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- [00:00]
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- [00:31]
Sarah Gibson Tuttle
hi, it's Sarah. I'm the founder of Olive and June and can I tell you the one thing that always makes my day better? A fresh manicure. But who has the time or the money to go to the salon every week? That's why we created the Olive and June gel Mani system. It gives you that same mani that you get at a salon for so much less. It comes with everything you need. A pro level lamp, salon grade tools, our damage free gel polish that lasts up to 21 days. All you do is prep, paint, cure and you're good to go. And the best part? It's super easy and so affordable. Each mani breaks down to $2. So let's skip that $80 salon appointment and get the salon quality look at home for so much less. And on your schedule. Head to oliveandjune.com DIYgel20 and use code DIYgel20 for 20% off your first gel mani system. That's oliveanjune.com DIYgel20 code DIYgel20 for 20 percent off your first mani system.
- [01:30]
Zibby Owens
Today's episode is sponsored by Nutrafol. Do you ever worry about your hair? I was convinced that my hair had gotten a little bit thinner once I reached a certain age, which had me in a complete panic. So I started taking neutrophil and it helped. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement and the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. Nutrafol offers multiple formulas for men and women tailored to different life stages like postpartum or menopause and lifestyle factors. For all of you who abide by a plant based diet, I do not. Adding Nutrafol to your daily routine is easy. You just order online, no prescription needed. You get automated deliveries and free shipping to keep you on track. Plus, with a Nutrafol subscription you can save 20% and get added perks to support your hair health journey. You just take four supplements a day and you'll be on your way. Let your hair be one less thing to worry about. See visibly thicker, stronger, faster Growing hair in three to six months with Nutrafol and for a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit nutrafol.com and enter promo code Zibby that's nutrafol.com spelled N U T R A F O L.com promo code Zibby Go do it. Hi, this is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books in my daily show I interview today's latest best selling buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know. Get insider insights and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram IBBEowens Today's episode is with newly minted USA Today best selling author of so I met this guy. So excited because we published this book by Alexandra Potter. We talk about it in the interview but she is just so amazing. I had her on my podcast for her last book confessions of a 40 something F up and now look at this. She's on the USA Today list and I loved interviewing her live at Tolibook Live in New York which was amazing and just totally excited. By way of bio, Alexandra Potter is the best selling author of numerous books in the UK including as I mentioned, Confessions of 40 Something F Up, which is now the basis of the major TV series Not Dead yet which was on ABC. Her novels have sold more than 1 million copies in 25 countries. Yorkshire born and raised, Potter lived for several years in LA before settling back in the uk. She currently lives in London with her Californian husband and their Bosnian rescue dog. Enjoy. Welcome to Totally Booked Live at the Whitby. I'm here with the amazing Alexandra Potter in from the uk. So excited to be talking about so I met this guy. Welcome.
- [04:52]
Alexandra Potter
Thank you for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here of course.
- [05:00]
Zibby Owens
Alex, you and I last did an event in what, 2023 three back over at Zibby's bookshop. Alex had come in, she was helping me with the launch of my book and she made some sort of joke like oh I wish that. And she had already been on my podcast for her last book, and she made a joke like, oh, I wish you would publish one of my books. And I was like, really? Because she sold a million copies in the UK and is amazing. I was like, I feel like we could make that happen. And so we did. We published this book. So I met this guy, which just came out, and I couldn't be more thrilled.
- [05:34]
Alexandra Potter
Thank you.
- [05:38]
Zibby Owens
Before we jump into the latest book, give everybody a little bit of a background if they don't know much about you.
- [05:46]
Alexandra Potter
Okay? Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming. It's really nice to see you all. I just got in last night from London, so I'm super excited to be here in New York. I've been writing for 25 years now. I've published 15 novels. I started. Wow. I think I had my first book published just before my 30th birthday, which was kind of super exciting. I tend to write. I've written all kinds of books, but all fiction, romantic comedies. I like to write uplifting fiction. Stuff that's going to make you feel good when you've finished reading a book. And my most recent book is so I Met this Guy, which I hope if you get to read it, you'll absolutely love it. And I think this is. It's got a serious message, but it ultimately has a very uplifting, empowering message, I think.
