February Bonus Episode

Summary

Certainly! Here's a comprehensive and engaging summary of the February Bonus Episode of "The Shit No One Tells You About Writing."

---

Podcast Summary: The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

Episode: February Bonus Episode
Release Date: February 24, 2025
Hosts: Bianca Marais, Carly Watters, and CeCe Lyra
Cohosts: Literary agents Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra from P.S. Literary Agency

---

Introduction

In this February Bonus Episode, Bianca Marais, accompanied by cohosts Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra, dives deep into the literary world by interviewing two esteemed authors: Charlotte Wood and Karen Thompson Walker. The episode offers invaluable insights into their creative processes, explores the themes of their latest works, and provides aspiring writers with practical advice on storytelling techniques.

---

Interview with Charlotte Wood

Guest: Charlotte Wood
Book Discussed: Stone Yard Devotional

Overview of Stone Yard Devotional

Bianca opens the interview by sharing her personal connection to Charlotte Wood's novel, Stone Yard Devotional. She recounts how the book provided companionship during a grueling 40-hour commute from South Africa to Toronto, highlighting its profound impact.

Plot Summary:
Stone Yard Devotional follows a middle-aged woman who, burned out and seeking retreat, leaves Sydney to return to her rural hometown. She finds refuge in a secluded religious community, despite her lack of belief in God. Her tranquil life is disrupted by three mysterious events:

1. Mouse Plague: A growing infestation that threatens the community's stability.
2. Skeletal Remains: The return of her sister's bones, presumed murdered three decades prior.
3. Troubling Visitor: A figure from her past that forces her to confront unresolved issues.

Notable Quote:
Charlotte Wood discusses the challenge of infusing energy into a still setting:

“I did find it very daunting at the beginning, figuring out how was I going to create energy, I suppose, in stillness.” ([06:25])

Themes and Structural Choices

Wood delves into themes of forgiveness, grief, and ethical living, juxtaposed against the backdrop of relentless natural disasters and supernatural elements. She explains her deliberate choice to write in a diary format, allowing for an intimate exploration of the protagonist's internal struggles.

Notable Quote:
On maintaining intimacy in narrative voice:

“I wanted a very, very intimate close-in sort of vantage point, so that it feels as if you are in her head.” ([14:07])

Incorporation of Real-Life Anecdotes

The conversation reveals that Wood incorporates real-life experiences into her fiction, enhancing authenticity. For instance, an anecdote about a pencil case striking a nun's abdomen is directly drawn from her own life.

Notable Quote:

“That was from real life. That was me in the pencil case. It made no sense.” ([30:09])

Writing Techniques and Narrative Depth

Wood emphasizes the importance of narrative rhythm and structural variation to prevent monotony in a static setting. By breaking up the text and blending personal anecdotes, she keeps the reader engaged without overwhelming them with backstory.

Notable Quote:

“Breaking up the slabs of text created a sort of, hopefully, a fairly uneven sort of rhythm so the reader doesn't get lulled into this sort of plodding rhythm in the book.” ([06:25])

---

Interview with Karen Thompson Walker

Guest: Karen Thompson Walker
Book Discussed: The Strange Case of Jane O.

Overview of The Strange Case of Jane O.

Bianca introduces Karen Thompson Walker, highlighting her accolades and the critical acclaim of her works. She provides a detailed synopsis of The Strange Case of Jane O., setting the stage for an in-depth discussion.

Plot Summary:
Jane O. experiences a series of inexplicable psychological phenomena—amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations—following the birth of her child. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Bird, becomes deeply involved in her case as Jane mysteriously disappears, leaving him to unravel the complexities of her condition and its implications on his understanding of reality.

Notable Quote:
On the inspiration behind the novel:

“I was imagining if a psychiatrist who had a specialty sort of like Oliver Sacks, were to encounter a patient whose symptoms could not be explained by the usual causes.” ([53:46])

Narrative Structure and Point of View

Walker explains her dual narrative approach, alternating between Dr. Bird’s clinical perspective and Jane's introspective letters to her son. This structure allows readers to navigate between two unreliable narrators, enhancing the mystery and depth of the story.

Notable Quote:

“I realized pretty quickly as I started writing it that it felt incomplete and also kind of just wrong for her to not have her own voice.” ([56:09])

Unreliable Narrators and Reader Engagement

The podcast delves into how both narrators in Walker’s novel—Dr. Bird and Jane—are unreliable, challenging readers to piece together the truth. This technique fosters active engagement, making readers question and re-evaluate the information presented.

Notable Quote:

“The whole book is about like not being able to totally understand everything about reality, and reality itself or our experience of reality is never 100% reliable.” ([74:57])

Incorporating Personal Experiences

Walker touches upon the blend of personal experiences and fictional elements, enriching the narrative with authentic emotions and complex character dynamics.

Notable Quote:

“I have learned to trust my instincts and to trust that if my mind really goes to something, there's a reason. It has some kind of undertow of import that isn't just about description or a memory or something.” ([36:25])

Balancing Narrative Gaps and Tension

The discussion highlights Walker’s skill in maintaining tension through narrative gaps, allowing readers to form their own theories and stay invested without feeling manipulated.

Notable Quote:

“You have to make sure that you're working so much harder to still keep it super, super compelling.” ([64:31])

---

Conclusion

Bianca Marais, along with Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra, wraps up the episode by commending Charlotte Wood and Karen Thompson Walker for their masterful storytelling and innovative narrative techniques. The hosts encourage listeners to explore their works for inspiration and valuable writing lessons.

Final Remarks:

“We will link to Stone Yard Devotional on our bookshop.org affiliate page. Go get the book there, support an independent bookstore and the podcast and go read the book that made this very hard-hearted podcast host and author cry.” ([35:45])

---

Key Takeaways for Writers

• Narrative Innovation: Both interviews emphasize the importance of innovative narrative structures—diary formats and dual unreliable narrators—to deepen reader engagement.

• Thematic Depth: Exploring profound themes like forgiveness, grief, and the human condition can elevate a story beyond surface-level entertainment.

• Balancing Show and Tell: Integrating personal anecdotes and maintaining narrative gaps allows authors to enrich their stories without overwhelming readers with backstory.

• Engaging the Reader: Planting curiosity seeds and encouraging readers to actively participate in unraveling the mystery enhances the overall reading experience.

---

Listeners are encouraged to delve into Stone Yard Devotional and The Strange Case of Jane O. to witness firsthand the storytelling prowess of Charlotte Wood and Karen Thompson Walker. Additionally, aspiring writers can glean valuable insights into maintaining narrative tension and developing complex characters from the authors’ discussions.

---

End of Summary

Transcript

[CeCe Leera]

Hello from cc. I'm so excited to announce an all new class called Starting It Right which is all about how to begin your story in the best place and in the best way. Now this is going to be a four day class so come prepared to.

[Bianca Murray]

Take lots of notes.

[CeCe Leera]

We'll cover the different types of beginnings and how to choose the best one for your story, how to frame your inciting incident in a compelling way, common mistakes writers make when starting a story, how to balance exposition and mystery, how to make readers connect with your protagonist and how to make the reader want to turn to the next chapter and so much more. And guess what? For the first time ever there will be an interactive component to my class. Everyone who is registered will have the option of sending in the opening scene of their work for a chance to be critiqued during the webinar. Writers of all categories and genres are invited to attend and there are limited spots, so if you're interested, sign up now. And don't worry if you can't attend.

[Bianca Murray]

One or more live sessions because the recording will be sent to everyone who is registered.

[CeCe Leera]

This class will begin on March 20th and like I said, will go on for four days. For more details, check out the link in my bio on Instagram. I hope to see you there.

[Bianca Murray]

Would you like to win an appearance on Books With Hooks so we can discuss your work while you're on the show with us? If not, no worries. You you can choose a whole other prize. We're hosting an awesome giveaway in which you get to choose your own prize because in my upcoming novel A Most Puzzling Murder, I pay tribute to all the choose your own adventure books I loved so much as a child? So how can you win and be guaranteed an exclusive invite to a zoom discussion between Cece and myself as we spill all the behind the scenes tea on how this book came to Life. There are two easy steps. 1. Go onto Goodreads and add Most Puzzling Murder to your want to read list while entering the Goodreads giveaway for the book. 2. Share a screenshot of your entries on socials using the hashtag amostpuzzlingmurder so we can find your entries to put them into the draw. The winner gets to choose one of four fabulous prizes according to how they'd like their adventure to end. Further details on the rest of the prizes and the links to enter are in the 20th of February's show notes and on our website under the Giveaways tab. You have until the end of February to enter. Winners will be announced on the 3rd of March. Good luck. Hi there and welcome to our show, the shit no one tells you about writing. Hi, I'm Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Carly Waters and cece Leera from PS Literary Agency. Today's guest is the author of seven novels and three books of nonfiction. Her 2016 novel the Natural Way of Things won the Stella Prize in her native Australia and was joint winner of the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for fiction. Her 2020 novel the Weeknd was an international bestseller. Her latest novel, Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the Booker PR Prime Minister's Literary Awards. It's my pleasure to welcome Charlotte Wood. Charlotte, welcome to the show.

[Charlotte Wood]

Hi Bianca, thanks for having me.

[Bianca Murray]

It is such an honor to have you. I would like to show our listeners the COVID of Stone Yard Devotional. This is for those of you watching on YouTube. This book kept me company on a 40 hour commute from South Africa back to Toronto in December. When I came back and there were times that I was like feverish, you know, I was like having outof body experiences in terms of the jet lag and the time changes and airport weights. But this book kept me company and it was just so phenomenal, so enthralling, I actually get goosebumps talking about it. So I am so excited to get to chat with you today about it. Charlotte, for our listeners, I'm going to read you the flap copy just so that you know what the book's about and then we're going to dive in because I've got so much that I want to do to pick Charlotte's brain about. So burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts the secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is a return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared three decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past. Meditative, moving and finely observed. Stonyard Devotional is a seminal novel from a writer of rare power, exploring what it means to retreat from the world, the true nature of forgiveness, and the sustained effect of grief on the human soul. Wow. So something that we discuss a lot on the podcast. Charlotte is the difficulty of telling so called quiet stories. And we have two agents on the podcast with me, and we read and critique query letters and opening pages to help emerging authors land their dream agents. And so often we say quiet stories are the hardest stories to write because so much of it happens with inside the character as they face their demons, as they come to grips with things and realize certain things. And we say that if you were to make a movie trailer of your novel, it's so difficult to film a character just sitting there having realizations. It's easier to have them running around and doing things. And so plot involves dominoes tipping over, and this leads to that. But this kind of book, not much happens. We have these three incidents, or visitations, as you call them. The Bones, the Mice, the Return of Helen Parry. Can you speak a bit about them and how these visitations allowed you to explore the themes or what you wanted to say about the human condition?

