Latest / The Book Deal / Natasha Lester on setting goals, the business behind a bestseller and her latest novel inspired by Marie-Madeleine Fourcade

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Natasha Lester on setting goals, the business behind a bestseller and her latest novel inspired by Marie-Madeleine Fourcade · The Book Deal

• 0:09
  Tina Strachan: This is the Book Deal podcast
• 0:10
  Madeleine Cleary: where you will discover the inspiring stories, the authors behind your favourite books.
• 0:15
  Madeleine Cleary: No matter what stage of writing you are at, we've got you covered.
• 0:19
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm Tina Strachan.
• 0:20
  Madeleine Cleary: And I'm Madeleine Cleary.
• 0:21
  Madeleine Cleary: And join us as we pull back the curtain of published authors one
• 0:26
  Tina Strachan: deal
• 0:26
  Madeleine Cleary: at a time.
• 0:29
  Madeleine Cleary: The Book Deal Podcast acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters, which it's recorded on.
• 0:35
  Madeleine Cleary: And pays respect to their elders past, present, and emerging.
• 0:43
  Madeleine Cleary: Hi, it's Madeleine here with 11 novels to her name, international bestselling and Perth based author.
• 0:49
  Madeleine Cleary: Natasha Lester is a writer who needs no introduction.
• 0:53
  Madeleine Cleary: Her novels have been translated into 21 languages and are published all around the world.
• 0:59
  Madeleine Cleary: I finished Natasha's latest novel, the Mademoiselle Alliance the night before our chat, and I struggled to contain my fangirling before we hit record.
• 1:09
  Madeleine Cleary: I love Natasha's messages to writers in this one about writing your way to success by writing what you love.
• 1:15
  Madeleine Cleary: I.
• 1:15
  Madeleine Cleary: Being brave to set crazy goals, setting time aside to work on the business behind being a writer, and of course, our chat about her latest novel.
• 1:25
  Madeleine Cleary: Inspired by the incredible Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the only woman to lead a resistance movement in World War II in France.
• 1:37
  Madeleine Cleary: Hi, Natasha Lester.
• 1:38
  Madeleine Cleary: Welcome to the book Deal podcast.
• 1:40
  Madeleine Cleary: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:41
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm really looking forward to chatting today.
• 1:43
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh, I'm just so excited to have you on and I just wanted to reflect on, I'm sure if you remember the first time we met in person, Natasha.
• 1:53
  Natasha Lester: Remind me, I will remember there were so many things in my brain, I keep saying to my publicist, I'm so worried that half of them are falling out somewhere.
• 2:01
  Madeleine Cleary: Maybe I shouldn't remind you'cause it's a bit of an embarrassing story for me.
• 2:05
  Madeleine Cleary: So it was back when you were on publicity tour.
• 2:08
  Madeleine Cleary: For the Disappearance of Astrid Bricard.
• 2:10
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay.
• 2:11
  Natasha Lester: I feel I signed a book for you, didn't I?
• 2:12
  Natasha Lester: You did.
• 2:13
  Natasha Lester: You did.
• 2:13
  Natasha Lester: I, I remember it all.
• 2:15
  Natasha Lester: Coming back to it now.
• 2:15
  Natasha Lester: I knew it would,
• 2:17
  Madeleine Cleary: and this book was actually one that I had not purchased, and I ran out of the store.
• 2:23
  Madeleine Cleary: No, no, no, no, no.
• 2:24
  Madeleine Cleary: So what, for listeners, what happened?
• 2:27
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause this event was really popular.
• 2:29
  Madeleine Cleary: There were so many people and I hadn't had a chance to go and buy the book.
• 2:32
  Madeleine Cleary: And when they called up the signing line, the signing line was huge.
• 2:35
  Madeleine Cleary: And I said to my mum, go grab a copy so I can quickly get in line so I'm not gonna be, you know, waiting in line for hours.
• 2:42
  Madeleine Cleary: And um, mum's like, yep, no worries.
• 2:43
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm like, I'll stand in line, mum, you go buy it.
• 2:46
  Madeleine Cleary: She's like, yep.
• 2:47
  Madeleine Cleary: Got it.
• 2:47
  Madeleine Cleary: Got it.
• 2:48
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, and so went and had a lovely chat with you, Natasha.
• 2:51
  Madeleine Cleary: You were so gracious and so lovely.
• 2:54
  Madeleine Cleary: And then mum and I were walking outta the store and I said, oh, mum, let me know how much to transfer you.
• 2:57
  Madeleine Cleary: I signed
• 2:58
  Natasha Lester: the stolen book.
• 3:00
  Natasha Lester: I remember
• 3:03
  Madeleine Cleary: I was horrified.
• 3:05
  Madeleine Cleary: We just looked at each other outside and we're like, what do we do?
• 3:10
  Natasha Lester: No, that was great.
• 3:11
  Natasha Lester: I've never signed a stolen book before.
• 3:12
  Natasha Lester: It's like a highlight.
• 3:14
  Natasha Lester: Not that you know of.
• 3:15
  Natasha Lester: Not that you know of.
• 3:16
  Natasha Lester: Yeah, not that I know of.
• 3:17
  Natasha Lester: True.
• 3:19
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, also, I did go back and purchase the book.
• 3:22
  Natasha Lester: Of course, being an author, you would know
• 3:25
  Madeleine Cleary: exactly.
• 3:26
  Madeleine Cleary: Now we are about to, you are about to launch upon, uh, your new book, which is coming out, um, on the 26th of March in Australia.
• 3:33
  Madeleine Cleary: And.
• 3:34
  Madeleine Cleary: You've got a bunch of international releases coming as well from the Mademoiselle Alliance, which I've just read and it is brilliant.
• 3:41
  Natasha Lester: Thank you so much.
• 3:42
  Natasha Lester: And I'm so excited to read so many books for this podcast, so thank you.
• 3:46
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh no, it was, um, an easy one to read and I just absolutely adored it and we will talk about it.
• 3:50
  Madeleine Cleary: But I wanna sort of go back to the start because we're all about talking about book deals on this podcast.
• 3:56
  Madeleine Cleary: Yep.
• 3:57
  Madeleine Cleary: You have so much experience to share.
• 4:00
  Madeleine Cleary: And when I was doing some research, I realized your first novel, or your first historical fiction novel was published in 2016.
• 4:09
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes,
• 4:09
  Tina Strachan: that's
• 4:09
  Madeleine Cleary: right.
• 4:10
  Madeleine Cleary: That was only nine years ago.
• 4:12
  Madeleine Cleary: You've released nine historical fiction books in nine years, is that correct?
• 4:17
  Natasha Lester: Um, yeah.
• 4:18
  Natasha Lester: It must be.
• 4:18
  Natasha Lester: I'm, I'm looking over at my shelf now.
• 4:20
  Natasha Lester: K 2, 4, 6, 8.
• 4:23
  Natasha Lester: Yes, this'll benu.
• 4:24
  Natasha Lester: Is this number nine?
• 4:25
  Natasha Lester: Yeah, it is.
• 4:25
  Natasha Lester: It's number nine.
• 4:26
  Natasha Lester: Oh my gosh.
• 4:27
  Natasha Lester: Great.
• 4:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Which is amazing.
• 4:29
  Madeleine Cleary: How, how, how have you, are you okay?
• 4:31
  Madeleine Cleary: Like,
• 4:34
  Natasha Lester: no, um, I do go through phases of intense, like brain fatigue and, you know, every now and again, I mean, it sounds like I've had one a year, but I haven't had one every year.
• 4:44
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 4:45
  Natasha Lester: Like my last book was 18 months ago, and then I've had a couple of other 18 month stints in between, so I've had.
• 4:52
  Natasha Lester: 18 months is a rest for me.
• 4:54
  Natasha Lester: Um, but yes, I suspect that that pace will slow down as the years progress.
• 4:59
  Natasha Lester: And I get older and older.
• 5:01
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, I hope not because we love having them out in the world every year, even if there is an 18 months break in between.
• 5:08
  Madeleine Cleary: Um.
• 5:09
  Madeleine Cleary: You didn't actually start in historical fiction.
• 5:12
  Madeleine Cleary: Your first two novels were contemporary.
• 5:15
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, can you maybe talk about, um, how you got your deal for your very first book, which is what is left over after.
• 5:23
  Natasha Lester: Yes.
• 5:24
  Natasha Lester: So I had written that as part of a university master's program and like all young hopeful master's graduates, I'd sent it out into the big wide world and like it was a long time ago, so that was published in 2010.
