Latest / Mythmakers / Emily J. Taylor: The Otherwhere Post

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Emily J. Taylor: The Otherwhere Post · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:11
  creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and
• 0:17
  today I'm very excited to be able to welcome onto the podcast Emily J. Taylor, whose second
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  novel, The Other We're Post, is it about to come out Emily or is it already out? How is it?
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  Is it on the verge? It's already out. It's out. Okay, just out. So that's really exciting.
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  For people listening, because they can immediately go and find the book. Wonderful, which is
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  published by the Pushkin Press, which is a really exciting, independent publisher. So Emily,
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  welcome. Now, Emily, you aren't sitting in Oxford or Oxfordshire like I am. Tell us where you are.
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  I am in beautiful, very warm right now. I'm in Minnesota in the United States. We're very close
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  to Canada. It's actually cold and snowy most of the year, but right now it's pretty warm.
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  But looking at your bio, you are originally a California girl. I am. I am. I grew up in California
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  and I moved around quite a bit and then my husband and I kind of landed here and we've been here
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  for a little while now. So this is pretty much home, but... So we're going to be talking mainly
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  about The Other We're Post and writing that kind of fantasy, but let's work out how you got here.
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  So what was your journey to being an author and which of the authors that you've read had inspired
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  you along the way to being a writer? It could be people you've read and thought, well, I'm definitely
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  not doing that. Or those I'd like to be then. I don't mind whichever way you take that question.
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  Yeah, I read so much. It's interesting. My path to becoming a writer was a little winding. I worked
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  in advertising and I worked on the creative side. So I actually was an art director for years and
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  years before I started writing books. And I always read. I was a voracious reader. I was reading a
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  book. I read quite a bit and I loved reading, but I never felt... I never knew that you could
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  be a writer. It's funny, like growing up as a little girl. I never thought that, oh, I could write
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  books. I just never entered into my brain space, but I was a creative. And I feel like creatives,
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  like where authors are creatives. We can take that creativity and apply it to a lot of other
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  things. But yeah, so I worked as an art director for years, so very visual. But I wrote a lot of
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  commercial scripts. I wrote quite a bit for my job and I read a lot. And I would say the books that
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  I loved reading. I read a lot of fantasy from a young age. I remember particularly reading... I remember
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  reading the line in which the word opened. I was really young in loving that. And then I also read
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  my mom had this collection of... They were these gothic suspense novels from... I think there was
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  this one, like, Daphne Dumourier. I read her and then I also read this one author, Victoria Holt,
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  I don't know. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, I read everything she wrote growing up and then a lot of
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  that same ilk. So all these really kind of romantic gothic suspense novels. Yeah, I actually
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  reminded me of a thread that we've never spoken about on this podcast is that when I was growing up,
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  as well, because there was less published for sort of YA readership at that time. This is a category
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  that I read Victoria Holt, Jean Plady. Yes, Jean Plady, yeah. Yes, Susan. So these are historical...
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  historical gothic suspense novels. We're a pre-raflight vibe. Yes. Oh, well, so thank you for
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  taking me down memory. Yes, nobody knows who I'm talking about when I say her name so thank you.
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  But yeah, I was deeply into those and I read those when I was very young, very impressionable,
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  like middle grade high school level here and then I think the first YA I ever read was Twilight.
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  It was... I think it was a lot of people's first young adult book that they read and that kind of
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  tipped me into YA and I remember reading everything I could get my hands on that had a vampire in
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  it for a little while. I wonder if I was maybe a bit older than you, I probably am. I met those
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  vividly. My daughter was reading Twilight and I heard of the phenomenon. So I remember vividly
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  sitting in a car park waiting outside whilst one of my children had a drumming lesson. I didn't go
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  in for the drumming lesson because I found it a bit painful. I remember sitting in the car park
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  reading this book and finding myself fixed, you know, absolutely in that moment, in that world,
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  but also sitting and wondering, why does this work? What is the secret to making this work?
