← The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Insights from Beth O'Leary and Kate Hilton
01:00:12
Author Interviews
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- [00:00]
Bianca Murray
Foreign. Hi there and welcome to our show the Shit no one tells you about writing. I'm best selling author Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Cece Lera of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of P.S. literary. Hi everyone. Today's guest is an internationally best selling author whose novels have been translated into more than 30 languages. Her debut, the Flat Share, sold over a million copies and changed her life completely. All five of her subsequent novels, the Switch, the Road Trip, the no show, the Wake Up Call and Swept Away have been instant Sunday Times bestsellers. She writes her books in the English countryside with a very badly behaved golden retriever for company. If she's not in her writing shed, you'll probably find her chasing a toddler with a strong coffee in hand. It's my pleasure to welcome back Beth o'. Leary. Beth, welcome back. Hel.
- [01:02]
Beth O'Leary
Thank you for having me again.
- [01:04]
Bianca Murray
Yes. And thank you for joining us. I know it's late in the evening there and I know that pre pub everything is so busy. So I'm sure you've had a really busy day and you're still joining us, so we appreciate it. So for our listeners who are not watching on YouTube and you really should watch on YouTube because we have some really funny moments that you see on camera that you don't necessarily hear or will see on the podcast. What I'm holding up here is Beth's book, the Name Game. Lovely, lovely cover. It looks a bit battered. I'm really, I'm starting to realize that I'm quite rough on books after I finish reading them, they look really worse for weight. Yeah, I say the same but other authors freak out. So really lovely cover. Let me give you some of the flat copy and then we're going to dive in. So a man and a woman with the same name are looking for a fresh start, only to discover they've landed the same job in this charming new romance by best selling author Beth o'. Leary. Charlie couldn't be happier to take the job of farm shop manager on the remote wild isle of Ormer. She's grieving a little lost and in desperate need of a fresh start. Jones has come out of a difficult breakup and is looking forward to some peace away from the noise of his city life. Moving to Ormer couldn't have come at a better time. But when Charlie Jones and Charlie Jones both turn up at Alma's one and only farm shop claiming to have been offered the role of manager, everyone is baffled. How could this have happened? And just who is the real Charlie Jones? Okay, so this is going to be such a tough book to talk about.
- [02:47]
Beth O'Leary
And you know what? This is one of my first interviews about it and I'm so worried I'm going to say something I shouldn't because, yes, there's some surprises in there.
- [02:56]
Bianca Murray
I am worried as an interviewer because for me, it's so important to protect the sanctity of, you know, no, no reveals. I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but for our listeners, I'm going to be careful with my phrasing and Beth's going to be careful with her phrasing. And just to show you how interesting a romance novel this is, on the jacket copy, we've got a Blurb by Gillian McAllister, who writes psychological thrillers. And she said surprising and heart stopping. So firstly, you're not expecting an author like Gillian McAllister to be blurbing a romance novel. So speak a bit about that for us, please, Faith.
- [03:38]
Beth O'Leary
Well, I mean, I am actually very lucky to know Gilly. So that is one of those things that I think, if you're not in the publishing world is an interesting thing to know about blurbs is that sometimes they happen because, you know, I can hand it to her and say, please, could you read? And so I feel very lucky in that respect. But also, there are surprises in this book. And I think the reason my publisher were interested in getting that quote was because it is a way of sort of saying, isn't it? You know, there's a little bit more sort of surprise and mystery to this romance than you might than you might otherwise expect.
- [04:10]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. I mean, as an author as well, I have friends who write in different genres and I'm not an author who can stick to one genre. So I will approach one author friend, please, to blurb, you know, one book and another one to blurb another because I wouldn't have them doing it. So this is a great way to signal that this is something a little bit different. So, okay, inspiration. And again, I don't want to give away the twists. What came to you first or did the start off as something else and it evolved?
- [04:39]
Beth O'Leary
Yes, so it was much more. And actually this is always how I start really is with that hook, with that question, with an unusual situation that either brings people together or connects people because I want to write about human relationships. And so it's kind of trying to find a kind of a wait. What sort of question is where I start? So with my debut, the flat share that was two people share a one bed flat. But don't Meet, because one of them works nights. You know, it's that kind of what if? And then what I work to do is really ground that sort of unusual concept in something that feels like, okay, well what would actually really happen if you were in that situation? So I started with two people with the same name, man and a woman with the same name. And that was the beginning. And I really did like, you know, like us when we embark on this story. I too had no idea why there were two Charlie Joneses turning up on the Isle of Ormer. So that was, unsurprisingly, a big journey for me. But yeah, I always start with that, with that kind of big concept. And then I ask myself, who are these people? And what might be a really interesting way to answer that question that I've sort of posed, I guess of in this case, why are they both there as well as all the other things that are kind of happening in that story of, you know, the two of them getting to know each other, determined not to fall in love.
- [06:05]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's incredible. And I love that you do it that way because I think for a lot of writers, they write the book and then afterwards they're trying to find the hook. Right. They like, oh, I wanted to tell this story about this and that. And then when someone goes, yeah, but what's the hook? Then they really struggle. So I think it's really smart to start with that what if and that hook and then take it from there because it makes it much easier.
- [06:29]
Beth O'Leary
Yeah, I'd actually never thought about it that way, but I suppose it is, it's like leading with the part that you're going to lead with when you explain the book to people.
- [06:39]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. So something that I want to discuss is intentionality when it comes to structure because a lot of emerging authors will go, oh, I'm going to write third person close because that's what I feel comfortable with. Or I'm just going to write first person because that's what I feel comfortable with. This book. There is so much intentionality in terms of each thing that was chosen. And again, I'm going to be careful here because it's part epistolary novel. So we have sort of diary entries, we have emails as well, and then we have sort of multiple POV third person close when it comes to backstory. But the diaries and the emails are in the present day timeline. So again, was that something that started off that way or was it as you were coming to grips with this concept you were going, okay, this is how I'm going to need to handle it.