• 5:38
  Natasha Lester: So I was sending this out around 2007 and.
• 5:42
  Natasha Lester: Agents were still asking you back then to send it by post.
• 5:46
  Natasha Lester: Oh my gosh.
• 5:47
  Natasha Lester: Email.
• 5:47
  Natasha Lester: I know that's how old I'm, that's the worst part of this story.
• 5:50
  Natasha Lester: Right.
• 5:51
  Natasha Lester: Um, so I had posted my chapters and query letters out to the.
• 5:57
  Natasha Lester: Like three or four agents that were accepting submissions in Australia at the time.
• 6:02
  Natasha Lester: It wasn't like now where they have open periods.
• 6:05
  Natasha Lester: It was very hard to just send an unsolicited, um, submission to an agent and they'd all rejected me, um, quite, quite nicely in many cases with lovely, handwritten.
• 6:15
  Natasha Lester: Handwritten, not even tight.
• 6:16
  Natasha Lester: Wow.
• 6:18
  Natasha Lester: I know.
• 6:18
  Natasha Lester: Have you kept them?
• 6:20
  Natasha Lester: Yeah, I have, I've got a folder of them.
• 6:22
  Natasha Lester: Of course I scrapbook.
• 6:23
  Natasha Lester: Yeah.
• 6:23
  Natasha Lester: It could be worth
• 6:24
  Madeleine Cleary: money
• 6:24
  Natasha Lester: in Future, Natasha.
• 6:25
  Madeleine Cleary: That's right.
• 6:27
  Natasha Lester: Um, and then I'd sent it off to a couple of publishers as well, who were, again, at that time open, which again, wasn't many because they didn't, you know, publishers these days that have, um, open slash piles that you can send.
• 6:37
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 6:38
  Natasha Lester: That wasn't the case back then.
• 6:40
  Natasha Lester: Um, and pretty much everyone had rejected me, which was only about, you know, like five people in total.
• 6:46
  Natasha Lester: And so in Western Australia we have the TAG Hungerford Award for fiction, and that's an award for any, um, unpublished manuscript written by a West Australian author or someone with a Strachan connection to wa I live in wa so, and I'd known about that award forever.
• 7:02
  Natasha Lester: And, and that was always on my kind of goals list.
• 7:05
  Natasha Lester: So I submitted it to the Hungerford.
• 7:08
  Natasha Lester: Crossed my fingers.
• 7:09
  Natasha Lester: It's about, um, nine months, the judging process.
• 7:12
  Natasha Lester: So you don't hear anything for a really long time.
• 7:15
  Natasha Lester: Wow, that's a lot.
• 7:15
  Natasha Lester: Yeah, it's probably changed again, this is like such a long time ago.
• 7:19
  Natasha Lester: I'm sure it must be quicker now.
• 7:21
  Natasha Lester: And um, then I got contacted and told I was on the shortlist.
• 7:24
  Natasha Lester: With other people and I was super excited, but I was also quite despondent because, um, a right friend of mine, Julian Van Lone, had recently won the Australian Vogel Award when that existed.
• 7:37
  Natasha Lester: And she'd been called by the judges before the night of the award ceremony to tell her that she'd won.
• 7:43
  Natasha Lester: So she had a speech ready.
• 7:44
  Natasha Lester: So, of course, me being me, I assume this was how all literary awards done.
• 7:49
  Natasha Lester: Worked and no one had called me to tell me to get my speech ready for the Tag Hunger Foot Awards.
• 7:54
  Natasha Lester: We haven't won, obviously.
• 7:56
  Natasha Lester: So I went along on the night thinking, oh God, I haven't won.
• 7:59
  Natasha Lester: What am I gonna do?
• 7:59
  Natasha Lester: This is like my luck.
• 8:01
  Natasha Lester: Literally my last chance I, I don't know.
• 8:04
  Natasha Lester: And my husband said later.
• 8:05
  Natasha Lester: He was driving me there and he was thinking the same thing.
• 8:07
  Natasha Lester: Oh my God, what are we gonna do?
• 8:09
  Natasha Lester: You know, she's not gonna, she's not gonna win'cause she hasn't got the phone call.
• 8:12
  Natasha Lester: It's gonna be, she's gonna be so sad.
• 8:14
  Natasha Lester: How am I gonna cope with her afterwards?
• 8:16
  Natasha Lester: Anyway, so these two despondent people were driving along to this award ceremony and then we arrive and they pull out the envelope and I'm.
• 8:25
  Natasha Lester: Looking around the room at the two other short listees trying to scope out which one it's going to be.
• 8:31
  Natasha Lester: And then they read my name out and I have literally never been more surprised in my life.
• 8:35
  Natasha Lester: So yeah, so I won that and that came with the publishing contract.
• 8:38
  Natasha Lester: Still, that's, the awards still exist.
• 8:40
  Natasha Lester: It still comes with a publishing contract and it's such a great award because it's launched the careers of so many.
• 8:45
  Natasha Lester: West Australian authors like Holden Shepherd won that award for in Boys, which is now obviously a Stan Yes.
• 8:51
  Natasha Lester: Phenomenon.
• 8:52
  Natasha Lester: Um, so it's just a really valuable part of the West Australian Biden community.
• 8:57
  Madeleine Cleary: When you did get shortlisted and when you were ultimately won, what was that feeling like?
• 9:04
  Madeleine Cleary: That first time?
• 9:05
  Madeleine Cleary: Because is that the first validation you got for your writing or were there other things that you were submitting?
• 9:10
  Natasha Lester: Um, I know I had submitted some poems and short stories in the couple of years, probably more than the couple of years prior, probably the five years prior to that.
• 9:19
  Natasha Lester: Um.
• 9:20
  Natasha Lester: In fact, the very, I had this like beginner's luck.
• 9:23
  Natasha Lester: The very first thing that I ever sent off to anyone was a poem to Overland Magazine, which I don't know if that just still exists.
• 9:31
  Natasha Lester: Yes, it was a very famous literary magazine and I'd written it as.
• 9:35
  Natasha Lester: Part of a university assignment.
• 9:36
  Natasha Lester: My tutor had said it was great and I should try and submit it, sent it off by post again with a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
• 9:42
  Natasha Lester: Oh my god, I'm so old.
• 9:45
  Natasha Lester: And, um, my stamped self-addressed envelope arrived back in the mail and I thought it was gonna have the standard rejection letter in it, and it had a check for a hundred dollars and an acceptance letter saying it was going to be published.
• 9:56
  Natasha Lester: And so.
• 9:57
  Natasha Lester: After that initial beginners, like obviously things did not always run that smoothly with every other submission that I had sent out after that, but I kept sending out poems and short stories, and so I'd had a few of those published, but it's not the same.
• 10:10
  Natasha Lester: I think when your ambition is to be a novelist, it's not until you know that your novel is going to be published that you feel like you can really call yourself a writer.
• 10:18
  Natasha Lester: I'm like, I still.
• 10:20
  Natasha Lester: We would go to parties and people would ask me what I did, and I would never have said, oh, I'm a writer.
• 10:24
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 10:25
  Natasha Lester: I would've said, I'm studying writing or something like that.
• 10:27
  Natasha Lester: But then once I knew that book was gonna be published, it was like, now I'm an author.
• 10:33
  Madeleine Cleary: Isn't that strange though, how we have this imposter syndrome about it?
• 10:36
  Madeleine Cleary: It absolutely, yeah.
• 10:37
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 10:38
  Madeleine Cleary: Anyone that writes as a writer, it's, it's, there's, you know, it's, that's quite interesting.
• 10:43
  Madeleine Cleary: So, um, seven.
• 10:45
  Madeleine Cleary: So you win this award, um.
• 10:48
  Madeleine Cleary: How, at what point did you decide I want to be a writer?
• 10:52
  Madeleine Cleary: Maybe just to yourself.
• 10:53
  Madeleine Cleary: You might not have told other people about it.
• 10:55
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 10:55
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh,
• 10:55
  Natasha Lester: no.
• 10:55
  Natasha Lester: When I was little, like my mum has all of these poems and little books that I wrote and illustrated when I was young.
• 11:02
  Natasha Lester: Um, I always loved writing.
• 11:04
  Natasha Lester: I always loved reading, and I always wrote things throughout my whole childhood.
• 11:09
  Natasha Lester: And it was if, when I was reading a book.
• 11:13
  Natasha Lester: And I had that, you know, I fell into the story and had that Strachan sense of being taken away to some other time placed, uh, person inhabiting someone else's life.