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  Because in a sense, it's not, you know, there were things which plot wise. I mean, you can pick it
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  apart. There's an element, pick apart and criticise and I think what I decided was that it managed
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  to capture that obsession and breadthlessness of a certain stage in your teen years.
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  A completely grim, yes. It's really about that. I mean, the vampires is a nice lens to do that,
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  but I did feel as though I was that 15, 16-year-old again with a crush on somebody who would really
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  not suit me if I thought about it. Anyway, so that's what I, it's funny that, isn't it? So to
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  write the YA, you have to sort of channel that in a teen, I think. Oh, 100%. Yeah, I like to say,
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  I'm like perpetually 17 years on. I was looking at the sort of the material that came along with
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  your book when I sent a lovely finished version. And it was like a little origin story they sent
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  with it. But for those of you who don't get sent the origin version, we'd like to tell us where
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  the other way post came from. Yeah, I don't remember what I wrote on that, but I thought it'd be
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  prompt. So you said it came in two parts. Oh, yes. Okay, so the first part, so it actually started,
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  I remember the exact moment it started. It was during the pandemic and I was, I had a newborn
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  at the time. So I was very sleep deprived. And I remember walking to the mailbox just to get
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  mail. And I had, I had just sold my first book Hotel Magnifique, which is a standalone fantasy. And
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  I was trying to think of a new idea to pitch as kind of a second, like a follow up to hotel to
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  present to editors. So that was in the back of my mind. But I remember walking in the mailbox.
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  And I had, and staring at the mailbox, as one does when they're sleep deprived.
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  I know, I know. I know. I remember I think it said like property approved by the postmaster general
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  on my call. There's interesting world building. But the idea of what if mail wasn't ordinary,
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  what if it could be magical, what if we could do things with it like enchanted to leap off the
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  page and form a missing relative in the air. And that idea of this enchanted mail really gripped
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  me. And then I thought, Oh, what if we could deliver mail to other worlds? And that was kind of the
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  big sparkly idea that, and I always kind of start my books with with it's funny. I always do,
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  but I've only written two books. Yes, 100% track record. But I, but these questions of taking
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  something that is ordinary and adding a magical twist to it. So I liked this notion of, Oh, we could,
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  what if we can deliver mail to other worlds? And all these ideas started coming to me and I
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  immediately ran back home and came up with my main character, Maeve, who is the protagonist of this
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  story. And it's about her. Do you want me to give a little pitch for the book? Yeah, tell us
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  about the book that I'll make you tell me the second. Okay. Okay. It involves Edgen Bruh if you'd
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  pick up. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll give you a pitch for the book. And then well, so the story
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  is about this girl named Maeve and Maeve's father committed this horrible crime. And she is essentially
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  running from her. She doesn't want anybody to find out that she's his daughter. So she moves from
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  place to place. She's afraid of making friends. She's afraid of getting close to anybody. So she
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  doesn't go on dates. It's this really heartbreaking sense for her until one day she receives this
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  letter. And it's not any ordinary letter. It's enchanted to be delivered right to her. It's from
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  another world. And it tells her that her father was actually innocent. And she has to figure out
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  if it's true or not because it would completely change her life. So to do that, she sneaks her
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  way into this apprenticeship at this magical school where she learns kind of this dark magic that
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  allows the couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds. And there she meets a boy.
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  And there's this great tension because she has to figure out this big mystery while also being
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  under cover. And she's falling in love for the first time. So she has to learn to learn to
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  learn how to trust and learn whether or not she can trust other people.
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  Yeah. So when you say school, just for those who are listening from a sort of European side,
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  we mean university level college as opposed to younger kids, Harry Potter-esque stuff.
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  Yes. It's more like a trade school in a way because they're they're learning the skills of
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  scriptaments, you know, things to do with the letters. It's got a theme running through it. It's not.
