Rebecca Starford, AN UNLIKELY SPY

[1:39]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time To Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, My website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Today's sponsor is the Baby Trend Cover Me four in-one Convertible Car Seat. This car seat is so unique. It addresses the number one complaint by experienced mothers, which I believe I am, which is sun in your kid's eyes, which is something that of course drives them nuts and you're not going to want to put like what baby sunglasses on. That's never really worked for me. Along with the canopy, the Cover has a usage rating from four to 100 pounds, so you can use it for a long time, and can be used infant rear facing, toddler rear facing, forward facing, and belt positioning booster. The Cover Me also has a very convenient recline system, which includes a zero radio base and integrated recline flip foot. I don't exactly know what that means, but that's okay. The system allows the children to find a position comfortable to them and also limits the amount of space taken up by the seat when in rear facing position. Basically, it's just an amazing car seat, and I wish I had had this when my kids were little enough to fit into car seats. It makes parents' and kids' life much easier. It's just amazing, and it has a UPF 50 plus on the canopy so your kids don't get a sunburn either. So your kids will love sitting in it, they can interact with everybody in the car, and it protects you both rear and forward facing. There is a special 20% off code which is CoverMe20. If you go to babytrend.com/osa,ossa. That's httpsdouble/babytrend.com/ossa and put in the code COVERME20. Capital CCoverMMe, the number 20. Also, I'm giving away one of these car seats. So if you or anyone you know is having a baby soon and would like a new car seat, which is something that you have to get when you as soon as you're pregnant, I am giving one away. To win the giveaway, just write a review and give a rating to my podcast, preferably a five star rating and a really nice review if you don't mind. Extra credit if you do the same thing for my moms don't have time to lose weight podcast and my moms don't have time to have sex podcast. If you could do five star ratings and reviews for all of those podcasts, oh my gosh, you will definitely be at the top of the list for entering this giveaway. And then we will pick at random. So enter the giveaway, use the code if you just want to get the percent off and order it right away. And again, baby trend cover me four in one convertible car seat, go for it. It's June. Happy June 1, everybody. Welcome to my June Book Blast where I'll be releasing multiple podcast episodes a day, all based around a certain theme. And today's theme is Happy Pub Day. This is the Pub Day release for four books that are all coming out today June 1. Christine Mengan, Rebecca Stafford, Nikola Yoon, and Zakaya Harris. So enjoy today's June 1 book blast. Rebecca Stafford is the author of An Unlikely Spy. She's also the author of Bad Behavior, a memoir about boarding school and bullying. That book has been optioned for television by Matchbox Pictures. Rebecca's first novel, The Imitator, was published in The UK, and now it's coming out in The US in June with a different name. In The UK, it was called The Imitator, and here it's called An Unlikely Spy. Either way, it has an amazing cover, FYI. She is also the co founder and publishing director of Kill Your Darlings and has previously worked for Text Publishing and Affirm Press. She's a freelance editor and creative writing teacher. Originally from Melbourne, Rebecca currently lives in Brisbane, Australia with her partner, son, and many pets. Welcome, Rebecca. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books, to discuss An Unlikely Spy and everything else you're up to. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. Listeners, it is six in the morning in Australia where Rebecca is. So we're having like an in the dark podcast situation here, which is great. It adds an extra layer of intimacy to this conversation.

[6:10]Rebecca Starford: So love it. It does. It adds to the mistake, doesn't it? Yes, exactly. Sense of disguise.

[6:18]Zibby Owens: Yes. Already on edge with the mystery behind your book and everything. Can you tell listeners what your book is about? And also, what made you choose the first quote, the epitaph or epithet or whatever you wanna call it, that discusses how to know whether or not you're a monster or if this is just what humans really are?

