Clare Mackintosh, HOSTAGE: A Locked-Room Thriller

[1:09]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 time 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 and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Claire McIntosh is the author of Hostage, a locked room thriller. Claire is an award winning New York Times and international bestselling author. She spent twelve years on the police force in England and has written for The Guardian, Good Housekeeping and other publications. Translated into 40 languages, her books have sold more than 2,000,000 copies worldwide. Claire lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children. Welcome, Claire. Thanks for coming on Mom's Now Time to read books, to discuss Hostage. You can save hundreds of lives or the one that matters most.

[2:18]Clare Mackintosh: That's good. You should be like one of those movie announcers. You just need to get that gruesome That's true to be a man with a little voice. Other than that, I'm fine.

[2:27]Zibby Owens: Excellent. And by the way, may I just say that you had the coolest marketing package that I've seen with like, that came so long ago now. Feel like when even was that months ago with like the, like, well describe it to everybody. What did you do? Because it's like They did

[2:43]Clare Mackintosh: such a cool job. I was actually quite, I was quite envious. I was quite jealous because I'm in The UK. And so I have my UK team doing stuff, but in The States they put together this really cool in flight magazine.

[2:55]Zibby Owens: And then what else? Because I haven't had it. I feel like there was like a ticket or like a ticket and like, it was like a whole,

[3:01]Clare Mackintosh: yeah. You felt like you were going on the flight. Which was really good timing, of course, because nobody was going on a flight at all. So I figured actually it's gonna work one of two ways. It's either gonna be really great to make people really excited or everyone's gonna go, I don't want to go on a plane. Well, don't want to be a hostage necessarily, you know? No, mean, it'd be nice to go on a slightly less eventful flight than the one that's in the book perhaps. Although

[3:27]Zibby Owens: I, it sounds amazing. This flight to, you know, Sydney and the twenty hours, not the fact that it's twenty hours, but like how luxurious it was. And I mean, I don't know, it sounded like a plane I would want to try out. You know, the thing that I was most excited about in my fictional world was the fact that the people in business class got these special commemorative pajamas

[3:49]Clare Mackintosh: to wear,

[3:51]Zibby Owens: which I don't think is a thing. Because this is It is a thing. You get pajamas on flights. Oh, you go on posher flights than I do. Clearly, it's You get you get flights on British Airways on pajamas. Yes, you do. I have them in my closet because I went on my honeymoon to Wimbledon and I saved my pajamas. That is the coolest thing. Oh, come on. Stop. You didn't do research. You wrote a whole book about this.

[4:16]Clare Mackintosh: I've just never obviously flown the sort of on the sort of ticket that comes with its own pajamas,

[4:23]Zibby Owens: Zibby. Yeah. No. You did not make it up. They do it on on most international flights. And Air France, like, I feel like Air France does pajamas. I think maybe I'm just not traveling in the right class

[4:34]Clare Mackintosh: of I think that's the problem. What it is. I'm I need to sell more books.

[4:38]Zibby Owens: Have you have you worn these pajamas since? I have. I always change right into them because I think it's the funniest thing. I should find you a picture. If I can find it after this, I'll send it to you for my honeymoon where I like, and they're like oversized men's pajamas. And next thing you know, I'm like patting down the hall and my

[4:55]Clare Mackintosh: is simple. So I'm trying to think of what I've had free on planes. So I flew with, so I've had some sort of nice like sleep masks and sprays, you know, the robo therapy spray. That was very nice. The weirdest thing I've had is a little China, like kind of porcelain house flying with KLM. These are not sponsored airlines, we should point out. Yes. The Dutch airline. And they were little kind of little Dutch houses. I'm not really sure what it was for. So that was a bit odd. But I love all that stuff and I love even flying with really sort of budget airlines. I love airline food and little miniature salt and pepper pots and it's a little miniature cutlery that doesn't really cut properly because you can't take knives on planes. I miss travel.

