Stories Behind the Story with Better Reading

Stories Behind The Story: Rose Carlyle on the delicate balance between creative expression and commercial expectations.

Rose Carlyle talks to Cheryl about her writing journey, the realities of the publishing industry, and the delicate balance between creative expression and commercial expectations. Her latest novel, No One Will Know, is out now.

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Duration:: 32m
Broadcast on:: 29 Dec 2024
Audio Format:: other

This is the Better Reading Podcast platform with stories behind the story, Jane's Be Better podcast, my book chat with Caroline Overington, and more. Looking for a particular podcast? Remember, you can always skip to it. Welcome to the Better Reading Podcast, stories behind the story brought to you by Belinda Audio. Listen to Belinda audio books, anywhere, everywhere. Hi, this is Cheryl Arkel from the Better Reading Podcast, stories behind the story. We talked to authors about how they came to tell us their story. Rose Carlisle, welcome to Better Reading. Thank you, Cheryl. It's lovely to be here. Yeah, and you're all the way in New Zealand. That's right. Yeah, where about? So I'm an Auckland writer in the study here. Yeah, so Rose is a New Zealand author. As we know, she's over there right this very minute. She has an adventurous spirit whose life experiences deeply influence her writing. A lawyer by trade, she has crude, unscientific, yodding expeditions and sailed across the Indian Ocean. Her debut novel, The Girl in the Mirror, became number one. And now, this is her latest work, No One Will Know. Did we talk when you published The Girl in the Mirror? Because I remember that very clearly. I remember the story. I don't think we did. I know that it was a bit on Better Reading, yeah, watching, but I don't think we actually had an interview. All right, just so much life and living there. Firstly, I want to start with, how does a lawyer become a scientific room member? I mean, how is it that you get on a yacht and you sail around the world? Oh, so Salem was a hobby that I got into as an adult. So my boyfriend at the time bought a half-shear in a yacht. And I just really took to the lifestyle. I think what I love about it is the mixture of adventurous and cozy. So I really... Is it really cozy being on a yacht? Oh, yeah, especially with a family. So when we sailed with our children, I really loved that, you know, like when you're cooking dinner, you're in the galley, which is like part of the main area. So you're with your family. And yeah, there's nothing cozier than knowing that you've got a really good anchor holding you in place. And you can hear the wind whistling outside, but your yacht is just secure and you're just sitting in a sheltered bay listening to the wind outside. And then you get up in the morning and jump off, start the day with this one. It's just a beautiful lifestyle. So anyway, to answer your question. So I got to know people in the sailing world and one of them held the government contract to take scientists to and from the sub-entric islands. Wow. So I think Australia has Macquarie Island and a few others in New Zealand has the Campbell Islands, the Auckland Islands, the Antipides. And they're incredibly remote. So they've deliberately not put airstrips on them, because only the scientists who loved the birds enough to do a three or four day journey through the Southern Ocean, see sick all the way, get to actually go to these islands and study the birds. So I just got asked as a friend if I wanted to come along as crew, and I thought it would be an amazing experience, which it certainly was. I bit off more than I could chew. I could imagine. So the islands belong to different countries, or they're leasing them. How does that work? Yeah. So I mean, technically the Antipides Islands and the Campbell Islands are part of New Zealand. Yeah. Right. Are uninhabited, except for when the scientists come to stay, and they usually go over summer. It's still only about five or ten degrees there in summer. Right. It would be really, really awful. I mean, the Antipides, for example, they, I think they had a solar generator, but they were basically living in a hut. That's what I was going to ask. What are they in? Huts. Yeah. Campbell Island has a bit more developed. Like when I went there, it was civilization compared with the Antipides, which really was just a hut. But there was an amazing experience to go to. So Antipides Island has the hut that the scientists live in, but it also has a 19th century hut. And I'm also into tramping, which I think you call hiking in Australia. Right. Yeah. Going to stay in these huts. And this was definitely the most remote hut I'd ever seen. And it had 19th century graffiti in it because people, you know, random sailors and whalers would just stop at this tiny dot in the middle of the Southern Ocean and find the hut. And right, you know, I was here. So it was quite a historic. Can I tell you the most adventurous thing I've ever done is I decided to go to Hamilton Island, which is highly developed. It's a tourist destination. Oh, yes, I know. And I took a scuba diving trip. I did a day's course and then I went out. And it was, I don't know, on a boat or a yacht. I don't know. And they provided lunch and they took you out, whatever. Well, from the minute I got on the boat, because we did all the pre-work in a pool in a swimming pool. So with the minute I got on the boat, I realized that I got seasick. And I was sick the whole way. And then when they stopped