Harriet Tyce: Courthouse to Bestsellers List, Charting New Territories

Sunday Time Bestselling author  Harriet Tyce joins me as we share our journeys from the legal world to the literary landscape, revealing the resilience required to embrace the vulnerabilities of writerhood. Whether it's transitioning from barrister to full-time parent, or confronting the fear of unveiling our innermost thoughts to readers, we dissect the emotional and professional pivot points that led us to where we are today. Her debut novel, Blood Orange was a Sunday Times bestseller and long listed for the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year 2020.  Our discussion meanders through the cathartic process of writing that balances our sustained passions with life's unpredictable rhythm and Harriet's new novel, "A Lesson In Cruelty."

A Lesson in Cruelty

They say you can't always get what you want. But you can take it.

Anna wants a fresh start. She doesn't believe she deserves it, but after three years behind bars she has finally paid her dues. Most of them, anyway.

Lucy craves the attention of the only man she can't have, her alluring Oxford professor. He's married - not for the first time. Maybe she should be next in line?

Marie the recluse has been locked up for too long. She's not ready to be free, but some rules are meant to be broken.

Everyone wants a perfect life. But not everyone is prepared to take it.

Unless someone decides to teach them a lesson.

Transcript

HARRIET TYCE: 0:00

If someone doesn't like my book, it doesn't mean they don't like me. But you know, you still feel that there is a value judgment at the heart of it on you as a person and that can be quite disconcerting.

NADINE MATHESON: 0:15

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation Podcast with your host, best-selling author Nadine Matheson.

HARRIET TYCE: 0:22

As always.

NADINE MATHESON: 0:22

I hope that you're well, I hope that you've had a good week, and I'm going to talk about myself for a little bit. Not for long, just a little bit. But I just realised that when this episode is released on the 9th of April, that my third novel, the Kill List, will be out in exactly one month. And it's crazy to think that you spend so much time working on a book, so much time, and then, once you finish, there's all this, obviously, preparation, working with publishers and marketing and the publicist to get your book out there. There's so much lead time and then, all of a sudden, your book's going to be out in the world. So if you'd like like to pre-order the Kill List, which is the third book in the Detective Inspector Angelica Henley series, all you need to do is go down to the show notes and click on the pre-order links. Right. Let's get on with the show.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:17

This week I'm in conversation with Sunday Times bestselling author Harriet Tice, whose fourth novel, a Lesson in Cruelty, is out this week. In our conversation, harriet and I talk about the judgment that can come your way when you write unlikable characters, how everyone should experience rejection and how writing brought her back to life. Now, as always, sit back. We'll go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Harriet Tice, welcome to the Conversation. Thank you very much for having me. You are very, very welcome. I'm trying not to laugh, but we've just spent a couple of minutes talking about the stuff we shouldn't be watching on TikTok.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:58

Not like that.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:59

Very wholesome. No, not like that.

HARRIET TYCE: 2:01

It's very wholesome Cleaning proper cleaning and that kind of thing Not dirty, you know, not that kind of dirty.

NADINE MATHESON: 2:09

No, definitely not Dirty rugs. That's what we're talking about.

HARRIET TYCE: 2:12

Oh, you're just digging. Now You've got to stop.

NADINE MATHESON: 2:16

OK, let me start again. Let me ask a question before we go off on a different after the hours sort of podcast. So, harriet T Tice, a very proper question for you. So you left the law after 10 years as a barrister to start writing and I've spoken to I think I've spoken to maybe four or five solicitors, judges, barristers and, yeah, just lawyers on this show. But what was that moment like for you when you finally made that decision to leave because you were going to write?

HARRIET TYCE: 2:49

If only it had been from one to the other, it would have been a much more straightforward decision. I left because I had a baby and because I was a criminal barrister at a set that was kind of at the scrappy end of defence work. A lot of our cases were, we had a big presence in Nottingham and there were a lot of gun trials in Nottingham, that kind of thing but what that meant in practice was that you had to travel at the drop of a hat to places that were well outside of commuting distance to London. And you know, I mean I can think of colleagues of mine who would spend like three weeks living in a travel lodge while they dealt with their case. And I was the primary carer for our child. And you know, I could have got a live-in nanny who would have dealt with everything, but the live-in nanny would have earned more than I was paid, which seemed to be somewhat, shall we say, counterintuitive as a way of spending my time.

HARRIET TYCE: 3:52

Um, and also I did feel that I wanted to. While I very much wanted to work part-time, I did also want to be part-time with my child. You know, that was how I had envisaged things working out and you know, quite honestly, being a criminal barrister was not something that was. It didn't work, you know it doesn't work with having kids, or at least it did not for me. I know that there are people who have made it work, but at a huge, huge cost and expense to lots of people concerned.

HARRIET TYCE: 4:26

So I left, and for about four or five years I was, I have to be honest, really quite angry, um, because I was bored, I was frustrated, I was probably depressed. Um, I was a very overqualified person for being a specialist on where the pants were in my house and you know sort of all of the household management, and I didn't get another job I didn't, you know, I should have. There are lots of things I should have done and I didn't. But what I did do, though, finally, was start writing just in an evening class, just in an evening class, and through that I sort of found my way back to myself, um, you know, and turned it into, repurposed all the experience into the books that I've written. You know, it's it's it. It's been very nice to feel that I didn't waste all of those years, it.

HARRIET TYCE: 5:21

That was the worst. The frustration was this sense of waste that, you know, even though I could see how much, you know, I love the time I spent with my child, um, but also, you know, it can be quite a grind, um, and thinking about. You know that I had spent all this time at, you know, university and legal training and in court and building up all that experience just to be doing this um. And now, you know, when I look at it and sort of feel like it's come in a way like a full circle, um, that that makes it feel that it was worth it. But at that very moment of transition, no, it was, it was horrible.

NADINE MATHESON: 5:58

I have to be honest, it was really it wasn't good it's hard when you, when you think back, you know and you look back at how long it took you just to get qualified or even like for you. So for me it's listed to get the training contract. And then you know, get taken on with a firm and then establish yourself and build, you know, build up your career. And it's so hard for barristers, new barristers, to get pupillages, which is and then tenancy.

HARRIET TYCE: 6:25

You know I've got tenancy. I had actually made it through. You know if getting published is hard, but getting tenancy is really hard. I mean, I had fallen on my feet with my very first pupillage and then it just became increasingly difficult. From that point, you know, if you don't get tenancy immediately after you finish pupillage, then you are fighting against the numbers. I think we were told and this was bear in mind, this was back in 1994 when I did my law conversion course we were told that there were, however many thousand people were applying to go to bar school, and at that time it was still only like a couple of thousand. It wasn't like the thousands there are now. Um, but from that number there would be something like seven or eight hundred pupillages and from that number you would then have 400, 430 tenancies available. So I had made it against considerable odds and had started to do jury trials and was starting you know it was starting to take off, albeit slowly.