- [06:45]
Zibby Owens
Okay, give them a little more about the book.
- [06:47]
Alexandra Potter
Okay, so this is. This is a book about a romance fraudster, but I believe here you call it more catfishing. And it's about a woman called Maggie. She's 49, and she meets a man who she believes is the love of her life. He is the perfect guy. And that was the idea for the title of the book. So I met this guy, and it turns out that actually he is not the love of her life. He is a. Is a con man. And he steals her heart, her life savings. She kind of takes out a mortgage, a business loan. She loses everything. She loses her home. And she ends up living in a caravan in a field in the middle of nowhere. And a young reporter gets to hear of this story, and she's looking for her big break, and she meets Maggie and she convinces her that, you know what? I found this guy. Because the police don't really want to know. They say it's, you know, he was your boyfriend, you gave him the money. It's kind of. And so she's like, let's go find this guy. Let's confront him. You know, sort of let's get revenge. And so they Fly to Monte Carlo, he slips the net and they go on this crazy two week trip of a lifetime road trip across Europe trying to find this guy. But what they really find is themselves.
- [08:16]
Zibby Owens
What a great pitch, right? And how did you think of this?
- [08:22]
Alexandra Potter
So I'd been hearing a lot of stories about women that had been conned by these men. And it was on the news a lot. I kept reading about in the newspaper and I thought it was a really terrible crime because it's not just the financial damage, it's the psychological damage and the emotional damage. Because women feel that they have lost someone that they really loved. And they feel stupid, they feel foolish, they feel ashamed. A lot of women don't even tell the police. They don't tell their families. So it was something that I really wanted to write about. But then I like to use a lot of humor, I like to write funny books and I absolutely love traveling. That is my big thing. And I just thought, let's wrap this book up in a two week sunshine filled road trip across Europe. And I put in all the places that I wanted to travel to. I made up this itinerary. I thought, I'm going to do a bit of road, a bit of research. Because often I'm sitting in my little bedroom office writing. And I thought, this time I'm going to go out there. So that was really good fun. I did some fun research trips. I called my sister up and said, hey, do you want to come to Monte Carlo, play roulette? And she's like, yeah, I'll come. And so, yeah, so that's how the book came about.
- [09:42]
Zibby Owens
So fun. Okay, where did you go that we all have to put on our bucket list of where to go.
- [09:47]
Alexandra Potter
Wow. So I sat there and I thought, where can these two characters go? And I took them to Monte Carlo. I took them down the Amalfi coast, if anybody's been there. That is a really terrific trip. It's kind of scary. I did it with my husband and it's a lot of hairpin bends and it's. Yeah, you've got to be a good driver. I went to Sicily in the book, which is pretty fantastic. They go to the islands, Biza, Mallorca, they go to Spain, they go to Tangier, they go everywhere. It was quite some trip.
- [10:24]
Zibby Owens
Now we all get to go just by opening the pages of a book. How do you like that? I know the notion of catfishing and trusting someone was so interesting, the way you depicted it in the book. Because at one point Maggie says, well, but I Still love him?
- [10:39]
Alexandra Potter
Yes.
- [10:40]
Zibby Owens
Right. Like, those feelings don't necessarily go away just because someone. Because they're not reciprocated or because somebody does something terrible. How do you get over that feeling? Talk a little about that.
- [10:51]
Alexandra Potter
Yeah, I think it was a really. That's a really interesting question because I. When I was reading a lot about personal stories of this happening to women, they said that the guy that they fell in love with still existed in their mind and in their heart, even though they'd found out that he was not that guy. And it was like somebody had died. And so in my character Maggie, she's sort of too ashamed to admit it, but she's still in love with that guy. But that guy was never real. And I think that is the real psychological trick that these men are so manipulative, and they will feed you everything that you want to hear. And I read about love bombing, and I read about coercive control and breadcrumbing and all these terms I'd never heard of. And it's quite amazing how they draw you in so that you are hook, line, and sinker, and then they just disappear.
