What I Wish I’d Known About Publishing: A Debut Author Panel
In this episode…
✨ Ever wondered how debut authors navigate the rollercoaster of their first publication? In this insightful episode of Writes4Women, Pam chats with debut novelists Maxine Fawcett, Jill Valentine and Helen Signy. From the emotional highs and lows of the writing process to the triumphs and challenges of getting published, this episode is packed with candid conversations and valuable advice. Tune in to discover the real stories behind their debut novels and gain inspiration for your own writing journey. Don't miss this empowering episode! 📚🎙️✨
Transcript
This transcript is provided as a companion to the audio episode and has not been edited.
[00:00:00] Pamela: Maxine Fawcett, Helen Signy, and Jill Valentine. Welcome to the Writes4Women Convo Couch.
[00:00:07] You.
[00:00:07] Maxine: Thanks
[00:00:08] Pamela: for having me. Thanks Pam.
[00:00:09] Morning. Thank you.
[00:00:11] Pamela: Great to have you on. And congratulations to all three of you on your debut novels, which all have all come out this year.
[00:00:17] Pamela: And I'm really excited to talk to all three of you about your experiences, the writing of the novels, and how things have gone for you since publication. But can we start with each of you giving us perhaps your elevator pitch for your book, or, a short version of what the book is about? Jill, can we start with you?
[00:00:35] Jill: Sure. So high heels and low blows is a tale set in Sydney present day. And it follows the lives of three women who all very different, but are caught up in a world of chaos caused by the toxic manipulative men in their lives. So the first main character is B Bloom, and she is the embodiment of a modern day leader.
[00:00:57] Jill: She's a female CEO of an investment bank, which is a rarity 'cause there aren't many female CEOs. And she's kind, compassionate. And one day a new chairman arrives at the company and she works out very quickly that he has it in for her. The second character is Lucy Love, who is a binge drinking depressed stay at home mom who gave up her successful career as a TV presenter.
[00:01:25] Jill: Because of her 1950s husband. And to make matters worse for her, he's facing sexual harassment allegations and she's left going is it true? And so we see her unravel a bit. And then the third character is Rosie Reed, who is a PR pro known as Sydney's Fixer. 'cause her job is to come in and basically clean up the mess of her misbehaving male clients.
[00:01:49] Jill: So whether it's a chairman that's been caught having sex with the receptionist, or whether it's a senior executive that's used the corporate credit card to pay for strip clubs, she comes in and she's like the kind of hush, if you like.
[00:02:02] Jill: And the looming question throughout is, will these toxic manipulative men get their time?
[00:02:08] Jill: I
[00:02:08] Pamela: love that. Great rundown of the book there, Jill. 'cause there's a lot to unpack in the story. And you've got, of course, three main characters, which I'm gonna talk about when we get onto the writing process, which, kudos to you because doing that for your debut novel I think is very brave.
[00:02:22] Pamela: But we will come back to that. Thank you. Max, can you give us the rundown on Everything is perfect?
[00:02:29] Helen: Yeah, sure. Thanks Pam. Yeah, everything is perfect is about a woman called Kathy Prince, and she lived in a beautiful beachside suburb and she has a loving husband who travels a lot for work and two children Ellie and Danny, and even an Oodle dog.
[00:02:47] Helen: So from the outset, everything does look perfect, but she has started to, she's been a mid 40 and things aren't really seeming the same inside of herself. She is just noticed a shift in everything that's going on. She's had to give up her job, her career, been free for and to look after her son who's struggling at school.
[00:03:10] Helen: And her, uk she finds out he's about to he's really ill and in hospital and everything just, and her husband actually decides to travel a lot more for work and he is never there to help with anything. So it's the beginning of the school term and she dropped their children off at school with all of these things going on and goes into the local cafe and sees the new dad that's just started at her children's primary school who's a widower.
[00:03:40] Helen: And the moment she looks at him she starts to think that maybe he could be the answer for her problems. And that's where the story begins.
[00:03:50] Yeah.
[00:03:50] Helen: It's about middle age. You know what it means to be a woman in your forties when you just start to actually reassess things that have happened in your past and your childhood and realize this is the moment to.
[00:04:05] Helen: Create kind of a new chat for as well. But yeah, Kathy has to go down a very slippery slope before that happens.
[00:04:12] Pamela: Yeah. I look, there's so much in there that I think women can relate to regardless of age, but certainly, yes women in that kind of 40 something age group.
[00:04:20] Pamela: So yeah, the beginning of the
[00:04:23] Helen: The feeling invisible era. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:28] Pamela: Thanks, Pam. Thank you. Thanks Max. Helen, how about Maya's dance? Can you tell us about that? A little bit different. We're in a different time period and different location, so fill us in.
[00:04:38] Helen: Sure. Thanks Pam. So Maya's dance is historical fiction set in the Holocaust.
[00:04:44] Helen: So it's based very closely on the true story of a Holocaust survivor who used to live quite close to me in the northern beaches of Sydney. And I heard her story and just thought it had to be told, so Lucy or Maya she's called in the book was 15 when Hitler came into the Czech Republic where she lived.
[00:05:04] Helen: And she, so she was a teenager. She absolutely loved to dance and that's when she could feel free. But everything changed when they, the family were arrested and taken to a labor camp in East Poland. So it wasn't a death camp. They weren't killing people, they were making people work in the fields. There were hundreds and hundreds of these camps all over the place in Poland in, in those days to try and grow food.
[00:05:29] Helen: Germans German, and then when you got too weak to work in, then you were shipped off to Sobibor or wherever the nearest death camp was. So she was there with her mother and her stepfather and still trying to be quite optimistic and everything and made some friends with some other teenagers in the Campion.
[00:05:45] Helen: They decided to put on a show, which was incredibly, quite common during the Holocaust. They love to sing and dance and try and make themselves feel better. So she danced in this show and one of the Polish guards was watching her from the other side of the square and just fell in love with her.
[00:06:04] Helen: So essentially it's a love story between this 15-year-old and a guard, which in itself, I suppose was a bit problematic. And then things get so. Difficult in the camp. It's becomes very clear to them that nobody's supposed to survive, so he gets her out. So the story is of the escape, but it's told through a dual timeline of Maya in Sydney in the 1990s, telling her story to a young journalist who's a bit lost, and she's just come out of a relationship and, she's a bit depressed.
[00:06:37] Helen: And the old Maa imparts this incredible wisdom that most Holocaust survivors seem to have about how to live for every day and just appreciate the good in life and yeah, live live your life as if it's the last day and then they go back to try and find him.
[00:06:53] Pamela: Oh, I got goosebumps listening to you telling that story.
[00:06:56] Pamela: It's thank you. And as I've found in so many kind of holocaust or war stories, anything set in that period, while there's so much kind of trauma and. Obviously it can be really hard to write and read, but just that, that sense of strength and resilience, it just always amazes me and particularly so with this being, as many of them are based on a true story.
[00:07:19] Pamela: But I'm gonna come back to that whole point about resilience. 'cause I think that is something that is a feature of all of three of these books. And the women that you write about. Can we stick with you for a little minute, Helen? I just wanna ask each of you going back in time now, 'cause we're gonna come back to talk about the novels a bit more, but going back, what was the moment that you first knew that you wanted to write in, specifically write a novel.
[00:07:42] Pamela: And how did you then get from that point to publication? Helen, how did that happen for you?