HARRIET TYCE: 7:34

But you can't do that on three days a week because trials don't work like that and cases don't work like that. Instructions don't work like that. It you have to be like that. Instructions don't work like that. It you have to be available. You know it's not quite sort of doing the duty, solicitor, where you have to be in the police station at you know three o'clock in the morning as a weekend, but you still have to be ready at the drop of a hat to take on things um which require a huge amount of work. And and I mean this back, it was back in the 90s. I mean I don't want to think about how much worse it is now. I mean we could spend a whole hour talking about the, you know, the criminal justice system and its collapse, but perhaps we shouldn't do that. Um, it was hard enough 20 years ago, is all I can say.

NADINE MATHESON: 8:20

Um, I was. I was training the baby barristers not baby barristers, baby um solicitors last week, who's doing advocacy and communication skills and I was explaining to them how the list system works and I you know which which is. It's cruel because I'm explaining that you don't. You don't know until 4 30 on a Tuesday afternoon that you've got a trial coming in the next day which could be anywhere in the country.

HARRIET TYCE: 8:46

Realistically, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's, but better being prepared, because I don't think I'd known in advance quite how difficult it would be. I think I had gone in with this idea that I could do everything, and it was when I was actually hit with the stark reality of well, hang on a minute, someone's got to look after the baby, and I do feel it should, at least in part, be me. Um, and I wouldn't have had a problem working full time if there'd been a predictability to it. You know, if I'd had an office based job, or I had always been going to the same court day in, day out, that would have been absolutely fine. It the fact, though, that there was this travel and this complete inflexibility of of you just had to be available, so starting writing was the thing that, that that actually brought me back to life.

NADINE MATHESON: 9:34

I think it is not a too overstated way of putting it did you always want to write, though you know way back when you was at university and then you went, because I know you did. I know you did the conversion course, so you know all of those are very firm decisions that you have to make right?

HARRIET TYCE: 9:49

I'm going to be a barrister now, so I need to take this step, but was writing always in the back of your head when I was at school I wrote poetry and I mean it wasn't very good but I did love doing it and, um, and then I was told that it was too self-indulgent some of the stuff I'd written, which I'm sure it was because I just discovered Sylvia Plath, um, and so I was getting a bit fruity really, um, and but that actually put me off completely. You know, I sort of then I didn't and I didn't. You know, I did an English degree and I was always reading continuously, but I was too kind of scared, I think I did not like that criticism and so it had just sort of terrified me. And then, sort of, with the English degree, I never really availed myself properly of the career services. And you know, without the Internet internet, it, you know, you can't thinking back there was so much we didn't know about. You know, the amount of knowledge that you've got available at your fingertips now is just extraordinary. But at the time I really didn't know about what jobs you did with an English degree.

HARRIET TYCE: 10:59

I couldn't really think, um, I didn't want to be a teacher, I didn't think I'd be any good at that, I didn't want to be a journalist for various reasons, but it just didn't seem to be something that was a good idea and that, in a funny way, left law, because my father was a lawyer in Scotland and so I'd seen that life and thought, well, it seemed interesting. You know, he prosecuted for some time and he had lots of stories about trials, and it seemed to be as interesting a life as any other. And so I think that that's why I was never under pressure to become a barrister. You know, it wasn't something, you know. I mean, I think if there'd been family pressure then I'd have stayed in Scotland, but I didn't want to do thatister. You know it wasn't something, you know. I mean, I think if there'd been family pressure then I'd have stayed in Scotland, but I didn't want to do that, you know, because I wanted to see if I could make it without family connections, um and um, and so I sort of did that, though you know I wish now I mean, I don't because I'm very happy with how it's all worked out, but I sort of wish I'd known more about how to get into publishing, because I think it would have been amazing to be. You know, I sort of think of myself that I could have been some sort of grand Diane of literary agents. Now I think you would have been a good agent. I'd have loved it. You know what I mean. I love all of that. I think it would be fantastic, but also very hard work, and you know, I think writing's enough for me.

HARRIET TYCE: 12:27

But yeah, the writing was always there in the back of my mind, but in a sort of scared way. And I think I once tried, but then I couldn't work out how you were meant to use inverted commas and do speech, which is ludicrous, because you know, know, I'd read all these books and all I needed to do was look at the page, but I just couldn't make the leap from from book to what you do. It just didn't, it just didn't. Um, but then a friend started doing, I think about five years before I even gave it a go, a friend signed up to do an MA in creative writing and I was.

HARRIET TYCE: 13:03

I had such a strong emotional response to that that I was, bizarrely, I was really angry, was my first reaction. It was like, but yeah, how dare he? And then I was like, yeah, what's going on here? And I realized it was, of course, because I was really jealous, because it was what I wanted to do myself, and I think that actually opened the door as to oh, you know, you can go and learn how to do this. There are ways. Um, so that was when and when I did actually properly start and I got over my nerves and sort of fear of even. You know, in the very first class, I remember you had to go around the table and just say your name. You know what your writing experience was, and I was shaking. I was shaking so much. And then we were given a prompt. I can't remember what the prompt was, but we just had to write like a hundred words and then we had to read it out loud and, oh my god, it was terrifying. Um, it, it's so good.

NADINE MATHESON: 14:04

I always find it fascinating how we can be so confident in our previous careers.

NADINE MATHESON: 14:10

It's good you know you would have stood up there endless times. You'd lost count of the amount of times you've stood up in court before a jury, before a judge said what you had today, made your submissions, done your speeches. You haven't thought. I mean, you think obviously more than twice about it, but it wasn't such a oh my god. I have to get up, get up and on the stage and do this today and, similar to you, it's like I could do that every day of the week and not think twice about it. But the minute I had, I did my first class for the creative writing MA and I had to sit there just introducing myself and again talking about what you'd written if you'd written anything but listening to everyone else in the room I was like oh my god, oh my god, what am I doing here? I can't match any of this. I should. I've made a mistake. Let me just go back to court tomorrow.

HARRIET TYCE: 14:59

They all had so much more experience they all had. You know, you sort of look at it now and you just think it's, it's, it's. Sometimes I do try and remember because you know, because it's sort of the goal post shift all the time and you sort of forget how it felt at the start and I think it's it's it's very useful to think how far you've come in terms of confidence and the ability to be able to. You know, I still find reading my work aloud really difficult. I get really nervous doing that. Yeah, I mean, I can read about a page and a half, so like a really short prologue or something. But if I, then I don't know what it is. But I think I just suddenly get this feeling of, oh my god, people are listening to. Oh my god, they can hear, oh my god, and then I kind of start shaking again. I do get sort of stage fright, whatever you'd call it. I am quite nervy. But do you like reading aloud? Do you like reading aloud? No, I don't. Yeah, I don't like that.

NADINE MATHESON: 15:57

I'd rather, yeah, people are like, oh, can you read a bit of your work? I'm like, oh god, I can. I'd rather I didn't, because I'd rather I'd rather say to them you know, you got the book, you can read it for yourself. But you really listen to the audio book like you don't really need me, and then I think you're doing really well. I mean, I'll do it, but I'd rather that I didn't have to do it.

NADINE MATHESON: 16:21

But then again and I said the same thing. I could do a speech, I could do a closing speech, I could stand up there for half an hour and do my speech, but it doesn't. I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry about it. But then I think, when it comes to that, it's if you get, I said to I can't remember if I said it in a podcast or even to the students I said when you get feedback from that, it's in terms of it's guilty or not guilty. It's not a reflection on you, it's just a reflection on the evidence, whereas when you're sitting there or standing there, whether it's on a panel or in your class, reading your work or having other people give you feedback, it's on you, it's all.

