S2E4 April 2026 Q&A with Ashley Kalagian Blunt on Like, Follow, Die

Welcome to Kelly's Writerly Q&A, a podcast that celebrates authors and their books! I'm your host, Kelly Sgroi, writer, reader, and soccer mum.

Listen to my 27th episode where I chat to Ashley Kalagian Blunt, ‘Australia’s queen of tech noir’. Her third novel came out with Ultimo Press in Feb, and it's a thriller! Purchase a copy of Like, Follow, Die from Booktopia via my affiliate link. 

We discuss:

•  Like, Follow, Die
• Audible
• What inspired Ashley to write this story
• Being a podcaster
• Ashley's unpublished manuscripts

And more!

Thank you for listening!

Music credit to Levgen Poltavskyi from Pixabay.

*If you enjoy this podcast, please like, share, follow, and consider buying a copy of the book using my Booktopia affiliate link or buy me a Ko-fi. Your support, big or small, will help cover hosting and production costs, and keep me creating and supporting authors and books!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You're listening to Kelly's Riderly QA, a monthly podcast that features authors and their books. Kelly Scroy is your host, writer, reader and soccer fan.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

This is season two, episode four of Kelly's Riderly QA, and I'd like to extend

Meet Ashley Kalagian Blunt

SPEAKER_01 0:20

a warm welcome to Ashley Caladian Blunt, the Australian Queen of Technoir and author of Lack Follow Die, which came out with Ultimo Press in Feb. Congratulations, how are you today?

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Thanks so much, Kelly. Yeah, I'm great today. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

It is so great to chat. I read Like Follow Die and also Dark Mode recently,

About Dark Mode and Like, Follow, Die

SPEAKER_01 0:49

and I can attest to your title of The Australian Queen of Tech Noir. It's so apt.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Love it.

unknown 0:57

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Yes. Oh this is definitely my niche, is cybercrime and sort of how tech is malicious and but like makes us all vulnerable.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, with both of those books, you really showed a darkness in the everyday that is closer than any of us realize. So it's quite scary. It's definitely definitely thrillers, but each one shows a different insight into different sides of the internet, and they both stand as a warning. Like I said to you before, I almost don't want to post reels on Instagram anymore. Like there was a time when I wasn't showing my face on my social media public account, and then I've I've had to find the confidence to put myself out there more, which followers respond to. After reading your books, I might have to reconsider.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Yes, I yeah, I I always hesitate as well when I'm putting my face and my voice and my video on the internet. It's it's definitely opens us up to risk that is uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yeah, a hundred percent. But like follow diet is an amazing read. It's quite a unique thriller. I really got a lot out of the motherhood side of it, which I wasn't expecting. And also because I'm the mother of a teenage son, it hit home for me. There was a lot of things that have been on my mind recently about my kids and what they're exposed to online. So we'll touch on it later. But there are different shows that I've seen that have triggered those things, and then reading your book, I really enjoyed not only learning that side of it, like what you bring to the table on that subject, but it was just an enjoyable read. Like it was really engaging read. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

That's lovely to hear. I really appreciate that, Kelly. And yeah, I love writing thrillers that have a great twist, that have a great hook, that have really fast pace. I'm a thriller fan myself, and that's what I always look for in a thriller. So that's really rewarding to hear.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

And thank you for taking the time to answer some writerly questions. Can you give a little explanation about it for anyone who hasn't heard of it yet?

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Absolutely. So, yeah, like fall die, my third thriller. It is set in Sydney's eastern suburbs, you know, money, Maserati's mansions. And it is about uh an older mum, and she's she's not wealthy. The characters in the book aren't the super rich of the eastern suburbs. It starts when a knock comes on her door and she looks through the peephole and she sees that there's a cop on the other side of the door. And she she doesn't know this guy, but she knows this is a cop, and she knows that he is there to talk to her about her son. And we get her perspective, we get the cop's perspective, and we also get the son's perspective through his journals, going back over seven years. So from the age of 12 to the age of 19. And the crux of the book really is about what has happened with her son that has made her come to be known as the most hated woman in Australia, and whether she is now faced with this cop going to finally reveal the secrets that she knows.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

I just got goosebumps because you know, could you imagine how that would feel as a mother? And yeah, as a reader, I definitely wanted to know what did he do, and you tricked me. I didn't I didn't see the twists coming. So yeah, uh, I won't say too much, I don't want to give anything away, but great, great description.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Thank you. Yeah, it is a tricky book to talk about in terms of avoiding spoilers.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yeah, totally. So this story was first published as an Audible original last year. Can you tell

Publishing an Audible Original

SPEAKER_01 5:10

me about that experience?

