Erin Young: A Writers Journey From Battlefields to Corn Fields.

This week my guest Erin Young and I peel back the curtain on the publishing world's highs and lows, sharing the tenacity required to navigate rejection and the emotional fortitude to absorb critiques even after topping the charts. From embracing a tough exterior to the strategic shifts like adopting a pen name for different genres, we explore the nuanced decisions that shape an author's career, especially when crossing from the world of historical fiction to contemporary thrillers.
 
Erin Young is the author of the Riley Fisher series and lives and writes in Brighton, UK. Her debut contemporary  thriller novel, The Fields, was  inspired by an article in 'The Guardian'  about the menacing power of Big Agriculture on rural communities in Iowa and drew comparisons with Mare of Easttown and True Detective.  Her second novel,  Original Sins has been described as 'Bold, gritty and deeply immersive.'

However, Erin Young is no stranger to the publishing world. Erin Young is the pseudonym of acclaimed historical novelist, Robyn Young, author of eight internationally bestselling novels. She has been published in 20 languages in 23 countries, selling over two million books worldwide.

Original Sins
It's a brutal winter in Des Moines, Iowa, and the city is gripped by fear. A serial attacker known as the Sin Eater is stalking women and has just struck again. It's a tough time and a tough place for Riley Fisher, a former small-town sergeant, to be reporting for duty as an FBI agent on her first assignment.

Teamed with a man she's not sure she can trust and struggling to prove herself - while fighting the pull of her old life and family dramas - Riley is tasked with investigating a vicious death threat against the newly elected female state governor. Gradually, she traces a disturbing connection between this case and the hunt for the Sin Eater. Through snow, ice, violence and lies, Riley Fisher is drawn towards a terrifying revelation.

Transcript

Erin Young: 0:00

And then the rejection happens beyond that, because even if you get your agent, then you get your publisher, then it actually happens and you've got a book in the shops and maybe even then you get a bestseller, you're still going to get people who hate it and tell you that they hate it in great detail.

Nadine Matheson: 0:18

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation Podcast with your host, beth Senninoffer, nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well. I hope that you've had a good week. What can I say about my week? It was a good writing week. And what's a good writing week? It's when you get words down on the screen or on the page and you're actually happy with what you've written and that you can see that you're making progress. I think that was the most important thing for me. I got to Friday and I looked at what I've written and I thought, yes, I made a breakthrough. I know exactly what's going to happen next. I know exactly what my characters are doing. I'm happy with where I'm going. So that was what made my week a good week.

Nadine Matheson: 1:01

Now let's get on to more important things. I have three shoutouts to make. The first shoutout is to Anna, the second to Brian and the third is to Catherine. Now Anna, brian and Catherine are supporting this podcast via Patreon. Now, one of the perks that you get for supporting my podcast via Patreon is that you get a shoutout on the next episode of the podcast. And there are other amazing perks that you get, depending on which tier you subscribe to. If you would like to support my podcast via Patreon and I would be extremely grateful if you do then all you need to do is go to patreoncom, put the conversation with Nadine Matheson podcast in the search engine the link is also in the show notes and you can select what tier you wish to pick and support me and then you can see what perk you will get. And if you're a writer, publisher, who else working in PR, and you want to advertise your book on the podcast, you're able to do that via Patreon also and you can also sponsor the show. As I said, I really am grateful to everyone who has supported the show and has posted reviews, posted comments and have followed and subscribed and shared. Anyway, let's get on with the show.

Nadine Matheson: 2:16

Today's guest is author Erin Young, and Erin Young has a new novel coming out this week called Original Sins, which I read and I'm not just saying that when I say books are brilliant, I'm not just saying that because I'm talking to my guests, it's because I genuinely mean it. I described it as being so atmospheric and just dark and thrilling. It has everything that you want in a good thrill. So I recommend that you go and get it. So in today's conversation, erin and I talk about reaching out and touching history, experiencing rejection beyond signing with an agent and the pressure to repeat success. Now, as always, sit back. We'll go for a walk and enjoy the conversation.

Nadine Matheson: 2:59

Erin Young, welcome to the conversation. Hello, good to be here. It's nice to have you here. So my first question is because anyone like who knows you does all they need to do is go on your website and they know this is not like your first rodeo. This is not your first trip as an author. So what I was interested in is was there any sense of imposter syndrome when you started with the Erin Young book, so the new thrillers when you've had this long, massive, successful career as a historical fiction author?

Erin Young: 3:40

Yeah, in a way there was. I kind of thought maybe I should get a wig or something and switch between these two personalities. Yeah, it was a strange one. I guess I didn't really think about whether I would change my name or not. But it was my American agent who said to me because I mean, the first book did my first historical book, as Robin Young did pretty well in the States, it was in the New York Times, a seller list, but historical fiction generally over there just hasn't had the kind of interest that it gets here and in Europe, and so it was never. Even though it did well with the first book, my, the rest of my historical career just didn't do that well in the States.

Erin Young: 4:27

And having this new thriller that sets in Iowa, my agent was very much of the thought that it would be helpful if I rebranded myself as something new for the American market, and in some ways I sort of started thinking about it when he suggested it and Erin actually was a name my parents were going to call me, so it was kind of one of those fun sort of.

Erin Young: 4:54

Oh well, I used to love that name as a kid and I'll take it now then, but it's the more I sort of thought about it, the more I thought actually that makes sense for my readers here, that they'll know then if they're picking up a Robin Young but they're going to get historical fiction, if they're picking up an Erin Young but they're going to get contemporary crime thrillers set in Iowa, both of which are quite different. So it actually felt like a nice sort of split that would help in terms of where it would be branded and marketed and the readers that would be coming to it. So I think, because so many people here knew me as Robin Young, as medieval action adventure, I think there could have been a risk of people picking the new one up and just kind of being completely stumped or surprised when it opens in a cornfield in Iowa. Not a medieval battlefield, the medieval one got here.

Nadine Matheson: 5:55

I was thinking, you know, when you're saying that historical fiction doesn't like, it's not as successful. Maybe in this day I just find that weird.

Erin Young: 6:05

Yeah, I don't know whether it is it because their own history is comparatively short and in terms of you know Western, you know kind of modern history of America, I don't know what it is. I mean, I think the first book did so well because it was about the Knights, templar, brethren, and I think people got a little bit excited, thinking it was going to be another Dan Brown type story. Yeah, they'd come out the year before brethren came out with the Da Vinci Code and I think a lot of readers picked it up and it did quite well because of that. And then we went, oh, hang on. Yeah, I don't know, I'm not really interested in this.

Nadine Matheson: 6:43

Oh, it's. History, History yeah.

Erin Young: 6:46

Ancient, ancient history. I've no clue about this, I don't know. I don't know what it is. I suppose it's very easy for us in Britain, and in Europe as well, to kind of literally walk around. I could walk around the corner here and be in a pub that was I mean, I'm in Brighton but being a pub that was there in the 16th century with the same sort of flint walls. The flat I live in is from 1750. It's churches down the road and Brighton was a fishing village. It's just kind of steep in and I don't know whether that then feels we feel closer, maybe in some ways, to our history because it's so much more visible to us, I suppose.