HARRIET TYCE: 16:57

You and I think that's what it is that's exactly right. There is something exposing about it and not liking, even though I have got much better about disassociating.

NADINE MATHESON: 17:11

you know someone doesn't like my book it doesn't mean they don't like me, but you know, you still feel that there is a value judgment at the heart of it on you as a person and that can be quite um disconcerting yeah you, I was thinking you know what you were saying when we're both talking about when, in the early days of being a barrister and you're you're going through this you're constantly being told that your odds are really really really high, like not many people get through the same.

NADINE MATHESON: 17:40

As for solicitors, I don't know what the numbers are, but the numbers are something stupid about the number of applicants there are in comparison to the training contracts, which are the jobs that are available, and I think is there anything? Do you think that prepared you in some way for what they tell you about publishing, like you know, when you're doing the course? I'm sure we would, we had the same talk of. You know, not many people get agents, not many people get publishing contracts. You know it might be the case that none of the 12 people whether the numbers are sitting here none of you make it agents at the end of it. So do you think already going through that it kind of softened the blow a bit?

HARRIET TYCE: 18:18

yeah, I think, I think it definitely, definitely, because I really had had a lot of rejections, um, when I was I mean I well, I'm not going to count them, but you know it runs into at least between 20 to 30 I think, in terms of pupillage application, tenancy application, and I mean I was lucky other people do melt with her way more than that but, and some of these were rejections after interview, some of these were rejection after second stage interview.

HARRIET TYCE: 18:48

You know it was personal. It wasn't just that they they had read the first 50 pages and thought, uh, um, but what I did get good at from all of that was dusting myself off and and doing another application somewhere else. And I mean the first few times. I remember, you know, in terms of the legal stuff, I remember being in absolute pieces, you know, I don't think, you know I was in my 20s, I wasn't wearing it. Well, you know it was hard. So when it came to agent rejections and I think I probably had about I can, can't remember, but I think coming up for about 50, um, you know, with earlier yeah yeah, I tried for quite a long time.

HARRIET TYCE: 19:35

Um, before everything, you know, I was trying for stuff for about seven years before it all came together. Yeah, when it all came together, it came together with a bang. But before all came together, it came together with a bang. But before it came together it didn't. You know, I'd written a whole book before Blood Orange, which I mean that did get. That got six, six requests for the full manuscript, which was when I started to think I might be on to something. Um, and none of them wanted it.

HARRIET TYCE: 20:03

But you know, their rejections were quite helpful, you know, because they all were kind enough to give feedback and, um, you know that it it didn't feel as if it was a never darken our door again.

HARRIET TYCE: 20:14

Um, it was just not this time. But I think that it's very useful, for, I mean, as a general rule, I think everyone ought to experience rejection because it it does develop resilience. I mean because otherwise you can go through your life and then you hit rejection. You know if you'll say you're someone who's got a job straight out of university and done it for 25 years and then you're made redundant in your 50s, you know that if that's the first time you've ever experienced a setback, I think you're actually a lot more likely to end up in a state than if you have had, you know, repeated, not packs over the years, because you know it does. It does make you stronger and it does mean that you get better at sort of of getting on and doing the next thing and just you know you've got. There's always another book you can write, there's always another idea you can try it's. I think that that being able to move on is a really good thing.

NADINE MATHESON: 21:12

No, I agree. I think you, you need to learn how to be able to get a reaction. That's not get a response that's not the one you're expecting and doesn't put you in a place where you thought you were going to be enough. I always said pivot was my favorite word last year, but then you need to learn how to pivot in those situations. But if you just go through life and it's just all, it's just completely smooth sailing, and then you get to, I'd say, 52, 53 and that's your first no, I don't know how you respond to that when your life has just been plain sailing for so long.

NADINE MATHESON: 21:44

Because when I, you know you saw my applications, I can't remember how many applications I made for training contracts in the early days. I would say it's probably more than 20 and it was you said in. It was, you know, they're being projected at the application stage or maybe an interview stage. But then when I look back on it, I remember thinking, okay, it's because I was applying to the wrong places, this wasn't really what I wanted to do. So the rejection sometimes forces you to reassess things. And then when you look at success with the publishing, with your book, there's not many people out there, I think, in terms of authors who have written a book, the first book it's gone out there. They've got an agent on the first application. They've got edit, they've got a publisher on the first submission. There's always some, there's always some kind of path, this kind of lit.

HARRIET TYCE: 22:34

It's a little bit of rejection prior to that yeah, and I think it's, and I think it's better, because I think if it's too easy, then it's it's going to fall apart later.

NADINE MATHESON: 22:46

Nobody gets it all handed on a plate no, I think you can look, but I think you know we're talking about before we were recording, was talking about social media and stuff, and then was talking earlier about back in like the 90s. Even when applying for universities, I had to go to the careers office and pick up all the brochures for every single university and look through those brochures instead of, you know, going online and doing your research. I forgot where I was going with that. Now I forgot where I was going with that whole point about doing your own well, I do think.

HARRIET TYCE: 23:24

I do think it has got. I mean, the rejection doesn't get easier, but certainly the amount of information available has become. It's made the process more straightforward in terms of you can find out now. You know, when I was not knowing what to do with my inverted commas, you know, if it had been sort of 10 years later, I could have Googled how to write speech, how to report speech. You know there are so many resources available. If I had been wanting to find an agent, I could have looked up how to find an agent.

HARRIET TYCE: 23:58

I mean, and I know all these things sound self-evident and we take them so much for granted, but yet you know there was an opacity to the process back then, which I think just as well, just as with law. You know, I thought I'll go into law because my father was in law. You know that it did. I think, think, limit it. It becomes much more widely open with the availability of information that more people can see that this is something that's also possible for them. Um, you know because, bitch as one might about social media and it's, you know the burden it places on us to have a presence and you know, and all of the toxicity that emerges. It's still, I think, overall, though, a force for good in terms of of how you can find out about things and what you can. You know because how you can google how to deal with rejection, and that will tell you, you know, try again, do something better or better. You know, it's, it's, it's definitely an improvement.

NADINE MATHESON: 24:59

No right, most definitely, because I think if this had happened, if I'd been trying to get published, just say, back in university I'd say, you know, I wouldn't even know where to start. Realistically, in terms of well, who do I speak to and what do I do with this? With my history degree in America's history, what am I supposed to do with it? I need open doors somewhere else.

HARRIET TYCE: 25:25

I think that's exactly it.

NADINE MATHESON: 25:26

Yes so when you did get the success with Blood Orange and it's it's not even just yay, I got a book deal, then I'm gonna be I know I'm gonna be WH Smith in Waterstones and that's good enough for me. But when it goes stratospheric and you're internationally best selling all over and selling millions of copies, how are you able to? It wasn't that many, nadine, I think.

HARRIET TYCE: 25:51

It's millions. To me it has done extremely well and I'm very lucky. But millions is definitely an overstatement and internationally best-selling I wish but Portugal, I was a best-seller in Portugal.

