Latest / Mythmakers / Anna Waterworth - The Girl Who Grew Wings

Transcript

Anna Waterworth - The Girl Who Grew Wings · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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a writer but I'm also director of the Centre and today I'm having one of my favourite conversations
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and that is when I get a chance to sit down with a new to me author who is just beginning to
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launch herself in the fantasy space and her name is Anna Waterworth and she's published with
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chickenhouse that's a great independent publisher over here in the UK. So Anna, lovely to meet you.
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Hi Julia, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. So Anna, we're going to be talking
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mainly about your new book called the girl who grew wings. But before we get to that point,
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would you like to say a little bit about your journey to being a writer? Where have you come from?
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Would you look over your shoulder? What's the back trail look like?
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Oh well I've always been a writer. I'm sure you'll understand this as well Julia because you're
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a writer but even when I was young I used to write stories from my parents to read and
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yeah so I guess I've always been a writer. I started taking it more seriously in my early 30s
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when I had my first maternity leave and I wrote a couple of books then. The first one was absolutely
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awful and I will never show it to anyone but the second one was a lot better. I like to think
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and I entered that in a competition in chicken houses competition for unpublished authors
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and it got shortlisted. It didn't win but I ended up getting my first contract from that.
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That was under the name of Anna Day though so it's quite confusing because I got divorced so
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my name has changed and so that was for a book called the fandom which was a fantasy kind of a
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science fantasy novel and then I've just been writing ever since then really I think that came
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out in 2018. Yeah so ever since then I've kind of carried on writing published books with chicken
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house. So we need a little correction there that there's been Anna Day. Yes it's confusing.
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Who isn't so new to this? Is this the girl who grew wings? Is that your first Anna waterworth?
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Yeah it's very confusing. I'm sorry about all the names. I've also written a fantasy book as
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Anna Rainbow as well so that's my middle grade name. So young adults Anna Day and Anna Waterworth
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and children's middle grade Anna Rainbow. That's my partner's surname. It's all very
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confusing. I don't know why I have so many names. No no no you're talking to somebody who already
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has three pen names plus I my own journey to writing is not unlike yours in that I started
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getting serious about writing in my early 30s when I was on maternity leave.
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Yeah difference being my third child rather than my first so I'm very admiring of you that you
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managed on your first maternity leave. I don't know hard on your third I reckon when you've
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got two better kids. Well I was doing a doctorate when I had my first two kids so there wasn't really
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a concept of maternity leave. I remember carrying on studying with a book in one hand and baby
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in the other literally it was multi-tasking. Absolutely well done you. So the girl who grew wings
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is a story about the twins Ikari and is that Sefi is that how you say her name? Yeah and would
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you like to give us a little bit of a description about what goes on in this book?
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Yeah okay so it's kind of loosely inspired by group mythology so if you think of Ikari as being
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kind of an Icarus gender flipped Icarus so she has to build wings hence the title of the novel
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and Sefi is kind of a Persephone character so she is Ikari's twin the way the magic there's
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quite a strong magic system in the world that there's three types of magic that only a special
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few have access to and that means that you can either be a healer so you have kind of magic healing
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powers or an embalmer so you can make sure people travel to the afterlife or you can be an alchemist
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and that's not necessarily about metals it's kind of just transmuting the natural world around
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you so you can turn storms into a sunny day and rotten fruit into good fruit and you're only allowed
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to have one gift in the world that they live in so when Sefi discovers that she has two gifts she
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should suddenly incredibly vulnerable because the punishment for having two gifts is death so they
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have this big secret to protect and then it kind of sets in motion this whole string of events
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where Sefi's stolen and taken to the underworld by demons and the only way that Ikari can help her
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is by building wings and growing wings and the only person she can get to help her do that is this
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kind of mysterious enemy prisoner in the dungeons so there's kind of a bit of room on there so there's
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kind of an enemies to lovers trope going on yeah so your world that you're creating is loosely