- [07:33]
Beth O'Leary
Yes. So the decision to. I've always wanted to write diaries. I love reading them and I just, I like voiciness in my first person narrators anyway. I like to really lean on kind of making you feel like whenever you're in one of their chapters, you really know you are. And so diary is almost like an extension of that in some ways, isn't it? It's just having a little more voice on the page in some ways. And I've wanted to do it for a while. I wanted to do emails for a while. So that kind of definitely sparked my interest. And the other thing that it. It also allowed me to do some other things that, that were useful plot wise and interesting plot wise. And I thought very hard about the decision to use those, to have those kind of past stories. And it's. It was one of those things where I really just had to try it and I really didn't know how it would feel. You know, sometimes, sometimes you can plan and you can figure it out. And I just thought that that was one of those things that I needed to feel. Whether it felt disjointed. And for me, I hope it really works. But it was, it was a lot of fun and I definitely stretched myself in terms of that and in terms of kind of using first and third. And, you know, these are things. It's funny, I actually, I said to my husband when I was kind of talking through all these decisions with him, he was like, I don't think I know what your other books are written in. And it's really odd, isn't it? Because, you know, he's read those books many times. But I think when you're a reader who doesn't kind of have a writer's head, you're so caught up in the story, you're not necessarily thinking about it. But of course, those decisions are often very intentional. I'd say I'm most comfortable writing in first person. I only tried writing in third with my fourth book and I remember how. So I get it if people are nervous about it because I remember that it almost feels like trying on someone else's shoes. You're like, this is weird. You know, like, this is kind of like writing, but I'm doing it in a different, slightly different. It almost changes your voice, I think, when you. Your writing voice. So I, I do get it. But yeah, I was having a field day playing around with it here.
- [09:30]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, no, it's really good and Again, I don't want to give too much away, but you'll read and you'll get to like the twist. And then when you come back and read again, it makes so much more sense. Things that you weren't really paying attention to. So that's why I speak about that intentionality, because there was so much intentionality here. So for listeners who are struggling with should I do this, should I do that? You know, definitely pick up this book to see how the structure really aids the story. Something important, especially when it comes to first person narratives, especially in diary entries and in emails, is really differentiating the two characters voices. And I know, you know, I've watched some of your Instagrams and stuff and you've said that when it comes to editing, you will look at different things in different edits. So for one thing you might edit just for tension and pacing. Another time you'll come and look at it just for characterization. So is that something you come to at one point to really make sure that those voices sound unique and different?
- [10:35]
Beth O'Leary
Yes, there will always. I will always do multiple kind of voice character edits. So I am just, I'm like trying not to get distracted by line by line kind of fiddling or all the other things that I want to fix and just trying to make sure that their character sings out wherever it can. And one trick I always use, I mean, this isn't a very clever trick, but there are always certain words, phrases, even types of punctuation that each narrator. And this is not necessarily exclusive to when I'm writing like diary, like in this book. You know, I'll do this if I'm just using a first person narrator is they will have a few, maybe no more than three or four, but just distinctively them turns of phrase, little things. And I hope that they almost pass you by, you know, because they're very subtle. But I think they do something in terms of really just having a repeated. It might be just that one character says ugh. And the other, if they're frustrated and the other one says, ah, you know, something like as small as that. But I think all those things, little things, are little signals to you that add up that you're with this person, not with that person. Because that is really important to me, I think. I mean, it's a chance to give, like there's a chance in every line to give more character if you're using voice in that way. And you want every opportunity to help your reader know your character as deeply as possible. So like, why miss a Trick, you know, just pile in everything you can to. To do that.
- [12:03]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. I mean, and there's quirks. So someone, you know, one character might use contractions, or they may not use subject, verb, object. They may just, you know. So again, for our listeners, a great way to see how to differentiate voice one from another and to consistently apply that. And it's, you know, like you said earlier, that the reader won't really pay attention to point of view. They won't really pay attention to this and that, because if you're a good writer and you're doing your job, you draw them so much into the story that they're not even focusing on that. But again, to become such a good writer, you have to know your craft, and you make it look so easy. But it isn't easy. And that's why we sort of pick this apart on the podcast to go, okay, read this book. You immersed yourself in it, and you got swept away by the story. But how did that author do that? What were the little things that they did?
- [13:00]
Beth O'Leary
Yeah, I think the dream is that you make it look effortless. Right. But I am certainly not a writer who writes effortlessly. I delete tens, if not hundreds of thousands of words for every book that I write, partly because I am a writer who learns through writing. I think this frustrates me about myself, and I've had to sort of come to accept it that I can't always go in knowing what I'm doing, and sometimes it's better not to try because I'm just wasting time. So sometimes I have to. It's that really hard decision, isn't it, of when am I ready to start? And most of my books have at least one quite major false start. So I will really think I've got it, and I'll be like, yeah, and I'll maybe write somewhere between 5 and 20,000 words before I'm like, I'm way off. Like, the world is. I'm in the wrong place. The wrong people are involved. Like, I'm talking about that wrong. And there are a million other wrongs along the way. So, yeah, I think it's definitely a case of just honing and honing and honing and knowing as well. And this is a lesson that I hold on to, that the work that you're doing, sometimes it can feel like it's gonna show, you know, like people are gonna see that I struggled so much with this book, and it's not gonna feel the same as the one that I wrote in three months in a beautiful creative Burst, you know, because some books are like that and some books aren't, at least for me. And I would say, like, it doesn't show, if anything, often I think those books that have been crafted and crafted and have beaten you, and you can't. You feel like, you know, you can't do it and then you do it again. And those books sometimes can be the most sort of accomplished because you've shined them, you know, you've made them as perfect as you can. And some of. You know, if I look at my backlist of titles, some of my very most beloved books that I most often hear from, from readers about are ones that I remember thinking, will people feel it in here? Like, will they be reading this and feeling the effort that I put into it?