NADINE MATHESON: 26:05

it makes you international. One country makes you international. Take it, take it, I'll take it all. Were Were you able to manage that in a pragmatic way Because of all life? Oh no.

HARRIET TYCE: 26:26

I mean no because yes and no, but no, it's been a real process. I think that the I mean for a start. I wrote a book After I got the deal for Blood Orange and it was a two-book deal. I had to write another book. I wrote a book after I got the deal for Blood Orange and it was a two book deal. I had to write another book and I wrote another book and it was mental. It was really bad. We couldn't work out what the hell to do with it. My agent and me, we sort of looked at it and we're like, oh yeah, that's gone wrong. So in the end, we told the publishers, before we'd even given it to them, that it wasn't, it couldn't be published, um, and that I was going to come up with another idea. I didn't know what that idea would be and so and that meant, so that was all of.

HARRIET TYCE: 27:12

I got the deal in 2017 and in an ideal world, I'd have written the second book in 2017 to 2018, but as it was, I got to 2018, um, and had to just throw away everything that I'd done, and so I started 2019 as Blood Orange was published. Um, back at the drawing board to have to write book two in a state of kind of panic about how was I meant to do it. I didn't know what I was going to do, um, and I had come up with a better idea, and that was that did turn into lies, the lies you told, which was my second book, um, but it was a very complicated and kind of confidence destroying situation. So, on the one hand, I had this amazing stuff happening with Blood Orange, but on the other and that was 2019, remember, was before it went you know that I had this. You know, I mean that they, they Headline had made it, I think, their super lead. So it got. They had done a huge amount of, you know, pr and marketing and I went to, you know, I sort of I did a tour of events. And I went to America and did a tour which was in no way as glamorous as it sounds, um, but was still, you know, an extraordinary experience.

HARRIET TYCE: 28:31

Um, and I was trying to write this book that I just couldn't. And there was the, the my then American publishers were putting a load of pressure on about it was the. Well, when we'd been on the book before and it had been called the Rose Garden, and then they said, well, no, you've got to call it the Body in the Rose Garden. And I'd said, well, there isn't one, there is no body in it, that's not the book. And they were like, nope, we're calling it that. So in the end I ended up with this pile up of five bodies in the in said rose garden, just, you know, like some kind of weird massacre. Um, it was, it was awful, it was awful.

HARRIET TYCE: 29:06

So I was sort of, you know, publicly, obviously it was all quite successful, but you know it hadn't hit the stratosphere. But I think I was actually in a complete state. I mean, I remember going to events and just being in this state of complete panic. Um, the one sensible decision I made was to cut out alcohol, um, from the, I think from a month after publication. I um didn't drink because I thought, right, I'm not going to drink until I've written the first draft of book two, like you know, the new book two, book three, book two, um, and if I think, if I had actually been drinking that year as well, I probably would have had a full on breakdown.

HARRIET TYCE: 29:49

Um, you know, and there was also my best friend had cancer and that was. There was quite a lot going on with that. So it was a very. It was very, very difficult and yeah, it was a very. It was very, very difficult and yeah, it was very, very difficult. It's a juxtaposition of success and I mean it's a good problem to have how to manage success, but it is also complicated.

HARRIET TYCE: 30:15

And then it all went mental in 2020. You know, as lockdown hit and there was this sort of you know that, as lockdown hit and there was this sort of you know, cataclysmic event happening globally, the book also went through the roof and I think it was because everyone was at home bored and it was 99p in April, which was perfect timing. Perfect timing you know the lockdown world to want to have something to do. Um, unfortunately, I'd got lies sort of written by then, but it's it's. I'd say that it's taken. I mean, it's five years since Blood Orange was published. Um, I've been in therapy now for two years. I've completely given up drinking and I'd say it's only now that I'm starting to feel like I can remotely handle the situation it's not even just.

NADINE MATHESON: 31:10

You know, like I say, and I think we say in jest a lot of the times when we talk about a second I was going to say second album, like we're musicians, yeah, but when?

NADINE MATHESON: 31:18

you talk about second book syndrome and it's just, oh, it's that difficult second book, but it wasn't just a case of it just being that second, that difficult second book, because you've got all this stuff going on with, which is always and that's a strange predicament to be in when your first book is out there. You know it's out there in the world, it's doing the world and you're tracking it and the thing is not just you tracking how well it's doing, it's people coming back to you saying how well it's doing and you're seeing how well it's doing but, then okay, you still have to deliver another book, and you're.

NADINE MATHESON: 31:51

The struggle is. It's not even like oh, it's a, it's a fresh struggle, it's starting all over again.

HARRIET TYCE: 31:56

It's something completely alien what you've gone through before totally different experience and and one of the biggest problems as well and I'm sorry, I really don't mean to be moaning because I mean it has been phenomenal, but it just was a sort of that one of the one of the biggest issues as well was that Blood Orange was I think they call it a marmite book. Um, because while there were lots of people for whom aspects of it resonated heavily, I mean, dear god, there were a lot of people who hated the protagonist, alison I mean, and they hated her because you know she, she was a a mum with a bit of a drink problem who was having an affair, and you know she was doing her best, but it was a fairly bad best that she was doing. And the amount of judgment, the amount of vitriol, you know, if you look through my amazon reviews, it's not very illuminating. Well, it's quite illuminating about the state of misogyny and the wide readership and you know not all obviously, but you know the number of people who said in reviews that they wanted to shake her. And I'm sat there going. This is a book about domestic violence, you know. Do you? Do you not think that's an overly aggressive response and that I this will sound incredibly naive of me, but I had not thought when I was writing her that she was unlikable I, I had just thought of her as a person, you know, as a person who wasn't a million miles away from me, you know. I mean, I've talked about alcohol a couple of times already in this. That you know.

HARRIET TYCE: 33:29

I will readily admit that for many years I was drinking way too much on occasion and you know that obviously made its way onto the page, yeah, and to see the judgments that were being made of her, it kind of threw me completely. So when I was writing the second book, I mean and, if anything, the rejected second book I had them behaving even worse. I mean, some of the scenes were oh-ho-ho, but when it came to writing the Lies you Told that, I realized that one of the biggest issues I had with writing that book was that the main character, sadie, wasn't a character. She was just a not Alison character, because whenever it came to her I was determined that I was going to show that I could write someone who was a good mother, and so every time she was doing something that was remotely morally questionable, I was like, what would Alison do right, we'll have her doing the opposite. So you know, sadie is there very conspicuously not drinking, not smoking, not being. You know she's like not being a person.

HARRIET TYCE: 34:40

Well, yeah, she wasn't. It was awful. So you know, I really had to dig deep to try and get her characterization and I mean, I'll be honest, I don't think her. I mean, for me her character has never really come to light, because I suppose she's a bit of a negative. You know she's a negative, she's the opposite, she's like reverse Alison and therefore not, not not being able to be her own person. Um so, and I mean, and I think that something I keep being told is how unlikable my characters are, because my third book has got unlikable characters too, but I think I sort of, by that time, I'd lent into it and I was a bit like well, you know, can I swear, nadine, that's what I want to do you can, swear you can swear by.