Nadine Matheson: 7:29

I think that's absolutely true because even where I am so in Greenwich, and I could I can walk out my house now and cross the park, go to a small church called Settliclist Church and you'll see plaques dedicated to like Evelyn Peeps. And then I can walk along the river, which isn't even five minutes from where I am, and there's all these like display plaques explaining about the history of the river, dating back to God knows when, and then a little bit further up, the Cutty Sark's there. Then you go to Greenwich Park and I've got the observatory and the Meridian timeline. It's like you could spin around and throw a stone and you'll hear history.

Erin Young: 8:12

Yeah, I think it is that. I think it's that we can reach out and touch it and it's so much more tangible for us, whereas I mean, and America is such a kind of it's always been in its recent history sort of so young and kind of thrusting and ambitious. And I think America looks forward and I think Europe looks back quite a lot and I think it's maybe that dynamic somehow that tends to have, you know, more readers of historical fiction in Britain and Europe than in America.

Nadine Matheson: 8:46

Why are you doing that with an American agent? So?

Erin Young: 8:50

he came through my first UK agent who I was with for, oh goodness, since he took me on as a client just after I finished my master's degree, which was in creative writing at Sussex. And actually I met that agent, rupert Heath, when he came to do an agents and publishes day when I was on the sort of pre masters creative writing course and it was one of those days where agents and publishers rock up and basically give a massive dose of reality to all these aspiring authors who are like what you mean, my book is going to be automatically a bestseller. So I met him there and actually he was really encouraging about what I was writing, which was Brethren at the time. I wrote that on their creative writing course and then I did it for my dissertation on my masters and I worked with Rupert for a couple of years back and forth. I mean that book started off in Brethren, started off in first person with my main character, will Campbell, looking back on his life in the Crusades, and it was just going to be one book and three working with Rupert, for it was nearly two years before he signed me up the day after I graduated from the Masters. Really, yeah, it was such an interesting experience because I think he was. He loved the idea but he really didn't like the fact that it was an old man character looking back on his life. He said but all the kind of drama and kind of thrill and danger of the Crusades is kind of lost because it's a retrospective, rather than he's right there in the thick of it, you know and hey look, you know he survives everything because he's telling you about it. Sorry, yeah, so it's that sort of it. You know that that was that perspective that changed that for me. But then when I did change it to third person, I was able to then open it out and be able to tell the story of the Crusades from the Muslim perspective as well as the Christian perspective and I think for me that made it a much better book and a much richer and deeper story. That became three books. But yeah, that took two years.

Erin Young: 10:59

And then it took us myself and Rupa another two years to find a publisher for it. We had loads of rejections. We said, oh sure, we got rejected. But the re-editors said, look, we think there's something here. This is quite exciting. You know, go back and rework it. Here's some pointers. I mean, they didn't give me much to work on, but with Rupa I was able to sort of tease out what it was that we thought they wanted more of or less of. So I went back and re-wrote it at that point for the. I think I have 12 drafts of that novel on an old hard drive somewhere. God, it's probably on a floppy disk. It was that long ago. We're talking about the end of 2000s A lot of floppy disks. So, yeah, it took a long time.

Erin Young: 11:50

And then when we did get a UK publisher, it sort of went quite big. We had an auction between Penguin and Hodron Storton, who I ended up with, and after that it was kind of selling rights throughout Europe. And then Rupa just said look, I'm going to get us an American agent on board to help us with selling it in the States. So that's how I got my American agent, rupa, and I parted company very amicably in 2017. And I signed with a new agent, anthony Topping, at Greenham Heaton, but I kept my American agent. So I've had him since. Goodness, I've been with Dan he's at Writers House in the US. I think it's probably since about 2004, something like that. So, yeah, a long, a long standing relationship.

Nadine Matheson: 12:44

A long relationship.

Erin Young: 12:45

Yeah, a long relationship.

Nadine Matheson: 12:47

You know when you're like going back to when you know you'd written this book and you're sending it out and you're getting multiple rejections.

Erin Young: 12:54

How do you manage?

Nadine Matheson: 12:55

that Because you know, when you were saying earlier, because I remember that moment when I did my masters and the agents came in, we had the agents talk, yeah, and I remember it was free agents. And it is that dose of reality like whatever dream you had for yourself, which is like I'm going to say oh, it's like, look at that, it's a crushing, a given dose of reality.

Nadine Matheson: 13:16

And I mean because you go in there thinking, you know, when you start your course, like I'm going to write this book and I'll get an agent and it will sell and I'll get into the Sunday times, I'll be number one and it will be amazing and I'm going to have a whole bright spark in the new career. Yeah, get this reality check off. Yeah, you might not get an agent and if you do get an agent, your book, you might not even pick up a publisher straight away and your book won't be ready because we're going to have to work on it. And no, you don't get into the supermarket, it's automatically. It's like a game of Jenga.

Erin Young: 13:48

Yeah, and you're left with this very sort of rickety looking skeleton that could fall at any moment. It's um, exactly.

Nadine Matheson: 14:01

You're just looking at it and just thinking, oh okay. Well, thanks for the talk. I'll just go to the pub and drive my store over.

Erin Young: 14:12

I think we all did. I think we all literally. I think there were literally people in tears afterwards.

Nadine Matheson: 14:21

I think I yeah, there was hope. I remember there was. There was hope in it. But I think the biggest reality check was I can't remember who came in to speak to us it wasn't an agent, it was an author, but they she was explaining to us about supermarkets, how the supermarkets work in terms of getting your books in there, and I think it was because you don't know, you're just an assumption, that your books published and then off it goes next to the P's order Like no it doesn't work that way, like they have to pitch to the supermarkets and the supermarkets can dictate like your title and your book cover.

Nadine Matheson: 14:59

They don't like it, then you'll have to go and change it.

Erin Young: 15:03

Yeah, it's crazy. It's such an interesting look behind the curtain once, once you're, once you're behind there and you're like, oh, this is a different backstage than I thought. I didn't expect that to be here, okay. No not at all.

Nadine Matheson: 15:20

It's a fact of my question, it's a moment off of my tangent. It's like well, how do you manage? How do you manage to adapt, reject and cause? You know, I've always been signing up with the agent. That's the dream, that's all you're told that you get an agent and get an agent and you just think, oh, it'll just be like smooth sailing from there. But there can be more rejection even when you're signed with your agent.