[5:45]Zibby Owens: Me too. The stale rolls, the freezing cold butter. That's like a brick that you like have to saw through with your plastic. And

[5:55]Clare Mackintosh: do you know what? So this, I wrote this book sort of during the pandemic or certainly edited it. It kind of been written before it, but I had envisaged that the whole of 2020 while I was putting the finishing touches to this book, that I would do what I normally do, which is write on planes. That's kind of my thing is when I'm traveling for book festivals or signings or whatever, I play little games with myself. So I will upgrade myself if I'm prepared to work or I'll go into a lounge. So I'll get to the airport and I'll say, right, you can use the business lounge but only if you write a thousand words. And then, you know, I'm on the plane and you can have a glass of champagne once you've written, you know, 200 words. I don't wanna I don't wanna put it off too long. So I have these little games and I break up my writing with nice fun stuff like going to the bar if there's a bar on the plane or I don't know, watching an episode of Friends or something. But of course, I didn't have any of that last year. And so I just had to be in my office with no one bringing me pretzels. Was very I'm

[7:03]Zibby Owens: very sorry.

[7:05]Clare Mackintosh: Does this classify as a first world problem? I think it might.

[7:09]Zibby Owens: I love writing on planes. I love doing like anything productive on planes. And I'm kind of sad that, like I'm super sad that now it's just another place to email with wifi and everything. Protected space to be creative or to get through a book or read or write

[7:27]Clare Mackintosh: or whatever anyway. And this is the sort of thinking about your not having time to do anything. The thing about plain time is that it feels like free time. And it does. Sometimes if you are going back in time, then it actually is free time. Like you literally travel. You get a free day. So you've done like, you know, you've done a whole day's work and then you arrive and okay, like you're massively jet lagged and you feel a bit sick, but you've got another day and it's free and you get to do more work or read a book or, and I love that. It blows my mind just a tiny bit because I can't quite get my head around actual time travel. I totally agree. Yeah. There's something about that where you're like, oh, I landed and it's like only seven in the morning. Everybody here is just waking up, but like, look at me and I'm

[8:18]Zibby Owens: yeah. I love that. Everything is sort of suspended. Crazy. Okay. So for this book, you start out with a mother and her estranged husband. And, you know, this makes me very nervous as I'm trying to hire a new nanny on the weekends. Like, you know, for what happens with this au pair right at the beginning. And anyway, and sort of a special needs kid who they've adopted and what this flight will do for their relationship and the mother and what is she hiding and all of this drama. So tell me, just take me back before you envisioned a life of pretzel eating, you know, above Why the

[8:58]Clare Mackintosh: this family? Like how'd you come up with them? Okay. So the way I write my books generally is I start with the premise. So I start with kind of the question and that was what happens if you're on a long haul flight, you can't contact people on the ground and somebody anonymous on that plane puts a flight attendant in an impossible situation, which is do you save the plane or do you save your family back home? So that's my starting point, which is obviously a fairly horrific starting point. And then I think about who is in that situation. So when I started planning hostage, I started with Mina. I generally start with Mum, I guess because I am one. And so that's, you know, that's easy. I'm always lazy. Start the easiest job. And Mina is quite a complicated person because she's got various things that happened in her past that impact on her decision making. And, you know, that's all of us, all these layers that we build up. And I knew that I wanted her relationship with her child to be quite challenging. And then what happened was I had a conversation with a friend of mine who has an eight year old daughter who was adopted as a baby. And before I knew, so I happened to know a number of parents of adopted children, which is quite common for anyone like me who's gone through fertility treatment. You start to know a lot of parents who have come to their family in different ways. And this particular friend was telling me about a moment when her eight year old daughter came to her for a hug for the first time at the age of eight, the first time that she had instigated affection. And it was a very moving moment, but it also really made me think about what that's like to have a daughter for eight years who finds it so difficult to ask for affection because of what happened to that child as a baby. You know, what do does to you as a mother? And I have a daughter who has autism and for whom affection is quite a tricky thing that sometimes she needs to be held but won't be held. And it, you know, it's something I know a little bit about. So that slotted a few things into place and that's how Sophia came about. And Sophia in Hostage is five years old and she was adopted at birth but she comes from a chaotic family where affection wasn't given to her and where she cried and nobody came. And those are habits that have formed and are so ingrained that that makes her quite a challenging child. And then the final piece in that family dynamic is Adam, who is a police officer. And I was a police officer for twelve years. And what I wanted to write about when I wrote about Adam was a police officer who we see off duty because cops are like the rest of us where, you know, we've got issues and worries and anxieties and weaknesses. And so although we see, we meet Adam briefly at work, we actually, this is not him as a police officer, this is Adam as a dad at home with all the secrets and problems that he's got. So that's that little triangle and the relationship that the parents have with each other and with their child and then them as a threesome.