HARRIET TYCE: 35:24

The time it came to three, I was, I think, a lot more fuck you. I'm just fuck you, but I think you have to be that way with your book, because it's your characters yes, it's I, I.

HARRIET TYCE: 35:37

It got into my head much too much and that was absolutely disastrous. If you pay too much attention to what other people think, you'll never. You know that old truism about not pleasing all the people all the time. You know you can't, you absolutely can't, you can't think about it, you can't worry about it, and I was much too much about it. You can't worry about it and I was much too much. Um, and I think it's only by the time that I mean to be honest, because I'm now working on book five and it's only now that I'm actually feeling genuinely free and I'm not totally free, but this is the first time in years I've actually felt like I'm having fun, um, with the idea and I'm feeling playful at last. It's not feeling kind of weirdly pressured and strange. You know it's hard getting past, you know, and getting past the second book, you know when you get to the third book, you're like, well, can I do it?

HARRIET TYCE: 36:34

Because, I think that's it. And they're all their own different kind of hard, aren't they? But the thing is, you sort of feel that maybe by book four you're sort of I'm here now, actually, I'm doing this, oh, I am doing this, I'm not going anywhere. I have got another idea and I think you start also to have faith that you're gonna have another idea and that it might be good enough, or at least you hope so. Yeah.

NADINE MATHESON: 37:00

I was. You know when you're talking about, when you're talking about the alcohol, and I was thinking the legal world doesn't help with the alcohol. So I said I didn't. I mean I could drink, but I think it's only when I qualified and I moved to Soho. That's where my office was.

NADINE MATHESON: 37:17

I was working in Soho, which was exactly exactly I said I never drank as much as until I start, until I qualified. And then I'm sure I've mentioned this in the podcast before um, I went to my first seminar off to get my CPD points, your continuing professional development point, and it was a. It was at Chambers and they said, oh, we'll bring out refreshment. And I was just very naive newly qualified solicitor thinking oh, refreshment it's going to be soft drinks and tea and biscuits. And I saw the staff come through the back of the room. So I'm watching the back door because I'm watching the time as well. It's going to be over soon, like 7 o'clock, half seven, and the staff wheeled in trolleys full filled with beer and wine. And Harriet, no word of a lie, I did not get home to four o'clock that morning because I then went out, yeah, with barristers after we had our refreshments. Yeah, so that legal world does not.

HARRIET TYCE: 38:15

It's not conducive to a healthy living at all, I mean there are definitely people who don't, and I was always being told by my pupil master, you know he was very much. You've got to stop it. You've got to stop going to the pub near Chambers. But the problem was that, you know, for the few puritanical people and here I am using, you know, puritan as a, even though in retrospect they were entirely right you know the much jollier people who were much more like Rumpel, went to the pub that was next to Chambers and I'm sorry, but it was fun, you know. And you're just sat there getting absolutely leathered listening to people talk about murder. I mean you would, wouldn't you? You?

NADINE MATHESON: 38:59

know, I mean, you know it's. It's only between like lawyers you can say that and it's like there's no, no one's looking at you with questions in their eyes. It's like it makes absolute sense to me.

HARRIET TYCE: 39:14

You could well, I always think it's a normal Friday it's, it's well Tuesday, wednesday, thursday. But I mean, part of the aspect too is that you know especially. You know if you're, if you're sort of on circuit or you're, you're trekking across the southeast of England with your wheelie bag, going from court to court, you're on your own, you're dealing with cases which there's a lot of aggression. You know that even in the most minor of cases, the magistrate's court's an aggressive environment. Your client can be aggressive, the stakes are high, you know it's. It's a lot.

HARRIET TYCE: 39:48

And so when you come back to chambers, you know, especially before kind of computers and remote working and digitalization, you had to come into the building physically to drop your brief off and to get your next brief. And so when you find people who'd all had, you know, similar but different experiences, I think that it was almost inevitable that there would be this letting off of you know this is a letting off of steam. It's need for you know it's a need for companionship and it's a need for you know, and particularly at that point when you know later on, I think you have a family then going home, you would think, though I mean I had a people master who always made a point of not going home until he knew the kids would be in bed, you know, because he just wanted to have a quiet, like, yeah, he divorced, funnily enough. Um, yeah, there's a lot of that, so it's, but it isn't. It isn't a very healthy environment.

HARRIET TYCE: 40:46

No, I mean I was living on, you know, five pints of cellar and a packet of crisps for most of my year of third six peopleage and I didn't get a tendency there. It's amazing, isn't it? Who can, who can, who can figure that out?

NADINE MATHESON: 40:58

out. I ate so poorly in those early days of being nearly qualified because I could finish court at whatever time. Say, like I thought I had an early day and I finished court at one o'clock and then thinking I'm going to go to the office and just work in the office. I know I need you to go to Wimbledon. Why am I going to Wimbledon? Because I need you to go. There's a police search. Am I going to Wimbledon because I need you to go? There's a police, certain someone's been arrested. And then I'm sitting in Wimbledon police station till god knows what time 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night, and I haven't eaten. And then I come home, yeah, and it's caught the next morning, or please, it's. It's a crazy way to live.

NADINE MATHESON: 41:34

But then I was thinking he was talking about flawed characters and readers and getting reviews. People not like saying she's too unlikable. But my characters? I don't think my characters are very. I don't want them to be likable, because then that doesn't make them realistic. Well, I don't mind them having flaws, because none of us are perfect.

HARRIET TYCE: 41:52

We all have our flaws. I think that's. I think that's right, I think that that's. I think that that it's very boring to have people who are perfect, and also for the purposes of writing crime fiction, it's completely absurd, because if she'd been making good decisions, then the book would have ended at the end of chapter one because she would have said no, I'm afraid, I can't go to the pub, I've got to go home and put my daughter to bed. And that would have been it, because that's not even a short story, it's just, it's nothing, it's. He nicks his shit. Um, yeah, I think that it's.

HARRIET TYCE: 42:27

I think it was simply that I whatever it was I thought of her. I had not thought of her as unlikable and I don't know, and I suppose, because you know, a lot of her was me, it. That was the thing I mean. Basically, I took it as a value judgment on me that I was on life. Well then, that was like, oh god, it was complete with the book having done. You know, it was a very, very weird. It was a very weird period of time, but I mean I wouldn't go back to being a debut for anything, would you?

NADINE MATHESON: 42:53

I mean, it's just just just just so lovely to be a few years down the line yeah, I don't like not knowing what's happening or not understanding how things work, and that's how I felt as a debut. I said when you've been established in a different career for so long and then you come into something new and you see things that happen, you're like but I can't get a firm handle on this. And to me I've said it loads of times on this podcast I feel like sometimes the sands are shifting a lot in publishing, like the rules are not concrete or grounded. So in the early days I'm like and then I was in the middle of the well, everyone was in the middle of a pandemic. So I'm in this pandemic in my room, in my house, all this stuff is going on around me and it's like there's nothing I can do, I can't have any impact or any influence, or I know it's three books in, right.