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  Yeah, I would think it's like a dark act. Yeah, like a dark academia apprenticeship.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So moving out of the Harry Potter world of starting at 11. It's not that
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  yes. Yes. No. Oh, this is old. It's much darker. And there, I mean, I suppose death rates in
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  Hogwarts are quite high as well, but there is a real risk associated with this crossing between
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  the world of letters. It's not an easy, it's more like going to really armed forces or something
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  or the Air Force. It's got a sort of death toll associated with it. So stakes are high, as we like
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  to know in stories. So tell us about, this is probably more to do with the world building,
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  but tell us about Edinburgh as a spark for this idea. Yeah. So I had the idea, went to the mailbox,
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  had the idea. And it was just that. It was an idea and I kept, I wrote a little bit, I did some
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  free writing on it and I couldn't I couldn't figure out where like what it looked like. I'm such a
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  visual person. I come from art direction. So I love to have, I pull a lot of scrap. I have a lot
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  of I like to create kind of the feel for my book visually so I can picture it perfectly as I'm
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  writing the story. And it didn't really come together until I was traveling. I actually did a
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  writing retreat in the UK and then I went north up to Edinburgh and I remember standing. I don't
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  someone asked me what, what was the square that I was standing in and I don't remember what it was
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  called. But it was, I remember there were the, they had all these covered alleyways called
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  closes and they remember standing, staring at the buildings and the city itself has a lot of
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  gothic architecture and it has the buildings have this amazing black sediment dripping down the
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  sides that because of the weather there and it almost makes them look ink stained. And I saw
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  that and it just kind of clicked and I thought, oh, this is, this is my book needs to feel like
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  this like this is my story. I'm literally standing in my magic system right now and that directly
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  inspired the main world that may have lived in and the setting. So it really wasn't the first
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  free writing and stuff that I did. It wasn't a dark academia. It wasn't really until I went to
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  Edinburgh that it became what it is and kind of chilled for me. But I would say people ask,
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  so is it Edinburgh? And it's, it's not Edinburgh. It's just, it's inspired by that moment.
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  Yeah, no, it didn't feel like Edinburgh to me, to me. Yes. I mean, Edinburgh has a very unique
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  architecture because the castle sits on a volcanic plug. So you've, oh, I didn't remember that.
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  Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So you've got the old town, which is what you're talking about. Yes.
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  Yes. Yeah. Up to the castle. That's the older part. And then around sort of in the flatter area
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  where the railway station are and where the festival is are the more the later streets with
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  broader shopping streets and things like that. So it's definitely a city with lots of different
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  parts to different architectural periods. And I think thinking around, though you mentioned
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  the closest, that's in that bit that's the ancient ancient heart. Yes, the ancient ancient
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  area. Yeah. Nice and fantasy, it's suitable for fantasy, absolutely. Yes.
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  So think here about your process. I, for those of you who are watching this on the YouTube
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  version, I can see behind you, you've got a white board of some sort with.
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  Are you a person who sort of pins up your plots and your ideas? You actually have a physical
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  expression of your story. People are always interested how people write a book. Do you need to get it
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  out there to look at it in order to write or is there some sort of document on your computer
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  these photographs in? Yeah. My process is so chaotic. There's, there's both. I kind of take
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  notes everywhere, but I do have in my office, I have a one wall is just made out of quirk,
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  so I can pin things up to it. So in as an art director, like I always would pin,
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  like kind of create a mood board in front of me. And so I could like physically take
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  scrap down and put scrap up. And I love to that process and I kind of continue doing that as I
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  started writing books. So I like to pin different scenes and I'll print out like little pieces of
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  scrap or even I kind of, I tend to take inspiration from everywhere. So not necessarily like
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  visual, but I might find, I love fashion. So I might find like a like a designer that is doing
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  cool things and pin like a piece of clothing from like their show up or like a cool little antidote
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  from traveling and create something that is next to me. So that if I am stuck, sometimes I just
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  turn and look at my wall and stare at it for a moment, but I think it helps to, it helps for me,
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  it helps just to see things visually and have have something up. So that sort of goes to my question
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  about you've got a number of worlds story, including one which is sort of closed off. I don't
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  think that's a plot spoiler because that's established at the beginning. And you have a map at
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  the beginning of your book, but of course I can't do the map of everything because I know
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  that would be impossible to visualize, but the map is of the the other way, post sort of like the
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  university for college buildings, which is rather lovely. I didn't use that whilst I was reading.