and laid out this beautiful lunch, I couldn't stop vomiting on the boat. It was, I was so sick. So they asked me to jump off and tread water while they are at their lunch, because it was really making everybody feel terrible. So I jumped off the boat and I was in the water for the duration of the lunch. And then they let me back on. It was a hell trip. Oh, that sounds awful. But you got better when you went for a swim because sometimes it's sick. When I was in the water, I was fine. But when I got on back on the boat, I was not fine. That's why they asked me to get off. So I felt fine while I was treading water for one whole hour. You just don't know when you get on a boat. You don't know. And do you, well, that is not that I've done it again, but is it likely to happen like once seasick, always seasick? I think so. Yeah, there's a lot of sort of old wives tales about seasickness. So for example, my children don't seem to get seasick. And I think it's because they've been on boats since they were babies. So they used to it. Yeah. But I don't really know whether that's true or whether they've just been lucky. Yeah. Okay. So I feel in your work that you definitely feel in your fiction, your adventurous past, your exploration, your curiosity. But tell me then, how does a lawyer and are you still practicing? How does that career fit into it? Because I think being a lawyer is none of those things. So you've got, I often feel that lawyers are quite conservative, you know, they don't have an adventurous spirit. And that's gross generalization, but you know what I mean. Oh, that's true. And I think I became a lawyer out of my sort of fear of leaping into the unknown, because I just didn't see writing as a possible career, even though I loved it as a kid. You know, I didn't come from family money. So I knew I had to make my own way in the world. And I saw law as a safe bet. I thought, well, even if I become quite unwell and I'm stuck in a wheelchair, I can probably still roll in the world. Yeah, well, you went to a dark place there. Well, yeah, I did, because I was also thinking of being a doctor. And I, and I thought, you have to actually be in good health to become a doctor, because you have to do 100 hour weeks to get trained. And I just wasn't even, I just really felt that need for security, because I knew I would have to make my own way in the world, that there was no one really backing me up. And then I did just kind of get busy with my life, because I started practicing law at 21. I had three children in my 20s. And then in my 30s, I was doing a lot of sailing with my children, my husband and children. We, you know, we took them across the Indian Ocean, a lot of adventuring. And that I did all of that when I was young and healthy, and I could handle getting up at two o'clock in the morning every night for a week row to do night watches. Because, I mean, I didn't ever think, oh, I'm collecting good material for my future novel, but I was. I just had so many stories about the sea that I would love to bring to readers. So it's worked out really well for me. Yeah. When you're in a yacht and your day is at sea, is it, I mean, it's such a small place. What do you do with three children and two adults? It's actually quite busy. I mean, when you're on a round the world yacht trip, most of the time, you're actually visiting land. And, you know, sleep, the yacht is like a floating, you're floating accommodation, but you go from there on, you know, endless day trips or even longer trips in the land. And that's something I really love, especially in the Indian Ocean. There are such diverse cultures, every country you come to is a surprise. But it's also surprising how busy it is on a yacht. There's just endless, there's a joke that around the world trip is just a way to do yacht maintenance and exotic places. You're just always maintaining the yacht, constantly feeding the children. I'm schooling the children, not to mention, you know, these night watches. So I think the image we have is of allegedly lifestyle. And it's not that. I mean, it's fabulous. It's amazing, but it's actually quite busy and active. Because, you know, in order to, you're having to cook a lot of food from scratch, because you can't have really made meals because you haven't got anywhere to kick them unless nobody has a freezer, big enough for that. So, you know, every meal is made from scratch and there's a lot to do. Okay. So tell me about the path to writing them. When did that happen? Had you been thinking about it since you were young? Were you a voracious reader? I absolutely always loved it. So I know that when I was six, I begged my parents for a typewriter. Oh, wow. And without really much hope, because we didn't really keep presents like that, but then my godfather turned up with this ancient Remington manual typewriter, and I started typing stories on it right away. So I did, I wrote fan fiction and that sort of thing in my teens. And then as I say, I just was so busy with the legal job and the kids and the sailing, that it kind of took a back seat for a long time. I was always reading constantly, but I thought I might do it when the kids grow up. So my youngest was 12 when I started writing. Were you sailing at the time? Or were you online by then? No. So we were back on land and it was kind of a way to revisit those beautiful places. And just in such strong images in my head of places like the Seychelles, which are just gorgeous paradise. And also of the actual the sea itself, you know, being out of sight of land, where just you