• 11:25
  Natasha Lester: I would always think, wow, imagine being able to.
• 11:28
  Natasha Lester: Make people feel like this.
• 11:30
  Natasha Lester: Like that must, that's like a superpower to me.
• 11:32
  Natasha Lester: It was.
• 11:33
  Natasha Lester: And so from then on I wanted to be a writer.
• 11:36
  Natasha Lester: I just took me, you know, a long time to get there, but
• 11:38
  Madeleine Cleary: was there.
• 11:39
  Madeleine Cleary: And so you've always wanted to do it.
• 11:41
  Madeleine Cleary: Was there a point where you said, okay, I'm gonna start doing it, and how do you, how do you start when you get that?
• 11:46
  Madeleine Cleary: When you decide, okay, this is what I wanna do.
• 11:49
  Natasha Lester: So for me, uh, when I was in year 12, uh, and everyone was selecting their university courses that they were going to do, I still wanted to be a writer then, but.
• 11:59
  Natasha Lester: WA, there wasn't really a creative writing course that existed at university back then.
• 12:04
  Natasha Lester: There was journalism and I didn't really wanna be a journalist, but that was the only thing similar.
• 12:09
  Natasha Lester: So I ended up doing a Bachelor of Commerce and I majored in marketing and public relations'cause that had this kind of writing element to it because I didn't know what else to do.
• 12:18
  Natasha Lester: I didn't know how to be a writer.
• 12:20
  Natasha Lester: Like, you know, there was no kind of apprenticeship or pathway like there was, if you wanted to be a teacher or a doctor, there was this very clear kind of pathway to follow and very clear set of objectives that you had to achieve along the way.
• 12:33
  Natasha Lester: So I just, and back then there wasn't the wealth of information.
• 12:38
  Natasha Lester: On the internet.
• 12:39
  Natasha Lester: 'cause the internet didn't exist back then when I was leaving high school.
• 12:42
  Natasha Lester: That was like this far flu dream.
• 12:44
  Natasha Lester: Didn't even have mobile phones.
• 12:45
  Natasha Lester: Oh my God, I'm so old.
• 12:47
  Natasha Lester: Um, so I didn't, I know how to access the kind of information that might have helped me to be able to become a writer, but I also Strachanly believed that back then at age 17, I didn't have the emotional range that I needed to be able to be a writer.
• 13:03
  Natasha Lester: So it was actually a good thing that I went and did a completely different degree.
• 13:09
  Natasha Lester: Then I worked in marketing for 10 or 12 years and then my husband had had to follow me to Melbourne for my work.
• 13:16
  Natasha Lester: And then when he had to go back to Perth for his job, um, I obviously went with him.
• 13:22
  Natasha Lester: I didn't stay in Melbourne and.
• 13:24
  Natasha Lester: Meant quitting my marketing job that I had at L'Oreal.
• 13:28
  Natasha Lester: Um, you know, I was marketing manager for Maybelline.
• 13:30
  Natasha Lester: It was, that
• 13:30
  Madeleine Cleary: sounds so romantic.
• 13:32
  Natasha Lester: It was, it was really fun.
• 13:34
  Natasha Lester: And, you know, coming to Perth where there weren't companies with their head offices located here back then, so there wasn't the same kind of marketing job available.
• 13:43
  Natasha Lester: And that was when I thought, well, I've still got this idea in the back of my mind about being a writer.
• 13:49
  Natasha Lester: Maybe rather than just getting any old marketing job, I go back to university because now there are creative writing courses at university and I give it, give it a try because it's all very well to think you wanna be a writer, but.
• 14:04
  Natasha Lester: The actual practice of being a writer, like maybe it would've been different to what I thought.
• 14:08
  Natasha Lester: Maybe I wouldn't have enjoyed it.
• 14:09
  Natasha Lester: So I wanted to check that first.
• 14:11
  Natasha Lester: And also, obviously the most important thing is to find out if I was any good at it because you know, my amateurs amateur, childish kind of books for not very good.
• 14:20
  Natasha Lester: So I needed to kind of test myself.
• 14:22
  Natasha Lester: So I did go back to university and I.
• 14:26
  Natasha Lester: Um, found out that I loved it.
• 14:28
  Natasha Lester: Got my poem published, so that was like, okay, well maybe I have some ability to do it.
• 14:33
  Natasha Lester: And I kept going from there.
• 14:35
  Natasha Lester: So that was really, um, I've completely forgotten what you actually asked me.
• 14:39
  Natasha Lester: Did I answer your question?
• 14:40
  Natasha Lester: Oh my God,
• 14:41
  Madeleine Cleary: absolutely.
• 14:42
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm interested actually.
• 14:44
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, I.
• 14:45
  Madeleine Cleary: Few writers now that have had marketing and public relations backgrounds.
• 14:50
  Madeleine Cleary: Interesting.
• 14:50
  Madeleine Cleary: Which is, yeah, really interesting.
• 14:52
  Madeleine Cleary: And I suppose it goes into that advertising marketing space where you are being a bit more creative, um, but to, in order to make money, um, yes.
• 15:00
  Natasha Lester: And also I guess you're telling a story when you're going out to consumers with a brand, you are saying to them, imagine yourself with this.
• 15:08
  Natasha Lester: And so you have to create a story around that.
• 15:10
  Natasha Lester: So I feel like, you know, I can understand that.
• 15:12
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes.
• 15:13
  Madeleine Cleary: And actually authors are always told that we have to tell the story behind the story Exactly as well.
• 15:18
  Madeleine Cleary: That's been something that I'm, I'm learning how to do.
• 15:21
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, with my debut coming out, what, how's your marketing background helped you, do you think?
• 15:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Has it helped you in your writing life?
• 15:30
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, and what maybe tips do you have for, for emerging writers?
• 15:34
  Natasha Lester: I definitely think it has helped me because it's, it's hard.
• 15:39
  Natasha Lester: There are.
• 15:40
  Natasha Lester: You know, a number of schools have thought out there about whether writers should or shouldn't think about their readers and their audience.
• 15:48
  Natasha Lester: And you know, when you get into marketing and you drill down to things like target audiences, like it sounds icky when you put that into like a writing in a book kind of space.
• 15:57
  Natasha Lester: But.
• 15:58
  Natasha Lester: I mean, mostly I would imagine that people are writing to be read, and so therefore you are in the, at the end of the day trying to reach a customer.
• 16:10
  Natasha Lester: So having that ability to.
• 16:14
  Natasha Lester: Appreciate the art of what I'm doing, but understand that there's a business side of it as well, I think has actually been really helpful and I don't feel embarrassed or ashamed about acknowledging there is a business side to this and some writers don't want to think about that, and that's absolutely fine.
• 16:32
  Natasha Lester: Everyone is different and everybody should approach it the way that feels most comfortable to them.
• 16:36
  Natasha Lester: But I don't know whether I would have achieved the success that I have achieved if I hadn't have been able to consider at least the business aspects of being a writer as well.
• 16:49
  Natasha Lester: I mean, you are a CEO of your own business, and you are required to.
• 16:54
  Natasha Lester: Invent the idea for the product, then create the product.
• 16:58
  Natasha Lester: Market the product, manage your budgets.
• 17:01
  Natasha Lester: Um, do all your finances.
• 17:03
  Natasha Lester: Yes, do strategy for yourself.
• 17:05
  Natasha Lester: Like, where do I wanna be in five years time?
• 17:07
  Natasha Lester: That's up to you to decide.
• 17:08
  Natasha Lester: So, and all those kinds of things I had to do in marketing.
• 17:11
  Natasha Lester: It was all strategy, ideas, product creation.
• 17:14
  Natasha Lester: Finance, budgeting, et cetera.
• 17:16
  Natasha Lester: So it's been really useful.
• 17:18
  Natasha Lester: And my big piece of advice to writers would be to just, you know, spend some time thinking about whether or not.
• 17:26
  Natasha Lester: You know, giving yourself a bit of a, a day every couple of months to think about the more business aspects of writing would be useful to you.
• 17:35
  Natasha Lester: And for some people it'll be like, no, that will totally dampen my creativity and I won't be able to write.
• 17:40
  Natasha Lester: And if that's the case, then you shouldn't do that.
• 17:42
  Natasha Lester: But for other people it might be worthwhile.
• 17:44
  Natasha Lester: And, you know, giving yourself a business day that you formally kind of set aside in your calendar.
• 17:49
  Natasha Lester: Can be a really good thing'cause it forces you to acknowledge the other elements that there are to being a writer.
