting back to the writing,'cause there's such a playfulness about it, rather than make it about a business or something that you have to produce or it's an output.
• 12:17
  Kate Mildenhall: That's exactly it.
• 12:18
  Kate Mildenhall: I love that you mentioned play, because I think too, um, I was quite, for a time wrapped up in the, the romantic ideal of it, it being an an anxious leading, horrendous painful kind of endeavor to to write tortured artist.
• 12:35
  Kate Mildenhall: The tortured artist.
• 12:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Absolutely.
• 12:37
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, and a couple of things changed that in general, me, you know, trying to deal with kind of ongoing anxiety in my life, which was like, why would I do this if it was, if I was making it, um, so, so hard on myself.
• 12:53
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but also that idea of that idea of play that, um, particularly Elizabeth Gilbert talks about, I remember being kind of profoundly moved by hearing her speak about.
• 13:06
  Kate Mildenhall: That playfulness and the joy and, and finding that and being, and a kind of a gratitude, I guess, without being too twee about it for the fact that, that we get to do this thing and make stuff up on the page.
• 13:19
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and that there has to be play and joy in that.
• 13:22
  Kate Mildenhall: Otherwise, there's really no point in doing it.
• 13:25
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm getting tingles.
• 13:26
  Madeleine Cleary: I think it's lovely.
• 13:27
  Madeleine Cleary: That's just, yeah, and it's a nice reminder, I think, for me at the moment.
• 13:31
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm sure for many listeners too, to find that.
• 13:33
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, so it sounds like your first book, you had a pretty dream run.
• 13:37
  Madeleine Cleary: I did.
• 13:37
  Madeleine Cleary: Uh, yes.
• 13:38
  Madeleine Cleary: And I had a great experience.
• 13:40
  Madeleine Cleary: And you probably expect, well, this will be then what will happen for all the rest of the books that will come out.
• 13:46
  Madeleine Cleary: Right.
• 13:46
  Madeleine Cleary: And this is your career.
• 13:47
  Madeleine Cleary: You're going up
• 13:49
  Kate Mildenhall: progress.
• 13:49
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm going up.
• 13:50
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm just gonna keep writing books right here.
• 13:53
  Kate Mildenhall: That's what I thought.
• 13:54
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes.
• 13:54
  Madeleine Cleary: So tell us what happened
• 13:55
  Kate Mildenhall: then.
• 13:56
  Kate Mildenhall: That didn't happen, Madeleine, that didn't happen.
• 14:00
  Kate Mildenhall: In short, what happened is that, um, that they bought my, my next book, um, on, um, uh, you know, a kind of a pitch.
• 14:09
  Kate Mildenhall: And can you talk about
• 14:11
  Madeleine Cleary: that actually?
• 14:11
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause I think that's, that's a actually an uncommon thing, isn't it?
• 14:14
  Madeleine Cleary: To, to practice on a pitch or a partial, I think is what they call
• 14:18
  Kate Mildenhall: Yes.
• 14:18
  Kate Mildenhall: It wa it wasn't even a partial, it was absolutely just an idea that Sky lacking did relatively well for, um, debut.
• 14:27
  Kate Mildenhall: It was historical fiction.
• 14:28
  Kate Mildenhall: So the, the first problem was, I guess they didn't, they wanted me to write historical fiction again.
• 14:35
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I didn't want to, partly because, um.
• 14:41
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, I hadn't intended to write historical fiction.
• 14:43
  Kate Mildenhall: That just happened to be the first story that I wrote.
• 14:45
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, I really wanted to kind of play with some other ideas.
• 14:50
  Kate Mildenhall: But also, as I said, I only get one idea at the, at a time.
• 14:53
  Kate Mildenhall: And my next idea was this one about a mother on the run with her kids.
• 14:56
  Kate Mildenhall: And it wasn't historical.
• 14:57
  Kate Mildenhall: It was either contemporary or as it came to be Spec Vic.
• 15:01
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so, but they liked the idea, they bought it.
• 15:05
  Kate Mildenhall: I got, I mean, it was a small advance, but I, I got an advance and I wrote it and I submitted it and, uh, they didn't want it anymore.
• 15:17
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, I've talked about this in, in other places, so forgive me if, if you've heard this before, but, uh, this, when I was writing the Mother Fault was when I, I started journaling, um, at the same time.
• 15:30
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and so I had my journal open when I got the email and, um.
• 15:37
  Kate Mildenhall: And so I've, I've got the record and I often use it when I'm teaching of me saying, oh my God, they don't want it.
• 15:45
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I'm gonna burn this thing.
• 15:48
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm so humiliated.
• 15:49
  Kate Mildenhall: I can still feel how humiliated I felt and ashamed of what I'd written, I think as well.
• 15:55
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, because, you know, we all have that extreme vulnerability about what we've written.
• 16:01
  Kate Mildenhall: And in this case, you know, this was something that they'd wanted.
• 16:04
  Kate Mildenhall: And yet then I'd turned it over the thing that I'd actually written the SE and all the second book fields, and they didn't want it.
• 16:09
  Kate Mildenhall: So, um, yeah, I was gonna burn it.
• 16:12
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I've written, I wrote in my journal, you know, I'm never gonna write again.
• 16:15
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm never gonna look at this again.
• 16:17
  Kate Mildenhall: Like, it was, it was awful.
• 16:18
  Kate Mildenhall: But of course, um, the beauty is that, uh.
• 16:23
  Kate Mildenhall: Those feelings are very intense for a minute.
• 16:25
  Kate Mildenhall: And then we moved past them and I was super lucky, Madeleine, that um, at that point I'd got a little creative Victoria Grant to write the Mother Fault.
• 16:34
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, I'd used it to get a mentorship with Charlotte Wood.
• 16:40
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, she was doing them at the time.
• 16:42
  Kate Mildenhall: She had a gap.
• 16:43
  Kate Mildenhall: It was just, again, kind of serendipitous.
• 16:46
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so I was working with her at that time.
• 16:50
  Kate Mildenhall: So I emailed her and I said, this has happened.
• 16:53
  Kate Mildenhall: And she said, which I will always be so grateful for, she said, delete the email.
• 16:58
  Kate Mildenhall: Don't look at it again.
• 16:59
  It's
• 17:00
  Kate Mildenhall: not useful right now.
• 17:01
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, and now give yourself some time.
• 17:04
  Kate Mildenhall: Just give yourself a bit of time.
• 17:07
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and by the time I had kind of wept and done all the other things and got over my shame and come, come back to the work without a publisher, without an agent, I realized that, um.
• 17:22
  Kate Mildenhall: I was deeply invested in this book and that I was gonna finish it.
• 17:25
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, you know, it, it, and that I wanted to redraft it.
• 17:29
  Kate Mildenhall: I knew I wanted to redraft it.
• 17:31
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and it, it didn't change hugely much before it was picked up by someone else, but I was invested in it and I was gonna try and see if someone else would publish it, but, you know, this wasn't gonna be the end of me.
• 17:42
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so and so that's what I did.
• 17:45
  Kate Mildenhall: And by that stage, um, we were doing the podcast.
• 17:49
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, we, we'd met a few writers and through the PWE, the RMIT alumni as well, I knew some writers.
• 17:56
  Kate Mildenhall: I was able to get an introduction, um, to an agent, to Pippa Masson at Curtis Brown.
• 18:02
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and she signed me.
• 18:04
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 18:04
  Kate Mildenhall: And then within six months, um, she'd sold the book on a two book deal, uh, to Simon Chester.
• 18:13
  Kate Mildenhall: So, you know, it was, and, and I guess one of the other things that I feel really fortunate for in my career is that.
• 18:21
  Kate Mildenhall: Is that kind of what it meant is that the Mother fault also became kind of like a debut.
• 18:27
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, it was a different genre.
• 18:29
  Kate Mildenhall: I was with a new publisher.
• 18:30
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, they put a lot behind it.
• 18:33
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and so I'm, I feel very fortunate about that.
• 18:37
  Kate Mildenhall: It meant that in a way my biggest kind of, um, expectation and second book fields came.
• 18:44
  Kate Mildenhall: When I was writing and, and went on to deliver the Hummingbird effect.
• 18:48
  Madeleine Cleary: Mm-hmm.
• 18:50
  Madeleine Cleary: There's so much there, Kate, and I think it's easy in hindsight, isn't it, to look back on those moments of rejection, um, and reflect on that because obviously the mother fault then went on to become a bestseller.
• 19:01
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 19:02
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, and you've spoken about this, it's sold internationally as well.
• 19:06
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, so a huge success, a critical success as well.
• 19:10
  Madeleine Cleary: But at the time when you're in that, that when you're in that state, um, it's really hard to pick yourself up.
• 19:17
  Madeleine Cleary: And I think Charlotte Wood's advice about taking some time and space is a good one.
• 19:21
  Madeleine Cleary: Was there anything else though that helped you when you had that moment of rejection?