- [11:51]
Zibby Owens
And not to suggest that any of you in the audience will be victims of catfishing by dashing men or anything like that, but are there any warning signs? You did a lot of research on this. How can you be sure that the person you're falling in love with is actually who they say they are?
- [12:08]
Alexandra Potter
I think one of the key things that I discovered when I was researching is that they like to take you away from your friends. So they often say, you only need me. And they create a little bubble. And so people stop. They stop sort of telling their friends thing or involving their friends. And one of the first things they do is they often ask to borrow a little bit of money from you, and then they pay you it back. So you think, oh, okay, he's borrowed 500 bucks and he's given me the 500 bucks back. So he's a good guy. But it's sort of like a little test that they do. And then the things start happening. There'll be a medical emergency. There'll be a relative that's not well. There'll be some issue where they can't get hold of some money. I read about women that they said they want to buy a house together and they're going to pull their money. And so they set up an account and they put their money into this account, and the account doesn't exist. It's really an elaborate fraud. And if you Are someone that's quite trusting. And if you do fall in love with someone, and it's very easy to be conned. And when I used to read these stories, I used to think it couldn't happen to me. It just couldn't. But I think it can. You know, you've got to be so careful.
- [13:26]
Zibby Owens
Gosh. As if it's not hard enough. Oh, my goodness. The female friendship in the story is also amazing. And what women can do when they put their heads together and all of that. I love the angle. Although I have to say, when I read the very first draft of this, it was talking about Maggie being this older woman, blah, blah, blah. And finally you get to the point where, like, midway through the book, and you're like, Maggie's 49. I was like, 49. In my head, she was like, 82 or something like that. I'm like, 49 is not. I'm 49 anyway.
- [13:58]
Alexandra Potter
I know, yeah, I'm 55.
- [14:02]
Zibby Owens
But anyway, we all get to a point where age kind of doesn't matter anymore. Like, my kids are at the age where one grade makes all the difference. And now it's like, oh, you're friends with people who are 20 years older, and it just doesn't matter. And there's a big age gap, but we see how it collapses when they're in pursuit of something together. Talk about female friendship.
- [14:23]
Alexandra Potter
Yeah, I'm really. I love writing about female friendship because I think it's a transformative, powerful thing that we're very lucky as women, I think, to have our female friends. And there is a lot written about romantic love. A lot of movies, a lot of books, songs, poetry. Not so much written about the love that we have for our female friends. And I think female friendship is something that carries us through our lives. And sometimes relationships come and go. People get divorced. But I've got friends that I've had from school, and I've had these friends. Often they can be the longest relationships in your life, I think, female friendships. And then another interesting thing, I think, is that the friends that I've also made as I've got older, I know when I was younger, they had to be the same age as me. And now I've got older. I've got friends that are in their 70s, their 80s, a big age gap. But it doesn't feel like that big age gap because we have so much in common. And I think that with friendship, age is just a number. I have friends that are younger, in their 20s, and you can learn a lot from each Other. And I really like to write about female friendship in my novels, and especially the intergenerational ones, because that, to me, is such an important part of our life. And even though the book is, you will call it a romantic comedy, There is a Guy in there. It's more about the friendship between these two women. And ultimately, like I said, they're trying to find this guy, but what they do is they find themselves. And it's the friendship that they both have that is so empowering and really changes their lives.
- [16:11]
Zibby Owens
How many people came here today with a friend, With a close female friend? Look at that. A lot of people. Not to shame you if you didn't, but that's amazing. Next time you can. Oh, that's amazing. Which one friend, if you had to pick, is someone you've had the most adventures with. And what did you learn from her?