- [15:04]
Bianca Murray
Some books, it feels like you have to wrestle them to the ground. You know, it's like an octopus. It's like, oh, my God, I've got to get all these hands, and I've got to really struggle with this concept
- [15:13]
Beth O'Leary
to tame it like that. And why, you know, I really wish maybe with experience, you develop this skill. But I wish I could tell when I come up with the idea whether it's going to be one of those. Because I always think it's going to be a nice, easy one. Every time I'm like, well, this book's going to be really straightforward. Like, I can't see any problems here. You know, I'll figure it out.
- [15:35]
Bianca Murray
I think it's just as well you don't, because then you may not actually dive into it, you know, and if
- [15:41]
Beth O'Leary
I knew, then maybe I'd never do it.
- [15:45]
Bianca Murray
And the false starts and deleting that work, I think it's so important because, yeah, I think a lot of emerging writers just write the first draft and they're like, that's it. It's amazing. And I'm sending it off to an agent. And they don't see how many words do get deleted and how much feels like it's wasted. But it's never wasted, because you would never get to the point where it feels right if you hadn't gone through all the false starts and all the words that had to be deleted.
- [16:14]
Beth O'Leary
Yeah, One of my sort of major pieces of writing advice is always finish the first draft because so much of the work of crafting the actual novel happens after you've done the first draft. And I mean that to be sort of, like, empowering rather than like, oh, God, because it feels like I'm saying everything. All the work starts now, but what I mean, is sort of just let yourself have a bad first draft. Because you cannot have a novel until you've got an end to at least start reshaping. And for me, I often don't know what the book is until I read, you know, on some level at least. And I'm often a little surprised by my first draft. I'll kind of particularly, you know, tonally or pace or something like that. I'll read it through and I'll be like, God, this is like a lot faster than I expected. Or this is, you know, this is a more thoughtful novel than I thought it was going to be. Or it's things like that kind of come to you because there's something very organic about first draft and that is beautiful and important. But the second draft is really, for me, when a book becomes the book, that probably resembles something like what you're going to read, you know, because the first draft is for raw material and like you can't shape something out of nothing. So you've got to, you've got to get the words down. And I know how hard it is. Like finishing a novel is a massive achievement. Like I think continuing and having the self belief to keep going for 100,000 words and letting the story carry that, like I, you know, it's not to say that it's easy, but it's such an important step, isn't it?
- [17:49]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. And it also, I think it takes the pressure off of that first draft. Because the first draft should really be play time. It should be, let me try this, let me try that. You know, because the further along you go, with each decision you make, you are cutting off options for yourself in terms of storytelling. Whereas that first draft, it could be anything, you could go anywhere. And it really is a delight to play with the story that way as opposed to putting so much pressure on yourself.
- [18:19]
Beth O'Leary
Yeah. And I think you can do some of your best work by giving yourself that mentality as well. I certainly find that saying to myself, like, even writing something and thinking, oh my God, I would never let anyone read that, or, you know, that's. I know that's clumsy or that's tonally, like I'm trying to be too literary or doing things where I push myself, like that's cringy. Or, you know, I do that in a first draft because no one's watching. No one's watching in the first draft. And that's like, it's like dancing. It's like dancing in your room, you know, and, and that is how it should feel. I think, and that's the delight of the first draft. It's actually my favorite, my favorite part. And then reality hits and you think, okay, so now people are watching me do this dance in my bedroom. So like, am I brave enough? And is this actually good? But if you've given yourself, if you've pushed yourself out of your comfort zone in that first draft, then you can rein yourself back in or do what you need to do. But you've already gone a little bit further than you maybe would if you were kind of thinking about it too much.
- [19:19]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, completely. So in terms of having almost dual timeline narratives or multiple timeline narratives, I always say that you're going to have a present day timeline and then you're going to have the past. And you have to be so careful when you go back to the past because the past cannot drag the reader back. When you put the past in the story, it needs to further the plot of the modern day story. Like, it needs to be that you planted curiosity seeds in the modern day. The reader's super curious about them. And so when you go back to the past, they actually are happy about it because they're getting payoffs for the seeds that you planted originally. But it really is a balancing act to make sure that you, you get that balance right. So is that something again that you play around with or is it because, you know, you've written so many books, you kind of feel that instinctively?
- [20:18]
Beth O'Leary
Oh, I think a lot of it is in instinct and actually has always been, possibly was more so at the beginning. I probably think about these things harder now in some ways than I, than I used to. But I totally agree with you. It's the challenge with a flashback or a back timeline or really anything where you're pulling a reader, you're asking a reader to pause the story they're currently embroiled in to do something else or be somewhere else or with someone else is making it worth their while. Like, you just need to feel like the ideal is that they, they're kind of delighted to be wherever they are, not like it's another that chapter. And because I play, I mostly write multiple points of view in my books. I am quite used to the challenge of hopping. And for me often that hop can actually be very good for the energy of the novel because, you know, you don't stay in one head too long. You're like boing, boing, boing. I'm hoping that makes some sense. It wasn't just some weird stuff.
- [21:14]
Bianca Murray
It does because it helps with the tension and the pacing. Right. Because you've gotten to a point in the present day story and it's like, dun, dun, dun. And then you're like, but wait, this is how we got there. And then the reader's like, oh, my God, I really want to see how we got there. Because in the beginning, and this is something as well that emerging writers need to guard against, is they tell too much in the beginning.
- [21:35]
Beth O'Leary
Whereas why did this. Yes, yes.
- [21:39]
Bianca Murray
Withholding as much as you can for as long as you can to keep the reader turning pages.