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based on a Greek a world where Greek myths are believed were you thinking of a particular like
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Greek landscape or is it your own world that you're building yeah it's more my own world I mean
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I think people have said to me that you can see a bit of kind of Egypt in there which makes sense
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because Egypt and Greece are kind of linked historically a little bit of paganism in there as well
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kind of Mother Moon Father Sun so I think it's borrowed from lots of influences but is ultimately
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my own world but there is a real kind of Mediterranean feel to the world when you read it it's kind of like
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a marble citadel you can kind of imagine it kind of being quite having that kind of aesthetic
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of ancient Greece yeah so I think it's well Hellenistic world isn't it when the the Greek and the
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Egyptian world are collide and that's where you get clear pattern all that like there's Greeks yeah
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yeah sort of I don't want to get into that debate because there's been a huge debate about whether
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or not we agree that this Mediterranean world was greatly stirring part of these different things
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but obviously this is a world of fantasy it's not linked to any sense of a historical ancient Greece
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no so would you say that you were helped on your way to writing this story by any particular
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influences like other fantasy writers that you have read or any particular obviously the myths
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and legends of Icarus and Persephonea are in there but what else can you see going into your
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melting pot oh I don't know I mean I started I had the idea to write I've always wanted to write
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an Icarus rewrite because it's been one of my favourite stories since I was a kid and I agreed
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it with chicken house in like 2017 I think so I started writing it well before kind of Greek myths
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became very prominent in literature you know that's quite a fashion for them now so I don't think
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any of those influenced me because I started writing it well before that I think it's probably
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just influenced by all my fantasy love you know in in the sense of that kind of big world building
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and I mean obviously the Greek mythologies in there but I think just all those big
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worlds I love so much you know Lord of the Rings avatar Harry Potter they're all chucked in there
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you know I mean it's nothing like Harry Potter but just in the sense that there's like a sorting
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hat moment where they kind of obviously there's no magical hat but they get sorted in they have a
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oh what's weird I'm looking for they have a ceremony where they're chosen which magical power
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that they have they already know but it's kind of making it formal and that has kind of sorting
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hat feels to it or kind of a little bit hunger games feel to it so there's loads of different
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influences in there but to be fair to you that's only because the sorting hat is based on what
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happens to us at school I've got physical memories of going to my secondary school and sitting in a
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huge hall I'd hope they do it better now and you were literally called out in forms and you look
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around thinking oh the person I knew has just gone off that through that door and I'm left with
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these people I don't know I mean there is a feeling of being sorted at most school experiences yeah
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absolutely I mean we had houses at school and earned merits and things for our houses so yeah
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I think you're right I think every fantasy is often you know well nearly always just an extension
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of real life isn't it yes I call it like a laboratory I'm going to ask you a question about that
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a bit later but it's like a place that you can run an experiment when you're looking at something
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in real life you move it sideways into how would this work out with these were the rules in my fantasy
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world oh yeah yeah so just checking back to your sort of connection to the twins story is there any
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particular relationship between you and twins or you and sisters have you got some kind of
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basis in your own life that you were drawing on to flesh out the interaction between Ikari and
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Sefi well I mean I've got a system myself so probably draw on that a little bit I've got
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children I've got three kids so looking at their kind of sibling relationships
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yeah probably just my own family but I've just checking you weren't a twin because it's quite
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important I'm not a twin no no no it's just a few minutes older than the other but that gives
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the feeling of responsibility oh yeah ultimate power I'm always older yeah so part of the story
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did you find you enjoyed writing the most is there a section where you look back and have
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that I mean when writing really goes well there's a kind of euphoria isn't there that you're in the
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you're in that zone it's a part of this story where you look back and think yes that that
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fell into place really nicely I think probably for me though the climax was probably