- [16:33]
Alexandra Potter
Gosh, I have. I have. Gosh, I've got some really good friends. I've had a friend from school that I've done lots with, but I have a friend that I made. I lived in LA for a while and I met a girl girlfriend there, and she was. She's five years older than me. And it's really funny because when I was at school, I would never had made friends with someone that was five years older than me. They would have just seemed so much older. And now we're really close. And we went to Sicily together to research this book. We did, in the book, the characters do a cooking class. And we did this cooking class together with this kind of very small, scary Sicilian woman. When we originally heard about this cooking class, it sounded really good fun. And I was texting with her and she was texting back and I was like, wow, her English is amazing. And obviously I didn't realize about Google Translate. And then we went to her house and she just, you know, she didn't speak a word of English, but she would kind of rap on the thing with the rolling pin. And we had to make. We made lasagna. And it was actually quite a stressful experience because you were having to make the lasagne sheets thinner and thinner and thinner. And they would be coming through the machine and she would kind of wrap our knuckles and whatever the Italian word is for thinner, thinner. And we were like, oh, my God, you know, and anyway, we made this amazing lasagne and we made tiramisu, and it was really good fun. But this is. Her name's Dana. She's great. And she's just going on her 60th celebration, actually, next month in Spain. So I'm going to meet her. So we've had a lot of adventures together.
- [18:16]
Zibby Owens
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- [19:45]
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- [20:16]
Sarah Gibson Tuttle
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- [21:18]
Zibby Owens
I was actually with a bunch of my old friends last night. My college did a joint, like, 50th birthday celebration for our entire grade, which was such a good idea. So, so efficient. And being around old friends, you become who you were too. There's something about that. Not to mention all the memories they have. I feel my whole life has become basically a brownout where I can't retrieve memories. But if someone mentions something, I'm like, oh, right, that. And I feel like that's the role of friends as we get older, too, is like reminding us of situations we were in and who we were then and how we felt and otherwise, these moments can get lost. Do you feel like that?
- [21:57]
Alexandra Potter
Yeah, I do. I mean, I often say there's just nothing like being with old friends that you've known a long time because you can. You do forget how old you are now. And you do. I wouldn't say you regress, but you can be with your girlfriends and it's how you were when you were a teenager or how you were in your early 20s, and they'll remind you of something that you did. And it's such a nice feeling. They really know you, don't they? And they have been with you throughout thick and thin, and they have seen you. I think there's something about friendship is you feel seen and they love you no matter what. It's just. I mean, my friends just carry me through life. When I look at all my whatsapps and all my text messages, it's just all my girlfriends. All my girlfriends.
- [22:45]
Zibby Owens
There's also something about the group, too. Not to keep going on about this, but you can have your individual relationships, but when you have like a group from college or a group from this or the mom friends or whatever group there, when you all get together, the dynamics immediately come back that can't be replicated just with coffee with one of those friends. And there's something so neat about that.
- [23:04]
Alexandra Potter
Yeah, yeah, I know.
- [23:06]
Zibby Owens
Okay, I'm waxing philosophical about all my friends, but it's fine. Okay. Alex, before. So I met this guy, you had two bugs that I loved that were like a continuation of each other. Talk about. Oh, the confessions of a 40 something F up.
- [23:22]
Alexandra Potter
So I, yeah, I wrote a book. I was kind of in my 40s, and I remember it was kind of when Instagram really blew up. And I remember looking at Instagram, at all these perfect lives, and I just thought, wow, my life just looks nothing like it's looking on social media. And I was like, where are the messy lies? Where are the lies that kind of went a bit wrong. Or where are the. And I was speaking to some friends and I was like, you know, 40. 40 doesn't look anything like I imagined it was going to be. And they were like, oh, tell me about it. And so I had this idea to write a novel about a girl who gets to 40 something and she hasn't got the life that she thought she would get when she was younger. She hasn't got married, she doesn't have children, she's kind of lost her job. She has to move from America back to London and she can't afford an apartment. She has to rent a room in a house. And I called it confessions of a 40 something F up. And the idea is that all her friends that were all single are married with children now and apparently have these kind of perfect lives, whereas she doesn't. And so she sets up an anonymous podcast where she tells it like it is. And the book came out, and it came out during the pandemic, so it sort of had a very soft landing. All the bookshops were closed, and I thought, oh, it's not going to sell. And then slowly, by word of mouth, this book started to sell and sell and sell and sell. And it just became this phenomena because it turns out that everybody related to this character, Nell, and she has a friend in it called Cricket who's in her 80s and her life hasn't worked out how she thought. And everybody can feel like a bit of an F up. And then it was made into a TV show here in America, and it kind of just blew up. And then I wrote the sequel to that one. And I think I get so many messages from people saying that that book has found them at a really tricky time in their life when their life kind of went wrong. And. And it's sort of. It's like, how. How do you. How do you pick up when your life's gone wrong? However we perceive Life going wrong. And I like to write about women. They're not victims. They, they pick themselves up, they sort themselves out, they turn their life around, and you actually end up having a life that you were always meant to have, but it might have not been the life that you thought you were gonna get. And I think that's, that's seems to be kind of a universal theme for a lot of people.