- [21:45]
Beth O'Leary
Yes. And also just telling less in general. Like my. I think it's very telling that the first draft, the first manuscript of my debut, the Flatshare, which was the book that got me my book to book, my first book deal that went out to agents and only one agent was interested in reading beyond the first three chapters. And then when it went out to publishers, it went in a preempt. And all around the world, people were. I mean, it was absolutely the wildest and most amazing time in my life. But the difference, what had happened between those two things was that the first three chapters had stopped. Like, the first three chapters, when I sent it to agents were here's loads of sort of everybody's day. You know, here are who these people are and what I have since learned and what I. I worked on it with my agent before it went out on submission. We took out a huge amount of content from the first six chapters. And I am now such a fan of put people right in it. Don't really tell them anything. They don't need to be told anything. They're right there with you. Just let them learn who the people are by seeing them dealing with whatever it is you've thrown them right into at the start of the book.
- [22:56]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. And it's starting immediately with the inciting incident, as opposed to build up before the inciting incident. And these days, people's attention spans are really not great. So now more than ever, you need to grab the reader. Whereas before, I think writers had the luxury of being. This is the usual day. La, la, la. Birds chirping. And then this happens. Now we just like have to get to it faster.
- [23:20]
Beth O'Leary
You know, doing some embroidery on a sofa or whatever it is that people used to do back when novels were the only entertainment.
- [23:27]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. Can we speak a bit about the world building? Because again, people think world building just pertains to fantasy novels. I mean, this was such a lovely setting. So quaint. It felt so real. The supporting characters, I mean, each of them could have been the main character in their own novel because you just love everybody so much. So can you speak a bit about building that kind of work?
- [23:50]
Beth O'Leary
Yes. Now that was really important to me with this book in particular Swept Away, which is the novel I wrote before. The Name Game is about two strangers who end up lost at sea together after a one night stand on a houseboat that is swept out to the ocean. So it is two people in one set with open sea all around them. And it was an amazing challenge to write and I, I'm so proud of that book. But my goodness, when I finished it I was like, give me some space and people I was longing to write, you know, a wonderful motley cast of characters again. So that is definitely what you get in the Name Game. And yeah, I think also Swept Away taught me so much about setting because I was forced to use everything I had on that houseboat and, and the sea, like using, you know, they had an unchanging scenery in some senses, but of course the sea and the sky are ever changing, but they was just really not. I didn't have the opportunity to have another character walk in to provide variety or, you know, there was so much limitation that I looked a lot more for what I could do. And I think it showed me like how much setting can bring like to a novel in a way that I possibly hadn't explored as much before. So bringing the Isle of Ormer, which is my fictional island that I got to invent, which was just, I mean, getting to invent a whole island after being in one tiny boat. I was like having so much fun kind of being like. And then there could be this here and you know, filling, creating my own world. It was really about making sure that I was coming back all the time to Vibe, really. Because I think actually with setting that is more important than the stuff that's there. It's like, how does it evoke the feeling that you want people to feel in this place? Not really what it looks like. And for me the island needed to be kind of earthy and stripped back and you know, I quite consciously kind of don't have much tech. Like they're not. Well, the island has no cars or streetlights. But also, I mean like day to day, they're not posting on Instagram, they're not living the kind of life that we actually all are where we're constantly sort of googling stuff. And I wanted to use that to kind of create, you know, that's part of the setting really is that is the disconnectedness of it, but for it to kind of always have warmth and. And a sense of home and belonging. So all those. So I would always come back to Vibe and then it would be like, when you're naming the pub, how are you bringing the vibe when you're, you know, when you're describing this speech, like, how does it come back to that sense that you want the person to have when they feel like they're standing there? So, yeah, I so enjoyed exploring setting with this one.
- [26:28]
Bianca Murray
And setting really helps a lot with sort of character development and character arc, because when you're speaking about a book that's on a houseboat, that's a very claustrophobic sort of feel to people. Hugely claustrophobic. Whereas with this book, you're giving your characters space and room to breathe because they both arrive kind of damaged and they, you know, they need to. They need to like, sort of exhale and find themselves, and that allows them to find each other. So setting is more than just backdrop. It really helps in terms of character development as well.
- [27:04]
Beth O'Leary
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And what they needed was sort of fresh air. And that's kind of what I wanted the setting to be. And actually in Swept Away, what they needed was to not be able to get away from each other. You know, they need. And so you're right. Like, you can use that setting to really. You can lean on it in the same way that you might tweak your characters to sort of. How can this bring more to my play lot?
- [27:27]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, it made me think of the chicks. They used to be the Dixie Chicks there, the lyric. She needed wide open spaces, room to make big mistakes. So, yeah, love this so much, Beth. So I'm holding it up again. We are going to link to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page. If you buy the book there, you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time. Get this book to learn so much about the craft of writing, but also to just really enjoy it and gasp when you get to the twists. Like, be in touch with me and tell me when you get to them. Thank you so much, Beth.
- [28:03]
Beth O'Leary
Oh, thank you so much. It's been so great to chat.
- [28:06]
Cece Lera
It's hard to believe, but it's my 10th wedding anniversary this year and my husband and I are planning on what we want to do to celebrate. When we got married to 20 somethings, fresh out of grad school, just starting our careers, we didn't really want to invest in a big honeymoon. It felt a bit irresponsible when we wanted to buy a house and all those grown up things. But Fast forward to 2026 and my Italian husband and I are finally planning a wine tour in Italy. If you have travel coming up, join me in using Rosetta Stone to learn some local languages there's something about spring that feels like a reset, fresh energy and the motivation to try something new. Learning a language is the perfect way to channel that momentum into a skill that's going to open up the world. Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for 30 years. Their immersive, intuitive method helps you naturally absorb your new language without memorizing random vocabulary lists or relying on translations. Instead, you get to connect with words, visuals and meanings in context, the way that language is meant to be learned. Working in the publishing business means my days are often packed with meetings and manuscripts, but I love how simple these lessons are and they fit into my schedule. Whether I have five minutes between emails or an hour on the weekend, I can access my lessons from my desktop
- [29:10]
Kate Hilton
or the mobile app.