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the best bit of writing because I had the two so it's told from Ikari and Sefi's like it's a dual
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perspective so you've got two points of view and they kind of weave together and for the first half
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of the novel Ikari and Sefi are occupying the same space so that's quite interesting because you
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get to see similar events from kind of different points of view but then when Sefi's stolen and
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taken to the underworld they both have very different stories that kind of weave together so at
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the end there was like a coming together of the two threads and I felt like that really paid off
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you know that kind of hard work of careful plotting and making sure everything fell in the right
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place it kind of really paid off I find writing multiple perspectives much harder but more rewarding
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oh yeah it's definitely um it's one of the things that when you're when I'm teaching creative
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writing that obviously I applaud ambition but if someone comes with a multi-perspective story
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it is just so much harder to make us care about both well I think two sides is okay but when you
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get to sort three or four or five you have to be very good at what you're doing to make it
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make us care absolutely I've never been brave enough to do more than two
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maybe next book and so there are also some very dark sections right from the start so you know
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bear that in mind reader just to be aware that it's not a soft and gentle world that these twins
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are living in how do you handle writing those moments of great pain so there's obviously great
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physical pain that the characters go through with the loss of their mother and the punishment that's
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meted out to Sefi right at the beginning but there also is spiritual and physical pain going on
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at the same time how do you handle that in what is a YA book yeah I think that's a really interesting
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question because I always think of young adults kind of teenagers and young adults as kind of
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cognitively being pretty much on a path with adults but it's kind of you know not what we know
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from kind of neuroscience it's the frontal lobe development that maybe hasn't quite got there yet
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we don't get our full frontal lobe development I think until we're about 25 yeah so I always think
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you know they they can handle emotions in the sense that they're feeling big emotions you know
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so we don't want to patronize young adults too much because you know they're amygdala it's all
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that and if anything the emotions are stronger when you're younger because you haven't got the
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kind of cognitive not necessarily the cognitive but the kind of the understanding of consequences
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and that kind of prefrontal stuff isn't quite there as much to help as a protective factor
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so I think it's important that we help young adults and teenagers kind of process those really
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big emotions and it's quite a safe space anyway because it's a book you know it's not actually
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happening to them but then like you say don't want to be traumatising people and there there
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is a line so I think I work quite closely with my editor for that because obviously they are
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a children's publisher they specialise that's all they publish chicken house they don't publish
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adults so they're very very specialist in that area so if I'm a tall worried I'll just run it past
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them and and actually there was one scene near the beginning that made it all the way to kind of
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copy edit and then when we sent the book out for to get kind of endorsements there was a couple
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of writers that actually said oh hang on a minute this doesn't sit comfortably and so we had to
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adapt that scene to make it more child friendly so well young adult friendly so I think even
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editors can you know maybe not get it wrong because it is subjective but maybe overstep where
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that kind of blurry line is a little bit sometimes so yeah I took a one different yeah it's such a question
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of it's like seasoning a dish it's not like a rule you gotta just work out if if you've got the
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band so I would say looking at it myself that the way you handle the mother's death at the beginning
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which is hopefully something nobody experiences in life because it's a sort of punishment
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because it's awful which craft punishment I won't anymore than that but you do have a moment of
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transformation of beauty at the end of that scene which kind of is a relief for the reader which
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that's the image that you stay with rather than the pain that went before yeah and I think in the
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case of the punishment of Seffy it's her anger carries you through it it anesthetized you to what's
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being done to her in a way so yeah a strong emotion actually helps protect from dwelling on the
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what's happening so Anna one of the most difficult things as an author is when you're putting in
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highly dramatic moments which have some potential to trigger other people I'm not saying you know