• 19:26
  Kate Mildenhall: I think the other thing that helped is by that stage, um, I had other mates who were writers, and I, I think that there's part, and you will understand this as well, that um, it's such a strange industry to outsiders in that it, um.
• 19:44
  Kate Mildenhall: It works in odd ways.
• 19:45
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, the kind of business side works in odd ways, but also, I guess other artists feel like this too, that, um, that vulnerability, uh, and the fact that it feels so personal, um, when your work is rejected.
• 20:02
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I know we always try and talk about, you know, your book is not you, et cetera, but,
• 20:07
  but
• 20:07
  Kate Mildenhall: we put so much of ourselves onto the page.
• 20:10
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, so I think having other people around me who understood that, of course my friends and family were very supportive, but, but having other writers who can say, oh, yeah, you know, this time that I was rejected, or understand exactly how low you might be feeling through that is really good.
• 20:27
  Kate Mildenhall: And I think too, having gone through the part of the course, I mean, I was still doing the, the course at that stage too, getting a bit of a sense of what feedback can look like and.
• 20:42
  Kate Mildenhall: And I think around that stage two, I can't remember if someone said this to us on the podcast, but this idea that you only need one.
• 20:49
  Kate Mildenhall: Yes.
• 20:51
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and, and I remember maybe having given that advice to other people, but then suddenly being in a position where I was like, oh my gosh, now this is me.
• 21:00
  Kate Mildenhall: And I have to go out and, and find the person who will love this book and who will support it and who will wanna get behind it.
• 21:07
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, so, you know, so I think I, I kind of, I can't even describe how useful it had been to be able to talk to other writers, hear about their rejections and how they worked through it.
• 21:21
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and also the stuff that we don't necessarily say out loud or on podcasts, the kind of talking green rooms or, um, in WhatsApp chats where, where people are talking about how many times their successful books got rejected.
• 21:37
  Kate Mildenhall: Um.
• 21:38
  Kate Mildenhall: That was all galvanizing because I knew that, I believed in my book and I thought that it would have readers.
• 21:49
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I knew enough about the industry to, to know that at that stage that my best bet was to try and get an agent to do that.
• 21:58
  Kate Mildenhall: So I think as, as always, like we say, the information is, is so powerful.
• 22:03
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and that's why sharing information with other writers, uh, is something I believe in so much.
• 22:09
  Madeleine Cleary: Mm-hmm.
• 22:09
  Madeleine Cleary: Having that belief in your work, it's a, it's a really tough one, isn't it, particularly when you are an early emerging writer.
• 22:16
  Madeleine Cleary: When you talked about vulnerability earlier, does that ever change?
• 22:20
  Madeleine Cleary: You've published obviously five books now.
• 22:21
  Madeleine Cleary: Does that, does that change?
• 22:23
  Kate Mildenhall: I don't think so, Madeleine, I'm so sorry to say it.
• 22:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Oh, damn.
• 22:28
  Kate Mildenhall: I always talk about it, um, as feeling un skin and, and I think, you know, with each book.
• 22:37
  Kate Mildenhall: Regardless.
• 22:38
  Kate Mildenhall: Even, even with, um, the picture book, um, there's a feeling of kind of yeah, unzipping yourself and showing your insides to everyone, um, and, and worrying how that will be received.
• 22:56
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I think there's also a thing that I find, and it's why maybe often writers will talk about how that last, um, proofread, you know, when you're doing the final one and you have to hand it over and you, there's this kind of tug where you're like, I don't wanna give it over yet.
• 23:14
  Kate Mildenhall: Because I guess when you finally do that sign off, you are saying, this is the best thing that I could do.
• 23:21
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and often, often, for me anyway, it is, it, it's never quite the kind of perfect dream that I had of it.
• 23:33
  Kate Mildenhall: You never quite.
• 23:34
  Kate Mildenhall: Reach the ambition.
• 23:35
  Kate Mildenhall: And you know, I've talked so much about that extraordinary George Saunders, um, uh, quote that he talks about, about the, the kind of golden orb that you have when you first come up with an idea and that the process of writing is dropping that golden orb and it, it's smashing into a thousand pieces.
• 23:52
  Kate Mildenhall: And then your job as the writer is to put it back together and you never quite get it perfect.
• 23:57
  Kate Mildenhall: There's still cracks, isn't there?
• 23:59
  Kate Mildenhall: There's still cracks and you can see where you've put the seams together.
• 24:02
  Kate Mildenhall: But so I think that that other part is the vulnerability of saying, of having to have a level of, of pride in your work.
• 24:12
  Kate Mildenhall: You putting it out there, you're saying, this is what I've made, this is the best thing that I've made.
• 24:17
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but that's really hard.
• 24:19
  Kate Mildenhall: That's really hard to do, I think as well.
• 24:21
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and so I think that those two aspects, the fact that, um, regardless of.
• 24:27
  Kate Mildenhall: Of what kind of fiction, nonfiction, what whatever you're writing that there, it, it's so hugely personal, um, to put that writing out, but also to have to stand by it and say, this is the best thing that I could make right now is, is very vulnerable.
• 24:39
  Madeleine Cleary: No, I agree.
• 24:40
  Madeleine Cleary: I've, I've never spoken about this before publicly, but, um, when the Butterfly women came out, um, the, on the day it came out, arts Hub did a review and gave a three star of the book.
• 24:52
  Madeleine Cleary: Is there anything worse than a three star?
• 24:55
  Madeleine Cleary: No, I know because it's, it's, it's like a middling review.
• 24:59
  Madeleine Cleary: You'd rather go, they hate it all.
• 25:00
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 25:00
  Madeleine Cleary: Give
• 25:01
  Kate Mildenhall: it a one and hate it.
• 25:02
  Kate Mildenhall: And so then all your mates are gonna jump on and go.
• 25:05
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:06
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm so sorry that happened.
• 25:07
  Kate Mildenhall: Oh no.
• 25:07
  Kate Mildenhall: It was, why did you read
• 25:08
  Madeleine Cleary: it?
• 25:09
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, I know I didn't, I couldn't until I had a glass of wine in hand and then my husband read it to me.
• 25:13
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes, that was the day of publication.
• 25:15
  Madeleine Cleary: And at the time I thought, well, I just wanna pull it from, I wanna pull the book from publications.
• 25:20
  Madeleine Cleary: Obviously people are just gonna be like, oh, it's an okay book.
• 25:24
  Madeleine Cleary: Like it's just, okay.
• 25:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:25
  And
• 25:26
  Madeleine Cleary: of course, in hindsight, and you know, you, you get all these people that love it, people that absolutely love your work and you, and people bolster you, they tell you about it, but you don't have that when you get those, you know, initial early reviews.
• 25:39
  Madeleine Cleary: And, um, last night I thought,'cause I haven't read it since then, I'm like, I'm gonna read it.
• 25:43
  Madeleine Cleary: And I reread it and I was like, it wasn't that bad.
• 25:46
  Madeleine Cleary: It's not,
• 25:46
  Kate Mildenhall: it's never that bad.
• 25:48
  Kate Mildenhall: It's never that bad.
• 25:50
  Kate Mildenhall: And that's the thing too, that I think, um, I can't remember who recommended to do this.
• 25:56
  Kate Mildenhall: I wish I could, um, you know, put a name to every piece of ama amazing advice I've got, um, over time.
• 26:02
  Kate Mildenhall: But someone said to make a folder of, um.
• 26:08
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, beautiful compliments about your work or great reviews so that you can go back into it and bolster yourself in the future in those times where you are trying to remind yourself that you are worthy and exactly that you wrote Well, um, because in the period of publication as well, it is such a rollercoaster.
• 26:31
  Kate Mildenhall: You, you're like all nerve endings everywhere and you're getting this extraordinary feedback sometimes, and then you're getting haters or reviews that aren't as great as you wanted or someone else's books got massive sales.
• 26:46
  Kate Mildenhall: Like there's always something that can make you feel really shit about how your own work is going.
• 26:51
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so I think being able to just kind of quietly retreat to a place that is like, it's okay.
• 26:59
  Kate Mildenhall: Exactly.
• 27:00
  Kate Mildenhall: Remember these other things.
• 27:01
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, remember someone thought this was good enough to publish and that's, that's.
• 27:06
  Kate Mildenhall: Pretty bloody good in this country.
• 27:08
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, so, you know, let's just go back to there.
• 27:10
  Madeleine Cleary: That's right.
• 27:11
  Madeleine Cleary: Putting your armor together and it's exactly piecing together of the armor that you need sometimes.
• 27:16
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 27:16
  Kate Mildenhall: On, on the, the flip side of all of that is that someone, and it might be Catherine, um, might be someone else, talks about jumping on good reads and getting a, a clear sense of the kind of middling reviews straight up.
• 27:31
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm.
• 27:32
  Kate Mildenhall: So that, you know, what people are gonna speak to.
• 27:34
  Kate Mildenhall: I couldn't do that.
• 27:36
  Kate Mildenhall: What the complaints are.