[Charlotte Wood]

Yes, thank you so much, Bianca, for that lovely introduction. You're exactly right about the difficulty of writing a book that is essentially set in a place of stillness. You know, that monastery or, you know, a convent, a closed religious order, is all about stillness and silence, which is the opposite of what you want for a novel, right, because you need movement and momentum and progression. So I did find it very daunting at the beginning, figuring out how was I going to create energy, I suppose, in stillness. So quite often I think about energy rather than plot, because I'm not. I've never been a really a plot driven writer. And I think there are all kinds of ways to maintain narrative tension and movement that actually are not to do with plot, might be to do with voice or character or so on. However, this problem of stillness really did need to be addressed. So partly I did it in a structural way by kind of breaking up the text in this sort of diary form. So think strangely. You can do a lot of work with structure that it's sort of not talked about very often. But for me, breaking up the slabs of text, even on the page, created a sort of, hopefully a fairly uneven sort of rhythm so the reader doesn't get lulled into this sort of plodding rhythm in the book. But of course, the main, I guess, driver of surprise intention is visitations. And they came about fairly organically for me. First of all, I was writing the book during COVID when we were all in lockdown. We were all in this sense of sort of captured stillness to a degree. And so I'm sure that sort of flowed into the book. But there is something. There is something tense about feeling captured, you know, so there's a sense of release is one of the things, I guess, that hopefully causes some tension in the book is that my narrator is not a believer in God, and yet she goes to this religious order. So there's already a sort of sense of unease or question or it doesn't make sense. So that's a slightly energizing sort of force. But. So the mouse plague, I guess, was the first visitation that comes. And that came about because in my state in New South Wales, a big mouse plague was happening, a real one. And the scenes in the book that people have been kind of quite horrified by. I went to visit my friend who lives on a rural property. This was in between lockdowns, and we were allowed to travel. And the mouse blade was happening then. And that sense of this sort of growing plague. And there's something about mice that is very surreal, that everybody kind of freaks out about mice. I do, too. It's really, you know, if I see a mouse, I'm the kind of archetype will jump on a chair screaming, lady. And yet, when this happens periodically in Australia, you can't maintain that level of sort of panic because there are just so many. So I spent two days there experiencing that, and that was plenty enough for me to. To pursue a whole book with. And. But I guess one of the things about a plague like that is it starts small and it gets more and more intense, and it becomes something that you have to address because mice in that sort of plague proportion will destroy a house. I mean, they literally eat buildings. It's completely bizarre to me how they can do this. So that was something that sort of could build and build through the novel. And I didn't want to lean on it too heavily in terms of what did it symbolize or anything like that. I just wanted it as a really kind of, I guess, builder of physical tension. So. So that happens. And then the returns of these two other figures, one of whom is, as you've said, a skeletal remains of a nun who used to live there, but who left many years ago to go and work in Thailand with poor women because she decided this life of seclusion and contemplation wasn't doing any good in the world, and she wanted to go. And that addresses the kind of central tension in the book, I guess, thematically, of what is the better way to live ethically. Is it to be still and do no harm, or is it to go out in the world and act? So this is the kind of tension that's at play the whole time. And then the person who brings those bones back turns out to be a woman that my narrator went to school with, and she has a very troubled past relationship with. So that kind of. I guess these things are quite sort of archetypal, you know, the stranger coming, interrupting a closed community. You know, this thing of having the bones of a dead person in the house. She comes back because they're going to bury her. She's been murdered. The remains have been found, you know, decades later. They bring her back to be buried on the property. But there's all kinds of rules about whether they're allowed to do this. So there's a sense of waiting. We're waiting to do this, and nothing will be. The peace of the. Of the kingdom will not happen until these things are addressed, until these bones can be buried. So I sort of hope that was another form of tension, this. This sort of anxiety about waiting for this thing to happen.

[Bianca Murray]

Yeah, I mean, all of these things layered together. The horror of the mice. And I'm not someone who freaks out at mice. I see a mouse and I'm like, oh, cute. Let me pick it up.

[Charlotte Wood]

But.

[Bianca Murray]

But the horror of that was just like, oh, my God. And the juxtaposition of Helen and of the main character. We'll discuss soon, like, thematically what each of them did for a living and how they came to be. That created a lot of tension as well. So there's a lot that you've said that I want to unpack. Something as well is. We call it planting curiosity seeds. The things that create questions in the reader's mind, that the reader is forced to become an active participant in the story because they start coming up with theories to explain something, or they keep turning pages to get the answer. And you do that straight out the gate. Because we are going, why is this person at this religious place if they themselves are not religious? What has happened with their husband? What is going to happen in the future? So you do plant those curiosity seeds, and we do keep reading. But, yeah, so much is just what's in her head. And I love what you said about jumping around so that the reader didn't get lulled into a sense of complacency. Because there's so much about this novel that is anecdotal. There are all these scenes that are anecdotal from her life, from someone else's life, and they speak to the human condition. And I'm going to have you read one of them shortly. As we get to that as well, something that I want to ask about is. You don't even name the narrator. I don't think we ever get her name. She's written in the first person. And other characters are described in detail. So we get someone is broad bummed, someone has a man's wide hands, a nun has a man's wide hands, the kind to smack you on the legs with, etc. But the main character is not described, which makes sense in the first person because nobody in the first person is going to be, well, I am blonde with blue eyes, etc. That must have been a very deliberate choice on your part. And I always try and discuss intentionality. Why that choice and what did it add to the story?

[Charlotte Wood]

Yes, it was a deliberate choice. I think it was something to do with the voice and also this device of a diary. So it starts, you know, the word devotional means a kind of spiritual journal or diary of some kind. So my. My narrator is not religious, but it's a kind of diary of her observations of this place. It's very overt in the beginning, you know, she says, day one, day two, day three, and then it sort of falls away and it's almost an internal diary. So I guess the first thing is, as you said, as someone speaking of themselves doesn't name themselves, you know, I don't in my head think I charlotte, we'll go for a walk now. You know, and I wanted a very, very intimate close in sort of vantage point, I suppose, so that it feels as if you are in her head. So in that case, you know, I just thought she doesn't. She doesn't need to be named. And people have told me they feel that it was very intimate. And I think that's part of creating that intimacy is that it's so close in that you. You are her in a way. I mean, I think this is what reading is about. That's good. Books do. But I also had a kind of commitment from early on. You know, I've written. This is my 10th book. I wanted to play around with things that I hadn't really done before and take a few risks in some ways of not explaining things. I really love books that don't over explain. And I love those narrative gaps where as a reader, you're thinking, hang on a minute, what's happening here? You know, as you said, I love that expression curiosity seeds. It's brilliant. You have to be careful because it can kind of become annoying, you know, at times. And in the editing process, my Wonderful editor Ali Lebow said at one point, you know, there's a reference to the narrator's husband, who she's left. And I had much less information. I mean, there's very little information about him in there now, but there was even less. And my editor said, look, you know, I'm on board with this thing of not explaining, but a couple of times by being so opaque, you're drawing more attention to it. You're sort of doing the opposite of what you are trying to do. So I did a little work of sort of just a tiny few little droplets of backstory about husband and what's happened. And, you know, it's a risk because some readers really don't like that. You know, some readers are really kind of annoyed by not knowing why she's there, what happened, what led to this sort of unspecified crisis that's happened in her working life, which is really her whole life, which is this environmental activism. So I decided quite early on that I wanted nothing unnecessary in the book from my point of view. And that's. I guess it takes some experience and some confidence to say I'm going to please me. I'm not going to please anybody else, which is, you know, I want to please readers. I really want to please readers. I love my readers, and I get very anxious about, you know, displeasing a reader. But I. I guess I wanted to just experiment with this book and really, really commit to that sort of the spareness of the narrative and, you know, the narrative gaps and spaces that both hopefully cause this sort of curious energy, but also allow a space for a person to. To have their own life come up to, you know, a reader, to have their own life come into their mind. And I heard an interview with Anne Enright, who's a writer. I really. I love the Irish writer. She said when she's reading, she loves a book that every now and again you have to. You just sort of put down and look into the middle distance and think about something in your life and then go back to. And I love that idea. And I. I sort of hoped that that would happen as a result of these sort of spaces that if I had the confidence to leave those spaces, you know, the right kind of reader would appreciate it.

[Bianca Murray]

Yeah, again, so much to unpack there one is. Not every book is for every reader, and it's not our jobs as writers to make our book for every reader. And I love that you were so true to this because again, in a devotional or a diary, she's not going to Write the backstory of her marriage and why it's collapsed because she already knows that and she's moving past that. So too much of that context would have felt weird. And I love as well, there was a sense of claustrophobia. You know, you got us so close into her perspective that there were times that I was feeling claustrophobic, which was not helpful because I'm already claustrophobic on a plane, Charlotte. And here I was doubly claustrophobic, and there were times that I wrote, oh, my God, you are killing me in the text, because it was just. It was just so much so as well, just in terms of what you've said there in filling in the blanks. I love that. I love putting a book down and being like, I can project myself into it or take myself out of it. And I love coming up with theories and not knowing why her marriage ended. You know, there were parts when she was talking about Helen that I was going, oh, my God, is this going to be a love story? Is she a bit in love with Helen? And I must be honest, I was a bit in love with Helen. You know, I feel like you could write a whole damn novel just about Helen. And that was also never answered for me. And I love that it wasn't answered for me. And I love that I got to put my theories in and I get to choose, you know, and maybe that wasn't what you, as the author intended, but I love those gaps as well, where the reader can place themselves into the story. So, speaking about the diary style of the book, what I found so interesting as well is how you began, especially in the beginning, with a kind of shorthand that somebody would use in a diary in which they're just reporting things that they're going through. They don't even use pronouns, it's, etc. So it's day one. Arrive finally at about three. The place has the feel of a 1970s health resort or eco commune, but is not welcoming. Signs on fences or stuck on little posts by driveways. No entry, no parking. A place of industry, not recreation. So here it's not. There aren't pronouns, not I arrive early. The place is not welcoming. There are signs on fences. It's all this kind of shorthand that you experience expect from a diary. Day two, slept poorly, as opposed to I slept poorly. Day three, slept deep and long this time, but this is how each one begins. But after that, the sentences expand. It's like she almost starts breathing and feels her way into the words and gives herself permission to use all the words as opposed to that brisk kind of shorthand. And again, I feel like with a writer of your caliber, that was something that was very intentional. You would have carried through that kind of shorthand throughout if you wanted to. And the fact that you didn't, again speaks of intentionality. So is this something that tells us about the character? Like, what was your intention there? Changing the style each time between the first paragraph and how she sinks into the rest of it.

[Charlotte Wood]

Thank you. It's lovely to be read so closely. I really appreciate it. Bianca? Yes. I mean, if you have ever been on a retreat or in some sort of, you know, people go and, I don't know, health retreats or. I've been to a place like this once for two days, but. But I have been to a lot of artists retreats, lots of writers retreats. And the thing that always happens when I arrive, I'm all kind of buzzy with the energy of being driven there. Packed with myself, I unpack and, you know, often being desperate to get away and get some time. And then when I get there and all this time opens up, it's actually quite scary. You know, it's like, oh, no, I've got all this time. What. What do I do? It takes a while to just. For that energy to just soften and open and slow down. And one of the things that. That my narrator notices about these women is that they speak really slowly. You know, it kind of annoys her. She thinks, well, just get on with it. You know, initially she's watching these. That when she's just a visitor there the first time, and she thinks, what are they doing? They come in and out of church seven times a day and all this praying and bobbing up and down and singing. And she thinks, well, what's the point of this? And also she thinks, how do they get any work done when they have to interrupt it to come into church all the time? And then the penny drops and she realizes that, oh, for them, this is the work. The praying and the singing and the way that. That this is the work. And the other stuff, the cooking and growing vegetables and whatever is the interruption to the work. So I guess the kind of. Again, it's a rhythmic thing in the early parts, as you said, the sentences are very short. They're choppy. And it's a kind of choppy rhythm of her before she just slowed the place, makes her slow down and settle and open up her. Her inner world in a way that all these other, you know, you mentioned before, the Anecdotes about. I mean, we haven't sort of mentioned that she. This place is close to the hometown where she grew up. I think you did mention it, actually. And so being there in this place of stillness and silence, all these old memories and stories and experiences of her early. Her young life kind of filter up to the surface of her consciousness, and her dreams become very vivid. And there's a sort of. In a world that becomes more alive when it has none of the distraction of the outside world. But the outside world is where all that choppy urgency comes from. And also, Helen Parry brings that energy back into the place, and it's very disturbing. She's an activist, sort of political activist, nun, who is a troublemaker, who goes out, speaks truth to power, causes a ruckus. She's interested in getting justice for people who, you know, have no power. So that energy that she brings is a kind of culture clash for these women who have left that behind. And that's another source of tension with the book.