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the absolute extreme of putting a trigger warning on Jane Austen or something which I've heard
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not like that but I mean really serious subjects so I noticed that in your book you have a moment of
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which refers to some sexual abuse but you say also that it was revised during potentially revised
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during a later draft is that the section that you tone down to make more palatable for this age
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group yeah yeah absolutely because we'd had feedback from I think when we sent it out to authors to
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get endorsements one of the authors came back with that feedback and I think someone else did as well
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I think one of the copy editors maybe came back so quite late on in the process we changed
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we just kind of toned the scene down a bit and made it like you say more palatable for the age
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group a little bit more age appropriate yeah so it's a tricky thing because you want to
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honor the real experience of absolutely yeah the sad reality is that girls do get sexually
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assaulted but I guess it's maybe just knowing where to draw the line and that's when editors and
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other people can you know be really quite handy because I guess the line is a little bit subjective
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a little bit blurry completely and it changes from publisher to publisher so yeah and edited to
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editor so I think as long as I mean you're working you're writing for a YA market and I think
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at the only time as a parent giving children a book that I had a problem is when I felt that
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the material should have been YA flagged and wasn't and so you know um yeah it's a tricky
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tricky area because you don't want to censor what people think should felt right character
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anyway I was interested to find that you had that experience so that's actually part of the
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editing editing experience but how else did you find that whole process of submitting a novel
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going through the editorial was it problem-free or did it have it ever problem-free oh yeah
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I think I've yet to experience that actually that's not true by last book actually was quite easy
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but um but yeah the the girl who grew wings um was it the submission was easy because I got the
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contract before I wrote the book um so I just pitched the idea um and chickenhouse gave gave me
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an advanced writer so that was yeah really handy like I didn't even have a plot or anything
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so that was easy but I think that was probably the only easy bit because then I wrote it
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um and then I got my first draft feedback and it wasn't terrible or anything but when I read
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it through I just wasn't happy and I just decided to rewrite the whole thing so absolutely nothing
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from the first draft is in what you read today so I just started from scratch basically so
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when I was supposed to be getting my second draft feedback I was basically getting my first draft
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feedback um and then um I had to rewrite the second half again so the first half was okay the
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second half needed to be writing so there's just a lot of rewriting a lot more than what I've
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ever done before um so just meant it kind of meant that we were still doing quite big changes
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at line edit and copy edit so for people who don't know you kind of do your first draft your second
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draft and then um your line edits and then it goes to copy editor where they really kind of
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pedantically look at grammar and make sure it's kind of fit for publication um sorry I know you
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know that Julia but not everyone will but um normally on line edits you're just picking up on
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grammar and words but I was like making big changes on paragraphs and things so um oh sorry
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so that felt a little bit rushed um compared to kind of other books I've written where
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um it felt like there was more time and space but I mean I like to think it's a better book
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because of all the work that I did um but maybe a more difficult experience kind of heartbreaking
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deleting time yeah it's interesting isn't it I think there's a certain courage involved in being
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and also of jacking something in and saying let's start again the ideas are good and I have
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you but let's break it down and and and I have another go um it's it's drastic but also it's
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really cleansing and and inspirational I've done that on other occasions with books where
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oh that's good to hear yeah because in fact and I certainly when I'm doing some screenplay writing
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that happens all the time um few words involved in screenplay so it's not quite as painful but um
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you're you're circling an idea is how best should this story be told doesn't mean what you
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written was rubbish it just means that you've circled around and thought well I'm going to tell it
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this way instead and cleaning on like cutting and pasting stuff from the old draft can actually be
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a bit of a drag on what's good about rewriting so yeah well done for doing that