• 27:37
  Kate Mildenhall: Are they gonna say, you know, I know in Hummingbird it was a lot of like, whoa, you know, like, this jumps around a lot.
• 27:43
  Kate Mildenhall: Like there's a lot of stuff in here, or people talking about the COVID sections.
• 27:47
  Kate Mildenhall: I was like, okay, cool.
• 27:48
  Kate Mildenhall: I can handle that.
• 27:48
  Kate Mildenhall: Like, they're all right.
• 27:50
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm, I'm willing to take that on the chin.
• 27:52
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, because often the, often the criticism that gets us in the gut the most is things that we've been worried about.
• 28:01
  Kate Mildenhall: And so.
• 28:02
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, so to see that it's not that, that it's something else or you know, like, I don't know, the sex was too wild.
• 28:09
  Kate Mildenhall: Like, great, go for it.
• 28:10
  Kate Mildenhall: Please complain.
• 28:11
  Kate Mildenhall: All you want about that, uh, there's a bunch of other readers who will be really happy with that, you know, so that can be useful too.
• 28:17
  Madeleine Cleary: And that's why the three stars are kind of the worst sometimes.
• 28:20
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause they can get underneath the skin of the book sometimes.
• 28:23
  Madeleine Cleary: Those little things Absolutely.
• 28:24
  Madeleine Cleary: That you, yeah.
• 28:25
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 28:25
  Madeleine Cleary: I don't check my good rates actually, to be honest.
• 28:27
  Madeleine Cleary: My,
• 28:27
  Kate Mildenhall: yeah.
• 28:28
  Kate Mildenhall: Smart, smart.
• 28:29
  Kate Mildenhall: Do you, uh, I have done in the past, uh, I, I, now, the thing that I've stopped doing is that I used to have a Google alert on like my name plus the name of the book.
• 28:42
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and one night before I went to sleep, um, and it was pretty late and, you know, like a review came up in the age in SMH, uh, and I read it again.
• 28:58
  Kate Mildenhall: It's not a terrible review.
• 29:00
  Kate Mildenhall: There was one line in it that cut me to the core and after that I was like, that's it.
• 29:06
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm gonna get them delivered either via, you know, someone at my publisher or like you.
• 29:11
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm gonna get my husband to read them to me with a glass of wine.
• 29:15
  Kate Mildenhall: So I've taken off the Google.
• 29:16
  Kate Mildenhall: That's a good tip
• 29:17
  Madeleine Cleary: for everybody.
• 29:18
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 29:18
  Madeleine Cleary: With reviews, glass of wine and hand must, that's a must glass of
• 29:21
  Kate Mildenhall: wine and hand.
• 29:22
  Kate Mildenhall: And do not put a Google review on yourself in your book.
• 29:24
  Kate Mildenhall: Do not
• 29:25
  Madeleine Cleary: put a Google Review.
• 29:25
  Madeleine Cleary: A
• 29:25
  Kate Mildenhall: A Google.
• 29:26
  Kate Mildenhall: Google Alert.
• 29:26
  Kate Mildenhall: Sorry.
• 29:27
  Kate Mildenhall: Alert.
• 29:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay.
• 29:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Do not, that sounds, that's a good, um, you've interviewed so many writers.
• 29:32
  Madeleine Cleary: I wanna talk about that.
• 29:33
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause I feel like you've got a lot of tips'cause a lot of authors are a little bit nervous and anxious before being interviewed during their publicity period.
• 29:41
  Yes.
• 29:41
  Um,
• 29:41
  Madeleine Cleary: do you have any, like, any just quick tips for writers who are being interviewed?
• 29:45
  Madeleine Cleary: Like what are some of your standout interviews and is there anything that's a pattern with them?
• 29:50
  Kate Mildenhall: One of the things that I think can be really useful, um, either if you're being interviewed or if you're in a position to interview someone else, is to find that person, uh, online on a podcast or on a video.
• 30:06
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, if they're a debut writer, they might just have done a couple of videos for their, um, publisher or on their social media to get a sense of how they speak.
• 30:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 30:16
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, whether they answer questions slowly, whether they go fast, um, whether they, there's some people who talk like they're giving perfect quotes, and then they'll just stop.
• 30:29
  Kate Mildenhall: So you know that that's your cue to then go on and ask a question.
• 30:32
  Kate Mildenhall: So it just allows you to feel a little bit more prepared.
• 30:35
  Kate Mildenhall: And certainly if you're being interviewed, um, and it's a certain type of podcast, um, or even a radio segment can sometimes, you know, there'll be a certain way that they interview.
• 30:47
  Kate Mildenhall: Yes, very quick, quick, isn't it radio?
• 30:48
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 30:48
  Kate Mildenhall: And it's so really, super quick, quick.
• 30:50
  Kate Mildenhall: So you wanna make sure that, um, you kind of have an understanding of what the brief is, of what you're gonna talk about.
• 30:58
  Kate Mildenhall: And the key, the, the other key thing is to recognize that in most of these situations when you're being interviewed, the thing that you want to do is to get people interested in buying your book.
• 31:10
  Kate Mildenhall: So, for instance, um, very simple, but say the name of your book, you know.
• 31:16
  Kate Mildenhall: Possibly once or twice.
• 31:18
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you want to have a couple of versions of your one sentence pitch, your one minute pitch.
• 31:27
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you'll often get asked about the seed of a story or where a story came from.
• 31:33
  Kate Mildenhall: So to have a, a short anecdote about that.
• 31:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you'll often get asked about what was hard or what you, or what you know was easy or what you loved about writing a book.
• 31:44
  Kate Mildenhall: So just to have a sense of how you might respond to some of those questions because, uh, and even to get someone to practice those kinds of questions with you can be really useful when you are going into interviews.
• 31:56
  Kate Mildenhall: Um.
• 31:57
  Kate Mildenhall: As an interviewer, I always try and, uh, let people know.
• 32:01
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I don't like to give questions ahead of time, but I will give them ahead of time if, if someone requests them and I'll, I'll make that clear.
• 32:08
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but I do like to ask people if there's anything that they wanna tell me that means that I can make the situation more comfortable for them.
• 32:17
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you know, people like, uh, Tim Winton, um, didn't want video on when I was interviewing him, just his preference.
• 32:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Oh, so
• 32:26
  Madeleine Cleary: you sat, so you sat video off, did you
• 32:28
  Kate Mildenhall: Sat video off?
• 32:29
  Kate Mildenhall: Oh yeah.
• 32:30
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, which is disconcerting for me'cause that's my preference.
• 32:33
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm.
• 32:33
  Kate Mildenhall: Because I like to read facial cues, but he didn't want that, so That's fine.
• 32:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Fair enough.
• 32:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you know, some people will want a moment to sit with the question that they've been asked, and I know for me that it took me a.
• 32:50
  Kate Mildenhall: A couple of seasons to be able to sit with that quiet and not just fill it and try and ask the question in another way.
• 32:56
  Kate Mildenhall: Some people just need a little bit longer to, to process the question, and they wanna be really thoughtful about how they answer.
• 33:02
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, yeah, so there, there are things that work for me and I will often ask, um, before a festival panel or before an interview, you know, please let me know if there's anything that you particularly don't wanna discuss or that you particularly do wanna discuss and what that can do.
• 33:19
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, often people will say, no, no, it's fine, ask anything.
• 33:23
  Kate Mildenhall: But I think anything you can do to make, um, the person you're interviewing feel more comfortable, um, coming in because it's scary, right?
• 33:34
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 33:35
  Kate Mildenhall: It's scary, particularly if you've never done it before.
• 33:37
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you can feel like you're gonna stuff up or, or say something stupid or, or not understand the question.
• 33:44
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I think as a guest.
• 33:49
  Kate Mildenhall: The other thing you can do is, you know, you can always ask again.
• 33:52
  Kate Mildenhall: You can always say, sorry, I didn't catch that.
• 33:54
  Kate Mildenhall: I've been on so many stages where people have said to me, sorry, can you ask that again?
• 34:00
  Kate Mildenhall: Or, um, I trailed off, did I answer your question?
• 34:03
  Kate Mildenhall: That's so perfectly okay to say those things too, rather than kind of, um, just rambling through an answer just to, to fill up space.
• 34:12
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh, these are great tips.
• 34:14
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm gonna go back and re-listen to that and then take all these notes because this is perfect for both the interviewer and the interviewee.
• 34:19
  Madeleine Cleary: Good.
• 34:20
  Madeleine Cleary: It made me reflect, I think the most nervous I was for an interview for the publicity period with the Butterfly Women was actually an interview by my publicist as a mock interview.
• 34:30
  Madeleine Cleary: She, she mock interviewed me and it was a great practice session.
• 34:33
  Madeleine Cleary: It was really good and she tested me on a few things and then she gave me feedback.
• 34:38
  Madeleine Cleary: I think it was the giving of feedback that was most an anxiety inducing, but very wealth worthwhile.
• 34:43
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah, I think so.
• 34:44
  Really
• 34:45
  Kate Mildenhall: worthwhile.