[Bianca Murray]

Yeah, it takes you a while to realize that this is a book about guilt, shame, and grief. You know, there's so much of that woven through. And for our listeners, you know, our narrator knew Helen Parry when she was in school, and she saw Helen be badly bullied, and she kind of became a part of that because, you know, she didn't want to stand up to the bullies and then make herself a target. And so she has a lot of shame about this. But one of the most brilliant juxtapositions is between our narrator, who is a species conservationist, who's given that up in despair. You know, in the beginning, she's looking at the food that she's been given at this place, and she despairs because each piece of cheese is individually wrapped and each. Each little packet of biscuits is individually wrapped. And she's just like, oh, my God, by just being here, I'm a part of the problem because they have to do this for me. And then you have Helen Parry, who is thriving. She's an active climate activist. And, you know, our narrator suffers enormous guilt. But Helen has moved past that. She's not bitter. Well, she doesn't seem to be bitter about the past. She's grown into her power, and she's dealing with her own reckoning from the past. You know, she's got a lot to reckon with herself. I don't want to give too much away for the listeners, is there? So we got two characters who are reckoning with their past and coming to grips with it. And that created its own kind of tension, you know, and it made me. I actually wrote a note in the margin and I said, how much of shame is about us centering ourselves as opposed to the people that we owe apologies to? I mean, was that something that you were. Were trying to sort of question and grapple with, or is that something you've allowed me to fill in the blanks with because you gave me the space for that?

[Charlotte Wood]

I love that. I think I was certainly very interested in forgiveness, in what forgiveness is. I mean, we sort of think we know, but I came across something and I. And I wrote a section about it called Forgiveness Therapy. I just read about it and it talked about, you know, when a great wrong has been done to a person and somebody apologizes, they have to decide whether they are ready to forgive this, whether. Whether that act is a forgivable act. And it takes a lot of moral work to get to that point of actually truly forgiving a person. And I'm talking about, you know, serious breaches of trust, just little things. But I'm interested in how in our culture, we seem to have developed an idea that forgiveness is a transaction. You know, if. If I do something to hurt you, Bianca and I say I'm really sorry. Our kind of expectations. Well, you have to forgive me. You have to accept my apology and you have to forgive me. Otherwise, you know, it's your. But, you know, the thing in part of the two in the book between Helen Parry and the narrator is that the narrator wants to be forgiven and Helen doesn't forgive her or not forgive her. You know, she just sort of says, you've said you're seeing. And narrator partly admires this refusal to let her off the hook, but she thinks about other, other instances of forgiveness. And there's a section where she remembers a friend of hers who died. And this actually was really reflective of something in my life. The friend, as she was getting nearer to death and knew she was dying, had an old person from her past come and say, I need to make amends for, you know, this breach of some kind. And it was part of a sort of 12 step thing. And the woman, Beth, the dying woman in the book, just says, look, I'm sorry. It's your thing. You'll have to figure that out. I've got my own work to do here. So I think this sort of withholding of forgiveness is. In neither case, there is a kind of petty thing or a punishment thing. It's just. That's not for me to do. You. You have to Come to terms with your, you know, so called crime or problem. My forgiveness. I'm not here to help you out with that. You know, and I'm. I think that's really interesting because I don't think we really think about forgiveness as a complex, morally complicated and difficult thing. And there's a lot of people just throw around, well, you have to forgive everyone. You know, that's the way to get peace and whatever. And some things, some things are not forgivable. So I was interested in that. And then, as you say, the shame aspect comes as a part of that. Because if no one sort of absolves you of your shame, what do you do with it? Where do you take it? How do you process it? So it's sort of one of those things that. That can be left sort of in the air and isn't resolved.

[Bianca Murray]

Yeah, yeah. This is one of the amazing things about literary fiction is it makes us grapple with these. These huge issues. You know, we're running out of time. So, Charlotte, I do want to get to those anecdotes. So the anecdotes throughout the story are things from the narrator's childhood, from people she lived next to or people she knew in school. It's all kinds of anecdotes. And some of them were just so specific. I. I had a feeling that some of the anecdotes about the friend were based on real life because there was a specificity there of things that happened that felt so real to me. When she pulls out the notes that her friend wrote and she keeps it and has to keep rereading that, I was like, God, yes. That, that is real life. And there was one. There's an anecdote about a pencil case hitting a nun's abdomen and the nun freaking out and saying, you know, that a womb has been endangered. Please tell me that was from real life. Because if you took that from your imagination, I'm just in awe.

[Charlotte Wood]

That was from real life. That was. That was me in the pencil case. Isn't that. Yeah.

[Bianca Murray]

You endangered a nun's womb, Charlotte. Damn it.

[Charlotte Wood]

It made no sense.

[Bianca Murray]

It was excellent in fiction as well. So. So for our listeners, you can take things from real life. The specificity of it gives it so much texture. It just grips for the reader. You know, it's something that the reader can grab onto, that specificity. So last question is, I would like you to read two pages of one of the anecdotes just so that our listeners can hear what I'm talking about when I speak about that my mother.

[Charlotte Wood]

Was Catholic by birth, but she was open to certain unorthodox beliefs. Unlike almost everyone we knew, she had an inclination to the mystical, I suppose you could say. Once a strange friend of hers engaged the services of a water diviner and my mother took me along with her to watch this ancient art take place. We trailed around the paddocks with my mother's friend some distance behind. The man with the sticks he looked disappointingly ordinary. He dressed more like the engineers my father worked with, tailored shorts and a pressed short sleeve shirt with work boots and khaki socks, the exception to the office uniform than any kind of sorcerer. I had expected Cat Weasel. But this scout leader of a man stood stamped about the dry paddocks, holding out his sticks and glowering. The sound of trucks on the highway floated to us across the land, along with the high whiz of the grasshopper's song. I think he found it irritating to be watched, and he didn't find any water, but he was unembarrassed. It only proved there was no water to be found. Another time, when I was about 11 and after I had long complained of a mysterious pain in my calf muscles I called tight legs and which others, including our family doctor, dismissed lightly as growing pains, my mother took me to someone she referred to as a different sort of doctor. He worked in a room adjacent to a dental surgery in a small building with green glass bricks in the waiting room next to the town library. I think now he must have been a Reiki practitioner, for his treatment consisted of me sitting in a chair and moving about, rubbing rapidly at the air around my body with his two opened hands. There was something I didn't like about this man. He seemed not to see me, and he spoke about me to my mother as if I couldn't hear him, or as if I were a dog, some creature who could not understand language. Once I was seated on a vinyl chair. The man stood over me. My mother looked out of the window, looped her handbag over her shoulder, and told me she'd be back in a moment. She wanted to pick up some milk from the corner shop. I could see the shop through the window and would have been able to watch her the whole time until she returned, but I did not want her to leave me in this room with this man. I would never have been able to say this, but she saw my face and she sat down again and let the handbag loop slip back into her lap. Actually, it doesn't matter, she said, picking up a magazine. The man had noticed my expression, and as he stepped around my chair, he said to my mother, a bit of a crybaby, is she? My mother took a moment to meet his eye and then said, her voice very cool, not at all. The treatment took about 20 minutes. I sat embarrassed and alert in the chair while my mother pretended to read the magazine, but actually watched the man carefully as he stepped from side to side, his hands dabbing at the air around my torso, my shoulders and head. Most of the time, he was behind me, and I kept my gaze fixed on the leg of my mother's chair. When it was done, I was allowed to peel myself from the sticky vinyl seat, and my mother paid the fee. The man said several more treatments would be necessary, and my mother said she would be in touch about another appointment. But we never went back. We didn't speak of it after that day. My mother trusted me, and I trusted her. The tightness in my calves came and went, but eventually I forgot about the pain, so it must have subsided sometime in my teenage years, as I grew into my 20s, then 30s, and learned about other mothers, the complications and layers of hurt and mistrust, of envy and control, and about the confusion so many of my friends still carried about who was parent to whom, I began to understand how rare such a simple and powerful trust had been. I wished again that I had been able to say any of this to her when she lived, yet I doubt I would ever have said it. There was a quiet but potent aura of unknowability around my mother, and I think now that to say such things would have felt like an impertinence. I have sometimes thought it wrong of me to be so preoccupied with my mother and not my father. But at the same time, I understand why my father and I knew each other absolutely. And I am convinced that had he lived a long life, I would never have known him more completely than I did as a child. I don't know why that should make such a difference, but it does.

[Bianca Murray]

Yeah, that part had me all so teary on the plane. And it has been cherry again.

[Charlotte Wood]

Thank you.

[Bianca Murray]

I'm embarrassed. It's the first time I've cried on the podcast. But yeah, it was just. Just so beautiful and powerful and just incredible. So can we speak a bit about when we write these kind of anecdotes, what they add to the story, as opposed to just being backstory or context that drags the story along, how it bolsters the story, because these anecdotes kind of bolster the whole story up. They're a framework for so much of the narrative. So how do you pull it off in a way that moves the story along, keeps deepening our understanding of the characters and. And just explores the themes without slowing down the pace?

