Welcome to a pair of bookends, the book Club You Can Carry Anywhere.

I'm your host, Hannah matt Donald and I'll be bookending the conversation with some of the most exciting voices from the bookish world.

Welcome to another episode in our debut Spotlight series, where we shine a light on the freshest authors and their work.

Today, that spotlight is on Hattie Williams and her debut novel, Bitter Sweet.

Listeners, you know how much I love on a fair novel, and I fell completely in love with this one.

It's a story of power, dynamics, friendship and finding hope in dark times, and it's perfect for fans of Sorrow Bliss by Meg Mason and Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Cocomella's.

Hatti Williams is a novelist, screenwriter and journalist based in East London.

She left education in her teens to pursue a career as a musician and went on to tour Europe extensively, three studio albums and work as a composer, with her tracks still regularly featured on TV and streaming services across the world.

In her mid twenties, Hattie accidentally found herself working in publishing and an admin Tempion job turned into a twelve year career where she ended up working with some of the biggest authors in the world.

She is the former producer of the Iceland Noir Literary Festival, and her substack, Big Feelings, is the perfect place to read more of her wonderful musings on you guessed it, Big Feelings, but also brilliant insights into her writing process and the world of publishing.

Her debut novel, Bittersweet, is out everywhere book published by Orion and the UK and Bantamdell in the US.

Hit chatt all about it.

Welcome Hattie to her Pawaprikens.

Hello, thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for coming on.

I met you at the Serenity Bookseller's launch.

No, it wasn't the launch, but it was an event that you did there and it was wonderful and I was so excited to try and get you on the podcast from that moment onward.

So I'm really please that we've managed to make this happen.

I know me too.

That was such a special event.

I think it was like a couple of days before the book actually came out.

Yes, yeah, and I had like the worst journey ever.

The worst travel, wasn't it everybody.

I got to the bookshop, my first bookshop event, and everybody was just getting down.

They had like two of wine waiting for because of the trains.

It's bad, but what a special bookshop serenity.

Oh my god, it's amazing.

I absolutely love Kellens and.

David, Yeah, all of those guys.

Yeah, it was a really really lovely kind of first event.

To kick everything you handled it like an absolute pro Oh I was.

I was very sweaty.

I mean the travel in this.

Yeah, underneath all of that, and I think I like trying to pick up my glass of like wine at one point at my hand was just shaking so bad and I'm just going down again.

But I think it was just, yeah, the stress of the travel because we thought at one point I wasn't going to make it at all because the trains were cut down.

So yeah, and I didn't have your signal on the train, so I was I couldn't really just tell anyone it was.

Yeah, it was what a way to start stop.

I mean, the joys of transport in the UK just yeah, never ending.

I just have to be planned to be three hours early everywhere you go, and you should get there.

I'm sure you've got lots of of the more important things to be doing than spending your life on travel.

Oh no, I love it.

I love doing events.

I love going around the UK.

So yeah, I just don't like being stuck on train.

No.

No, of course, on a stage talking to people about your book.

I love that.

Before we get into you and your book, I do love to start by asking what you're currently reading, So could you tell us?

Yes, I can tell you it's an amazing book.

But I haven't quite pronounced forging to pronounce needs surname properly.

But it is this book Ordinary Saints by I think it's need Naumoleon, but I'm probably pronouncing that.

I think that sounds like a good pronunciation.

It is so good.

I've been in a real reading rut lately, and this book is digging me out of it.

It's about a young queer woman who's late brother becomes is made into a saint.

It's so human and funny, it's so dry the humor, and it's just it's an absolute beautifl book.

And her writing is amazing, and I'm yeah, I'm interviewing her at Waterstone Streatum in London in a few weeks.

So I'm really excited to meet her because she seems like a very very cool person.

Yeah she does.

I listen to her BBC Radio to book Club interview and humor completely came across and she was such a great speaker.

So I'm really excited to read that book.

How do you find you're I'm assuming you'll be asked to do a few different events where you're interviewing other authors.

How do you find that or is it quite easy because you're both writers?

I think it is.

I think also because I was a director of a literary festival, Literary Festival which takes place in Iceland every November for a number of years, and so I did a lot of kind of charing of events amazing through that often kind of like sharing a panel or stepping in last minute if somebody couldn't you do it, or kind of interviewing people.

So I think I'm quite comfortable.

I think also worked in publishing for so long, I've been used to going to events.

But I do also you know, I put a lot of effort into the research and really try to think about how I'm going to facilitate that conversation in a way that I would want to be facilitated of course.

Yeah.

Writer and also Jenny Godfrey.

I don't know if you know Jenny Godfrey who Suspicious Things.

She's done a few events with me and she is such an excellent chair facilitator.

So I've actually learned quite a lot from Jenny as well, which just goes to show that you're always learning, aren't you.

There's one hundred.

Let's hope that I can pull this one off.

I haven't read Jenny's book, which is it feels like blasphemy.

Person in the UK that hasn't read that book.

I know it's absolutely shocking, and I'm so eager to read it.

I just haven't got round to it yet.

It's like you're doing two days.

It's like everyone says how amazing it is.

I actually think I am the only person in the UK that hasn't read it.

I think I think that whoever's doing the sales numbers would probably on that it's sold so well.

She's such a generous, wonderful woman and writer, and I think the kind of the warmth of her personality really comes across in her writing as well.

She's She's a little bit magic Jenny Gulfree.

I love that so much.

Oh okay, I'm going to have to get to it now.

I'll come and tell you what I have.

You've had such an incredible multi hyphnet career.

At what point did you know that you wanted to write a novel?

Is that something that you've always wanted to do.

Yeah, I think it is something that I always wanted to do, But I don't think it's something that I thought I could do.

So I think there was a real disconnect there.

And you know, you know, obviously, working with all the amazing writers I work with while I was working publishing and kind of through the festival meant that I spent a lot of time kind of understanding that writers are just normal people who sit down and get the work done.

But I think there is still before you've written a book, there is still something about the idea of writing a novel that seems so far out of reach and so impossible, And so I think that was that was kind of how I how I kind of view.

You know, I tried to write a few bits here and there, but I'd never known the ending.

So I get like twenty five thirty thousand words, and I've written myself into so many corners.

I then had to just kind of give it up and throw it on the scrap peep.

And then I during COVID, I did this brilliant course called Write Like a Girl, which is amazing.

It's an online course.

I only actually made it to first two of the six sessions because I was so pregnant and miserable, so much going on.

But that that really just taught me that you just have to show up at your computer every day.