• 34:45
  Kate Mildenhall: I think the other thing, Madeleine and I used to teach, um, a kind of a, a a workshop about this, getting your head around the, the publicity period.
• 34:57
  Kate Mildenhall: And one of the things to recognize is, um, that what particularly media outlets will do, um, particularly for debut writers, is they want you to.
• 35:08
  Kate Mildenhall: They want you to spill your guts.
• 35:10
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm.
• 35:10
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, they want this kind of the most authentic, the most truthy.
• 35:14
  Kate Mildenhall: I mean, if you cry, brilliant.
• 35:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Let's get that.
• 35:17
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so one of the things that I really encourage writers to do, um, before the publicity period is to kind of make really clear boundaries about the narrative behind your book.
• 35:30
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, because you don't owe the media or the public, you know, your whole life.
• 35:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Like there's you as the writer and then there's you as private person.
• 35:40
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so a couple of the mistakes I made really early on is, um, you know, one of them was writing a piece for Sunday Life about, about my best friend myself and my best friend because Sky Laking was kind of about friendship and I'd, I'd written a really beautiful piece and then Sunday Life came back and said, oh, can you make it all about jealousy?
• 35:58
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, which I did, and I remember how sick I felt when it came out.
• 36:04
  Kate Mildenhall: Because I'd met the brief, you know, I'd done the thing that they asked and I'd given them a great piece of writing.
• 36:09
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but I was like, oh, I've, I've given too much.
• 36:12
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 36:12
  Kate Mildenhall: Like, that wasn't, that wasn't mine to give.
• 36:15
  Kate Mildenhall: And also I feel kind of sick about how much I've opened up there.
• 36:18
  Kate Mildenhall: So, and I say this, even if you're writing memoir, um, you are allowed to put the constraints around what you are gonna talk about.
• 36:28
  Kate Mildenhall: And they can be constraints that you speak publicly about, or they can just be the ones that you know, you know, this is the boundary around the story that I'm gonna tell.
• 36:35
  Kate Mildenhall: And I think having your head around that before you get asked and you just in the cycle, and so you say yes, yes, yes to everything, and you, you know, give away stuff that makes you feel like you've said too much.
• 36:47
  Kate Mildenhall: Um.
• 36:48
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 36:48
  Kate Mildenhall: That, that would be one thing that I encourage too.
• 36:50
  Madeleine Cleary: That's a really good tip.
• 36:51
  Madeleine Cleary: We actually, uh, in, I interviewed Kylie j Metcalf, who wrote Breath and she talks about this exact thing and she ended up having to put a lot of boundaries around her social media.
• 37:02
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, and just posting purely about the book and not about herself.
• 37:05
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause she felt she was giving so much of herself.
• 37:07
  Madeleine Cleary: And I think Memoirists, they do, they do, but it absolutely, it doesn't matter if you're a memoir writer or a fiction writer, even in kids Lit, you still have to give a lot Yeah.
• 37:16
  Madeleine Cleary: Of yourself now.
• 37:18
  Madeleine Cleary: We should follow one of your tips, which is to mention your book in a podcast interview.
• 37:23
  Madeleine Cleary: Shall we talk about the hiding place?
• 37:24
  Madeleine Cleary: Now?
• 37:25
  Madeleine Cleary: We can, let's just say the title a lot.
• 37:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Let's just say the title, the Hiding Place,
• 37:29
  Kate Mildenhall: and, and let's just say to everyone too, what I've already said to you before we started recording was, this is my very first interview about this book.
• 37:37
  Kate Mildenhall: So, um, as much as I've said all those things about like having your online pitch and everything down, I do not.
• 37:43
  Kate Mildenhall: So, you know, gonna ask everyone, watch and learn.
• 37:46
  Kate Mildenhall: Watch and learn as I.
• 37:48
  Kate Mildenhall: Stumbled my way through attempting to talk about my,
• 37:51
  Madeleine Cleary: my new book.
• 37:52
  Madeleine Cleary: Well look, I'm glad that we caught you first off so it's not sort of on repeat.
• 37:56
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause all this you tend to get on repeat.
• 37:57
  Madeleine Cleary: So this will be nice and fresh.
• 37:58
  Madeleine Cleary: It's a good practice episode.
• 38:00
  Madeleine Cleary: Thank you.
• 38:01
  Madeleine Cleary: I think for it.
• 38:01
  Madeleine Cleary: Thank you.
• 38:02
  Madeleine Cleary: And I feel safe with
• 38:03
  Kate Mildenhall: you.
• 38:03
  Madeleine Cleary: You good?
• 38:04
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm glad you feel very safe.
• 38:05
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, I absolutely love this book.
• 38:08
  Madeleine Cleary: I read it last week while I was in Noosa.
• 38:10
  Madeleine Cleary: It is going, it is, it's gonna take Australia by Storm's.
• 38:13
  Madeleine Cleary: A brilliant novel.
• 38:14
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh,
• 38:15
  thank you.
• 38:15
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, and my husband.
• 38:16
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause I was reading it next to my husband, like on the beach and by the pool and I kept like, you know when I think you know the sign of a good novel when you are like very audible in your response.
• 38:26
  Yes.
• 38:28
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 38:29
  I love it that you were making noises.
• 38:30
  That's great.
• 38:31
  Madeleine Cleary: I was like, oh God.
• 38:33
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh no.
• 38:34
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh no.
• 38:36
  Madeleine Cleary: You're tearing my hair out.
• 38:37
  Madeleine Cleary: Like, really?
• 38:38
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh my gosh.
• 38:39
  Madeleine Cleary: Are they really gonna do that?
• 38:40
  Madeleine Cleary: Anyway, it was brilliant.
• 38:42
  Great.
• 38:42
  That makes me incredibly happy.
• 38:44
  Thank you.
• 38:46
  Madeleine Cleary: Do you have your one to two line pitch for us, Kate?
• 38:50
  Kate Mildenhall: I don't, but I, I will attempt it.
• 38:52
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, so the Hiding Place is, uh, a novel about a group of family and friends who buy a property together.
• 39:03
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and it is set over the three days, uh, that they visit the property for the first time, and on the very first night, someone ends up dead.
• 39:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:16
  Kate Mildenhall: So that's, that's what happens.
• 39:17
  Kate Mildenhall: That's a terrible pitch for it.
• 39:19
  Kate Mildenhall: It is.
• 39:19
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, it's somewhere between crime and satire.
• 39:27
  Kate Mildenhall: There's a little bit of.
• 39:30
  Kate Mildenhall: Domestic kind of realism in there.
• 39:33
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm.
• 39:33
  Kate Mildenhall: It's completely different to anything else I've written before.
• 39:36
  Kate Mildenhall: It's a thriller.
• 39:37
  Kate Mildenhall: I think it's a thriller Thrill's.
• 39:38
  Kate Mildenhall: A thriller thrill.
• 39:39
  Kate Mildenhall: It's page
• 39:39
  Madeleine Cleary: turning.
• 39:40
  Madeleine Cleary: It's beautifully written.
• 39:42
  Madeleine Cleary: Thank
• 39:42
  Kate Mildenhall: you.
• 39:43
  Madeleine Cleary: There.
• 39:43
  Madeleine Cleary: I mean, it, it's literary, but it's, it's, it's got some really big hooks I think that keeps you absolutely gripped and in your seat.
• 39:52
  Madeleine Cleary: You just want to keep, get it through.
• 39:53
  Madeleine Cleary: I think I read it in 24 hours.
• 39:55
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes.
• 39:55
  Madeleine Cleary: And I'm not actually generally a fast reader, but I couldn't put this one down, so I'm so
• 40:00
  Kate Mildenhall: glad.
• 40:01
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm so glad.
• 40:02
  Kate Mildenhall: And that is, I mean, at the start of the process, and I was just looking back on my journal and it hasn't really changed much.
• 40:09
  Kate Mildenhall: The initial kind of, um, premise of the novel hasn't changed.
• 40:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Heaps of other stuff changed in it, uh, including that I, I got the number of, uh, characters down from something like 35 altogether, including the kids to a much more reasonable, uh, number of, you know, just over 10.
• 40:28
  Kate Mildenhall: But, um.
• 40:29
  Kate Mildenhall: But that premise was there from the start, as was the idea that it was going to take place over three days.
• 40:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Yes.
• 40:36
  Kate Mildenhall: And that was a, a pushback, like a literal kind of boundary that I put on myself after Hummingbird, which is said over, you know, 250 years and was this huge kind of sprawling epic.
• 40:48
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and I was like, you know what I'm gonna do for this one?
• 40:51
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm gonna make it three days.
• 40:53
  Madeleine Cleary: I, I love that.
• 40:54
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 40:54
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 40:55
  Madeleine Cleary: You have complete opposite because Hummingbird was so, so expansive.
• 40:57
  Madeleine Cleary: It was very, very expansive.
• 40:59
  Madeleine Cleary: And the hiding place is, it's, it's intimate.