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yeah I think you're absolutely right and I think as writers we can get a little bit precious
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about our words and see them as like little babies and kind of not want to kind of just get rid
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of them but I think you're absolutely right that there's something really quite cleansing about
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just going right gone yeah felt again you kind of put it in a you know in a file on the computer
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and just say right there is you never look at it again of course but yeah it's sort of psychologically
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safe yeah absolutely absolutely and then I guess as time goes by you kind of lose the urge to
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think oh maybe I'll use it again and you just carry on and it's almost like a kind of very mild
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grieving process isn't it that to begin with you kind of want to stay close to it and then as time
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goes by you're able to kind of move on a little bit maybe it's more like moving house
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yeah yeah it's something like that where that's what that's how I tend to think about it so
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we were thinking about this role of fantasy and and you know as the central fantasy that's
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we often thinking about the social purpose of fantasy and what it's doing okay some people say
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right it's escapism that's what it does but I'm quite clear in my own head so that very often
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fantasy is the best way of telling a story about the real world you know our lived experience
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is sometimes best in a fantasy package and I can see elements of that in your
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your story so without reductively making it into an allegory or anything like that
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what you think about it is like an exploration or a laboratory test for some ideas
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that you're interested in the sort of current political climate yeah I mean I think so
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I mean it's very much it's it's a very feminist novel and I think for me I'd had quite a few
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bad experiences that I kind of come out of a divorce and had a few bad experiences with the
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patriarch so it was very much kind of playing on my mind and I think what maybe what I was trying
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to explore in the girl who wins maybe more unconsciously at the time sometimes it's not always a
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conscious process is it was kind of what happens when women have more power than men how is that
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dealt with by society you know because because in in the girl who good wins it's actual powers you
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know that only women can have more than one calling and how is that dealt with at a societal level
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in a backyard society but then thinking about kind of the real world you know how are women
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who are deemed too powerful how are they dealt with not talking about me necessarily just
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just any woman who for whatever reason it is threatening to men how is she treated
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um you know and history shows time and time again it's generally not that well
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yeah for me the moment when I really saw this having sort of thought oh we've moved on
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watching the American presidential presidential election back in 2016 when there was the
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Hillary Clinton versus the Donald Trump debate suddenly gender suddenly seemed incredibly relevant
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to I mean I know there was whole swathes of other issues about why you may vote for one or the
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other but just looking at on on the gender the gender side of it seemed incredibly unfair
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yeah she was criticized um and also discounted because she was female in many ways I think
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the sort of if she if she was there like to quickly transgendered and became male
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genuine and everyone's accepted her as sort of that all of those things would have gone the whole
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looming behind her in the debate stage the um the sort of uh association with her and what
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what it was perceived her husband it all that stuff seemed very gendered whereas if you could
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list up the things which you might question um the former president for doing on the gender front
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and you know the courts have found various things out about him yeah that was all kind of just
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wave by and I thought oh we really haven't moved on have we yeah I want to be much better once we get
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particularly America once America has a female president I think we really will have crossed a
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a stage in the same way as having a black president did with um um Obama yeah
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society the politics of it you know the actual policies I'm talking about the actual
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identities of people yeah yeah absolutely and I think you know you're absolutely right you can
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see it on in politics can't either way I mean I'm no fan of Margaret such a decent thing I am but
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the way she is spoken about is compared to maybe other prime ministers who have had just as
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stronger kind of right wing um you know there's just obviously gender differences there and
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I think I've always worked in the NHS I don't know I'm private now but um I always worked as a psychologist
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in the NHS and I have to say that NHS is quite female dominated and I think I just lived in this