- [29:11]
Cece Lera
Since we're heading to Italy, I've been using the True Accent feature, which gives real time feedback on my pronunciation so I can sound more natural when visiting the local vineyards. It's like having a personal coach help me communicate with confidence. Rosetta Stone offers 25 languages to choose from, including Spanish, French, German and Japanese. You can find the one that fits your next big adventure. Ready to start learning a new language this spring? Visit rosettastone.com today today to explore Rosetta Stone and choose a language that's right for you. Go to Rosetta Stone.com today now and begin your language learning journey.
- [29:42]
Bianca Murray
Hi everyone. Welcome to Today's Author Interview. Our guest today is the bestselling author of three novels, the Hole in the Middle. Just like Family and better luck next time. She is also the co author with Elizabeth Renzetti of the Quillen Packet Mystery series. When not writing, she maintains an active psychotherapy practice working with individuals and couples. She has a particular interest in personal reinvention and life transitions. She has had prior careers in law, university administration and major gift fundraising. She lives in Toronto with her family and it's my pleasure to welcome back Kate Hilton. Welcome Kate.
- [30:24]
Kate Hilton
Thanks Bianca. It's always so nice to see you.
- [30:28]
Bianca Murray
It's always so lovely to see you. And for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, you have to go watch because Kate's glasses are just incredible as is. I think it's a dress. It's just gorgeous. So for those of you who are missing out on the visuals Go and take a look. Okay. As well, I am holding up the book cover, City of the Muse. And this is an arc, so an advanced reader copy. It is exquisite. So you know that the actual book itself is going to be stunning. Okay, Kate, will you please read us that flap copy for us?
- [31:01]
Kate Hilton
I would love to. All right, here we go. Egypt, 1903. When renowned papyrologist Helen Gardner arrives at an excavation site in the ancient city of Kalliopolis, she learns that she has been given the job because her predecessor has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Only one of the women on the dig, Helen, tasked with restoring and cataloguing the thousands of papyrus fragments recovered at the site, soon discovers that there's more to Calliopolis than meets the eye. The archaeologists on the dig, mostly men, all have not only their towering egos, but their own agendas, including secrets they might kill to protect. Toronto, 2019. Archivist Maddie Sloan is at a dead end. She feels like her academic career has stalled, and she's still healing from her recent breakup with her former partner, Ben. To make matters worse, Ben still works with Maddie's father, a famous archaeologist and with whom Maddie has had a major falling out. It feels like her father has chosen Ben over her. When famous TV archaeologist Piet Pajar arrives at the Toronto Archaeological Museum to verify the provenance of objects from their Egyptian collection, believed to be from Calliopolis, Maddie jumps at the opportunity. After all, she has her own ties to the cursed city of Calliopolis through her grandmother, Iris, who worked at the site. As Maddie and Peter begin digging into objects and circumstances surrounding the excavation, they learn that two paparologists seem to have abruptly disappeared from the dig without an explanation. Suddenly, the search for provenance becomes a quest to uncover a history shrouded in secrets and lies. And a murder that has been covered up for more than a century.
- [32:46]
Bianca Murray
Done. Okay, so from there. Wow, Kate. So this book is so different from your others, and so I need to know how the idea began. Concept first. Like, oh, this is a cool concept. Or did a character come to you and you were like, okay, character, first thing, concept. Take us through it. Right.
- [33:08]
Kate Hilton
Well, I should maybe begin by saying that I have a lifelong, completely nerdy interest in archaeology. Like in grade six, you know, when you have to do. Maybe it was the same in South Africa, maybe not, but in Canada in grade six, in my era, you had to do a public speech in grade six. And, you know, it's grade six. They're 12, right? So it's like my dog, Sammy, like what I like about koalas. Right. Mine was on death and burial in Ancient Egypt. So I, this is, this is a long standing interest and probably also related to the fact that, you know, the King Tut exhibit had a huge international tour in the late 70s or early 80s when I was, you know, knee high and, and I went to see that at the ROM in Toronto and it was like brain exploding stuff. So that interest stayed with me always. And so I've continued to, you know, when I travel I like to go see archaeological sites and so on. So that's by way of background. That's a long standing special interest, you might say. And I'm a neurodivergent person. So we take our special interests pretty seriously. And so for this particular book I, you know, I subscribe to National Geographic and I'm always getting little tidbits about weird archaeological facts that I kind of squirrel away for this book. It was a number of years ago, a couple of different news stories sort of collided in around the same time in my brain. And one had to do with a scandal at the, at a museum at Oxford where the collection of papyrus fragments collected at a site called Oxyrhynchus in the late 1800s are kept. They're stored there. They've been stored there since, you know, 1896. And they collected so many fragments at Oxyrhynchus that they've still only like to this day, present day, have only translated a tiny, tiny fraction of them, like 2%. I mean, like a really tiny fraction. And there was a huge scandal which, you know, you can look up involving the curator of this collection and the allegation that he had perhaps taken some of these fragments and tried to sell them to the big bad Sackler family who were building a museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. so it was a big scandal because some of these fragments are biblical. Right. So that's why the Bible people wanted them. So that was one. There aren't, you can imagine, not a huge number of scandals in the field of paparology or even Egyptology really anymore. But so this was like really big news in Egyptology. So I was pretty interested in that. It was like a dark academia scandal and Egyptology scandal, like a classical literature scandal, like all wrapped into one. So it really like tickled my brain.
- [36:01]
Bianca Murray
It's giving doc academia. I'm loving it.
- [36:04]
Kate Hilton
Yeah. And there was at the same time another story about this like grad student, you know, who, those of us who were grad students or know people who are grad students know that you Know, you spend a lot of your life, like, just trying to find something that's obscure enough that no one's written about it and interesting enough that you might. It might actually have some legs as an area of academic study. This is like a very hard needle to thread. And there was a graduate student somewhere in Italy who stumbled across a letter that Galileo had written and it had been misfiled in the archives. Right. It was like, just in the wrong place. And he stumbled across it and, like, don't ask me what it said or why it was important, but it, like, completely changed how people understood the story that everyone knows about Galileo, that he sort of fell on his sword and, you know, confessed to having misled the Pope or whomever about his findings and then sort of off to the side said, but yet it moves. And anyway, so the story was that there was something about this letter that actually got contradicted the known narrative about Galileo. And originally I thought I would do like a kind of an archive story, because that had been so interesting to me.