[Charlotte Wood]

Yeah, that's a real problem, isn't it? You know that, because I have always, to be honest, been very unattracted to backstory. I hate stopping a narrative looking backwards, blah, blah, blah. And then, okay, we ended that memory and now we go forwards again. So I guess with this book it was different for me because I was really writing a lot about the past and I wanted to explore this relationship of the narrator to her mother and to open myself up, to be honest about my relationship with my mother. And so many of the. Almost all the things about the mother and narrator daughter are true. They're my memories of me and my mother. So that scene with the Reiki guy, that was real. And I guess it's hard to say this in a useful way for other writers, I guess, but I. I have learned to trust my instincts and to trust that if my mind really goes to something, there's a reason. It has some kind of undertow of import that isn't just about, you know, description or a memory or something. So I guess, you know, this is a book, as you said early on, largely about grief as well as the other things that go on. And so it's hard to say how that. I suppose within each anecdote, though, there needs to be a little story. There needs to be a little. A little beginning, a middle and end. Having said this, I can think of other things that were just flashes of observation, but I think they are mainly the ones in the present. In the nunnery, you know, she just say something, and it's an observation, a very brief description of something. But these things from the past, they all need to be a tiny story in themselves. So I guess that one with, you know, there's a threat there. There's something about that guy that the child knows and is frightened of. And that's a story about a mother and a daughter. I'm going to get emotional now, you know, knowing each other, believing each other, even though the mother is quite unknowable a lot of the time. But, you know that. That line where she says, I trusted her and she trusted me. So I guess it's, you know, a story about love. But in terms of what propels that little tiny story, it's the threat from the guy and is she going to be left alone with him? No, she isn't but they're both watching him. And that, you know, towards the end when she says, oh, we're going to go back, even maybe with the many thinking about this as I'm talking to you, which. The water diviner, you know, there's a kind of promise. Ooh, a water diviner, okay. He's going to go around with these sticks and they're going to start wiggling or whatever. But then that promise is undone by saying, nothing happened. But then he says, nothing happened because there's no water. So I suppose there is hopefully a kind of energy in expectations not being met as well, you know, and again, that can be frustrating if it's. If it doesn't work. But I suppose I just, you know, it's taken me 10 books to learn to write a book, really, I feel. And. And I just, you know, I'm just starting a new novel now, and I'm trying to take that trust into the next one as well. And that mixing of truth and fiction, that's the first time I've ever really done that to that degree. That sort of openness about my own past and mother. And there's a lot that's fictionalized about that because I have four siblings and the woman in the book is, you know, an only child, etc. But I suppose going to the depth of those real stories, as you said, there's something about texture and specificity that, you know, I'm now trying to invent that kind of texture and specificity again in my new book. And it's. I think it's just about looking really closely at life at the world. You know, not at television, not at books, not at films. Just looking at the world and how people really do respond. You know, as you mentioned before, the. The note from the dying friend, the narrator does get it out and look at it, but it's not written in a card. It's written on the side of a box that she gave her a bottle of champagne in. And so she rips off this thing and she has this panel of cardboard. So that's something that it's harder to invent than to take from life. But, you know, you can do it, but you have to be really. You just have to look so closely, I think, or pay attention. Really, really closely.

[Bianca Murray]

Yeah, I mean, that's our job as writers, right?

[CeCe Leera]

It's.

[Bianca Murray]

The observation is to see things, find links between things that other people wouldn't necessarily link. And there was another anecdotal section that I wrote. This could be a short story. And that's true of so many of the anecdotal stories. There was one with the childhood friend whose father owned the Holden dealership in town. And it ends with even after the mice had long disappeared from the house, the odor inside remained. And I've always associated that smell with the father in his underpants, the quiet daughter, the unmentioned misery of divorce. And it's just the sucker punch that comes at the end of that anecdote. So, not anecdote for the sake of anecdote, but for what it tells us about this character and how it deepens our understanding of her and why she is grieving her parents so much. So, Charlotte, I've used up a lot of your time. I've gone 15 minutes over. Thank you so much for being so generous with it and for this incredible, incredible conversation for our listeners. We will link to Stone Yard devotional on our bookshop.org affiliate page. Go get the book there, support an independent bookstore and the podcast and go read the book that made this very hard hearted podcast host and author cry.

[Charlotte Wood]

Bianca, thank you so much. I love talking in this detail about how we write. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much and thank you for being moved.

[CeCe Leera]

Have you heard of the investing gap? 66% of men invest in the stock market compared to just 48% of women. And in creative industries like book publishing, editing and writing, there are often way more women than men. That means our female listeners are less likely to be investing. And I'm here to help you get the Investing Gap means that less women have the chance to build wealth now and that can have huge repercussions down the road when it comes to putting down your pen and eventually retiring. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now. Even if all you've got is spare change, you don't need a ton of time. You can create your Acorns account and start investing in just five minutes. In creative industries, incomes can go up and down and that's the nature of our business. Believe me, I get it. But by investing your money and planning for the future, you take away the day to day money stressors so you can focus on your craft. Sign up now and join the over 13 million all time customers who have already saved and invested over $22 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com ts n o t Y a W or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns Tier one compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorn Advisors, LLC is an SEC registered investment advisor. View important [e-mail] T S N O-T Y A W Part of our life's journey is experiences and working on our self betterment. An experience I've been counting down the days to is taking our kids to France this summer. I've never met an almond croissant I didn't like and I can't wait to show the kids a new part of the world. Plus I can't wait for them to see what their French language education can do for them and the doors it can open. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language you want to learn. My husband and I are going to focus on Rosetta Stone together so we're ready for vacation and to set a good example for the kids culturally. Because learning the language of where you're traveling to is a sign of respect. We can't always assume people English. They are trusted experts for 30 years. With millions of users in 25 languages offered. That's Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Arabic, Polish and many more. There's fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone truly immerses you in so many ways. There are no English translations, so you really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. It's an intuitive process, picking up language naturally, first with words, then phrases, then sentences. They have speech recognition, a built in true accent feature giving you feedback on your pronunciation. It's like having a personal trainer for your accent. It's convenient with flexible learning anytime, anywhere. Learn on the go with the app or on your desktop at your schedule. There's amazing value. That's lifetime membership for all 25 languages for all trips and languages needed in life. That's lifetime access to 25 language courses Rosetta Stone offers for 50% off. It's a steal. Don't wait. Unlock your language learning potential. Now the shit about writing Listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit RosettaStone.com today to get started and claim your 50% off today. Don't miss out. Go to RosettaStone.com today and start learning today.

[Bianca Murray]

Today's guest New York Times bestseller the Age of Miracles has been translated into 29 languages and was named one of the best books of the year by People o, the Oprah Magazine and Financial Times, among other publications. Her second novel, the Dreamers, was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and was named one of the best books of the year by Glamour, Real simple and Good Housekeeping. Born and raised in San Diego, she is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. She is an associate professor of creative writing and lives with her husband, the novelist Casey Walker, and their two daughters in Portland, Oregon. Oregon it's my pleasure to welcome Karen Thompson Walker. Karen, welcome to the show.

[CeCe Leera]

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really, really glad to be here.

[Bianca Murray]

I am a huge fan, so it's a huge treat for me to get to chat with you today and to really dive into this incredible novel. So for our listeners, I'm holding up the COVID now of the ARC, the advanced reader copy on our YouTube channel. So for those of you listening on the podcast, you won't see it, but I am going to read the flap copy for you. So the book is called the Strange Case of Jane O. In the year after a child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes, amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to her mind, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later, she's found unconscious in Brooklyn's Prospect park in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue. When she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her. Are Jane's strange experiences the result of being overwhelmed by single motherhood, or are they manifestations of a long buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died 20 years ago and who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane's symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind and cause him to question everything he thinks he knows about so called reality, including events in his own life. Karen Thompson Walker's profound and beautifully written novel is both a speculative mystery about memory, identity and fate and a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between mother and child, between a man and a woman and among those we've lost but who may still be among us. So, so much to unpack there. Right? So what we're going to dive into is Karen as in the Age of Miracles and the dreamers. In this book, you provoke us through spellbinding fiction to imagine inexplicable psychological states and experiences that we can't explain. So what draws you to these kinds of stories? And especially what inspired the Strange Case of Jane? Oh, yeah.

[CeCe Leera]

I love how you describe that territory that I like to write about. I think something that links all three of my books is this interest I have in part of human experience, where ordinary experience overlaps with extraordinary experience. So I like for my books to feel really grounded in reality. But then obviously, they're really about these kind of unexplained phenomena. I think part of what draws me to that is that there's so much about our actual reality that we. That we don't totally understand. I mean, that scientists are, you know, working to understand that our knowledge remains incomplete and that I just find that so fascinating and humbling and kind of beautiful that there's still so much we don't understand that we still have to learn or that we might never learn. So this book, Strange Case of Jane O. Was inspired, just in general, by this lifelong interest of mysterious phenomena. But especially when it comes to the mysteries of the human brain and of consciousness. The kernel that started it came from my love of the writer Oliver Sacks, who's this brilliant neurologist and writer who wrote about these really kind of eerie and unusual case histories of his own patients that he had worked with, people who had really rare and often uncanny brain disorders. So people who had perfect memories or people who had inexplicable holes in memory or who could, you know, because of injury to the brain, could no longer remember anything from their past. You know, all these kinds of fascinating stories. And really kind of he writes in a really, like, beautiful and empathetic way about these. The human experience of these people. So the first kernel for this book was what if a psychiatrist who had a specialty sort of like Oliver Sacks, were to encounter a patient whose symptoms could not be explained by the usual causes, whose symptoms were so strange and hard to track, they began to seem impossible, and yet they were happening.

[Bianca Murray]

I love that so much because I've always been fascinated with the unexplained my whole life. But as you get older, so much of the things that had this mystery when you were young seem to become things that can be explained. So, for example, when I was very young, we thought that I could interact with ghosts or with dead people because things would happen to me at night while I was sleeping that could not be explained. And these things happened over and over. And I was taken to a priest for an exorcism. Some of our listeners are really going to laugh at that one. It didn't work, people. I was taken to priests for an exorcism and a child psychologist and all of these things. And the child psychologist actually referred me to a psychic medium because he felt like he couldn't explain it. And then a few years ago, it seemed like that phenomenon was explained as night terrors. Right. It seems like science was able to explain that. I was quite disappointed because I was like, man, I was special. And now I'm not bloody special anymore. I'm just someone who has night terrors. And I know I've had friends who've had deja vu all their lives. And then that gets explained as, you know, temporal lobe seizures. So I love reading these kinds of books where these things are not just explained. And there is this great mystery still to be considered.

[CeCe Leera]

Wow, that's an amazing story. That's amazing personal experience. I think a part of me also want to push back a little. I'm like, even though night terrors, that's the scientific explanation, that's the language of science speaking, you know, it still doesn't really tell. Like, why do. Why do some children have night terrors like that? That remains sort of. There's some kind of kernel of like, beautiful inexplicability, I would argue, even though science understands more than we do before about that. But, yeah, I love all that stuff.

[Bianca Murray]

I will take that because I did dream about my grandmother's death before it happened and did phone home and say I knew my grandmother died while I was traveling and my parents hadn't wanted to tell me. So there are these things that I will take. And this is probably why I write about witches and seers, etc, because it is so incredibly fascinating. So coming back to the structure of the novel. And I love that you also teach creative writing because I love seeing how different people or teach creative writing how they approach it. So I say that beginnings are extraordinarily hard because the opportunities or the possibilities of where to begin are endless. You can begin anywhere with the beginning, but as the book goes along, you make decisions, and so your options keep narrowing as you reach towards a logical sort of conclusion. Obviously, with exceptions with this particular book, did you circle the building of the book to try and figure the best way in, or did you know from the very beginning that the way you had to tell the story was in two different parts? So one written in Dr. Bird's perspective as he treats Jane as her psychiatrist. And then those diary entries or more letters to her son Caleb, written from Jane's perspective. What did that approach look like?