HARRIET TYCE: 43:46

Yeah, you still have those feelings of like days of I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what a book is, I don't know what it works and I think that's good, though, because I think if you start I don't know, because I play piano and there's bits where I'm playing and I'm like, oh, this is going really well, get me, this is great, and always I then fuck it up. So it's. I think if you feel too complacent about your, what it is you're doing, it's not going to work. I mean, literally every time I start I google how to write a novel. Um, you know, just because I sort of I'm a bit like I don't know what to do, total blank page, what. How does this? It's terrifying, you know. It can take you. Well, it takes me months to sort of circle into London, something. I mean, once I get going, I'm all right. You know, I can actually crack on and do like a thousand words a day, whatever.

HARRIET TYCE: 44:41

But you know, when I speak to, a friend of mine was saying recently that she can do a book in 16 weeks and they're good.

HARRIET TYCE: 44:48

You know she writes really well, but she's just got the ability to work out what she's doing.

HARRIET TYCE: 44:53

I mean, I think partly it helps, because I think if you're doing well I say this if you're doing a procedural, you know you're doing a series, you've kind of got a world. You've got your world, yeah, but it brings its own challenges. You know, I'm well aware about that with having to come up with a new, you know, to make sure that you're developing things, but not too much but enough. And you know the mini arc and the major arc and all of that stuff. It's, I think it's that uncertainty that gives it more strength in the end, because of constantly having to test everything to make sure that it's all right. I mean, I I think the time I spend not working in a way is as valuable as the time I spend working, because I am thinking about it all the time, you know, and then I might be washing my hair and suddenly an idea comes in and it's like oh, that's how that works. You know that it's not a question of sort of sitting there at the computer from nine to five, because I don't think that that's.

NADINE MATHESON: 45:58

No, the time you spend away from your desk, away from your computer screen, is just as valuable as the time you spend in front of you. As you said, you could be washing your hair and I've been washing my hair, washing the dishes taking are trying to spend in front of you. As you said, you could be washing your hair and I've been washing my hair, washing the dishes taking the getting.

HARRIET TYCE: 46:14

I don't know going to drive in the car and I'm like oh, oh, actually I know what.

NADINE MATHESON: 46:16

I can do, and it's nice when you have those moments of realization. Oh, I fixed something.

HARRIET TYCE: 46:22

Yes, the day before I could have been sitting and literally I've been sitting in front of the computer watching the cursor flash at me oh, yeah, I can go from I can go from absolute total depression to, I mean, I had a that this book five has been it's, it's.

HARRIET TYCE: 46:39

As I say, I'm having fun because it's been kind of presenting it to me in a series of layers like presents, it's, it's. It's been a yeah, really, really joyous. And when I came up with something for the ending which I'm still like, if I actually I'm not going to talk about it, but, um, no, we'll talk about the book before I get very, I get very, very, very excited, and it is it has reminded me that actually the greatest joy I get from this is when the ideas come together, um, and that the success of the book is. You know, if something is successful, that's obviously absolutely brilliant, but actually the joy of creation is what's sort of keeping me doing it, and I had forgotten that for quite a long time. So it's been lovely to to come back to that, though I did have fun. I think probably I should talk about book four a bit about.

NADINE MATHESON: 47:34

You know, I was going to say to you, harriet, before I have one more question, before I ask you about, I always feel like, because I always ask now, yes, I don't need to find, I need to find my question actually where's? Yeah, I was the question I was asked. Now is what piece of advice do you wish you'd been told earlier in your publishing career?

HARRIET TYCE: 47:58

oh, um, try not to worry so much, but people did tell me that I just wish I'd listened because actually I got good advice. You know people were giving me good advice, um, yeah, and, and I think I was too paranoid and too neurotic to be able to, I mean, I suppose, I mean I guess if someone had actually, but they did. You know that it doesn't matter in the sense that you know if you don't get picked to be on panels to things or you don't. You know that it can feel really personal when you see all those sort of top ten lists and all of the stuff that you've got, to just tune all of it out and just concentrate on you and the page and what you're doing, because you know there'll be people looking at what you're doing thinking, oh you know, I feel bad about that. I want that. You know it's all.

HARRIET TYCE: 48:50

If you worry too much about what other people are doing, you're just never going to get anywhere. Um, but, as I say, I think I was told that very much at the beginning it just it. You know, knowing something and feeling it are two very different things, um, and I think you can only. You can only get there through time and experience, unfortunately, but I think that you know this will get easier in some ways and it'll get harder in others. That that's probably the overall thing, isn't it?

NADINE MATHESON: 49:20

yeah, I think the thing of advice is that you're saying you have to be in that right mental place to to be able to receive it, because everyone can tell you all the right things. They can give you a nice little spread.

NADINE MATHESON: 49:32

I don't like spreadsheets, but they can give you a nice little spreadsheet of all the things you should be doing and it'll be the best advice in the world, but if you've got other stuff going on in your life, they might as well just throw it in the I don't know. Throw it in the river, it's like there's no point to it yeah, until you're ready to hear it. Yeah, you have to be ready to to receive it. So let's talk about a lesson in cruelty, which is your just about to be published. Yes, would you like to tell the listeners of the conversation about a lesson in cruelty? You always have the best titles, though, with your book.

HARRIET TYCE: 50:07

Well, that one's not mine. That was come up with by that. That was my editor, my brilliant editor, jack, came up with it, and it was. You know that we'd had all sorts of toing and froing, and then he said that and we just sat there and we were like, yeah that works.

HARRIET TYCE: 50:25

That's it. I mean, we're being quite sort of teaser-ish in how we're introducing it. We're not really giving a proper pricey, because part of the for me, the best thing about the book is that I really don't want people to know what's going on until they do, because it is a sort of it's a book of three different. It's a book of three different. It's a book of three different women in three different situations, and one of the big questions is how the hell does this all fit together and where is it going? Um, and it does come together by the end, but you know you have to read it to find out um three characters.

HARRIET TYCE: 51:08

It opens with Anna, who is in her early 30s and she is on the last night of a lengthy prison sentence. She's about to be released, um, when she's put into a cell with another woman who is on her first night on remand, um, and who takes her own life. And the story goes from there, um. We later on meet a second girl, um, who is a postgraduate student doing a master's in criminology at Oxford University with a very, very sexy professor. And the third woman is a bit of a mystery is Marie that she is? It's a bit of a strange scenario, and the Highlands of Scotland are involved. And yeah, it's it. It's a book in which these three disparate parts meet, and with a horrifying conclusion. I suppose I could sell it as that. It's not very brief, is it?

NADINE MATHESON: 52:19

It's not good synopsis, but that is there, but it's enough to rule you in Did you have fun writing it enough to, um, like, rule your head.

HARRIET TYCE: 52:32

Did you have fun writing it? Um, it was a weird process because it was. I'd spent six months planning something else and then that had fallen apart because we'd all talked about it too much. Um, and then it was a bit of a Christ. We've got to get something done because you know, I've got. You know we want to keep on publishing me in a relatively timely way and I need to write a book and this book's not going to work and I had a bit of a crisis about am I going to stay? Because the book that I was going to write hadn't involved anything to do with law.

