Erin Kelly: Pen to Publication, the Author's Expedition

For Sunday Times Bestselling author, Erin Kelly, every book launch feels like stepping into the spotlight for the first time, each page a new opportunity to captivate an audience or fall flat. This episode is an expedition through the complexities of authorship, examining the delicate equilibrium between the creative spirit and the unforgiving marketplace.  Together, Erin Kelly and I uncover the ambitious path of securing book deals, confront the stark realities of writers' earnings, and celebrate the tradition of mentorship that binds the community of storytellers. Erin Kelly's debut, The Poison Tree was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller, became a major ITV drama and was a Richard & Judy Summer Read in 2013. Her tenth novel, The House of Mirrors, the sequel to 'The Poison Tree' is available now.

The House of Mirrors
One of them has killed before.
One of them will kill again.

In the sweltering summer of 1997, straight-laced, straight-A student Karen met Biba - a bohemian and impossibly glamorous aspiring actress. A few months later, two people were dead and another had been sent to prison.

Having stood by Rex as he served his sentence, Karen is now married to him with a daughter, Alice, who runs a vintage clothing company in London. They're a normal family, as long as they don't talk about the past, never mention the name Biba, and ignore Alice's flashes of dark, dangerous fury.

Karen has kept what really happened that summer of '97 hidden deep inside her. Alice is keeping secrets of her own. But when anonymous notes begin to arrive at Alice's shop, it seems the past is about to catch up with them all ...

Follow Erin Kelly

Transcript

ERIN KELLY: 0:00

So yeah. So I think the shock was realising OK, I'm going to have to write every book as though it's my debut. I can't just go off and creatively try to satisfy myself, which I think is what I'd done with the Sick Rose.

NADINE MATHESON: 0:17

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation Podcast with your host, best-selling author, nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well. I hope that you've had a good week. I think that I had a good week. I'm just sitting here trying to remember what I've actually been doing and I can't remember, which means I've probably just been stuck at my desk writing my next book and recording episodes of this podcast. I think it's all just been a bit of a blur, but one thing I did discover, and this is probably whilst I was procrastinating and not actually working on my book.

NADINE MATHESON: 0:52

I did discover some random facts about books. So the first one is that the most expensive book in the world is the Codex Lester by Leonardo da Vinci, which was purchased by Bill Gates for wait for it, 30.8 million dollars. The most banned book in America is Harry Potter because it promotes witchcraft. And this is the one that just baffles my brain, because when I found out this fact, I just kept saying to myself well, how would you know? Like, how would you know? So Mark Train's Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first book to be written on a typewriter. Now, as I said, how would you know? How would you know that it wasn't some guy called I don't know, stephen, I don't know, living in Texas, who hadn't written his first book on a typewriter, like how would you not know? So it just baffles me. Anyway, let's get on with the show.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:49

Today I'm in conversation with Sunday Times best-selling author Erin Kelly. Erin Kelly is the author of the Poison Tree, the Skeleton Key and he Said, she Said, and her 10th novel, the House, house of mirrors, which is the sequel to her best-selling debut, the poison tree, is available now. In this week's episode, erin kelly and I talk about how survival, and not world domination, is the healthiest ambition to have as an author, having a second stab at success and the privilege of paying it forwards. Now, as always, sit back or go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Erin Kelly, welcome to the Conversation. Hello, thank you for having me. You are very welcome. My first question for you is it is about writing, but I know that you teach creative writing. So I was thinking what is? I know that you're you teach creative writing, so I was thinking what is the question that you're asked the most by the students? And then also afterwards, what's the answer that most like bursts your students bubble.

ERIN KELLY: 2:57

It's actually the same. Well, what they, what they want to know very often is about the business side of getting a book deal, so, I think, information about how to. So there's two sides of teaching creative writing. The first one is feedback on somebody's manuscript. So everybody's always, of course, got a question about their actual story. But those things tend not to come up when you're talking to a whole room full of people. You know that's the kind of thing that's done one on one. But so really, the first, the most important question is what do you think of my book? But there's no one size fits all answer to that. So people want to know how to get an agent, or how to get a publisher and the process of what to do.

ERIN KELLY: 3:45

Now I have a piece of writing. So that is the question I am most often asked. You know, here is my book. I will always say where is it at? You know, don't sometimes I'll say I've got three chapters and nothing else. Is it ready to take in? Or my book is half a million words long, so I reckon it must be finished, and my answer to both of those is, well, no, neither of those are fit for an agent, because you either need to finish it or you need to edit it. So, yeah, people just want to know the nuts and bolts of what the next steps are after they are already on the way.

ERIN KELLY: 4:21

I very rarely teach people from scratch, so most of the formal courses I do require people to have completed some kind of work as an entry. You know you need to give an outline or a sample chapter or something. So only really if I'm doing a guest spot am I talking to people who haven't even written anything. So usually my conversations with new writers are with people who've already done something. Quite meaty and the most disappointing answer is again about the business side of things and it's money. Um, it is the face they pull when you tell them that the average earning I actually can't remember the most recent one, but it's like 10 000 or something or you are, you're not. You're not going to make rent or support a family on your average, the average earning.

NADINE MATHESON: 5:04

I actually can't remember the most recent one, but it's like 10 000 or something, or you are.

ERIN KELLY: 5:06

You're not. You're not going to make rent or support a family on your average book deal and the dream for most people is to quit the day job and write full time. Interestingly, loads of them hate that when they do so. I've talked quite a lot of people who've gone on to have book deals yeah and um for everybody who says this is brilliant, I get to write for a living and I don't have to have a day job. There is someone else who, once they find themselves in that full-time writing position, they hate it that everything that inspired them was having a life that involved meeting people every day or bouncing off colleagues or something. But yeah, the money is.

NADINE MATHESON: 5:48

The money is always a wake-up call, I think, for people yeah, I remember, um, I can never remember who came in to give us one of our author talks, one of our guest talks, when I was doing the course, and it was yeah, don't expect to get the big deals. If you're lucky, you might get 5,000. If you're lucky, you're like what do you mean? I'll just get 5,000. Richard Osmond's really rich. Yeah, everyone else is rich. I want a castle.

ERIN KELLY: 6:18

Well, yeah, I mean, I want a castle as well. It'd be lovely. I've got a semi-detached house in Barnet and I'm very happy with that. But when I'm teaching evening classes and I'm doing long form courses, where I see the same people week in, week out for six months and they have all they've usually looked me up and they can find out that I got a decent advance for my first book because it went in. The bookseller and your agent always wants to know celebrate a triumph. Yeah, so they will say, but you know you got. When you got your first book deal, you got paid a really good amount for two books and I said, yes, I did, and that was seven years ago. And now I need to teach evening classes.