[CeCe Leera]

That's a great question. Also, I just love how you articulate that experience of how when you start at the beginning and moving forward, like, doors are closing sort of as you go forward in a novel. But for me, I think it feels really important to settle on an opening and settle on a beginning. Because, as you say, it's like. Because the beginning could be anything. It feels like I can't really get grounded in my story until I have committed to what the beginning is. In this case, the beginning was really. I began it before I knew very much. But all I knew was that I imagined a psychiatrist, you know, who. Even though it's not like the character is based on Oliver Sacks, but it was like, imagine if he was seeing patients like Oliver Sacks. I thought, what if a patient came in and behaved in a sort of mysterious way and wouldn't say what's wrong and left quickly? And that still is the opening scene. This, like, mysterious patient shows up at the psychiatrist's office. And he doesn't learn very much, but he's very intrigued and concerned for her. And so I wrote that scene. It was like a sort of a page or two that really still is the opening scene of the book before I knew anything else. And actually, while I was. That was while I was still finishing my last book, the Dreamers. So that really was the entry point. And I was so fascinated with this psychiatrist and also his voice. And his name is Dr. Bird. And he's really trying to stay very clinical and professional. But his own story and curiosity about her and some other larger things are kind of leaking in on the sides of his clinical notes. So I was very fascinated with that. And in a way, actually was so fascinated with that voice that at the beginning, I was thinking about having it be only him telling the story of this strange patient, Jano. But I think I realized pretty quickly as I started writing it that it felt incomplete and also kind of just wrong for her to not have her own voice. I mean, he's a bit unreliable. That's part of, I hope, the interest of the novel. But why should he be the only authority on this woman's own case? So it really, like, cracked open the book for me. And really, when I decided, like, no, we're gonna hear from her, too. And so the book is structured, as you say, in this, like, alternating sections where there's Dr. Bird's perspective on what's going on with Jane. And then we get Jane's sort of letters that are kind of a diary form to her young son, who's still a baby at this time. So the letters are like, for him to read when he's older.

[Bianca Murray]

There's a lot to unpack there. And I have questions following that are going to unpack a lot of what you've said. Something that you just said that I wasn't expecting, is that you wrote this beginning before you finished the last book, and that I find really fascinating. And is it just because this came to you in this moment of urgency and you just had to capture it, or is this thing that we do as writers that we kind of procrastinate ending a book? Because ending a book means we walk away from those characters. I know that as I near the end of my books, I start finding other things to do because ending feels so bittersweet to me. In one way, I'm like, oh, my God, get this away from me. I'm so sick of these people. I need to be done. And in another, I'm just like, oh, I don't want to hand it off. So what was that particularly for you?

[CeCe Leera]

I think when I get to the end of the novel, I more feel like ready to get it off my desk. So I think it wasn't the procrastination so much as it was more like the sudden inspiration. It's kind of related to the dreamers, because I started reading Oliver Sex works when I was in college, but I specifically picked up Awakenings, I think it's called when I was writing the Dreamers, because the Dreamers was about contagious sleeping sickness. And I was reading his book for research about a sort of somewhat. I mean, not that similar, but a little bit similar phenomenon where people who had complications from the influenza of 1918 had this. Some people had this kind of strange, like, sleeping sickness version of it, and then they had these really terrible complications later. Anyway, so I was reading about that, and he writes about it really beautifully and lots of fascinating details about the brain. So that was research for the dreamers as I was finishing it. But I just was so, you know, enamored with his style and just imagining, because he opens each one, it'll be like, I met Rose, you know, in her hospital and such and such. She was 85 years old, and this is what she was like. And I just. There was something about his style of writing and also just this feeling of like, encountering a new person and immediately sort of trying to understand what their specific life situation is. That was really compelling. And I was like, oh, I want to. I'm gonna try that. Like, what if I wrote a book where the narrator was the psychiatrist and an unusual patient showed up in his office? So I kind of just wanted to get it down. And so, yes, I wrote very close to what is the first two pages. I wrote it and then I set it aside. But I think the way that it might be connected to coming to the end of the last novel is that when I come toward the end of a novel, I notice that maybe my mind starts to, like, be more open to other ideas that are not connected to the current project. So that could also be it. It's like I was sort of in the closing stretch of writing the Dreamers when I was. I was starting to get new ideas. And so I put this one down.

[Bianca Murray]

And it's also a kind of a relief to know what the next project's gonna be. You know, that's always a relief. So that you're not scrambling. Oh, my God, what am I gonna write next? Okay, so I have a whole bunch of other questions, but this is a good entry point into hearing Karen's opening pages. So I'm gonna ask her to please read those first two for us.

[CeCe Leera]

Jane O. Came to my office for the first time in the spring of that year. She was 38 years old. Her medical history contained nothing unusual. This was her first visit, she said, to a psychiatrist. She spoke softly, as if concerned about being overheard. She did not remove her coat. She didn't say why she had come. And she had left much of her paperwork blank. But a silence can be useful. I have learned to let one bloom. And so we sat for a while without speaking. In my small office on West 96th Street. While the city thrummed around us. Jane sat very still on the couch. She kept her arms crossed. Minutes passed. There was a time when I would have found it awkward to sit so long in silence with another human being. But I've grown used to it over the years, the way other doctors do to the nakedness of the body. She wore a gray sweater and tortoise shell glasses. She was pale, and she was slim. She wore very little makeup, or none. A simple gold bracelet encircled one wrist. No rings. I'm sorry, she said finally. It's just hard to explain. I noticed then that the skin around her fingernails was red and peeling. In the silence, she began to peel it further. It was obvious that she was in some kind of distress, and I felt suddenly worried for her to a degree that I can't quite explain. Take your time, I said, which is the sort of empty thing I say when a patient seems more in need of kindness than of insight. This was a period when very few patients were coming my way, and so I wondered how Jane had found me, who had given her my name. Finally she took a deep breath, then spoke. Something strange happened to me, she said. She shifted on the couch, crossed and uncrossed her legs. It didn't make sense, she said. This thing. There was no way to know what kind of experience she was describing, but when I asked her to tell me about it, it she went quiet again. A light rain had begun to drum on the scaffolding outside, the water suddenly amplifying the sound of tires spinning against the streets. After what seemed like a long time, Jane cleared her throat, as if she were finally ready to say more. I had the feeling that there was something Jane wanted from me that she was not willing to ask. But then, very suddenly, she stood up. I thought perhaps I'd let the silence grow too long. I think this was a mistake, she said. Wait, I said. Let's start again. But she moved quickly. Already I could hear the swing and clang of the fire door, the echo of her clogs in the stairwell. I marked the time in my notes. Jane had spent only 14 minutes in my office. The act of remembering, we know from neuroscientists, has a way of rewriting a memory, and this day in particular, the day I met Jane for the first time, is one I have often revisited in my mind, perhaps altering it slightly with each remembering. And so I should say here that perhaps it was not raining on that day as it is in my memory, or maybe the window was closed and not open. But the point I'm trying to make is that I met Jane on a day like that, that the city sounded the way the city has sounded on a thousand other afternoons, when the spring is turning toward summer, when the air is warm but not yet stifling and the windows are open, all the noisy possibility of New York. Jane, though, seemed somehow separate from all that and singular. What I remember most about that first day is how lonely this woman seemed. I am not talking about the ordinary loneliness. This was something else, a kind of loneliness of the soul. I have tried to consult my notes whenever I can in the hope that what follows here is as accurate an account of these unusual events as is possible. I shall refer to this patient as Jane. O In these pages in order to protect her privacy. But her full name does appear in my notes. When I think of Jane as she seemed on that first day, an odd image comes to me. A pine tree growing alone on a great wide plane. As I would later tell the detective, I didn't think I would see Jane O again.

[Bianca Murray]

Incredible. So for our listeners, you know, we are always talking about withholding backstory, planting curiosity seeds, the kind of nuggets that the reader's brain snags on it. It's like a burr. And they're like, ooh, interesting. What is that about? And then they start to form theories, and they keep reading and they keep turning pages to find those answers. And when you provide those answers later, they feel like a payoff as a kind of relief to the reader as opposed to you just telling them everything up front. And this chapter has so many curiosity seeds, not just about Jane, of course we are. What is going on with Jane? What's happening here? But the reference to the detective later on, then we're like, holy heck, a detective's going to come into this. Plus things like, at that point, not a lot of patients were being referred to me. I wondered who told her about me. And then you're immediately like, interesting. There's something dodgy about the psychiatrist. There's something weird going on here. So for me, when I read curiosity seeds in an opening chapter, my brain ignites and my brain was fully ignited here. So let's talk a bit about that, Karen, as a writer, the kind of control that it requires to not give too much away, to withhold certain things, but not withhold so much that the reader feels manipulated.

[CeCe Leera]

Yeah. I mean, you're the perfect reader for these pages. I feel like you. How you articulated what each of those little, like, you say, seeds was meant to do worked on you. I'm so glad. Thank you. What a careful, careful read. Yeah, I love that, too. As a reader, I'm also very influenced by the writer Kazue Ishiguro, especially. Never Let Me Go. And I think this book in particular, I took a lot of influence from, and I think he's just a master at that. Putting these little seeds in especially. It needs to feel natural, you know, to the voice. Like, it can't. You don't want it to feel like the author is manipulating you, I think. So. Just finding that balance, I think is really important. And I learned it from other writers, you know, like, I give that just enough and have that restraint. And like you say, control to withhold, but not in a. Yeah, Hope, a way that feels too like you're doing a trick.

[Bianca Murray]

It requires careful calibration, and that's something that comes with experience for many writers. Emerging authors especially, feel like they need to tell the reader everything you know, here's all the backstory, here's all the context you need to know. And in fact, the more you can withhold from the reader for as long as possible without them getting frustrated, the better it actually is. We're going to discuss some things about him as a narrator, but I wanted to ask when you decided on a form of epistolary form for Jane. You know, it's these letters to her son. It could read like diary entries. You must have realized that some concessions would have to be made because of that form, because the minute we write diary entries or letters, we are writing from a point in the future, which means that we are reporting back on things that have happened, which takes away so much of the immediacy of what happens. And we kind of know the character's fine because they're telling us this in the future, whereas you could have very easily have just put us with her as everything happened and. And had the narration be first person present tense. So it was super close to her. And his talking, he is narrating to who we assume is the reader. He's in conversation with the reader telling us all of these things. And I just want to have a discussion about that for our listeners to say that every time we choose a point of view, every time we choose a narrative, a framework, there are pros, there are cons, there are concessions that need to be made. And sometimes you have, as the writer will then have to work that much harder to make something reported, still feel immediate and still feel frightening, even though you're talking about it after the fact. So can you speak a bit about weighing up the pros and cons and deciding, still deciding this was the best way to go?

[CeCe Leera]

Yeah, I mean, Dr. Bird's point of view is retrospective. He's looking back on this strange case and the steps in his process as he learned things about her. And then in Jane's case, hers sort of has retrospective elements because she's looking, sometimes looking back 20 years to an earlier time where she had this very formative tragedy happen to her. So that part is retrospective, but it's in the form of, you know, letters that she's writing. I do imagine that as she's sort of unraveling, she's writing to her son. So hers has a sort of. Yeah, combination. Like, sometimes you get the immediacy of, like, what's happening, what happened to her that day and then. But it's in combination with things that have happened in the past. Because sometimes she's reflecting. So. Yeah, and I agree. Point of view is just deciding what elements of the point of view to you. You know, obviously, who. Who's gonna tell the story and whether it's gonna be first person or third. But then, like you say, even in that, are they telling it? You know, what's the point of telling? Are they telling from somewhere far away or very close? So it was fun to have a book that had, like, multiple. Multiple points of view. And I guess the main thing I got out of having her sections be these letters to her son. And it's. It's letters to her son, but it's sort of the way that you would write a diary entry. Like each day she writes or, you know, when she sits down, writes an entry about what's. What's happening to her mind, but also things that she wants her son to know in case she doesn't survive or she doesn't survive intact. What that gave me was that it made it so that the reader's understanding of what was going on with her in the moment was not always complete. But you don't know that, you know, without giving anything away. It's sort of like there was some space that was fun to play with that I haven't had my previous novels. I haven't been able to work with that.