HARRIET TYCE: 53:02

I was sort of stepping out of that wheel park and, um, and then I had a couple of conversations where I thought you know what? I will end up going back to something law adjacent or criminal justice adjacent, because at least it closes options down. There are so many things you can write about. If you're doing standalones, you've got to kind of give yourself some kind of guardrails. Um, and then jack, my brilliant editor had he sort of come up with. We were sort of doing the monkey tennis thing, like that alan partridge scene, where you're sort of throwing ridiculous ideas up, but he came up with the line, you know, there was this whole list of things. And then there was shawshank redemption. But women and I went off and I watched Shawshank Redemption and I thought, hang on, a minute, prison, women's prison, that's, that's law adjacent, that's criminal justice adjacent. They've got quite strong views about prison as a punishment and I can see that there's something that could happen here and then it just, but it kind of unfold without any planning whatsoever, um, and I was sort of writing it.

HARRIET TYCE: 54:15

You know, I sort of wrote the first few chapters from Anna's point of view and then I was like, oh, hang on, we probably need to put in something else, let's change, let's sort of change where we are. And then suddenly I had this, this student, and then I read a book, um called the secret diary of a. No, it was a diary of a secret prison governor where he talked about a certain sort of way of incarcerating people, and that sent me off on the third strand, um, but it was a sort of slightly automatic writing thing that I'd sort of sat there and then things happened. There was no plan until there was much later on, um, when I started to draw it together. It was a very intense process, the writing, um, and it didn't feel playful. It felt quite heavy in a way. Because it's quite heavy subject matter, it's not a lot of fun. Um, you know, you know that bug on. I was just gonna say there are some funny bits. Don't let me put you off reading it.

NADINE MATHESON: 55:19

I'm not saying that no, but you know that moment because you know you've been we're not going into detail of the synopsis of the book or anything, but you know that moment because you know you we're not going into detail of the synopsis of the book or anything, but you know that moment for you when it clicks. Yeah, you know. You know I'm not saying there's a grand reveal, but you know we call it the grand, we call it the grand reveal when you have that moment that it clicks in the book, so you and what the reader's going to know what's going on. What was that moment like for you as the writer when you work out oh, this is what it's all about.

HARRIET TYCE: 55:51

It was kind of quite panicky, just because I wasn't sure I'd actually made it work that there was an absolutely um, ridiculous, there's a there's, there's a bit. That was an absolutely ridiculous scene where it was kind of like a a crazy car chase up to the north of Scotland. And I mean in the original version, which has been much edited down, there was a very, very, very overly dramatic, ridiculous car crash and you know I sort of went a bit mad and some of it was.

HARRIET TYCE: 56:26

I hope I never write a book again that is as heavily edited as this, because this had three structural edits to get to the point where oh yeah, because I was kind of, as I say, it was all such sort of automatic pantsing writing that it was completely, it was just completely all over the shop. So, um, yeah, it, that was raw out of blood that book, um, but I think it works now. Um, I think it works, I hope so the feedback's been all right so far. I mean, I don't dare look at Goodreads or NetGalley to find out what you know wider readership think, but I've had some very nice author quotes and from people I don't know. So you, you know, I'll that's always a good thing.

NADINE MATHESON: 57:09

Yeah, no, exactly, you know it's, I think you leave good reads and Amazon reviews to the readers.

HARRIET TYCE: 57:16

Yeah, writers would just go and do something else, exactly Not for me. Not for me, don't need to know.

NADINE MATHESON: 57:24

All right, harriet, I've got some questions for you. Are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?

HARRIET TYCE: 57:29

I'm a hybrid of the two, but I think I'm a lot more introverted than I used to think and alcohol was my method of getting through that, um, without alcohol as a crutch. Now I find that I'm very happy to chat for a while at parties, but I do need to go home and just be on my own for a bit to refuel. Yeah.

NADINE MATHESON: 57:52

Okay, so what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most?

HARRIET TYCE: 57:58

I'd say most recently that it was my friend, sarah's death. Sarah died three years ago. She was one of my best friends and she died from cancer and it was. She was ill for four years before that I think three, four years and it was. You know it was. It was a very difficult period of time, I mean over the pandemic as well. Our families are close, the kids are close and you know, she and I were two weeks apart in age um and I was there very close to the time of her death.

HARRIET TYCE: 58:35

And you know, I don't think it's possible to to be as close to something as that without it having a profound effect, and if it doesn, then you're not someone who's got any kind of imagination. You know it's been really big and you know, I think that it's led to a lot of positive change in me, that I have actually sort of thought you know, I'm 50. I need to start actually taking care of myself. Um, not that you know she, hers was just it was immensely horrible. Bad luck. It was nothing to do with lifestyle, but you know, I did take a good hard look at myself and go. You know what? You're not a brain in a jar, you spend all your time just sitting on your ass reading books, watching telly, writing, you know barely exercising, barely. You know doing. You know some days I do what 400 steps or something. You know going to the loo and going up and down to get coffee. I mean dismal, um, drinking, eating a load of shit, just really, really unhealthy. And, and I think 50 is is one of those points when you actually have to take stock and that was a very big moment of how lucky am I still to be alive. You know, how lucky am I? Yeah, I can look at my face and go, oh god, I'm aging, look at the wrinkles, look at this, that and the other. But actually I get to do this. You know I get to. I still get to be here. I get to. You know, I've got the the joy and privilege of still being alive and actually I should take a bit more bloody care of that and and not take it for granted and not treat it in such an abusive, careless way.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:00:25

Um, you know and I'm not saying I've turned into a complete health nut, who you know, I do listen to the odd health podcast, though I don't have time for hooberman. Hooberman and his three and a half hours is too much. But you know, I do slightly rattle with the strange cocktail of supplements I take and I sort of do continuous glucose monitoring on occasion, not because I'm diabetic, but just to sort of get an idea. You know, I honestly gut bacteria all of it I'm, so I do kind of slightly despise myself, but no, I mean, and that's making light of, but you know, I mean, I found out, I found out just yesterday that there was someone from my year at school who has died from alcohol overuse. And you know there's the people 50.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:01:14

You know it starts to kick in. You can't get away with things, you know you get away with it for only so long and and that's so, you know. And that makes it sound a bit of a sort of a basic transformation in terms of. But actually I think it's more about, it's been more about just trying to, yeah, just to be more mindful, I guess, being more careful of myself and being careful, perhaps, of those around me and and and I think that it's caused me to also to look at what's important. You know, I mean, I know that that's going to be is such a cliched thing to say in terms of perspective, but you know the things that I was worrying about before, you know, in terms of books or lists and all the things I talked about. You know that not being nominated for prizes or not being this, that and the other, and and actually I'm so lucky I just get to keep doing this, that I get to keep writing books, and, and I think that just trying to find a joy in that and a joy in I think that just trying to find a joy in that and a joy in you know all of the, the stuff like friends, family, dogs, all of that kind of thing, rather than you know sitting there looking on Amazon at you know where am I, where what level is it at?