• 41:02
  Madeleine Cleary: It's looking at the data.
• 41:03
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes.
• 41:04
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 41:04
  Madeleine Cleary: It's
• 41:04
  looking
• 41:04
  Kate Mildenhall: at the data.
• 41:05
  Kate Mildenhall: It's
• 41:05
  Madeleine Cleary: really, really cool.
• 41:06
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, I wanna talk about characters and the point, multiple points of view and all that, but firstly, um, I read this article that you wrote, I think for the monthly mm-hmm.
• 41:15
  Madeleine Cleary: About camping.
• 41:16
  Kate Mildenhall: Yes.
• 41:17
  Madeleine Cleary: Can you tell us a little bit about camping and what role it's played in your life?
• 41:21
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 41:21
  Kate Mildenhall: Okay.
• 41:21
  Kate Mildenhall: So, um, I mean, I think my mom and dad took me camping, you know, when I was three months old for the first time.
• 41:28
  Kate Mildenhall: There's pictures of me in the Mudder at the Murray River.
• 41:31
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and camping has always been a massive part of my life.
• 41:34
  Kate Mildenhall: My parents were both teachers.
• 41:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, we would camp nearly every holiday, including winter some years.
• 41:41
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and relatively basic campers.
• 41:45
  Kate Mildenhall: We'd go relatively remote.
• 41:47
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I think mom and dad still kind of turn up their noses at places that have showers and running water.
• 41:53
  Kate Mildenhall: So, um, you know, we spend a lot of time, um.
• 41:56
  Kate Mildenhall: And go Kuna country in kind of East Gippsland and Far East Gippsland, off and on the coast.
• 42:02
  Kate Mildenhall: And by the time I was a teenager, um, we were camping also with kind of some other families and our friends that had always been part of what we did.
• 42:12
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but then by the time we could all drive, there was probably a group of, of 20 of us who would camp together.
• 42:20
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and as is the way with people, any of your listeners who are from Elham will know this, that people from Elham often end up, uh.
• 42:30
  Kate Mildenhall: Procreating and marrying sometimes people from Eltham, uh, procreating with and marrying people from Eltham.
• 42:36
  Kate Mildenhall: And so, um, now that group has expanded out to something like 50 with all of our kids, and we camp together and it's multi-generational.
• 42:44
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you know, many of us have families there as well.
• 42:49
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, it's an all-in brawl, so we have lots of different sites, but we eat together, we play cricket together.
• 42:55
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and it's, it's a really huge part of, of our lives.
• 43:01
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and in fact, one of the, one of the seeds, or the original seed for this book is the fact that, um, we as a group were burnt out from the place that we have always camped or camped for 30 years at Thorough River, um, in the big flex, um, in the big fires.
• 43:23
  Kate Mildenhall: 2020.
• 43:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 43:24
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, and you know, like quite dramatically, you know, had 15 minutes to evacuate and a lot of us had to leave our gear in there, our trailer and the kids, that,
• 43:32
  Madeleine Cleary: that would've been frightening bikes things.
• 43:34
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 43:34
  Madeleine Cleary: I, we
• 43:35
  Kate Mildenhall: all got out and we were very safe and we were very lucky in that way, and other people had it much worse.
• 43:39
  Kate Mildenhall: But, um, yeah, you know, the next week we had the, the kind of, the army sent us photos of the kids, melted bikes and our melted trailer.
• 43:46
  Kate Mildenhall: And so, um, and, and that campsite is only, it, it looks like it might reopen this year, but, you know, for a long time it was closed.
• 43:54
  Kate Mildenhall: So we had to find somewhere else to camp.
• 43:55
  Kate Mildenhall: And one of the things that's things that has happened in Australia, all around Australia is that, um, camping numbers are just going up and there's a whole lot of different reasons for that.
• 44:05
  Kate Mildenhall: But, um, it can be really hard to find a camping place over, over summer.
• 44:10
  Kate Mildenhall: So that was quite tricky for us.
• 44:11
  Kate Mildenhall: So when, um, we talked as a group at different times about, you know, a.
• 44:17
  Kate Mildenhall: Buying a bush property together.
• 44:18
  Kate Mildenhall: So we didn't have to go in the ballot every year to find somewhere.
• 44:21
  Kate Mildenhall: And you know, that had always been the dream.
• 44:23
  Kate Mildenhall: And then one day down at my local real estate agent, I saw a sign saying, buy a whole town.
• 44:29
  Kate Mildenhall: And it was this beautiful property, uh, on the Thompson River near Rosson and, um, in kind of in the mountains, uh, just outta Melbourne.
• 44:40
  Kate Mildenhall: And I put it straight into the camping WhatsApp chat and said, why don't we just buy town?
• 44:45
  Wait, did you?
• 44:46
  Kate Mildenhall: No, we did not.
• 44:48
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and that is part of, I was like, wait,
• 44:49
  Madeleine Cleary: is this like a memoir?
• 44:50
  Kate Mildenhall: No, it's not a memoir.
• 44:51
  Kate Mildenhall: And part of the premise for the book came about because it started a lot of interesting questions about, um.
• 44:59
  Kate Mildenhall: The nature and complications and pressures of owning property together.
• 45:03
  Kate Mildenhall: And for a bunch of different reasons, you know, very wise ones, we didn't buy this particular property.
• 45:10
  Kate Mildenhall: I went and visited it, you know, went around it with my kids.
• 45:12
  Kate Mildenhall: We went full driving over it, uh, with, with the current caretaker.
• 45:17
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but the seed that it planted in me was, this is a great premise though for a novel because those early conversations I had with my very dearest friends who I've been friends with for, you know, decades, I was like, huh, I can see how this could go pear shaped, uh, not pear shaped in the way that it goes.
• 45:37
  Kate Mildenhall: Might I say no in the novel Madeleine.
• 45:39
  Kate Mildenhall: But, um, but that idea of, of friends and family, of money, of, um, ownership, uh, of what we believe about the ethics of property ownership as well.
• 45:53
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, they were all questions that I started thinking about.
• 45:56
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh, there's so much I wanna talk about.
• 45:58
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, so when I was reading it, it made me really reflect, I suppose, on my friendship group, which is probably what you're wanting and intending to do.
• 46:07
  Madeleine Cleary: Please.
• 46:07
  Madeleine Cleary: Because we, and I think travel changes so much as you go on with your friends.
• 46:11
  Madeleine Cleary: Like in my twenties we did a lot of travel with a big group from Canberra when we were living in Canberra.
• 46:16
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 46:16
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, a lot more drinking, partying.
• 46:19
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 46:19
  Madeleine Cleary: Big house by the beach.
• 46:21
  Madeleine Cleary: Like that was the sort of really good fun times.
• 46:23
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 46:24
  Madeleine Cleary: But now we're all in our thirties.
• 46:25
  Madeleine Cleary: It's a lot more complicated.
• 46:28
  Madeleine Cleary: We all live interstate.
• 46:29
  Madeleine Cleary: A lot of us now have kids and things do get bigger.
• 46:32
  Madeleine Cleary: So when you were talking about like the size of it, the coordination, the logistics.
• 46:37
  Madeleine Cleary: So for me, I really sympathize with Lou as the group organizer'cause I am the lou of my group.
• 46:42
  Madeleine Cleary: Uhhuh.
• 46:43
  Madeleine Cleary: I love
• 46:43
  Kate Mildenhall: this.
• 46:44
  Kate Mildenhall: I feel like people should be able to get little badges.
• 46:46
  Kate Mildenhall: Like I am Lou, I suppose no one will wear one that says I am Phil.
• 46:49
  Kate Mildenhall: But you know, maybe that they can, maybe they can.
• 46:52
  Madeleine Cleary: Are you, are you
• 46:52
  Kate Mildenhall: the Luke of your 50 odd.
• 46:55
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, no, it really gets shared around and no, I'm, I'm not a classic.
• 46:59
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I'm not a classic Lou.
• 47:00
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, there, there's everyone has very distinct roles.
• 47:07
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 47:07
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and we're also pretty good at sharing them, at sharing them out.
• 47:10
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and I've gotta say too, that, um, it was abundantly clear to me early on that if I was gonna write a book about a great big group of friends who have known each other for a long time and go camping together, that I was going to have to, um, radically work on characterization that was not based on any of my friends.
• 47:32
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, yes.
• 47:32
  Kate Mildenhall: So
• 47:34
  Madeleine Cleary: I gonna ask, is it,
• 47:35
  is it into, what, what's been the reaction of your friends?
• 47:37
  Yeah.
• 47:37
  Well, I mean, not all of them have read it yet.
• 47:40
  Kate Mildenhall: Mad, uh, I did do a sense check through, uh.
• 47:44
  Kate Mildenhall: By a few key people, uh, including two of my best friends.
• 47:48
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and they assured me that everything was okay.
• 47:50
  Kate Mildenhall: Though they both did say it, it went pretty close to the bone.
• 47:53
  Kate Mildenhall: And I think that that's because, um, as you are talking about with your own friendship group, um, there are lots of common dynamics that happen in friendship groups.