[00:07:48] Helen: So I, my kids are a little bit older and, the youngest one had started high school and I was a bit bored my job. And I was at a conference in Canada actually, and I was thinking what am I gonna do now for me?
[00:08:01] Helen: Shall I, should I do a master's and a PhD? I know I'll write a novel. And it just started percolating. And I had heard the story of this Holocaust survivor a few years before and been absolutely fascinated with it and always thought I might write it as a feature because I'm a journalist. And then I remember I was sitting on a.
[00:08:19] Helen: A boat. We were doing a day trip as part of the conference, and this character of Maya literally just came to me. It was a real sort of JK rolling moment when she saw Harry Potter walking down the train. I just felt her it was so bizarre. So obviously Maya is not the real Lucy. She's a fictional character.
[00:08:37] Helen: But, I just imagined what it would be like to be a teenager running away from the Nazis. From that minute I was like I've gotta write a novel. And then I did a novel writing course for the Faber Writing Academy. And I don't think I ever would've got to the end of it had I not done that course.
[00:08:55] Helen: I had no idea where to start, what I was doing, how you structure a novel. That was really helpful. And when I started, my main end game was to just write a novel. I didn't even think I would ever, I. Get it published or send it off for publications just to, something I wanted to do in midlife, just to, to show that I could do something.
[00:09:16] Helen: And then incredibly when it was finished, I sent it off and it got picked up. So yeah, it's just been the most incredible experience that I never thought would happen. I would not have believed when I was sitting on that boat that I would one day be sitting here talking about my published novel.
[00:09:31] Pamela: It's amazing, isn't it? So were you are published by Simon and Schuster, Helen. Did you send it just off to their slush pile or what was the kind of mechanism that you sent it through?
[00:09:41] Helen: As part of the Faber Writing Academy, they published an anthology of a couple of thousand words for everybody's novel.
[00:09:47] Helen: So there was quite a lot of interest at that point, which was right in the middle or at the end of Covid. So I'd already had some interest and used that then in my emails to other agents. So now I got picked up by Curtis Brown, and it was just after the Happiest Man alive, the Eddie J who book, and I think everybody was looking for the next Holocaust novel.
[00:10:10] Helen: And it's a very crowded genre, o obviously, but mine's a bit different because it's got the two dual timelines and, a third of the novel is set in Sydney and is about the remembering and the going back. So yeah, it was just a bit different. And I think it was, that was the Holocaust novel that people were looking for.
[00:10:29] Helen: So once Curtis Brown. I had picked it up and they actually suggested a big restructure. So I did a lot of rewriting before they sent it out, and once it got sent out there was a lot of interest.
[00:10:40] Pamela: Yeah.
[00:10:41] Helen: Which is fantastic. Fantastic.
[00:10:43] Pamela: Amazing. How about you Max? What's your story from when you first knew you wanted to write to getting that contract?
[00:10:50] Helen: Yeah, it was, I heard you interview the fantasy author the other day. She's written like 45 books in six years or something. But her story was very similar that she, I wrote as a teenager all the angst of teenage years.
[00:11:03] Helen: I was writing into diaries and things like that. And then throughout my twenties I let it go. And working in advertising and marketing, I just went to the sidelines. And then when I had my first. Starting early, 20 2008 I got back into it again. Started writing short stories and sent them off the new Idea magazine and that kind of thing.
[00:11:22] Helen: And then I thought, I'm gonna go and try and do a course. I did a local course in Northern Beaches Community College in, one morning a week when he went to preschool. And I just thought to myself, you know what? I'm gonna just see if I can write a book. It sounds mad 'cause I've not done a master's or anything.
[00:11:40] Helen: I've just done a
[00:11:40] Maxine: few
[00:11:40] Helen: courses. I'm just gonna see if I can give it a go. So I started writing probably my, probably when I was about 38, my, my first book in the draw book. And I just, I think I just flogged that a bit too, mu a bit too much. I spoke to petrol, my governor about this, and she said that she, we worked on her first book for years.
[00:12:01] Helen: Somebody had told it to stop. Start
[00:12:03] Pamela: again. Yeah. I was the same. I remember with my first foot went on for years and in the end I just went, no, I've just gotta stop and do something else.
[00:12:11] Helen: So yeah, that was me. But I did get through to hard copy, which was the Canberra at the time. It was called the, the Canberra Writer Center, which is Mion now.
[00:12:19] Helen: It actually got me into their hard copy program when they pick 20 writers a year to mentor through a whole year. So Oh great. So I said to myself, okay, there was something in that. It might have not have been right at the time, but it got me into that and it opened lots of doors, a lot. I sat down with lots of agents and publishers and got really harsh feedback.
[00:12:39] Helen: So it was actually like a toughening up process that, that process. It was like pictures your book. No and then I shelved that and started again in Covid and 2020 and started again writing from scratch again with everything is Perfect, which is now everything is perfect and I got the, I got my publishing contract through Writers and Unleashed, which is the Sutherland Writing Festival.
[00:13:03] Helen: Oh, okay.
[00:13:04] Pamela: Yeah. Through the
[00:13:04] Helen: festival.
[00:13:04] Pamela: Yeah. That went So you, you
[00:13:06] Helen: pitched at that festival? Pitched at that festival, $50. And I saw that Beverly Cousins was there, who's my publisher at Penguin. And I thought, my goodness, yeah, five minutes in front of Beverly. I was like, this is worth 50 bucks, even if nothing happens.
[00:13:20] Helen: The advice she could give me in that time was,
[00:13:22] yeah.
[00:13:23] Helen: So I went down into the basement on that day and sat opposite her and pitched to her and I'd sent her probably five pages. And the first thing she said when I sat down was, she goes, max, I love it. And I was just like,
[00:13:35] Maxine: oh, we just sat there and I got all like tingly and I didn't know what to do and I got hot.
[00:13:39] Maxine: But
[00:13:41] Helen: yeah. And then she said, please send me your whole draft the whole manuscript. And she gave me an email address. So that's where the process started for me. So that was in 2022, September, 2022. But before, yeah, before that I did get Dye Blacklock to read it first and she was amazing.
[00:13:59] Helen: And I was so nervous in the month that she was reading it and then she just sent it back. She goes, there's something in this max. Oh, okay, great. Oh fantastic. Yeah. So it's like a 14 year journey to this point.
[00:14:11] Pamela: Yeah.
[00:14:12] Helen: Yeah. But worth it. Yeah.
[00:14:14] Pamela: Great. I love, it's so good. I think for authors out there to, or people who have got those manuscripts and they're thinking about submitting that first book.
[00:14:21] Pamela: I think it's really great for them to hear all the different ways, in which you can approach it. Yeah, definitely. So Jill, what was your story? Definitely,
[00:14:29] Jill: it was similar to Max in that I started writing a workplace intrigue kind of story about 15 years ago and then it just hit. A roadblock and writer's block or whatever you wanna call it, and just went into the top drawer.
[00:14:43] Jill: 'cause I found it really hard to write. And now looking back, I think it's having that creative space to be able to do it because I was trying to do it while working full time. I had just had my first child, but I was like oh, I just really wanna write a book and I wanna write it now. And I just, yeah, I just couldn't, figure it out in my head how the story was gonna run.
[00:15:05] Jill: And I got to about, I think, 20,000 words and just put it away. Actually, it'd be funny to go back and look at it now and see what you know, and see what it was like. But then. And so then high heels and low blows came about because I had just been let go from a corporate job. And I also had a big birthday coming up.