• 17:56
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh no, I think that's excellent advice and I think you are an example of someone that's really built your brand really, really well.
• 18:03
  Madeleine Cleary: And I, I know we cringe as creatives to hear that, but, but it is true when true people say, I wanna, yeah.
• 18:10
  Madeleine Cleary: You know, it's a Natasha Lester book.
• 18:11
  Madeleine Cleary: They know, they know.
• 18:13
  Madeleine Cleary: You know that they're gonna get a really well written, beautifully crafted, well researched novel.
• 18:18
  Madeleine Cleary: Is that what you'd intended from the start?
• 18:20
  Madeleine Cleary: Because your two first books of, you've re, you've first released your two books, which were contemporary fiction, and then you've, um, since then, um, published historical fiction with Ette.
• 18:30
  Madeleine Cleary: Was that a deliberate decision or was it just what you want to write?
• 18:34
  Natasha Lester: It's funny how little intention has gone into a lot of the things that I've done, but you're absolutely right when you say that, you know.
• 18:43
  Natasha Lester: We don't like to think of ourselves as brands, but that's how the publishers think of you.
• 18:48
  Natasha Lester: You know?
• 18:48
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 18:49
  Natasha Lester: When someone is submitting, they wanna know the comp titles.
• 18:52
  Natasha Lester: They wanna know what two books or three books, this is like, or will appeal to the readerships of those.
• 18:58
  Natasha Lester: Comp Titles are really important out for publishers, and that's really saying.
• 19:02
  Natasha Lester: I think my brand aligns with this author brand is really what you're saying when you're picking those comp titles on your pitch document.
• 19:09
  Natasha Lester: So, um, so it is important to think about that stuff, but sort of when I moved from contemporary fiction to historical fiction, it was a bit of an accident.
• 19:19
  Natasha Lester: I had written a third contemporary that I thought I would get published, but it was a horrible writing experience.
• 19:26
  Natasha Lester: It was a terrible book.
• 19:27
  Natasha Lester: Um, I threw it in the bin and, um.
• 19:32
  Natasha Lester: Sort of didn't know.
• 19:33
  Natasha Lester: It was a bit of a loose end, didn't know what to do.
• 19:35
  Natasha Lester: It was a bit of a crisis mument, I suppose, for me.
• 19:38
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 19:38
  Natasha Lester: I didn't have the difficult second book.
• 19:39
  Natasha Lester: I had the difficult third book.
• 19:40
  Natasha Lester: I'm obviously a bit delayed.
• 19:42
  Natasha Lester: What made
• 19:42
  Madeleine Cleary: it difficult?
• 19:43
  Madeleine Cleary: Because I know a lot of people find this.
• 19:45
  Natasha Lester: Yeah.
• 19:45
  Natasha Lester: For me it was, um, I think because I'd written my first book as part of a university master's program.
• 19:53
  Natasha Lester: Back then.
• 19:54
  Natasha Lester: I think it's very different now and it's much more open at the universities.
• 19:58
  Natasha Lester: There was an, a very Strachan expectation about the kind of book you would write as part of that master's program.
• 20:05
  Natasha Lester: And it needed to be serious and weighty and heavy and sad and grim, almost like it.
• 20:12
  Natasha Lester: Um, and so I wrote two books like that.
• 20:16
  Natasha Lester: Um, and then I just, I think I'd run out of that kind of energy by the third.
• 20:20
  Natasha Lester: It wasn't, they sound very consuming.
• 20:22
  Natasha Lester: Yeah, I could ride like that, but it wasn't really me.
• 20:27
  Natasha Lester: Um, I needed a bit more light, a little bit more love, a little bit more, um, ability to, um, shape the female characters and a less kind of.
• 20:41
  Natasha Lester: Vulnerably victimy kind of way.
• 20:43
  Natasha Lester: Maybe.
• 20:44
  Natasha Lester: Um, you're finding beauty, I think, in your novels.
• 20:46
  Madeleine Cleary: You are, you're finding this beau like this during trouble times.
• 20:50
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause there's still a lot of darkness in your, in your books.
• 20:53
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes,
• 20:53
  Natasha Lester: absolutely.
• 20:53
  Madeleine Cleary: But there's these muments of light and beauty, which is what I love about your writing.
• 20:58
  Madeleine Cleary: So just Oh, thank
• 20:58
  Natasha Lester: you.
• 20:59
  Natasha Lester: Yeah.
• 20:59
  Natasha Lester: I mean that's I guess really what I'm trying to do, but I didn't know that then I literally just pulled all my favourite books off my bookshelf and I.
• 21:06
  Natasha Lester: Reread them.
• 21:07
  Natasha Lester: And that was when I realized that so many of them were historical fiction.
• 21:12
  Natasha Lester: And I hadn't ever really thought to myself before, oh, I love historical fiction, but I clearly did love historical fiction.
• 21:18
  Natasha Lester: And then the smart part of my brain went, oh, why don't you try writing historical fiction then?
• 21:24
  Natasha Lester: And I was like, oh, that's a really good idea.
• 21:25
  Natasha Lester: So I did.
• 21:27
  Natasha Lester: Um, so it wasn't intentional and it wasn't planned.
• 21:30
  Natasha Lester: Um, and same thing when I began to write the Jewel narratives.
• 21:33
  Natasha Lester: Um.
• 21:34
  Natasha Lester: After my third historical, that was again, an accident.
• 21:37
  Natasha Lester: It wasn't intentional.
• 21:38
  Natasha Lester: And then that bit and the whole French thing wasn't intentional really, because it all seems so strategic, Natasha, when you look at
• 21:45
  Madeleine Cleary: it
• 21:45
  Natasha Lester: in
• 21:45
  Madeleine Cleary: retrospect, perhaps.
• 21:47
  Natasha Lester: I think it's all I was pursuing my interest in doing what I loved, and that's also a really key thing I think for people.
• 21:53
  Natasha Lester: You've gotta.
• 21:54
  Natasha Lester: Write about the things that you most love, because when you're doing it, the readers will feel the love.
• 21:58
  Natasha Lester: And but then that was how the brand shaped out of me just writing about the kinds of things that I really enjoyed exploring in my novel.
• 22:07
  Natasha Lester: So, um, no, it wasn't intentional.
• 22:10
  Natasha Lester: And, and so I, I think that definitely in writing there is that.
• 22:14
  Natasha Lester: Uh, push and pull and balance between some of the stuff is just very magical and spontaneous and going with your gut.
• 22:23
  Natasha Lester: And then there is this kind of business element to things as well, and you've gotta have both parts playing, um, off against each other at the same
• 22:30
  Madeleine Cleary: time.
• 22:31
  Madeleine Cleary: Would you, so, um, is historical fiction, is that where you're going to stay, do you think?
• 22:36
  Madeleine Cleary: Because there are a lot of, there's a lot of talk about, um, writers sticking, and I know publishers enjoy when writers stay in the genre.
• 22:44
  Madeleine Cleary: Have you ever had this discussion?
• 22:46
  Natasha Lester: Yes.
• 22:47
  Natasha Lester: Well, it's interesting, particularly in America, um, at the mument because obviously that's my biggest market, simply because more people in America, right?
• 22:54
  Natasha Lester: So if you are selling books there and hitting bestseller list there, you're just naturally gonna sell more copies.
• 23:00
  Natasha Lester: And, um, similarly to here, historical fiction has been declining over the last year, a couple of years or so.
• 23:07
  Natasha Lester: You know, we had this golden run, which is a bit like what romantic and crime having now.
• 23:12
  Natasha Lester: Eventually they'll reach kind of their decline, their peak and start to decline.
• 23:16
  Natasha Lester: It happens with every genre that kind of has the, has this big burst.
• 23:21
  Natasha Lester: So in the US there's been a lot of talk about pivoting, which is, I hate that word, but that's what the word that everybody is using over there.
• 23:28
  Natasha Lester: And writers are being encouraged for the, which I think is great because it's not normal to.
• 23:33
  Natasha Lester: Take a bit of a turn and to keep some of the hallmarks of their brand, but to maybe explore a different direction.
• 23:39
  Natasha Lester: So I've got, there's
• 23:40
  Madeleine Cleary: romantic in your future, Natasha?
• 23:42
  Natasha Lester: No, romantic is not in my future.
• 23:44
  Natasha Lester: It's in my daughter's future.
• 23:45
  Natasha Lester: She adores those books, which is great that she's reading them.
• 23:49
  Natasha Lester: Um, so no, my, I've got a book coming out.