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Absolutely. So I was really lucky uh in that after dark mode was published, my first thriller, which came out in 2023. I have a great agent through Curtis Brown, and my agent was talking to Audible and they asked for pitches from me. So I pitched to them. I had this idea because originally Audible, Audible originals used to be shorter, they used to be sort of uh 20 to 40,000 words is what they were originally asking for, which is about maybe two to three hours up to about five hours. And so I had this idea that I thought, oh, that would be perfect for a shorter story. It's not quite big enough for a whole novel, so I'll save it in case Audible ever approaches me. And then when they approached me, they said, Oh, what we're finding is actually if people are going to spend a credit, they want a full-length story. So they want eight hours or more. So they said, we'd like it to be at least 50,000 words. And I thought, okay, well, I can I can make this story work at 50,000 words. So I sent them this pitch. It was a 300-word synopsis of what this story was going to be. And they came back and said, We love it, except for the main part. Take that out. And I thought, if I take that out, all that is left is a story but a cop. Like all that is left is like this, there's a cop. So I said, okay, um, can we talk about this some more? And we came back and we had some discussions about what they were thinking, what might work. And I then the idea that I'd added in actually became the main idea. And so that really drove the story. So then I went back to them with the first six chapters, so about 10,000 words, and a 1500-word synopsis, so much more detailed synopsis based on our discussions. And they said, Great, we love it, go ahead, write it. And this was my fastest book ever. So I had a first draft of this, like a working draft that was readable in uh probably 10 months. So incredibly fast. The my next book, I thought, oh, I'll do the same thing. I'll have the three POVs in their own separate timelines. Um, and no, not that fast at all. So it took me 14 months just to get a working draft of it. And it's still it still needs a lot of work. So every book is different, Kelly. It's just amazing how you just cannot predict, like when you start with an idea, how that idea is going to develop and how challenging it may or may not be to write.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

That is so true. Every book, yeah, you just you don't master it. No, no, not at all. But it's interesting how the process is so different with audible, like you're not having to finish a manuscript, you're presenting a pitch like more like you would with a nonfiction project. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Partly because they're approaching people who are already selling well. So they're saying, okay, you have this track record with readers, we want you to do something similar for us. So that's that's one of the things that makes it easier once you're established in as a writer, is you have like more doors open to you effectively, particularly if you have a book that sells well.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah.

Celebrity narrators

SPEAKER_01 8:33

And you also had some celebrity narrators.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Yes. So Audible selected the narrators. That's one of the things that they bring to the project, is that they have this stable of really experienced narrators. And they immediately, as soon as I pitched them, they thought, oh, Claudia Carbon would be perfect to play the mom. But they didn't tell me that because they they didn't know if she was available. They didn't want to get my hopes up. So they waited until she was signed onto the project to share that with me. So that was really exciting to have Claudia play the mom because she's perfect for the role. And she actually just did the Sydney book launch last night with me in Glebe to talk about playing the mom and and how she connected with that character. And uh, we also have Ryan Korr playing the cop, and then a great actor named Lawrence Boxhall plays the son. And that was a really challenging role because he had to age the voice up, the voice up from 12 to 19. And the Audible publisher, she actually was at the Lord of the Rings musical, and he played Gollum, and she thought, oh, this person, this is the ideal person to play this teenage boy, which I think says everything.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, so you can capture that darkness.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Exactly. But also the also the empathy, and that's the that's the tricky thing with that role is you know, we know we know from the beginning this boy ends up doing something terrible. We don't know exactly what. You know, he loves his dog and he's on the swim team, and and he's got a great relationship with his mom and his teachers, and he's just a really sweet kid when we first meet him. So it's it's was bringing those layers to that voice acting role.