ERIN KELLY: 7:04

Because the other thing that shocks people is that writing most of the time has the opposite progression to a traditional career, where you would maybe begin as a trainee or an apprentice or a graduate and the more experience you get and the more responsibility you get, that is matched by pay, whereas with an author it's far easier. The business model that publishing seems to work upon is that when you're a debut, you're just this ball of potential and you've never disappointed anybody and everybody's fighting over you and you know, three or four books in, I still, um, you know I still don't have to have a proper day job, but I still. I still do have to take on editorial work and every now and then teach or charge for appearances at schools or festivals. Because you don't. You tend not to go in with a bang and then get more and more and more with every book because things just aren't sustainable at that pitch for more than a handful of writers.

NADINE MATHESON: 8:13

I don't think because London book that's we're talking. It's London book fair at the moment and I'm yeah, so I'm signed up to the bookseller. It's probably like every on the hour it seems to be.

NADINE MATHESON: 8:24

I'm getting emails about oh this is the latest rights deal that's been announced for this debut and this debut has been preempted for a significant amount of money and I just think, for someone who's two, three, four, I don't know how many other number of books you are in. You see all that, see those emails coming in to see that news coming and you're like, oh my god I was.

ERIN KELLY: 8:47

I mean, I would say I would say three or four books in. Yes, they did fill me with despair, not just because I was jealous I'm always jealous, you know, of course. Of course I'd love a nice seven-figure advance and be able to, you know, send my mum on a round-the-world cruise and and not be driving a 20 year old Nissan Mic Micro that's got grass growing in one of the windows. But I'm just about to publish my 10th book and I'm still here, and now I'm much, much better than I used to be at riding out and thinking, well, some of these people that are the book of the fair and everybody's talking about some of them I'll go on to meet in a couple of years and it's going to turn out that you're a great person.

ERIN KELLY: 9:29

And, um, yeah, they come, they go, and here I still am, and that's all I ever wanted was to be able to do this all day, every day, and I think, actually, survival as a published author, rather than world domination, is probably the healthiest ambition that you can have, because for me so far touch wood, it's been achievable. So if I'm looking around and thinking, you know why haven't I got six Netflix shows in development and why. You know, why haven't I got all the publishers in America fighting over me and why aren't I having lunch with Reese Witherspoon? Well, that's not going to. You know, that's like wishing that I had the same body I had when I was 20. I could spend my life trying to chase that. But why don't I just get on with, you know, having a nice life with my fat middle-aged arse? Why don't I just get on with you know, having a nice life with my fat middle-aged ass.

ERIN KELLY: 10:27

Why don't I just deal with it that way? It's um, yeah, so I'm. I'm a lot more pragmatic about these things than I used to be. I just, yeah, to still be here is you've still beaten the odds. I've still beaten so many odds to still be writing 15 years in. So that's amazing. I've still been at so many odds to still be writing 15 years in.

NADINE MATHESON: 10:47

So that's amazing. I've asked this question before to other writers If you would have preferred to have had success really, really early on or have it later, so you've had the progression you know, with your books and learning your craft, I suppose. And then you've had the succession, because it's kind of escalated or just come out of a bang at the very beginning and then dealing with it afterwards um, I kind of I've had both, actually weirdly.

ERIN KELLY: 11:14

So I started with a bang. My first book was really good to me. It's called the Poison Tree and it was made into a tv show and it got a good uh pickup in the states and it got really nice reviews and it was a Richard and Judy pick and I had an auction and that piece in the bookseller that I was that I mentioned earlier. And then things did get quieter and quieter with every book and then my sixth book, he said she said was almost like having that again, because that did really well when I was not expecting it to. Uh, don't know why, but sometimes the book just captures a light out of nowhere and I was so much better prepared to deal with everything when I had that level of attention the second time around. Uh, I was. I appreciated it more because not only had I seen my career take a dip, I had also seen it happen to people around me.

ERIN KELLY: 12:13

So one brilliant thing about being part of the crime writing community is that people are very honest and we do talk about money and sales and problems we might be having. You know, perhaps the editor that you love with your whole heart has just been promoted to a different company. Right at the moment. You signed a six-book deal and you thought you were going to be working with them, or perhaps I don't know, there's a legal problem with your book that means you're going to have to change the whole thing. We talk about everything. Perhaps there's a cover that you hate, or perhaps your publishers made you change your title. There are so many things that we talk about and now I can't remember what the question was it was about managing, about dealing with it, whether how you would have responded to success early on.

NADINE MATHESON: 13:00

Oh yes, that's it. Yeah, but you've had both.

ERIN KELLY: 13:04

Thank you, um, yes, so uh, the point being that the first time, my first time out the stable, I didn't have writer friends, so I didn't have anybody to talk to about it, and so I didn't really know. You know, my expectations were based on somebody who's probably writing their first book now and they are reading the headlines in the bookseller and perhaps getting an inflated idea of what the long-term reality of being a novelist is. So when it happened for me the second time, I was lucky enough that I had some really good friends in the writing community who not only could I whinge to them and say I'm a bit worried that things aren't going the way I want, I also had their experiences. So I knew by that point that it's entirely possible. If you are a good author by which I don't mean you're super talented or you're winning all the prizes but if you have proven yourself to be able to deliver four or five books that have all been well-reviewed and you haven't got a reputation in the industry for being an arsehole and you've got a few contacts about the place, it's always possible to reinvent yourself. You can switch genre, you can write under a new name, and so I was a lot more confident in that. I knew, if anything I'd, you know I'd had friends who'd done that. I'd seen peers who had really reworked their careers entirely and had a great second act. You know, not necessarily the name on those books wasn't the name that their mum called them, but they had a great career going on with a reinvention, all people had branched out into screenwriting and I just was more confident.

ERIN KELLY: 14:56

I thought, if the, if the plan a that I had goes tits up, there's loads of other ways I can still make a living from writing. There are loads of editors I could talk to make a living from writing. There are loads of editors I could talk to. I can tell my agent I'm available for ghostwriting. You know, I just didn't have and never have had again that sense of this is all over. I'm gonna go and have to work in a shop because I have no transferable skills apart from journalism and that is dead. You know, the kind of journalism that I used to do, that doesn't exist anymore. All the magazines I used to write for are folded.