You just have to like ship away that word count to write yourself out of corners.

Try not to think yourself out of corners.

Yeah, write through writer's block.

It just taught me basically that so many of the reasons I thought I couldn't write a novel were not actual reasons.

They were just it was just basically procrastination, either around kind of self confidence or just not kind of wanting to commit the time.

So you know, as soon as you've had a teacher saying that's not actually a reason not to write, that's not a reason not to write, that's not a reason not to write, you kind of go, oh, okay, actually, you know I do just need to sit down do the work.

And then fortunately I had the idea that I had an ending for.

And I think that's really I think if you're a writer like me, you need to know the ending writing.

So as soon as I knew the ending, you know, I wrote it to sweet seven weeks once I started writing.

My gosh, seven weeks.

Yeah, and my second avoided a first draft in seven weeks again because I could just see the ending, and you know, I've planned it all out.

I'm not panswer at all.

You know, I plan out like particulously to a three act structure.

And also that means that then if I do get a little bit stuck, I can jump ahead and write a chapter later in the book.

That's so smart that you do plan ahead and that you can, you know, jump about if you've got that three X structure set in place.

I am currently writing, attempting to write my debut, and it's very scary and I've almost at the twenty five thousand word mark.

That's a massive achievement, but scary.

And I think the writer advice that really helped me was I think she's called Amy McNee and she's got a Oh my god, I can't remember, I'll link her instagram the show notes listeners.

I'm sorry, I can't remember what her instagram is right now.

But she does a lot of things where she writes unlike pieces of paper and it's like a quote thing that she's come up with, and it'll just be pictures of her holding up like inspiration for writers or creatives.

And it's just about just doing the thing, and you know, rather than making it such a big deal and eventually, you know, you end up avoiding it, just sitting down and doing it.

And she I listened to her on a podcast and she was saying, like, for people wanting to write, just write three hundred words a day, that's like nothing, But it's getting yourself to actually do the thing each day and make it a habit.

And actually, like three hundred words isn't anything.

And I started out trying to do that, and I was like, oh my god, I'm actually getting so much written because I'm not putting this pressure on myself to sit down and get the whole thing written in one day.

So true.

And also like you wouldn't expect to be able to run a marathon if you hadn't trained right exactly, you have to work those muscles in your brain a little bit every day to become nimble with words and with what you're trying to do.

So I'm you know, got a subsequently, so I kindly mentioned earlier, but because I'm writing essays constantly now I've now written like, I think twenty one or twenty two essay sub step over the last kind of three months, I am now able to write kind of a first draft of the substuc or you know, from writing a feature for The Times.

I can now do it in about forty forty five minutes just because I'm doing it constantly.

So it's just very very available to me.

When I need to do it, I can just slip into it, move into it and do it.

And that you know, has been has been really life changing.

But yeah, it is just showing up and doing the work.

It's I know that people that want to write often see it as being this kind of impossible thing, and even actually I think writing a novel is impossible.

I think when I you know, I'm currently writing my third and I have to go back to it, and I'm like, writing a novel is too hard, It's impossible.

So just remind myself writing seven hundred and fifty words day is possible, and that's what's It's just a series of three hundred words to day, seven fifty words a day.

Whatever the community cumulatively ends up being a novel.

But yeah, as long as I think, as long as you've got the ending, and I think that's the thing about stories as well, for me.

Not everybody feels like this, but for me, my favorite books, the favorite stories are the ones with the best endings.

And so I always just you know, go to the idea that's got the best ending, and I can kind of see your way through it.

There's sill lots of surprises on the way, you know, you move away from your plan, you know, your characters will surprise you, you'll have more ideas along the way.

But yeah, I think, yeah, I just I just want as many women to write as possible.

Basically, I want to break down this idea of writing being this super intellectual thing.

You have to have an MFA and I left school, you know, eighteen.

I don't have a degree.

I have a couple of AI levels.

And I think that you know, as women, especially we are quite hard on ourselves about you know, not being interesting enough, not having the right experience, but actually our viewpoint, our take on the world, what we've lived through.

You know, that is often more than enough to make a novel.

And I just really want to encourage women to draw on their own experience and just try and write, and just try and do those two hundred and fifty words a day.

Try and find yourself ten or fifteen minutes, even if it's on the note app of your phone as you're on the bus, or brushing your teeth, you know, just just working those muscles a little bit every day.

I just want I want everybody to have the joy of writing that I have, and I think so many people want to write.

I love that so much, and I think it's so true.

It does sometimes feel like I don't want to say it inaccessible, but I suppose it doesn't way.

I've especially found that, you know, I'm working class, I'm an actor and I'm a writer, and I've often felt like the art spaces don't kind of belong to me, or you know, this industry doesn't belong to me, because you know, I feel like it belongs to people that are from very different backgrounds, that have connections and wealth and knowledge that I maybe don't have, or they're privately educated, and it feels like, you know, they know things that I don't know.

They understand things that I don't understand, and rather than just trying to learn, it just feels like a barrier kind of thing.

Is It sort of puts the fear in you and it stops you from doing the thing.

But no, it's really encouraging to hear you say that.

Actually, No, I mean I think.

So much of what I write about.

I mean, you know, I've only written two and a half novels, but what I'm always writing about is kind of working class people in the arts, and you know, the kind of ideas of what what people think working classes versus what working class actually is.

And I think that is the barrier.

Yeah, more than anything as people.

You know, when I worked in publishing, you know, I consider myself from a working class background.

There was a period of my time where we had a bit of money while as a kid, but then I was on school free school meals for a really long time.

Like you know, I lived in an next council, like you know, we didn't you know, there was there was all sorts of stuff going on.

This is also a thing we also feel like we need to explain ourselves, So yeah, I promise.

I think it's also you spoke to somebody the other day.

You have me a woman's out and she's like, oh, it's so funny, like whenever I've met you or I'd never said you're working class, and it's like okay, and she is very working class, and I just felt like, oh, I don't, am I not aligned with you?

I think yeah, I just think I think I think class is such a weird thing.

It's such a weird, weird thing, so outdated, and you know, I don't think about our understanding of class really fits around what society actually looks like now.

And you know, I grew up in a house full of art and politics and music and creativity and not big tellies and chicken uggits, which is what I think a lot of those kind of publishing people think of working class as being I'm interested in it and kind of the mindset and especially kind of you know, how people get treated and publishing.

I think publish has got a lot better.

I think publishing.

I think publishers are specifically looking for more working class voices now and trying to look to you know, to have a bit more representation.

But yeah, it's just hard.