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  I looked at it later thought, oh, that's nice, but I didn't fill the need for it. So do you keep,
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  how do you keep your layers of worlds? I can remember three, there might be, there was just,
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  there's three. Yeah, good. I've got that. I read it properly. How do you keep it straight in your
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  head? Because they're sort of layered on each other, like parallel worlds, that's probably not quite
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  the right word, but it's not like to America and going to England. It's like you go to this
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  version of England and then another version of England and then another version. Is that right?
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  Yep, it's a, it's a multiverse. So it is, it's essentially parallel worlds that are layered on
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  on top of one another. And I don't know how I keep it straight, I just do.
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  Yeah, I can picture everything. That's probably quite a long way in one of the worlds, didn't I?
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  Yes. What, away from, like, a train journey. So you have to sort of, is always that
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  jeopardy, but are they going to get back? Yeah. It reminds me in, did you read any,
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  any blighten books when you were growing up? There's one called, it was like the standard kids
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  for here called the Macbarway Tree, where the big jeopardy, which used to really worry me as a kid,
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  is that if you stayed in the land too long, it would move and you couldn't get down the tree again.
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  So there was this, would you be able to get back through the door again if you stayed too long?
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  Yeah. Because when you go from parallel worlds, it seems to always be a massive issue.
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  So one of the things I wanted to ask you about is you're writing in a sort of version of a
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  historical time period, which I would say is early 20th century. Yes, yeah. Almost into war,
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  really, I don't know, with the technology. How do you go about, but it's not within the politics of
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  that era. It's not referencing specific things. It's just the level of technology, the close,
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  some of the gender assumptions, and the way people buy and sell things. It's all that, you know,
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  you can tell from that level where you are. How do you go around choosing for your fantasy,
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  which period to set it in? And are you choosing negatively? I don't want to do
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  this period because too many people have done it. How do you find it?
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  Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think with this book, I chose that particular period
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  because I wanted... Why did I choose that period? There was a big reason for it.
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  I think it came down to the magic system where I had developed this magic system of
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  things and quills, and I wanted it to feel... I wanted the world to feel accessible. So accessibility
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  is a big thing with my writing. I want someone to be able to read it and be able to instantly
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  understand what this fantasy world is, even though it's the second world fantasy, because it's
• 19:32
  slightly based on things that they already know. So with my first book, the world itself was
• 19:41
  based off of the Bellapac, because I was really fascinated with this idea of this Bellapac hotel.
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  So the first book is that I wrote about a magical hotel that travels where you wake up every
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  morning in a different location across this kind of fantastical world. And that time period was
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  because I wanted it to... wanted the hotel to make sense in whatever time period that it was set in.
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  This book was... I wanted the magic system to feel grounded and not an agronistic. I wanted it to
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  feel like it fit naturally with this world and this whole idea of... I got really into researching
• 20:25
  in quill feathers and how people choose different quill pens to write. So the magic system is
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  all based on handwriting and that's like a big part of the world building. So this was really based
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  off of wanting that magic system to make sense while also wanting a world that felt a little bit
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  more modern but not so modern that people wouldn't use that type of writing. I don't know if you
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  have thought this, but I think one of the reasons why the early 20th century works for this is it's
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  like the high watermark of the letter writing practice. So we've got family papers, including the
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  occasional postcard where I know some great grandfathers would write to his wife Arby Holmes by three
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  o'clock because there were so many posts. It's like it was when... it would have been before he did.