• 23:52
  Natasha Lester: It probably next year it'll be out because I've submitted that.
• 23:54
  Natasha Lester: Um, and that while still having a historical.
• 23:58
  Natasha Lester: Element to it has some quite different pivot, I guess you would call them.
• 24:03
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 24:03
  Natasha Lester: Elements to it as well.
• 24:04
  Natasha Lester: And, um, that was super, super fun to write.
• 24:08
  Natasha Lester: I had a great time writing that book.
• 24:10
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay.
• 24:10
  Madeleine Cleary: Pivoting.
• 24:11
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay.
• 24:11
  Madeleine Cleary: I'm gonna remember that.
• 24:12
  Madeleine Cleary: That's an interesting Yeah.
• 24:13
  Madeleine Cleary: Way of describing it.
• 24:14
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, I wanna talk about the US actually.
• 24:16
  Madeleine Cleary: It's a bit of a, a dream, I think for all emerging writers and day writers to, to be published internationally.
• 24:23
  Madeleine Cleary: Um.
• 24:24
  Madeleine Cleary: And, and particularly in the US market, there's a, like you said, it is your biggest market.
• 24:29
  Madeleine Cleary: Can you talk a little bit about your experience becoming New York Times bestseller and I believe it was, um, perhaps Penny from Costco that might have assisted, is that right?
• 24:38
  Natasha Lester: Yeah, so thank God for Penny.
• 24:40
  Natasha Lester: I always say, um, so I had published two historical novels with, has shared Australia, which hadn't been.
• 24:47
  Natasha Lester: Publish internationally at all.
• 24:49
  Natasha Lester: And then my third historical was the Paris Seamstress, and that was picked up by a publisher in the US and which I thought was fantastic, but I was also quite pessimistic about it because I just didn't see why people so far away would read a book written by an author from Australia.
• 25:05
  Madeleine Cleary: But it is, there's a lot of very much set in New York though as well.
• 25:09
  Natasha Lester: Yes, exactly.
• 25:10
  Natasha Lester: But I don't know whether I was just setting my expectations low or something.
• 25:14
  Natasha Lester: I don't know.
• 25:14
  Natasha Lester: So I was just happy that it was being published, but didn't expect it to do anything very much.
• 25:21
  Natasha Lester: Um, and it was published in August of 2018 and.
• 25:28
  Natasha Lester: It had a recently, like a better print run just kick off than I thought.
• 25:32
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 25:32
  Natasha Lester: And just kept getting reprinted, just little reprints, um, because people just sort of kept buying it.
• 25:38
  Natasha Lester: And so that was all gone quite well.
• 25:40
  Natasha Lester: Like, I was pretty happy with it as it was.
• 25:42
  Natasha Lester: It didn't, and I still didn't have any more expectations for it until.
• 25:46
  Natasha Lester: This email arrived in my inbox, it must have been late October, early November.
• 25:51
  Natasha Lester: So this is a couple of months after publication and my editor in New York said to me, oh my God.
• 25:58
  Natasha Lester: And she used ex exclamation marks.
• 25:59
  Natasha Lester: And when a publisher uses exclamation marks, you know, it's exciting'cause they hate exclamation marks, right?
• 26:04
  Natasha Lester: Um, and she said the Paris seamstress is a Penny's pick for December.
• 26:09
  Natasha Lester: And I'm like, who the fuck is Penny?
• 26:11
  Natasha Lester: I.
• 26:17
  Natasha Lester: Um, and she clearly got the sense from my reply that I was underwhelmed and not taking this information on in the way I should be.
• 26:24
  Natasha Lester: So she then came back to me with a full explanation of who Penny was.
• 26:28
  Natasha Lester: She was the main buyer for Costco.
• 26:31
  Natasha Lester: Costco's like your big box, um, department store in the us Their massive, they didn't sell many books, but the ones they sell, they take a lot of stock of.
• 26:41
  Natasha Lester: And Kenny would choose one book each month, um, from all the books.
• 26:44
  Natasha Lester: Available and it would be her pick.
• 26:47
  Natasha Lester: And people had come to trust her pick.
• 26:50
  Natasha Lester: I love that.
• 26:51
  Natasha Lester: I know.
• 26:52
  Natasha Lester: It was a real, it was like the Rece Witherspoon book.
• 26:54
  Natasha Lester: Yes.
• 26:55
  Natasha Lester: I was just gonna say Fox department stores.
• 26:57
  Natasha Lester: Oh my God.
• 26:58
  Natasha Lester: It was, she's an influencer.
• 26:59
  Natasha Lester: Penny's an early, and she, she's doesn't do it anymore, which she is such a dream.
• 27:03
  Natasha Lester: I know.
• 27:03
  Natasha Lester: So she interviews the author and you have a big, um, article in the Costco magazine, which goes out to, you know, millions of households all over America.
• 27:11
  Natasha Lester: And you walk into the store and there's Penny's pick right at the front of the store.
• 27:16
  Natasha Lester: And the, the cherry on, the icing on the cake was that it was December's pick.
• 27:21
  Natasha Lester: So that's Christmas, right?
• 27:23
  Natasha Lester: Oh, everyone's walking into Costco to get a Christmas gift, and there is the power seamstress sitting right there saying I'm the perfect Christmas present.
• 27:31
  Natasha Lester: And they bought it.
• 27:32
  Natasha Lester: And they bought it.
• 27:32
  Natasha Lester: And they bought it.
• 27:33
  Natasha Lester: And they bought it.
• 27:33
  Natasha Lester: To the extent that.
• 27:35
  Natasha Lester: My publisher ran out of exclamation marks every time she gave me a sales update.
• 27:40
  Natasha Lester: 'cause it was just so astounding for both of us, the kind of numbers that we were moving.
• 27:45
  Natasha Lester: Um, and then like in February, so six months after publication, target came on board as a new, um, a new retailer like that.
• 27:54
  Natasha Lester: Doesn't like that was amazing.
• 27:56
  Natasha Lester: So then it had this whole nother.
• 27:57
  Natasha Lester: Um, another boost from that, um, which meant that by the time my next book came out, which, um, was called the French Photographer here in Australia, the Paris Orphan in America.
• 28:08
  Natasha Lester: That came out in the October, uh, September of 2019, that went straight to the new New York Times bestseller list, which was a another.
• 28:17
  Natasha Lester: Pinch me mument.
• 28:18
  Natasha Lester: And again, my editor emailed me with exclamation marks saying, oh my gosh, the Paris Orman is on the New York Times bestseller list.
• 28:25
  Natasha Lester: And then she said, you can cross that off your bucket list.
• 28:27
  Natasha Lester: And I was like, I don't have it on my bucket list.
• 28:29
  Natasha Lester: 'cause it seemed so extraordinarily.
• 28:33
  Natasha Lester: Unlikely to happen.
• 28:35
  Natasha Lester: So yes, I did get out a piece of paper and write bucket list on top and write it on there just so I could cross it out.
• 28:46
  Hello, listeners.
• 28:46
  My name is Angie Cui.
• 28:48
  I'm a member of Debut Crew 2025.
• 28:51
  I'm so happy to share my first book with you.
• 28:54
  It's called My Mum is Bird, which was released on the 1st of April through UQP.
• 29:00
  This touching story celebrates the differences and the beauty of loving your family feathers and all.
• 29:07
  Its parents, and parents stay at school.
• 29:09
  The child doesn't want to ask the mum to come to school.
• 29:12
  This is all because the mum is a bird, an actual bird.
• 29:17
  Having a bird.
• 29:18
  mum seems to stand out for all the wrong reasons, especially in the human world.
• 29:24
  After feeling embarrassed to bring the bird mum along, the child slowly realized that even though the mum is a bird, she's pretty cool.
• 29:32
  After all the stories inspired by one of my friend's daily life, the book reminds us families can come in all shapes and sizes.
• 29:42
  My Mum is a Bird is out now, available in bookstores.
• 29:46
  I cannot wait for you to meet my characters and experience this heartwarming story.
• 29:52
  Thank you so much to the Book Deal podcast for allowing me to pop in this episode.
• 29:58
  And thank you all for listening and happy reading.
• 30:05
  Madeleine Cleary: What does it mean to authors to be on the New York Times Bestsellers list?
• 30:09
  Natasha Lester: It's exciting because it's really, it's still one thing.
• 30:13
  Natasha Lester: I don't know how much longer it will be meaningful for in the current kind of very fragmented media environment, but it still is meaningful to.