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little bubble thinking that women were generally as respected as men and we'd kind of like you said
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got past that and I think going into the court arena was a huge shock really opened my eyes as to how
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women are still judged just on their gender and you know I mean it happens um for other groups as
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well you know in some ways it was an eye-opener for me that made me more empathic because it made me
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more aware of how other groups are judged just for something that they haven't chosen and just
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for being the way they are so you know yes and of course these can't comment attached to
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people of different faiths like you know Islamic faith or people of different colours or
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sexualities I mean the same patterns are seen it's because we all like to attack the other I mean
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hopefully I don't personally but we as a human race absolutely absolutely I mean as a whole
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there's a whole psychology school dedicated to group dynamics and how we kind of favor the
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in group by pushing away the out group and but the thing is we we should be better than that
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you know yes yes we have those emotional drives but we also have higher level cognitive thinking
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and we should be able to move past that but anyway really not all the time but that's where
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that's where fantasy helps because you know if I if I say Hillary Clinton like now everybody gets
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immediately there is a strongly positive or strongly negative action whereas if you say I'm talking
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about a pre-stess in my fictional world who's going for high office up against you know immediately
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you strip away all the personal heritage of the last few decades that has gone around the real
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people and you can look at the dynamics of fresh and that's what I like about fantasy
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yeah I think that's such a good point absolutely and Margaret Annewood says that in her speculative
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fiction she uses that term rather than science fiction she has never put anything that doesn't
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already exist in the world yeah that and that's sad considering she wrote the handsmaid's tale
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yeah yeah or it's and Craig is is another one of like experimentation so yeah good stuff but it's
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useful to look at fantasy as a way of of common to common commenting on the present day and of course
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you only have to look at 1984 which is perennially relevant it seems even though we've gone way past
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1984 yeah yeah so you mentioned to me that you also have a new project that you're working on
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do you want to tell us a little bit about your next book um yeah um that's fantasy too um because
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obviously fantasies what I love writing um and reading and watching so um it's um so it's middle grade
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so it's for a younger audience than YA so it's for age 8-12 and it's kind of a mash-up of Robin Hood
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and Jim Carey's the mask so it's about um a 12-year-old girl who finds a highway man's mask
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um in a grandpa's shed and when she put it on it transforms it into an infamous
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highway man and then she kind of has to save the queen and the queen dumb it's very feminist as well
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because there's no king it's just a queen dumb um so yeah so feminist fantasy seems to be what I tend
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to write um but yeah it's it's a lot of fun it's a lot lighter a lot and a lot more lighthearted
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than the girl who wins as you just met because it's for young boardies um yeah it's a kind of fun
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adventure kind of book um so many of our listeners will be experimenting with their own writing
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do you have some top tips that you find work with your writing process um yeah I mean probably
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my favourite top tip would be um to kind of ditch the perfectionism um which I know is easier said
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than done but a lot of us um kind of feels like when you write it has to be as good as kind of what's
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going to end up being published and just to kind of reassure people that most people's first drafts
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are generally terrible um and it's better just to write something and even and I guess just going
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on from that kind of not waiting for motivation and inspiration to strike but just to start writing
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and then the motivation and the inspiration will come so you know just to basically not to
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provocate um not to anxiously avoid writing um and then another tip um would be um just to write
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what you love because you're going to spend a lot of time with it so kind of I wouldn't advise
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looking at the market and thinking what's selling and then trying to write that um and let's
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it's what you love obviously um because the market changes quite quickly anyway so just just write
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what you enjoy um did you want to have a tip is that no that's fine uh if you have another one
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that's fine do share it with us I think um that your your thing about just uh you know void
32:18
perfectionism is something I need to keep hearing so I've had a day where I've really done everything
32:25
but right you get days like that where you know I've I've done everything except the thing I was
32:31
supposed to be doing um not counting this podcast obviously and one of the things I need to remind