[00:15:25] Jill: And I thought that, this is a moment, this is like the sliding doors moment. You either go and throw yourself back into a corporate job, or you do, you go after that goal that you've always wanted, which is to write this book. And also, I had started talking to lots of women about their own workplace experiences.
[00:15:44] Jill: So I wanted it to be some kind of women workplace empowerment kind of theme. So yeah, so from there, I think it took me about six months to write my first draft. And I feel like I was really naive actually, because I didn't even know the names of publishers. I just, I just started Googling who can I submit to?
[00:16:05] Jill: And in parallel with that process, I was walking my dog one day up at the local park, Tanya Park, and I met a woman walking her dog and she said she was a publisher. And her name is Benita Mercy Artis, and she's the founder of Fair Play Publishing, which is a niche publisher. She's published a small amount of fiction, but her main focus is books about soccer, football, actually, if you're from the uk.
[00:16:31] Jill: Okay. So it feels like you know that where's the fit there. But actually when we got talking we had a lot in common beneath her and I, she's a FIFA whistleblower and she's very like pro women's rights and pro diversity in the workplace and so on. And she's, she, being this FIFA whistleblower she had this confidence about her that was about doing the right thing.
[00:16:52] Jill: And I think she liked that the theme in high heels and low blows was about, you know about women women getting on top and men having their day. And so women standing up for what's right, whether it's in the workplace or in your personal relationship. Anyway, so cut a long story short we sat down, we had coffee 'cause it was a bit inappropriate to discuss it at the dog park.
[00:17:13] Jill: You can never conversation properly up there. But then we had coffee and then I signed with her. So I was doing that. I was going out to publishers while talking to Benita. And then I went ahead with her and it's been, it's been really good.
[00:17:27] Pamela: Fantastic. And, just listening to all three stories, a couple of things that really strike me is one, you all, you started because you had this love and this passion.
[00:17:36] Pamela: You wanted to get the writing done, but you kept writing and you were also making connections. With other people in the industry, other writers, whether it be publishers, agents, whatever. And, but all the while, behind the scenes you're writing away. And just I think that's so important.
[00:17:53] Pamela: That whole idea of, obviously we write in the hope that we're gonna get published, but continuing to just get that writing done behind the scenes while that, is or isn't happening out there is so important, I think.
[00:18:05] Helen: Yeah, definitely. I think it is going to book launches even I went to book launches and even without a contract because I just wanted to start immersing myself in the community of writers in Australia and actually making some content and actually feeling like I was supporting other writers at the time, which I think is really important.
[00:18:25] Helen: Down the track really to set up a network, like you said.
[00:18:29] Pamela: Yeah. And you just be, you become part of that whole writing community. Yeah. And that's something that I've been talking about on the podcast the last couple of weeks is, if you're a writer, whether you're published or not you are a writer.
[00:18:38] Pamela: If you write, then you're a writer and yeah. Go out and make those connections and talk to people and like you say, max go to book launches and things like that. Yeah, definitely. So Jill, we were talking before about the fact that this is a three point of view novel, three triple point of view.
[00:18:53] Pamela: Was it always that way from the beginning for you? Is that like you wanted to portray three different characters or did it evolve as you continued to write? How did that go?
[00:19:02] Jill: No, I always wanted to write it from the different points because. I actually thought it was gonna be really hard to just write it in the first person and to make it, I actually take my hat off to anyone that does that because I think the multiple points, it's it allowed me to beef the story out.
[00:19:19] Jill: Personally, I think how, how would I make it into a hundred thousand words through the one, one viewpoint. But I also wanted to do it because the three women are so different and to reflect different viewpoints.
[00:19:31] Jill: But then they have similarities, of course. 'cause they're all at the hands suffering at the hands of these toxic men. But they're all in different situations. So it's from a personal viewpoint, but it's also the professional viewpoint. So someone in the workplace, someone working in investment banking.
[00:19:48] Jill: I didn't want it to be all about that. 'cause I realized that readers might not resonate with that environment. Even though I've worked, that's my background and I've worked in that industry for 20 years. I wanted to have multiple viewpoints to make it interesting to multiple readers. 'cause I was always thinking about what the reader might like rather than I suppose just what I might like to read.
[00:20:09] Jill: So I introduced Lucy as a kind of character who, you know, because she has given up her career. She's very different to be Bloom. Who is the career woman? She, Lucy is the complete opposite. She's at home second guessing herself, doesn't know, like really having a bit of an identity crisis, if you like, because she doesn't know who she is anymore.
[00:20:30] Jill: And then the third person Rosie was introduced because she sits in the middle of them. And I also wanted to throw in another kind of perspective there about how give readers an insight into how a PR person works and how they do their job in terms of going in and covering up things.
[00:20:48] Jill: It's a bit relevant now 'cause we've got the hush money thing going on with Donald Trump at the moment. But, in the corporate world there are lots of people that are called the, the fixers that just basically go in behind the scenes and keep things out of the papers.
[00:21:04] Jill: So there's a lot of stuff that goes on in the corporate world. That's what interested me about and why I wanting to write about it. There's a lot of stuff that goes on that, never really sees the light of day. So yeah, just wanted to introduce that into the story.
[00:21:17] Pamela: Yeah. Really interesting. And what was your process in when you're writing that?
[00:21:21] Pamela: With the three different points of view, did you write all of one story or, and then slot them all together? Or how did you approach that kind of triple point of view oh, I,
[00:21:31] Jill: it was quite a linear process in the sense that it was chapter by chapter. I think I'd, so I'd written the beginning and then I knew how it would end, but it was very structured and very Okay.
[00:21:42] Jill: Alternating the viewpoints as the chapters went on. And that's how the story built. It wasn't, oh, I'm just gonna write what happens to be bloom, and then I'll insert Rosie later. It was always that it was, things were happening at the same time and rolling along. And it was very structured in the sense that, because I initially started writing and it was a bit all over the place, and I was a bit frustrated with my whole writing process because I felt like it was a bit hobby I was just trying to fit it in around stuff.
[00:22:13] Jill: But then the moment that I said this is my job now. This is, I'm not, I'm not working. I don't have my corporate job at the moment, so I'm gonna treat this like a proper job. I'm gonna sit down at 9:00 AM and I'm not gonna get up until three o'clock. Or, and then write again later whatever it is.
[00:22:31] Jill: For me, unless I, I did that every day. It just wasn't, the word count wasn't going up.
[00:22:36] Pamela: So important to have that discipline, isn't it? Even though it's something that we love doing it can also be excruciating at times. But yeah, having that discipline and getting that bum glue happening is really important, isn't it?
[00:22:47] Helen: It's also having the time to be able to do it. I've actually just quit my job because oh yeah, I can't, I'm trying to write for an hour in the morning and then start a big busy day. And it's just, you need, even if you're not spending all day writing, you need those hours to be thinking about it and letting the story develop in your head.
[00:23:06] Helen: So I, I just can't do both. So we'll see how that goes.
[00:23:10] Pamela: Yeah. Okay. You, Helen, at the moment? Helen, yeah. For Mya Dance. Helen, in terms of the writing process, you said you had heard that story, did you actually meet the woman who was the inspiration for the story and and what other sort of research, rabbit holes, I guess you must have gone down quite a few in the writing of the book.
[00:23:30] Helen: Yeah. Yes, I did meet her. I met her through just one of the ballet moms at my daughter's ballet lesson. And she was a very close family friend of Lucy. And in fact, Lucy had completely transformed her life. She was a dance physio, so that's how she had met her. But by the time I met her, Lucy was very far advanced in, into dementia.