I mean, you know, ultimately you generally need to have a little bit of financial freedom to be able to write.

You know, it's all very well saying just find ten to fifteen when it's a day, and you know, for ninety five percent of people, I'm sure they can.

But you know there are also people working multiple jobs, and yeah, people with no space or no room, you know, and all of those things are massively a barrier.

There's a writing podcast I love listening to where the host will kind of talk to authors about their writing space and they will talk about like this garden office, all this kind of spare room is me.

You just kind of hunched in my delivery next to laundry and just like with bits of past are stuck to my start, Like nobody's going to want me on that podcast.

I did read you did an interview for the Women's Prize, I think it was, and it's on their website and you're talking about your writing space and I just absolutely loved the stuff that it was just so relatable.

That yeah, there is there is no room of one zone in this house.

But yeah I can't.

I mean, I get a look.

I love my kind of I love the Paris Review like magazine, but also have a great Instagram and it has loads of brilliant kind of writing tips and bits.

And I can't remember I saw the other day that it was just basically like, if a writer waits for the perfect conditions to write, then they will never write a way.

Yeah, it's like I don't have that, but you know, you just have to get on with it.

I mean, you've got a very creative, beautiful space, and I love that you and your child do the drawing on the what is the drawing of the painting on the wall a piece of paper.

I'm obsessed with that.

I think that's incredible.

I'll send you.

I'll show it in a minute.

Amazing.

It's on the opposite wall.

But oh that is gorgeous.

Yeah, it's really nice.

And yeah we keep changing them every weekend and I love that.

And that is a home.

Yeah that looks like home to me.

But it's so funny, isn't it.

By the end of the Saturday afternoon, and then this one's coming around, you like, clean it, clean away all the toys, all of the joy, all of the all of the creative beautiful messiness of family life.

Yeah, boxers wipe everything, clean it and try and put it back to being a normal place.

I mean, my friends came over the other day and I was cleaning out the recycling bins.

I've never done that.

Like what am I doing?

Like?

Why amust?

Like what it means?

You don't have to write three hundred and fifty words exactly.

Yeah, anything to a third time in the week, just not writing.

Anything to avoid it.

I would love it if you could give the listeners a summary of what Bittersweet is about, because I have so many questions, but I feel like that is the best place for us to start.

Okay, Bittersweet is It's my debut novel.

It's a story of Charlie who is a twenty three year old publicity assistant.

He's just starting out in her first job in London in an independent publishing house, and that is where she meets Switchard Daveling, who is the fifty six year old, married, incredibly famous author that has defined his generation.

And he is a writer that Charlie has obsessed over since she was a teenager and her late mum introduced her to his work.

Richard and Charlie meet and Richard Paul's Charlie in to a really secretive, coercive affair relationship that lasts about a year, and the book follows over the course of the year and examines the different ways Charlie's life, professional life, emotional life, romantic life in her life unravels off the back of this affair.

And it's told by Charlie looking back at these events kind of fifteen years on, so she's kind of looking back with a bit of distance at kind of what happened in that kind of monumental year in her life.

And it is a book that I absolutely adored.

I absolutely inhaled this book, and I didn't want it to end, and I just kept putting it down so that it could last longer.

I was absolutely devastated that it finished.

And I feel like it is one of those books that I'm going to want to return to in the future.

Is wonderful, and I am a massive fan of affair novels.

And I said to my boyfriend, I was like, oh, this is about an affair, and he was like, Oh, I'm so surprised.

I'm just obsessed with them.

I don't know what it is.

We know, though, isn't it like when your partner's just like, oh yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

Cool, I've already made made this a thing for myself.

Why did you want to explore an affair?

Is this something that you also like reading?

Are you interested in that type of dynamic?

Where did that aspect come from?

I really want to tell you that I set out to write this book with a very clear idea of what I wanted to say and I wanted to write.

I just had this idea, which is the first chapter of the book where Richard and Charlie meet, and I had I think, very very visually, and this scene just came to me in my head like as if I was watching it in a film, and that conversation and how it evolved basically just kickstarted me to write the novel.

But I feel like the story just kind of laid out in front of me, the characters laid out in front of me.

It just kind of appeared, which is really annoying.

I know.

It's really annoying, though, isn't it, Because it's like, I don't know, we kind of want to understands and kind of intention.

I think that I often only really see kind of the intention in what I've written after I've written it, I.

Think it shows that you're a visual writer.

And I think that's a really interesting thing because for me, I could see all of this, So it's clearly I think that shows up in the reader's experience.

You know, I could visualize every single one of the scenes in this book.

And I also, you know so before that you're a screenwriter, and I do hope that there could be an adaptation at some point, but yeah, maybe I can ask that later, but.

I couldn't possibly tell you.

You couldn't possibly tell me.

That's great.

I would be thrilled if that was the case.

But yeah, I think, you know, I could visualize all of the scenes in this book, and I think the inspiration for books come to writers in various different ways.

And the fact that you just visualize this one scene and then you've produced this is so incredib because you know, you could have had this idea for this one scene and then nothing sort of came of it.

But you know, you've you've wrote this beautiful story.

Thank you.

I think I think also what I did with this.

You know, as I've mentioned, I tried and failed to write a few kind of books before, and those were much more kind of high concepts like Margaret ATWOD type things, which is what I thought you needed to do to be a literally writer.

And with this book, I just kind of said, you know what, I'm going to write this just for myself, and I'm going to put a lot of my own life and my own experience in it, and I'm not going to be embarrassed about that.

I'm not going to allow myself to feel exposed, which is why I think I often shied it away from writing about my own experience.

So I just wrote about publishing.

I wrote about grief, I wrote about mental health, I wrote about class.

I wrote about all of these things that were so present in my life, especially my kind of early twenties.

And I think by kind of allowing myself to do that, I was able to find my own voice because I was writing, you know, kind of essentially about things that I knew inside out.

Charlie isn't me.

She's very different to me, but a lot of what she goes through the things that I've I went through.

I didn't have an affair with a really exciting kind of older married author done it, so that's quite disappointing.

But yeah, I think writing what you know, and I think I think maybe it took me being you know, I was thirty eight when I wrote this book, you know, which is you know, comparatively young for writing.

You know, it's one of the only careers you can get into at forty and be one of the younger ones.

But I do think there are also a lot of kind of younger, really exciting writers coming out now.

And I think it just took me to get to that point in my life before I felt that I could.

I gave less of a ship.

It gives zero fox what anyone thinks about me these days.