- [26:11]
Zibby Owens
What was the name of the TV show here again?
- [26:13]
Alexandra Potter
Oh, it was called Not Dead Yet.
- [26:16]
Zibby Owens
Anybody watch that?
- [26:17]
Alexandra Potter
And it was ABC did it. So that was, that was fun. I got to fly to LA and I got to go on set and meet everybody. And I think it was Gina Rodriguez. And it was fun. It's really good.
- [26:28]
Zibby Owens
Amazing. And what are you, what are you working on now?
- [26:31]
Alexandra Potter
So I'm writing the third in the confession series, actually. Nellie's turning 50, her friend Cricket's in her 80s. I put on Instagram, what would everybody like more of? And they were like, we want more of Cricket because everybody loves this wise 80 year old woman who's, she's lost her husband and she is not taking it lying down. And she's out there and she's living her life and doing lots of really cool, interesting stuff. And I actually wrote that character for my mom who's in her 80s, and I didn't feel that she was being represented in fiction. I just felt that Everybody thinks an 80 something, they're an old woman, they're kind of knitting and sitting in an armchair. And my mom's not like that and her friends in her 80s are not like that. So I kind of wrote that book as a love letter to her and all her friends. And it's been people, people really love this character of Cricket and they say, I want to be like her when I grow up. And another interesting thing people say is, where do I find a cricket? And I'm like, they're everywhere. You've just got to look. Because I think people can see an older woman and I don't know, they can be invisible. And actually if you talk to a woman who's older, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, you know, they've got brilliant spirit stories to tell and they've got full, interesting lives. You just gotta look, you just gotta strike up a conversation.
- [27:54]
Zibby Owens
My mother is now my most popular Instagram feature. Yeah, that's all people.
- [27:59]
Alexandra Potter
I've seen you, I've seen this, I'm
- [28:00]
Zibby Owens
telling you, that's like, she's so funny. It's just, who knew? You just have to ask.
- [28:05]
Alexandra Potter
You Just have to look.
- [28:08]
Zibby Owens
So, Alex, when you start writing your novels, how do you approach it? You have an idea and then do you just dive right in or do you plan the whole thing out? Tell us.
- [28:18]
Alexandra Potter
I'm Cole. A friend of mine who's a writer says I'm the queen of the cork board. I am a huge plotter. I do know people that set off and write a novel and they just start typing for me. I have to plan out a book. I have a huge cork board in my office and I plot all the chapters from beginning to the end. Because I kind of think that otherwise it's like sort of getting in your car and you're setting off driving. Well, you don't know where you're going, so you've got to have a destination. And then I like to put some twists in and some reveals and some, you know, I like to develop characters and give them all a storyline. And I'm a very visual person. And so every character has a different colored post it note. And so when I stick them on my cork board and I stand back, I can say, oh, bit too much pink. So we need to spread that character out a little bit more. So that's how I stand back and look. And then you can move scenes around on the board. And once I've planned it, then I begin to write. And then I think if you get stuck in the middle of a book, you know that that chapter's coming. So you could always move further along in the story. It's quite a handy thing to do.
- [29:32]
Zibby Owens
And then do you make yourself like working hours where you have to write?