[6:40]Rebecca Starford: Yeah. Well, okay. So An Unlikely Spy is set in London. It was set in two timeframes, both in London. Most of the book is set in 1939 and it covers the first year of the Second World War. The quiet period, I suppose you'd describe it, at least for the British, During which time Evelyn, a young 21 year old is recruited to work for MI5, the intelligence agency based in London. And her work really involves the infiltration of far right Hitler sympathiser group who were made up of very influential establishment figures in The UK. And this is based on real events and real people. And the novel explores it explores her work as a spy, the kind of the technical aspects of it, the processes for her training and how she will go about infiltrating this group. And it all but it also explores the psychological impacts this work has on her. How it is she has really come to be in this, what I found anyway, quite extraordinary position of both these high stakes intelligence work at a really young age. But also how it was that she was kind of primed for this work. What made her really a suitable candidate for adopting a different persona and how she reflects on those processes and what it does to her sense of herself but also her relationships with other people. Some of those people are actually very very close to her and have actually helped her in the progression of her career. So that sort of personal and professional worlds really collide later in the story. But the epigraph from Clarice Lispector you know, the quote is who has not asked himself at some time or other, am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person? I suppose really jumped out to me. I like Lispector but also the whole whole book sort of explores what betrayal means and also what, you know, for Evelyn, her work as a spy requires her to adopt the persona of these other far right individuals. Many of whom have really abhorrent, awful views. As we know now, historically, you know, very anti Semitic, in particular very much in favour of an allegiance or an alliance with Hitler and also a range of other kind of really problematic views as we look back on them historically. And so, that was what I wanted to explore. Can Evelyn still feel that sense of betrayal for people, you know, who are, you know, kind of objectively awful kind of people, but she has to develop an intimacy and a friendship with them as well. So it's all around that kind of complexity

[9:27]Zibby Owens: that I wanted to explore in the book. And what piqued your interest about this to begin with? So your last book was about bullying and boarding school, Now we're like deep in the like James Bond as a woman type of, you know, World War two. How did you get there? Like, what piqued your interest about it?

[9:45]Rebecca Starford: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I've I've been asked that a lot and people sort of asking if there are threads between the earlier books. I mean, I was really just interested in, you know, that kind of fundamental question of, you know, where do we find belonging? And, you know, so often we can find belonging in the wrong places. And my first book explored how that happened to me as a teenager. Obviously this is fictional, it's set, you know, in the 1930s in London. So all of those sorts of differences, but it's really a character study of this young woman and how it is her life is so transformed by, you know, particular sort of circumstances around her own upbringing, her educational opportunities. And really she's you know, she really shouldn't have been in that position at all because she was plucked kind of from obscurity when she wins a scholarship. Evelyn this is to go on to a prestigious boarding school. That's where she meets these people who become her friends who who have influence later in the story. But I mean, I'm interested in World War two in London. I love London as a city. You know, I've spent a lot of time there. And I was interested in that particular period of the war. You know, I think we read a lot about, you know, like you said, you know, the sort of the James Bond, the action pact, the kind of military operational aspects of the war. I wasn't interested in that. I was interested in the psychological aspect of it. I didn't know a lot about the first year of the war, the so called phony war where nothing was happening and there was still the belief that war wasn't that that it would be over. And it was really interesting to read back over so much archival material. In the intelligence service, you know, there was this conflict between what the intelligence service were telling government because the government of the time in The UK really didn't want to go to war. They really wanted I mean, it's understandable, obviously, but there was this real reluctance whereas MI5 rep where Evelyn was working at the time, they were really warning them of many threats. But the biggest concern was this uprising of pro German British nationals who in the event of invasion during that first year of the war there was a real fear that Hitler was going to be crossing the channel. And if in the event of that happening, the intelligence agencies were really paranoid about these establishment figures rising up and helping with that insurrection and with that invasion too. So, so much of their work was focused on local people and the threats they posed as well. And to me that was just absolutely fascinating because there are so many contemporary parallels between that. And I wrote, started writing the book in 2016 which was such a huge year for everyone, particularly for you guys over in The States. But also in The UK Brexit was happening, nationalism was on the rise, Australia has its own complicated sort of political situation too. So there was a lot swirling around. That to me was really fascinating looking at that through the lens of this particular historical event

[12:54]Zibby Owens: and these characters and drawing out those parallels, I suppose. Did you major in history? Have you always been into history?

[13:01]Rebecca Starford: No, I haven't had any kind of formal training in history. Read a lot of historical novels and, you know, it's just again, I suppose I suppose that I didn't maybe set out to write a book like this. It's just it was something that might that kind of held my held my interest. And I wanted to know whether it would be possible to write a historical novel.

[13:23]Zibby Owens: So Love it. You know, that's It's an accident an accidental historical novel. You know? Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.