Erin Young: 15:44

And then, and then the rejection happens beyond that Cause, even if you, even if you get your agent, then you get your publisher, then you, you know it actually happens and you've got a book in the shops and maybe even then you get a best seller, you're still going to get people who hate it and tell you that they hate it in great detail. So it's sort of more rejections beyond that too, and then can you do it again, can you if you have a huge best seller. I mean, that was for me, brethren, even though it took seven years from first idea to actually seeing it on a bookshelf, it's, you know, it was still a complicated thing because it was a life changing moment for me. I mean, to have the auction and suddenly I've gone from being really quite, you know, teaching on the edge of you know, real money difficulties at that point and really struggling to kind of justify myself being able to write these books and to continue with, you know, year after year, with each rejection. I mean, I think for me what helped me in that time was was a working with Rupert. That was amazing.

Erin Young: 16:56

And I think also where each time, even though it was a no for so long, there was this little door always that was left open. It was sort of like we really like your writing and we love this idea. We don't think that you fulfilled it just yet, but we think you could. And so for me, I'm quite a I kind of tend to run up against challenges like that, and especially if I feel that there's a kind of justifiable reason for me to continue. I mean, I think if they'd all just flatly rejected and there'd been no sense of we think this is worth continuing, I probably I would have given it up but I would have carried on writing. Definitely I wouldn't have given up that. I just would have given up on that book perhaps after a couple of years. But I think where people just saw something in it and something in my writing, it kind of made me think well, look, there's a little glimmer of hope there. And while that hope is still there, I'm going to go for it. And I think that's sort of what you have to do as a writer. You have to be a kind of combination of a bit bloody minded and determined and ambitious with it, but also maybe know when it is time to give it up.

Erin Young: 18:08

And I have to say on that second send out. That we did to agents the second round about a year later, after I'd reworked it again. I remember actually I was in the gym, I was on the treadmill, I was going a bit nuts because you're in that point where your book is out there, nobody's really saying anything. It's been a couple of weeks, we've had a couple of rejections already and that number of editors who still have it on their desk is dropping. And I remember I was on the treadmill and I was watching a morning program about Coast Guards and I looked at it and I thought, well, I love swimming and I love the sea and I really like the idea of helping people. So I tell you what, if I get the call and it's like no, they've all rejected, I'm giving up this book and I'm going to become a Coast Guard. That was literally my plan at that moment. So I don't know, I mean, maybe I could have been out there saving lives rather than sitting here writing.

Nadine Matheson: 19:08

I'm laughing because you're not the first person to ever say you know when they're at that point. It's that turning point and you're just thinking.

Nadine Matheson: 19:16

You know, I'm just. You are just going to go back to what you were doing before, or you just got to go and find a completely new career. I don't know why. I've seen a lot of pilates. I thought, well, you know, if it all goes to part, I'll just become a pilates instructor. I don't want to become a pilates instructor. I don't know why I don't, but I remember having a thought when I was lying on the reformer. One day. I thought, well, forget the law as well, I'll just become a pilates.

Erin Young: 19:44

Definitely. But I think it's something that gives us control. When we're in a situation which is so out of our control. I mean we can write the best book that we can write, but it might not be either A good enough or B what they're looking for at that point. Because of course, you know there's like the book industry, like many other industries, is kind of driven by what's hot at the moment. What people are looking for, what do they want? What else have they got on their slate? Maybe they've got a book just like it. I mean, I've got friends who've had horrible experiences where they've been particularly friends who write historical fiction, where they've been writing about a character or an event that somebody else has bought a book out and nobody wants it. No, so I think it's.

Erin Young: 20:28

It is that thing where we're in an uncontrolled situation when our book goes out there and we can't I mean we can do, we can absolutely make it the best it can be and I think that's where a lot of writers come into this industry and then sort of fall at the first hurdle because they're just not aware of how much this process involves in terms of editing. It's not enough just to write your first draft and think that it's great because, my God, you did this amazing thing. You got all these words down on paper. Maybe there's like 100, 200,000 of them. Wow, you're really clever and good and, yes, you are. That's amazing, but it's not enough. You are going to have to go back and go through that thing until you hate it, until you've pulled out every single word, chopped it around, taken them out, put them back in again. What is a crazy, crazy process, and I think a lot of people don't realise that side of it.

Nadine Matheson: 21:28

I'm looking, erin can see me. I'm suddenly looking up because there's a book on my bookshelf called From Pitch to Publication. Oh yeah.

Erin Young: 21:36

Yeah, and I remember reading it.

Nadine Matheson: 21:38

It's so good. I don't know where I got it from because I think it's out of print, but I remember reading it. This is like way before anything. And in it Carol's talking about the amount of drafts you have to do, and I think someone has submitted a book to her and she will how many drafts have you done? And I was just like the first or second draft. She's like no, no, you need to come back to me when you've done, like your seventh draft. Yes, I'm looking at seven drafts, seven drafts just to get an agent. But the reality is, god, I think that by the time, if I think about if I think about the Jigsaw man, I think by the time the Jigsaw man went to print, I know I'd probably done about seven to eight drafts of that book before it was ready to go and be printed. So if you told me that in the very beginning, I want to be like no, no, thanks, yeah.

Erin Young: 22:31

I'm right Time to you having a laugh, yeah, yeah. And then of course you know you do your drafts to get it hopefully good enough to be attracting agents. Yeah, then you'll do more drafts with them because they're going to want the best shot for it and you, when they send it out and of course it's their reputation on the line they don't want to send out something that's half finished. So you'll do your drafts with them. Then you'll get a publisher and you'll have a lovely time and you'll go out and you'll drink some champagne and they'll, you know, they'll say right now the hard work begins. And you're like what I've been doing hard work for seven years.

Nadine Matheson: 23:11

And then I always tell the story of my sister-in-law, and it came to the point. Every time she'd called me. She's like what are you doing? I said I'm doing edits. She's like I thought you just did your edits. I said, yeah, I did this will call me again like a month later about something. So what are you doing? Oh, I've got a deadline and I'm doing edits, but it's finished. It went on like that for about a good six months and so I was able to say now I'm done, it's finished. Now I'm just waiting for cop line. Oh, I don't know what. I was waiting for something to come back.

Erin Young: 23:42

Yeah, there's always something. Then there's copy edits, then there's proofreads, then there's line edits, oh yeah, and then when I did think I was finished.

Nadine Matheson: 23:51

this is the thing when I did think I was finished because I had the US version and I had the US publisher. I then had copy edits from my US publishers. So there's copy edits coming through and I'm like, why did you want copy edits? Like I'm done, but no, apparently I wasn't done. And then I'm thinking of more things. When it's being translated I forget, like questions from the translator.

Erin Young: 24:18

God, I remember having one of those with. It was one of the historical novels, so is Robin Young, and my Danish translator came back with a question which was something like I can't remember which word it was. It was either Baron or Lord, but they just don't have a Danish equivalent of whatever. It was a title of nobility and I remember him saying oh, maybe that, maybe it was Earl Actually I think it was Earl and and he said, well, well, we're going to have to call it something else. You know how about Lord or Count, or Baron? We have all of those and it's like no, because it's so specific, it really does mean what it means. You literally just going to have to put it in English in the book. We can't call him something else.