Book club questions and character

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, and in the at the end of your book, you've got book club questions, and one of them asks about like growing up in a wealthy suburb and sort of how that affects someone who isn't wealthy. Yeah, and I think that he really struggled with that because for a kid it's hard to. I mean, an adult does get that keeping up with the Joneses feeling, but I think kids struggle to understand when they can't have what their peers have or can't do what their peers are doing.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Absolutely, and he because he was originally in a private school, he was surrounded by other kids from families with a lot of money. So then when circumstances changed for him and his mom, he saw all those other kids just continue on with their lives, and he really feels like he has been left behind, he has been left out, he's he is not getting something that he is owed, and that's really representative of this lie that's being sold to men right now, which is that feminism has taken away from them, feminism has left them in a deficit. And that's I think it's something about the um aggrieved entitlement. We know it's easy to convince people, unfortunately, to feel victimized by things that they're not actually victims of.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

True. I wanted to just ask when you spoke to Claudia, did she mention anything about if it came to screen?

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Oh, well, she's definitely interested. She's definitely interested. She would love to play that character on screen. So I would uh encourage you to uh keep up with my news and see what happens. We might we might be able to make that happen. Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

I picture her though with lighter hair. What what do you picture for that character?

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Oh, with lighter hair. Interesting. Yeah, uh, so that character, she like I said, she's older. She's a bit older than Claudia is now. Claudia's early 50s and she's early 60s, but she does dye her hair to look younger. And I pictured her hair as a little bit darker, uh, just the way it's dyed. It's dyed kind of a uh a darker, a darker brown. But I mean, she could go with whatever she thinks works for the role.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

It's interesting how the reader, like I don't know if you mentioned hair color, but just while I was reading it, that's what I had that visual.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Yeah, yeah. It is it is interesting because I think one of the challenges of writing characters is that every person who reads a character maps them onto people that they know. So they're bringing so much of their experiences with other actual people to the character, even just subconsciously.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

So one of the things that has really, really helped me improve my writing is having a writer's group where we give uh detailed feedback every month. So we send our pieces around by email a week before we meet, and we all read them and we all leave comments and then we discuss. And just seeing how different people react to different characters and why has taught me so much about the intricacy and challenge of characters. I think characters are the, for at least for me, are the biggest challenge of crafting a compelling story.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

I always start with character, like that's sort of how I build around that. So you talked about the manosphere, and

Inspiration

SPEAKER_01 13:58

this story came into my life after watching adolescence on TV last year, which deeply affected me. And also just recently, Louis Thoreau's documentary Inside the Manosphere on Netflix. So both of those shows just made me worry about being a mother to a teenage boy, and I just thought it was so timely to what you've written, but obviously novels take years to write. So you would have started drafting this probably before both of those shows even hit screens. So, what actually inspired you to write the story?

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Yeah, I was actually had submitted it and it had gone into recording right at the time when Adolescence came out, which was about this time last year in uh 2025. So I had been working on it at that point for probably about a year and a half because I'd written that first draft, but then we also went through several rounds of editing. So what made me want to write this particular story was that I had written about the Manosphere in Dark Mode and I'd done quite a lot of research into it in dark mode. And dark mode is a book that opens with a murder. And there's a woman, you know, the main character finds a woman who's very, very clearly been murdered. And what has happened to her uh is all based on a true murder that happened in the United States in the 1940s and that is still technically unsolved. And it's a very famous murder, the Black Dahlia. Her name was Elizabeth Short. Uh, I didn't cherry pick that murder though, just because it was sensational. There's theories around what happened to her that tie into misogyny. And I wanted to draw a line between misogyny in the past and attitudes towards women in the past and these attitudes towards women online now, which are uh just metastasizing in the manosphere. And how much this has changed just in the past five years, like while I've been researching and writing these books, is is alarming because when I was going around promoting dark mode, I would ask people in the audiences, you know, how many people had heard of incels, for example, in voluntary celibates. And sometimes as few as 10% of the audience would put their hands up. So it wasn't something that was really uh entering the mainstream. And now, as you said, a few years later, we've got adolescents, we've got um the roo documentary, and it is entering the mainstream. And that is because it has uh caught like so many people have become caught up in it. It's in our media, it's in our politics, like it's become it's become a big deal. And if you talk to, for example, high school teachers, the female teachers will tell you how much boys' attitudes have been changing in recent years. And again, we're talking the past five years, so this is this is very fast moving and very recent. And they'll say, you know, a lot of the boys are coming in and their respect for female teachers is so much lower. There's I've talked to teachers who said they have boys in their school who won't even talk to the female teachers. Like they're perfectly fine with the male teachers, but they will not speak to the female teachers because they just look down on them so much. So this is it's a big deal. And that's why I wanted to come back to it. I felt like it was important to look at it further and to look at it seriously. So like Follow Die has a connection to dark mode. It builds on that story, but they're not uh they're not, it's not a sequel, they're completely different characters. They just have a link to connect, to connect the two stories.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