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  Yes, so I love it. It was the mail that the trains delivered, you know, the steam engine,
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  that the night train, which of course is a famous train, I think by...
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  Oh, I've tried to remember what the... I'll look it up, the night train poem. I put it in the show notes.
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  I mean, so it romanticises the idea of the post-moving through the night across the country,
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  simply the same in America, though, you had more of a... the pony expressed, didn't you?
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  Yes, that's not this world. It feels more of a... it doesn't feel like an American world. It feels more
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  like a kind of... that sort of the size of it feels more like a kind of European UK.
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  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I wanted to set it in a place where it felt more modern too,
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  but then there was this deep well of like ancient history that you could feel in like the architecture
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  and as they're walking through it, that you can't... you can't... I mean, you can have a couple places
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  in America, but it's really difficult. And the... I actually did some research on the... for a little...
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  there was a little blip where I thought about setting it in the... in the US and in the West about...
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  because our postal system actually started... was the reason why we built a lot of our infrastructure,
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  so like all of our freeways and stuff were built. And railway systems were built because of the...
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  Yeah. Yeah, starting the postal system, but I... but I wanted that... I didn't want that...
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  it to feel like that. I wanted it to feel more like a European city. Yeah, it definitely does.
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  So another theme that I was interested in as I was reading this is the idea of isolation.
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  So that in fantasy and sci-fi, you've got this possibility in different ways of making smaller
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  communities isolated. So what I mean by that, you can take it to the extreme or something like...
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  Oh, Lord of the Flies, you know, where it's a community, abandoned on an island and you see what
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  happens. But all the idea of being a place being cut off from the rest of the world. And that has
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  happened to one of your worlds in this story. And in a way, they're all cut off from each other
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  with just this little link of the post still holding them together. So I mean, I've got some views.
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  But tell me what you feel about the potential of the plot of isolation for a writer.
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  Is that off for you?
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  Yeah, it's interesting. I didn't necessarily come out of the story from that angle, but I...
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  It's it...
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  It lets you do things that you aren't able to do when you don't have isolation, like you can create
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  kind of this... I'm curious what you think about it.
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  Yeah, I think it's a bit like looking at sort of crime fiction.
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  The sort of agatha-christi-country-house murder.
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  The thing about isolating a world or isolating a community is you can intensify, but also
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  not make it too difficult to explain.
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  Yes, that's true.
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  You get basically a form of microcosm. You microcosm your world. So that's...
• 24:42
  You know, when Alice goes into Wonderland, she doesn't go into the entirety of Wonderland.
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  She goes into the small area around...
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  Harry Potter is certainly to start with. It's not the entire wizarding world, it's just Hogwarts.
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  So you basically have little communities which you explore.
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  And for you, it's in your book, I think it's mainly obviously the college, the school for
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  the postal workers. And the area immediately around the towns immediately around that.
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  And you're not doing the whole globe of...
• 25:17
  No, maybe I don't know.
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  The globe, I don't know what it's in.
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  I'm too. No, I'm just kidding.
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  Maybe it's latter.
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  Maybe that's why instinctively all writers choose something like that because it allows us to do
• 25:35
  the sort of the small and beautiful world building as opposed to, hey, we're going to do a
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  boring piece style epic. You know, that's a very heavy lift doing that.
• 25:48
  Yeah, yeah, I definitely do it for...
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  Like, there's a reason why there's only three worlds and one of them is cut off.
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  It's already a complicated enough concept that I wanted to make it as simple as possible and easily
• 26:04
  easy to digest as possible. So you really focus on the characters and the story and you're not
• 26:11
  so confused by all this extra world building. And I wanted...
• 26:18
  What are you going to say?
• 26:19
  Yeah, I was going to ask how much if it did. How much did the book change from its first
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  draft to the published version? What was the effect of having your correspondence?