And I think earlier than that point in my life, I cared too much about being exposed and you know, to write really form the heart and might really personally and find my voicebook with this it was just like, yeah, they give a shit, this is this is me, this is stuff that's gone on.

And then I, you know, in the editing process, I layered more kind of fiction into it, and I took some stuff out and decided that's a bit too exposing, that's a bit too real.

But yeah, I think that's kind of kind of what happened there, But yeah, it interestingly, you know what, everything I write, the movies that I write, the books that I write, are all about young women overcoming trauma.

And I think that is essentially what I'm most interested in, people, is is kind of how we overcome things that have happened to us and our kind of formative views in our childhoods, in our adolescents, and how that kind of shapes us as adults.

So although I didn't kind of go into it with like a clear thematic idea of what I was trying to write about, I think those themes are very present and very clear in what I've written, Which is I should just say that, oh yeah, you know, I'm really really intellectual and smart, and I wanted to write it was really fascinating social commentary on the arts and class.

But yeah, it's just stories, isn't It's just stories that come to me, characters that come to me, and I just like putting them on pages.

I mean, you are very intellectual and smart, and that's very clear with this book.

And I was so pleased to say, you know, we've mentioned class before, but I was so pleased to see a working class woman working in the arts written on the page.

Could you tell us a little bit about why that representation was important to you and the way you brought into the book.

Yeah.

Absolutely, Yeah.

I kind of found myself working publishing in my mid twenties, and i'd never really considered publishing a career.

I don't have a degree.

I'd been working as a musician and just the kind of started an abmin tempt job at Permit Milan for kind of a couple of weeks sorting out those spreadsheets and liked me and kept me.

I think it was mainly because I was five nine, which is the exactly right height to wear the Grafflo mascot costume.

It was children publishing looking after Lovely Dearly a dancer and the Grufflo so oh my god job.

But just like you're tall, not too so Yeah, I was really you know, you know, I did.

I grew up like kind of around bohemian artsy people, like lots of social workers and kind of like poets and artists and teachers and stuff like that, so you know, I wasn't like, you know, I didn't have like a horrific kind of financial upbringing, and I was exposed to the arts a lot.

But the kind of people I met publishing I've never met before in my life, not believe that these people really existed.

I felt like everyone owned a house, like in some amazing part of London, These like twenty twenty five year olds.

Everyone had been to Oxbridge, Durham, the language used, the reference points.

I was so far outside of all of it, but I was at the time totally enamored by it.

I wanted desperately to be a part of this.

I was like, this seems amazing.

Everyone's so happy, everyone's so together, everyone's got money, everyone's you know, really well read.

And so I tried desperately hard to fit in.

And I think I've been trying to do that in my life constantly.

You know.

I remember, like when even when I started secondary school, when I moved schools, you know, when I've tried to be in bands.

All of it has been this feeling of being an outside of trying to fit in.

And I think a lot of us feel like that.

That's who I wanted to write this, this book for.

Really, you know, the thing I love most about ITATIM Books, it's feeling like I can see my experience reflected back on the page, and you know, publishing in this setting, you know, not only gave me a chance to kind of write about how I felt those jobs and how I felt for those you know, it really felt for twelve full years working in house, I felt like an outsider, kind of clawing at the edges, and that I didn't fit in.

And I wanted to write about that feeling.

And I wanted to write about that in a way that I hoped other people would connect with.

And I think hopefully what I've done is not make it too specific to publishing, and.

No, I think it will resonate with anyone that's struggling to fit in in any sort of space, you know.

And I found it really relatable.

And there was a line that I've written down where you write, everyone seemed to me to be connected, existing in a web that I had no knowledge or understanding of.

And I think it's that it's it's feeling like everyone knows something that you don't feel like you've been locked out of this this secret and you can't get a kind of handle on it, which is a really like horrible feeling to have, but I think it happens for so many of us.

So yeah, it was just really refreshing to read about that.

I think I just to just add to that, though, I think that I don't think that feeling in publishing is exclusive to being from a certain class.

I think a lot of people in publishing and the arts feel that.

There are many, many different reasons.

I think it's a universal feeling.

I think a lot of people that do fit in probably feel like they don't fit in the person I was looking at the room, going they fit in, they understand everything.

They're probably thinking, I don't understand anything.

I don't fit in here at all, and I think that's really hard.

I think that's one of the reasons why I'm also anxious.

I also think when you add in an extra layer to that, where you are dealing with mental health issues, depression, anxiety, so you're trying to fit in, you're trying to be somebody else, and then you're terrified you're going to lose your job because publishing is so competitive these mental health problems, and so you're showing up to work even when you shouldn't, claiming headaches or migraines, when you're just like unable to get out of bed.

It's really hard.

It's really hard publishing is a hard place to work, you know, any I don't know.

I think what really summarizes it is this idea of new adults.

So I'm sure you've heard this lots, you know, kind of food, podcasting, work you do in publishing, This idea of kind of new adult books that kind of focus on people age kind of eighteen nineteen to twenty three.

Yeah, I think this period is a really interesting point in our lives because we're out of UNI, we are suddenly being treated as adults, having to pay rent, doing our first jobs, and yet you just still feel like a kid.

You've got no idea, no idea, and you have to sit there pretending to be grown up.

And it's this incredible learning, learning curve where I think a lot of people really really struggle.

And yeah, I think you know, these kind of hard workplaces, these really intense environments where it's super competitive and the stakes are very high, or you're made to feel the stakes are very high, even if you're in pr you know, it's like if we don't get this done, we're going to lose this client, we're going to this book's going to fail.

It's just a lot pressure on young people.

I think one percent and you're still modeling your way through.

And Charlie, your protagonist, is twenty three, and even at that point, you know, I still look back at me at twenty twenty three and I didn't know what I was doing.

I was just modeling my way through.

And I still feel like that now I'm thirty, Like what the fuck am I doing?

Episode A way, I think, like I think the only pole which has changed, I still feel like I've got no idea what I'm doing.

That's reassuring.

Somebody handed me my baby when I was thirty eight, and I was like, I'm too young to have a kid.

The only yeah, I think that really never goes away to some of it.

The only thing is that you just stop caring so much what other people well.

It's so liberating and joyous.

That is really reassuring to hear I'd like to not care as much, for sure.

I think the wonderful thing about the publishing world because I don't think you shy away from the flaws in that industry, like within any part of the arts.

You know, there's many floors there and you don't shy away from that.

But the wonderful thing about her working in this world is the people that she ends up becoming friends with, and she has these beautiful relationships with Ophelia and Eddie who she ends up living with, and also her would you say, her senior in publicity, Cecil.