look around the whole horizon, it's just unbroken blue and blue sky, beautiful birds, beautiful sea life. I just wanted to go back there so much. And I found that writing was a way of taking myself back there. I would really feel like I was there when I was writing. So that's one of my key reasons for writing, I think, because as a reader, I love to be swept away. I love to be in a beautiful place. So even though I write thrillers, this is weird paradox between putting the reader in a beautiful place with maybe some fabulously wealthy people around a lot of opulent architecture and gorgeous settings. But then at the same time, you've got some awful things happening to your characters that the reader starts being swept away into a dream world and then it becomes a nightmare and they're probably quite happy to close the book at the end and be back in their normal life and their normal house. We're saying there's a bit of a trend with that, particularly with white lotus, for example. Did you watch that at TV series? Yes, I do. And there's that thing where people are seeing wealthy people commit crimes, seeing wealthy people make mistakes, be awful, in succession. It happens, right? Yeah, and I think that's the vibe that I enjoy, rich people behaving badly. Yes, beautiful settings, but also very twisty tales with dark things happening. I never write anything too dark. I don't want to write anything that really depresses the reader and that they wish they hadn't read. But at the same time, you want some thrilling stakes. So it's all about what I want to read. Yeah, and I love to be swept away and just propel through a book. So that was my goal with both the girl in the mirror and no one will know. I wanted the reader to feel compelled to keep reading and just get caught up in the story. 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So with state farm life insurance, you can protect your loved ones without breaking the bank. Not sure where to start? State Farm has over 19,000 local agents that can help you choose an option to fit your needs and budget. Get started today and contact a state farm agent or go to statefarm.com. So I want to go back to the girl in the mirror and talk about the path to publish it. Well, firstly, even before that, how did you approach writing? Because you're a lawyer and now you're turning your hand to long form fiction. I mean, it's very different. So how did you approach that? Well, at the time I was teaching law and I was actually just getting up early in the morning and writing before work. Oh, I had done a creative writing course. I put a novel on that, which I've actually never really finished. I just shoved it under the mattress. Then I got the idea for the girl in the mirror and I thought, oh, this is the idea that I've been waiting for. My sister and I actually kind of came up with it together. And she just kept saying, you've got to write this, you've got to write this. So I set aside the novel I had written on the course, which was a Masters of Creative Writing at Auckland Uni and started the girl in the mirror. And yeah, I would just get up before dawn and write because by that stage, I was a single mark as well. And I had four teenagers and I was teaching law. So life was really busy. It was as busy as it had ever been. It wasn't a great time to start writing, but I just felt so compelled by the story. I just really wanted to get it out there. And I didn't know much about the publishing world. I didn't even realize I'd written a thriller. This was just the story I wanted to write. So I just sent it off to one publisher. I didn't have an agent or anything. And of course, the usual story is that they never read it and you never hear anything ever again. But I also had a mentorship through the New Zealand Society of Authors. And funnily enough, my mentor was not an author. He was a retired agent. And the first met with him, he said, by the way, I never agent people like mentoring. I just divide the two roles because otherwise people think they can get me as a mentor as a back door to agency. And I said, that's totally fine. I understand. And then when I'd finished the book, he said, "Would you like me to send this to my old agents?" So then I told the publishers, the one publishers that I had sent it to, an agent, an American agent is interested in this book. And they had read it within 24 hours. I was off the slash pile. And then everything just kind of went crazy. I didn't even know that it was going to the Frankfurt book fair as Ellen and Ellen's lead title until I got an email saying, or a New York editor from HarperCollins wants to talk to you about your book. And I said, "How did she know about my book?" I didn't know because it hadn't even been copy edited. So I thought nothing would happen. It's a lesson to would-be writers. Don't assume that your grammar doesn't matter because the copy editor will fix it because it was out there being sold in America and written in all around the world in manuscripts, uncopy edited, manuscript form. So it's important to get it around. Yeah. And then, of course, it came out during COVID, which was set to be the case of death for debuts. But it's somehow managed to defy that and got great press coverage. Yeah. So that was a great start. I've recorded many, many podcasts. I think I'm maybe over 600 conversations. Some of them have been doubles, but let's say over 500. And largely, when I am speaking to female writers, they are fitting in the writing amongst whatever it is they're doing, whether they're caring for children, caring