• 30:21
  Natasha Lester: People, um, it's meaningful to bookstores, it's meaningful to readers, so it kind of just gives you, um, a, a little bit more, um, authority, I guess.
• 30:35
  Natasha Lester: And also, you know, in Australia there's not that many writers that have made the list, so it's kind of, um.
• 30:42
  Natasha Lester: You know, it, it, it's an, it's such an honor.
• 30:45
  Natasha Lester: Do you know what I mean?
• 30:45
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 30:46
  Natasha Lester: Like, it really feels like an honor.
• 30:48
  Natasha Lester: Um, and
• 30:48
  Madeleine Cleary: we don't really have an Australian equivalent unless we say an Australian bestseller
• 30:52
  Natasha Lester: coach.
• 30:52
  Natasha Lester: No.
• 30:52
  Natasha Lester: We don't really have an Australian equivalent at all.
• 30:54
  Natasha Lester: So we need to start that because only UK's
• 30:56
  Madeleine Cleary: the Times best seller.
• 30:58
  Madeleine Cleary: Exactly.
• 30:58
  Madeleine Cleary: Exactly.
• 30:59
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 30:59
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 30:59
  Natasha Lester: All these.
• 31:00
  Madeleine Cleary: Australian bestseller maybe.
• 31:01
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah, maybe you can put that.
• 31:03
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay.
• 31:03
  Madeleine Cleary: I wanna talk about the Mademoiselle Alliance, which I'm very much hopeful will be on the New York Times bestseller list.
• 31:09
  Madeleine Cleary: Fingers crossed.
• 31:10
  Madeleine Cleary: Fingers crossed.
• 31:10
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 31:10
  Madeleine Cleary: Goals 2025 goals.
• 31:12
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah.
• 31:12
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, but before we do, can you tell me about the first time you heard about Marie-Madeleine Fourcade?
• 31:18
  Madeleine Cleary: So
• 31:19
  Natasha Lester: I had come across her name maybe just twice in nonfiction books that I had read about the Second World War over the years because I've read quite a few for research for my other books and she'd been mentioned in passing, um, in connection to the resistance and certainly.
• 31:38
  Natasha Lester: Never to me, to my knowledge, mentioned as the leader, the only female leader of the largest resistance network in France.
• 31:46
  Natasha Lester: Like that piece of vital information was missing from the books that I had read.
• 31:50
  Natasha Lester: And I wonder
• 31:50
  Madeleine Cleary: why as well.
• 31:51
  Madeleine Cleary: Yeah,
• 31:52
  Natasha Lester: I know.
• 31:52
  Natasha Lester: Um, so I didn't know that she was that important nor what she had done until I sat down and decided to.
• 32:01
  Natasha Lester: By her memoir on a bit of a whim really, of looking for a, a next book idea and read her memoir and thought, oh my gosh, this is who I'm writing about.
• 32:10
  Natasha Lester: I can't think about anybody else.
• 32:12
  Madeleine Cleary: So do you wanna tell me a bit about her life then, and what was the what, what really inspired you?
• 32:17
  Madeleine Cleary: When were you like, oh, this is a book, I have to write this story.
• 32:22
  Natasha Lester: There were so many muments where I thought that it's like almost impossible to pick one.
• 32:27
  Natasha Lester: So she, she grew up in Shanghai.
• 32:29
  Natasha Lester: Her father, um, worked on the French, uh, merchant Marine service.
• 32:35
  Natasha Lester: And so she grew up in the French concession of Shanghai because obviously back then, um, you know, there was a French concession there.
• 32:43
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 32:44
  Natasha Lester: Um, so she had this very extraordinary childhood being allowed to kind of roam.
• 32:48
  Natasha Lester: Free through Shanghai with her nanny and her brother and sister.
• 32:51
  Natasha Lester: And I think that, uh, childhood really formed the kind of woman she became.
• 32:57
  Natasha Lester: But at the same time, she was also practicing to be a concert pianist.
• 33:00
  Natasha Lester: So she was going to sit on the stage at the Egia in.
• 33:05
  Natasha Lester: Um, Paris and play the piano.
• 33:07
  Natasha Lester: Right.
• 33:07
  Natasha Lester: Of course,
• 33:08
  Madeleine Cleary: she was, nothing surprises me now about this woman I
• 33:10
  Natasha Lester: know.
• 33:10
  Natasha Lester: I know.
• 33:10
  Natasha Lester: So eight hours a day she's playing the piano.
• 33:13
  Natasha Lester: And then her father sadly passed away and the family had to move back to Paris.
• 33:18
  Natasha Lester: And a short time later, when she was 17 years old, she, um, fell instantly in love with this, um, French military intelligence officer.
• 33:28
  Natasha Lester: And part of the attraction maybe was that he was about to be posted to Morocco because Morocco was a French colony at the time.
• 33:35
  Natasha Lester: This is the late, this is the late 1920s.
• 33:37
  Natasha Lester: And so that would marry him, would mean moving to Morocco and having probably a similar experience to what she had in Shanghai.
• 33:43
  Natasha Lester: So she did that.
• 33:44
  Natasha Lester: Um, and you know, learnt Arabic.
• 33:47
  Natasha Lester: Like, can you imagine a woman in 1920s Morocco learning Arabic, like a blonde, blonde woman?
• 33:53
  Natasha Lester: You know?
• 33:53
  Natasha Lester: I know.
• 33:53
  Natasha Lester: Like it's crazy.
• 33:54
  Natasha Lester: Right?
• 33:55
  Natasha Lester: And she would go out with her husband, um, to meet the tribal leaders that he had to talk to, to get information from, for his role.
• 34:03
  Natasha Lester: She helped, um, women at a local women's clinic give birth to their babies.
• 34:09
  Natasha Lester: Um.
• 34:11
  Natasha Lester: Then she separated from her husband.
• 34:12
  Natasha Lester: They were very different in personality.
• 34:13
  Natasha Lester: She was quite vivacious and outgoing, and he was not like that.
• 34:18
  Natasha Lester: Uh, so she took her two children back to France with her.
• 34:21
  Natasha Lester: Um,
• 34:21
  Madeleine Cleary: and at the time that would've been quite significant too.
• 34:24
  Natasha Lester: Oh, yes.
• 34:24
  Natasha Lester: She like, you know, a scarlett letter kind of stuff, you know, separated.
• 34:28
  Natasha Lester: The only way she could get away with it was because her husband was in Morocco.
• 34:31
  Natasha Lester: You could say that you had come back for the children's schooling.
• 34:34
  Natasha Lester: So people accepted that as an.
• 34:35
  Natasha Lester: Excuse because the schools in France were perceived to do better than those in Morocco.
• 34:40
  Natasha Lester: Right.
• 34:40
  Natasha Lester: Um, so then she became a car rally driver.
• 34:43
  Natasha Lester: Like she drove in the very early car rallies, um, you know, and did really well on them, like, you know, came third and stuff like that.
• 34:50
  Madeleine Cleary: There's a great scene of that in the book, which I just loved.
• 34:53
  Madeleine Cleary: How can you leave that right?
• 34:56
  Natasha Lester: Even if it wasn't plot related.
• 34:57
  Natasha Lester: Loved it.
• 34:58
  Natasha Lester: Loved it.
• 34:58
  Natasha Lester: I know.
• 34:58
  Natasha Lester: You just have to get that in there.
• 34:59
  Natasha Lester: She flew.
• 35:00
  Natasha Lester: She was a pilot like in the nineties.
• 35:02
  Natasha Lester: I know.
• 35:02
  Natasha Lester: Are you kidding me?
• 35:03
  Natasha Lester: Like, what did not what did this woman not do?
• 35:05
  Natasha Lester: Right.
• 35:06
  Natasha Lester: Um, so she also worked as a journalist for, um, a radio station in, and she interviewed women who were, uh, kind of progressive, um, for the time in France.
• 35:16
  Natasha Lester: So women kind of like her.
• 35:18
  Natasha Lester: Um, and then of course war happened, um, in 1939.
• 35:22
  Natasha Lester: War was declared and she'd in the couple of years.
• 35:26
  Natasha Lester: Prior to that, had started helping a man called Navar, who was publishing a newspaper, designed to show the French people and the French government that Hitler was preparing for war because people didn't believe that Hitler wanted to take over Europe.
• 35:40
  Natasha Lester: I don't know why they didn't believe that, but they didn't.
• 35:42
  Natasha Lester: And um, they almost probably didn't want to believe it.
• 35:45
  Natasha Lester: Did they?
• 35:45
  Natasha Lester: Yeah.