What was the inspiration for those characters?

Right?

So, I have wonderful experiences, a friendship.

I have amazing people, and one of the best things to me about working publishing was the people I met along the way that are still my best friends, you know.

Kind of my wedding was full of people from publishing that it's like my best friends, all of you know, we have gorgeous, gorgeous relationships.

And I think that women are told repeatedly that other women will try and drag them down.

There's whole kind of idea about women not supporting women, and I think that a lot of fiction supports that.

A lot of kind of the antagonists in fiction, especially these kind of books about kind of millennial women.

Yeah, the antagonists that kind of the conflicts are driven for kind of female friendship.

And I wanted to do the exact opposite of that because that is not my experience of women and a friendship of people that I've worked with, they're obviously like terrible people I've worked with.

I work with some really awful people, but overalls has been really good.

And I also wanted to just write about that joyous, chaotic, messy point in your twenties where you're living in house shares and you're working cre jobs and no one's got any money, and somehow you manage to get drunk all the time if they've got no money, and sometimes you still don't get hangovers, and how beautiful that can be.

But also Charlie's arc in the novel, you know, it's kind of a downward spiral she's doing with some very very serious stuff in her life trauma, you know, kind of sexual trauma and grief, and you know, then this coercive relationship and you know, she really unravels.

I wanted to surprise people by showing the kind of friendships and support and love that I've had when I've been very unwell, which has been that people will drop absolutely everything to be there with you and support you and get you through.

And it's quite hard for people like me to kind of let people in and let them do that.

And I want example and a lesson of what happens when you let other people lift you up and take care of you.

So I wanted that to be kind of something that hopefully people take away from the book that they are in trouble emotionally or they're having a really bad time, that they will turn to their friends and answer for that help because people generally surprise you.

Yeah, I mean it makes me want to cry thinking about what Opheelia does for in a particularly difficult time that she's having.

She does really go above and beyond for and I think that's really special.

It's a really special relationship in the book.

And you know, I definitely find it hard to ask for help.

I think a lot of us do.

It's a really scary thing.

Really scary, especially when your self esteem is really low and you're feeling really depressed because you feel like nobody wants you in their life at all.

So to then be able to reach out to somebody and say, please help me, it's now impossible.

Really.

But yeah, I think that, you know, the archive is obviously there is a prologue to this book, so I'm not giving anything away.

We know that Charlie's all right.

I think it's really important for me when I write the book to let you know people kind of know something about the ending so they can enjoy the journey of how they get there rather than worrying all the time about where they're going.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean she, you know, Charlie is in big trouble and you know, the people around her really really come through for her.

And yeah, I hope that people take a positive positive that.

No.

Definitely, grief, as you've said, is a big part of this book.

You know, as you mentioned, Charlie's mom died when she was sixteen, and I think grief shows up in a variety of ways in the book.

It never sort of leaves her.

And the really beautiful thing about her mum is that whilst she's not there in physical form as the reader, we always feel her presence on the page.

And I thought that was a really special thing.

And I wanted to ask you about writing grief and why you think it found its way into this novel.

Yeah, I mean, this is a grief novel.

It's funny because people are like, oh, it's you know, I think some people think it's like it's a novel about her relationship with Richard, but really it's not.

It's about relationship with her mother and with grief.

So I lost my mom when I was eighteen, and I really wanted to I think I needed to write about it.

I needed out of my system.

It's the most significant I arobably wouldn't say it's the most significant thing that's ever happened to me.

Now I've had my own child.

Having my own child is probably on the par with how significant it was to me to lose my mom.

You know, if it, you know, had a monumental, catastrophic effect on my life, and you know, who I've become as a person.

Everything I've done has really been as a result of that loss, and writing about it was just this incredibly cathartic thing.

And you know, I put a lot of my mom into this book.

There are you know, there are things that she really said to me, things that we did together that yeah, a literally word for word on the page, and it was really nice, Like it's been really lovely that she's been a big part of the pr as well.

You know, I did a big piece for the Sunday Times on her that had these huge photos of her and her friends got in touch and they were just like, oh my god, it's like you're bringing her back to life again for this book.

So it's been a really beautiful and lovely thing.

I think I could probably only do it because i'd had my own I just had my own baby.

So my baby was seven months old when I started writing this book, and I think I was able to because i'd had this very for me, having a child was a very healing experience.

I didn't think it would be.

I thought it would probably send me into a downward spiral about my own grief.

But actually my baby looked just like my mom.

She's got coloration anything like me or husband, which is really annoying.

But yeah, it's been this really beautiful transformative thing.

And I think writing that book was for me the kind of the last point in my kind of grief journey.

I think I will obviously always grieve my mom nowbe days it still hits me, but I don't feel under the I think I describe grief in Bitter Sweet as being like a familiar, like a like a you know, kind of a bird or a cat or something that's kind of hopping over shitting on you whenever it decides to.

And well that's gone since I wrote the book.

Oh my god, you're healed.

But it honestly is I had a baby and wrote a novel about it, and now I feel much better about it.

Amazing.

You know, writing is I know it shouldn't be therapy, but for me, it is kind of therapy.

I work out a lot of stuff.

And also, you know, I've had some incredibly beautiful messages from people that have been through grief or lost their mum while they're going through it right now that have read and related to the book or the pr that I've done around being kind of for motherless mother and you know, the kind of challenges of that, and that makes me feel really good.

It just makes me feel good to know that people are taking something from this and feeling a little bit less alone in their own grief because of emotions, isn't it.

It's one of the worst, is the worst emotion that we can go through.

And yeah, I think it's it's really beautiful the way that you wrote about her relationship with her mum, and I think you describe it with Charlie as you know she has I think she says at the start of the book there's three specific before and after moments in her life, and it is that sort of thing with loss it's like the person that you were before the fact, and then it's the person that you are after the fact, and it can completely change you.

But it's you know, it's it's not an easy thing, and it shows up for different ways for different people.

But I thought that the way you explored it was yeah, beautiful, really beautiful.

Yeah.

I think like when you go through something like that, like a part of these stools at that point, you're suspecting in times.

So there's a part of me that is eighteen, suspended and air frozen in time that will always just kind of be be there because you know, you know, that moment passes, the person dies, and you are transformed so much from that person that you will never again.

But you become kind of I think you take on kind of more personalities, like the more grief you go through, because each one, each one stalls a part of you and then you have to move on from it, but you can't kind of go back, and yeah, it really messes with your development, especially when you're a child.

Yeah, I can imagine.

I do I return to Richard.