Nadine Matheson: 25:05

I'm different, so it's all this, all this things you want to think about. I've had good, I've had good comments, though I think it was my translator from I think it was Finland, and he, it was something about the birds I'd referred to when the birds were flying in the sky, and he was like you don't get no sort of birds at that time of year. And I was like well, thank you very much.

Erin Young: 25:31

Because you know you've got an answer about it from someone.

Nadine Matheson: 25:36

No, you definitely want to go a letter. Have you got a message? How do you respond to those emails? Yeah, I don't talk about.

Erin Young: 25:46

Yeah, I do, I do. I haven't had that many, thankfully, but I have had a few over the years. We have had a couple often that came through my agents at the time and there was one who we had a few that were useful and I would write back to those people and say thank you. I have no idea about that. In fact there was this one lady she was in her 80s somewhere in America and she was a professional horse rider and of course I've been writing for years about all of these nights who kind of live alongside their horses and rely on them, and I always used to say that in my early historical novels that you know when they want the horse to go, they kick it in its flanks, because I see blank side. Of course that seems to make sense and I'm sure I've seen it written a million times in other books. And she wrote to me and said if you kick a horse in its flanks, it's where they're very, very sensitive, almost ticklish, and they hate it and it would literally throw you off. If you did that, it wouldn't go anywhere. And I was at the time because even before I got that letter, I was writing my fourth historical fiction novel which was the start of another trilogy. It was on Robert Bruce, william Wallace, the Scottish Wars of Independence Because I had got so far writing about knights and horses and reading all of the books on them.

Erin Young: 27:12

But I thought I really need some more kind of descriptive words for galloping and you know what they sound like and this. So I'm going to go and spend a bit of time with some horses. So I looked up somebody who was a skill at arms teacher just outside of Brighton who teaches people to joust for things like you'll see the jousting at the Tower of London, whatever. He's the guy who teaches all of those people how to do it. So I spent a year with him learning to ride horses yeah, once a week for a year nearly killed me several times the horses did anyway and it really gave me such a deeper and clearer understanding of what these animals are like and the kind of what could happen, I mean, especially if you're going into battle on one of them. They're so their own creatures. They have their own personalities and, as I discovered a lot when they would just do things, I wasn't expecting He'd be shouting at me go the other way, I'm trying.

Erin Young: 28:17

It was an awful leap through for a three bar gate. With me on it, it stopped galloping, which I was not ready for. He was shouting you're galloping, I know, but it was really helpful and really useful. And actually I remember telling my instructor what this lady had said in her letter about never kicking the horse in its flank, and he decided to demonstrate this while I was sitting on the horse. He said yeah, yeah, we'll poke the horse in its flank and the horse literally reared up. Oh my God, again written that and I did write to that lady and say, yes, thank you.

Nadine Matheson: 28:53

That's a good question. That was a good question.

Erin Young: 28:58

Yeah, I'd others where the, where people have just been actually wrong themselves and it's ended up in one of those sort of arguments where I just had to sort of leave it and send them off in in the direction of Google.

Nadine Matheson: 29:12

I do. I found I've been getting. Maybe I've just been busy the last couple of weeks and I've been seeing these questions come through and I've just found myself just getting on my high horse. I've been wanting to respond. Do you know? I am a solicitor who specializes in criminal law, and I've been specializing in criminal law since just such day. I just like delete. I've actually been knowing you to press send on this email. You're just having a moment and feeling a little bit precious about yourself.

Nadine Matheson: 29:41

And you know you're right, so just leave them. Just leave them. Yeah, I just go off.

Erin Young: 29:45

It's sometimes the best thing to do, or just you know, just take your comments or whatever. Yeah, it's.

Nadine Matheson: 29:54

Did you always want to write? Before we go on to, because I think the next question is going to ask you is going to stem on from your right, your research and how far you take it. Aaron, did you always want to write? Was this the final end game? Yeah, is that for?

Erin Young: 30:09

you? Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's. It's for all the difficulties that we've been talking about, and you know, we both know that they exist and that the industry can be one of the most maddening I've ever experienced. But it's also my dream job. When I I feel so privileged and so lucky that I've been able to do this for so many years, and if I can keep going, even though it might sometimes feel like madness, then I want to keep going. So, yeah, no, I I don't know. Really, it's always been there for me.

Erin Young: 30:41

My dad taught me to read when I was three, so I was books with something huge in my life for a long time. My mother was a folk singer and so you would always be singing these stories that had so much history and those songs were so much more stories than just songs, and I think I got a love of both storytelling and music in in my household when I was young and they always had a lot of books, and my granddad was really instrumental in kind of getting me into storytelling. He, he was an amazing storyteller himself and used to do this thing when me or my cousins would go and stay. He would do this whole sort of. He wouldn't just read us a bedtime story. He would come along and he would tell us, out of his own imagination, a bedtime story, but we were all the main characters and we had to decide what would happen next. So he was you know way before. Choose your own adventure. Yeah, that's what.

Erin Young: 31:41

I was saying and so I think that gave me a real love of storytelling and that sort of putting yourself in the shoes of a character. So I tried to write a book when I was 10. That didn't go very well, I think. I drew the front cover and then I just got to page one with blank page and didn't know what to do, which is kind of still how I come at any verb, to be honest.

Nadine Matheson: 32:06

How long did I write this? Looking at that blank page on the screen?

Erin Young: 32:12

There's nothing more terrifying than that little cursor just sitting there blinking on its own. It's quite something, and it does sometimes feel like as much craft as a sort of weird magical process, like I've written stuff that I look back on now and I think did I write that? Wow?

Nadine Matheson: 32:37

I think I've had that this week or for the past week because, as I was saying to you earlier that I got the proof copy back for the kill list, so I had you know you have to review it and check for mistakes and stuff, and I'm so you're reading it now as a book, as a proper book You're reading it and I'm sitting here at my desk reading this book and I'm sitting there thinking I honestly don't remember writing half of this stuff.

Nadine Matheson: 33:01

I don't. I remember bits of it and I remember moments of thinking oh my God, this is awful. And I've read it now and I'm actually not. It was bad. But there are huge chunks of it where I don't remember it. But it's my words, it's my story, it's my character and I know I did it. But it's, you know, it's that combination of this. You know getting all boo-boo about it. It's a magical channeling thing. And then there's the craft of it.

Erin Young: 33:26

Yeah, it's an auto process. I still don't really understand it, but yeah, I still love and hate it in equal measure.

Nadine Matheson: 33:36

What surprised you most about the publishing industry once you were in it, mm Roughly as an author.

Erin Young: 33:43

Oh God, how cool Kind of how dysfunctional it can be. There's a lot about it, I think, unfortunately more so these days than before. I think web budgets get tighter and you know there are fewer staff. There are certainly fewer book shops and places to buy books, places to review books, than when I started, I mean when I was first published in 2006,. We had, you know, wall-wests were selling books and borders and Sussex stationers who had, you know, really great shops around the South Coast and Waterstones. All the supermarkets would generally have a really good book section, particularly for paperbacks. I mean, as with my second novel Crusade, they really helped us to get it into the top 10. As did Tesco and Sainsbury's. Waterstones would take loads of them. The review spaces in magazines and newspapers were much bigger than novels.