• 35:46
  Natasha Lester: Well, yeah.
• 35:46
  Natasha Lester: And which is.
• 35:47
  Natasha Lester: Similar to Mm.
• 35:49
  Natasha Lester: But that's a conversation for, for another time.
• 35:51
  Natasha Lester: Um, so he was getting informants to smuggle papers out of Germany, which Murray Madeleine would collect from places like Belgium.
• 35:59
  Natasha Lester: And then they would publish the, the plans of the, um, Nazi party, um, in terms of their military strategy.
• 36:06
  And
• 36:07
  Natasha Lester: even that kind of information didn't convince people.
• 36:10
  Natasha Lester: So then, um, the war happens.
• 36:13
  Natasha Lester: Everything they've been publishing proves to be true and accurate, and France is taken over by the Germans and cut in half.
• 36:21
  Natasha Lester: And Navar forms this, uh, intelligence network, which becomes a resistance network that becomes the terminology for it.
• 36:29
  Natasha Lester: Um, and he has Marie-Madeleine as his, um, right hand woman.
• 36:34
  Natasha Lester: She's his chief of staff initially until he is arrested.
• 36:37
  Natasha Lester: And she, I love
• 36:38
  Madeleine Cleary: how quickly he just like gets arrested and Marie-Madeleine's like, okay, so I guess I'm gonna take over then
• 36:44
  Natasha Lester: and an extra, and the extraordinary thing was that she had no military training.
• 36:48
  Natasha Lester: Yes.
• 36:49
  Natasha Lester: You know, she didn't have any formal intelligence training.
• 36:52
  Natasha Lester: She was 31 years old, a mother of two kids in this network at this time, where military men decades, her senior with military experience that she didn't have.
• 37:04
  Natasha Lester: But there was something about her.
• 37:07
  Natasha Lester: That made those agents and those men who, you know, probably had some pretty chauvinist outlooks all the time, you know, at that time that was the kind of norm, right?
• 37:17
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 37:18
  Natasha Lester: Yet they accepted her as their leader.
• 37:21
  Natasha Lester: So that was I.
• 37:22
  Natasha Lester: Number one.
• 37:23
  Natasha Lester: Well, you know, like the, one of the extraordinary things that happened.
• 37:27
  Natasha Lester: And then, so from then on, um, she led up to 3000 agents in this resistance network that stretched across the whole of France and gathered so much important intelligence without which the war could have ended very differently.
• 37:40
  Madeleine Cleary: That's right.
• 37:41
  Madeleine Cleary: Well, I mean, it, it sounds to me that without.
• 37:44
  Madeleine Cleary: Intelligence of alliance, you know, it, it, thousands of more people would've died.
• 37:49
  Madeleine Cleary: The war would've kept going.
• 37:51
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, the intelligence was crucial to the allied invasion of France, the, the eventual allied invasion in 1944.
• 37:58
  Madeleine Cleary: And this is a direct result.
• 37:59
  Madeleine Cleary: So why have we not heard about her before?
• 38:02
  Natasha Lester: Well, most likely because she's a woman, sadly.
• 38:06
  Natasha Lester: Um, but also I think it was because Charles.
• 38:09
  Natasha Lester: Charles Degal, as you would say in French, but let's just call him Charles Dega because that's easier.
• 38:14
  Natasha Lester: Um, he created this, um, uh, group called The Companions Deion.
• 38:18
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 38:19
  Natasha Lester: And he, this was an honor he bestowed on the people he deemed most fundamental to.
• 38:25
  Natasha Lester: Uh, securing Francis Freedom throughout the war, and he gave that honor to 1,038 people.
• 38:33
  Natasha Lester: 1,032 of them were men.
• 38:35
  Natasha Lester: Um, so only six of them were women, and none of those women were Marie-Madeleine Fourcade.
• 38:41
  Madeleine Cleary: Blews My mind when I read that and course like, what?
• 38:44
  Madeleine Cleary: This, this I know real
• 38:46
  Natasha Lester: grant, her subordinates.
• 38:48
  Natasha Lester: Received the award.
• 38:49
  Natasha Lester: Oh, so three people who she was managing and giving priorities to for their intelligence gathering and managing them, telling them what to do, et cetera.
• 38:59
  Natasha Lester: They were awarded.
• 39:00
  Natasha Lester: Yeah.
• 39:00
  Natasha Lester: It was
• 39:00
  Madeleine Cleary: de sha the goal.
• 39:01
  Madeleine Cleary: Just not like Marie Madeleine.
• 39:03
  Natasha Lester: Look, I feel like he probably was quite typical for a man of his time, but given that he did only give the award to six women, there were many more than six women who were of course.
• 39:14
  Natasha Lester: To the French resistance.
• 39:15
  Natasha Lester: Um, so that in and of itself reflects perhaps his beliefs.
• 39:19
  Natasha Lester: Um, there was also quite some tension between Charles Daal and, and Navar who founded Client Network that were not friends.
• 39:26
  Natasha Lester: And so potentially it arose from that as well.
• 39:29
  Natasha Lester: Um.
• 39:30
  Natasha Lester: But I think that when you've got a woman who is excluded from that list, then history thinks, well, she wasn't important.
• 39:38
  Mm.
• 39:38
  But
• 39:38
  Natasha Lester: then when the histories are being written, she doesn't get mentioned because she's not one of the most crucial people who helped to, to achieve France's freedom.
• 39:46
  Natasha Lester: So I think it probably happened.
• 39:48
  Natasha Lester: From there, uh, is my supposition anyway.
• 39:51
  Madeleine Cleary: Hmm.
• 39:51
  Madeleine Cleary: Well I'm so glad that you have written this book because her story needs to be spread to a wider audience and I consider myself a well-educated person.
• 40:02
  Madeleine Cleary: The fact that I hadn't heard of her was really disappointing to me.
• 40:05
  Madeleine Cleary: So, um, have you approached the research to this story differently, do you think, than your other historical fiction books?
• 40:11
  Natasha Lester: Really, other than there was, I mean, I've had to read lots of French documents in the past for my books, but this time almost everything was in French.
• 40:21
  Natasha Lester: And yes,
• 40:21
  Madeleine Cleary: I I was very impressed when you said that.
• 40:23
  Madeleine Cleary: You've, you were, you read the French, her French memoir.
• 40:26
  Natasha Lester: Yeah.
• 40:27
  Natasha Lester: 'cause the
• 40:27
  Madeleine Cleary: English abridged, it was an abridged version.
• 40:29
  Madeleine Cleary: That's
• 40:29
  Natasha Lester: right.
• 40:30
  Natasha Lester: It left a lot of crucial stuff out, so.
• 40:32
  Natasha Lester: I did it pretty much exactly the same way.
• 40:34
  Natasha Lester: I went to France, traveled in her footsteps, visited all of the locations where she had her headquarters, visited her grave, um, visited other memorials, uh, particularly to a man named Leon Phi, who was her second in command.
• 40:47
  Natasha Lester: And I read lots of documents in French, including Leon's niece had written, um, this kind of handwritten journal about her uncle.
• 40:58
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 40:58
  Natasha Lester: Um, which was, uh.
• 41:01
  Natasha Lester: Her handwriting was terrible and she'd scratched out lines everywhere and put arrows, adding in bits of information, and I had to decipher the handwriting and the French to be able to kind of create him as a character in the book.
• 41:13
  Natasha Lester: So it was the most difficult research, I would say, just from the language perspective, whilst I do speak French, you know.
• 41:21
  Natasha Lester: Reading archaic French handwriting is very challenging.
• 41:27
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay, well I wanna talk about then, because I read this in your newsletter, I think at the start of this year, I thought it was really inspiring you.
• 41:33
  Madeleine Cleary: You said that you wanted to make optimism, um, your 2025 word and this your goal.
• 41:39
  Madeleine Cleary: So I wanna talk about that.
• 41:40
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause this year it is a bit of an uncertain year and in lots of different ways, which we alluded to earlier.
• 41:46
  Madeleine Cleary: Um.
• 41:47
  Madeleine Cleary: So what are your goals for the Mademoiselle Alliance, Natasha?
• 41:51
  Natasha Lester: Well, my main goal is.
• 41:54
  Natasha Lester: I'd like as many people as possible to read it because then they will know Marie-Madeleine Fourcade's name.
• 42:00
  Natasha Lester: And also I've said that at its peak, the network was 3000 people.
• 42:05
  Natasha Lester: 439 of those people died.
• 42:07
  Natasha Lester: And I bet nobody could name a single one of those people who died.