for elderly parents, caring for a sick partner, caring for a sister, caring for friends. It's a common thread. If you listen to my podcast, where women are fitting in the writing, whether they're writing early in the morning, whether they're writing late at night, some writers tell me they write at nap time when their child rap naps. And it's funny because when I speak to the men to male writers, at this stage, no one's bought that up with me. It's not like I'm fishing for it or categorizing people or it's just the conversations that I hear. It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. There's a great movie on this topic and that may have a fall. Yes. I've seen it. Yeah. So I find it so inspirational that the woman writer says, even though this really distracting music is playing, I can write anywhere. I just put in my earplugs. And I have thought of that often because I've also got a construction site next door. Sometimes they're playing loud, you know, commercial radio, that's from the 80s. And I just have to say to myself, no excuses. So even though my kids are grown up, I'm spending a lot of time looking after a sick family member at the moment. There's always something. Yeah. Very few women say to me, oh, yes. And I've got this studio and I go there in the morning and I write for nine hours and I don't hear that much. I really don't. I don't even have an office. I don't have a desk. You know, it's a small house. Where do you write? I often sit on the floor and I just write wherever I can find a quiet corner or a noisy corner. You've just got just a corner. Or else as a, particularly as a woman, it will never get written. Okay. So you had success with the first book, right? And I always feel that that's a conflict in a way. It's fantastic. You know, it's so difficult to get success with debut fiction. But you got it. And I often feel that that kind of really causes a lot of, from the people I've spoken to, a lot of stress for the next book, because the pressure is on to deliver the same results, I guess, as your first. So how did you feel about moving on from the girl in the mirror to no one will know? How was that for you? What you've said is absolutely true. I did feel the pressure and it was very distracting. But then after a while, I realized the writing is just the same. All of the publicity and everything that's just like a separate job, you know, it's like my day job now, because I have left the law, I am a full-time writer. But I think of all of the, you know, the publicity and the dealing with agents and so on is like my day job. And I still just get up early in the morning and write and forget about the fact, try to forget about the success that I've had and just focus on writing the book that I love. And the best moment for me was when my American editor said to me, this is the perfect next book for you to have written. Because I felt like, is she going to stay or it's too similar or it's too different? Or, you know, but because there are elements of that, you know, they don't want you to write something completely different, but nor do they want it to do fine lines. This is your formula. Now you're just going to write a hundred books that were saying. It's such a fine line. There was just such a great thing to hear from here. That was when I thought, yeah, I have actually managed to do it again, because you've wondered whether you will. And then what happened? Because I've noticed you've changed, have you changed publishers in that time? Yeah, so we ended up, so I only ever had a one book deal and it's the same this time around, which at first I sort of felt jealous of all of the writers who had two book deals that sounded like, oh, you're a proper author if you've got a multi book deal. But now I've realized the advantage of that that you can actually put the book out for auction. And so that's worked out well for me. Yeah. And I think too, from the authors I've spoken to, often a two book deal is a lot of pressure as well. Yes, because it did take me, I mean, it's four years between books, which is quite a long time. I mean, partly that's because of, you know, the pandemic and it was very difficult for a long time and with 14 ages and lockdown. But also, I didn't have to deliver a book to a deadline. I mean, I wouldn't want to name names, but occasionally I have read an author's second book that came out only a year later. And I thought, oh, you know, they had their whole life to write their debut. And then they had one year to write their second book. And I didn't want to fall into that trap. I wanted it to have, I wanted it to be as thrilling and exciting and as satisfying a read as the first book, even if that took a bit more time. Is it anything you've changed or you've learned from the, in terms of your own personal style and your own personal habits and how you approach writing between the first and the second? Oh, that's a tricky question. Yeah. But I think what I learned was that I, you shouldn't let things change, you know, you shouldn't let whatever success you have or don't have, you know, like there's always something that you think, you know, like I didn't get a French translation of all the languages. That was what I wanted. I wanted to read it in French. But you know, sometimes I find myself just thinking, oh, why didn't that have, it's just a whole lot of distraction, you know, or even thinking about all the things I did get, you know, optioning it for screen was life-changing. But you can't think about any of that. You've just got to almost imagine that you're an unpublished author. And just, I mean, now I cherish that time because nobody, nobody expects anything of you when you're unpublished. You just have all this freedom to just write to your own schedule. I have heard that from authors before that their first book was, you know, writing an isolation, I guess, and writing for yourself or writing for the reader, but not having a deadline and not having to deliver. So I've been lucky to have that again, this time as well. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So can I just say, I know we're audio only, but this cover in the world, right? Yeah, it's fantastic. Can you describe that to us? I know. So Rose is holding the book up and this is audio. But tell me why you think it's the best cover in the world. So I just think it's the most beautiful colors. Like I genuinely want to eat it. It's beautiful. So it's like a hot pink. Yeah, a bit of red. And there's a picture of a very lonely, looking female figure looking out on a bay full of yachts with hills in the background. Beautiful water, but there's also something a bit dark about the cover, I think. Well, it means straight away. You're right. It feels suspenseful, straight away, just by looking at that cover. Yeah, swept away to a beautiful place, but also suspenseful and nightmarish. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's exactly what it says. You know, it's really interesting that we have a segment on Facebook. I don't know if you've seen it, and whether it works in terms of timing with New Zealand. But anyway, it's called, what are you reading? Eastern Standard Time at 2pm, and it's live. I don't know whether it was last week or the week before, or somehow the conversation, because it's not scripted. I just sit there and talk to people. We got talking about covers, right? And I said, oh, and how important and putting it out there, we've got 400,000 people on Facebook. How important is cover? And do you know, 90% important? Yeah, I think that's true, because they say don't judge a book by its cover. And I've certainly picked up the occasional amazing find with a terrible cover. But actually, publishers, there's a language of book covers. And I think publishers know how to tell the reader what the book is, not just through the title of the book, but also through the colors and the images. And so the reader wants to get what they see on the tin, don't they? So if they pick up a book, and it looks like it's a fun romance, and then it turns out to be, I don't know, a really dark mystery, they're going to feel that they didn't get what they paid for. So I think publishers today are really effective at conveying this is that kind of book. And the reader doesn't even necessarily know what the language is. They just know, yeah, I want to read this book. And most of the time, it's, they're right. If you feel you want to read a book, you are going to enjoy that book. Yeah, it's really important. Cover art is so important. And also, you know, some designers can do it in some kind, you know, it's even a specialization down to the design. But what's really interesting, because you bought up france, and I don't want to rub this in. French books have virtually no cover design. Oh, you see, I wouldn't know them because I don't have a French cover, boo-hoo. You walk into a bookshop in Paris. And it really is, they're largely plain white, with a text and a little image cover that's not the same market as the US, UK, in Australia. Yeah, it's fascinating how different it is in it. So in translation, and it's got such a beautiful cover, but they would never do it here because the words are just, it's basically just a picture of the ocean. Just the whole cover was just tiny little words down the bottom on a tiny yacht. Obviously, that worked in Korea. Okay, so dare I ask, have we started a third book? Oh, yes. I mean, I'm always writing. Yeah. So I think it's taken me a while to figure out what I love writing and what people love reading from me. And now it's pretty much. Yeah, I know that I love to write about a world that I would love to be in. I also love to have scary, exciting things happening in that world. And the other thing I really enjoy is having a huge twist, you know, something that's quite unique and unguessable, hopefully. Yeah. Oh, well, we're out of time, Rose Carlisle. What a wonderful conversation that's been. The new book is called No One Will Know. And Rose also wrote the best-selling book, The Girl in the Mirror. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure. If you'd like more information about better reading, follow us on Facebook or visit betterreading.com.au This podcast is proudly sponsored by Belinda Audio. Belinda audio books are available on CD and MP3 from online booksellers and bookshops everywhere, or you can download from Audible, Google Play or the iBook store. We've also created our own app called Borobox that's available from both the App Store and Google Play. All you need to do to get it working is to download the app, join your local public library and you'll gain access to the world's best collection of eBooks and e-audio books available for you to loan on your phone or your personal device. Belinda, we're here to enable you to escape, imagine, grow and be inspired through the power of storytelling. Belinda audio books. Anywhere. Everywhere. So good. So good. So good. Amazing deals on active wear for all the ways you move are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. 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