- [37:21]
Bianca Murray
And the.
- [37:21]
Kate Hilton
The finished book isn't really about archives, but I do have a character who is like an archivist who is really struggling to find her way in academia and trying to find it, mired in that moment of, like, what have I done with 10 years of my life and nothing to show for it? And I'm now this lowly little. The encounter in the basement of a museum, and then she finds something that really changes her world. So those two. Those two weird little National Geographic news stories were the impetus for the book.
- [37:56]
Bianca Murray
I love it. But again, even more so because I will have these ideas and I have idea one, idea two, idea three. And I think they're all different books. They are things that I will have to, you know, look at completely separately. And then when that aha moment comes when you realize they are actually the same book.
- [38:17]
Kate Hilton
Oh, that you best. Isn't that the best?
- [38:20]
Beth O'Leary
Right.
- [38:20]
Bianca Murray
It's just like fireworks going off and you like, oh, my God. The whole time I thought these were separate stories. They are not. So, I mean, firstly, okay, I wanted to ask you how long this took to write, because I can imagine this took a long time. And. And I think. What were you working on different projects while you were working on this? Take us through that.
- [38:40]
Kate Hilton
So I was probably working on this book for about six years, but always between other projects. So I think I started working on it when my third novel, Better Luck Next Time, was in edits, I started doing the research for it. I just got. That was probably around the time that I found these stories. And then I started reading all kinds of academic articles about, you know, what people found on those digs and learning about what papyrus studies was and what was the importance of these particular kind of finds in the history of Egyptology. And then I got really interested in women's roles in the field of archaeology, which maybe we should talk about later. But that's a super interesting field in and of itself. And then, you know, and then that book came back and I promoted it. And then I was working on. I was working on this book. I'd started writing this book when the Pandemic hit. And because this book is a departure for me, but also so research heavy, and I was really, you know, working in isolation through the pandemic, I kind of got a little stuck on it. And then the story goes that Liz Renzetti and I were, you know, wandering around in the snow in Toronto at a particularly low point in the pandemic, and both of us working on projects that were kind of like a little bit stuck in the shallows and said, let's just. What if we just had some fun writing something different for a while? And then the Quill and Pekka mystery series came. So then. Then we wrote two more books in that series while I was still writing this book. So this poor book just kept getting shunted aside. But I was always happy to go back to it, and I was very happy when the time came that I had a really nice Runway to work on it, which sort of happened in the. In the last couple of years.
- [40:28]
Bianca Murray
That's incredible. So I have tried to cheat on books with other books, and it just. I don't know. I always. I've been trying recently especially, and I just can't. I'm so fascinated when people can do that. And I'm fascinated by writing collaborations like you and Liz have. I've told you guys both, I think it's absolutely incredible, but that, you know, again, for our listeners, this is so important because sometimes a story needs room to breathe. Teeth. Sometimes it isn't the story for right now, but that doesn't mean, you know, burn it or reject it for all eternity. Sometimes it just means work on something else and come back, and then things might fall into place for it.
- [41:12]
Kate Hilton
I mean, I really think of myself as quite a monogamist when it comes to my projects, but I think that's just a story I tell myself. Like, looking back, I've. I've played around a lot. And, you know, it's because books have A momentum arc to them, and they're different for every book. And somewhere for me in the middle, I get, like, overcome with a sense that this. I do not have what it takes to write this book. I'm good enough to realize this book, or I'm too exhausted to realize this book. And I do need to. To toggle sometimes to just get a different injection of fuel. And sometimes, like the book, the life of publishing lets you do that just because books are coming out and you take a break and you do promotion and you're at different life stages with projects. You're editing one, you're drafting another. But I like that better. Like, it's not ideal to be really deep into first drafts at the same time. I would say to your readers, to your listeners, there was a point in time where I completely had to shelve a book. And I remember saying to Liz, I actually, I've now discovered something about myself as a writer. I cannot write two first drafts at the same time. Neither of them is getting enough of me. So I wouldn't set out to do that again. I have to say.
- [42:39]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, personally, yeah, it's fascinating. Okay, so in terms of the dual timeline, dual POV narrative, I'm assuming that from when the idea fell into place, that is how it was always going to be. Or was it a case of you started with one and then realized you needed the other one?
- [43:02]
Kate Hilton
I always knew it would be a dual timeline. I like dual timeline mysteries a lot. And I think I was thinking about people like Kate Morton, who I think does such a good job with that. I love a cold case. Right. So my own tastes and mysteries. Like, if you said to me, it's a cold case, it has either an archaeological or artistic or literary thing going on in the past, and there's some object or piece of writing or like. Possession is one of my favorite books as bias Possession. That's an older book now, but it. When I was an English literature major, I thought that book was like the absolute peak of perfection. And so I have an attachment to those types of stories, and I wanted to write one of my own. I mean, I think it's always a good rule of thumb to write books you want to read. And so this book, you know, it tickled me in a bunch of. In a bunch of my different interests. And dual timeline was one of the components I wanted to. I wanted to play with.
- [44:13]
Bianca Murray
And those of you who do it so well, make it look easy. But here's the thing. With a dual timeline narrative, especially when the Say present day one has got to do with figuring out what happened in the past is. It really is a balancing act. So when you go from the present day back to the past, the past narrative has actually got to be feeding the present day narrative. Right. There's got to be a golden thread between both narratives. One, to explain why they're on two different books entirely, and two, so that when the reader goes from the present to the past, they don't feel like, are we going back to the past again? Because they are actually going there to get answers to questions that you have planted in the present narrative.