Well, I think the thing with Richard is that the author that Charlie has this affair with is I think there is a part of her that feels connected to her mom because she's the person that introduced her to Richard Richard's work.

So I think there's a really nice connection there in the maybe not really nice, but she almost doesn't want to ever lose that relationship because it feels somehow tied to her mum.

I think, would you say that's about right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, there's a number of things about Richard that are very that make Charlie vulnerable.

Obviously, there's the kind of the power and amic at work.

He's got a lot of power over her there.

He's got a lot of power over her because he is obviously incredibly famous.

But then there is also this layer of power because she is a fan.

She's like a super fan.

She's obsessed with his writing and you know, been obsessed with him in the way you know, kind of normal teenagers get obsessed with people.

The problem is that, yeah, she is stalled at kind of sixteen after having lost her mum.

Yeah, then she actually meets him, and that's just you know, it doesn't happen very often that people obsessed over that.

You've kind of find yourself in a situation where you are meeting them, and yeah, it was interesting that that relationship to kind of write about because there are so many reasons that Charlie gets drawn to him.

The main one is, of course, is that she feels desperately sad and lonely and an anchored and you know, so in the novel, Charlie's mum was married to her stepdad and it was very confusing because she's now got a new party, he's got a new partners.

So this is very like mess complicated family, yeah.

Where there's no kind of bloodline left for Charlie, who you know is a vulnerable twenty three year old, so she see the love where the love is being given to her.

Like her stepdad really wants her to be Closethelia, her best friends want to be her to be close, even Cecil, her boss wants her to talk to her.

But she doesn't go to any of those like healthy places for love.

She goes to Richard, which is I think something probably most women can relate to.

That we've gone towards the guy that shouldn't be, going towards the place of the people that do love us.

Do you think that Charlie's sort of admiration that she's always had for him.

Do you think that distorts her view of him massively.

Yeah, like like to the you know, to the point that she when she sees him in person, she's imagining this photo of him age twenty six on the back of his books, not the fifty six year old man in front of her.

You know, she's you know, she fantasizes sexually about the idea of Richard.

She's constantly obsessing her for how he looks.

She thinks about him being on TV, on the radio, doing events.

You know, that's when she's really attracted to him.

When she's actually in bed with him, she's kind of grossed out by this like overweight, you know, fifty six year old guy who does not take care of himself with drinks and smokes and doesn't really exercise.

So yeah, she's very much I mean, Charlie's a total fantasist.

You know.

She has this long, you know, kind of multi layered, like multi story kind of ideas that she has where she you know, kind of imagines being married to Richard and you know, where they're going to live.

You know.

At the same time, she imagines when her mum comes back from the dead how she's going to explain to everyone's been She's like, she's just got this very soft, young, vulnerable imagination that really runs away with itself.

She's really Charlie, isn't she.

I mean, I can definitely relate to having an imagination though with yourself.

It's very mad.

It makes for great novel writing.

But oh yeah, but I found it really funny the moments where she imagined someone coming back and being like, how do I explain this?

And it's obviously a really sad part of a grief journey, but it was very funny.

It's kind of funny, like when she just imagines, like you he doesn't reply to her email and she's just like she just imagines like moving to Scotland and like taking your identity Like I've been there, have we all done it?

Yeah?

What the solution is for me to change?

When you accidentally like one of your exes like photos, Oh my god, And you're like, if I just delete my social media, changed my name, move out of the country, yeah, put my hands off, then that'll probably be the.

Only way I do.

I do want to return to Richard and ask about the sex that you just mentioned there, because that was One thing that I found really intriguing is that with I read a lot of affair novels, Hattie, I love an affair, as I've said, but with a lot of affair novels, the sex can be quite you know, exhilarating or exciting or you know, it's something that they've fantasized about for ages and then when it happens, it's like the most amazing thing ever.

But that wasn't the case with the sex that they're having.

It wasn't that it was always bad.

It's just that when she first has sex with him, she's almost like disappointed, and she's confused by that disappointment because it's obviously unexpected.

Why did you want to write about the sex in this way?

Well, I think, I think firstly because that's just how it would be.

I think you build it up in your head, something up massively your head, So the more you've disappointing, it's going to be generally a rule.

I think.

Also it was quite an important way to kind of show where Charlie has power power over Richards sexually, because she is beautiful and young and he's very attracted to that, and he is, you know, not beautiful and young.

He's kind of gross, so what I mean he I had to make him a bit more close than the Edits actually like my wonderful edit to share.

But she's like, this is this is great hard any changes could but can you write the sex cluss gross because at the moment it's so it's so gross.

Yeah, it kind of allows.

So it's where I get to show Richard kind of take him down a peg or two, so we kind of actually see the reality of him versus what Charlie sees of him.

So it's the only time that she can really see him for what he is.

I can't really see him for the manipulative, coercive, unkind man that he can he can often be.

But also I think, I think, you know, kind of sex and intimacy is a brilliant kind of way to show characters and show what's going on, to see the last moment.

And I think that sex, when written well can be incredibly powerful.

I think that Sally Rooney has shown us what you can do with sex that tells the story and can also be erotic and beautiful.

So yeah, there was a lot of that, I think.

Yeah, I think it's also just quite interesting isn't it that she when she fantasizes about him, she has like a great time and it's just in the flesh.

She just doesn't really like it.

But also, you know, it kind of allows me to kind of explore this idea of kind of sexual trauma and the impact that Charlie, you know, in this you know, first real relationship where you know, this is for Charlie's it's a terrible relationship, but it's still Charlie's first relationship with someone to understand her and talk to her and connect with her sexually.

And yeah, I think the sex kind of allowed us to kind of unpick a bit of what Charlie had been through.

Yeah, definitely, And you're right, it does tell us so much about a character.

You know, this sort of sex and intimacy and how they feel in those moments.

It tells us so much about them.

And I think what was so interesting is looking at it from an outsider's perspective.

You know, I've been in relationships that other people knew that weren't right for me and knew that person wasn't right for me, But when you're in them, you don't understand that, and you're totally blinded by all the sort of good aspects, and the good aspects don't even necessarily need to be anything amazing, but you'll you'll take anything with ourselves.

It doesn't get any better, we get it's just it's still just kind of telling yourself lies about people because you want to believe that, you know.

And I think also it's that, you know, with Charlie that she gets to a point where she's told Richard all of the terrible stuff that's happened to her, and that makes it really vunerable.

She doesn't want to go and have those conversations again.

She's found someone that she can tell that stuff to.

Poor Charlie.