• 42:11
  Natasha Lester: And yet, if it wasn't for those people, the world could be a very different place.
• 42:15
  Natasha Lester: So just for pe for them not to have died for nothing.
• 42:19
  Natasha Lester: 'cause that's honestly, when you're doing this kind of research, that's kind of what it feels like.
• 42:23
  Natasha Lester: Yes.
• 42:23
  Natasha Lester: That nobody remembers them at all.
• 42:26
  Natasha Lester: And we really should remember them.
• 42:27
  Natasha Lester: So, um, you know, standing by her grave and standing by Leon's Memorial and other memorials, it, it felt a little bit futile.
• 42:37
  Natasha Lester: But then you remember.
• 42:39
  Natasha Lester: No, you know, Adolf Hitler died and the Nazis, um, did not exist anymore because of those people.
• 42:46
  Natasha Lester: And so the repercussions of what they did, we we're still able to enjoy and hopefully will continue to be able to enjoy.
• 42:54
  Natasha Lester: But at this crucial mument in time, I feel like her story is more pertinent than ever.
• 42:58
  Natasha Lester: So my.
• 43:00
  Natasha Lester: Optimistic goal is that everybody reads it and realizes that how much one person can do because she, like I said, she didn't have military training or intelligence training.
• 43:10
  Natasha Lester: She was just an ordinary person.
• 43:12
  Natasha Lester: Yes.
• 43:12
  Natasha Lester: Like you try, and yet she was able to lead 3000 people to help France free itself off the Nazis.
• 43:18
  Natasha Lester: So we can all be Marie-Madeleine Fourcade we.
• 43:23
  Natasha Lester: You know, believe that we can, and we have a little bit of bravery and a bit of courage when we need to.
• 43:28
  Natasha Lester: It's amazing how much difference one person can make.
• 43:30
  Natasha Lester: So, absolutely, that's my optimistic goal, is that people read it and walk away feeling like that, and then go and do something to, you know, help change the world.
• 43:39
  Madeleine Cleary: I love that.
• 43:39
  Madeleine Cleary: That's a great, great goal to have.
• 43:41
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay, well I think that's gonna inspire a lot of people and I hope everybody buys this copy.
• 43:45
  Madeleine Cleary: 'cause I think I'm hoping that this book will absolutely fly this year in Australia.
• 43:49
  Madeleine Cleary: In all your markets.
• 43:50
  Madeleine Cleary: I read that you've, your books have been translated into 21 different languages, which is just incredible.
• 43:57
  Natasha Lester: Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
• 43:59
  Madeleine Cleary: Oh, it's amazing.
• 43:59
  Madeleine Cleary: It's amazing.
• 44:00
  Madeleine Cleary: Um.
• 44:01
  Madeleine Cleary: I've got two last questions.
• 44:02
  Madeleine Cleary: One I wanted to talk about, I wanted to continue on the goal theme.
• 44:07
  Madeleine Cleary: What do you think we, as sort of early emerging writers, debut writers, what should, how should we define our goals?
• 44:14
  Madeleine Cleary: Like, what, what should we aim for, do you think?
• 44:17
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, we obviously, um, are not probably aiming to be a New York Times bestseller.
• 44:22
  Madeleine Cleary: Um, but what, what, what's some of the things that we should do?
• 44:25
  Madeleine Cleary: What's a realistic goal?
• 44:26
  Madeleine Cleary: For us.
• 44:27
  Natasha Lester: Why not?
• 44:28
  Natasha Lester: And New York Times vessel.
• 44:30
  Natasha Lester: Like, honestly, like if I, I didn't ever have those things on my list because I didn't ever think it was possible.
• 44:36
  Natasha Lester: But the thing I always try and say to um, new writers now is if it can happen to me, like it can happen to anybody.
• 44:43
  Natasha Lester: So you should never underestimate yourself.
• 44:45
  Natasha Lester: Um, and I think as writers so often.
• 44:48
  Natasha Lester: We don't have the confidence to call ourselves writers.
• 44:51
  Natasha Lester: We don't have the confidence to believe that we can be a bestseller.
• 44:55
  Natasha Lester: We're almost apologetic, um, to our publishers who need our books to be able to have books in bookstores.
• 45:01
  Natasha Lester: So, you know, that would be what I would say to have the, to have whatever crazy out there goals you want to, because they are all absolutely achievable and.
• 45:13
  Natasha Lester: Why not walk through the world thinking, God, I'd love to be a New York Times bestseller than thinking, oh gosh, I'm really lucky to get published and, you know, I'll just, you know, go and look at my book in a book shop.
• 45:24
  Natasha Lester: You know?
• 45:24
  Natasha Lester: I mean, and that's all great too, but why not have a bigger goal if you want to, that is obviously you don't have to, but if you do love that, help yourself out.
• 45:31
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay.
• 45:32
  Madeleine Cleary: So everybody has to write on their bucket list.
• 45:35
  Madeleine Cleary: Yes, they do.
• 45:35
  Madeleine Cleary: Write your times best seller.
• 45:37
  Madeleine Cleary: Yep.
• 45:37
  Madeleine Cleary: Put it up there.
• 45:38
  Madeleine Cleary: Put it on the fridge.
• 45:39
  Madeleine Cleary: Put it on the back of the toilet door, wherever you want.
• 45:41
  Madeleine Cleary: Yep.
• 45:41
  Madeleine Cleary: There's no, no shame in having those goals.
• 45:43
  Madeleine Cleary: No shame at
• 45:44
  all.
• 45:45
  Madeleine Cleary: Okay.
• 45:45
  Madeleine Cleary: So we always ask, um, at the end of our podcasts, um, you, you've already shared with us so many of these, but we ask for your single top tip for emerging rider.
• 45:55
  Madeleine Cleary: What would you like to leave us with?
• 45:57
  Madeleine Cleary: Natasha Lester.
• 45:58
  Madeleine Cleary: I.
• 45:58
  Natasha Lester: I feel like probably everybody might say this, but I feel it's even more important now, is to read.
• 46:04
  Natasha Lester: I really feel like, I mean, I recently judged the TAG Hungerford Award a couple of years ago and I could tell who read books and who did not read books.
• 46:14
  Natasha Lester: That's 97 manuscripts that I read in full, um, over that time and.
• 46:20
  Natasha Lester: Because the market is a bit tricky at the mument and things are gonna keep changing and they're going to keep evolving at a more rapid pace than they have been over the last kind of 10 years.
• 46:32
  Natasha Lester: You need to read more and more and more read things you don't like, read things you do, like read things you think are bad, read things you think are good.
• 46:39
  Natasha Lester: Try not to have those judgements about books.
• 46:42
  Natasha Lester: Um, you know, if they're being published by a publisher.
• 46:45
  Natasha Lester: Then the publisher thinks there's something about them that will engage readers.
• 46:48
  Natasha Lester: So what is it about those things that will engage readers and read critically?
• 46:53
  Natasha Lester: You know, like look at why does this book work for me?
• 46:56
  Natasha Lester: Or why does it not work for me?
• 46:57
  Natasha Lester: Because in understanding what you don't like to read, you learn more about your own voice as a writer and your own personal interests, and you have to bring.
• 47:05
  Natasha Lester: What's particular to you, to your own writing.
• 47:09
  Natasha Lester: And if you don't know what that is, then you can't bring it to your writing.
• 47:12
  Natasha Lester: So reading helps you to develop that sense.
• 47:14
  Natasha Lester: Mm-hmm.
• 47:14
  Natasha Lester: Um, it's a subconscious gut thing.
• 47:17
  Natasha Lester: You couldn't probably sit down and notate it out, but the reading helps with all of those things.
• 47:22
  Madeleine Cleary: Hmm, great advice I think, and um, why not go and enjoy reading as well.
• 47:27
  Madeleine Cleary: We are all, if we're writing, we generally like to be readers as well, so go out and enjoy and read different things.
• 47:32
  Madeleine Cleary: And I hope everybody reads the Mademoiselle Alliance, which will be coming out on the 26th of March.
• 47:37
  Madeleine Cleary: Thank you so much, Natasha Lester for joining us on the book Deal podcast.
• 47:40
  Natasha Lester: Thank you.
• 47:41
  Natasha Lester: We're so much fun chatting to you.
• 47:47
  Tina Strachan: Thank you for listening to the book Deal podcast.
• 47:49
  Tina Strachan: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the pod so you can receive updates as soon as our new apps drop and to keep up to date with what the pod is doing.
• 47:58
  Tina Strachan: You can also find us on Instagram.