[00:23:52] Helen: So I went to her nursing home in, in North Tara Mara and just held her hand and she just kept squeezing my hand. And it was just so lovely. And then I didn't get to see her again because of Covid. And then she pa she passed away, but she had also wanted her story to get out there all her life.
[00:24:08] Helen: And she had done many writing courses. Her, she spoke about five languages fluently, and English wasn't her first language, but she had written her memoir and it was very much factual. This happened on this date, but that was my primary source document. So I stuck really closely to that because of course, her family is still alive and I didn't want to subvert this story just for.
[00:24:33] Helen: For fiction. So the facts are very closely based on that. But then, gosh, I did loads because I'm a journalist by training, as I said. So I did loads of research into, more into Holocaust survivorship than what happened in the Holocaust, because the book's not an account of the Holocaust. It's a love story set against a backdrop of the Holocaust, so it was the human side of it that I wanted to understand. And the Jewish Museum were absolutely wonderful. I spent a lot of time there and I've spoken to a lot of Holocaust survivors, and they all have very similar outlooks and messages and, this amazing view of the world. I watched that and then, every documentary about the Holocaust that I could, and there's plenty of stuff out there about the Holocaust.
[00:25:20] Helen: It wasn't too hard to research.
[00:25:22] Pamela: And I guess having that other character too, who is doing the interviewing of your, fictional Lucy would've allowed you then to play around a little bit more with the kind of more fictional elements, like you said you wanted to stick to Lucy's story, but I guess that gave you a little bit more freedom having the other character.
[00:25:39] Helen: Yes, absolutely. And it allowed me to give the older Mara a voice, and to talk about her outlook on the world. So that's why I put the young journalist in there. But then actually the journalist has her own character arc in the end as well, which, and hers, there, there are sim, there are shared themes between the two, the motherhood theme and how, importance of.
[00:26:01] Helen: Of mothers, and the importance of loving somebody else. So yeah, it just enabled me to play around with it rather than doing a straight account that a lot of Holocaust literature is. Yeah, I guess it's a bit different to a lot of Holocaust stories.
[00:26:13] Pamela: How about you, max? 'cause I know that, you were, you drew on experiences from your own life, but also drew on, a lot of experiences from women that you'd spoken to and your observations.
[00:26:25] Pamela: How did you pull all that together in the writing process? Did it just come out naturally or, what was your process in doing it?
[00:26:33] Helen: It was a bit weird. I know I've heard other authors say this and like a voice comes to you and she is not my voice at all because she's, she just almost started speaking to me.
[00:26:45] Helen: It was. Very witchy, woo kind of thing. And I actually couldn't let her go until I'd finished, until I got it down. And I always know that's when something's working for me in writing is when the voice is really the most important thing for me. And I can't actually get going on anything until that voice comes.
[00:27:04] Helen: And before writing Cassie, I tried another few things, which I realized I think is my process. I go through a bit of like icky stuff, and then the minute that voice comes, I think, okay, I'm on now, I'm on the, I'm on the roll. So it was just, yeah, it was just listening to really, to what she had to say.
[00:27:23] Helen: And I've, like you said, Pam, the things that I've learned about going away with girlfriends for the weekend and stories I've heard across years of being at school with different parents and everything, I just soaked up all of that primary school life and funneled it out of her.
[00:27:41] Helen: There was a line in there actually. It was about a, which is one of those things that when you are in a primary school, everything becomes so important, doesn't it? With, like the WhatsApp messages and, have you got the right uniform and everything. And I did use a bit of truth in there with, was a proposal for a bottle shop actually to be opened opposite the school gate at one point.
[00:28:03] Helen: And there was like, all the parents like had this massive kind of protest and all of this stuff. 'cause they didn't want to bottle shop opposite the school gate. And that actually was my, I just thought that'd be quite handy actually why I had that. But Kathy I suppose as a debut novel, I was drawing on what was around me, but it was also a lot of what was inside as well and the lots of things that I was thinking about being in a, being in a relationship for so long and all of that was just.
[00:28:34] Helen: Instead of creating a story, I started off with my feelings about that, which I do. I journal stuff down every day and channel that through characters perspectives, really. Oh,
[00:28:46] Pamela: fantastic.
[00:28:47] Helen: So
[00:28:47] Pamela: are you journaling about the novel writing process or just doing a, vomit on the page of what's in your head?
[00:28:52] Helen: It's everything. It's, yeah, things that are annoying me right now. Things in the news, things in life, things to do with my kids, things to do with my parents. And then I will skip back to things that are when I was a kid or, it's almost like I haven't got a therapist right now. I've just got this book.
[00:29:12] Helen: This book. I love it. Yeah. So yeah, I start everything with that because that's just how I feel everything inside me. And I. Have listened to Chloe Higgins quite a lot. She was a mentor for a little bit, and she did say that most people actually don't feel anything from the neck down and it's all in their head.
[00:29:33] Helen: So that's what I'm trying to get better at actually is working out what's going on past the head. Yeah. In the body. That's what Yeah. Yeah. In the body. And that's what I basically try and write down as well, but yeah.
[00:29:42] Pamela: Oh, fantastic.
[00:29:44] Helen: It's
[00:29:44] Pamela: therapy for me. Yeah. That's why I don't think I can ever stop. I think we all have a bit of that, that going on with our writing, for sure.
[00:29:50] Pamela: Yeah, exactly. Jill, what would you say would've been the main challenges for you in getting the story finished and into that kind of form that you were ready to submit?
[00:30:03] Jill: Oh think the main challenge was just the discipline and the, because. Very early on, when you don't have a publisher on the scene and you don't know where it's going.
[00:30:16] Jill: I think the motivating factors for you in doing it, that's always a challenge because it's, some days I would just think where's this going? And who cares and what's driving me? And and it all just seems so fanciful, doesn't it, sometimes to just, is that the background?
[00:30:32] Jill: To be and maybe also a little bit selfish. I would just have moments where I just would battle with myself about what my, were my motivations, what were my intentions with the book. And that, that's probably comes back to having a lot of time by myself, because you are by yourself when you are writing and, you'd step away.
[00:30:50] Jill: And if you weren't having a great day and it wasn't all bouncing along nicely, you'd just think, what's the point? Because you are writing it for you. And then you were saying, Pam, that Yeah, a lot of writers, the end goal is that they do want to be published.
[00:31:05] Jill: I think I just didn't even really know. I just thought I, I just want to finish it. But there was just some real highs and lows, like high heels, low blows. There was real highs and lows like over the months of just keeping focused and yeah and what was my end goal.
[00:31:22] Jill: And I also felt really bad because I wasn't working for the first time in my life, I didn't have a financial income, every month since I'd been whenever I started working back in London always had an income and to not, so that was a challenge for me as well. I had the enormous guilts about not contributing in any way financially.
[00:31:42] Jill: Middle of the cost of living crisis, and I'm. Taking up my, my decided that I'm gonna fulfill this long held goal of mine. So yeah, I think all of the challenges, they were all up
[00:31:56] Pamela: in my head. How about for you, Helen? Yeah. What did you find were the biggest challenges?
[00:32:01] Helen: So I think initially the hardest thing was learning to write fiction where I'd been writing as a journalist for so long, it's a completely different form of writing, and it probably took me two drafts to actually realize I didn't have to report.
