It’s another comedy, and it’s set in a zoo! It doesn’t have a magic thing like The Husbands does, but like The Husbands it is definitely a bit weird. Other than that, can’t say much till I’ve written more I think!
Different people at different stages! There’s a little local writing group which I love - we meet once a month and talk over two people’s work each time, and that’s super useful just for making me pull things together and kind-of make sure I have something written for it. Once I’m a little bit further in I’ll probably read it aloud to my husband a chapter at a time, which I did with The Husbands - that’s super useful just because it makes you read it aloud, which helps with spotting when a sentence isn’t working, but also because you get to see the moment-to-moment reactions, when something’s boring, when a joke doesn’t land and so on. When I’ve got a full draft there’s also a few friends I’ll send it to - they’re mostly not writers but they’re very enthusiastic readers.
When I wrote The Husbands I didn’t know many other writers, but I know a lot more now - I’ve talked to a few of them about the core concept a bit, and I suspect I’ll send them chunks of it to talk over in a month or two!
Do you still have time to read others’ works, and if so, what are you reading now? Is there an author in particular that inspires you?
Going back to the question about how long it took you to write the book, did you run into writer’s block at any point, or did you decide you needed to step away from it for any reason?
Oh yeah, for sure, reading is my main hobby and if anything I do more of it now that I can go “ohhhh actually this kind-of counts as work”. Sometimes I read stuff specifically for research or to go “hmm, here’s a problem with something I’m writing that I’m dealing with, I wanna see how other people resolved similar situations in their books” but generally I’m a very mood-led reader, and if I’m not enjoying a book I’ll stop very quickly.
I read a couple of books a week, probably, on average? And in most genres except horror, because I’m a giant coward and don’t want to be scared. I usually have a few things on the go at once - at the moment, or in the last week or so, I’ve been enjoying:
- Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection, which is a collection of very funny, awful short stories about people who feel rejected and the things they do as a result - it’s incredible but it’s probably not something to go for if comedy of embarrassment makes you too uncomfortable
- Stacey D’Erasmo’s The Long Run, which is a series of essays and interviews with eight different artists who’ve had long careers - most of them are in their seventies or eighties and it’s kind-of about what it means to work creatively for a long time, how you figure out the shape of a career and keep making stuff
- Zen Cho’s Behind Frenemy Lines, which is a really fun workplace romcom, the core relationship is very charming
- Susan Coll’s The Literati, which I’m not far into yet but I think it’s a kind-of mishap-laden comedy of manners about a young woman who starts working at a literary nonprofit and finds the director’s disappeared leaving a whole lot of problems and a large cat behind
I would say there’s not one specific author that inspires me in particular! It very much depends what I’m working on.
It seems like living Lauren’s life would get exhausting pretty quickly. Is there anything about this character’s experience, though, that you’re envious of and wish were true of your own?
Hah! I definitely get that. My husband will be puttering around the house and giving me dirty looks. “Hey! I’m working! It’s not my fault I’m sitting here on the couch with a cat on my lap!”
It seems like you read multiple books at once. We had a conversation about that not too long ago. Has that always been your reading style? Do you ever do audiobooks? Are you hardcopy only, or do you do ebooks as well?
What’s it been like touring for your book? Do you mostly end up at book stores? How many venues do you hit in a week? Can you share any interesting experiences you’ve had while on the road?
… and of course, now that I’ve brought up cats, I have to give a shout-out to your two, Madeleine and Gelato. Is there anything you’d like to share about them?
Well, because it was a first novel, I didn’t really have a deadline or any particular expectation that I would finish it or - if I did - that it would find a publisher or a readership! You know, there are so many blog posts and articles out there talking about how hard it is to find an agent, or a publisher, and how even if you do get published most books don’t get widely read. So there were definitely whole 3-6 month periods where I didn’t really do anything on it, not necessarily because of writers’ block but just because I got busy on other things, or the weather was really nice, or whatever else.
Ah not really! I mean, when she has a swimming pool in Felix’s mansion, I’m envious of that. And I do think attics are cool, but I would definitely prefer a non-magical one.