ERIN KELLY: 15:30

So, yeah, I, just after that first dip and I had a second stab at success. I was just in a much better position to handle every part of being an author and since then I have had books that got brilliant reviews but didn't sell very well. And I have had books that got brilliant reviews but didn't sell very well. And I've had books that sold better than I thought they should have done, because I wasn't didn't think they were by my best work. Um, and you know there will be, there will be disappointments again and then there will be those random days when you know money or attention falls out of the sky from a completely unexpected direction. So, yeah, I, if I could do it retrospectively, I would definitely choose to build towards success than have you know sort of crash into everyone's lives and then there's nowhere really to go but down. I kind of pity authors, in a way, who have phenomenal success with their first books, because it's, how could you ever live up to that?

NADINE MATHESON: 16:35

I mean, I know, I know go on.

NADINE MATHESON: 16:37

I was gonna say, like you see it happen all the time. They come out from the starting gate and it blows up. It's just big and it's everywhere and they're everywhere and it seems like they're all over the world. You know, they're being applauded, they're getting all the awards, they're getting everything. So I would think your students will be that's what they want, that's what they're getting. And then the second book comes around and it's like it's like a little puff of smoke, like a barbecue dying. That's what it's like. It's like a puff of smoke. You're like what happened yeah and you can't.

ERIN KELLY: 17:08

I don't, I think. I mean, I think they're very rarely absolute puffs of smoke, but I think anything is going to. You know numbers I would kill for must be disappointed when two, three years ago you were the third best-selling book on the planet. But I think the real reason I wouldn't want that first off is because I'm going to keep going on about this, but it's the best thing I've had out of my career is the friends that I've made.

ERIN KELLY: 17:34

The other authors and a lot of the people who I'm closest to are people like Julia Crouch and Jane Casey, and we were published within a couple of years of each other and so we know we kind of grew up together as writers and I know that a lot of your friends in the community are people whose debuts came out round about the same time as you. It's just what happens. You naturally cluster together with people who are at the beginning of their journeys as well, and when success is so stratospheric, so early on, you don't have peers. In the same way, you have other established authors but very few debut authors who are in the position of not really knowing how the industry works, not having that experience to negotiate publicity and attention and everything else. So you don't get to grow up with people, which sounds like a stupid thing to say, because we're all grown up to get published.

ERIN KELLY: 18:39

I think having people, even if your careers go off in completely different directions, there will always be a special bond with people you met when you were both at the beginning and clueless, and there is just a solidarity there.

NADINE MATHESON: 18:58

Yeah, and it's a beautiful thing, and you don't need someone to understand why you're bitching and what you're bitching and moaning about but I imagine it must be quite an isolating experience to suddenly be catapulted to Hollywood or whatever.

ERIN KELLY: 19:13

and every time you go to a festival which is where authors do most of their socializing, because most of us don't leave the house from one day to the next, if we can help it um, everybody else, apart from the most confident and established authors, are scared to talk to you. Success can be really intimidating in other authors.

ERIN KELLY: 19:34

I mean, I have been starstruck a couple of times by authors who I read, you know, when I was a child, when I was a teenager you know, when I was a child, when I was a teenager, and it does, you know, it does just make you that little bit hesitant to make the first move and make the introduction. But I imagine it's just as isolating for somebody who is under the spotlight and maybe they wish they could be in the corner, you know, snorting vodka or whatever it is, with nobody paying attention or judging them. Yeah, eating a whole burger in one go without those eyes on you.

NADINE MATHESON: 20:13

But I was thinking as well that even if you know, even for someone who does like make it from the very beginning, they go really big from the very beginning. It's not often that you're going to have like three or four debut authors in the same genre going stratospheric at the same time.

NADINE MATHESON: 20:27

It might be one in, like you know you're in crime fiction, another one's in literary fiction and they say another one's in what is it now? Romanticism, and the three don't really. The three don't mix together. Like there won't be, like three you know, a joint festival together. So you are.

ERIN KELLY: 20:42

I think there should be. I'd love to see that, I'd love to watch that. But yeah, no, no, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, it is really valuable having somebody who works in the same genre, not just because you know, you know, you know what makes each other tick, but there's also, I think, wherever you are, you will have your own little pocket of things that you're going to be judged for.

ERIN KELLY: 21:10

So if you write romantic fiction, I think those authors often get dismissed as being fluffy. And I think actually some so-called chiclet tackles really dark, heavy stuff. It's just because you know there's no, there's no sort of procedural plot doesn't mean that you can't go to those places and you know. Or family books are dismissed and I think, well, we all, we all come from a family, we all live in a family. That's life is being in a family, isn't it? It's the most fundamental thing.

ERIN KELLY: 21:37

And if you are a literary author, I think it can be difficult. I mean, there's a whole conversation to be had about what literary fiction even is. I personally think it's a marketing term for books that aren't intended to have huge supermarket commercial appeal and rely more on reviews and awards than someone who's writing straight fiction has. But you are dealing with press attention but not necessarily having the income to write as often as you would like. So that's a different kind of problem to have.

ERIN KELLY: 22:19

You know, very, very few literary authors shift big units, somebody like you know sally rooney or or claire keegan or or Brit Bennett. They are outliers really, I would say. They get the praise and they get the awards, but they also sell the books. That doesn't often happen. And then in crime, you know we're used to having it leveled at us that we exploit real life victims and that we're kind of serving up something terrible for entertainment. And we know how it feels to have our books dismissed that way, because we all know that we're trying to shine a light on society and, I think, crimes, you know, if you want to know what you know, if you want to know what is happening in a society, go to court you.

ERIN KELLY: 23:13

That's all you need to do. Yeah, you spend a day in just your local crown court and you know everything you need to know about that city and that time yeah, especially, yeah, especially what's going on.

NADINE MATHESON: 23:24

I said what's prevalent in that period of time because, yeah, you could go for me like I look back at my career one year, you can see a prevalence of, I'm just gonna say, like I'm saying, theft, it's all about, yeah, and then the next year it could all be fraud cases and the next year after that it's then a prevalence of sexual offenses and you kind of see it the way in which society is moving, but then also you're seeing the sort of people who are coming in and out of the courtrooms and the type of people who are being charged with certain offences, and that was always eye-opening to me, the very first time.

NADINE MATHESON: 23:57

It's like you can't put one person in a box and think that they're going to do this it's.

ERIN KELLY: 24:03

There's so many factors that make up the reasons why people will do so would you see the demographic of offenders change depending on what was happening in?