[12:29]Zibby Owens: Wow. So interesting. Well, I feel like we got Adam a little bit at work, but he was already like failing out of work. Jeremy, like, I feel like you already had him one foot out the door by messing up and getting called to the boss's office and, you know, his backup against the thing so all of his peers can see him and all worried about his phone records. And, you know, then you're like, okay. Enough of that.

[12:51]Clare Mackintosh: Send him on his way. He's in trouble. He's in trouble from the outset. And I like to tell stories from multiple points of view, which you have to be a little bit careful about because as a reader, it can get a bit kind of, you get what I call literary whiplash if you're going from one person to another too fast. But if you, as a writer, can pull it off, then it gives you a much more three-dimensional experience from a situation. And so what we have in Hostage is we have mum and dads, Mina and Adam's situations, and they are both in very, very difficult situations in different but connected ways. And then we also get to see little insights into some of the passengers on this special twenty hour flight. And that was really fun to do.

[13:45]Zibby Owens: That's also, I always, because I'm always wondering what's up with all of the people, Right? Like, what's their story? What are we all doing here? Like That's it. And I'm trying to glean it when you're, like, sitting next to someone and, like, what's he working on? No one's ever gonna wanna be near me after this podcast. It's I'm just finally admitting how, like, totally snoopy of a person I am. You know. But this is the thing, isn't it? When you are a creative person,

[14:08]Clare Mackintosh: whether you produce art or you consume it, I think you're a kind of professional people watcher. And so whenever I'm travelling and I'm normally, if I'm travelling with work, which is most of my travelling, I'm travelling solo. So I'm not being distracted by the kids, you know, vomiting or wanting snacks or like just climbing on me or all the things that they do, or by making conversation with my husband or a friend. I'm just me and I'm eavesdropping and watching. And I think it's fascinating to make up stories and to wonder, if the person they're traveling with is the person they're married to or someone they just met at the airport or, you know, all those little relationships. And long haul flights are just, I find the concept of them when you boil it down really quite a threatening, a potentially threatening environment. So you know, you're locked. It is literally a locked and pressurized room. You cannot go anywhere. Nobody can come in. So from a writer's perspective, it's both exciting and challenging because you can't suddenly introduce a new character that just kind of walks on set halfway through the flight. But also where else do you sleep? Like, you know, this far, you know, six inches away from a stranger's head. I mean, that's just the weirdest thing. You literally sleep as close as you sleep to someone you're in a relationship with. And yet you might not even exchange two words with them. And it's just a weird concept. You've got no idea what they're like or whether they mean you harm.

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[18:06]Zibby Owens: Wow. Yeah, you had a line in the book similar to this where, you know, you said like, like what could happen? 20, all breathing the same air, you know, that's it. And I read, I was like, okay, I don't know if I can ever get on another plane at this point, basically. Is it now I'm like, so like you have to pretend when you're in it that all these weird things are not happening. Otherwise no one would ever fly, right? Yes, it is a weird thing. And I remember seeing years and years ago, a particular airline, which I won't name,

[18:38]Clare Mackintosh: where they were talking about an idea that they'd had, and this never actually happened, I'm glad to say. But the idea was that passengers on a flight would be able to send messages and drinks to another passenger on the flight.

[18:56]Zibby Owens: So, you know, you imagine you're a They have this. What? They have this. I've done this on your little phones that you like pull out like on the screens or something you can text because You I've like,

[19:08]Clare Mackintosh: can send a message now. So that in itself, I think has the potential to be creepy. But imagine your So the idea was that you would be able to send a drink to, you know, with a note to another seat. So imagine you're a lone woman and you're travelling and you can't go anywhere. It's not like a bar where you can leave and the man in, you know, Row 46, whatever, sends you a martini with a note saying, you know, pass my row or meet you in the bathroom. It's just horrible. It's the creepiest thing. And so this, so I've been thinking for ages about how unsettling it would be to know that there was someone who knew more about you perhaps than you knew about them or some kind of hidden threat when there's just no opportunity to get off? I'm scared just even talking to you.

[20:02]Zibby Owens: I'm telling you, I don't know. This is not good. So when you're writing, like, do you get creeped out yourself? Like when you're sitting there, and I don't know where you like, tell me where you like to work and like, let me envision, like, are you right at this? Okay, so I'm here now, I'm at my desk. And what is that all behind you, by the way? All these This different is my wallpaper. So this wallpaper of classic

[20:25]Clare Mackintosh: penguin books. Oh my gosh, it's so cool. And it's, yeah, it's fun. This is really lovely. And then on the other side of me are bookshelves. So in fact, very similar to yours, although I'm slightly disturbed by your rainbow shelves, which are beautiful. Thank you. How do you find anything?

