Nikki May, WAHALA: A Novel
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[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]Nicki May is the author of Wahala, a novel.
[0:44]Born in Bristol and raised in Legos, Nicki May is Anglo-Nidrian.
[0:48]At 20, she dropped out of medical school, moved to London and began a career in advertising,
[0:52]going on to run a successful agency.
[0:54]Her debut novel, Wahala, was inspired by a long lunch with friends.
[0:58]It's published around the world, and due to be turned into a major TV series.
[1:03]Nicki lives in Dorset with her husband and two standard Schnowsers.
[1:06]Welcome, Nicki.
[1:07]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Wahala.
[1:11]Thanks for having me, Sivi.
[1:13]Oh, I love that cover.
[1:15]I still have the galley, but this is one of my favorite colors, so I'm very excited about it.
[1:19]Okay.
[1:20]Hot pink.
[1:21]I love it.
[1:22]Okay.
[1:23]Would you mind telling everybody listening what your book is about?
[1:26]And then I want to know what inspired you to write it.
[1:28]Why this story?
[1:29]It's my debut novel.
[1:30]It's called Wahala.
[1:31]And other people are describing it as sex in the city with a killer twist.
[1:36]And I'll take that.
[1:37]It's a modern, it's a modern, subversive take on friendship, family, and culture.
[1:42]But it's underpinned by this rather epic revenge twist.
[1:46]Excellent.
[1:47]Okay, debut novel.
[1:49]How did we just go back in time first?
[1:51]How did we get right here?
[1:52]Like, where did you always like to write?
[1:55]How did you end up writing your debut novel now?
[1:57]Always written, whether it was Thanksgiving terrible poetry as a spotty teenager.
[2:02]And then I worked in advertising most of my life.
[2:04]So I was writing copy technical copy for telecoms clients or books on mindfulness.
[2:10]And I'm a writer.
[2:11]I do do all.
[2:12]I've always got a pen and pad in my hand, even if I don't ever read back what I've written.
[2:17]And I've always wanted to write a book, but then don't we all?
[2:20]And I put it off because I always had work to do and much more important things to do.
[2:25]Until we sort of downsized the business and went more into consultancy.
[2:29]So I had more time on my hands.
[2:31]And it was after a long and very large lunch with friends at an Nigerian restaurant
[2:36]that bears more than a passing resemblance to the restaurant in Booker.
[2:39]I got on the train home and I felt myself coot switch out of Nigerian me into English me.
[2:45]I started thinking about my two cultures.
[2:47]I started sketching out some characters.
[2:49]And I've written the first scene before I got to my stop and remarkably,
[2:53]the first scene in the book is hardly changed from that very rough draft.
[2:58]Oh my gosh.
[2:58]So you wrote it on your phone?
[2:59]I had to write all time like pads and pens always because I'm a list person.
[3:03]So I always have a pad to write the next list.
[3:06]Wow.
[3:07]That's crazy.
[3:07]So same menus, same everything.
[3:09]You know, I like that first theme particularly because you really show what it's like.
[3:15]because even the conversation, the girls were like, this is okay to say in this restaurant,
[3:20]but if you say this outside the restaurant, you'd be in trouble.
[3:23]So it was almost like you have this like private little bubble inside that you created.
[3:29]Same groups can be like that.
[3:30]I have different fan groups and we have a different private little bubble in each
[3:34]where certain things become shorthand and certain things you get a person saying,
[3:39]which you wouldn't say outside.
[3:41]And I wanted to recreate that.
[3:42]I think female friendships are just lovely and wonderful and complicated and can be toxic.
[3:47]So what a rich vein to explore.
[3:49]Totally.
[3:50]Oh my gosh.
[3:51]I miss seeing my friends.
[3:52]I feel like I have no time to see my friends.
[3:53]Do you see your friends often?
[3:54]I feel like I never knew.
[3:55]It's because I live in a middle of nowhere.
[3:57]So with COVID, it's been a nightmare scene, friends.
[3:59]Hopefully soon things will change.
[4:02]Yeah.
[4:03]Sometimes I zoom with them.
[4:04]Yeah.
[4:05]Oh my goodness.
[4:08]Well, I have to say I really related to a lot of booze issues here with her husband
[4:14]and her kids and her daughter I should say and how she had to navigate, you know, even
[4:20]though he was this charming French man, how he would just, you know, try to make up for
[4:24]everything with a very charming kiss and then run off and do his things and even the
[4:28]simple things like like why can he not look at the calendar?
[4:32]Like it's all the calendar.
[4:33]Why does his work calendar trump my calendar and what she ends up doing about that ultimately?
[4:38]Which I felt like there was a, you know, sort of a, you understood where she ended up
[4:45]like what was, what the underpinning was for why she made some of her decisions.
[4:49]So tell me about boo.
[4:50]I love boo.
[4:51]I believe one of my favorite characters.
[4:53]She gets a piece of stick from readers, but I personally think that even the best, most
[4:58]wonderful, most loving mothers, that times you feel resentful, that times you feel frustrated,
[5:03]times you think, come on, I shouldn't have to do all this or I want more.
[5:07]And boo has, boo's life is complicated.
[5:09]She never met her father because he abandoned her mother before she was born and it really
[5:15]didn't help her.
[5:16]Her mother had to move back with her parents as she was brought up in a white Yorkshire
[5:20]village, in a white family with a white mother, a white stepfather, white siblings.
[5:25]And it, she never felt like she belongs, she felt disconnected from herself.
[5:29]And this absent father informed all her opinions about my jury, about my jury and men,
[5:34]about black men and not in a positive way.
[5:37]And then she's tried to adapt all her life to either blend in or fit in or to be accepted.