NADINE MATHESON: 24:14

that's so interesting. You would, you'd see it. And that was eye-opening for me. Because it's not because no one, no one can teach you that you know when you're in law school, when I'm in law school or university, no one can teach you that. It can teach you the practicalities of it. You know the, the theory of it, but the real life impact of it you're not aware of that until you get into the courtroom and you're dealing one-on-one with clients. So that's the end. That is definitely eye-opening, but I suppose it's like being a writer as well. You're not aware of the impact and how the world, that publishing world, works until you're in it and you're talking with your peers. You know people have started with you and people have come in, you know been there way before you and us and are propping up the bar. They're ready to tell you the story?

ERIN KELLY: 25:03

yeah, but I love that. I love hearing from people who've been doing this for so long. When I started out, I had the same publisher Well, I still do. I have the same publisher as Sophie Hanna and she was she's got, I reckon, about 10 years on me, so her debut would have come out 10 years before mine did, and she's she's an extraordinary person.

ERIN KELLY: 25:28

So, vianna, she's just this. I don't know if you've ever met her, but she is like she's got the energy of six or seven people. It's astonishing how she does it and she's so good in front of a crowd and talking to readers and she takes the work really seriously. But she she's never po-faced and hoda would put me with her for events and I would ask her questions about her career so far and she basically taught me how to be an author. I mean, she never sat down and did it formally like I said this is what you've got to do this, this, this and this, but she would answer all my questions and on stage she would show me, just by the way she acted, how to field a question that was a bit rude or weird and how to never talk down to a reader but also to defend yourself. If somebody was aggressive with their questioning, it was. She was just so good at being an author and I loved having somebody that I spent so much time with that. It was like a crash course and now I'm that person to people who are just coming up and I think it's such a privilege to be able to pay it forward a little bit.

ERIN KELLY: 26:53

And I always say if ever I'm interviewing somebody whose first book, as I say, or if I review a book before it even comes out, I always make contact. Well, not always. I often make contact and I just say is there anything you wish you'd known or you know? Is there anything you don't understand about what's being done? Is there you know? Is there anything that's going on behind the scenes? I won't always know, I have to say, and actually a lot of debut authors now are so much better informed than I was when I got picked up in 2009. Was when I got picked up in 2009. There's just. There is so much more. I mean, there are podcasts like this one, but there are blogs and there is loads of information. It was all completely shrouded in secrecy when I started out and I still learn new stuff all the time.

NADINE MATHESON: 27:41

But I love the fact.

ERIN KELLY: 27:43

But yeah, I just, I just like having a little bit of grey in my hair metaphorically, as well as loads literally in my hair.

NADINE MATHESON: 27:52

I was going to say the first panel I did, the first live panel I did was at Harrogate with you. Wow, oh my God, I remember that now.

ERIN KELLY: 28:04

But you could tell, I mean, you're such a good speaker probably because you're used to standing up in front of strangers, and yeah, that's a real baptism of fire, isn't it? The first event being, I mean, you get like three 400 people in the audience in a big marquee.

NADINE MATHESON: 28:22

Basically and I had it wasn't. It wasn't like I'd known before, like, for example, like weeks, not like most, for example, like weeks. When you do Harrogate, you're told months and months in advance that oh, was it the first one post-COVID?

ERIN KELLY: 28:35

Yeah, so you got parachuted in at the last minute. I got parachuted in.

NADINE MATHESON: 28:41

I was like oh okay, yeah, I'll do it. It's different, though, to doing, you know. I say doing during speeches and being in court. It's completely different, that's just yeah people, and then this was just a crowd, you know, and I remember thinking they're not expecting me, though I think no one's expecting sarah pimber, but you're in the right place.

ERIN KELLY: 29:03

You're at harrigan, which, um, if, if your listeners don't know, they probably do, but it's basically Glastonbury, isn't it? For crime writing. So, uh, and the people who come there are brilliant because they just want to hear from new people, and they all knew Sarah Pimbrough. She'd been knocking around for decades. You were, you know, but they haven't seen you before. So, no, it's always exciting and um, uh, yeah, it was, um, it was a really good panel, though.

ERIN KELLY: 29:32

I thought it went really well and at least you didn't have weeks to tie yourself up in knots wondering no about it yeah, it's probably a good thing not having that build up of oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

NADINE MATHESON: 29:44

This is the biggest thing ever, as opposed to just. You know, I'll just off you go, here's your mic, let's make sure.

ERIN KELLY: 29:49

Yeah, yeah, pretty much onto the stage yeah, that is what it feels like the only downside to that, I guess. So they have a what's it called the debut panel every year? Is it called fresh meat or fresh blood, or something?

NADINE MATHESON: 30:01

always get it wrong way around, or new blood, it's something like that, yeah, something to do, something to do with.

ERIN KELLY: 30:08

It's a fleshy title and it's for Val McDermid selects, I think, what she thinks the four best breakout writers of that year. And that is very, very often the first event, first live panel event those authors have ever done, and I think it must be pretty intimidating, as it was for you, but also it must raise like if you think, yeah it every, everywhere I go I'm going to get 400 people hanging off my every word. And then the next week you're sort of traveling six hours on a broken train system to a regional library where there's two people and a dog that farts, and one of them is staff yeah, I mean it has.

ERIN KELLY: 30:54

We've all got those stories, haven't we? You know, and there's never any predicting it. You never know until you get there. And then sometimes you're like you're sort of going somewhere that hasn't got a station barely even on the map, and you'll get to some scout hut in the arse of nowhere in a valley and it'll be full and you'll sell 50 books and there's just never any way of telling, until you get there, what you're going to get.

NADINE MATHESON: 31:24

So how did you? You know? If you go back to the Poison Tree, what was that? I have 2009, but it's that late that's when it was published.

ERIN KELLY: 31:32

No, no, it was published 2010, 2010. Got the deal in 2009.

NADINE MATHESON: 31:38

Okay, so you got the deal in 2009. It's published in 2010. You're doing journalism before that. Yeah, he said it blows up. Yeah, your debut is the one that blows up. So how do you manage it? How did you manage that? And then you say the whole industry's kind of you know, doing events is all shrouded in secrecy and you're having to learn as you go well, I dealt with that really well because I didn't know anybody.

ERIN KELLY: 32:01

I just thought, great, this is what publishing is always going to be like. So the um, the difficult part was when, uh, my second book came out and lightning didn't strike twice that it. No, it wasn't a flop, it was. It did really respectably. But uh, so the poison tree did it did well, it didn't chart in the sunday Times bestseller list but because of Richard and Judy it sort of stuck around for a long time. It was very visible, um, and so I just thought, well, that's that, that's how it's always going to be. And then the second one, the Sick Rose, was for a start, it was a much quieter book and it was harder to write, because I wrote the first book when I was pregnant. I had a child when I wrote the second one, so my life had changed completely anyway so it was.