- [44:58]
Kate Hilton
Exactly. And really, it's a. I think that it is about keeping the momentum going because it's very easy to lose that energy when you're switching timelines. So you have to continue the thread of suspense, in particular, that you feel like you're as a reader, continuing on your hunt for answers as you jump through time. And that in a satisfactory, satisfactory kind of a way, your own investigation into the book, whether it's a mystery or not. I mean, every book is a mystery, in a sense. Why are we here? Why are we reading this story? What are we trying to learn about this character? Like, what will happen? And so when we're jumping through timelines, we have to feel like we're moving forward in our understanding of whatever that essential question that we're trying to answer is is.
- [45:52]
Bianca Murray
So what I just remembered what I was going to say earlier. You were saying that you get to a point in a project where you're like, can I do this? Can I do justice to this? Can I carry on? And I get to that point as well. But my favorite part, because the part when I know that I'm actually going to finish this book is the part when I'm terrified I'm going to die before I finish the book.
- [46:13]
Kate Hilton
It's like, oh, my God, I'm going to get hit by a bus.
- [46:16]
Bianca Murray
Or something's going to happen before I finish this book. And that's when I know I've built up up enough momentum to keep going. I don't know if you reach that point after the. After that. I can't do this.
- [46:26]
Kate Hilton
I'm so happy. I'm not the only person who experiences that. It's like deep writer psychosis, right? It's like, you know, I must see this through. I'll crawl across the desert.
- [46:39]
Bianca Murray
I don't take a lot of notes while I'm actually writing, but when I get to that point, I start making notes for the author who has to step in and finish my.
- [46:48]
Kate Hilton
I love that so much. Writers are so crazy in their own distinctive ways. You know, I'm. I feel seen. Thank you, Bianca.
- [46:56]
Bianca Murray
Here we go. Okay, so now differentiating our characters in our dual timeline narratives, because what you write so well is like, strong woman, the kind of woman you don't expect to find at a particular point in time. I mean, if we look at Helen for her time, so, you know, going against everything, what everyone wants for her. And then we come to Maddie, who, okay, it's 2019, and she's feeling a little bit lost. She's got more to prove. But again, it's so important in those two different narratives to completely separate them in a way so that the reader could pick up the page and not even see the headline and where we are to be able to know which character they're with. What's your advice there?
- [47:42]
Kate Hilton
Well, a couple of things. So the first is, even though. So if you're writing historicals, right, and you want to write strong female characters, I mean, obviously strong women have existed throughout history and found a way to sort of buck against the strictures of their particular circumstances. But there are always people you can read about. So I was very interested to read about specific and real life women who had been part of the very early days of archaeology, because archaeology was a really new discipline. And so the women who were there in that discipline were. Were going to university. They were getting kind of the first university degrees issued to women. Women mostly were not given degrees. They could go to university, but they wouldn't be given degrees at the end of it. And they were given degrees in archaeology because it was this new science. And they haven't. Hadn't really figured out that there was kind of anything in it to exclude women from yet. Right. It had no, like, no, you know, there was no franchise to protect, particularly. So women were there. And you can imagine the kind of women in that era who wanted to. To go into dusty, dirty, dangerous places and do this kind of work that was both extremely intellectual, but also, like, extremely menial because everyone was literally carrying baskets of dirt out, and no one, you know, they were inventing a whole discipline. Right. So you just kind of did it all. These were very unusual women, and there are lots of wonderful books. Kathleen shepherd, who's an American professor, does a lot of work on these women, and she's written a wonderful book called Women in the Valley of the Kings. Yeah, incredible book, full of. Full of stories about these people. So my first piece of advice for your listeners is do your research. Right. Because the women exist, you know, at any point in history who are just doing something a little bit different. And I always liked to start kind of grounding in reality because the way independence and free thinking and spirit kind of shows up, it is historically specific. Right. Things that feel like radical acts of. Of individuality in, you know, 1890 look really different than radical acts of individuality in 2026. And so, you know, you really need to, I think, situate yourself in those time periods so that you're not writing someone who's completely ahistorical. But, yeah, for character.
- [50:29]
Bianca Murray
I mean, I don't know.
- [50:30]
Kate Hilton
We've just to introduce a whole other thread. I'm a psychotherapist, so I've spent my whole life being very interested in what makes up a character. That is to say, how does a person think about themselves? What stories do they have about themselves and their relationships? What stories do they have about themselves and their strengths? What dreams do they do they have for themselves? Did they see themselves as a collection of roles? Do they see themselves as a collection of wishes, interests, priorities, relationships? What are they proud of about themselves? What kinds of moments in their lives do they feel define them as a person and that, you know, so in a sense, characters are like regular people, right? We all have those. We could all tell a story about ourselves and what makes us us. And past or present, you want to be able to do that with your characters. And so I always feel like there are as many different kinds of strong female characters as there are different kinds of weak female characters. You know, it's not a particular. The strong woman character isn't a particular kind of Barbie that you trot out, and that's your strong woman Barbie. Barbie, right.
- [51:49]
Bianca Murray
They have.
- [51:50]
Kate Hilton
They're strong in different ways in different circumstances, and everybody has things about them that make them vulnerable. Yeah.
- [51:59]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. And, I mean, you chose to write Helen in the past in the first person, and then Maddie sort of present day in the third person again. Is that, like, how do you. How do you decide which character should be first, which should be third? Do you play around with that until the voice feels right to you? Because I talk on the podcast all the time about circling the building of the work, and at the beginning, there are so many options available to us, but writers like yourself, I know that you're very intentional with your choices. So can you take us through that?