[00:32:18] Helen: It's, you're allowed to have the freedom to show. And I knew, they told us. Writing, course writing that you had to show. And I don't think I really understood it for a long time. And then when I got that, I, it just, the floodgates opened and that was wonderful. So not just about using, figurative language, but just having that kind of cinematic view of what was going on.
[00:32:41] Helen: So that took me ages. But now I'm into it. It's coming. That's just how I write now. So I've learned that, thank goodness. And the o the other big issue I had was with structuring the novel. 'cause it, the hardest writing a Holocaust novel as a debut novel with a dual timeline was probably a bit to bitten off a bit more than I could chew with hindsight.
[00:33:02] Helen: But I didn't realize that. So my initial structure, I wanted to have them with two characters going back to Poland and mirror the events and it just didn't work at all. And then, so then I decided to completely change it and just tell it chronologically and that. Worked so much better. And then when I'd got to that understanding it all sorted itself out.
[00:33:23] Helen: So I'm writing the second one now, and I just feel like I, I'm just much more confident with both those things that at the sentence level but also at the structure level. I know what needs to come next where I really didn't know that in the first one.
[00:33:37] Pamela: Yeah. It's a huge learning curve, isn't it?
[00:33:39] Pamela: That first one. Yeah. So much to learn. And you just keep learning with each book, but how about for you Max? What did you find was the biggest challenge in getting it from that, first idea to across the line?
[00:33:51] Helen: It isn't it? Sort like Jill said, I completely get what, where she's coming from.
[00:33:55] Helen: Nobody is asking you to do this. Nobody's asking you to sit down every day. And. Do this thing that might not be any outcome at all. And I think starting again was like a real struggle for me because I put everything into that first book for so long and nothing came out of it, but now I've looked back, it was that kind of needed to happen.
[00:34:18] Helen: I needed to be able to write that book to get to this point. And it's only when that's happened, you can actually realize it at the time if you're starting writing. And anybody out there who is writing their first book now or is, having a go at doing it, the reality to say to yourself, this may not be it, and this may be a chance that I get to learn what to do.
[00:34:40] Helen: And at the time it's horrible. You don't wanna be told that you. You wanna be able to, I know it know, because
[00:34:45] Pamela: you feel like you are wasting your time, don't you? But it's not really, it's not wasted time because it's a learning process. Yeah.
[00:34:50] Helen: They say no writing's wasted. I can't remember who said that.
[00:34:53] Helen: Anyway. I would just hang on to that even now. So I just think that was the biggest challenge for me was moving from that to that, but to this, but now I, and it sounds weird, but now everything is perfect. It's written, there's points. I dunno if you were like this or anybody else Helen or Jill.
[00:35:10] Helen: I actually can't believe I got to the end of a book and sometimes I forget even writing it. Do you know what I mean? It's like, how did this happen?
[00:35:17] Maxine: When did this
[00:35:17] Helen: happen? It's really strange to get to the end and then have this book thing in front of you. It's like having a baby. You don't actually realize.
[00:35:28] Helen: So yeah, I think that was the thing. I'm just so glad I carried on. Now I would say even the, the rollercoaster like Jill was saying, is, and I think you've, I've learned from you Pam as well recently, that just goes on. I think that's just accepting that is never gonna change. Never gonna change.
[00:35:44] Helen: Even with the next book and the next book.
[00:35:46] Pamela: Yes. Or part of the fun life which it is. And which leads me to my next question, max. Let's stay with you for a minute. Yeah. What have you, when you think back about that whole debut publishing experience, what have been the highlights for you?
[00:35:59] Helen: Oh my goodness.
[00:36:00] Helen: The first morning after so long thinking, am I actually gonna see a book or something that I've written in a shop? People are gonna buy, pick up and read my words that I've written in the cafe, or, on notes on my phone, or, whatever. Waiting for the kids at school to actually see that in a bookshop.
[00:36:18] Helen: Basing out on the new release table. And that morning actually that on my Publica on publication day, I back to back radio interview. So I was in here until lunchtime and my sister was here from New Zealand and my husband Darren, and they were out like scouring the shot for me, like on the convent conman and sending me pictures back from Berlow books at Stockland
[00:36:40] Pamela: What's been the highlights for you, Helen? What, when you think back about it, what are the things that really stand out as being amazing?
[00:36:47] Helen: Like Max said, the first time you see your book on the shelves is just magic.
[00:36:52] Helen: And I'm used to seeing my byline in magazines and newspapers and things, but yeah, a whole book is something else. And she I I met the managing director of Simon and Schuster at one of their functions, and he said to me, just, cherish it. You'll never be a debut novelist again.
[00:37:07] Helen: Yeah. Just really en enjoy it. And the other thing, like I'm not a confident public speaker at all, so I was very nervous about the publicity and I went and did a public speaking course in the end at nida, which was absolutely fantastic. Great idea. Yeah. Yeah. It's so good. It was all about, how you hold yourself physically, because I think that's what I was doing wrong.
[00:37:31] Helen: So I've done quite a lot of events and they've gone really well, and I've chatted away and I'm more proud of myself for being able to speak in front of a room of 70 people than I am writing a novel, I think. So that's been really wonderful. And then I suppose the other thing is that a lot of children of Holocaust survivors have come to my events and I was really nervous about how they would take it because.
[00:37:57] Helen: I am appropriating these awful, horrific experiences, the worst that humanity can do. And I'm, I am, I've turned it into a novel for financial gain really. I've had lots of feedback from people in the community that they really love the book. And for me, that's the absolute most important thing.
[00:38:17] Helen: I really don't care about anything else, but the fact that people have lived through it, have endorsed it. Yeah that's the best thing. Better than I ever could've hope. Brilliant.
[00:38:26] Pamela: Yeah, I can imagine it would've been quite nerve wracking having the children of Holocaust survivors.
[00:38:31] Pamela: What about Lucy's chil? Has she got, did she have children?
[00:38:34] Helen: No, she never had children. She didn't feel that she could mother them properly. Okay. Because of the trauma that she'd been through. And a lot of she had friends who had children and the children just, all the guilt was invested on the children and the children felt that they had to live extraordinary lives to make up for everything that their parents had lost.
[00:38:55] Helen: But she did she had three marriages and her third marriage her husband still alive. He's 98 this week, I think, or next week. And he had four children. So yes they've supported the book. And I have given a copy of it to her husband, Peter, but I don't think he's read it. He looked and he said, oh, that's a lot of words.
[00:39:14] Helen: I, I don't think he's got any further than that, but he's supported me publishing it because that's lovely. That's what Lucy always wanted it to be out there, so now it is. Yeah.
[00:39:24] Pamela: Yeah, that'd be such a great feeling. How about for you, Jill? What have been the highlights in having your book published?
[00:39:30] Jill: The same as Max and Helen really. Yes, seeing it in its, in its hard copy versions is amazing. But also, as Helen said, sometimes it's the feedback as well that you get in the emotions that maybe it, it evoked for some readers and for me, 'cause my, when I was thinking about a target audience, really, it was that corporate woman that might have had a bit of a rough, a rough trot or, and I've had lots of women just say, oh, it's not satisfying.
[00:40:00] Jill: 'cause it's unfortunate that they've had a, a poor experience in the workplace. But the fact that, the words on the page had made them feel seen was one of the, one of the ways someone described it to me, the way that it had it, it validated like how she had been made to feel in her role.