It's scary because we're not familiar unless people are doing these documentaries, making these shows, writing these stories, you know, it's it's triggering me to learn about it.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

And that's and that's great. That's really important. I think that's what we need. Like, we need a lot more people to know about it, and we need a lot more people to understand. Like, one of the things I wanted to show with like Follow Die is how men are victimized by these groups too. I could talk about this for a long time, but probably I imagine, especially as the mother of a teenage boy.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

I imagine my mind is just exploding, but yeah, we better move on. So, you're also a fellow

Podcasting

SPEAKER_01 18:20

podcaster. Do you prefer answering questions or asking them?

SPEAKER_02 18:27

That is such a good question. It is such a privilege to get to ask questions, right? Especially talking to writers who have achieved like really incredible things or writers you really respect. And also on our podcast, like I host a podcast called James and Ashley Stay at Home, which is about creativity writing and health, because both James Mackenzie Watson, my co-host, and I live with chronic illness. And so we've also had a psychologist on the podcast talking about strategies for managing creative anxiety. We've had an art therapist on the podcast, we've had a lot of medical professionals on the podcast. And it's a real privilege to get to say, this is what I really want to know. And can you share your expertise on that topic?

SPEAKER_03 19:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

But it's also a real privilege to get to talk about my writing and to be in the position to talk about my writing. And I love connecting with readers, I love connecting with fellow writers, I love sharing things that really help me get to where I am. And I also, you know, when I do events, for example, I put a lot of effort into my events to make them fun and to make them engaging. So last night with Claudia Carbon, we were playing this cryptocurrency game where I had a list of cryptocurrency names and they had to guess if they were real or fake. And it was just really fun. So I know it's a privilege to ask for people's time and attention, especially nowadays. And so I think I just slightly prefer answering questions just because I uh feel like I get to share uh all the hard work that I've done, and I just really find that engaging. Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

I've only been a guest on a podcast once, but I did enjoy it quite a lot actually. Once you sit down and receive some questions, you realize that you do have a lot to say. And also with your podcasts focusing

Chronic illness

SPEAKER_01 20:21

on well-being, did you want to talk about your chronic illness at all?

SPEAKER_02 20:26

So I live with chronic fatigue syndrome and I have since 2016 technically. I was diagnosed in 2017, and at that time it was very acute. So I basically at the age of 33 saw my entire life shut down and I was mainly bedbound for a number of years. And I have been getting progressively better each year. I have to really carefully manage my health, but I am really lucky that I've seen such improvement and I'm able to do so much now. I almost work full-time now. That does take up my entire life. Like I don't have any kind of life outside of the work that I do really, and then managing my health. Those are the those are the main two things in my life in my life and my world. But I'm I feel, you know, very lucky that I can just get out of bed in the morning, that I'm not going to spend the day in bed alone, just watching time pass. And I think it's important that we talk about chronic illness and the realities of it and show that people with chronic illness can still achieve things, like that they're able to do so many things, but also that there are a lot of barriers. And I think being aware of them as a society, looking at where we can help, where we can, I am very passionate about talking about it. So thank you for giving me an opportunity to do that.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yeah, certainly. March was endometriosis awareness month, which I suffer from. April is adenyosis month, which I also have. I feel like when you have Chronic illness that you don't just have one problem and you're you're suffering from a string of conditions, the diagnosis keep coming, you're you're constantly at the doctors for one thing or another, and you're trying to suffer silently because it's not something that people sympathize with.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Yeah, it's really good. I like your podcast featuring professionals that can help sort of make life a little bit easier when you are suffering and you want to be creative. So yeah, people should check that out. It's a really great, great one.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Thanks, Kelly. And we've had an author uh with endometriosis actually talk about the realities of that for herself. And that was Amy Lovett. I don't know which episode number it was, but go back and find the interview with author Amy Lovett, who's amazing. And uh I think talking especially about endometriosis, like you said, we need it to not be taboo. We need to talk about the realities of that disease.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, 100%. So let's switch gears again and go back to when being an author was still a dream. Can you share

How Ashley got her first yes

SPEAKER_01 23:11

how you got your very first yes?