Erin Young: 34:49

Events would generally like to invite novelists more than just celebrities, and I think that's unfortunately, you know, I think, where everyone sort of runs scared in terms of either buying new books or having authors come and speak at events. It's sort of like, well, let's just go for the known thing you know as a celebrity who, yeah, okay, well, we might have to pay somebody to write their book for them or with them, but you know, we're pretty sure we're going to shift a few copies of this and we're pretty sure we're going to get a really good audience for these people. So I mean, I understand the attraction of it but I sort of think that that's at the expense of your kind of bread and butter, which is, you know, the raft of really serious writers and you know that's from mid-list, you know bestseller list and who've been doing it for years, who understand the craft, who understand how to write books, who've got a decent readership. Sometimes they might need help in building that readership, but it's.

Erin Young: 35:49

I sort of think publishers get very distracted by the new and the shiny. You know the new sparkly debut or the celeb who's writing a novel or is getting somebody else to write a novel. And I understand it. And you know it's kind of sometimes a bit easier to breathe new life into something new and shiny than it is to breathe life into something that might have faded away slightly in terms of careers. But it's a shame. I think authors are struggling more these days than I think I've ever seen them in my 18 years in this Really.

Erin Young: 36:25

Yeah, I think so there's a lot of. I find a lack of communication with publishers these days can be quite detrimental to the whole process, and I understand it. And I think there are fewer staff in publishing houses. I think there have been so many mergers since I've been in the office, yeah, and I think you know you sort of then start to strip away a bit of experience. Some of the older editors and publicists who've been around for a bit and seen it all, but you know, probably have higher salaries at that point and so they're easier to get rid of and I just sort of think it's a shame. We're losing quite a lot of experience and I think in the past you'd have a lot of new young people coming in who would then learn from that experience yeah, I think of all the editors. But so of course you need you need that turnover and that has to happen. But I think it's been.

Erin Young: 37:19

I think the pandemic has changed quite a bit, like, like, like it's changed every industry Really, I think it's. I think it's harder in some ways to maintain your career as an author now in this landscape, I think, in the face of the dawn of AI, that is pretty terrifying for a lot of authors. But I think we have things now that I didn't have or we didn't make use of when I was kind of early on in the business, like the technology. I think authors have more potential to empower themselves. I think you know things like what you do. I think that's incredible.

Erin Young: 37:57

I think the use of technology also since the pandemic has been really interesting. We've all become a lot more familiar with doing, doing stuff ourselves using technology, and I think that can be a really interesting way of opening out these discussions and empowering authors to be kind of advocates for themselves and for each other as well. And I think community that's changed a lot. I think we understand how important our community is as writers and with readers as well in that, and we connect with them a lot more, and I think that's a good thing. So I think there are positives and negatives in the last few years that have happened.

Nadine Matheson: 38:37

I think about the community things. I think one thing you realise when you do get into this whole publishing industry is how important it is to have a strong community of other writers around you and not only just so you can pull you up and just bitch and whine, but just to give you advice and just how to navigate things. And also, if you see, I don't know if your publisher is telling you one thing and it doesn't sit right with you, you know you'll have our gut instincts.

Nadine Matheson: 39:05

I can message him be like Aaron, what do you think about this? And you could be like, no, you're fine or no? This is definitely not right. And technology has given you that ability. And social media, you know, for all its back points. Good point is, social media has given you that room and that access to everyone.

Erin Young: 39:26

Yeah, no, I think so. It's so vital. I love particularly, you know, for me, moving out of the historical genre and then moving into crime, with the fields and now with the original sins. It's been so helpful for me to be out there, you know, going to some of the big festivals, the crime festivals like Harrogate and Mont Blanc Noir, and I'm, you know, I haven't even ever been invited to Harrogate, I just show up, look, a lot of authors do and it's just such an incredible space, like all of these festivals Capital Crime in London to go and meet other authors and to be able to have those kind of water cooler moments that we don't need. Yeah, because otherwise we're just sitting here, you know, just moaning to ourselves, talking to ourselves, with, you know, our friends and family getting increasingly worried about mental health.

Erin Young: 40:22

We need to do an intervention.

Nadine Matheson: 40:27

We decide to move into crime though all the other genres, and then realize I'm saying that I'm doing all hand. Maybe it's all the other genres, because I'm just thinking about I think it was the bookseller Sunday Times this last week when I think out of the top 10 hardcover fiction spots, I think like five of them, maybe even six, were Romantic, Romantic. Yeah, you know when we're talking earlier about, you know, kind of following the trend and writing to trend and the trend at the moment seems to be romantic.

Nadine Matheson: 41:02

So what made you out of all of that? I'm going to cry.

Erin Young: 41:07

Yeah, I kind of went for police procedurals. When everyone was like, yeah, no, they've been done, yeah, nobody wants police procedure, I was like, oh thanks, for me it was literally just the story. It wasn't even the genre that attracted me. It was even though, having said that, crime fiction and crime thrillers and police procedurals have been my favorite genre to read for years, even more than historical fiction, although I love, I love that crossover of historical crime. That's, that's what's a one of my favorite genres. But it was.

Erin Young: 41:42

I was part way through the middle book of what was planned to be a trilogy and I may still hopefully go back and finish it off, but I was part way through this middle book called of walls, which is set in Renaissance Florence, and I was having a bit of a struggle with the book. And I was doing that thing where you sit in bed too long in the morning, doing anything but getting up and having to face this mess on your screen, and so I was reading the Guardian, like I normally do, but I read all the way to the very end.

Nadine Matheson: 42:20

You're really over-accastimated. That's like me just switching to like G2 section.

Erin Young: 42:26

I paid for my page and, as it happened, this was quite a life changing moment because I came across this really weird unsettling article about big agriculture and I mean the headline was, and it was quite click baity for the Guardian. And then obviously you know I'll just stuff this in here at the end, but it was is a diet of corn turning houndsters into crazed cannibals, yeah, and I was like, oh, is it? I don't know, click, that's the sort of thing I would do.

Nadine Matheson: 43:03

But oh is it, Let me find out.

Erin Young: 43:06

Yeah, let me look on this really bizarre headline with these two cute fluffy houndsters. I remember, on the, on the, on the on the headline, I clicked and I read, because I didn't want to carry on writing my historical novel. And I got to the end of it and I thought, wow, ok, this is bizarre and frightening and unsettling in terms of Food chains, food production, gmo crops and particularly around corn production. It was quite an eye opening article and I literally had one of those lightning bolt moments and thought, oh, I think I could do something with this. I think there could be a really interesting novel here and I I didn't know where I was going to set it and also I didn't have a publisher for this or anything. So I actually called my editor up and said, hmm, I know I'm supposed to be writing and I'm contracted to write another in this historical series. I'm writing and I'm still up for that.