[00:40:18] Jill: And I wrote something I had an interview in the Australian Financial Review and actually after that was the weekend, the the book came out. I had a panting jogger run towards me, and it was one of the school mums. And she said, oh, I read your interview. It just resonates so much with me.
[00:40:38] Jill: Women, we are either still wearing Teflon to go into the office sometimes, or some of us are just stepping away because it is, it is still really hard. And I think, for people that aren't in that industry sometimes think, it's 2024, hasn't the world moved on and yet has in some areas that it really hasn't in others.
[00:40:57] Jill: In the UK at the moment, there's this whole sexism in the city inquiry looking at the increase in harassment, bullying, and discrimination in the financial services sector. And, I started my career in London in 1997 and to hear that it's still, if not just as bad, if not worse is really depressing to me.
[00:41:19] Jill: 'cause it's like we're trying to keep more women in the workplace and yet these barriers that they face all the time, either from the hands of core, toxic men that are power hungry and, and don't behave properly. That still really really angers me anyway.
[00:41:35] Jill: So to have the feedback is really nice because you sometimes think, oh yeah, it's all up in my head. But one of the other really lovely things is that it has opened up this whole new network for me because, you have friends throughout life, you move into groups where when it's about the schools or it's about work, and then to have this whole new group of other authors and to talk to authors and also in a very welcoming circle, like they're all so positive and and supportive.
[00:42:04] Jill: It's really lovely because I think back to high heels and low lows and sometimes having lived through a very cutthroat environment. And then to be so welcomed in this environment. And it is just, it's, that's been really lovely. And I'm going to a author Talk tonight for Amy Hutton.
[00:42:21] Jill: And I just booked that on my own. I'm just going by myself, but I'm sure that there will be people there that I know.
[00:42:27] Jill: And it's not like walking into a 'cause corporate event where I don't know anyone. And I think, oh, who's gonna be here? The atmosphere is
[00:42:35] Helen: very different.
[00:42:36] Jill: Yeah.
[00:42:37] Helen: I love going to those things. I've turned up to loads by myself and you actually get there and then you realize there's three people that, it's really great.
[00:42:44] Pamela: And I think, we've been talking about everybody going through that writing process and going through the experience of publication and whether you have actually been published yet or not, I think you're in a room with, obviously there's readers there too, if it's a book launch, but when there's a whole bunch of other writers around, everybody's had that shared experience, of, we know the ups and downs of what it's like to write a book and to get it out there and to then, grapple with the next one.
[00:43:09] Pamela: And so I think that kind of is a bit of a glue too for everybody in that writing community.
[00:43:14] Helen: I was just gonna say, I've found the more established authors, particularly have been really generous with their advice and their time, which is, I haven't seen in certainly not the case in journalism. It's, that's much more cutthroat. But I just feel like in, in the world of being an author, the more support you can give each other, the better it is for the industry, which has been absolutely unexpected and really lovely.
[00:43:37] Pamela: Yeah. Jill?
[00:43:39] Jill: No, what I was gonna say was everyone's so supportive and willing to give advice, but also it's really it's really good to hear that everyone's going through the same stuff. Varying degrees. Sometimes I think sit at home and think, oh, is it just me that feels like this?
[00:43:54] Jill: Or is it, because actually the one thing that overwhelms me as well as social media, because I actually wasn't on any. That's good,
[00:44:00] Pamela: because that was my next question, so keep going with that one.
[00:44:05] Jill: My, my thing was I wasn't, I was on LinkedIn and, which is just, for obviously professional and you don't really post anything too fluffy on there, so I haven't really minded that.
[00:44:15] Jill: But I, my first post on Instagram was me signing my contract because I thought, oh, I've gotta step out of the shadows. Now I've actually always quite like looking at other people, but then I don't really like posting about myself. So that was another aspect that you know to put yourself out there.
[00:44:31] Jill: But I remember I didn't even know what to post, so I'd look at other authors and I copied someone's, it was Kirsty Jaggers. We were both talking at the Manny Writers Festival and I sent her a DM and I said. Oh, I'm just copying the template. And she said, oh yeah, don't worry. We all do that. We're all just looking at things and pinching ideas because, I just didn't know what to post.
[00:44:51] Jill: 'cause I thought, is anyone interested in this? Yeah. So that side of things is quite tricky. It felt, always felt to me quite narcissistic that personally the social media. But I'm getting the hang of it a little bit now. Yeah. I'm just try not, I try and align it a lot with just the book rather than as me.
[00:45:12] Jill: And that's something gives me a bit more comfort
[00:45:14] Pamela: yeah. I think that's a great way to approach it. How about you Max? How have you found the whole kind of social media and promotion side of things?
[00:45:21] Helen: It was quite full on, isn't it, in those early, and the, actually the leading up was the biggest thing, I think it was like the weeks beforehand and I was trying to think of interesting.
[00:45:32] Helen: To put on there. And my dad actually said to me, he goes, oh, you were posting a lot about your book.
[00:45:38] Maxine: I was like, yeah, dad. That's the point.
[00:45:41] Helen: And then, and afterwards, now I suppose like Jill, I have got a lot more use to it. I actually do use my dog quite a lot because I find that a really good kind of kind, so it's not just my face and me, there's something out there that kind of shows what kind of life that I like to live.
[00:45:59] Helen: So I do use Snoop quite a lot apart from when she bark on podcast. So yeah, I found that really helpful. And then also, yeah, like also putting other books on there that I've loved or write events that I've been to. And then always I've been trying to like, ask questions of. People who to have some kind of interest that pe you know, there's something else going on.
[00:46:21] Pamela: Yeah. Bit interactive sort of
[00:46:22] Helen: thing. I think. Yeah, A bit interactive. My friend Alice calls it a character pop. If you probably never know the lingo, if you put something that different to you on your social media, it this shows a bit more of your personality. I think so I've been trying to do that and then just get some interest that moves on so it can move on through me as a person then into, outta the book kind of world.
[00:46:45] Helen: Yeah.
[00:46:46] Pamela: And I think readers are interested in, I guess you've gotta decide how much of your life you wanna put out there on social media.
[00:46:52] Helen: My team boys are like, I can't even put a shadow of them on there.
[00:46:56] Helen: Not even a hand. It's mom, get that down. Which I totally understand.
[00:47:03] Pamela: So Helen, you said you did the public speaking course, which has been really helpful. How have you navigated the rest of the kind of social media and promotion side of things?
[00:47:12] Helen: So again I've found it really difficult and I think because I come from a journalism background because most journalists really should not be the story.
[00:47:22] Helen: That's what you are always told. You are reporting other people's stories. So I hate self-promotion. In any part of my life I'm quite shy. But I, I quite like the social media. I'm learning it, so I don't think I'm doing a great job, but I'm posting regularly, which is more than I did before.
[00:47:40] Helen: I think the hardest thing for me has been not really knowing the industry or how to market myself and knowing what to do next. I'm three months in and the really busy time is over now, and it's everybody, they've all moved on to the next books that have come out now. What should I be doing?
[00:47:57] Helen: Should I be still trying to do events? Should I still be trying to get the book out there? Or people will, people just all be really sick of me. So I think that's, I think it's more a mental issue than a technical one. So yeah, nobody teaches you this stuff, but publishers and the agents move on to the next thing and you're left there.
[00:48:16] Helen: So I think having the author group has been absolutely critical and just, taking people's advice and. Text Max or somebody else and say, whatcha do? How did you do that? How getting advice been? Fantastic.
