Elizabeth Kay, SEVEN LIES
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[1:04]by it is a gift to housewarming if you actually go somewhere or just give it to yourself. Everybody
[1:09]needs a treat without a long spring. PageOneBooks.com. Welcome to day four of my July book blast.
[1:17]Today I'm going to be calling this thrilling Thursday, and there are a bunch of thrillers,
[1:23]and suspenseful reads that I thought you'd really enjoy, and that would make great summer reads.
[1:29]A lot of these came out during the pandemic, and they're really worth your time, so I wanted to get
[1:33]them out. I hope you enjoy them. Elizabeth Kay is the author of Seven Lies, which is a fantastic
[1:39]debut thriller. Seven Lies, when it made the submission rounds for the publishers, it became one of
[1:44]the most set after novels of the year, and was immediately sold all over the world at the London
[1:49]Book Fair. Now there's already a TV deal in place publishing rights have been sold in 20 countries,
[1:54]and it's gearing up to be a really exciting, much anticipated summer read. So I had to get
[2:00]it out so you guys could hear about it. Elizabeth Kay works in the publishing industry under a
[2:04]different name. She currently lives in London and has a first class degree in English literature.
[2:09]Welcome, Elizabeth. Thanks so much for coming in, Mom. I'm starting to have time to read books.
[2:12]Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I love your accent. I always love doing
[2:17]my guess with these beautiful projects and sense so official and everything so.
[2:23]So Seven Lies, your book, like, took the world by storm at the London Book Fair, and now it's
[2:29]going to be a TV and movie, and it's so good. First of all, tell listeners what it's about,
[2:34]and then what inspired you to write it, which is a great story, too. Sure. It's the story
[2:39]of Seven Lies that lead to the death, and it starts with two best friends, Jane and Marnie, who've
[2:45]known each other since school. And it is organized by the Seven Lies that Jane tells to Marnie
[2:51]throughout the novel. And along the way, we find out what this death is and how their friendship
[2:57]was a part and the various strings that have been pulled and released as their relationship
[3:03]has evolved. I think it's for me, it was about how sort of childhood friendships can evolve
[3:08]as we become adults and what that can look like and how female friendships can be
[3:12]intense and very overwhelming and that can be a brilliant thing, but it can also be a difficult
[3:18]and very complicated thing at the same time. So true. And was it the inspiration for it, how I came
[3:24]to write it? Yes, please. So on a practical kind of how should I write it? No, I've been writing
[3:29]something else for about three years and I had kind of, I'd worked. I felt like I'd been working at it
[3:35]for absolutely ages and I had been written it again and again and changed whole parts of the plot
[3:40]and I never really felt like it was particularly exciting or very strong. And it took a long time,
[3:46]I think, for me to have the courage, I suppose, to say, actually, I'm going to stop trying.
[3:51]I think I'd always be told, keep persevering, keep persevering, don't give up and it felt
[3:56]like a bit of a failure to put that one away. But as soon as I had kind of drawn a line under it,
[4:01]I was able to start thinking about something new and I knew I wanted to write about female friendship
[4:05]and I knew that I wanted it to be very dark and very sinister and the main character is Jane,
[4:10]it's all told from her perspective and her voice came to me straight away and I so enjoyed being
[4:16]in her head, but I kind of very much. Once I had her and I felt like I knew her and I knew how she
[4:21]spoke and what she wanted to say, I felt like I was onto something that felt exciting to me.
[4:26]It's also so great how you have Jane talk directly to the reader. I always love when that happens in
[4:31]books, right? Like, it's just so neat because then you're just like, so in it, you know,
[4:36]you feel complicit in whatever she's doing and thinking and I don't know, it's just like this,
[4:41]it's an intimacy squared, something. I totally agree. I really like a first person
[4:49]narrator and as you say, that sense of being part of their story can be quite enjoyable.
[4:55]Yes. There was a passage, the way you write about female friendship because as a woman and
[5:01]whatever I adore my female friends and I've felt a lot about friendship over the years as many
[5:06]people have and there's one passage hold on. Let me just get to it. You wrote, there is something
[5:11]so enchanting about a first-best friend at 12. It is intoxicating to be so needed to crave someone
[5:16]so acutely and to have that feeling of being so completely entwined. But these early bonds are
[5:22]unsustainable and someday you will choose to extricate yourself from this friendship in the pursuit
[5:27]instead of lovers. You will extract yourself limb by limb, bone by bone, memory from memory until
[5:33]you can exist independently until you are again one person or once you were two. So great.
[5:39]Oh, thank you. It's just so captivating. It's like, that is what happens because you're so
[5:45]in mesh. I had a really like one of my well, my best friend passed away on September 11th and
[5:52]at the time, thank you. At the time we were so, I try to explain now like and I explained to my
[5:59]you know, we're so close now. That's what it felt like then because in your early 20s, your best
[6:04]friends are like you're everything. They're who you talk to and you're just so like entwined.
[6:09]So when I read this passage, it just made me think of my friend safety and I don't know. Just how
[6:13]everybody, it doesn't have to be at 12. It can be at any point in your life when you meet someone
[6:18]and you become just totally like hooked together in a way. And I think, you know, you find you're
[6:23]talking to them all the time and you're telling them there's nothing about your life that they
[6:27]don't know. They know more than your parents, your siblings. Everyone else feels kind of boring
[6:31]like a Paris and you just want to be with that person. It is like falling in love, I suppose.
[6:36]And I think particularly when you're in that teenage face, can I guess all the hormones and
[6:40]everything else make it all that much more intense anyway. So true. So how did you come up with
[6:47]this structure, which I love also by the way of the seven lies and each chapter is a lie,
[6:53]like how did you come up with that? Or was it just a natural development when you were writing it?
[6:57]It was I suppose it was a conscious decision. The book I had been writing before had always felt
[7:02]really woolly and like I skipped all over the place and I never had enough structure or momentum.
[7:07]And so I knew I needed to be quite strict with myself this time and not allow myself the space
[7:12]to kind of run away and to various ideas without focusing on a central plot.
[7:18]And seven lies about like an interesting way to hold myself to account. I couldn't,
[7:23]I could never travel too far away because I always had to get back to the next line in the story.
[7:28]So it started for me as quite a practical tool and because I'm not really a planner
[7:32]instinctively, I sort of had a vague idea where the middle would be, a vague idea where the end would
[7:36]be and it served as a bit of a road map to stop me, stop me losing my place I guess.
[7:43]That's awesome. And I read somewhere that you were inspired by some sort of Broadway show
[7:49]to write this particular story. Did I make that up? No you didn't make that up. My husband,
[7:54]we were in New York for his birthday in 2018 I think and we went to see Waitress and there is a
[8:02]song in that will take it from an old man which is one of the characters I don't know if you know
[8:07]it's saying to the other you know life is short do what you want to do have a go it doesn't
[8:11]matter if you fail and that was a point of which I was like right I have to put down the previous book
[8:16]I have to draw that line underneath it and I have to try again. So it was just one of those moments
[8:20]that I don't know the song kind of pushed me to take that leap into trust like that and to start a
[8:25]stretch. Very interesting. So like start to finish how long did this book take?
[8:30]About all in I think it was about a year or 15 months including editing and so not too bad
[8:37]given the other was three years and it didn't get very far. And you work in publishing also.
[8:43]I do I'm an editor for transfer publishers which is part of Penguin Random House in the UK
[8:49]for that is where I had that editor had a Monday Friday and then writer had Saturday Sunday.
[8:54]Wow so when did you find time to do this? Did you it was this like a before work after work?
[8:59]It was only weekends actually I was always really knackered after work and I can never really think
[9:04]creatively or kind of carve out the time for it. So I sort of sat down every Saturday and Sunday
[9:09]morning and wrote until I couldn't better write another word and eventually there were enough
[9:13]words on the page for me to start editing which is what I prefer doing if I'm on this getting the
[9:17]words down that like a bit of a slog and then I started to enjoy it from there. Have you always
[9:22]and your whole life is now books right your editor? Well I had a baby four months ago so that's kind
[9:27]of shaken the book bit to the side for the moment. But up until then it was it was very much all
[9:33]books. Was it something that from a very young age you just knew you loved and wanted to do and
[9:38]or how did you discover? Because I know you had some sort you had a pivot earlier in your career
[9:42]when you weren't working in the book world and your husband suggested that you do it.
[9:47]Right. Right. I wrote a lot of the child. I loved writing as a child and I think I stopped at some
[9:53]point in my teenage years at just stopping a priority and then when I was studying it was always
[9:58]other people's books.
[10:00]of thinking about language and form and never writing creatively. So it wasn't until
[10:06]after I left university and I started to think, what do I want to do? What sort of job do I want?
[10:10]I found myself in a job that I hated and my husband said, well, you like books and I thought,
[10:15]well, let's give that a go then. And I was really fortunate actually. I kind of
[10:19]I landed on my feet in many regards. I managed to get a couple of worth experience placements
[10:24]and one of those companies was then hiring for a PA. So I was able to apply for that job
[10:29]and then move up from there. And I think it was once I was back in the book world when I was
[10:34]working in books and seeing people writing creatively and doing that as a career. And I suppose
[10:40]seeing how publishing works, I thought I wanted to try it from the other side as well.
[10:44]And now that you've done both, what do you think? What was the most useful thing from being
[10:51]on the publishing side that you took into your experience as a writer?
[10:55]The importance, I think, of being able to pitch a book really succinctly. So when I'm trying to
[11:01]acquire a book as an editor, I'm always trying to pitch it in one or two lines at the most because
[11:07]I know that the publicists have to go out and talk to the media and be as picky as possible
[11:11]and the sales team to retailers. It's so hard to stand out, I think. And so that little focus
[11:17]for what that book is and how you can sum it up really briefly and make people feel excited by it.
[11:22]That was something I was aware would be great if I could manage to do that.
[11:26]Excellent. What sort of advice would you have then to aspiring authors? Aside from a short and
[11:32]exciting pitch? I think I would say based on my experience, don't be afraid to just put something
[11:38]down and start again. If it starts to feel boring, genuinely, but I think everything feels boring
[11:43]and hard work at times. That's not necessarily a reason to stop. But I think if it's not exciting
[11:49]you anymore, start again, try something different. Don't be afraid to do something else for a week
[11:53]or two weeks just to see if that feels like a better fit. I think if I had taken that advice earlier,
[11:59]I probably would have saved myself a lot of time trying to edit something that was never really
[12:03]going to be good enough. Tell me about the experience of the sale of this book and what that was
[12:09]like for you emotionally. They felt ridiculous at the time. If I felt so surreal, I was really
[12:14]excited when I signed with my agent because I think she's brilliant and I'd been impressed with her
[12:18]and thought she was wonderful long before I had a relationship with her professionally. I knew
[12:23]that she had done brilliant things for other debut authors. I felt excited that she was going to be
[12:29]the one to send it out, but still I think I was managing my expectations. When we started getting
[12:35]offers from various countries, it was so hard to make that feel real. I'm still not sure it does feel
[12:40]real if I'm honest. It feels very strange, but it was such a thrill that other people liked it
[12:45]because for so long it's just you and a keypad writing away at a laptop and then to have an agent
[12:51]like it is amazing and then editors coming on board too is so exciting. Tell me a little more about
[12:57]the film and TV news around the book. Again, that feels crazy. You never quite know if it will come
[13:04]to fruition, but it's been optioned and there is a writer currently working on a pilot here in
[13:11]the UK for a potential TV series. So fingers crossed, you know, it might be, it might be on TV at
[13:17]some point. It's so exciting. It's such a perfect transition to a limited series with seven episodes,
[13:23]isn't it? I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. That seems like if I were a TV producer, that's what I would
[13:29]do. I think that's what they've been talking about trying to keep the structure and see what happens.
[13:34]I don't know. It's one of those things I felt you hand it over to another creative team and say,
[13:41]do what you can with it. I hope it works for you and it feels exciting and you can do something fresh.
[13:45]So yeah, I'm just hoping that it will. It will happen. But yeah, fingers crossed certainly.
[13:51]And what has it been like now having a baby and trying to, are you still trying to write or
[13:55]how has it changed to your creative? You know, I'm trying. It's not as easy as it was to carve out
[14:03]big chunks of time. I think we're getting into a little bit more of a pattern, getting more
[14:08]sleep now certainly, which means a bit more mental space for thinking if not actual time. But
[14:14]I'm hoping, well, we will see. It feels a very different way to be writing my second book than it did
[14:19]for seven lives. Can you share what your next book is about? It's kind of very much an
[14:24]infancy. But I think it will be a story, a similar dark story looking at women in particular.
[14:31]And I think it will be focusing on women and anger, which is something, it's something that's
[14:37]interested me quite a while and how we think quite negatively about women who are angry.
[14:43]And it's seen as a weakness perhaps and kind of an ugly quality in many ways. But actually,
[14:48]I don't know. I feel like there might be something there. So we will see if I can get the
[14:52]words on the page or find out if there is something there. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much
[14:58]for chatting with me about your book. I feel like I can't wait to like watch and see as your
[15:03]career progresses because I feel like you're so young. I don't know how old you are. But you see
[15:06]you see me young to me. And this book is so good. I mean, just the way you wrote it the way it's like
[15:13]you don't get lost in the sentences. And yet they're still really interesting sentences. Like they're
[15:17]they're not too self conscious. Like you write it's clear enough and yet it's still
[15:22]literary, but not in a way where you feel like you're ever out of the flow of it, which I really
[15:27]appreciate because sometimes the sentences themselves can be a little distracting in their
[15:32]prettiness almost. And this is not like that. You're just so immersed. And I'm very grateful
[15:38]for books that really capture my attention and like draw me in and get me out of my own mind.
[15:44]And your book like is like a checklist. So I can't wait to just you know, truly. I can't wait to
[15:49]see all of your outfit. And it's exciting. I'm so nice to hear. I always say that I can be
[15:54]a bit of a lazy reader sometimes. I get I have to kind of really if I'm not into it really quickly,
[15:59]I find it quite hard to persevere. So to know that this was a book that kept you going.
[16:05]Yes, now it's amazing. And I see why there's so much attention around it. And anyway,
[16:10]it's very exciting. So I'm wishing you all the best. Thank you so much. Thank you.
[16:14]Sure not to tell any lies because as as you point out in the book, the first one, you know,
[16:19]I'll just stop. Thank you very much. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode from
[16:26]Thriller Thursday, part of my July book blast to get great authors into your hands while the
[16:31]summer is still going on. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[16:37]Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram at
[16:42]Zippy Owens and at Moms don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list at
[16:48]Zippy Owens.com so you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to. Thanks a lot.
[16:52]Thanks so much to page one books for sponsoring today's episode. I hope you'll all check
[16:56]out my summer beach bundle at page one books.com. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at
[17:01]Texture Sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morningmoon Productions for providing
[17:06]this fantastic intro and outramusic. Thanks for listening. You can always email me at Zippy Owens.com.