[13:30]Rebecca Starford: Wow. That's funny. I mean, it's impressive. It's not really funny. I mean, it's just like it's it's impressive because I mean, I I don't mean to make it sound like I just sort of whipped it up because it's like I say, it was four years of, you know, self. And that means that the thing about historical fiction, obviously, is there's so much research. That was one of the really wonderful things about it too, know, going and doing that research, you know, being being in these particular places, spending time there. But also I went and visited the National Archives in London in Kew which was absolutely fascinating because they'd one of the things one of that happened during that early period of my research is they declassified, the government declassified a whole bunch of cables and archival materials, these transcripts of interviews that MI5 did during this period which kind of illuminated a lot of what was going on behind the scenes but it gave me this sense that almost the personality of the people involved, though they're pretty standard. But the kind of language that was used, the attitudes, it was all I thought it was absolutely fascinating. It was a kind of nerd's paradise in the archives. But that that worked its way into the book the book too. So that was really fantastic.

[14:40]Zibby Owens: And then let me ask you a really stupid question. So is The Imitator The UK version of the same book or is that a totally different book? No, that's the Australian edition. So that's called the name of of the same book over here is The Imitator. Yes. Know it's a little bit confusing, but hopefully, hopefully it's not just a wanted to make sure. I was like, did she she couldn't have done like a whole second book in the same genre in the same time period, but okay. Wow. So tell me about like the rest Okay, you've started all of this research. You've done these books and you also have started Kill Your Darlings, which are you it sound looks like from the masthead, you're still involved in and everything. Tell me about starting that. Tell me about how you balance your time with all of that and all of the writing and just like what your life is like now. Yeah. Okay. Oh.

[15:35]Rebecca Starford: So, yeah, I do. I run Kill Your Darlings which is a magazine. We're online now over here in Australia, though you can read it anywhere in the world. So this is a magazine, it's a literary magazine but we also a lot of my time is spent facilitating some other activities that we do. We run writers' workshops, mentor programs, manuscript assessments because I'm also, you know, my day job is as an editor. Was working in house for various publishers over here in Australia but I went freelance about five years ago. So I still do editing work as well on a freelance basis. So my editing in Kill Your Darling's work is about part time or so, maybe, you know, across the week, two and a half to three days and then I spend the rest of the time sort of writing. So, yeah, I filled in, you know, filled in writing around other work, that sort of balance I suppose. But I do try to write every day. So usually in the mornings. I also have a two year old. That's yeah. So hoping he's gonna stay asleep throughout our chat, but we will say. And so that's obviously, you know, as I'm sure you and many of your listeners know that's a whole other element to be balancing with work. And I mean, working from home and obviously with everything being going on with COVID that's been challenging as it's been challenging for everyone. Life in Australia has been a lot easier for almost everyone else in the entire world so we've been we've been really fortunate. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[19:24]Rebecca Starford: Been working from home as well, it's just that whole but I I mean, I wrote the book. I was still editing. The book was accepted by my Australian publisher. I was I was about two weeks away from give you know, gonna have him. And then I was doing editing. The bulk of the editing was and working with my American publisher was when he was about nine months old or something. So I can't believe and I looking back on that time, I can't believe I even did that. But sometimes that narrow focus and that task at hand. Someone said to me once that you know, if you're working and you're a parent, your levels of efficiency just are kind of off the charts because you have such a limited amount of time and so much to do. And I found that that's the case. I procrastinated much less now. So that's good.

[20:15]Zibby Owens: I know people always ask me that and I'm like, well, I just like have to do it. Like I have, you know, this is my time. I focus on one thing at a time and I'm like, okay, now I'm doing this. Now I'm doing that. Now I'm like doing like twenty minutes of like kids' medical forms. Now I'm doing now I'm gonna hang out with them. And you know, I have four kids. So anyway That's right. Oh my god. Okay. Wow. But I have to say, my kids are a little older. I have a six and seven year old and then twins who are almost 14. In the pandemic, I was like, at least they're older. I mean, having a baby or I mean, that is I think having one child that age is harder than four kids who are older, just FYI,

[20:55]Rebecca Starford: I think. Yeah, but I mean presumably you had you were home, you had to homeschool the kids as well and do it all. I just I don't know how that That was so funny. So anyway, it's just I get it. Yeah, I know. Yeah, absolutely.