• 48:04
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and they are about, you know, certainly at the age that me and my friends are at, are at now too, there's complexities around, um, around parenting.
• 48:15
  Kate Mildenhall: There's complexities, uh, for people who have grown up with each other for a really long time, who have made different choices about work and about property and about the way they live their lives, which means that money can be really different, um, for people and can have really profound effects for people by the time that they're in their mid forties.
• 48:35
  Kate Mildenhall: Um.
• 48:36
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, there's, there's so much that happens, um, particularly with that idea, I think of, of old friends.
• 48:45
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 48:45
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and I think that some of the characters say, say something about this in the book that, um, you know, there's something about old friends where you're also still kind of expected to be your 18-year-old self Yes.
• 48:57
  Kate Mildenhall: Or your 16-year-old self, or your 25-year-old self.
• 48:59
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and to have both those strengths, but also, um, those weaknesses if we wanna call them that.
• 49:08
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and so there's not a lot of remaking yourself that you might get to do mm-hmm.
• 49:14
  Kate Mildenhall: With old friends that potentially one gets to do with newer friends.
• 49:19
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and, and I think that is.
• 49:23
  Kate Mildenhall: Really kind of interesting an an interesting place to play with, with characters and how they might react to different situations as well.
• 49:32
  Madeleine Cleary: And that's that intimacy I think that your book really brings you really showing those connections and you do it with such a large cast of characters.
• 49:40
  Madeleine Cleary: How, how did you, how did you keep up?
• 49:43
  Madeleine Cleary: How did you manage to work through who's who?
• 49:45
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, I
• 49:45
  Kate Mildenhall: gotta say, you know, like I cut a lot out because it, it became abundantly clear that I could not have the cast of characters that I imagined, which is really hard for me because in my mind when a group camping trip does involve somewhere around a 30 to 50 people.
• 50:02
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but of course, like with many things on the page that's very difficult, uh, to deliver on.
• 50:08
  Kate Mildenhall: So, um.
• 50:09
  Kate Mildenhall: So in terms of the, in terms of then working out who got to stay, uh, it was really important to me that there was, um, this idea of multi-generations.
• 50:21
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, so there is one child with a, with a point of view.
• 50:24
  Kate Mildenhall: Stella?
• 50:24
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 50:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Stella.
• 50:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and there's an older character, um, Avril, who's the, the matriarch or the mother of, of two of the characters.
• 50:32
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and she doesn't have a point of view, but she is, uh, it was really important for her to, to be in there as well.
• 50:39
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I wanted to have a, a sense of, I always had a really clear sense of Bill, who is, um, you know, one of the dads,
• 50:52
  he's smug, he's smug, he's
• 50:53
  Kate Mildenhall: smug, he's smug.
• 50:54
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, he, you know, he is a basketball dad.
• 50:58
  Madeleine Cleary: What I love about Phil is like there's so much chaos going around him and all he cares about is these his bloody lamp.
• 51:04
  Kate Mildenhall: He just wants to get the lamp spit on.
• 51:07
  Kate Mildenhall: He's thought about it a lot.
• 51:09
  Kate Mildenhall: He's got a new spit, he's bought the new contraption.
• 51:13
  Kate Mildenhall: He's really thought about it a lot.
• 51:14
  Kate Mildenhall: He's watched a lot of YouTube videos and he's going deliver on this bloody spit.
• 51:20
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, he was so much fun to write.
• 51:24
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh, I, I imagine.
• 51:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 51:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but you know, like with, with all things, um, multi POV is hard to do.
• 51:34
  Kate Mildenhall: Stop.
• 51:35
  Kate Mildenhall: Multi POV is also really hard to do when you've got a lot of action that you've gotta get through.
• 51:41
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and, and one of the things that I had to really work on, in, in drafting and in editing was trying to get the language right.
• 51:49
  Kate Mildenhall: They're all, um, kind of close third person POVs.
• 51:53
  Kate Mildenhall: And I was trying to get, uh, the language distinct enough between those characters.
• 51:59
  Kate Mildenhall: They're close, they've known each other for a long time.
• 52:01
  Kate Mildenhall: They do things like, uh, have the same phrasing around.
• 52:05
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you know, they'll call each other love or babe.
• 52:09
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and, and at times.
• 52:11
  Kate Mildenhall: I had to really work out, okay, well, I've gotta have one character who says love, and one character who says doll or something else, just to give it that differentiation, even though in real life often what we do is kind of mimic our closest friends as well.
• 52:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, yeah, so getting the, getting the POV was important.
• 52:30
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I wanted to have sisters as, as part of that.
• 52:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:33
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and, and a best friend as well.
• 52:35
  Kate Mildenhall: So it was just kind of, yeah.
• 52:38
  Kate Mildenhall: Experimentation and, and, you know, killing a lot of darlings.
• 52:42
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, you said you cut a lot, so what, how much
• 52:44
  did
• 52:45
  Kate Mildenhall: you cut?
• 52:46
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I cut, I originally had something like 12 adults.
• 52:52
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I didn't have them all with a POV, um, but they did, uh, really muddy up the waters a bit.
• 53:00
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 53:00
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 53:00
  Kate Mildenhall: And the way that I, I wrote this book much more quickly.
• 53:04
  Kate Mildenhall: Then I have previous books, and again, that was a decision that I made, uh, along with the constraint around, um, the time, uh, the three day kind of timeframe of the book.
• 53:16
  Kate Mildenhall: And to be frank, um, and I'm gonna be frank with you though, I'm not sure if I'll mention this in other interviews.
• 53:21
  Kate Mildenhall: It was a financial decision, uh, in that I knew that, um, you know, there was a, there was a period of time where I was a sole income earner for, for our family in the last couple of years.
• 53:31
  Kate Mildenhall: And I knew that, uh, the only way to make my advance work was to write the book quicker mm-hmm.
• 53:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, for it to keep us afloat.
• 53:38
  Kate Mildenhall: So, you know, that was a, a decision that I made to write quickly, but also, um, I really lent into it as part of the creative process.
• 53:47
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, so I wrote fast, but I also deleted fast.
• 53:51
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, I kind of had a sense of the plot.
• 53:57
  Kate Mildenhall: I knew where I wanted to end up.
• 53:59
  Kate Mildenhall: Um.
• 54:00
  Kate Mildenhall: The way that it got there.
• 54:02
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, who dies, uh, how they die, um, who may or may not be responsible.
• 54:08
  Kate Mildenhall: All of those things changed multiple times over the drafting.
• 54:12
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 54:12
  Kate Mildenhall: 'cause
• 54:13
  Madeleine Cleary: often, like crime thrillers are heavily plotted and Yeah.
• 54:17
  Madeleine Cleary: Enhancing it is, is not generally
• 54:19
  Kate Mildenhall: recommended.
• 54:19
  Kate Mildenhall: No.
• 54:19
  Kate Mildenhall: But let's remember, I am not a crime thriller writer, and this is what I love so much though about it.
• 54:24
  Kate Mildenhall: And I spent so long, um, you know, talking to other crime writers, bailing them up, really, let's be frank about it.
• 54:31
  Kate Mildenhall: Bailing them up in green rooms and at writer's festivals and saying like, okay, Chris Hammer, how do you do it?
• 54:37
  Kate Mildenhall: Okay, Hailey Scribner.
• 54:38
  Kate Mildenhall: Like, what is your key kind of thing that you do?
• 54:41
  Kate Mildenhall: What did they say?
• 54:41
  Kate Mildenhall: Can you give us, well, they all had completely different responses.
• 54:44
  Kate Mildenhall: That's annoying.
• 54:45
  Kate Mildenhall: They did.
• 54:46
  Kate Mildenhall: I mean, Haley's one of Haley's, um, great pieces of advice to me because I, I was kind of held back for a long time by the fact that, um, I.
• 54:58
  Kate Mildenhall: It was really ethically problematic for me to kill someone.
• 55:01
  Kate Mildenhall: And like I say that I sound like a golden child.
• 55:04
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm not at all like, I can, I can do horrible things in fiction, but I was, I think because I was writing these characters as people like me, you know, these kind of average middle class kind of people, um, who think that they're good people.
• 55:22
  Kate Mildenhall: I was like, well, how am I gonna get a dead body in here and have someone responsible for it?
• 55:26
  Kate Mildenhall: Because these are people who aren't necessarily going around thinking about killing people.
• 55:30
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and what Haley did, which was really good, was she was like, oh my God, just kill anyone.
• 55:35
  Kate Mildenhall: Like, don't stress about it.
• 55:37
  Kate Mildenhall: Crime writers don't stress about who they kill for God's sake, Kate.
• 55:40
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, so that was good.
• 55:42
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and, and you know, you, earlier you talked about playfulness, and one of the things that I had to do was to have this element of kind of theater and playfulness and, um, you know, satire and having things a little bit over the top.
• 55:57
  Kate Mildenhall: So that I could get through those kinds of, um, yeah.