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Yes. Well, it depends on which yes you're talking about, but I assume you're probably talking in terms of a book, yes? The first big one. Yeah, because I spent a lot of years building a profile as well before I was a like had my first book published. So I had yeses to short stories and uh essays, a lot of essays. I started writing book reviews, which was really useful. I started doing that unpaid and then worked my way into getting paid for book reviews. So I had lots of smaller yeses, but the first big yes is actually interesting because we'll talk about rejection. I have four unpublished manuscripts. So I very much know how it feels to be trying for years and years to make my writing work for a publisher and therefore for readers. So I had one manuscript that, you know, I worked so hard on this, Kelly. I worked so hard. It was about my, it started off being about my great-grandparents who were survivors of the Armenian genocide of World War I, which is a genocide that I, you know, graduated school having learned nothing about and was really curious about why I didn't know about it, especially the more I researched it, the more I realized what a massive historical event it was. This was the blueprints for the Holocaust. You actually can't understand how the Holocaust happened without understanding how the Armenian genocide happened. And yet, uh it's very, very unknown. But I had interviewed all of my Canadian family and their community on a research grant. I then did a master's degree at Sydney Uni looking at uh Armenian diaspora and cultural identity. I interviewed um dozens of people in the Sydney Armenian community. I spent two months traveling Armenia that I paid for myself, just interviewing anybody who would talk to me across the whole country and having the Peace Corps uh officers translate for me, which was fantastic. And so I'd done this huge amount of research, like years of research. And then I'd written this book. First draft was 200,000 words because I just didn't know any better, right? And then I got a manuscript assessment and worked it down. I got that draft over years of effort, down to 75,000 words. And at that point, it was getting shortlisted for unpublished manuscript awards, and publishers were requesting to read it. And they were coming back and saying, Oh, you know, your writing's really good, but uh, we can't sell a book about Armenia in Australia. There's no market for that. And that was really frustrating to basically be told there's no market for this entire concept like you've that you've spent years working on. And so two things happened from that. One is I decided I really wanted to keep improving my writing skills. I felt like that was part of it. I felt like if the writing was good enough, it wouldn't matter what the topic was. And clearly my writing wasn't that good yet. But then also part of me kind of thought, well, can you publish a book about Australia and Australia? So I started writing my memoir, How to Be Australian, which a manuscriptor assessor had suggested to me might be a good topic for me, was writing about, you know, being a Canadian, living in Australia, and trying to develop an Australian identity. So I was working on two things. I enrolled in another master's degree. I did a creative writing master's at Macquarie Uni. And I was specifically looking at improving my writing skills. And for that project, I wanted to do something that would really challenge me. So I decided to write about the terrorism that happened in the 70s and 80s. Descendants of the Armenian genocide decided that they would force the Turkish government to acknowledge this history by attacking their consulates around the world, which obviously terrible idea. That violence came to Australia. So in December 1980, uh the Turkish Consul General and his bodyguard were assassinated here in Sydney in broad daylight. And then there was a bombing in Melbourne in 1986 that uh thankfully only killed the bomber. And so I thought, well, you know, the Sydney shooting is still an unsolved crime. And the true crime, unsolved true crime angle, I thought this might get Australians interested in this history and how it connects to them, even though there are far more connections. So I decided I wanted to write a novella from the point of view of one of those would be terrorists, because they were committing this terrorism for the same reason that I had spent years writing about this topic, which was that I wanted recognition for what had happened. And it was very unsettling to look at terrorists and recognize that I had the exact same motives. Like I intimately understood their motives. So I thought, okay, I want to, I want to write that. And it ended up being a novella because that was the requirements of the master's program that I was in. So I didn't expect that to be my first published book at all. I just thought this is this is an exercise in improving my writing. And I did, however, enter that novella when it was finished into an unpublished uh novella manuscript competition through Spineless Wonders here in Sydney. And it was shortlisted. And the publisher said to me, I would love to publish this as a print book. It's not technically long enough to have a spine, it was only 15,000 words. And she actually asked if I had other short stories. We could do a short story collection. And I said, you know what? I have this other manuscript that I've been mining for essays, and I've been getting essays published in places like Griffith Review and Overland. And I said, these essays explain the history behind this story. So we could make a compilation of a novella and essays. And she was like, This is great, I love it, let's do it. So that became my first published book, which is a which is a windy way to a yes. And it was a small book from a small publisher, you know, the final book still, it was only 25,000 words, and booksellers were completely flummoxed by it because where do you shelve a book that's half fiction and half essays, right? But for a small book, it did, it did really, really well. And I've had so many wonderful readers say, I'm so glad I learned this history because I knew nothing about it and I can I can see how important it is. So that's been really rewarding. So technically, that was my first book that came out in 2019. But