ERIN KELLY: 32:56

It was harder work and but I did write it in a bubble. I wrote it before the poison tree came out, for the most part so I'd never been published and I'd never had. So, you know, I'd never done that thing of going on to Amazon and seeing what the ranking was and seeing who had decided to trash it on that particular day. So, yeah, and I think it was when the second book came out that I realised, oh right, every book is a completely different experience and that hadn't been the case in journalism different experience and that hadn't been the case in journalism. So we're talking, you know, 16 years ago, very different time for everything, you know, because it was pre um. The internet was still kind of in its infancy in terms of media, it wasn't really cannibalizing print journalism the way it has done since. So with journalism, whenever I found a newspaper or magazine I liked writing for I just kept doing it and it was steady and the money kept steady and I would just get more and more work all the time. And I'd been, you know, obviously with a few dips here and there, because freelance life is always like that.

ERIN KELLY: 34:05

But I don't think I understood how readers buy books in the way I do now and I presumed that everybody does what I do, which is find one writer and if you like their first book, you will follow them forever and you will just buy everything they write, and it will take six or seven books of you not enjoying them before you finally admit that maybe this writer isn't working for you. You know, either you've moved on from them or they've gone in a direction that you don't love as much. So, yeah, so I think the shock was realising okay, I'm going to have to write every book as though it's my debut. I can't just go off and creatively try to satisfy myself, which I think is what I'd done with the Sick Rose. I didn't make it, as you know. It was a, a quieter book that happened in a smaller, everything you know, fewer characters, not the same big twist yeah, I mean it.

ERIN KELLY: 35:03

I mean it all took place in a ruined Elizabethan castle and it was was about gardeners. For God's sake, I'd gone from sex, drugs and the long, hot summer of 1997 for someone living in a trailer. So I think, yeah, that was the real crash course. It was when my second book was published that I understood what this was like as a long game book was published, that I understood what this was like as a long game and that, yeah, and so now I do. Every time I write a book I write as though I'm hooking somebody new for the first time. I write as though I've got to bring a new agent in. And I think also I was kind of right about how readers used to work and they don't now. My agent agent has said as much.

ERIN KELLY: 35:49

You know, time was you would have a brilliant debut and those readers would stay with you. But so much has changed now. The way books are sold is different. You can't guarantee, you know, if you end up in the supermarkets, which is really the only way to shift huge numbers of books, huge numbers of books, um, if you end up in a supermarket for one book, you might not necessarily end up there for the next one. So those readers who might only buy their books in supermarkets won't be able to follow you from book to book to book, because that's just not how they shop, and digital reading changed everything.

ERIN KELLY: 36:27

Lots of Kindle readers are loyal to a genre rather than an author, so they will go for if you love this, you might love this. You know they will be led by the algorithm, which I think is a brilliant. You know, I've discovered so many great authors that way. I do read on on kindle, um, but it does mean that the algorithm is leading them towards other similar books rather than the next book by that author, unless they make a point of following you, the author, and that's not really how Amazon works. So I'm, yeah, so I'm aware that readers are I don't want to say fickle, because that sounds like I'm throwing shade on them and I'm not doing that. I'm saying that the options readers have are different to the options readers had 20 years ago, when there were a lot more bookshops on the high street and that was still how the charts were done.

ERIN KELLY: 37:31

And also, this supermarket shelf space is shrinking all the time. Yeah, it's very rare. I mean, I remember the, the big Tesco's on the North Circular where I do, my big food shop used to have a whole aisle of books, fiction, children's, non-fiction, and now it's sort of you know three. It's a tiny part of the greeting cards aisle, along with magazines, and so readers just don't have the same choice. So it is harder for readers to follow on, which means that every single time I've got to think of a really good hook or a really good book. And that's not to say that I don't have my. You know the real ones, the hardcore readers who've been with me from the beginning. I do, and they're brilliant and they will buy everything. But it is harder, I think, beginning I do, and they're brilliant and they will buy everything. But it is harder, I think, than it's ever been to keep a big, big number of readers coming back, book after book after book not many not many authors can do it no, because I'm.

NADINE MATHESON: 38:30

I was thinking that like another shock for us when we started doing the course and then we've been. It was being explained to us how the supermarkets work. So that's you.

NADINE MATHESON: 38:40

You have a always say you have reader's glasses on when you're looking at how the industry works yeah, so you're just thinking, okay, you just ask for your book, not even ask, you just assume your book will go on to the supermarket shelves and then you, once you, you know, you sign up your publisher, you realize, oh no, that's not how it works. Like you have to be pitched, like you're constantly being pitched to bookshops and certain supermarkets. As you said, even my local test goes the shelves, the spaces it's minute now, used to be aisles and now it's just a few bays but there's pitching that will be happening within your publisher as well.

ERIN KELLY: 39:15

So all the different editors will be pitching to sales about why. You know, this is why we need the jigsaw man in the supermarkets, and there will somebody else be there waving a rival book. Because they want to. They're backing their author saying well, actually, you know, I think that this author has a longer track record and it's a more established series. I think this is the one that we should pitch to Sainsbury's. So the competition is fierce at every single level.

ERIN KELLY: 39:50

It's kind of reassuring that we are not privy to these meetings. I think we would find it really soul destroying if we knew what's going on behind the scenes. If we knew what's going on behind the scenes. But it takes a long chain link of people to get a book on that supermarket shelf and it doesn't always happen for me. Sometimes some books my publishers will say this is a book that we think is more of a Waterstones reader book, or we're going to throw everything into an online deal for this book and it's for me definitely. It's been a different experience with every single book. Some authors sell loads and loads in hardback. You mentioned Romantasy at the beginning of the chat, which I still don't quite understand.

NADINE MATHESON: 40:38

They've got subscription boxes, though they have.

ERIN KELLY: 40:42

But even without those, their readership seems to want a book as a beautiful hardback thing that they can hold. Yeah, it's like it's all about the art. Yeah, exactly, it's all about the artwork and being the first one in your group chat to have this thing and they want to take a flat lay of it and they want to take a picture of themselves reading it in an empty church or whatever it is. And I do love this. I do love the fact that TikTok has infused Gen Z about books and about books as a physical object, because I do think it means that we're not staring down the barrel of a kind of spotify model where we can't make a living anymore. But it does slightly shift the way books are consumed.