HARRIET TYCE: 1:02:39

What does that mean for pre-orders is, you know, you can drive yourself mad, and all that does is get in the way of work. It gets in the way of actually being genuinely creative and doing something, which means something you know, and I'd like the work to mean something to me, if to no one else. You know that's, I suppose. Where I am now, though, you know I'm still only a month from publication. If I'm closer and I get my buy-in, then it's terrible. Then I'll probably be, you know in a complete state, but I am trying to be more zen about it because you know it's. It's what's important, what isn't you know. What can I control, what can't I? Um, and the only thing I can really control is is you know what words I put on the page, and are they any good?

NADINE MATHESON: 1:03:31

yeah, I don't think any of it sounds basic or anything sounds cliche, because, um, I think it was. What day was it? Last Friday was a year since my cousin died of she died and she died of. She died of cancer. She's like my sister when you say when you have someone that close to you yeah pass.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:03:55

I don't. There's not, there's any choice in it. It does force you to reassess and look at where you are and also that whole like. I'm very funny about birthdays. I've said before, like my brother, one of my brothers, he's, he's a year younger than me but our birthdays are two days apart. So we're the same age for two days, but he's every time it's his birthday. Oh my god, I can't believe I'm this age. I'm like no, no, be grateful, be grateful, because I'm like nothing about my. I call him my cousin, you know. So she was 42. I said, said 42 is no age. I'm like you have to be every year. I'm grateful for every year, every line on my face.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:04:36

That's interesting. I was quite horrible to my husband, who was. You know that, as with age, you know, the hair has depleted a bit. And I said very forcefullyfully well, at least you've not lost it because of chemotherapy. And then I just thought, okay, that was a bit harsh. You know what you?

NADINE MATHESON: 1:04:57

can.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:04:59

Maybe I should rein it back in a little bit people have feelings, but no, I mean I'm, I'm, I'm, it is. It's really hard, isn't it it's yeah, it's hard and and then you miss. You know what misses people?

NADINE MATHESON: 1:05:14

it's yeah, you do, and I thought before I go into the next question, I remember saying that when it happened last year and I said to um, my friend, and I said to my brothers I never realized that you could wake up crying because the grief is so raw. I'm like I didn't know you could cry in your sleep. I didn't know you could wake up crying because the grief is so raw. I'm like I didn't know you could cry in your sleep. I didn't know you could wake up crying and all of those things were happening in those initial days of her going. It's hard, but when you know, the years pass and it gets easier.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:05:45

It changes yeah, it definitely changes.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:05:53

I think it's. It changes, yeah, it definitely changes. I think it's um, yeah, yeah. I mean there comes a point when there's not really much one can say except no, it changes it does.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:06:00

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

HARRIET TYCE: 1:06:07

stop bloody drinking woman. Give it up. It doesn't do you any favors. That's what I would say.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:06:20

I never know what my answer would be, but now mine is always put the credit cards down. You don't. You really don't. That is not an emergency. Whatever you think is an emergency to put on your credit card, it's not an emergency.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:06:32

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah so, oh, I have, I have, um, my random questions, but I say it's not that much, it's not that random. But what surprised you before we go? What surprised you most about publishing once you're in it, like three to four, where you are now, what's continues to surprise you about it?

HARRIET TYCE: 1:06:59

I think that it's the randomness to me of, I mean, just from the outside, you know, because I mean I know I'm more on the inside, but it's, it's how, how do decisions get made as to what gets chosen to be? You know that, that, that because you know some books are chosen to be super leads and you know how, how do they get chosen? Why do other books not get chosen and why do some books take off and other books don't take off, when you know you can't sort of see a difference necessarily between that book and this book, and you know some books which are massive runaway successes are, you know you can see exactly why. And others you're a bit like. And then you read something and it should have been huge and you're like, you're like, well, that's I just it's really strange trying to do. You can't second guess what the reading public are going to get behind.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:07:57

I suppose that's the thing, that, that, that, and it shouldn't be a surprise, but it's just reinforced so frequently because you can see publishers really trying, you know, to make something thing and it just doesn't. Nobody ever really you know it just doesn't happen. And then you can see with something that they haven't necessarily really tried that it takes on a life of its own. I mean the the whole book talk phenomenon seems that, seems to be something that's completely nobody knows quite what to do with that, because you can't harness you know you cannot harness the power of tiktok, it's, it's got to build up its own kind of collective mass.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:08:40

You know, it's, it's, it's that I think that there is, you can predict, and it must make it so impossible for publishers and it probably explains why so many different books are published in what can seem like such a random pattern. Because you know you are to an extent throwing paint against the wall, hoping that something sticks, but without being completely sure as to. You know you can try doing the same thing but a bit different, but sometimes it's something that comes completely from left field. You know you can't, you can't predict it, and I think that's what has been brought home to me through all of the years, that and I say all of the years, as if five is a long time, but it feels, you know, it does feel like a long time.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:09:28

I feel like, yeah, without mentioning any book names, that whole thing of um, you think a book is going to be huge because it's being pushed and promoted here, there and everywhere. You're like you can't. I said to someone you can't go to the toilet without being promoted. It was like it was everywhere. But then Harriet and I are mouthing to ourselves but you'll never see this. But but then you said you think so, you think it's just going to be, it's going to be big, it's going to be massive. And then it it comes and goes. And you're like what happened? Yeah, like a really big movie being promoted, and then it just comes and goes. And next thing, you know, it's streaming on ITV2.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:10:14

I was packing up, actually, because I've just been, I was renting some office space and I'm moving out of that, so I was packing up. There was a whole load of like a whole shelf of proofs and I was sort of, as I was looking at them, you know, putting them away and it was, you know, some of them. I couldn't remember, you know, because I mean I hadn't read everything, because you know you can't, but I, I was looking at them and I just couldn't. Um, you know, some of them had obviously gone on to people have become established, but you know, this was sort of going back a few years and you know, some of them.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:10:45

It's like whatever happened to that book, I don't recall it at all, but yes, at the time, and you know, when you look at the back and it says it's going to be supported by a massive marketing campaign. So I suppose I am surprised at the randomness, um, in the sense that it sort of reinforces that it's not possible really for someone. You know that that there's only so much of this can be controlled, even by the publishers, that they don't have the full control. I'm sure that they'd like, I mean, some things are going to be, you know absolute sure things. But other things you know. It's an entirely speculative industry, to an extent at least.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:11:27

Yeah, I agree. So finally. Finally, harriet Tice, where can listeners? It's not that controversial, it's just where can listeners of the conversation find you online?

HARRIET TYCE: 1:11:38

they can find me on twitter I mean x? Um and instagram stop laughing and Instagram. Both of those are at Harriet, underscore Tice. And then I have an author page on Facebook which is, I think, author Harriet Tice or possibly Harriet Tice author.

HARRIET TYCE: 1:12:05

But, if you want to look that up, then you would find me there, and I have a website with a mailing list that I do nothing with because I have not really psyched myself up to do a newsletter because I'm not quite sure what I'd put in it, but maybe that'll be. This year's challenge is actually to set up a newsletter, um, but yes, in all the usual places and not propping up my local bar anymore, so that's good well, that just leads me to say, harriet Tice, thank you very much for being part of the conversation thank you very much for having me thank you for joining me for this week's episode of the conversation with Nadine Matheson podcast.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:12:47

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 theconversation at nadinemaffersoncom. Thank you, and I'll see you next week.