Erin Young: 44:05

However, would you be interested in a slightly weird political agricultural thriller? And he said, ok, let's have a chat, maybe come in and then you can check your temperature. Make sure that you have not gone completely off the rails. So I went in and I had done some work and I'd done some research and I had a kind of a bit of a skeleton of a plot together and he actually really liked it. And he said, ok, we're interested in this, we would be happy to switch so you could write this as your next book and we will try you out in the crime thriller sphere. And he'd always said you know, I think you can do different things as a writer and I would be interested in anything else you wanted to write as well. So he's always been really supportive of that.

Erin Young: 45:00

And I sort of felt like, with the historical fiction at that moment in time, the kinds of historical fiction that I was writing I mean, I wrote Brethren in my early twenties and I'm now nearly 50.

Erin Young: 45:12

I'm a completely different person, a completely different writer, and I was finding that I just wasn't able to stretch my creative muscles in a way that I really wanted to in that genre with what I was writing.

Erin Young: 45:26

So I really wanted to try something new and see if I could do it, to be honest. So when I got the green light from Hodder and the fields was born, I had to sort of think about where I would set it, and it had to be somewhere that was heavily reliant on corn and corn production. And I literally Googled biggest corn producer in the world and it's Iowa, in America. So there was my location and it was like, okay, I don't even know where to point to Iowa on a map. I know it's in America, but somewhere in the middle, but I couldn't tell you where. And, as it turns out, when I go and look on Amazon and A-Books and other bookshops looking for, you know, like the rough guide to Iowa or the lonely planet guide to Iowa, as it turns out, no, there just isn't anything. It's not really a holiday destination, so-.

Nadine Matheson: 46:21

And I believe we onto like research era. Yeah, only this is the woman who, you know, learned to ride a horse for a year. Historical fiction. So he decides because he's my rough guide for lonely planet, guide for Iowa what do you decide to do?

Erin Young: 46:39

I decide to get on a plane and touchdown in Des Moines, which is capital of Iowa, in the middle of a violent, raging mid-summer thunderstorm, which is, for a time, it's like welcome to Iowa. You may die, but no. I spent a couple of weeks in the summer of 2018, traveling around the state, meeting people, speaking to cops, farmers going to the state fair, speaking to people with corn businesses, speaking to local politicians, and it was so important. It was, yeah, it was such an incredible trip. People there were so nice. They talk about this famous Midwest charm and that is so true. I mean literally my partner and I, because when I go on a research trip, I like to just kind of re-immers myself, get out there in the landscape, so we were hiring bikes and like cycling through the cornfields and sort of really feeling the mid-summer heat and the bugs and the humidity and looking at these endless miles.

Nadine Matheson: 47:42

You go all in heaping corn. Yeah, you don't just do a Google search and do street view? No, straight in there.

Erin Young: 47:50

Yeah, sweating on a bike in a cornfield, that's me. I don't know if it's a stupid question or not.

Nadine Matheson: 47:56

We know you mentioned all the people you spoke to in, like going to a fair with police officers. How do you arrange that? Like arrange those con? Do you have a middleman or middle person? No, I mean, I always find it very weird and a little bit excruciating.

Erin Young: 48:13

So I probably don't make as many connections as I could because I get scared of going up to somebody and just saying, hi, I'm a novelist. Because I don't know if I'm a novelist. I'm a novelist, you know, they might just think I'm mad. But so I did a lot of. I think I was lucky there because of my accent. So people in Iowa, it turns out, don't often meet people from England and there's a lot of Are you lost? Sort of thing. That goes on in a very nice, charming way. But I mean people would just stop what they were doing in restaurants, bars, gas stations, went to a couple of baseball games, that kind of thing. And the moment that people heard our accents my partner and I they would just come up and start talking to us and asking us about ourselves and wanting to tell us everything about Iowa and being really genuinely curious and excited that we'd kind of come to their state. So that was really helpful. So I got a lot of local colour from those conversations. A lot of the characters. Actually a lot of the people that I met have kind of found their way into characters and scenes. I was really lucky. At the end of the day.

Erin Young: 49:24

We were then driving from Iowa to Manhattan. I don't drive, so Lee, my partner, he had to drive into, drive our hire car probably still covered in corn dust and whatever and then drive into downtown Manhattan so I could go and see my agent. That was quite a trip. But on our last night we stayed in a little town called Muscatine, which is on the Mississippi, and we stayed in an old farmhouse that's been turned into a B&B, with this guy that was running it. It was his family home and he was such a sort of interesting guy, really easy to talk to, really proud of Iowa and the local area, very knowledgeable.

Erin Young: 50:06

So I fessed up and said well, I'm actually here writing a book and it's all around a kind of global conspiracy around corn production and the food chain and political corruption. And he said well, if you really want to know about Iowa, I'm a member of the city council here in Muscatine and I've got a meeting with the mayor and the rest of the city council this morning. Come along and ask us anything you want. Oh, wow, that was just such an incredible, eye-opening experience. A lot of the sort of big political stuff in the book around China, particularly because Iowa and China have this really interesting sort of symbiotic relationship in real life and that just opened up so many different avenues for the plot for the book. It took it from a sort of small-town murder mystery into something much, much bigger and it was, yeah, really exciting to speak to them all and kind of humbling to find out really how people do live their lives under the shadow of big agriculture and can anybody kind of keep a family business going in Iowa? It's really interesting.

Nadine Matheson: 51:16

It's amazing about you, know. We always get that question where do you get your ideas from? And sometimes it's hard to answer because you're like well ideas, they can spark from literally from nothing.

Erin Young: 51:27

Yeah, because.

Nadine Matheson: 51:28

I'm standing up washing up and I've picked up something I'm like, oh that's interesting and that sparked off an idea. Or you're procrastinating on another book, you're reading an article in the Guardian, but not only does the thing repeat, it didn't just give you. Oh that's interesting, let me park it away. Oh, that's interesting. I want to change what I'm doing Completely. Changed that direction Now.

Erin Young: 51:49

I've got to book a ticket.

Nadine Matheson: 51:52

I can't tell you where Iowa is on the map, but I'm going to go.

Erin Young: 51:57

Yeah, it was quite a big decision. Yeah, my American publisher's Flass Eye and one of these sort of big bosses. When I spoke to him about it, that was pretty much what he said. He said well, how did you come up with this idea? And I told him he said and he said, yeah, well, most people would come up with an idea like that, but they wouldn't necessarily get on a plane. That's why we're you just start randomly meeting people in Australia and asking them about big agriculture.

Nadine Matheson: 52:22

I think it's amazing. So could we end? Good, I'm watching the time. We need to talk about your book, original Sense, because I hadn't read up on you, because I hadn't read the Fields, but I'd read Original Sense and the first thing I remember is when I read the first chapter I was like it was. You've got such a strong sense of atmosphere that if I hadn't had known you, I would not have thought that this book had been written by a British person. I would have thought this is someone who's native, because, oh, I say, when you can like describe how the air smells and I feel like I'm there and that's what I think was like just atmospheric, just atmospheric, this whole thing is just atmospheric and you get into the whole mystery of the book. So I do recommend Original Sense. I thought it was brilliant.