• 26:31
  See the link, your correspondence with your editor on it?
• 26:36
  Yeah, so this is a... I tell a lot of people this. The first draft of the other
• 26:42
  repost is not the version that you're reading. There was a draft that I wrote up the story that
• 26:47
  was completely different. It had a different antagonist. The plot was different.
• 26:54
  The characters were all there. They were a little different. Tristan was definitely a different.
• 26:58
  He was more of a stereotypical love interest than he is in the final version.
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  And I wrote it and it wasn't working, so I just deleted it and started over.
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  So that draft is completely different than was published. But the first draft of the version
• 27:18
  that exists now, it... I would say it was more complicated. For me, my process...
• 27:27
  I loved to put too much in sometimes, where I'll complicate things too much. So it's just
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  really boiling down and simplifying and simplifying to get the final results as clear as possible
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  because my magic systems and my world building tends to be a little bit more complicated.
• 27:48
  Do something that's very easily digestible. And then I say that, but then we added a lot more
• 27:54
  into it. So it's simplifying and making things easily digestible, but then also layering on top,
• 28:00
  like world building, so you feel really immersed in the story.
• 28:05
  Yeah, I think in a way, the first draft you write for yourself. And then the drafts are really
• 28:09
  stuffy else. And that's... Oh, that's an interesting tick.
• 28:13
  Because what you know and what your... The phrase kill your darlings is getting at this. It's
• 28:21
  what you really enjoy and what make where it may have come from is that stupac going on inside your
• 28:28
  head, all these ideas, whereas you don't actually need to inflict that on everybody else.
• 28:33
  Actually, you can get rid of some of that and craft from that material as some things together.
• 28:41
  Oh, that's the idea and that's where an editor can really help. You see what you can't see
• 28:48
  in the shaping of it. Yeah. So would you say that the story is
• 28:57
  complete or is there more plans for Maven, the other way, post? Is this a standalone or
• 29:04
  are you carrying on in this world? It is a standalone. Yeah, I crafted it. It's funny.
• 29:10
  I always feel like this after I'm finished with this book. I'm like, oh, there's so many more
• 29:15
  things that could write the story because you make a world. You build this entire world that feels
• 29:21
  rich and deep that has other stories going on in it, but I think that that's the beauty of like
• 29:26
  doing a world justice, you know, but I feel like this is this is the story for now. This is
• 29:33
  this is the story I wanted to tell and it's it's definitely a standalone. I'll never, never.
• 29:40
  What's the next? I'm working on something that I am not allowed to talk about yet, but it
• 29:48
  did. You're not working on something. So I haven't asked for warned you on this question, but
• 29:56
  it's very helpful to people who are wanting to follow your your tracks and get their first book
• 30:03
  published. What's and my first book was published so long ago that my advice is no longer relevant.
• 30:09
  I was there was still a borders when I was publishing first got published. What would you say is
• 30:17
  the best advice that you've been given on this crazy journey that is publishing? Yeah, I
• 30:26
  so much good advice. I think I think just finishing the book like a lot of people
• 30:33
  want to write, but you really need to learn how to finish a book and then go through and start
• 30:40
  revising it and that's it's very hard to finish a book. So just work finish a book. People ask
• 30:47
  me all the time like how do I get into publishing? I'm like just right. I didn't I didn't start.