ERIN KELLY: 41:40

And so if you aren't a reader whose books, sorry, if you aren't an author who has that kind of readership, you've got a new competition that wasn't there five years ago. Five years ago it was very rare to get the sprayed edges aka spreadges, um. And now that books are kind of more collectible, in a way, they're more of a thing, and so you have publishers looking at an author saying well, maybe we need to push you more in heart in paperback because your readers aren't. You know, so many authors sell absolute crate loads of books and you never see them on tiktok or social media. They're just you know, they are beloved and they have really loyal readers. But they're just a different demographic and so maybe that author will market them in a different way. You know, maybe the way in is through libraries or smaller scale events rather than the book as a beautiful object.

ERIN KELLY: 42:47

It's really interesting, but also I think it's a terrible idea for us to overthink this. Our job is to write the best book, and when all this is in, I kind of sometimes wish I didn't know quite so much about what happens behind the curtain. I mean, what did you know when you started out? You must have been a bit more clued in than I was, I think. I don't think so.

NADINE MATHESON: 43:07

I think. No, I mean it's only because I said I did the creative writing master's degree, so I became aware of, okay, what your expectations could be in terms of advances, how the supermarkets work, and you know, I mean you can find that you also would have got a network out of that. You also would have had people to talk to yeah, so I hope it's like I already had my crew. Yeah, I want to put it that way well, that's invaluable, isn't it?

NADINE MATHESON: 43:35

yeah, and that's invaluable because that say that crew I had back in 2016. When we're all there's, like you know, it literally is your first day of school. You just find a workout where to sit. I still have that same crew now and that's the one you know you go back to and I'm like I need you to read the first 10 pages of this. Let me know it's. You know, is it decent? Would you carry on or just have a moan about something?

NADINE MATHESON: 43:59

and then you say that, that little crew widens because then you become a debut and then you get another crew. But in terms of all the stuff you know that we're we're talking about, no, I didn't have a clue. So when you do, but I think because of my previous career, you know, being a lawyer, I've said I very early on I learned I need to have a very pragmatic lawyer approach to it in order to deal with all the information and like assess all the information, because you could. It's a lot and if you're looking at the bookseller every week you can turn yourself quite mad.

NADINE MATHESON: 44:30

You know looking at all the door announcements and then looking at the charts and seeing where people are placed in the charts and how much they're selling, and I mean I bring up the romancy subscription boxes and you're seeing you know someone's first or say their first book coming out on the week one and they're selling like they're shifting like 40,000 copies. You're like how, how, like, how am I supposed to do that? But I don't know. I don't know how you'd manage that information if you know nothing and you've got no, you haven't got a crew next to you.

ERIN KELLY: 45:02

I don't know.

ERIN KELLY: 45:03

I mean, I don't know how I manage it, knowing everything so you know, I'm not knowing everything, but you know, I know more than I ever know a lot yeah and just when you think, just when you think you've got a handle on it, something else will come along and in a year we could have this chat again and we'll be talking about something that we had no idea about and we didn't see coming. And publishing didn't see coming. And might be a beautiful thing, might be an absolute disaster, but publishing's changed so much even since I began. I mean when I, when I sent my first manuscript manuscript off, um, I had to people, editors and agents they still weren't accepting email submissions.

ERIN KELLY: 45:43

Yeah, because it was the winter before the kindle was launched, so nobody had a convenient, comfortable way of reading no uh, on a screen, so I don't even think ipads I know the iphone came out when my daughter was one, which is 2009 or 10 yeah, and I think ipads came next.

ERIN KELLY: 46:17

So no people didn't have iPads either. So, yes, so that the publisher didn't have to bear the expense, or agents didn't have to bear the expense of printing everything in the slush pile. It was expected that the writer would do that, and I was pregnant and had just taken six months off to write the book before the baby came, and so I couldn't do what I would do if I was querying now, which would be emailing the whole thing to maybe five or six agents at once, knowing they would read when they could and get back to me when they could. I only had it was 30 quid to print off, um, just the first three chapters in a covering letter, and I remember, so I think I queried three or four agents and so I had to pay for that every time, and then you have to pay the return postage because you didn't want to spend 30 quid sending something out and then having to spend 30 quid for the next lot when that was sent back and you got rejected.

ERIN KELLY: 47:25

And I remember sending my husband into central London on his day off because it was a travel card was cheaper than four lots of postage for these things and yeah, so it was a, it was a, it was an investment in time and money and in the way that it isn't now. It was all so much slower and people were reading slush piles physically, I mean, you know, there were room. When I went in to see my agent, she was just in a room of paper, which she still is now, but not like then. No, so everything got so much faster once people started reading submissions digitally so much faster. It just stopped being a physical thing. Um, yeah, so so I? I was still getting rejections even when I had a book deal, because that's how long it had taken people to get to my book in the summer.

NADINE MATHESON: 48:17

Oh, wow, because, yeah, because you're sending it, you're physically sending it out yeah, and you're waiting for them to get through, to read through that, that physical pile of manuscript before they get to you.

ERIN KELLY: 48:30

And I got, um, I think, about a week before the book was actually published. So there had been an announcement, you know, and the title had changed. But if this agent had looked up my name, she would have been able to find out that I already had representation, given that the cover letter was by then over a year old. Yeah, I got an email saying this looks quite good. Can you send me the rest of the manuscript, which is I mean, I'm sure things still slip through the net like that now. I mean I'm sure things still slip through the net like that now.

ERIN KELLY: 49:00

But yeah, it was just a much more physical and time-consuming business and self-publishing back then was a thing you had to pay to print a book for. You couldn't be an author in control of your own career. I mean it's not for me just because I couldn't be arsed with the formatting and the admin, and I really like the fact that having a trad publisher lets me outsource all of those things that I'm terrible at and concentrate on writing. But I really respect those people who do it on their own, without a traditional deal, and make a success of it, because what was the equivalent 15, 16 years ago. What would you do? You'd pay a thousand pounds to have a load of hardbacks down and then take them around a car boot sale.

NADINE MATHESON: 49:43

That was literally, I remember would have been like back in 96, 97. When I was working at Books Etc part time and I was at uni and there used to be a guy who used to come in every Saturday that fell. He would come in with his books and it was like a local, I remember it was a white cover but it was local history sort of book. He'd come in every Saturday with his books, with his book, to speak to my manager about stocking his books that he'd self-published himself, you know. So he got, he's had to pay to get it printed and do all of that, and he came in. But it must have been about a good four or five months of him coming in religiously every Sunday before I think my manager just got yeah, fine, like we'll take four, and he took four. We had a little small, um, like local history section in front of the shop. He took four and they sold and they came up but that's what they had, that's what you had to do.