[Bianca Murray]

It felt so compelling. You know, that's the thing. Sometimes I'll read the epistolary form and I'll just be like, okay, we're getting a lot of reporting of what's happening. But there was constantly that tension of her terror. Because in this form, we get so much of her interiority. We get her trying to figure out what's happening to her. We get her feelings about it. We get her speaking to her son in the future and being like, I don't know where you are going to be or what will have happened to me by the time you read these letters. So, you know, it may be sometime in the future, and you may want nothing to do with me, you may be embarrassed of me. You may wish all of these things. And so that tension was simmering throughout. So for our listeners, if you're going to do this kind of form, you really have to make sure that you're working so much harder to still keep it super, super compelling. And this is something Karen has done brilliantly. So if you're Writing, you know, using the structure. Go and read this book and see how these diary entries still plant the curiosity seeds, create tension, move the plot forward, deepen our understanding of the character, because that's what every scene in a book needs to do. And Karen, every one of those diary entries does the same thing. It does all the heavy lifting, which is just incredible.

[CeCe Leera]

Oh, thank you so much. I'm really glad that it. That it worked. I will mention that I made a kind of late change, which originally it really was just her diary entries. Like Dr. Bird suggests that she write her experiences as a kind of way of thinking things through, as a sort of therapeutic act. So it was initially more of a straight. I thought of them as diary entries, but felt like they weren't Char. Something was kind of missing from those sections. There was something about it, and I think there wasn't enough, in a way, restriction on it for me. Like, sometimes she was rambling. I think I was. I was having trouble. Like, some of the risks and the challenges that you mentioned of this form, I was feeling. And I was like, what? Something is wrong? And my husband, who's a writer, actually made the suggestion that I have her write to her son. And it just. I was like. At first, I was like, huh. Well, I don't know. I never thought of that. And then as soon as I try, I was like, I'll just try it. It just cinched everything in. They gave it this, like, extra charge and so much more melancholy because there's this feeling of. Built in, like, a worry about loss of, like, is she gonna ever be able to tell these stories to her son? And I also cut a lot then because it's like, well, she's not gonna. What she's not gonna tell to mention to her son this kind of. Not that important thing that she did that day. But she might if it was an actual diary. So it really solved a lot of those problems for me. And I hope, I think, is part of maybe the emotional tension that comes through.

[Bianca Murray]

I love that solution. See, my husband works in banking, and he can't help me with these things, but I love that because there could be a kind of navel gazing that comes from diary entries, you know, just too much thinking and whatever. But the minute it's directed at him, everything comes through the lens of that. It's a laser focus at him and her worry about him in the future. And so that really keeps the tension going. So. Excellent suggestion there. Okay, so the one question that I want to discuss here is. So we begin the book. And we assume that Jane is going to be our unreliable narrator because she doesn't know what's happening to her and these things are kind of weird. And you're like, is she doing this for attention? Does she really not remember, is there something else that's happening, you know, behind the scenes? And then we start getting almost these disclaimers from Dr. Bird throughout as he tells the stories. It's like these mini disclaimers that make us start to question his credibility. He will say things like, I have a reason for bringing all this up here, which I guess I should make clear. And then suddenly he explains his own context. Then he'll say things like, I suppose the time has come to explain certain unpleasant facts about my recent past, facts that I did not previously judge to be relevant here. And you're like, dude, you didn't judge them to be relevant, but they're damn relevant, so you hid them from us. And then it'll be things like I mentioned before that I sometimes get a feeling what some might call a premonition. And I will admit now that in that earlier telling, I was perhaps misleadingly dismissive of the significance of this subject in my life. Right, so can we talk a bit about how upfront you position it in the reader's mind that they kind of know who's reliable, who's unreliable? We have a psychologist, he should be reliable, and we have her, and she's probably not going to be reliable. And as the story goes on, you have us questioning everything, which makes the reader start doing the heavy lifting. Because as soon as they start to wonder if he is reliable, they look at everything he said and they start to reframe it. They reframe it all and go, aha, could I believe what he said earlier? Which means that the reader becomes such an active participant in the story, they're not just being spoon fed information, they are suddenly having to decide who they believe.

[CeCe Leera]

Oh, thanks so much for that. Yeah, I mean, I love that as a reader. I love, I want to. I love to feel like reading a book is sort of an experience, you know, not just passive listening to a story. And so I really enjoyed the opportunity in this book of playing kind of constantly with the reader's understanding of reality. I think maybe there's a larger thematic reason for it too. Like, hopefully that makes for a sort of intriguing, entertaining reading experience. But then I think it also has a thematic meaning because. Because in a way, the whole book is about like not being able to totally. It's about the fact that we don't totally understand everything about reality, and reality itself or our experience of reality is never 100% reliable. You know, even our memories, I mean, in the real world, our memories are not one. They're not infallible. And sometimes we make kind of amazing and unbelievable mistakes in memory. So I just feel like I love that whole territory and the unreliable narrators especially. Yeah, especially. Having two unreliable narrators was very fun and hopefully makes for a fun reading experience.

[Bianca Murray]

It was an excellent reading experience. One of my favorites of the year. I'm already calling it We're Only in January, but one of my favorites of the year. So for our listeners, we're linking to the Strange Case of Jane o in our bookshop.org affiliate page. If you get it there, you support an independent bookstore and you support the podcast at the same time. Get this book for many reasons, not just if you're writing in the epistolary form, just get it to learn how to do Curiosity Seeds. The language is. It's not sort of jazz hands writing, which is what a lot of people think literary fiction is. It's. It's really. Karen has captured each character's voice so perfectly and yet there's poignancy there as well. There's tension simmering throughout. It really is a masterclass in writing. So please get it. And Karen, thanks so much for being a guest on the podcast and we hope to have you back again soon.

[CeCe Leera]

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It was great.

[Bianca Murray]

Hi everyone. Welcome to our February comps segment with the fabulous Emily Summer from East City Bookshop. Hi, Emily.

[CeCe Leera]

Hi, Bianca. Thank you all for listening and thank.

[Bianca Murray]

You for being on our show and maintaining good Canadian American relations. As it should be.

[CeCe Leera]

We are trying.

[Bianca Murray]

Okay, here we go. Here is our first request view.

[Charlotte Wood]

My debut historical and women's fiction dual.

[Bianca Murray]

POV novel was inspired by true events.

[Charlotte Wood]

Judge Sabina Daley inherits a vintage box.

[CeCe Leera]

Linked to a mysterious 15 year old.

[Charlotte Wood]

Girl committed in 1906 to a reformatory.

[Bianca Murray]

By the novel New York City Children's Court.

[Charlotte Wood]

Who is this young woman and how is she connected with the judge? A purported theft pending in the judge's court exposes a web of sexual assaults.

[CeCe Leera]

Targeting young women and snarling the judge's.

[Bianca Murray]

Daughter, now a witness for the prosecution.

[Charlotte Wood]

The mysterious wayward teen from the past was none other than the judge's grandmother, the successful family denizen hiding the truth involving her imprisonment and infertility stemming from childhood corruption. Universal women Women's themes stretch across generations such as victim Shaming and the power of love and redemption. Possible comps are the Lost Apothecary, the Lobotomist Wife.

[CeCe Leera]

So I think this is a perfect description in terms of like calling in and giving me what I need to give good comps because I feel like I know the tone and the audience and the comps you suggested were great. I had thought of before we were yours as before you even said that. So I think you're spot on there. It's possible it's a little too old, but I think that is what it seemed like the type of book that you were describing to me. So I was glad to hear that comp and know that I was on the right track. And I don't have other specific titles to tell you, but I do have some other authors, all of whom have multiple novels, and maybe you can see which of their recent ones might feel like the best bet. But I think all of these writers are for readers of Lisa Wingate, the Lost Apothecary. It sounds like they'd be writing for the same audience that you would be as well. And so the three that I thought of first of all are Christina McMorris, Susan Meissner, and Kristin Harmel. And they all write that blend of historical fiction, women's fiction tied to present day issues, but also the past. I think all of those would be good places to look and see if any of their books might be the exact right fit.

[Bianca Murray]

Wonderful. Thank you. Okay, here is number two.

[Charlotte Wood]

Hello.

[CeCe Leera]

Thank you all for helping us find comp titles. It's a difficult process.

[Bianca Murray]

Adult fantasy isn't everyone's specialty, so I'm grateful for any suggestions you can make here.

[CeCe Leera]

The titles I'm currently comping are from.

[Charlotte Wood]

RJ Barker and Robert Jackson Bennett, but I'm sure there are other great options out there.

[CeCe Leera]

A decade in hiding will blunt even the sharpest skills. And when the assassin comes for his.

[Bianca Murray]

Head, Sten isn't ready.

[CeCe Leera]

Hobbled by a companion he can't trust.

[Charlotte Wood]

Sten fights to escape without breaking the.

[Bianca Murray]

Vows he took when he abandoned his old life.

[CeCe Leera]

The assassin is skilled, armed with powerful.

[Bianca Murray]

Artifacts, and supported by the highest authorities.

[Charlotte Wood]

Hiding is temporary and running is no life. So Sten chooses a more radical option.

[CeCe Leera]

When your king wants you dead, the.

[Bianca Murray]

Best defense is attack.

[Charlotte Wood]

Turning the tables requires Sten to revive.

[Bianca Murray]

His former self, the Butcher.

[Charlotte Wood]

To survive, he'll need both his old brutality and his new compassion to live with himself afterward.

[CeCe Leera]

Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. My favorite phrase from this call in. Thank you so much for calling in and getting our help was the old brutality and the new compassion. I feel like that nails sort of what this character is going for. The butcher. As you all know who have listened, adult fantasy of this type is not exactly my strong suit. But I thought of a few possibilities and I like that you mentioned Robert Jackson Bennett. My husband reads him. He's sold. He is selling well for us now. And I thought maybe look at Joe Abercrombie too. I feel like those are similar readers. Maybe Andres Sapkowski, who writes the Witcher series that might have a similar feel, similar characteristics, the similar sort of skill of assassin with some compassion in there too. Torn between the past and the present. And I'd also look at Seth Dickinson. So I think that all of those look at their bodies of work and hopefully something in their overall might work for this.

[Bianca Murray]

Thank you, Emily. Okay, number three.