Yeah, I think it's it's hard as well, you know that she's had those conversations with them, and also that he sees a part of her that she's not necessarily delved into before before she sees it, and then you're like, oh, well, this person sees me, and that's you know, I've not been necessarily seen like this before, or you know, she definitely was seen by her mom, but mum's no longer there, so I think you know there's that attraction there.

Well, I'm seen by this person and I want to stay with this it's safe, but he's not.

He's not good for her.

You mentioned Sally Rooney, and if somebody brings up Sally Rooney to me, I have to jump on that.

So sorry about that, but I absolutely love her.

She's one of my favorite writers.

And when I was reading this book, I was trying to think about who would be the writer for me, or who would be, you know, the famous person for me that I think I'd categorically lose my mind over.

And I think I'd combusted if I'm at Sally Rooney.

That whole idea of don't meet your heroes, I think it would have to be with her, because I know I'd just make an absolute embarrassment of myself.

Is there anyone that you feel or you're rather not say?

What?

Writer?

I It can be anyone.

It can be anyone.

I mean like actors.

I can't talk to actors.

I'm terrible.

I mean, I've got a friend and I've got I've got friends that are actors because and I've never seen them in anything, so that's fine, but can I actually meet I'm totally totally hopeless writers wise.

I don't think there's any I mean I would almost certainly make a fool of myself in front of Sally Rooney.

I would almost certainly make a full out of myself in front of Lauren Groff and probably Max Porter.

Yeah, I'm not smart enough to talk to any of those people.

Honestly.

I listened to Sally Rooney talk and I'm like, I don't know what i'd say to you that would be of somedents.

Like, yeah, she's quite ordinary.

Brain is incredible, absolutely incredible.

I mean as well, like what I love about Max and Sally it's not even do they write brilliant books, obviously highly literary, but also incredibly accessible.

Is there activism?

Yes, they are setting an example for all of us as writers and creatives for what we can do and what we should be doing.

And you're in the line, and you know, it's hard when you're a writer, because you are constantly like you're constantly having to write for papers that you don't agree with or you know, kind of pushbooks through channels you know aren't necessarily you know, you know, align with your ethics.

You know, there's all sorts of stuff going on, and I try to write about it in a way I can, and I try to use the platforms that I have just written a big sub step today which kind of gets into societal and political stuff in a way that I've never really found the confidence to do.

And all of it is because of writers like Sally and Max and Nikos Shutkler, who's an amazing writer and kind of momentum, and the way these people are are being outspoken and talking out about things and not you know, Sally like can't come to the UK anymore because she's mental.

We be arrested for supporting Palistine action.

One of the greatest living writers cannot enter the UK, and obviously, you know, she is incredibly Hormoson has one for book sales and you know, money and a platform to be able to have the security to kind of do those things, and a lot of us writers don't have that yet, and we're building to a point where we hope we do.

But yeah, writers like that that kind of you know, really really lead the way in terms of kind of their social activism and political activism as well as writing.

Well, that's that's how I fall apart.

With valid I saw certainly the other day that it made me laugh, but like in a really uncomfortable way.

Of just like how they fuck forgot to this point in terms of like censorship essentially, but it was about Sally and what she's done, and it was like, so, let me just get this straight.

Sally Rooney, really popular, famous, incredible author who pretty much is fairly quiet and keeps to herself, you know, doesn't have social media platforms whatever is, has potentially been arrested for chexsnoes terrorism, and it's like, what the fucking how will we at this point?

Mind blowing?

And what is the role of artists and creatives in changing it?

I think that's what's really key.

Absolutely.

When we live in a system where anything we write generally takes a year to two years to be published once it's delivered and finished, it's very hard to write in a way that can keep up possibly with what is going on politically and socially.

So how do we use parent influence outside of that, whether it's substack, writing preases for the press, using our social media channels.

I think as writers we really do have a responsibility.

Marie and Keys is amazing as well.

She's worked with her a lot.

I think she's one of the most wonderful women and writers in the world.

And she is also using her platform to be really outspoken on what's gone in Palestine and what a woman, what woman marrying.

Is I am going to say something now that is going to get me absolutely hung drawn and quartered.

I am obsessed with Mary maryan Keys and have listened to so many interviews that she's given.

She just makes me laugh so much, and I think she's incredible.

Haven't read a single one of her bookshirt.

Just go and buy Rachel's Holiday like.

I've got it on my shelf.

Tell me why I've not read it yet.

Tell me why I've got Rachel's Holiday.

I've got grown ups haven't read awful.

I don't know why I've not, And yeah, it's it's shocking.

But speaking of sorry, what we're going to say.

Marian's books are healing, They're good for the soul.

They just this is what I wanted to ask you because this is one of the things that I absolutely loved in the book.

I loved your exploration of Charlie sort of building this relationship with her step mom.

And I think, you know, relationships with step parents are so difficult, and you know I've been through that experience both with my stepdad and my step mom, and it's really healing when you managed to find sort of common ground with them.

And how she finds how Charlie finds common ground with her stepmom is I mean, first of all, she coxies really nice meals for her, which is you can win me over with food anytime, but also with books, and she encourages her to try or the authors that she's not necessarily gone for before, and one of them is Mary Yankees.

And she talks about finding sort of solace with Mary Yankees.

And I really want to ask you what writers bring you solace and comfort?

Mary and Keys.

In fact, Mary brings me a great deal of comfort.

Max porter Grip brings me a great deal of comfort because he's so kind in his writing his books.

I'm very kind, and he makes me just feel better about men.

But yeah, Sally always makes me feel better.

I will often go back and comfort reading Julie Bloom but I love that, which I read a lot when I was younger.

I take a great deal of comfort in poetry as well, just the classics like Larkin Hughes, Yeah, James he Me so, yeah, those kinds of places.

But yeah, it's often the books that kind of surprise you out of nowhere, like this book Ordinary Saints and reading I'm just taking.

I'm really escaping into that book and finding comfort and love in the kind of portrayal of present day Northeast London where I live, and it just makes me feel better about London and what about you.

I am one hundred percent of Sally Rooney girl.

I love her, and I'm not a massive rereader, but I have gone back and reread conversations with friends.

I think there was just something about how she explored mental health and just the mind of that, you know, that young female protagonist.

It just was something that I could really relate to, and I don't think a writer had made me feel like that up until that point.

I'd always loved Judy Pickle when I was younger.

I love Jacqueline Wilson growing up, and I love Judy Pickle, and those are the writers that I just could get completely lost in their world.