Rejection

SPEAKER_02 29:21

my first full length and my first sort of proper real yes was then the memoir that I wrote, How to Be Australian. I had submitted to first I'd submitted to actually to HarperCollins and through through a program where uh a publisher read, you know, the first 5,000 words and a synopsis. And she said, Oh, I'd love to read the rest of this. And she did, and she came back and she said, you know, uh, I think it could use some work. Here's my ideas, are you willing to work on this? And I said, Yes, absolutely. So we went back and forth with this publisher for about seven months, eight months, and then she took it to acquisitions. And she told me the day she was taking it to acquisitions, and the meeting was, you know, 11 in the morning. And then I did not hear from her that day. And I so I knew I was like, oh, this is a no, this is bad, and she just doesn't want to have to tell me. And then the next day that was that was confirmed. And I had known that that was a possibility. Like I knew in my mind lots of books go to acquisition meetings and don't get through, despite how much the publisher wants them to. And we'd worked together so closely on this that I knew she was disappointed as well. And I thought because I had held that as a possibility in my mind, that it would be fine, that this rejection would be fine. But it I realized that what I had done is I had been envisioning how great the world would be when the yes came. And because I was so sick, I was really holding on to that as oh, this this will be something good to offset all the illness and all the negativity. And I had held the possibility of a no, but I hadn't envisioned what life would be like, how life could still be okay with the no. So the no still hit me like an avalanche. And I had had this plan that I was then going to send the manuscript to a firm press because I'd always written it with a firm press in mind. It really fit their list. They publish a lot of Australiana. And so I'd had this opportunity with Harper Collins, which would have been great. And in my head, I said, Oh, I will just immediately, as soon as I get the no from Harper Collins, I will send it to a firm press the next day. And it actually took me about three months to do it because I was so despondent. But then when I did send it through, I ended up not sending it through their slush pile. But by that time, I had a friend who was an author at Affirm Press and I asked her if she'd be willing to send the synopsis through with a recommendation, which she kindly did. And that's really the value of networking, of getting to know authors, of investing in the community and doing things like your podcast that you're doing. And then I got with with them, it was very quick. Like I had a phone call with them within a few weeks, and we'd signed a contract within a month, and the book came out in June the next year, which was unfortunately June 2020 during the pandemic. But you know, you you roll with whatever happens.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Yeah, I can see how a firm was perfect for that book, though. So I think it all worked out.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

It's and it does speak to understanding what types of books that publishers publish and and how a book might fit their list. Like learning about the industry as you're as you're also developing your writing skills can really benefit you when it comes time to actually to actually pitching your books. So that's how I got my first two yeses. But that big rejection from Parper Collins, that was probably one of the hardest ones really of my career.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Yeah, I totally agree. My biggest rejection took me uh almost a year to come back from. I think it's the ones that you get close that are the hardest, you know. It's easier to be okay with something that you kind of knew was a long shot.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

If you're already at acquisitions, oh my goodness, you can always taste it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

I've had a meeting at the HarperCollins office here in Sydney. It was so it was really it, I had just this vision of what it was going to be like, and it that was really devastating. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Yeah, it makes sense. And also I just wanted to add like about your manuscript that didn't get published, but then it's I don't think it was wasted time because, like you said, you've got all these essays that you've pulled from it, it's helped you produce the novel that was published. So I think that's another good message for writers like myself. Don't be disheartened if you have written multiple manuscripts and you're still waiting for that publishing deal because it's not wasted words.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Absolutely, absolutely. And then, so after Dark Mode was published, I'd sent in a one-page synopsis for my next book. I got a two-book deal with Dark Mode, and I spent 18 months working on that manuscript. And to cut a long story short, I basically threw the whole thing out. It just did not work. I knew I couldn't get it to work, and then I had seven months left on my deadline to write a whole new book. And I did use some of the work that had gone into the original version. So, for example, the setting, which is in Winnipeg, Canada during a minus 30 winter, that all stayed the same. The main character's main job stayed the same. She was always a tour guide, but basically everything else in that book changed. There was only six scenes that I was even able to rework in order to put into the new book. And it was that was really devastating to think, okay, this is my second thriller, this is my fourth published book. And I had to just throw out an entire manuscript.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