NADINE MATHESON: 50:34

Yeah, I said that was back in 96 and now you know you can sit where I'm sitting now in front of my computer and do it all. Yeah, although she's crazy, I wouldn't want. No, not anymore. No, it's, it's hard, it's hard, and so you have to work out what you're good at and what you're not good at and what you're prepared to outsource. Yeah, as well, but no, I can't do it. I wouldn't do it again. No way. I like this web. Yeah, my first, my very first book I self-published.

NADINE MATHESON: 51:00

I did not know that yeah, actually it wouldn't even be my first book. My very first, first first book I had no business sending out was the way you know you're talking about. Before, when I had to thank god, I worked in an office where I I made a lot of use of the photocopier to print copies of my book and then I used the postal room to send the book out because stamps were expensive. It was expensive to post stuff that was expensive.

ERIN KELLY: 51:24

Just consider it a bonus yeah, it was.

NADINE MATHESON: 51:27

It was crazy, but the first one that I that's published that you'll see on Amazon. Yeah, I self-published that myself, but the easy bit is the writing bit and then getting a cover artist. Even that was straight. I didn't do it myself, I found someone to do it. But it's the marketing which is hard and promoting your book and I was like you need to be prepared to put the work in, to work on the business side of it.

ERIN KELLY: 51:50

I mean, there's a reason that it's someone's job.

NADINE MATHESON: 51:53

Yeah, there is In a publisher, isn't it?

ERIN KELLY: 51:55

Yeah, not mine I, and I don't think I have. Um, I think there's enough rejection in being an author anyway when you learn that a book won't, a shop won't take your books, or you know nobody's reviewed it or nobody is blurbing it. There's so many ways or even just a you know a bad review or a book club on twitter saying we all threw it across the room because we were so bored. You know there's so many ways that can be rejected that I don't think I would have the psychological resilience to also be the one getting you know, seeing the numbers telling a story that this book isn't selling, sort of within the machine. I just don't think I would have. I just can't see how it wouldn't impact my writing yeah, yeah, no, it's a lot.

NADINE MATHESON: 52:52

I think. Emotionally I think it would be a lot because you have all the insight that our publishers have, so you know if one copy is sold with no copies sold at all. You're very much aware of everything.

ERIN KELLY: 53:06

And then you know in a way that, yeah, there's a middle ground to be had, though, because I think it's quite hard for us to know. I mean, I like to know exactly what's happening with my books for maybe the first four weeks of publication, like I really do like the granular detail. I like to know. You know, waterstones took X number and this you know. Brighton sold three and Nottingham sold five or whatever it is. You know, I really I'm really interested in that. I want to know where in the country my readers are. I want to know where in the country the booksellers who are pushing me are. I think this is really helpful. It's good. Apart from anything else, it means I can pop in when I'm if I find myself there and say hello and say a thank you, and then after that I don't like to know.

ERIN KELLY: 53:53

But for a while Hachette had something called the author portal where you could log in every week and see what your books are doing in real time, and I became obsessed with it, like I would go in there. Um, I would go in there all the time and I would be able to see what you could see was. You could see how many had gone out to the shops and you could also see how many were actually going through the tills, so you could see the gap and I I was. Then they cancelled it, they took the portal down and I was 50, absolutely devastated because it was my favorite way to procrastinate and 50 relieved because it isn't good for you, it's not healthy to think all the time like to, you know, sit there and think what do you mean?

ERIN KELLY: 54:39

I've only sold one book all week and that was in Saudi Arabia. You know, it's just it's it's really. Yeah, that was my experience of being in the machine and it was it's a bit like social media, like I kind of wish it didn't exist because then I wouldn't have to be so enslaved by it.

NADINE MATHESON: 54:58

Yeah, yeah, no, I don't. I would think, on one hand I would be intrigued, I'd want to know, but then on the other hand, I'd be, I could see how it could become an obsession.

ERIN KELLY: 55:07

I think if you are, if you're published by Amazon, I think you get pretty much that. I think you get alerts. I think it's updated every hour, like the rankings.

NADINE MATHESON: 55:19

I know, I don't know, I don't, I don't need to know now. Really, I don't need an hourly update, yeah it's too much for me yeah, twice a year.

ERIN KELLY: 55:26

Now. I like once when the hardback comes up, once when the paperback. That'll do, won't it that will do.

NADINE MATHESON: 55:31

That's that's acceptable. I think anything more than that, more in depth, is I said it's the equivalent of you just going on goodreads and looking up your reviews, which is not.

ERIN KELLY: 55:41

It's never healthy and I haven't done that for four years now four years I have not looked at amazon or goodreads. I occasionally, accidentally, see my landing page on amazon, if ever I have to post a link to something that's on sale like a special offer. But even then I won't read an individual review because I mean I can recite almost some of the reviews from my first book. I used to pour over them and think I've got to do this. I mean I learned from them in some ways, uh. But then I just thought, no, I don't need all that noise in my head.

NADINE MATHESON: 56:18

I know some authors who look, though I was told by one yeah, he goes. No, I look at all the one, every single star with. I'm like why would you do that to yourself, like it's just?

ERIN KELLY: 56:29

no, I might do it. I might do it for a really old book. I always feel like when a new book comes out, the old one can't hurt me anymore. So yeah, the further in the. So you can say anything you want about my first four books, and I'm like I was a different person when I wrote them. Don't care, um, but the closer I am to publication, the more it would sting to get a bad. Yeah, right up, but it's like I say, for me it works better.

ERIN KELLY: 56:58

I'm really grateful for any reader who does take the time to review. I'm even grateful for the bad reviews, because it, you know, it's engagement, isn't it? And then someone's taking time to yeah it it's. You know there is a call to action at the back of any kindle book and even a star rating. You know it. It is a yeah it is, it's. It just helps that book have a footprint on the world. It's better than being ignored.

NADINE MATHESON: 57:28

But I do not need to know the details of what people are saying about my books no, you don't, which is why I'm going to ask you about whether you are, erin Kelly, an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two. So, moving on to our last questions.

ERIN KELLY: 57:44

OK, I am an introvert with really good social skills, so I can busk it. I can busk it and I do. I really love people and parties, but the reason I'm able to go to them is because I have a job. That means I'm in the house on my own for seven hours a day, yeah, and without that I would really struggle with events and being out. So I I'm definitely somebody who's I mean the definition, if you boil it down, I think, is, do you get your energy from being alone or being around people? And I get mine from being alone. That's how I recharge.

NADINE MATHESON: 58:17

What was your first festival?

ERIN KELLY: 58:19

like it was harrowing Was it, but only as an audience member, right, not as a? Oh no, that's not true. I did the author dinner and I was on a table with a bunch of midwives who were. They just bought the thing as a reunion from when they'd all been training at midwifery college and didn't realize it was a murder mystery dinner. So I just, you know, I couldn't solve the mystery. They weren't really interested in doing it. So that was quite weird.