And Jacquelin Wilson as a young person made me feel really seen in somebody that was in like a very complicated family dynamic.

I think she wrote all that really well.

So I think when I think back to Jacqueline Wilson, she's you know, one person for me, Sally Rooney, is like my adult person that I am just unbelievably excited whenever there's a new book from her to get lost in her world.

I'm trying to think now, my Honestly, it sounds very biased, but my friend Emma Hines is an author, and I just think she is just such an incredible writer.

And you know, I'm in a really privileged position that I knew her before her books were published.

She's about to have her third book published, but we met.

I was an action in one of her plays, and I just really connected to her writing and I was like, how are you not like a world famous person yet?

And then now to have watched her sort of trajectory is just so inspirational because her writing has brought me so much comfort and joy, and then to see other people getting to also experience that it is just such a wonderful thing.

So yeah, yeah, I hope that the theater is incredibly comforting.

Actually, I go to the theater a lot, and I feel very very comforted.

I mean, unless it's bad there, and there's nothing worse than bad.

It's like a bad, badly fine bad song.

You're stuck probably unacceptable, but yeah, in the theater, I find something about when those lights go down and everybody just goes quite at the same time you just sit there.

I find that to be a very very soothing.

Definitely, have you watched inter Alia?

Oh my god, it's they're doing empty live at the moment.

I don't know if it's still actually on at the National, but it's definitely doing its empty live rounds at the minute.

I went and watched it at the cinema and I was really I didn't know how that experience would be.

But I've now watched Fleabag and Prima Facie and Entrailier at the cinema and it's worked.

But Intralia is just incredible and it is is it Rosamond Pike?

Is that how you say your name?

Ever got that right?

Or second guess myself?

Then?

But she could have.

It feels like she's just running the show, like you know, there's a.

Few sorry where she's a judge.

Yes, she's a George.

Yeah, And it's just incredible, like the use of the space, the sort of choreography of the piece, her performance, like it's just incredible.

Jody Comer was amazing as well, but they're both by the same writer, Susan Miller, and yeah, I was blown away by those so I would recommend I wish I had more time with you, but I do want to finish by asking what is next for you?

Okay.

So I am currently copy editing book two, so it's nearly done.

Book.

It's called Beginning Middle End.

It follows a young couple.

It's split between her point of view and his point of view from the age of kind of eighteen to twenty five and examines the beginning middle end of their relationship.

And it's about class and the arts and the theater and creativity, but it's also really a book about alcoholism and mental health and the cycles within families that we can escape and the ones that we can't break.

So I'm really excited about that book, and I am in the process of writing my third book.

There's some screenwriting stuff kind of going on in the back as well, like various projects.

And then yeah, I'm writing my substack every week.

So if anybody's enjoyed this, and please do come and come and see that, because I put a lot into those pieces, and you know, I really care about the writing quality of what I'm doing.

Over there.

So those are the amazing.

I'm also working on a play with a friend, Oh my god.

So yeah, and then I'm doing a bit of journalism alongside of that for the Times, I write about parenting for the Time sometimes, so yeah, oh.

My god, incredible.

I need this play to happen.

I need to see it.

I mean, I want to be in it because I love I love your writing so much and I highly recommend for anyone that hasn't found your substack yet to go and sign up to it.

It's free, and it feels like such privilege to be able to get that writing for free.

I think you write so beautifully on there.

I will link my favorite one in the show notes for people to find it.

I did say that was the last question, but I do like to finish by asking for a recommendation.

So is there any recommendations you have for the listeners?

Yeah, I mean, I love a recommendation, but I'm going to go for something.

I'm going to recommend a TV show amazing.

I'm going to recommend my favorite TV show of all time ever, which is called The Leftovers, and it's one HBO.

It's three seasons.

Each season is kind of very contained within itself, and it styles just In Through and Carry Koon and Margaret Quayley and loads of amazing people, and it is about the world after one percent of the population just disappears.

But it's not really about what's happened to them.

It's about the impact of these losses on society when nobody knows what's happened.

It's never explained.

It is just an arc following this family, following this character Kevin Garvey, who is paid by Justin Through, who also has psychosis and he's a police chief.

It's about the kind of the cults that rise up in this slightly damaged world.

But yeah, it's ultimately there is something so atmospheric about it.

And for me, nobody has portrayed grief on the screen in the way that they do in this show, and yet none of them really are directly grieving.

It's about this overall feeling of grief, mass Greek grief on a mass scale, where this thing has happened and nobody can understand why.

So it's absolutely beautiful.

The leftovers, I think you can get it all on out Fee in the UK and on Avison Prime.

Three seasons, the most perfect ending every single plot line, tied up with a bow, so satisfying, gorgeous, wonderful, smart writing, cerebral, funny, getting it.

Oh my god, I need to watch this, like right now, I don't want to go to work today.

I'm just gonna sack that off golling sick and watch that.

How have I not watched this show?

That sounds incredible, really weird.

It's kind of a culty show.

I think it like started ten years ago and it's like either you talk to people about it and they will just talk to you about nothing but the leftovers, or people haven't really seen it, and I think more people keep finding it.

I think, yeah, I think it's just something that people keep discovering and they keep and they will keep discovering because it's so timeless.

Oh my god, I love that.

I think it's so spun sure when you find something after the fact.

I heard so much about the BBC series The Split, and I had watched it, and then I came to that.

We me and my boyfriend finished watching that a couple of weeks ago when we flew through the seasons of that.

So good that girls.

It's another BBC thing like that's just been flying under the Radar and I've just eaten up two seasons in a week.

Brave New Girls, Brave New Girls.

I've got that saved.

Yes, that's Brave Girls.

I'm getting the name wrong, so yeah, oh my god, yes, I've got that saved.

That sounds great.

I'm thank you so much.

I have absolutely loved chatting to you, and I could have chatted to you for much longer.

But hopefully I can nab you back for the next book.

You're just open for that.

Not yet.

You can a hard back of Bittersweet Well.

It's also available in ebook audiobook is a book read by Rosie She he one of my favorite actors.

So yeah, ebook, audiobook, hard back.

It's amazing and links are in the show notes for those Thank you so much for joining me today, Hasse.

I will be linking your sub stack, your socials, and everything else that the listeners need.

But yeah, thank you so much.

It's been such a joy much thank you, and thank you listeners for listening.

If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to review and subscribe, And if you want to give us a follow, you can do so at paraple kens Pod on Instagram and at Paple kens On, Twist and TikTok Go.

Buy your copies of Bitter Sweet, come chats me about them, and thanks again for listening.

Bye,