But I was able to write the new version. The new version was so much better. Uh, it had a really great reception from readers in the end. And it was because of all the work I put into that draft that I threw out that I was able to then so quickly come up with something so much better. So nothing's ever wasted. It's all it's all important thinking time, development time, skill development.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Yeah, 100%. So for a writer

Writing advice

SPEAKER_01 35:21

out there with multiple unpublished manuscripts, is that is that your advice, you know, that it's nothing is wasted. It will lead you to where you are meant to be.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

I think two things. Like that's important, yes. Also to remember that there is so much going on behind the scenes in good writing. Good writing, it's it's actually really deceptive because good writing makes it look easy. But it wasn't until I really started learning about the internal mechanics of story that was the thing that helped me go from unpublished to published. And that's that's when I teach, that's what I really focus on in my teaching is the internal mechanics of story. I think about it like a car engine. Like as readers, we are the equivalent of drivers. And we think we're really familiar with the car. We spent so much time in the car, we know how to use the car. And then someone says to you, okay, go build a car. You're like, all right, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna build my own car. It's gonna be great. And you do know that car so well, except for the engine. Like, you know, there is an engine, but you're like, I'm not really familiar with that. But but it'll, if I do the rest of the car really well, the engine, it'll well work out. And for some people, intuitively, they can just do that. But for myself, and I know for a lot of people, you need to actually learn how to take that engine apart piece by piece, break it all down, figure out what everything does, look at how it works in really great books, and then build those skills up for yourself. And so you might have a book that your friends say, Oh, like this is really great, but your friends are reading it through the lens of being your friends. Like, give it to a stranger and ask, does this book make you want to keep reading? And like that's really the key is do you have an engine that is driving your story? I don't think we use the term narrative drive as a coincidence that we want that feeling of being taken somewhere. So that's one thing. And the other thing I do just want to say is if you're someone who is working really hard towards a creative goal and you have that, especially if you have a creative career in mind, that was really where I was with my manuscripts, right? Like it meant so much to me. I put all of myself into it. I think just acknowledging that the stress that that can put on you, I think that is one of the many factors that led to me getting so sick was that I had been working for years at that point and felt like I was, felt like I was failing, like felt like I just couldn't achieve this thing. And so remembering that, getting good support around you, taking good care of yourself and going easy on yourself. It's an incredibly hard thing to launch a creative career, and you just have to keep in mind the impact on your health while you are working on that.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Really good advice. I have come to this realization where I am enjoying the journey, and that is how I don't get so bogged down with the end goal and whatever I haven't achieved because I'm just enjoying the now so much. Maybe it's um demotivating me in some ways because you know, I'm I'm have I was saying to someone last night I was at a book launch and they asked me how how my writing's going, and I said, Yeah, I'm kind of at the end of another draft and just got to read it through, but I'm I think I'm stalling a little bit because at the moment it's full of possibility, you know. And um once I do actually finish reading, then I have to send it out, and then it is up for criticism, and you know, it will be judged, and it it may not make it again. And so there's good and bad to enjoying the now, and I have to um also find the strength to push to submit, you know. But it's so interesting, like you said, we do have to look after ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Yes, yes, that and that's great advice, Kelly, is is is appreciating the journey and finding joy in the journey. And it and it sounds like you're connecting with people as well. And that was one of the things that I eventually concluded was that writing had brought so many great people into my life that I was going to keep doing it regardless of if I ended up getting a book published or not, because it it was enriching my life in those ways. So, yes, I think that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Yeah, beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

So, last question

What's next?

SPEAKER_02 39:54

what can we expect from you next? Oh, I am working on my next thriller. I'm very excited about it. I did survival training in the outback so that I can set my next thriller in the outback. It is still cybercrime, so it's still tech noir. People have been referring to it as tech back noir, and I'm very, very excited about this new manuscript. I'm referring to it jokingly as 500% more twists. So that is the reason why it's taking me longer, though, is because trying to pack in more twists has made the story more complicated. And it's just a new challenge for me. Obviously, all my thrillers have twists, but this level of increasingly ratcheting up the twists throughout the story is a new challenge that I've been really enjoying.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Yeah. Oh, sounds amazing. Sounds very dark and scary too. It's been such a pleasure to chat with you. I think I could have talked for another hour, so we might have to do this again. Oh, that would be a joy, Kelly. Thanks so much for your great questions. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening to this episode of Kelly's Writerly QA. If you'd like to know more about the podcast, visit Kellyscroy.com.