[20:45]Zibby Owens: Well, I've started Well, first of all, I don't. I have to just like read them over every single time, but these don't really move. I like set these up last July. My closet around the corner has 8,000 books in it, and I have to, like, read through them, like, every two minutes. But I have to say I'm very visual, so this helps me more. Like, if I'm like, oh, I'm looking for hostage, then I just can, like, quickly look in the closet and I'm like, where's the black one? Like where, you know, and then I'm my eye goes to it. That's cool. Okay. So mine mine are arranged alphabetically.

[21:13]Clare Mackintosh: And then they're sort of interspersed with odd things, sort of like souvenirs, I suppose. I've got my police hat, which I don't think I was supposed to leave the police with. I think I was supposed to hand it in, but it's on my shelf. And a keep cup, you know, a travel mug signed by Lee Child and what else? A little Mexican figure from a book festival. So lots of kind of work related things that I find quite inspiring because they remind me of book festivals or meeting readers, whatever. And I don't normally write here because I normally write when I'm travelling and either on planes or trains or in anonymous hotel rooms I really like or cafes in cities where I don't speak the language so I can't get distracted by eavesdropping. I get kind of the buzz of people. And what I found last year is I, having for years said there's really no such thing as writer's block or creative block, and being privately quite dismissive and a little bit scathing about it, but actually you just have to knuckle down and do the work. Last year, my brain ground to a halt and I couldn't write. And I would come up to my office sort of in between homeschooling and feeding children and go, right, I've got an hour, I've got to write. And I just couldn't. And I was absolutely, completely, creatively blocked. And I hadn't realized how much impact environment has on how I write and what feeds into that creativity. And I found that I could do sort of task focused work. So I could edit and I could write a newsletter or a blog post or something that had a really clearly defined goal, but I couldn't brainstorm. I couldn't do, you know, blue sky thinking, think of a new novel idea or come up with something really fresh because nothing was feeding my creativity. And what I had to do was artificially replicate that freedom that I get from travel by reading outside my genre. So reading different types of books, reading non fiction, listening to podcasts. I went absolutely mad on podcasts, looking at art. I mean, all sorts of different things that would replace that creative injection

[23:40]Zibby Owens: that I get from travel. And then fortunately it's come back and I can write again. Wow, that is so interesting. I'm picturing you sitting there with like foreign languages you don't even speak playing on your Bluetooth speaker or something. Give me Russian. This is now.

[23:56]Clare Mackintosh: Yeah. Well, I actually, I listen when I do write, which fortunately I'm back into the swing of it, I listen to music and one of the ways that I put myself in the right kind of frame of mind, the right zone to write my books is listening to this this will horrify most people, horrifies most people I know, listening to the same piece of music on a loop, which I've done, Tibby, for three years.

[24:22]Zibby Owens: Stop. The same song? Well, same

[24:26]Clare Mackintosh: it's a soundtrack. I got so excited that I just jolted my desk. It's a soundtrack to a drama, to a UK drama called Keeping Faith, which was very, very good. And it's this sort of instrumental, quite moody background music and I have it very, very low and I don't even notice it's on now. So my husband will come into my office and he'll go, oh my God, you've got that music on again. And I'm like, what music? But it just, I don't know, sort of unlocks something. It's like a Pavlovian response. You know, I hear the music and I'm like, oh, this is writing time. And I'm straight kind of into my book.

[25:07]Zibby Owens: I was going say, I can recommend some other albums. I'll send you a few songs, Claire. You can send them in the rotation. Just mix it up. Oh my gosh. Wow. Yeah, my daughter is at the age where she likes to play the same song like a thousand times in a row, and it's not doesn't quite have that same meditative creation inspiring effect. Let me just say that. Oh my gosh. Wait, so what are you working on now? You said you're able to write. Yes. So I had

[25:37]Clare Mackintosh: a sudden kind of burst of creativity. And so I'm kind of back on track and I am doing the third edit of next summer's book, which is a murder mystery. And I've just written the synopsis for twenty twenty three's book, which is a thriller. And I'm planning a non fiction that I've got to write this summer. So I'm really kind of fired up and yeah, words flying out of my fingers onto my keyboard. A lot of champagne then,

[26:07]Zibby Owens: So many words. You've upped your eligibility more than two. Now you could do like, you know, 10 glasses of champagne in a day. Oh my gosh. So what advice would you have for aspiring authors?