• 30:53
  I didn't even I started writing as a hobby and then I finally I had written hotel magnifique and a
• 31:01
  lot of people I tell people about it and then be like that sounds amazing. You should publish it
• 31:07
  and that that wasn't that was when I first started thinking about publishing, but before that I
• 31:12
  think I had like four books that I had written before that just for we do in I don't know if it's
• 31:17
  in the UK but they do national novel writing month in the US. Yeah, November. November yes. You tried
• 31:23
  it. So I did that. I did that and I just kept writing. I kept on the same schedule. So I just wrote
• 31:30
  I wrote so much for like a couple of years and then I did national novel writing twice and I
• 31:36
  yeah at the end of those like two years I hadn't I think like four yeah four like full like
• 31:41
  books that I didn't go back and revise at all but I just I fell in love with writing and I think
• 31:46
  that's really important because this what you do is you have to once you once you publish like
• 31:52
  you're working with a company that turns your books into products and that's a whole different
• 31:58
  thing where you really need to learn to love the process first and and get good at get
• 32:05
  confident in your own writing. Yeah, you're right. There's definitely a gap isn't there. So
• 32:10
  even today I get people I know who know I'm a novelist, you know, I've been over 17 novels now
• 32:17
  and they come up to me and they say I've got this idea. Yes, but I haven't got time to write it.
• 32:25
  I literally got some last week who I thought would know me better than this.
• 32:29
  That's my idea and if there you go you're going to do the work and it's that's just so silly
• 32:36
  because novelist will tell you the ideas are the easy part. It's the actual boring stuff of sitting
• 32:43
  down, apply you know bump to seats and fingers to typewriter. That's the stuff that actually
• 32:52
  is the difficult bit and as you say moving through that to finish something is a real
• 32:59
  achievement because it's not finished ever, but finish it first.
• 33:04
  Initial for crafty assistance. Actually, if you're going to turn in and of all in November or
• 33:11
  other times of year are available, actually do the work. Yeah, just write, finish it, finish it.
• 33:19
  Probably she was not going to like you coming think I've got such a brilliant idea,
• 33:22
  so I can't be bothered to write, but you know trust me.
• 33:30
  That's lovely Emily, so thank you so much for that and wish you the rest of the other
• 33:34
  way of post. But before we sign off, I always like to end with taking a tour around all the
• 33:40
  available fantasy worlds and thinking about where it might be fun to find a theme from your
• 33:48
  stories, where is the best place for something? And I thought in honor of your book, I wondered
• 33:54
  where in the best place in all fantasy worlds is the best place to be a post man, post woman,
• 34:01
  post person delivering letters. I'm interested in, it's the delivering of them.
• 34:09
  Yeah, like to get in your spaceship, you'll ride your horse. I know so many of my favorite fantasy
• 34:19
  worlds are so violent that I would never put a post man in. Exactly. That counts as a game of truth.
• 34:25
  I would say I would say maybe like a studio ghibli, like like Diana when Jones House moving
• 34:32
  castle, but like the studio ghibli version where it's kind of, it's very like pastoral and
• 34:38
  can you imagine how to keep up with House moving castle to deliver? Yes, that's true,
• 34:42
  that would be really difficult, but kind of a fun challenge for a bit similar, but more dangerous
• 34:47
  in the immortal engines of Philip Reeve, like chasing those worlds that were on that sort of
• 34:54
  amazing imagination he has. Okay, so House moving castle world, that's a good answer.
• 35:02
  I think, because it gives you a chance to visit, you know, you have a reason for going to the
• 35:09
  door and you're sort of also outside of the communities. I think it would be a really good
• 35:14
  profession in many fantasy worlds, but why don't I go a bit more sci-fi just to kind of,
• 35:22
  I guess it might be one of the nice ways to interact with the Star Wars world.
• 35:27
  So, not be part of the empire or anything, but you could just poodle around and drop in,
• 35:35
  I like the idea of being to travel from planet to planet, that'd be quite fun.
• 35:40
  Try not to get caught up in the politics, which I've never been able to follow in Star Wars,
• 35:44
  like I... A poster worker in the Star Wars world would be interesting. Yeah.
• 35:48
  A different kind of force. Yes.
• 35:55
  Maybe it ought to be with you. Thank you so much Emily, it's been lovely talking to you.
• 35:59
  Thank you so much, House, this was lovely, yeah.
• 36:06
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• 36:10
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