- [29:35]
Alexandra Potter
Yeah, I work Monday through Friday. I treat it as a proper, regular, full time job. I don't work weekends. I used to work weekends. But then it can just be. You just feel like you're working all the time unless you're on a really major deadline. Yeah, I work from home. I occasionally might sit in a coffee shop. I used to work in a library that I loved. There's a museum in London, the Victoria and Albert Museum. I used to love working in that library. But then I moved and I was a little bit too. But yeah, it's kind of my job. It pays the mortgage. I used to. When I first wrote my first novel, I had a full time job and I wrote that book. I used to get up super early. I'd work weekends, I'd work nights, I'd work in my lunch hour. And that's how I wrote the first one. You can write a novel even if you have another Job. I think the trick is you do little. You might just do like half an hour or 20 minutes and try get 100 words. 100 words. 100 words. And eventually they will all stack together to make 100,000 words. Wow.
- [30:39]
Zibby Owens
Just like that.
- [30:40]
Alexandra Potter
Just like that. It's kind of how you read a book though, isn't it? Little by little by little and you get to the end.
- [30:45]
Zibby Owens
Do you have other authors who you admire or you're like, oh, lots, lots. I want to be in this category
- [30:51]
Alexandra Potter
with these people who, wow, there's so many. I've always. I did English literature at university. There's so many authors that I absolutely love. I love all the classics. You know, the Brontes. We were just talking. I haven't seen Wuthering Heights yet, so I'm really interested to see that. Jane Austen. I, you know, I actually wrote a book called me and Mr. Darcy, which was the idea of imagine if you could date Mr. Darcy. And then obviously, you know, people around today, I love, you know, I'll read like Elisa Jewell, a psychological thriller. Or I'll read. I just. Is it the Wedding? People I loved. I thought that was really good. And I just finished the Correspondent and I. I don't know about you, but I cried and cried and cried and I, I stayed up till one in the morning and then when I woke up the next day, my eyes. Because I'd been like, cry. I don't want to give a spoiler. I'd been crying and I just looked like I'd done like three rounds with someone. But that was, that was the last book that I've read that I just thought was amazing.
- [31:56]
Zibby Owens
And then, last question, advice for aspiring authors.
- [31:59]
Alexandra Potter
Do it. Absolutely do it. I come from a very working class family. I didn't know any writers. I didn't know anyone that had ever published a book. I thought that it could. I thought it happened to somebody else. And I wasn't, I kind of, I didn't have a clue really. And I just happened to read one day a magazine about something, six writers that had published their first novel and their advice was just start writing. Just start writing. And that's what I did. I just started writing. I found names of some agents. I managed to get myself an agent. But I think the thing is, I think it's just a lot of it is determination, hard work and just sitting in that chair and writing and not giving up. It's so easy to sort of have an idea and then you kind of lose confidence and you get halfway through and life takes over and you get busy. But if you just keep going and get to the end and you have a book, you've got as good a chance of selling it as anybody else. Love that.
- [33:09]
Zibby Owens
Alex, thank you so much.
- [33:10]
Alexandra Potter
Thank you, thank you.
- [33:12]
Zibby Owens
Thank you for listening to Totally Book with Zibby formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram, ibbeowens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.
- [33:34]
Capital One Advertiser
With no fees or minimums on checking accounts. It's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com bank capital1na member FDIC that's the sound of a big deal At Wayfair. That sound happens a lot. Dream sofa for half the price.
- [34:12]
Alexandra Potter
Big deal.
- [34:12]
Capital One Advertiser
New dining table you've been eyeing for months.
- [34:15]
Alexandra Potter
Big deal.
- [34:16]
Capital One Advertiser
Finally picking up those last few pieces and finishing that bedroom. Now that's a really big deal. Whatever your home needs, Wayfair has the selection, the savings and over millions of five star reviews to back it up. Shop Wayfair.com today before someone else snags your big deal.
- [34:32]
Zibby Owens
Wayfair Every style, every home with VRBoCare
- [34:36]
Alexandra Potter
help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists so support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind.