A new ‘Knives Out’ movie, the Balenciaga saga, and the road to publication

This week’s giveaway is Pip Drysdale’s thriller, ‘The Paris Affair’

It’s getting close to Christmas, and this week’s newsletter is a cracker of a read (see what I did there?). I’m so pumped for the continuation of my interview with gothic author R A Wodecki, aka one of the loveliest people ever and a beaut mistress of words.

Missed part 1 of the interview? Catch up here, where we talk about what she grew up reading and her pathway to becoming a writer. In this week’s chat, we get into her writing process, how the novel came together, and working her way towards publication.

Hope you love it sick, along with the rest of the newsletter. And the book giveaway is back – such a pretty cover, set in Paris, and murder in the mix? Sign. Yourself. Up.

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News

1.     Often wondered this – does kindness get in the way of success? I’ve always suspected so. How can someone who plays by the rules and puts others before themselves possibly compete with a person willing to trample everyone else on their path to career heights? Happily, it turns out that’s not so much the case. Kind leaders keep their staff and are more effective at their jobs. Still, I can’t help but wonder whether their road to the top was trickier to navigate due to their morals, and it’s only once they get there that their civility is to their benefit. In any case, this seems like a win for the good guys. Yay!

2.     Sometimes the most fulfilling and fascinating art is about working inside and around constraints. Dance isn’t about having the ‘perfect’ body and using it in the ‘perfect’ way; it’s about expressing yourself and letting the music wash over you and inhabit you so you and the audience experience something together. The kids in this cheer squad know that, and they’re including everyone along for the ride. Fab stuff.

3.     Balenciaga is in the hottest of hot water right now. Pushing boundaries can be daring and groundbreaking, but when is it just controversy just for the sake of seeking media attention? It seems that the brand has been crossing over to the dodgy side of that divide in recent years. Like, maybe dazzle everyone with your design talent, not distract them with poor-taste stunts? I do occasionally wonder whether we’re too pearl-clutchy about children in dance costumes wearing make-up – sometimes it just looks better under harsh stage lighting and isn’t about trying to make them look older or sexualise them. Photos for the Balenciaga campaign featured children carrying teddy bears in bondage outfits, with documents of a court ruling on child pornography appearing in the background. The brand has apologised, but given their recent track record for stepping way over the line in their campaigns, this seems like business as usual rather than a one-time innocent mistake. Dudes, do better.

Reviews

1.     We made a grave mistake this weekend. We rewatched the original Knives Out movie Friday and then settled down to view the sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Saturday night on Netflix only to realise… it’s not on Netflix yet. Oops! Anyway, we saw it Sunday night in the cinema. The first one has a classic murder mystery setting of the feuding, greedy relatives gathering at the family estate. It’s the plot that’s the fresh part of the equation (and it’s equally enjoyable on the rewatch). I was curious to see where the second one would go. Apart from the reappearance of Daniel Craig as the southern-accented detective Benoit Blanc, this one’s a whole new ball game. There are some delicious casting choices – the underrated-and-usually-hilarious Kathryn Hahn and Janelle Monae (so good in Hidden Figures!) in particular. The plot is even more ridiculous than the first one, in the best way possible, and there’s an anti-billionaire theme running through it that most people could get behind. Catch up on the first one if you need to, then see this, stat.

2.     My writing instructor in a course I’m doing compared my latest short story to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. It’s a classic I’d never encountered before *hangs head in shame*, but I read it on the weekend and all I can say is: huge thanks for saying my story is in any way reminiscent of it. Warning: the creeping dread factor is high.

Q&A

with gothic horror author R A Wodecki (Part 2)

Here’s the second instalment, continued from last week, of my chat with my awesome gal pal Rosalie about her new book, The Castle – Diary of a Lost Woman.

Beck: Tell us about your writing process – how you start with the idea and then start adding detail.

Rosalie: I usually have four major projects going and something needs to stick.

Beck: When you say major projects, you mean a novella or novel? 

Rosalie: At least, yeah. At least 10,000 words rather than a few thousand words. It might be a very long short story, but it has the potential to go somewhere. I'm not a planner because I didn't go structure, structure, chapter, chapter, chapter. I went: ‘Okay, who can I make space for in this story?’.

And then I went back from there, built in backstory and fleshed it out, wrote little short stories around the characters to give them more life, to give them more voice as well, a distinct voice.