- [52:31]
Kate Hilton
Yeah. Point of view. I've played with point of view in each of the books I've done. I've played with it a little bit. And so I don't have one default point of view that I always go back to. And it is a question. I love the way that you phrase that of circling the building and figuring out what is the right thing for this book and for this character. I am quite an auditory writer. That is to say, I hear voices. I can hear. There's a sense in which I can hear my characters voices much more than I can see them. For example, like with. And I write with Liz, who's very visual as a writer. And I. I'm not like, I can't tell you exactly what people look like. And if you read closely, you'll notice I don't have a lot of physical descriptions because it feels a little forced to me. What I can do is really hear them. Can hear them talking. I can hear their dialogue. And Helen was always in the first person for me. I could just really hear her. And I liked the contrast of doing a different point of view between the two parts of the book. And I feel like the first person in the past was great because it is. You're really being dropped into a foreign place. Right. It's a long time ago, a different part of the world. But it's also a very distinctive setting, like an archaeological dig site at that particular point in time. Like, none of us have been there, you know, and none of us really know very much about it because it's not even a part of Egyptology. Like, so there's archeology, and in that, there's the house of Egyptology. And deep buried in that is this tiny little hut of paparology. And most people know nothing about it. Right. So putting it in the first person just makes it more immediate. Like it's more startling. It's like you feel it there and you don't. I think you don't have to work as hard to try to picture it. You're just there in the present. The third person just let me do a wider lens. I felt like I wanted you to be really literally in the dirt with Helen, with Maddie. I wanted you to be able to kind of see a way broader lens, because I'm also talking about a whole lot of political and cultural themes about artifacts and institutions and how they operate. And I just wanted to, like, have a little bit of a wider lens. I think in the present day and third person, you know, you give up something in immediacy to get a broader view of the landscape.
- [55:10]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I love that. And for our listeners, so important because how Kate just spoke about it just speaks to the, you know, you choosing something on purpose to serve a purpose, as opposed to just being like kind of like third person past. You know, like, remember in past tense, if somebody is relating something in past tense, they can give foreshadowing, for example, that you can't have in the present tense, but you have immediacy in the present tense. So always weigh those pros and cons. We pretty much at the end of our time. But something that I also wanted to ask you, Kate, was coming up with Kalliopolis. It's not a real place, but it's based on real places. Did you have. I know you said you're not really a visual person. Did you create maps of the place to keep everything in your mind, drawings or something?
- [55:59]
Kate Hilton
I did. I did. I drew. I hand drew a map that I was using, and I kept changing it around because I did want to be kind of realistic about it. It's. It's. This town is imaginary, but it's roughly in the location of a town that exists now that wasn't especially itself famous as a dig site, but has in its vicinity many, many famous sites which were all kind of a feature of a. Of like a geographical shift in irrigation. Stay with me. In Egypt, so there were. Off the Niles, there was a period of time where a whole lot of canals got built to irrigate the desert, right? And then, you know, politics shifted. Pharaonic power kind of disappeared. There was a lot of political shifting around. The canals silted in. And so there are all kinds of towns dotted through an area called the Fayum Desert, and then a little outside of it that became kind of ghost towns, right? Because they're like, you know, like the towns like Ephesus and Turkey and Rye in England where the ocean receded and these towns, which had been really incredible and important ports, got orphaned, right? And so that happened all over this part of Egypt. And it left these little time capsules of these places that had been extremely important port towns and had, you know, very active literary cultures, for example, which is important for papyrus, because they were up kind of at the top of. Of culture where, you know, you've taken care of shelter and food and housing and now you're into the arts production and, you know, having interesting food and. And like having delegations of authority and all kinds of government and so on, right? Which happens as the society becomes more powerful and sophisticated. And then they just like, got cut off at the knees because these canals silted up. So that's what Makes them interesting from a papyrus point of view. And so I. I imagined a town like this that had these traits that had been on a canal. And there are. There are many of them like it. And many of them have produced really incredible artifacts. And the artifacts that get found in this book are artifacts that have been found at some of these sites.
- [58:24]
Bianca Murray
Okay, very last question with the research, I find as a writer, that research becomes a procrastination tool for me because the more I find out, the more I want to find out, and. And eventually it goes way off. Like, so how do you know with this kind of book? Because it's like the tip of the iceberg. You've got to know so much, but you can't show your reader everything you know, otherwise it's going to feel like a textbook. So how do you get that balance of the tip of the iceberg and know how to include just enough for specificity, but not so much that it's too much?
- [58:59]
Kate Hilton
This is not going to be that helpful for your readers. Just it's a feeling. It's a feeling about I1 like, internally, I'm now avoiding the writing, right? There's a point at which you know that you know enough to write, right? But you're avoiding the writing because the writing is hard and the research is fun. That moment of catching yourself in. I could read one more book about this thing I've already read a few books about. Or I could get down to the business of writing, knowing that if I hit a point where I feel like I need to know more about one specific thing, I'm pretty sure I can go, stop, take a day, and find the resource, right? So some of that is just the discipline of curbing your own special interest and your own avoidance about doing the hard stuff. But some of it is like you don't even necessarily know what you need to know until you get into the book. You have a sense of what the big themes are and you know enough about who this character is and what they're doing to get started on a first draft or an outline, right? And there are things, even though I'm a planner and I accept that as a planner, there is pantsing that has to happen on the along the way. And if you're a pantser, there's some planning that has to happen along the way. We know this. So I know that even though I'm a planner, my plan will have to change because as I'm writing, there'll be stuff that isn't working or stuff that I think I need to take this in a slightly different direction to pull in the other timeline. Right. Especially with the dual timeline, when you're trying to match them up, you're going to find that what you thought was going to work doesn't. And then there are moments where you have to develop something different so that it's more exciting, there's something better to find in the present or whatever the problem is. But the tool timeline problem definitely creates quite a few moments along the way where you have to stop and rethink. Yeah. Yeah.
- [61:06]
Bianca Murray
Well, that's the end of our time. I have a ton more questions, but luckily I'll be getting to interview Kate again, so I will hopefully get through all of those. I'm holding up the COVID again. City of the Muse, please. We'll link to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page. If you buy it there, you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time. And you support Kate. Kate, we wish you so much luck with this book.
- [61:31]
Kate Hilton
Thank you. I'll see you at the launch.
- [61:34]
Bianca Murray
Yay. 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,