[21:09]Zibby Owens: But no, so that's

[21:11]Rebecca Starford: how the day yeah, that day sort of spent. And I mean it's not I feel lucky that my day job as it was is also working with words always engaging with writing and having conversations with writers because that's really enriching when it comes to my own work and being an editor has been so transformative for my own writing process and also when it comes to reworking my own material too. So that's been great. So did I make up that you're getting a PhD?

[21:42]Zibby Owens: Was that you?

[21:43]Rebecca Starford: Did I make that up? Yeah. I I was also doing

[21:47]Zibby Owens: was also doing a literally like doubting myself. I'm like that can't be her then.

[21:53]Rebecca Starford: No. Yes. I I thought it'd be a good idea to also do a to do a PhD. So I I started that. That about four years ago as well. I have actually finished that so I'm almost I've gotten the examiner's reports back so I just need to make a couple of changes so in a couple of months that will be done and then I'll hopefully be that's when I'll be awarded my doctorate. That was probably the taking on too much. Was a point last year when I was going, Oh God, why have I done this? But I had managed to juggle it until that point just with the submission, the mad scramble to get it in because I'd maxed out. I'm not sure what it's like in The States but in Australia now with your PhD, used to be able to kind of take long as you wanted But they've cracked down here and if you go over your four years, you've got to start paying fees and all these sort of things. So I said to myself, right, I've got to do this and then it was just absolutely, absolutely crazy. So that was good to be to be done. But I've learned I've learned my lesson about I finally realized I have to scale back, not scale up now.

[23:04]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. So one of your last projects is being adapted optioned or something. What about this project? What's going on with that? Well, so far it's all quiet on

[23:14]Rebecca Starford: that front. So I mean, it'd be obviously wonderful if the book was to take on another form. So, know, obviously, yeah, if anyone is interested that's wonderful. So, mean, you know, I think, you know, there's an appetite for this kind of material as well. So, yeah, that'd be great if that was to happen. Is there anything you learned about that time period? Not to distill

[23:40]Zibby Owens: your entire, you know, magnum opus of research down to one or two sound bites. But is there something about that time that you learned that you were really surprised about? Or just that isn't like mainstream knowledge or aside from the quiet period in general and Yeah. You know, the the overall sentiment of the time? Anything? Yeah.

[24:01]Rebecca Starford: I think I think there were two I think there were two things just which are sort of quite different, but they're sort of more social. I mean, maybe maybe I did did know these things, but they were definitely sort of clarified through the process of research and writing. So the first was that well, I mean, I really came to the that the real the real seed of the idea, that very first little of idea in the back of my head was I came across this article in a British newspaper and it was an obituary for a woman who she died when she was in her late 80s. And it was only sort of right before her death that she'd revealed to her family. So she'd lived a pretty kind of conventional ordinary inadvertent commas life and she revealed very close to her death to her family that she actually worked for MI5 and she'd been involved in parachuting into France, you know, during the occupation and, you know, just extraordinary stuff. So she'd had this career during the war. Then the war ended and her service was sort of terminated. And she was required to go back to her life as it had been before, which was living in the countryside, getting married, having children, never working again. And it just I just could not believe this. I mean, know, as a contemporary twenty first century woman, this made my blood boil. It made my blood boil that these were the circumstances in which women's know women's working lives were kind of you know dictated. But that she'd been erased from history and there was this tiny little sort of note in the newspaper about her achievements. So that really that was a big propellant for me to uncover the story. Mean, Evelyn is not that kind of character. She's not kind of overtly heroic. I think she's a courageous person in many ways, but she's much more complex in terms of creating this character on the page. But I wanted to uncover those kinds of stories. So I mean, I just came across countless stories of women whose service was obviously so important and so integral, but so often it's forgotten, you know, if we think about these war stories or even if we think about espionage stories, know, it's such a masculine space. So that for me was really important. And obviously, was aware of women, you know, having these working opportunities during the war and then going back to the sort of the house the housewife sort of role such as it was back then very very limited. But yes, reading it over and over and women who were so accomplished as well was just I found that really kind of demoralizing and upsetting. And the other thing that I discovered which I think maybe I sort of knew intuitively but it was confronting to read about it was the group that Evelyn infiltrates. They're quite the extreme end of this far right kind of attitudes. But that a lot of these social attitudes around nationalism and anti Semitism in particular were fairly widespread amongst the establishment. Britain as we know has problematic attitudes, a problematic history when it comes to anti Semitism as so many countries in Europe do. But that these ideas that this particular group take and go kind of extreme with, you know, were quite pervasive at the time too. So it was how one of the challenges was how to kind of, you know, immerse myself in that way of thinking and how to kind of calibrate, I suppose those attitudes as well. Obviously not everyone had those thoughts and those feelings and attitudes as well, but how to scale them against what we now know and what we now think about those particular prejudices and you know sort of hatred. So that was fairly fairly kind of confronting too. But yeah those those sort of those parallels as well. Mean the book you know the book we sort of signed up on all the proofs and everything went over there for you guys in The States when there was you know the storming of the capital. I mean it was kind of this it was crazy that this was happening. Mean, that's was a whole a crazy day. Yeah, how can we? That's a whole other conversation. But that there were these that was a homegrown insurrection and that this in a much smaller small scale in my in my little book, you know, that it just shows that this this history is still repeating itself and this kind of the fermenting of these kind of clashes between ideas and the way that we live and how we are governed just continues. So that was just really extraordinary as well. So it's a story, you know, the events of World War II, I think this is why people are still so interested in it. They keep playing out in a kind of different format across our time in our time span since the war. And that's why when we're reading it, I think we can draw yeah, draw these kind of quite powerful parallels.