32:38
myself of is the reason I'm held up is I need to I know that I've got to get from somewhere to
32:44
somewhere else and I don't want to write that bit in the middle because like it bored me you know
32:51
so actually I'm just thinking oh I can just write this is the bit in the middle come and and leave
32:55
it and just move on because of course I would have edited that out anyway as I go back through
33:01
so yeah absolutely if you're stuck in your manuscript because you've got like flagging
33:05
interest in how they get from A to B uh it could be that's like really great it's going to happen
33:11
in that and you don't know but you could just say right well let's go to B we do like a cinematic cut
33:18
right there it be and then you can worry about slots together when you read the whole manuscript
33:22
and if it's still a massive gap you could say right what goes in that gap um and that probably will
33:28
help me move on from where I am stuck at the moment yeah I think that's such good advice and I think
33:34
it's Susan Dennard talks about kind of um magic cookies um cookies as in eating cookies not
33:42
computer cookies um and that if there isn't like a cookie and like what's the cookie in the scene
33:48
the bit that you want to read yeah exactly and if there isn't one just ditch it don't don't have
33:53
a you know find find the cookie and if there is no cookie don't write it so yeah and for me it's
33:58
something has to happen is the way I've always you know something that forwards the wider plot
34:03
has to happen at that point uh and I might realize what it is later on because of the complex
34:09
I might think oh I need to see that in earlier oh yeah I've got that gap well let's go and put it
34:14
in there you say you can use it because obviously you're you it's just you in this world for however
34:19
many months it is you writing it um you're you give yourself a mission to to skip to go forward
34:27
keep going forward excellent so we have a section where I was asked my guess um where in order fantasy
34:34
world is the best place or something and in honor of your book I was wanting to ask you where is the
34:40
best place to grow wings where would you like to sort of be a person and then grow some wings to fly
34:48
around uh it would have to be Pandora from Avatar um because it's just so beautiful and you could
34:56
sail around all these little floating islands and meet those little dragon things
35:03
that they that they fly around on a cotterman what they're called um I think that would just be
35:08
an amazing place to have wings yeah no that that would be great I think I mean obviously
35:15
middle earth but you know I don't always want to say middle earth as an answer because
35:19
so that would be great too yeah um but maybe thinking about it that it'd be quite fun to revisit
35:27
Neverland you know the Peter Pan flying yeah always a great fun um and yeah and to visit it without
35:37
the in a modern context because if you have ever read that book to your own family because
35:42
actually some of the attitudes in it are a bit dated shall we say yeah if you're quite good
35:48
to someone to have a real good old go at it as it's from a more um contemporary perspective shall we
35:55
say yeah there is one out there you know that someone's probably there is probably there is um
36:03
but anyway um I I think yeah you're right someone's obviously going to have done that already
36:09
well let me know if that was you because um out there because I'd be interested
36:13
anyway flying around because the way everything connects quite smoothly and lots of things
36:18
to see in one place plus you're flying from a Edwardian London that's a bit I'd really enjoy
36:24
is flying around and sort of visiting places landing on rooftops uh that would be great fun
36:30
yeah the moon it would be fun yeah going to be made lagoon exactly yeah
36:36
that and is there something that you can recommend our fantasy loving listenership something
36:44
actually might have watched or read that you think is well worth putting on the list for people
36:49
um well I just got on the fourth wing wagon um which is a really popular fantasy book at the moment
36:55
and I did enjoy that actually um what's that called again?
36:58
horse wing it's huge at the moment it's by um is it Rebecca Yarros I think it is um and that's
37:06
a kind of like a dragon um people who ride dragons like an academy for them it's a little bit older than
37:14
YA um but it still reads a bit younger like I still would have placed it maybe as new adult um
37:21
does it look like that's it's better to Anne McAfry kind of world
37:25
oh my goodness I'll show I'll show my eight here she was like the big dragon lady back in the
37:31
mountains yeah uh dragon white is a pern and I thought gosh this is I read this as a teenager
37:39
because there's some time for me it was like an older version of how to train you dragon
37:46
okay so somewhere in between I will look better yeah and my my fantasy tip is um I've watched
37:53
the last season of the Witcher over the last few weeks and I want to recommend one particular
37:59
episode which I think is episode five it takes place at a party and what I why I'm recommending this
38:10
is I think it has a really interesting structure in that it goes a couple of times through the same
38:16
events showing it from different points of view but if very unlikely actually how the rest of
38:21
the series is written I don't know who was in charge of that particular script but I thought it
38:26
was a really interesting experiment of form um something I've seen more in a heist movie where they
38:33
sometimes do that where they replay it and you see who switched what at what you know like in
38:38
oceans eleven or one of those things but it had that in a party scene uh so I and they actually
38:45
I enjoyed the series as a whole but this particular episode there were a couple of standouts and
38:52
that was my favorite just from the way it was written so yeah that sounds great yeah so I think
38:57
Henry Campbell is now leaving that series and we're getting one of the um uh Liam Hemsworth or
39:04
somebody is so I want to see games yeah yeah I wonder if they'll actually say don't you know
39:11
different or if they'll just carry on just pretend it's normal for people to have different
39:15
faces yeah is it going to be James Bond or is it going to be Doctor Who because Doctor Who they make a
39:18
big thing about movie creating and Doctor and in James Bond it just turns out oh I've got
39:24
found James Bond off we go totally different you know ends different little fine yeah
39:30
baguettes thank you so much Anna um I'm not thank you for having me it's great yeah we had to
39:36
we had to come back a couple of weeks later because we had some tech different difficulties
39:39
in the middle which is if you're watching this you might realize we've changed clothes because over
39:44
the course weeks we do and background in your case yeah yeah you've moved miles but anyway thank
39:50
you very much for coming back it's been delight talking to you and do get back in touch when you've
39:55
got something new to talk to us about and in the next book brilliant we'll do thank you so much
40:02
Julia it's been a pleasure
40:08
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