[26:20]Clare Mackintosh: Okay. Two bits of advice. One really super practical and one more sort of psychological, I suppose. So the second one first. So everyone says you've got to read and you have got to read. But what I want to say to people is read widely. So read outside of your genre. You know, if you don't think you like historical fiction, well read historical fiction because it's amazing how many lessons you can learn from different genres. And the same structure applies to any book. So you can read a romantic comedy and you will find the same structure, the same narrative arc as you'll find in a thriller. You still need the payoff, you know, the twist, the emotional journey. So read widely. And then the practical tip is something that I learned when I was working full time and my writing time was concentrated and limited. So I read lots of advice from people saying write every day. And, you know, I was a police officer with two young children. I couldn't write every day. I couldn't write a 100 words. I couldn't write my own name sometimes when I finished work. So I had chunks of writing time, maybe once a week, maybe once every ten days. And I would suddenly find three hours where I could write. So what I learned was I need to be able to plunge myself into that story again. And the way that I did and still do that is by never finishing at the end of a chapter or a scene, by stopping right in the middle of a piece of dialogue or a piece of action, something where I know exactly what's happening. And what that means is the next time I sit at my desk, whether it's, you know, the next day or three weeks later,

[28:04]Zibby Owens: I can pick up the threads of that story and go straight back into it. And the only time I look at a blank page is when I start a new book. I've heard that advice before but I always forget and that's such great. It's such a great trick to do. Yeah, very simple. But I feel like if you're really on a roll, it's really hard to stop. You know, if you wanna like finish the chapters.

[28:25]Clare Mackintosh: It is. And I think if you are a certain personality type and this is instinctively me, it's a nice, place to finish. And we want to get to the end of the chapter and you can tick it off and, but it is very helpful if you do sometimes it just works that you're at the end of a chapter. And if I do that, then I go and make notes on the next chapter so that I'm literally, I never want to sit down and look at a blank page. And actually last year, I did work in chapters and I only remember that because I incentivized myself. So because there was no travel and I couldn't upgrade myself. I incentivized myself by buying up luxury advent calendars in the January sales, which is a thing. And I had three of them. I had one for scented candles and one for chocolate and one for little miniature gin bottles. And when I finished a chapter, I was allowed to open an advent calendar door and get the gift inside. I am actually a child, Anton.

[29:32]Zibby Owens: I love these tricks. I love this. This is amazing. This is literally like, are you the type of person who needs some sort of external motivation to complete your work? If so, try out the Claire McIntosh strategy of writing.

[29:46]Clare Mackintosh: It's like one of those awful kind of flow charts in a magazine, isn't it? Like a quiz and this is loose. Well, that's actually my top writer tip is wait until after Christmas and then go online and buy up discount advent calendars to incentivize yourself. I'm going to put it in my calendar right now. January

[30:05]Zibby Owens: 2 What's shopping

[30:07]Clare Mackintosh: your luxury advent calendar? What would you want to find behind the door?

[30:13]Zibby Owens: Maybe M and M's.

[30:14]Clare Mackintosh: Nice. That's Yeah. A good

[30:18]Zibby Owens: I don't know. I don't know how good they'll carry over for like years. I guess I have to write kind of quickly. I don't know. Anyway, awesome. Okay, Claire, thank you so much. This was so much fun. And I'm going to be thinking of you as I, you know, make some new like little trick hacks for myself and convince myself to do anything with some sort of reward system in place, or maybe even use this for my children to somehow get the desired behaviors out of them that I want.

[30:49]Clare Mackintosh: I am still seven. And if you gave me a sticker on my reward chart every time I finished a chapter, I would probably finish my books like really fast.

[30:58]Zibby Owens: Okay. I will send you some, some, I'm gonna send you some songs and some stars.

[31:06]Clare Mackintosh: Photo of you in your pajamas.

[31:08]Zibby Owens: Yes, and the photo of me in my pajamas.

[31:10]Clare Mackintosh: Okay. That's not worth it at all. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. You too. Thanks for coming. Have a great day. Bye.

[31:21]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks. 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.