• 56:03
  Kate Mildenhall: Bigger moments that poten potentially I hadn't kind of played with or written before in contemporary realism.
• 56:09
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, it's different when you're doing it, I think, in Spec Vic and things like that because you're already building a whole world.
• 56:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Yes.
• 56:16
  Kate Mildenhall: Whereas this world is, is meant to be this world right here, uh, in the hiding place.
• 56:20
  Kate Mildenhall: So,
• 56:21
  Madeleine Cleary: um, as you're talking, I'm now picturing the scene that you, which I will not reveal of this dead body.
• 56:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 56:28
  Madeleine Cleary: And it is exactly what you've described.
• 56:29
  Madeleine Cleary: It is that, and it was one of those moments where I was like, oh, audible, audible.
• 56:36
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, I wanna talk about the good people and I'm just gonna read something here.
• 56:40
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause I thought this was, um, so interesting.
• 56:43
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, so this is from flicks perspective.
• 56:45
  Madeleine Cleary: One of the six or seven, it might've been seven, no, six.
• 56:48
  Madeleine Cleary: Six, no, I think it's six.
• 56:49
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 56:50
  Madeleine Cleary: So what Flick had come to realize she wanted, what was feasible and desirable for her was in fact a little slice of nature to call her own.
• 56:57
  Madeleine Cleary: This place isn't a holiday house like the rich folk have in their tightly held parcels of city adjacent coastline.
• 57:03
  Madeleine Cleary: This is something else.
• 57:04
  Madeleine Cleary: This is hashtag regeneration.
• 57:05
  Madeleine Cleary: This is hashtag sustainable.
• 57:07
  Madeleine Cleary: This is hashtag back to nature.
• 57:09
  Madeleine Cleary: What I love about this is that it, it, it really, it sets them aside, I think, from who they do not wanna be, which is these rich people who have investment properties.
• 57:19
  Madeleine Cleary: Um mm-hmm.
• 57:20
  Madeleine Cleary: Instead, they're all about being eco-friendly and respect to nature, and they're giving kids the ability to run around in nature, which also is really lovely as well.
• 57:29
  Madeleine Cleary: Do you wanna talk a little bit about some of that land ownership aspect that you were
• 57:34
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 57:34
  Kate Mildenhall: I love that you chose that bit.
• 57:35
  Kate Mildenhall: It's so interesting because I haven't heard people read from it before.
• 57:39
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but I think what struck me immediately too is, um, isn't that what we all want to think, right?
• 57:46
  Kate Mildenhall: We're not like other people.
• 57:47
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm.
• 57:47
  Kate Mildenhall: We do it, we're doing it a little bit differently.
• 57:51
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, we're, we're going with our moral values and our ethics.
• 57:55
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, we're not like those people for a, for a time.
• 57:59
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I was gonna call it those people.
• 58:01
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and, and I think, you know, that's one of the things that I wanted to examine and, and the stuff about land ownership too.
• 58:07
  Kate Mildenhall: I mean, you know, on, on so many, on so many levels.
• 58:11
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, land ownership is.
• 58:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Deeply problematic, particularly in this country.
• 58:18
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, you know, we're a settler colonial, uh mm-hmm.
• 58:21
  Kate Mildenhall: Group of people.
• 58:22
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, so the idea of, of land ownership and who, uh, lo owns land is inherently problematic anyway.
• 58:30
  Kate Mildenhall: Uh, and then there's this idea that Australians seem to hold so dearly as well about the little, the little patch that is yours, whether it is a backyard or a holiday house.
• 58:43
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I mean, just the fact that if you're listening to, you know, kind of legal talk back on the radio, that every second, uh, caller is talking about a fence dispute.
• 58:53
  Kate Mildenhall: Like we, we will quibble over 10 centimeters.
• 58:58
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, you No, you, that's where your fence No, that is.
• 59:01
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, so there's something that, uh, people find, um.
• 59:07
  Kate Mildenhall: It gives them such a sense of self about the land that they own, and yet that whole kind of idea could just go up and smoke.
• 59:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, so I really wanted to, I really wanted to write about land ownership.
• 59:20
  Kate Mildenhall: I really wanted to have the idea in there of also people having different kind of financial stakes in it.
• 59:26
  Kate Mildenhall: So does that mean that you, you are more an owner if you have more of a stake or if you do more work?
• 59:33
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, there's this idea of sweat equity that they talk about in the book too.
• 59:36
  Kate Mildenhall: Well, I'm doing a lot of work for the property.
• 59:37
  Kate Mildenhall: So what does that mean?
• 59:39
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I just think it's such a, yeah.
• 59:42
  Kate Mildenhall: A rich kind of area to think about and to talk about.
• 59:44
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I listened for a long time too to, um, an extraordinary book called The Book of Trespass.
• 59:51
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I think it's by Nick Hayes.
• 59:53
  Kate Mildenhall: He's, uh, an English writer, which talks about, um, the kind of the right to wander in the UK and about.
• 1:00:01
  Kate Mildenhall: Reaching fences and going over fences and, um, law of the, the law of the commons and things like that.
• 1:00:07
  Kate Mildenhall: So these are all ideas that I've thought about a lot.
• 1:00:09
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but in the end, coming down to the fact of where a fence is on a property, um.
• 1:00:19
  Kate Mildenhall: Whether you're squatting on common land or on someone's land, these were the practical ways in which I could kind of bring that to life.
• 1:00:26
  Madeleine Cleary: Mm, no, it's so interesting.
• 1:00:28
  Madeleine Cleary: And I think, um, you, you, you use very subtle irony as well, because on one hand they're really championing, um, you know, acknowledgement of country and first nations rights to land ownership.
• 1:00:39
  Madeleine Cleary: And then the same time there's this group of campus who are squatting on their, on their land, um, who have more connections to the land than, than any of them have, and they're trying to move them on.
• 1:00:51
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, and you do that as well with the environmental, um, side of things as well, which I think is really interesting.
• 1:00:57
  Madeleine Cleary: There's a lot of grotesque things that you have about the land, but there's also a lot of beauty and serenity.
• 1:01:02
  Madeleine Cleary: And then one of the characters is also, um, you know, I won't, no spoilers, but it definitely goes into things like climate change and how we, what, what footprint we leave behind.
• 1:01:12
  Madeleine Cleary: Do you wanna talk a little bit about the environment?
• 1:01:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Yeah.
• 1:01:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, so, so I guess one of the things too is that sense of hypocrisy.
• 1:01:19
  Kate Mildenhall: Hypocrisy was another, um, potential title for the book and the fact that, um, you know, they're often so convenient, our ethical and our ethics and our, and our morals.
• 1:01:32
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I guess, you know, um, in The Mother Fault, in Hummingbird Effect, uh, and in this one too.
• 1:01:38
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, I feel like there's a, you know, I, I guess I, I feel a kind of moral compulsion to write, um, about.
• 1:01:45
  Kate Mildenhall: The, the climate catastrophe in different ways.
• 1:01:48
  Kate Mildenhall: And in this one I wanted to kind of lean into, um, the idea of invasive species a little bit, um, but also that kind of, um, connection to or, uh, removal from the, the land.
• 1:02:02
  Kate Mildenhall: Also, you know, just in really little bits, there's, um, I got really obsessed with this idea of res nagging rivers and my mom and dad, you know, I grew up out on the Yarra River and mom and dad still lived there.
• 1:02:12
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, they told me about this idea that in the Murray in particular, you know, you're putting back in a lot of the, the big old trees to snag it up because they're, um, great habitats for fish, et cetera.
• 1:02:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:25
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but of course, you know, one of the characters in the book Flick also wants to, you know, like tidy the waterhole and make it safe and, you know, make it kind of more aesthetically pleasing.
• 1:02:36
  Kate Mildenhall: So she's pulling everything out while Joe's telling her to put it back in because it's good habitat and.
• 1:02:42
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, I, I, I think that's, that's what life is.
• 1:02:45
  Kate Mildenhall: You know, on the one hand, some of us are, you know, chucking solar on our roof, and then at the same time, you know, we've got our kids buying plastic shit on sheen.
• 1:02:56
  Kate Mildenhall: And, you know, you can't, there is no, I, I think what my position is is like there's no way that you can be fully, ethically good, right?
• 1:03:08
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 1:03:08
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and I think even coming to that realization, for me, it's taken a long time, but, um, but I think coming to that and holding that kind of, um, I guess that sense of hypocrisy and that, that sense of it, um, yeah, not, not also not feeling this kind of, um, that you ever have the moral high ground because so often you do not,
• 1:03:35
  Madeleine Cleary: because good people can make bad decisions, can't they?
• 1:03:38
  Kate Mildenhall: People make very bad decisions.
• 1:03:42
  Madeleine Cleary: So you've written historical fiction spec, thick children's picture book, a cross genre blend.
• 1:03:48
  Madeleine Cleary: I would say a thriller crime.
• 1:03:50
  Madeleine Cleary: What's next?
• 1:03:51
  Madeleine Cleary: Kate?