[CeCe Leera]

Hello and thank you. I'm asking about comps from my debut novel, the Bates. The Bait is a genre blending upmarket epic of 99,000 words geared for book club readers who enjoy creative world building and a PG13 level of horror language and fear. The Bait gives a fresh take on the post apocalyptic genre. It's a fast paced plot with insatiably rich characters and explores the bond between a father and his adopted daughter within an unpredictable futurescape of monsters and men. It is set in the American west and of course there are zombies, but I'm looking for comps that don't necessarily focus on zombies. I come from the filmmaking world, so I think of the Last of Us and the Walking Dead and there's also a level of sort of fascist political intrigue. So I think of the Handmaid's Tale. But what else can I use in a fun literary sense for post apocalyptic and isn't so focused on zombies but rather emotional fun characters and plot. Okay, I'm so glad that you said that you were looking for something that was more focused on the literary side and the emotional side, because that is what I do better with. And as soon as you said that this was set in the American west and it sounds to me the father and adopted daughter struggle, it reminds me of one of my favorite books in the life of my bookstore which has been open for eight years. And that's Paulette Giles, News of the World. Maybe a little bit too old, but absolutely read that because I think it will capture the literary elements and the emotional journey that you're looking for here. And it's also just a wonderful read. It's one of those books that I feel like I can hand to anybody because it's just so good. I also thought about True Grit by Charles Portis, which I don't think is appropriate for a comp because it is both too big and too old. But if you like News of the World and you're looking for more of that type of thing, you might as well dip into True Grit and give yourself a treat there too. So look at News of the World and see if Paulette Giles gives you any ideas.

[Bianca Murray]

Okay, thank you so much. Here's the next one.

[CeCe Leera]

Thank you, Emily, for doing this. Crybaby Bridge is an adult contemporary retelling of a New Jersey myth about a.

[Bianca Murray]

Baby who was tossed to his death.

[CeCe Leera]

Hundreds of years before from a bridge. He haunts a forested region of the.

[Charlotte Wood]

State to this day.

[CeCe Leera]

This is a dual timeline story set between the 90s, when the protagonist first heard the story of the baby and the bridge and she and her friends went there and experienced the phenomenon of hearing the sounds of a crying baby. The second timeline is present day, when the narrator has been fired from her job, having been cancelled for her political views, when a young boy is dropped.

[Charlotte Wood]

Off at her door and claims his pregnant mother is going to throw her.

[CeCe Leera]

Baby off the same bridge in question. Once born, the narrator and a cast of unlikely people go on a mission to find her. Right now I'm not finding a lot of myth retelling because in the United States I'd say this is literary and while there are supernatural suspicions, none are confirmed. Okay. So I'm intrigued by this in part because of the 90s angle, in part because I love sort of a dark mystery. But I would say instead of looking for American myth retellings, I think if you're searching for retellings of myth, you're right that you're going to get sort of classical myths. You're going to get, you know, Madeline Miller and all of the offshoots of Madeline Miller type books. So instead of looking for myth retellings or American myths, I might seek out like search instead for like urban legends or regional or geographic ghost stories. And I think it sounds like any dual timeline sort of local interest mystery might work too, depending on how primary the haunting and the ghost of this past baby thrown from the bridge might be. So the two books that I thought of that might work well for that sort of urban legend regional legend story are the Whisper man by Alex north, which is very good. He has several new ones that might work too, but that is the one that I know the best. A more recent book by Lindsay Stark is called Monsters we have Made and both of those might tie into that sort of like a regional story that has always circulated that pops back up into the present day. And in terms of just like a dual timeline, local interest mystery that could work here. The best one I've read recently is the Missing Half by Ashley Flowers. Her previous book, All Good People Here, was also very good, but I even preferred the Missing Half, which is saying a lot because I liked All Good People Here very much. And Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera has gotten a lot of buzz. That was very good, a very strong voice and a really excellent and fun read. I would start with the Whisper man and Monsters we have Made and books like that, kind of in the urban legend vein. So good luck.

[Bianca Murray]

Okay, here we go. Next one. Hello.

[CeCe Leera]

My book is a low fantasy for adults that follows 25 year old American Guatemalan Meredith, also known as Mayor, who is a complete wreck and grappling with her own identity as a questioning bisexual woman in a Christian Latino family and the recent mysterious murder of her almost girlfriend. She is unwittingly anointed as the Next Revealer, the guide responsible for stabilizing millions of minds linked to another realm known as the Overlap. But her own traumatic flashbacks are poisoning all the minds linked to the Overlap, leading to an onslaught of suicides as well as earthquakes and full out apocalyptic chaos. And she learns that she's fated to fail anyway. Her friendship with her best friend is tainted when her boyfriend becomes one of the people affected and ultimately takes his own life. There's some friendly ghosts, some dragons, some other fantastical elements. The level of violence and gore and sarcasm reminds me of Deadpool, which I obviously can't use as a comp. But the low fantasy elements make me think of the 10,000 doors of January. It's got a significant level profanity as well as an underlying theme of ending mental health stigma. It's hard to find something that links all these elements. Thoughts for comps or directions to look. Thank you, you're amazing. Okay, so the Young Queer Messy Fantasy for adults. I immediately thought about Cassandra Kaw. So so she also writes about like a queer young person mental health struggles where there is all kinds of stuff going on. I am specifically thinking of her book the Dead Take the A Train, but look into Cassandra's work, who Cassandra has blurbed and you might find others that fit the bill too. But start with the Dead Take the A Train. I would also take a look at Andrew Joseph White. He writes ya, but maybe look at those books too. They have a lot of adult crossover appeal and work very well for us, but they all feel like they might have the right tone and audience.

[Bianca Murray]

Thank you, Emily. Okay, number six.

[CeCe Leera]

Hello, Bianca and Emily.

[Bianca Murray]

Thank you for everything you and the.

[CeCe Leera]

Team at Tis Not Yaw do for aspiring writers. I'm hoping you might be able to help with comp suggestions from a gothic horror novel tentatively titled vampires of Chicago. 30 year old composer Anton is devastated when his best friend and true love, Percy becomes engaged to a young woman. Heartbroken and betrayed, Anton falls for a dashing and mysterious count at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. But as he falls increasingly under the.

[Charlotte Wood]

Count'S spell, strange deaths and odd occurrences lead to a night of passion turned horror. When the Count reveals his true vampiric form. Anton attempts to save his friends, but.

[CeCe Leera]

He'S dismissed and gaslighted until it is too late.

[Charlotte Wood]

Will Anton and Percy reconcile their differences and be reunited once more?

[CeCe Leera]

Or will the Count have his cursed.

[Bianca Murray]

Way with both of them?

[CeCe Leera]

Them?

[Charlotte Wood]

My current description is Bram Stoker's Dracula.

[CeCe Leera]

Meets Eric Larson's Devil in the White.

[Charlotte Wood]

City with the queer romance and heartbreak.

[CeCe Leera]

Of E.M. forster's Maurice.

[Charlotte Wood]

But these comps are much too big.

[CeCe Leera]

And of course, much too old.

[Charlotte Wood]

I would be most grateful for any.

[CeCe Leera]

Recommendations you might have.

[Charlotte Wood]

Thank you so very much.

[CeCe Leera]

Hi. Thank you for listening and you are welcome for the comps. Okay, so first I hear Gothic horror. I don't think that this is a comp for your book, but I have to throw out a shout out for Victorian Psycho by Virginia Fato, because I just finished it. It's just out and it is a masterpiece of gothic horror. Ooh. It is dark and funny and just unforgettable. So that's a brand new book. So if you are at all interested in Gothic horror, everybody look for Victorian Psycho. In terms of yours, I think you tell me. Bram Stoker's Dracula and Eric Larson's Devil in the West City with the queer romance of E.M. forster's Morris. Love it. I know exactly what you're talking about. You're right, though. I think that all of those are too big and too old. My first thought was Anne Rice's interview with the vampire, also too big and too old. I would also look maybe at the Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It's probably more in line with the too big too old comps. But if you need a literary reference or something else you want to look at, that is a really good one. And the two new ones that I would recommend Are Lucy Undying by Kiersten White. That is a new queer vampire mystery that one of my colleagues absolutely loves and has been hand selling like crazy. And Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas, who also wrote the Hacienda. That's another. So look at Lucy Undying and Vampires of El Norte and see if either of those fit the bill.

[Bianca Murray]

A question for you, Emily. So in terms of resources like, like Edelweiss, I know that Edelweiss, you can set up a free account and you can look up books and it'll tell you what titles the publisher themselves are comping to with that book. Is that something that you would also recommend for our listeners to perhaps do?

[CeCe Leera]

Absolutely. I mean that's how I buy front list for the store. So when I am looking to buy, I'm finishing up buying summer now and when I'm buying my summer books for the store, I am using Edelweiss and I'm looking at all of the comp titles that the publishers recommend if that is available to people and they and the general public can access it. Absolutely. That is a wonderful resource. I would say two things. One, the publishers comps are aspirational so they're going to use the biggest ones that have sold the most copies. So it's possible that you will see some that fall into that like too big area. But it's going to tell you who they think the reader is. So that's a great place to look for other suggestions. It's very helpful to me.

[Bianca Murray]

I think you can set up a free account. I'm not sure if you have to be in the industry to do it, but it's worth checking out. So what's E, D E L W E I double S, Right?

[CeCe Leera]

That's right. That's right. And I think it's, I think it's Edelweiss. Dot plus is the dot plus.

[Charlotte Wood]

Yeah.

[CeCe Leera]

Otherwise it'll be the Sound of Music. You'll, you'll, you'll Google Edelweiss and you'll get a beautiful Christopher Plummer singing to you. Which is always pleasant. But it happens to me a lot. I'll type in Edelweiss and then I'm like, oh, there's Christopher Plummer. He's singing to me.

[Bianca Murray]

Sometimes you just need that these times it's actually a good thing maybe. But I think some libraries as well, so for many people go onto your online library system as well and I think that they have like similar comp titles there as well.

[CeCe Leera]

Yeah, that's a great suggestion.

[Bianca Murray]

Just another resource. Okay, number seven.

[CeCe Leera]

Hi, all. Thanks for everything you do.

[Charlotte Wood]

I love the podcast.

[CeCe Leera]

I'm looking for comps for my entitled novel. It is an adult mystery and romance, and the comp I currently have is Once There Were wolves by Charlotte McConaughey.

[Charlotte Wood]

The tone of my work is lighter.

[CeCe Leera]

The topic's not as heavy.

[Charlotte Wood]

Clara loses out on the bear biologist.

[CeCe Leera]

Promotion of her dreams. But how can she complain when the reason behind it is the death of her co worker, Heather?

[Charlotte Wood]

Heather had been killed in a bear.

[CeCe Leera]

Attack after ignoring the safety protocol their organization preaches.

[Charlotte Wood]

As a result, public trust in their work has plummeted.

[CeCe Leera]

Funding in Claire's promotion falling within it. Clara stumbles across Heather's personal journal, and without thinking, she takes it.

[Charlotte Wood]

As she begins to see the world.

[CeCe Leera]

From Heather's eyes, Clara begins to question if it wasn't a bear that killed Heather, but instead someone she trusted. She reluctantly teams up with her frustrating neighbor Nolan, with the hopes of shedding.

[Charlotte Wood]

Light on Heather's death and saving her.

[Bianca Murray]

Job in the process.

[CeCe Leera]

Clara and Nolan grow closer, their relationship shifting from distaste to friendship to perhaps something more.

[Charlotte Wood]

As tensions rise and hard truths begin to surface, Clara will have to decide.