[00:48:34] Maxine: I love that group. Like on Friday night I was like, on the so for glass of wine. Oh, I know who, I can tell crew how I'm feeling at this moment.
[00:48:46] Pamela: So tell us a bit about the debut crew.
[00:48:48] Helen: Yeah Lisa Kenway, whose book is about to come out in August, set it up. I think he's been going for a couple of years. I think it, did it come outta the first time podcast? I think originally with Kate Ol and Catherine, I think they started it and then it's rolled on Facebook.
[00:49:06] Helen: So just a community of debut authors who were coming out in the year that you come out. On Facebook. So it was like sharing if we see each other's book in the airport or we do it in a bookshop, we'll take a quick picture and post it on there, or we'll put launch our launch information in there.
[00:49:24] Helen: Or just things that have worked for us I think that haven't worked to do, like you said, with social media. And just to do with, it's a lot of how, maybe I'm somebody that has overshare a lot of, this is how I'm feeling. Is anybody else feeling like this or this awesome thing happened today.
[00:49:40] Helen: I can't believe it. So every kind of part of the spectrum
[00:49:44] Maxine: Yeah. Is on
[00:49:44] Helen: there. And it's been great. And we, and a real community if people come to Sydney or somebody goes to Melbourne or Amber or Adelaide or wherever the person is, it's meeting up. And then when you meet them in real life, it's actually great.
[00:49:56] Helen: You actually really feel like you know each other already.
[00:49:58] Helen: It's actually been a really important part of the. Of the whole journey this year, actually. Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah.
[00:50:04] Maxine: Yeah.
[00:50:04] Helen: And I've had authors before who before it started went, I'd have
[00:50:07] Pamela: loved that. Yeah. I think it's great to have that support.
[00:50:10] Pamela: Really important. So what would you say Max would be, there's probably a lot, but if you could narrow it down to one main piece of advice that you would give to authors who are either submitting for, their first book to a publisher or agent Yes. Or going through that debut process, can you think of something that you know would've been really helpful for you to know?
[00:50:34] Helen: Yes. I think before you submitting. I had to take the emotion out of it because I was actually finding early on the process quite exhausting and quite personal. And I've learned since then that it's not anything to do with you or the standard of your writing. It is all to do with the business of publishing and where they are right now and what they can take on and what they can't.
[00:50:59] Helen: So to take that personal feeling outta it, I, which I think I've heard a lot of people do this if they just start a spreadsheet. So if I was submitting or just starting to submit now, I would do, definitely do that again. I would set up, but I didn't do for the first few with my first book, I'd just sent them out thinking this is it.
[00:51:16] Helen: And then I learned that and I got the spreadsheet and put the publisher's name and the tick or the cross. And then all I said to myself was, I just need a tick. That's one tick. I just needed one tick. And I just had that going through my head. And then you have the tick. So that's to do with before the, before you get published.
[00:51:32] Helen: That would be my biggest piece of advice to just keep going. As a debut for your first book coming out, I would say it goes so quickly, it is just a blink and it's just four months later and you are, and it is a whirlwind of stuff.
[00:51:50] Helen: And then you've it's gone and you are just like, oh, this is great. This is amazing. This happened, but it's so quick. It's almost every single day, just hang on to that time, I would say. And just really take it in, even going camp in the bookshelf without, stare with it before it's on the shelf, and before it's not in there anymore.
[00:52:08] Helen: So I would say just really take a moment to just appreciate what you've done, the hard work you've put in to get to that point. And, I just. Be really proud of yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:52:20] Pamela: Great advice. How about you, Jill? What bits of advice would you give to kind of people at both of those points?
[00:52:26] Jill: So firstly maybe try and be patient once you've finished it. Because I think for me, I got really an anxious about that. I'd finished this product and I just, and I actually probably should have gone back now when I think about it and edited it and done another edit and another edit instead, I just thought, oh, that, it's done, it's finished.
[00:52:49] Jill: But I realized that what I'd sent out, the first couple of people that I'd sent it to, it really wasn't. And that's a bit embarrassing, 'cause you get that one opportunity and every time, then I went back and you, because you can just keep editing forever and ever, can't you? Yeah.
[00:53:08] Jill: Yeah, eventually, like that's it. Okay. But I do think that there was some, I probably should have, given that I'd spent six months writing something, which probably doesn't sound too long in the scheme of things. I probably should have spent another two finessing rather than then getting impatient about what was next, and then the other thing is is just keep pushing as well. So when you have got it finished because I, I think. Helen was saying, they just the publisher then moves on to the next one. And you are when you are in that no person's land, that's a bit weird 'cause the buzz has gone out of the whole debut and its time's passed and you thinking, how long do I keep, do I keep pushing?
[00:53:50] Jill: And I suppose it just keep pushing until no one else wants to hear about just keep hustling and seeing if there's other opportunities. For me as well. 'cause I'm with a niche publisher. I wrote a couple of opinion pieces as well and one of them landed finally in the Sunday Life Magazine.
[00:54:08] Jill: On the weekend.
[00:54:09] Pamela: Yes. Fantastic. Well done.
[00:54:11] Jill: And, that was all about workplace heartbreak. So the similarities between a professional breakup and a personal breakup and the,
[00:54:19] Jill: Emotions that you go through. But also, you said I think thinking creatively about how you can position yourself to, to to, to get the book out because it might not be just a writeup or a review.
[00:54:31] Jill: There might be other ways to to get your voice out there that lead back to the book.
[00:54:36] Pamela: Yeah. I think that's so important because like you say, it has a certain shelf life, in bookstores and even online. They're always available online, but, in terms of being a debut, being the book, that's out there at the moment.
[00:54:48] Pamela: But if you can find those other ways, and your publisher tends to move on to the next, next author or whatever. So it's really up to us to keep word out there about the book, isn't it? And to find new ways to actually promote it and let people know about it.
[00:55:03] Jill: I went and spoke at a a Commonwealth Bank Women's Event recently, which wasn't something I thought about.
[00:55:09] Jill: And then when I went to it, I thought yeah, this is perfect. Because I was thinking more about the books, the bookshop events, readers coming there. And that's, 'cause that's what I see, everyone's going doing books in bars, I'm looking at what other people are doing.
[00:55:24] Jill: And then it was actually, my husband mentioned that to me and said, women in banking and finance, which is a not-for-Profit Forum, why don't you try and talk at that event? So just thinking a bit more about, not just about the reader being in the bookstore, where else I might target.
[00:55:39] Jill: Yeah. To think about it commercially a
[00:55:43] Pamela: great idea.
[00:55:44] Pamela: How about you, Helen? What bits of advice would you have for people either submitting or, and also at the point of, having had that first book out?
[00:55:53] Helen: So I know a lot of writers who are just, yeah, not finishing their books, they're wanting the book to be absolutely perfect.
[00:56:01] Helen: So while I think Jill's absolutely right, you don't want to send it in undercooked. I also think, I didn't realize until I was published how much more work you're gonna do on it after it's picked up. So it's certainly got to be at a stage that you're happy to submit it. But if you are the sort of person that is going to mind if they just completely cut out a character or change the end or change the structure, then you've gotta be prepared for that.
[00:56:28] Helen: And if you can't do it, then may maybe do something, just write right for you. So the key thing is to keep writing, get it finished, and then be ready for it to be changed. And then I think once it's published the main thing is to manage your expectations. So I think loads of debut authors think.