Then I just kept writing and Writers SA used to have a 12-hour lock-in for writing, which was for me the best thing that ever happened for allowing my brain enough space to see where the story could go. That's what I needed. I think I could do it in less time now because I've done enough redrafts of this. But it just meant that your brain, it just had to let go of everything after that long and you had enough room to see the ebb and flow that we feel as readers, as an author and get these people moving on their own. And then things would slow on their own, so that felt like a chapter end. And things would pick up again or switch scene, start a new chapter.

Occasionally you'd get to a part where you're like, ‘Well, what's going to happen now? We'll throw someone else in there,’ and every time I did that, it was magnificent. Lots of them weren't a surprise, but two of them were a massive surprise to me. So that felt good. That didn't feel like it was constructed. That just felt like, ‘Yeah, there's room for you. You need to be here.’

Beck: Tell me about publishing and trying to get published and lots of people would identify with the struggle.

Rosalie: Well, I did try a traditional method because that's where I'd grown up, seeing books on a bookshelf more than Amazon. I didn't pay attention to who published them, but I knew they were publishers. I probably knew who Penguin was.

I had a very good go several times, including going on an eight-week fiction feedback course. So, I didn't just write this in isolation, I listened to feedback, dealt with all sorts of things about voice and clarity between different people.

I also went to a pitch conference through the writers’ centre where you got to pitch directly to publishers. That meant thinking about your book, taking it seriously, So I had to think about an elevator pitch, the synopsis, the blurb, what is the book about? Not what happened from beginning to end, but why does it matter?

I had a very positive chat with one publisher, but let’s just say it didn’t pan out. You had to submit five chapters. So, it wasn't based on nothing, it was based on good work. 

It was painful to be that close and not get in, but what it did give me was, ‘Well, this is a good thing that you're making. Don't give up, and if you can't get in the traditional way, at some point when you have the mental energy to do it, you're going to make it happen yourself.’ I just had to keep convincing myself of that.

Beck: At least a near miss like that, as heartbreaking as it is, it's like, ‘This must be pretty good though.’

Rosalie: Yes. It must not be at least terrible. It's very, very, very encouraging once you get over the pain.

Beck: So, give us a taste of what the book is about – an idea about the characters and where the story goes and why you love it.

Rosalie: Why I love it? Like I said previously, there is no sexual assault. That's a big one for me – and I know it's not for everybody, but for a lot of people that like horror, that will be the thing that will put them off. I don't care if that makes it a spoiler.

Because I don't want to read that. So, it's wonderful to be able to scare people but not do that to them. Because I don't know how that helps someone.

I actually tried to write it as two main characters, but you've got to pick one. So the main character is Anna and her awesome friend is Catalina and they end up in a castle because of a weird email from someone. Anna is very adventurous and Catalina's much more sensible, but really enjoys her friend’s sense of adventure.

What makes it more than just the scenery of gothic, like Frankenstein, it is also about the myth and her suffering. In particular, in my book, it's about misunderstanding myth and the impact it leaves on people. And how it could change someone's life, whether or not they believe it, but especially if they do. I go into the great big sexy land of gothic vibe.

There is so much fun in there, I start laughing when I think of some scenes, but also it's gothic so it's going to be sad. There's going to be enough sadness and laughter that it makes it awesome.

Giveaway

The book giveaway is back! This week, it’s a copy of Pip Drysdale’s suspenseful novel, The Paris Affair. Pop your name and email address in here if you’d like to go into the draw.

Playlist of the Week

Don’t make me ghost you. All right, if you insist:

1.     No Drama - James Hype, Craig David

2.     Kiss My (Uh Oh) - Anne-Marie, Little Mix

3.     Praying - Kesha

4.     You should be sad – Tiesto Remix - Halsey, Tiesto

5.     Kill This Love - BLACKPINK

6.     Myself - Bazzi

7.     Thank u, next - Ariana Grande

8.     Better Than Revenge - Taylor Swift

9.     Narcissist - Avery Anna

10.  How to Be a Heartbreaker - MARINA

11.  No More Drama - Mary J. Blige

12.  What the Hell - Avril Lavigne

13.  Karma - Queen Naija

14.  Have a Good Life (See You Never) - Benedict Cork

15.  That’s My Girl - Fifth Harmony