Erin Young: 53:09

Thank you, noad, and thank you so much for saying so. It's just yeah. When your book comes out and you have other authors reading it, it's just such a joy, but it's also so scary, isn't it? More than anyone else, because we all know we've seen behind the curtain. I think it's always terrifying when authors are reading your book, but it's such a joy when they enjoy it. Yeah, so that's it.

Nadine Matheson: 53:35

You're welcome, so you can tell the audience, the listeners, about Original.

Erin Young: 53:40

Sense. Yeah, so it's. I mean it's sort of billed as the sequel to the fields, but I mean it is very much a standalone as well and I roast it as such. It's hard for me to know what the reading experience is like for readers having if they haven't read the fields, if they come to Original Sense first. But we've had it up on Net Valley for a while now and people are saying, much like you said, that they're able to read it as a standalone and so it works on that level, which is good. That's good to know.

Erin Young: 54:11

So in the fields, riley Fisher, who's my protagonist, she has just been elected as the first female sergeant and head of investigations at a rural sheriff's office in a little town in Iowa called Cedar Falls, which is a real place in Black Hawk County, and she is called in the middle of the summer heat to the body of a young woman who's been found in a cornfield just outside of town, brutally murdered. And Riley has a big shock when she discovers that the body of this woman is that of an old friend of hers from school, and her death and the circumstances around it bring up a huge amount of kind of dark past for Riley and things that she wanted to forget about and not deal with all come rushing back as she starts out on this murder investigation. And because she's the first woman in this very male-dominated sheriff's office, she gets a lot of flak for that. So there's a lot of kind of tension, kind of misogyny going on around the sides. And she has a really tough family as well. She's got her grandfather is who was the sheriff and so everyone thinks that she got this post because of her grandfather or because she's a woman. So she's just a tick in a box and he's in an old folks home now suffering with dementia and her brother, who is on drugs and basically has completely kind of fallen. She has to look after him. She's 35 in the fields, he's five years older, so you know he should have really got his stuff together but he hasn't and his daughter, maddie Riley's niece, is kind of going completely off the rails. So she's got this murder investigation that brings up a lot of her past and she's got her family falling apart around her. So that's the fields.

Erin Young: 56:07

Original sins starts in Iowa as well and the book is set in Iowa but it's in Des Moines, which is the capital. So we've come out of the cornfields and we're in the big city and it's set in winter and, unlike Britain where we kind of just have a sort of near kind of winter and then blah kind of summer, iowa has proper seasons and it goes from a hundred in the summer and I mean I was there then. It really it's just you walk outside in, you are just sweating and muggy and overcast often. So it's quite oppressive in a way in the summer and in the winter it goes to crazy temperatures in terms of below, I think it. I think there was a record temperature of I think it was like minus 40 or something crazy, maybe even more than that a few years ago Big snow, big drama, freezing, cold, real serious chance of frostbite when you're out in it, death even so, a very so original sins has a huge contrast in in setting in terms of the fields and Riley, who, at 37, has just squeaked into the FBI training program at Quantico because of events that happen in the fields.

Erin Young: 57:25

She ends up being offered a sort of hey look, you know you have to go to Quantico and do all of the rigorous interview process, but we think you should be, we think you're good enough to be in the FBI.

Erin Young: 57:36

So come along. So she's gone from this position as kind of really other than being the sheriff, being at the top of her game in this rural police department where she probably could have spent the rest of her career and lived out, got a nice salary, got a nice pension, and she's decided to throw all of that up in the air and leave her family, even though she's only a few hours drive away and go to the city and become a rookie and start all over again in the FBI, just at the point where the first female governor has been given a vicious death threat and at the same time there's a serial attacker of women called the Sinita who has returned after a 30 year silence and is haunting the city again. So she starts out all over again in this cold, icy place with no family, with a partner who is seemingly quite dodgy and really doesn't want her sniffing around at all. So she's not in a great place.

Nadine Matheson: 58:38

Not at all, but it's very, very, very, very good. I'm giving my first. I feel like Oprah giving my personal recommendation. My second and before I go on to your last four questions, what's the most extreme thing you've done in terms of research for this book not for the historical stuff for this series?

Erin Young: 58:58

So I went shooting. I went shooting police weapons at a range when I was in Iowa and that felt pretty extreme. I mean, they were live rounds, real guns, glocks particularly, which is a favored police weapon, and I was with an instructor from the NRA so it all felt a little bit crazy, but he was great actually and it was very safe and I had to do lots of, had to do a whole load of background checks so it felt it didn't feel like one of these kind of horror stories that you read about and it turns out I'm really good shot. So it was actually. Even though it was terrifying and it was so frightening holding these weapons and the kickback of them and I was just sweating, it was really. I found it quite an odd experience, but I do like being good at something, especially something I've never done before, so in that way I enjoyed it.

Nadine Matheson: 59:55

I came out, did you discover something new about yourself?

Erin Young: 59:58

Yeah, yeah, I came out with one of those targets that you shoot at and I'd gotten quite a few through the same hole and the instructor was really quite impressed and he laid the target on the counter in this gunshot and there was this old guy there sitting with all these gold rows of machine guns and whatever behind him and Lee was there waiting for me. And this guy, he looks at the target, he looks at me, then looks at Lee and he says, son, if she tells you to do the washing up, I'll do it.

Nadine Matheson: 1:00:29

So the errand is a good shot. It would be weird because we live in a country where guns are not a thing. No, it's not.

Erin Young: 1:00:38

You never really see guns.

Nadine Matheson: 1:00:39

Yeah, if you're walking around the airport you can sometimes see them. But that's it. You don't walk into Tesco's extra.

Erin Young: 1:00:49

With arms and dangerous. No, yeah, no, and I'm very glad for that. I have to say, yeah, it's not something. I would want to live in. A country with a lot of guns, no.

Nadine Matheson: 1:01:02

No, not, no, Me neither. So Erin onto your questions. Are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?

Erin Young: 1:01:10

So I think I've always thought that I was an extrovert and I'm always the last one standing at parties and stuff. And we've been out together. Yes, we have. So I just assumed that that must mean that I'm an extrovert and I love people and I you know all these kind of crying festivals and stuff that we go to. I really enjoy that time that I get to spend with other writers and readers, and but then I get home and I'm absolutely exhausted and I don't want to speak to anyone for about a week, and so I think maybe there's maybe I'm partially an introvert, because I think, although I love people, I find it very draining to be out there and to be on, as it were. So I think we are hybrid, ok.

Nadine Matheson: 1:01:57

So what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most? Oh goodness.