[00:56:46] Helen: This is going to be the next, I don't know, Haley Scrivener or Leanne Morty or something. I think we, we all think that, and then I think disappointment is a real issue for a lot of Deb authors and I think, be realistic. It's an absolutely amazing achievement to have a book picked up and published, and I don't think we celebrate that enough.
[00:57:07] Helen: Rather than obsessing about sales, which of course we all do every day but, just really enjoy the fact that you wrote a book. It's amazing. So that I wish I had, somebody had told me that before. I'd been through this. So I'm really just trying to be happy now that I've got a book out there and get back into the writing process for as well.
[00:57:27] Pamela: Fantastic. And what's next for you, Helen? You are working on another book now?
[00:57:32] Helen: I am. So I got a two book deal with Chester. I was very lucky. And I think the wisdom is that the second one should be along the same lines of the first, because, your readers will want more of the same.
[00:57:44] Helen: So it's actually very loosely based on my family's story. We always thought at the turn of the last century that my family came from Russia, but it was actually Ukraine, which I found out by getting my dad an ancestry.com genetic test. Oh yeah. We found all these relatives in America that we didn't know we had and who knew where the family was originally from.
[00:58:08] Helen: Yeah. So I have Ukrainian ancestry, so I'm imagining the story of how my family escaped from Ukraine to London in 1904.
[00:58:17] Pamela: Wow. Fantastic. And you've got all that experience from the first one to push you forward with the new one.
[00:58:23] Helen: Hope it's going more slowly than I had hoped. But anyway I'll, I know from the first one that I will get there.
[00:58:30] Helen: It's just a moment. I'm at the bottom of the mountain. By the time you've gone for a few months you can see the summit,
[00:58:35] Pamela: Yeah, true. How about you, Jill? You working on another one?
[00:58:40] Jill: I am, I'm at the bottom of the mountain as well. He going, oh, I just, yeah. What, how long's it gonna take me?
[00:58:47] Jill: I just don't know is the answer with this one because I am working, I I've got a part-time corporate job whereas I wasn't working with the first one. And so yeah, I, it's an, it's a workplace intrigue. It's very gender. It's about gender in the workplace and gender games if you'd like.
[00:59:05] Jill: So gender games that we play in our personal relationships and in, in the workplace. And I think. Helen was saying for me, I'll try and make that my focus area. It will be writing about
[00:59:17] Pamela: yeah.
[00:59:18] Jill: Women's issues with work through the relationships that they have with people. And it's a three women theme again.
[00:59:26] Jill: So I've got three very different women. But, and it's tackling some difficult some difficult material, but I'm trying to do it in a way 'cause I never want these things to be too too depressing if you like. To have a little bit of a comedic angle as well to lighten the mood so it can, take you through
[00:59:44] Jill: different emotions, but we'll see. It might take me another six months, but I don't know. Helen what's your timing? Do you have a, do you have a deadline? Do you set yourself or does Simon and Schuster give you one?
[00:59:55] Helen: I'm contractually obliged to send it in March. My contract says it, it needs to be, the first draft needs to be sent to them in March. So that's what I'm aiming
[01:00:04] Pamela: for. Good to have a deadline. Yeah.
[01:00:06] Helen: Yeah.
[01:00:07] Pamela: Even if you miss it. How about you Max? Where are you at with your next one?
[01:00:12] Pamela: Yeah, I
[01:00:13] Helen: realized my process is writing something and then letting it go before I start again. And it's just the recently, dawned on me. That's actually what I do. So last year I was really trying to get some, a lot of words down while I was waiting for everything is perfect to be published.
[01:00:29] Helen: And I got to the beginning of this year and looked at it and went, do you know what, no, it's just something wasn't firing me. Something has to really fire me up to get into the story. And it was I thought, no. Okay, that's what I did last time. Let's start again. So I am, yeah, I'm into something now.
[01:00:46] Helen: And I think the main theme of this is anger, especially middle aged anger. I'm just honing in on the middle aged woman right now because. I am my age and the stuff that's coming out that she's very angry, she's got, there's stuff in her past she's never dealt with and the stuff that's going on in the world that's just fueling her up.
[01:01:06] Helen: And I just thought, okay, I want to write a female falling down kind of thing, with Michael Douglas. She is in a similar Sydney community and yeah, it might all come bubbling out. I dunno. I'm a pa, I'm a, that we talk about, that, that whole plot and pants thing.
[01:01:22] Helen: Yeah. I'm with her on that ride as well. I don't know what is gonna happen. I do have the piece of paper next to my bed now, which I suddenly, I'm cleaning my teeth and I'll get into bed, then I'll sit up and I'll just write something. So I've got like pages of papers all over the side of my bedside table, but I think of something.
[01:01:39] Helen: So yeah, that's where I'm at now. Are
[01:01:41] Pamela: you contracted? Max did?
[01:01:43] Helen: No, I'm not, no. Which sits with me quite a lot better. My kind of personality I am like Helen's a change and she's used to deadlines and I would, it would just throw me all off. But I'm actually
[01:01:56] Maxine: quite happy with that,
[01:01:57] Helen: really to be able to just in, get into the story without any pressure right now.
[01:02:03] Helen: But I will put a deadline on at the end of the year for my first draft, is what I'm saying to myself. Yeah. Hopefully I can celebrate at Christmas with a bottle of bubbles when I type the end.
[01:02:13] Pamela: Nice. It's been so lovely chatting to you all. .
[01:02:16] Helen: I just wanted say this was really great doing something like this in a panel kind of chat. It's been really great to Jill and Helen's experiences of the. Thank you everybody. No problem.
[01:02:29] Jill: Honestly, I from my perspective, these opportunities are amazing. I think for, to have a platform to be able to talk about the book, every single opportunity is for me, is gold dust.
[01:02:41] Jill: When I first started talking about it, like Helen, it was a bit, it is a bit nerve wracking. Like I've always worked on the other side where I put people out to talk in the media. It's really weird.
[01:02:51] Jill: I'm going, go on, you've gotta do an interview and this is what you need to say. It's funny because I was talking to our chief economist at work about this and and he said, you'd be fine at it. And I said no. 'cause I'm always the one I've always just been behind the scenes. Yeah. And I think any opportunity to talk about it gets you better at doing it.
[01:03:09] Jill: So hopefully, you learn and you don't overthink it,
[01:03:12] Pamela: yeah.
[01:03:13] Helen: Yeah. And I think it's also. So it's also really nice to, for your listenership who are writing because it, there, there isn't much support for debut authors I don't think. Yeah, no, I agree.
[01:03:24] Helen: You know that it's just assume that you know what to do and yeah, you have no idea how this industry works. So thank you. Oh, no worries. And I
[01:03:32] Pamela: think another great thing to say to anybody out there who is listening and maybe struggling with anything like that, if you are, in those early stages is, I'm pretty sure you girls that'll feel the same, but I'm always happy for people to DM me or email or just contact if have a question or pop it onto one of the Facebook groups or something.
[01:03:51] Pamela: Everybody's really happy to help. Like we were saying, the Australian writing community is so supportive and don't be afraid to reach out to people I think is important to know.
[01:04:00] Helen: Yeah, definitely. I'm gonna let
[01:04:02] Pamela: you get on with your day.
[01:04:04] Pamela: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks Anne.
[01:04:06] Helen: Thanks so much. Thank you.
[01:04:08] Pamela: And I'll see you. I'm sure it'll launch somewhere soon.