[29:10]Zibby Owens: So are you working on a new project now? Because you're not doing enough, you know?

[29:16]Rebecca Starford: I've finished the PhD, so I've got to take on something huge. Yeah, exactly. I would like to I am thinking and starting to plan out another book project but it's in the very very early stages. So it does it is set abroad again for me, it's set in some different locations overseas which is challenging to my research because obviously we can't travel at the moment. So I'm just sort of thinking about ways I can I'm using Google Maps a lot. I'm just thinking about how I can how I can plan for that. So but yes, I do I do hope to be writing writing in properly in the in again very very soon. If it takes place in New York City, just let me know. I can be here, you know. Wonderful. Face me from the street or something. Any excuse to come back to New York, I'll be absolutely there.

[30:07]Zibby Owens: I've never been to Australia. It's like number one on my list. I don't know if that's there. But I would love

[30:13]Rebecca Starford: When we whenever we reopen our borders, it would be wonderful to have have you come over here. It's a beautiful country. It's big though. You need a lot of time. You need a lot of time to come in. Which I don't have. Mom's taking the time to go to Australia. So Yep. I understand.

[30:28]Zibby Owens: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

[30:31]Rebecca Starford: To persevere, really. I mean, so much of writing, for me anyway, is about sitting up, know, sitting at the desk sort of turning up for work I suppose. So much of the work on this book as it was for my first book was taking the material that I had in that first draft which was you know, very unwieldy, very messy and just revising and working. For me, obviously, a lot of it was built around the research feeding that research through taking things out. But yeah, being persistent and being patient. Think that's the biggest requirement of a writer because it is challenging at times and it can be frustrating when things aren't coming together as well. And like I said, this is a book that took me sort of four years. Had a and I had a baby sort of in between. Thankfully, I'd done, you know, the bulk of that writing work before he turned up. But yeah, just that that kind of patience and perseverance I think is the best thing to continue. And to also just to be open to sharing your work with others. I've found that having some really great trusted readers to get feedback, you know, really objective feedback has been really instructive and helpful for me. I've been really lucky in that respect. Excellent.

[31:48]Zibby Owens: Well, Rebecca, thank you so much. Thanks for waking up early and doing this podcast.

[31:54]Rebecca Starford: My pleasure. Mean, as you can see, I probably would have been up anyway. No, but you wouldn't have been all dressed and everything. Oh, thank you. You're always proud of the day. Oh, and thank you so much for having me, Xivia. It's been so lovely to chat.

[32:08]Zibby Owens: You too. It's been great. All right. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to part of my June Book Blast. I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow for more. Thanks again to today's sponsor, the Baby Trend Cover Me four in one convertible car seat. Don't forget to enter my giveaway, and the winners will be announced at the end of this week. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.