[CeCe Leera]

What'S most important to her. The job she's dreamed of her whole life or revealing what actually happened the night Heather was killed. Killed. Okay, if anybody's listened before, then, you know, I absolutely am obsessed with Charlotte McConaughey. I love once There Were Wolves, but I think you're right that it sounds like this is probably not the right tone. So I think you're right to think of that because of the nature aspect and the animal aspect, but it sounds like the tone is probably not right. So I'm with you on that anytime I hear bears. Now I have to recommend Bear by Julia Phillips. This is not necessarily a comp for your book. It is neither a mystery nor a romance, but it is a great novel. I absolutely loved it. It did not get quite as much attention as her book Disappearing Earth, which would be hard because that was a phenomenon. But Bear by Julia Phillips. I loved it and I highly recommend it. I'll also take this opportunity to recommend Charlotte McConaughey's new book, which comes out next next month. It's called Wild Dark Shore. It is, in my opinion, her best yet. It's so beautiful. She's writing like nobody else is right now, and I. I'm just waiting to see her on a booker list. So let we'll manifest that. Like last time we talked about manifesting a Donna Tartt novel, I'm manifesting Charlotte McConaughey being on the booker, at least the long list. All right. In terms of comps, it sounds to me like the mystery is primary here. So I hope I've understood that correctly. And it sounds like the main character's work and the setting in sort of the rescue, the animal rescue is secondary. I mean, primary, but not the whole focus of the book. So because of that, I thought of sort of books that are concerned with nature, that are very grounded in the natural world and have that sort of atmosphere. And with those sorts of mysteries, I always think of and recommend Kimmy Cunningham Grant. I love her books. And the most recent one, the Nature of Disappearing, is very grounded in the natural world and very atmospheric. So maybe this just the setting will be enough of a good comp for your mystery. So good luck. Take a look at that one.

[Bianca Murray]

Thank you, Emily. Okay, next one. Elevator pitch.

[CeCe Leera]

A gay Rambo plays the Most dangerous.

[Bianca Murray]

Game in a universe similar to the Handmaid's Tale blurb.

[CeCe Leera]

In a dystopian America ruled by religious zealots, Jonah, a decorated veteran scarred by a brutal past of childhood abuse and the ravages of World War III, returns to his native land and hometown 20 years away.

[Charlotte Wood]

Intent on securing his family decaying estate and extricating himself from the hellhole that.

[CeCe Leera]

Used to be the usa. The war vet is captured and forced.

[Bianca Murray]

To play the role of a redeemer.

[CeCe Leera]

In a twisted, fanatical version of the Most dangerous game. But his captors have not chosen wisely. For every ghost from his past ignites within him a dangerous quest for redemption and revenge. As he endures unspeakable torture at the hands of ruthless oppressors, Jonas must overcome.

[Charlotte Wood]

His inner demons to defy his oppressive face.

[Bianca Murray]

In a high stakes game where every.

[CeCe Leera]

Secret and every scar holds the key to his survival, Jonah's struggle becomes a.

[Charlotte Wood]

Defiant stand against society intent on reducing him, as they've already done to most.

[CeCe Leera]

Gay men and trans women, to nothing.

[Charlotte Wood]

More than ghosts of civilization.

[CeCe Leera]

Pass.

[Charlotte Wood]

Thank you for anything you can provide.

[CeCe Leera]

Okay, so for this one, again, a little bit out of my wheelhouse. And by a little, I mean a lot. We're not all the right reader for every single book, although I try to know what's going on and what is the good stuff in every genre. And for this one, I think maybe I'll make some of the same suggestions as I did for our second comp, just because I'm getting the same vibes of like a very tough trained traumatized main character who is forced to fight back. So I would look to Joe Abercrombie, Sapkowski again, Seth Dickinson, and maybe even Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. Off. Which is also a good possibility for our vampire comp that we just talked about. So look at those and see if any of those work for our gay Rambo who's playing the Most Dangerous game, which is a very good tagline. Even without any comps. I mean, those comps sell it even without any additional ones.

[Bianca Murray]

Yeah, that's an amazing hook. Okay, I think we've got two left, right?

[CeCe Leera]

That's right.

[Bianca Murray]

Okay. Number nine.

[CeCe Leera]

Hello. My completed upmarket fiction novel is called the Secret Lives of the Swallowed. It's a dual point of novel that follows two sisters. Maren is an uptight personality consultant. She's been given one last chance from her boss to communicate more graciously with clients. Her last chance work is to work with Devora, a holistic wellness group that has the public polarized in their opinions on its leader, Selah Rev, the same woman who ruined their mother's life years ago. Lavinia, meanwhile, is an up and coming sword swallower. She tries to hide an esophagus wound. She moves closer to the Devorah event where she will attempt a Guinness World Record in swallowing a curved sword. Having the support of Devorah could launch her into an overseas career. But when the injury continues, she isn't sure that Sailah will let her get the help she needs. I've considered Megan Taty Super Bloom because of the ridiculousness of the plot. It's kind of that kind of a tone. I'm hoping. I've also considered Things yous Save in a Fire by Katherine Senter because of the mother daughter relationship issues. Okay. I love a sister story. I love a sibling story. And I also like your inclusion of Megan Taty's Super Bloom. I think if that's the right tone that gives me a lot of information. I would look at Alison Larkin's forthcoming Home of the American Circus. She writes wonderful, emotional, upmarket fiction. I loved her previous book and have mentioned it before. The People We Keep. So Home of the American Circus is coming out soon. I have not read it yet, so I don't know if it's exactly right, but it feels like it might be. And I would also look at maybe the Glow by Jesse Gaynor that might fit into this wellness group angle. There are a lot of books out there that skewer that industry and investigate how those who cover the industry, that industry, and work adjacent to it could be drawn in or not. Self Care by Leigh Stein is another one. So look at those and see if that works for Maren and Lavinia's story.

[Bianca Murray]

Thank you Emily. Okay, here's our last one. Hi, I'm looking for con titles for my single POV fiction novel Holy Joe.

[CeCe Leera]

Which follows a sheltered deacon who after a disillusionment from his church, flees to LA in search of his long lost sister, stumbling through every sin in the process. Joe is 26 year old living in.

[Bianca Murray]

The south, though he's Hispanic and he.

[CeCe Leera]

Always believed he was destined for priesthood.

[Bianca Murray]

And he has been in Seminary for 10 years.

[CeCe Leera]

As he prepares for his final step.

[Bianca Murray]

To ordination, witnessing a wedding, his life takes a turn when his mentor confesses.

[CeCe Leera]

His months long affair with the groom. As his mentor leaves, he gives him undelivered letters from his estranged sister Luna.

[Bianca Murray]

Joe, feeling betrayed by the church, leaves.

[CeCe Leera]

The rectory and goes to LA in search of her.

[Bianca Murray]

In LA he faces life outside the.

[CeCe Leera]

Church for the first time. Luna, who now lives under the alias.

[Bianca Murray]

Moon Blue, is an eight tier actress.

[CeCe Leera]

Tired of fame and Hollywood. Their reunion forces them to confirm questions about family, faith and forgiveness as they.

[Bianca Murray]

Uncover the truth behind their father's death, a secret the church worked hard to bury.

[CeCe Leera]

I thought of Coco Miller's Blue Sister.

[Bianca Murray]

As a comp to showcase complex sibling dynamics or Priest's Daddy for comedy amid the backdrop of holiness. But that's a memoir, so not really the right tone.

[CeCe Leera]

Okay, for our last one I think yes to Blue Sisters, which I still haven't read. That's one of the holes in my 2024 reading. It was on my list all year long and I haven't gotten to it yet, but I know I'm in for such a treat when I finally do so look at Blue Sisters because of the sibling angle, I think that's a great one. I think you're right to avoid Priest Daddy, although I see where you're going. But because it is a memoir, as you say, because it is a little bit older and mostly because Trisha Lockwood's voice is just so singular. Unless you write in her style and sort of in her unique way or have like that kind of very singular voice, I would avoid her because to my mind she's someone like a Miranda July who is just doing doing her own thing and nobody else can compare. Another really good on the money comp I think would be Kelsey McKinney's novel God Save the Girls. So it's also a sibling story, although it's about sisters instead of a sister and a brother. It is also about being conflicted about the church that you're raised in and becoming disillusioned with all that you were taught and all that you hoped for and intended. She is maybe better known as the host of the podcast Normal Gossip and she has a new book coming out called you Didn't Hear this from Me about Gossip. It comes out, I think think tomorrow, February 11th as we're recording this. But her novel is excellent and you can tell that she knows of what she writes. But God Save the Girls is a great one and I would add that into a potential Blue Sisters comp for your work. So good luck.

[Bianca Murray]

Thank you so much Emily. And for our listeners, we do love to hear your input and your suggestions. We love to crowdsource as well. So what happens is the Tuesday after the this episode airs, which is always the last Monday of the month. The Tuesday afterwards we put up a graphic on Instagram and that is a place that you can come to if you have your own suggestions and if you are one of the authors whose work has been discussed today and you want to see if anybody else has chimed in, that is where you go on our Instagram page on the Tuesday after this is thank you so much Emily and we look forward to more comps next month.

[CeCe Leera]

Thank you Bianca and thank you all for the crowdsourcing. If you all are sci fi and fantasy readers, help me out and help your fellow listeners out for sure.

[Bianca Murray]

And that's it for today's episode. I hope you'll join us for next week's show. In the meantime, keep at it. Remember, it just takes one. Yes.

[CeCe Leera]

Hello from cc. I'm so excited to announce an all new class called Starting It Right which is all about how to begin your story in the best place and in the best way. Now this is going to be a four day class so come prepared to.

[Bianca Murray]

Take lots of notes.

[CeCe Leera]

We'll cover the different types of beginnings and how to choose the best one for your story, how to frame your inciting incident in a compelling way, common mistakes writers make when starting a story, how to balance exposition and mystery, how to make readers readers connect with your protagonist and how to make the reader want to turn to the next chapter. And so much more. And guess what? For the first time ever, there will be an interactive component to my class. Everyone who is registered will have the option of sending in the opening scene of their work for a chance to be critiqued during the webinar. Writers of all categories and genres are invited to attend and there are limited spots. So if you're interested, sign up now. And don't worry if you can't attend.

[Bianca Murray]

One or more live sessions because the recording will be sent to everyone who is registered.

[CeCe Leera]

This class will begin on March 20th and like I said, will go on for four days. For more details, check out the link in my bio on Instagram. I hope to see you there.

[Bianca Murray]

Would you like to win an appearance on Books with Hooks so we can discuss your work work while you're on the show with us? If not, no worries, you can choose a whole other prize. We're hosting an awesome giveaway in which you get to choose your own prize because in my upcoming novel A Most Puzzling Murder, I pay tribute to all the choose your own adventure books I loved so much as a child. So how can you win and be guaranteed an exclusive invite to a zoom discussion between CC and myself as we spill all the behind the scenes tea on how this book came to Life. There are two easy steps. 1. Go on to Goodreads and add A Most Puzzling Murder to your want to read list while entering the Goodreads giveaway for the book. 2. Share a screenshot of your entries on socials using the hashtag amostpuzzling Murder so we can find your entries to put them into the drawer. The winner gets to choose one of four fabulous prizes according to how they'd like their adventure to end. Further details on the rest of the prizes and the links to enter are in the 20th of February's show notes and on our website under the Giveaways tab. You have until the end of February to enter. Winners will be announced on the 3rd of March. Good luck.