• 1:03:52
  Madeleine Cleary: Romance.
• 1:03:52
  Madeleine Cleary: Obviously
• 1:03:53
  Kate Mildenhall: Madeleine, um, romantic, either romantic?
• 1:03:56
  Kate Mildenhall: No, I don't think I, I don't think I have the skill to pull off from a romantic.
• 1:04:00
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but it is interesting.
• 1:04:01
  Kate Mildenhall: I, I've got an idea for, for the new book, um, and there is an element of, of leaning into some romance tropes in it.
• 1:04:08
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, you know, what's really important to me is I don't think like crime writers, historical fiction writers, romance writers, they are so good at nailing their, their genre.
• 1:04:22
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and I think that for me, and so, so, you know, I hope no one feels like I'm, I'm stepping in territory or I'm like getting outta my lane.
• 1:04:29
  Kate Mildenhall: But one of the things for me that really works for my creative process is to go.
• 1:04:35
  Kate Mildenhall: Okay.
• 1:04:35
  Kate Mildenhall: Like, well, how does that kind of storytelling work?
• 1:04:37
  Kate Mildenhall: And if I mash that with this kind of storytelling, like how does that work?
• 1:04:42
  Kate Mildenhall: And I just, I, yeah, I, I find a lot of energy, um, from those kinds of experiments.
• 1:04:50
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, and they really fuel my, my writing.
• 1:04:52
  Kate Mildenhall: So, um, yeah, I, my poor publishers, they, they don't know where to shelve me.
• 1:04:57
  Kate Mildenhall: The booksellers, I'm sorry, booksellers.
• 1:04:59
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, hopefully this one is easier to shelve, uh, for you all.
• 1:05:03
  Madeleine Cleary: No, keep, keep swimming outside all the lanes, Kate, just keep going all around.
• 1:05:07
  Madeleine Cleary: We'll, just, everyone else can just keep following it, but we'll move around you.
• 1:05:10
  Madeleine Cleary: We'll embrace you.
• 1:05:12
  Madeleine Cleary: I love it.
• 1:05:13
  Madeleine Cleary: Kate, thank you.
• 1:05:13
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, talking, I was talking with Natasha Lester actually about dreams and having big dreams because she actually charted me.
• 1:05:20
  Madeleine Cleary: She chastised me when I sort of said, I'm setting my expectations low.
• 1:05:24
  Madeleine Cleary: You know, it's better to prepare yourself and you know, Kate, be realistic.
• 1:05:28
  Madeleine Cleary: And she said, why not dream big?
• 1:05:30
  Madeleine Cleary: So what, what, what are your big dreams then, Kate, for the next
• 1:05:33
  Kate Mildenhall: few years?
• 1:05:35
  Kate Mildenhall: Well, I think one of my big dreams is that I wanna write 10 novels, or maybe more than that if I, if I'm lucky enough to have that much time.
• 1:05:47
  Kate Mildenhall: And, um, I probably foolishly only realized that a few years ago, and I think it was one of those times when I was, I was looking through someone's book and I, and it was the first time that I'd encountered them, and I think it was, um, Louise Ick actually.
• 1:06:01
  Kate Mildenhall: And I was looking through and I was like, oh my gosh, you know, she's written seven novels already and, and I wonder how many more she's gonna write.
• 1:06:09
  Kate Mildenhall: And I realized like, this is what I wanna do.
• 1:06:12
  Kate Mildenhall: Right?
• 1:06:12
  Kate Mildenhall: I, there's so many, um, stories.
• 1:06:15
  Kate Mildenhall: I wanna write so many experiments that I wanna do, like, um, and to do that, uh, especially when you start thinking about what we know about publishing lead times and about how long it takes to write a book and then how long it takes to publicize it, you're suddenly like, okay, that's a finite amount of time.
• 1:06:32
  Kate Mildenhall: That, that I have left.
• 1:06:34
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, so I guess for me, you know, being able to build a career within the industry, um, and including getting to talk to other writers and, and doing that part and doing mentoring and teaching as well, that means that it is sustainable for me to keep writing, um, is like the biggest dream of all.
• 1:06:52
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, on top of that.
• 1:06:54
  Kate Mildenhall: Obviously, my first dream when I left school was to be a film director and to walk the red carpet at the Oscars.
• 1:07:02
  Kate Mildenhall: So we'll put that in as a secondary dream that, you know, that one day I, I want to be walking along a red carpet with someone who has turned one of my books into something amazing and I will feel pretty smug.
• 1:07:15
  Kate Mildenhall: Then
• 1:07:15
  Madeleine Cleary: I could see the hiding place as being a great movie.
• 1:07:18
  Madeleine Cleary: Did you just set me up there to say that?
• 1:07:20
  Kate Mildenhall: No.
• 1:07:20
  Kate Mildenhall: Well
• 1:07:21
  Madeleine Cleary: just keep saying The hiding place.
• 1:07:22
  Madeleine Cleary: The hiding place.
• 1:07:23
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes, do Please do.
• 1:07:24
  Madeleine Cleary: Please do.
• 1:07:25
  Madeleine Cleary: Please.
• 1:07:25
  Madeleine Cleary: This would be an amazing movie.
• 1:07:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, so we always finish on one last question.
• 1:07:31
  Madeleine Cleary: We always ask our guests their final top tip for writers.
• 1:07:35
  Madeleine Cleary: So Kate Den Hall, can you give us your top tip?
• 1:07:38
  Kate Mildenhall: Okay.
• 1:07:38
  Kate Mildenhall: I'm looking over at my, um, post-it notes that are on my window, which I keep above me to keep me going.
• 1:07:47
  Kate Mildenhall: And one of them says, forge ahead.
• 1:07:51
  Kate Mildenhall: With an exclamation mark.
• 1:07:52
  Kate Mildenhall: Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:52
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and I would say that that's just a variation on keep going.
• 1:07:57
  Kate Mildenhall: And I think what, what writers often forget is, um, that in the end, the work, the work is just getting the words down and doing the next thing to the words if it's in drafting, um, just to, to keep going.
• 1:08:12
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and that includes sometimes to keep writing through a failure, uh, to learn from that and to do the next one as well.
• 1:08:19
  Kate Mildenhall: And, and so I would say that at whatever stage people are at, in, in a particular project or in their writing career, um, keep going forward, ahead.
• 1:08:29
  Kate Mildenhall: You've got this.
• 1:08:30
  Madeleine Cleary: Ooh, I love that.
• 1:08:31
  Madeleine Cleary: And I think I'm gonna add to that, put up a, some post-it notes in your office as
• 1:08:35
  Kate Mildenhall: well.
• 1:08:35
  Kate Mildenhall: Put up post-it notes.
• 1:08:36
  Kate Mildenhall: And what I do is I generally, um, switch them over because I can see one of them says weather.
• 1:08:42
  Kate Mildenhall: And that's because I knew that I had to go back and do an edit, uh, where I had to really make sure, make sure that I had the weather correct in, in the hiding place.
• 1:08:49
  Kate Mildenhall: So, um, I do take them down, uh, eventually at the end of a, a project and then set up a new set.
• 1:08:55
  Kate Mildenhall: Um, but yeah, the Post-it notes, motivational post-it notes like you can't go wrong.
• 1:08:59
  Madeleine Cleary: No, exactly.
• 1:09:00
  Madeleine Cleary: So good.
• 1:09:01
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, Kate, you, this has been an amazing episode.
• 1:09:04
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm, I think writers are just gonna absolutely love this.
• 1:09:07
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, the Hiding Place.
• 1:09:08
  Madeleine Cleary: The Hiding Place.
• 1:09:09
  Madeleine Cleary: The Hiding Place.
• 1:09:10
  Madeleine Cleary: The Hiding Place, hiding Place.
• 1:09:11
  Madeleine Cleary: It'll be out when this episode drops, so it'll be available in all good bookstores.
• 1:09:15
  Madeleine Cleary: And I very much highly recommend everyone grabs a copy.
• 1:09:18
  Madeleine Cleary: And it'll be Christmas time as well.
• 1:09:19
  Madeleine Cleary: So grab a few copies, do grab them for
• 1:09:22
  Kate Mildenhall: everyone, um, especially the people who you might want to, you know, go into a communal living situation.
• 1:09:28
  Oh,
• 1:09:29
  Madeleine Cleary: or maybe not.
• 1:09:31
  Kate Mildenhall: Madeleine, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:09:32
  Kate Mildenhall: That was a real treat and like I said at the start, um, you know, I get a bit nervous being on the other side, so, um, you looked after me so well and I really appreciate it.
• 1:09:41
  Madeleine Cleary: Aw, well thank you Kate for joining us.
• 1:09:42
  Madeleine Cleary: We are so happy to have you on here.
• 1:09:44
  Madeleine Cleary: Thank you.
• 1:09:44
  Kate Mildenhall: Thank you.
• 1:09:49
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• 1:09:52
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• 1:09:57
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• 1:10:06
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• 1:10:09
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