ERIN KELLY: 58:49

And I knew one person. I didn't know anyone from my publishers until the dinner, but that wasn't until the third night. So I knew one person and I didn't even know her through publishing. She was friends with my old flatmate. They'd grown up together in Northern Ireland, so I had to do a lot of introducing myself to strangers and I got through it, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed myself. I spent most of my time in the audience watching how it was done. It was only about three weeks after the first book came out, so I can't. And the first actual event I did on stage would probably have been a talk with Sophie Hanna I can't remember where.

NADINE MATHESON: 59:39

I think you know what I'm saying. It's probably that would be a baptism of fire, though I think, harrogate, it's about to be your life, your first life in person, I know I know for an audience.

ERIN KELLY: 59:48

I remember standing at the very edge of the hotel, at the border of the driveway, and I was like rocky, I was almost sort of punching the air running up and down steps just to psych myself up. And I walked in and I was like come on, erin, you can do this. You've been. You know, I was a journalist. I was used to going up to strangers all the time, but I wasn't doing that as myself I was, I was doing that for a story. So it was a completely different thing and I was thinking you know, there'll be loads of other people here who don't know each other. And then I walked in to the hotel bar and in a row were Ian Rankin, val McDermid and Mark Billingham.

ERIN KELLY: 1:00:29

So basically three of the most successful, famous, recognisable British crime writers who have ever lived. And they were laughing. You could tell they were old mates and they were laughing and I was just like I am never, ever going to fit in here. It is such an establishment, it is just so overwhelming. It's a clique. Everybody knows everybody else. I should add that they weren't being exclusionary or anything.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:01:02

They were just as old friends do.

ERIN KELLY: 1:01:05

But can you imagine, you know, you think, oh it's, I'm sure it's going to be really welcoming. Everybody says Harrogate, it's a real leveler. And they were the first three people I saw. Anyway, by the end of the weekend I'd um, anyway, by the end of the weekend I'd had a drink with Ian and a chat with Mark and I just I felt that I could see somehow. But yeah, I remember going away thinking, well, I didn't really make the most of that time, but I reckon next year I can probably handle it.

ERIN KELLY: 1:01:41

And it was true, I didn't know, I didn't I, I did. By the next time I went I was able to walk into the bar and find someone to chat to.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:01:48

yeah, and I've never looked back okay, so what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most?

ERIN KELLY: 1:01:56

oh, my goodness. Um, probably just teenagerhood in general. So that was, um, I was a very bookish comprehensive, a girls' convent school where the teachers were trying really hard but it was not an easy place to be a kind of frizzy-haired, studious girl. So I suppose that was very formative in that I wasn't completely friendless but I spent a lot more time with books than I did with people and that made me into the reader I am, which makes me into the writer I am. So yeah, I would say that has probably done more to not not in isolation, but that's done a lot to give me the life I've got now yeah, okay.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:03:01

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

ERIN KELLY: 1:03:11

I had, um, I too, yeah, well, I mean I. I wasn't um when I, in fact I think I was. By then I was already dating the man I went on to. He's still my husband now and he was obsessed with the idea of buying a house, even if we didn't live in it. He was saying let's just find a little house somewhere and, you know, move into it one day. And I was like I don't want to travel the world. What are you trying to do? To pin me down, let's just see how this goes.

ERIN KELLY: 1:03:45

And, as it happened, it took another 10 years for us to get our arses in gear and do it. And I wish I had seen what would happen. I mean, nobody really had a crystal ball today, but if I had seen what would happen I mean nobody really had a crystal ball today but if I had seen what would happen to property in London, I would have bought a house many, many years earlier than I did. Okay, and finally, really boring, isn't it? But it would, it would change. I mean I'm I acknowledge that I'm really, really lucky that I had, that I was able to buy a house at all, but if I'd just done it 10 years earlier. What a house I would have now, and what a tiny mortgage or no mortgage.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:04:29

But it's the thing like back in what 25, when I was 25. What year? I don't know what year that was, let's say early it was about 2002, 2001, yeah, and they're giving you, they're literally giving you money.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:04:42

Here's 100 mortgage houses. You can get a nice free bedroom for like 60, 70 grand. Yeah, and we just went. No, I'm gonna go to ibiza. Yeah, you know, I didn't even ask you, before we say goodbye, about your um, your 10th book, the House of Mirrors. How does it feel knowing your 10th book is out there? Well, it's going to be out there.

ERIN KELLY: 1:05:08

I love it. It feels, um I know that they're all numbers and they're all completely arbitrary, but 10 feels solid. It's like, yeah, I've really got a back catalogue now and I've left you know, I've left 10 pieces of myself in the world. But this one's particularly meaningful to me because it's the first time I've ever written a sequel, so it's a follow. Well, it's not really a sequel, you can read it without having read the Poison Tree but it's got the same characters in and it revisits a lot of the same storyline. So I really enjoyed that being my 10th book, because it just sort of brings me back full circle to that first one.

ERIN KELLY: 1:05:52

And what I really loved was going back to those old characters, knowing so much more about everything, not just how the industry works, but really understanding the craft better than I did then when I was just making it up as I went along, hadn't done any courses, hadn't read any books on creative writing. And now, um, and I still don't think you absolutely need those, even though they're helpful, um, but also having the experience to not panic when I can't think of absolutely need those, even though they're helpful, um, but also having the experience to not panic when I can't think of the solution to a plot hole, because I think I've done it nine times. I've never. You know I have missed a couple of deadlines, but I've never. I've never had to pay back in advance, I've never not put out a book I was contracted to do, and so I don't spiral anymore. And that is something that only I think comes with experience, just being a grown-up and thinking you're not going to scrap it because you've thought that about all the books and look, you're all right.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:06:48

So you've done it. You've done all right. Erin Kelly. Yeah, okay, I'm still here. So, finally, where can listeners of the conversation podcast find you online?

ERIN KELLY: 1:07:00

You can find me on Twitter kicking and screaming against my will. I refuse to call it X.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:07:05

Ms Erin Kelly Instagram is Erin Jelly and Facebook is Erin Kelly. Author. Thank you so much, Erin Kelly Can. I just say thank you so much for being part of the conversation.

ERIN KELLY: 1:07:17

You're welcome.

NADINE MATHESON: 1:07:17

I've had fun. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of the conversation with the Dean 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 theconversation at nadinemathersoncom. Thank you and I'll see you next week.