Ah I’ve really enjoyed it! The US tour was the most full-on, because that was pretty soon after launch and it was I think ten locations in 12 days or something like that, so it was very much “wake up, travel somewhere, check into hotel, read for an hour, get cleaned up, have dinner, go to bookshop, do event, go to hotel and pack up to leave the next morning”. I don’t think I would like doing it for a month or anything, but for ten days it was pretty great. One thing that happens on a tour like that is that the publisher plans it out for you and makes a document that tells you exactly where to go and what to do, when to check out of the hotel, how to get to the airport or the train station. A lot of what’s exhausting about travelling isn’t doing it exactly, it’s the mental load of keeping track of things - and when you have this document that just tells you exactly what to do it’s almost kind-of relaxing, you can just sink into it.
Whereas in Australia, that was a much more relaxed setup - I was there for three or four weeks and only had I think four events, although obviously I was doing other stuff as well - but that was all with bookshops I’d approached directly, rather than something the publishers had organised for me. So sorting it all out was a lot more stressful, and I’d be more worried about whether people would turn up, and I had a lot of “okay remember to do THIS and go THERE” to keep track of, comparatively!
I love doing events, though. I love meeting other writers - it’s great when you get put “in conversation” with someone - and I love the different questions that you get; there’s some that come up a lot but there’s always something new and unexpected as well. I generally really enjoy public speaking - I was a high school debater, and then did a lot of talks at conferences when I worked mostly in games - so it’s a good time.
Hahaha just started writing about Madeleine and Gelato and got a popup saying “You’ve posted a lot in this topic! Consider giving others an opportunity to participate, too” as if it could tell that I was about to start posting way too many photos of my perfect cats. But I’m gonna do it anyway!
They’re “follow you around the house and sit nearby and maybe rest one paw upon your leg at times of great emotions” cats rather than lap cats. Maddy sometimes comes up to the study and sits on my desk or at the nearby window while I’m working. Gelato is a big fan of coming up behind you and patting you on the bum if he wants attention.
They’re littermates and they get on pretty well although sometimes Maddy wants time to herself and Gelato just follows her around the house trying to play or snuggle up next to her. They’re almost two years old, they’re not particularly smart (especially Gelato) which is a great blessing because it means we can let them out in the garden and stop them escaping very easily - I have friends whose cats can open doors which is amazing but terrifying. They’re supposedly British shorthairs, but as you can see Madeleine has very long hair, so they’re quite off-brand:
Gelato:
Gelato with a foreign-language edition of The Husbands which has a cat on the front that looks just like him, I was so thrilled when I saw it:
The two together:
Madeleine upstairs waiting for me to get on with work:
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Awwww. thanks for the pictures! I did enjoy your “Where’s Madeleine” game, LOL, and I love hearing about other people’s cats. I’ve got three of my own (one was an accident; we found her in the middle of wilderness - literally - and it took three days to coax her into a live trap to get her home).
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It’s awesome that you’ve got someone handling all the logistics. Does the publisher pay for the book tour (I hope!)? Do you get to request any specific locations, or do you just go where they tell you?
I’m really curious about who decides which venues you hit. Given the size of the U.S., 10 locations doesn’t sound like all that much - and I know you had at least one TV appearance thrown in there, too.
Is there anything you’d like to bring up about The Husbands that we didn’t touch on, or anything else you’d like to tell us about the book? Are there questions you wish people would ask (or ask more often) about your work?
Hi Holly, thanks for stopping by! As you’re a game designer, have you read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and if so what did you think of it?
It depends! They pay for events that they organise - but for the Australian events, for example, it probably wouldn’t have been worth their money to send me all that way for just a few events. Typically I think if they ask you to do something then they’re intending to pay for it, and if you’re organising it yourself or asking to be put forward for a specific event then you’ll probably be the one paying.
Choosing the venues - well, for the US tour that was the publisher so I can’t say for sure but basically I think publicists just talk to bookshops or festivals they have relationships with, say “we have these authors who are going on tour”, and if the bookshops are interested they figure it out from there.
I have! It’s such a joyful gift to game designers to have a book like that in the world - it’s such a difficult job to explain sometimes, people just don’t get what you do or why you would care about it, so having this incredibly popular and beloved book that really gets into the nitty gritty of it is really wonderful.
Honestly, nothing that I can think of - this has been such a fun set of questions, thanks so much for having me along!