Erin Young: 1:02:01

That's a tough one. Oh, I would say a combination of moving out of home when I'm 17. That was, that was quite a thing. That was what an experience. It wasn't necessarily a good one, but it did lead me on this path eventually, and so I think it taught me a few things, few hard knocks, but but yeah, I think, a combination of that and then also actually just this journey of publishing, I've learned so much about myself, about the world.

Erin Young: 1:02:35

I've been able to travel. I didn't come from a lot, I didn't, you know, there were certain privileges in my background and particularly around the arts and creativity and being taught to read so young. But we didn't have a lot. We didn't, you know. I think we went on maybe two foreign holidays, so, but my parents really loved the world and culture, so I kind of learned that through them and through food. They were really big cooks and you know, if we did never go anywhere then they'd always, you know, make sure I learned the language, and so I think I got a bit of a love of culture and travel, even though we didn't do a lot of it. But I've been able to since then do that through this job and then really get to appreciate it and enjoy it.

Nadine Matheson: 1:03:18

So, yeah, I've got an extra question that I'm throwing because normally for. But what piece of advice do you wish you'd been told earlier in your career?

Erin Young: 1:03:26

In my career. Oh, maybe, maybe, do some stuff yourself as well, don't just rely on your publishers. I mean, honestly, if I'd, if I'd sort of been a bit of a bit ahead of the game in terms of self, you know, promotion and marketing I think I might be in a kind of Slightly better position now. It's sort of where it's changed so much. I think you do need to be slightly more a master of your own destiny rather than just relying on on on other people.

Nadine Matheson: 1:03:57

So, yeah, maybe that's, and to just enjoy every single moment and not sweat the small stuff, the marketing thing's hard, though, because I think when you come in, I think if you come into any creative business, you're not thinking about I always, I've said it so many times you're not thinking about the business, You're just thinking about your creativity and your art, your craft, and then you know you're out your book and you just want your book to go out in the world and fly. You don't Someone's like, well, no, you need to go and do some promotion now. You need to sell. I think you just sell your book. You need to sell yourself.

Erin Young: 1:04:29

Yes, exactly no one's expecting that.

Erin Young: 1:04:32

No, and nobody teaches you that either. I think my first experience of it all was when the when Brotherhood was published in 2006,. I was told by my American publishers at the time that they wanted to do a coast to coast US radio tour and I would do it from my flat in Brighton with one of those headsets on and which, at the time you know, we didn't have anything like this. It was done through a switchboard in New York with a couple of people on the end of it transferring me between each radio station. But some, they don't prepare you for that at all. So I was suddenly live on American radio 16 interviews in six hours. Half of them were live. I felt like a president at the end of it or something. By the end of it it was like hi, arizona, how are you doing? At the beginning I was absolutely terrified and nobody. Everyone sort of says, oh, you're fine, you don't need any media training. But it was.

Nadine Matheson: 1:05:29

It was you do, yeah, especially more now because you know, I think when people think of media training, they think of what I think of the media they think of. I know BBC Breakfast News, good morning Britain. I'm sitting on the couch with Graham Norton, yeah, I think you know. Doing a panel at Harrogate or doing something online like this recording for a podcast, this is all different forms of media and no one's been trained for that or prepared for that.

Erin Young: 1:05:57

No, no, we just sort of get shoved out on stage and sort of blinking in the headlights and hope that something that makes sense comes out of our phones. That is literally it.

Nadine Matheson: 1:06:07

You're literally. I remember some of us. I'm just going to put the, the microphone pack on you. You know pocket around you. Do you have pockets? I'm like no, we're going to click it on your belt Honestly? Yeah, Always have pockets Always have pockets. Yeah, always have pockets.

Erin Young: 1:06:20

Yeah, I think it's. It's women will kind of. You know, there's been God, there's been so many awful experiences backstage where you've got, you know you're having to half undress to allow this random person to attach this great big, bulky microphone to you because you didn't turn up with pockets yet.

Nadine Matheson: 1:06:36

That's definitely my advice for our 25 years, never once advised.

Erin Young: 1:06:40

Have pockets, have pockets.

Nadine Matheson: 1:06:43

So if you could go back to when you were 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Erin Young: 1:06:52

I think it would be enjoy yourself for who you are now and really appreciate your youth and your skin and your ability to stand up without wincing or groaning, your ability to get off a sofa without making a noise. I just think you know, I think, as women still, and maybe even more so these days, with social media and Instagram and the need to look a certain way and you know, we grew, I mean thankfully, I think you and I didn't. I think we're pretty much the same age. We didn't grow up with that kind of thing, with social media like that. I'm just so glad for that.

Nadine Matheson: 1:07:38

I'm so glad.

Erin Young: 1:07:40

But we did. You know, we did grow up with a lot of you know. Women are supposed to be like this, look like this, whatever, and it, you know, at 25, even you can, god, honestly, if I look back and I think about the body I had, the skin I had, the sort of, you know, energy I had, and yet I certainly didn't think that or feel that then. So, but of course, you know you can't tell young people to just enjoy what they've got. It's something that you have to learn in bed. Yeah, you do.

Nadine Matheson: 1:08:09

You've had it actually pretty good. You know, I was thinking when we were talking, you were talking about, you know, being 25, and I think it's so funny, like last weekend I was with my friends and like part of our conversation wasn't about, like, wine choices and where we're going to go next. It was these are the vitamins you need to take for your joints. It really helps. Yeah, the conversation Hash and glucose this really helps your joints.

Erin Young: 1:08:34

Yeah, the amount of conversations I've had with girlfriends over the last few years have kind of a hang on. Is it long COVID, or is it menopause? It's not even known. Or is it just the publishing industry? I don't know. They all have the same effect, they all do so.

Nadine Matheson: 1:08:53

finally, Erin Young, where can listeners of the Conversation podcast find you online?

Erin Young: 1:08:59

So my website is up and it's nicely newly updated all the stuff about the original Sims and which comes out in America on Tuesday and comes out in the UK on the 7th of March, and my website is erinyoungauthorcom and then I'm also on Twitter at erinyoungauthor and I'm on Facebook confusingly is Robin Young, because they wouldn't allow me to change my name, so I probably use Facebook Twitter the most. Yeah, my website has also links to all of the places where you can buy original Sims as well.

Nadine Matheson: 1:09:41

And make sure you buy it, make sure you do, because it's very good Induce by me.

Erin Young: 1:09:45

So Erin Young.

Nadine Matheson: 1:09:47

I'd like to say thank you so much for being part of the conversation. Thank you, it's been lovely to be here. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of the Conversation with Nadine Matheson podcast. I really hope that you enjoyed it. I'll be back next week with a new guest, so make sure that you subscribe and you'll never miss the next episode. And also don't forget to like, share and leave a review. It really means a lot and it also helps the podcast. And you can also support the podcast on Patreon, where every new member will receive exclusive merchandise. Just head down to the show notes and click on the link, and if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the Conversation, all you have to do is email theconversationatnadinemathesoncom. Thank you, and I'll see you next week.