[5:43]And that sense of not belonging is very common when you're mixed race.
[5:46]You often feel that you're not sure where you fit in, you go there and you're an outsider,
[5:51]you come here and you're an outsider.
[5:53]And sometimes you feel adapt and adapt, you can actually get disconnected from who you
[5:58]really are.
[5:59]And I think boo feels that disconnect, which means when Isabelle, scheming manipulative
[6:04]Isabelle comes in, it's so easy to pull and push buttons and to insinuate and to persuade
[6:11]boo to do things that maybe boo wouldn't have done.
[6:14]Don't get me wrong, boo's mistakes are her own and she's got to own them.
[6:18]But I think being a woman is quite complicated and sometimes if you're fragile and somebody
[6:22]knows just what strings to pull, you can be set off of the track, et cetera, especially
[6:28]with encouragement from your peers and all of that.
[6:32]There were a couple of lines from boo, I just wanted to read just because they're so funny.
[6:36]I know this is just from one of her first chapters.
[6:39]I'll just even start with it.
[6:40]Can I just read the reading of the chapter?
[6:42]The first two paragraphs, I think boo was pissed off.
[6:44]She slammed a mug into the dishwasher and kicked it shut.
[6:47]An occasional Saturday lunch with the girls wasn't too much to ask, not even the whole
[6:50]of Saturday.
[6:51]God, no, she wasn't a monster for fuck's sake.
[6:54]Sorry for cursing, couldn't any kids are listening?
[6:56]Just a few hours, enough time to get to Buka, catch up with her best friends, whose
[6:59]lives revolved around more than cooking, cleaning, and ferrying, eat food she hadn't
[7:03]made herself an enjoy glass of wine, a little time out from being mom, wife, and fucking
[7:07]dormant.
[7:08]But no, how could DiddyA be expected to remember he'd been booked to look after his daughter
[7:12]for a few hours, how stupid of boo to assume he might take a cursory glance of the calendar.
[7:17]The one she kept up to date, she'd been ridiculous to expect that much of him, not
[7:21]when every morning he stood in the exact spot and asked, have you seen my keys in front
[7:25]of you more on?
[7:26]She didn't say.
[7:27]Oh, it sounds so good when you read it.
[7:29]I want to read that for more.
[7:31]Oh, thanks.
[7:34]And then there's so much of this, boo was having a shitty day, another shitty day.
[7:38]It's so funny.
[7:40]I think some of these problems are really versatile.
[7:43]I think all women have these issues or come across these problems, or they don't always
[7:48]say them, right?
[7:49]Right.
[7:50]But flawed characters are so much more interesting than wonderful, perfect people.
[7:54]So even with my friends, I'd like a bit of spice, a bit of flaws, like definitely
[7:58]have to have that in my characters.
[8:00]Totally.
[8:01]Yeah.
[8:02]You're right.
[8:03]Wednesday's to Friday's, boo was a stay-at-home mom, flattened by resentment and bitterness,
[8:06]unappreciated, and bored.
[8:08]What do you want, she asked herself, a fucking medal for doing the school run, a round
[8:11]of applause for sorting out a wash, getting Sophia and DiddyA fed, and out of the house this
[8:16]morning had been like hurting cats.
[8:18]And you like went on with all the stuff, oh my goodness.
[8:21]Anyway, I just love her.
[8:23]OK.
[8:24]So Isabelle, too.
[8:25]Let's talk about Isabelle's backstory as presented and as what happened with Chase and
[8:30]why you how you talked about this sort of controlling abusive relationship.
[8:35]Are we supposed to feel more sympathetic towards her?
[8:38]How did this come about?
[8:39]Tell me about developing her character.
[8:41]Well, Isabelle is rich and glamorous and there are a bunch of people who have ridiculous
[8:47]amounts of wealth, obnoxious amounts of wealth, and it comes with a lot of entitlement.
[8:51]And certainly in Nigeria you have these people and sometimes I think the gains are ill-gotten,
[8:56]and I started to realise we have people like that everywhere.
[8:59]But she comes in with all of these privileges, she's got a chauffeur, she can pay for anything,
[9:03]she can get anything sorted.
[9:05]But she also has to have this vulnerable side so that she can inviggle herself with these characters.
[9:11]So she's got this ex-husband Chase, who she says treated her terribly, making her a battered
[9:17]wife and a victim, and therefore we should feel sorry for her also, the characters feel.
[9:22]Isabelle is a really fun character to write, I've been watching Killing Eve with Villanelle
[9:27]while I was writing, and it was such good fun to have unlimited wardrobe budget to be
[9:33]able to go on to net a quarter and pick ridiculous clothes, and to have this super confident
[9:38]person who would wear and get away with anything and had access to any restaurants I wanted
[9:44]to go.
[9:45]She was a really fun character to write, and obviously her reasons for causing all this
[9:51]trouble are what propelled an narrative, and it's also finding out why is she doing this,
[9:56]why does she what is her game is what keeps you turning the pages hopefully.
[10:00]And her blue fingernails.
[10:01]Did you say she had blue nail polish?
[10:03]I love that.
[10:04]I was just imagining, I'm like, I'm like,
[10:05]it was sticky and like, the manicure place
[10:09]looking at nail polishes or something.
[10:10]Like, how did this work out of that?
[10:12]I'm quite low-maintenance, so I very rarely
[10:14]have a manicure.
[10:15]In fact, I've only got pink nails today
[10:16]because I've been doing book signings
[10:18]and I want the color to match the book.
[10:20]But normally, I don't normally, I've got,
[10:22]say it was quite fun inventing this high-maintenance life
[10:26]that I really don't have.
[10:28]Yeah, no, I do not have my nails done.
[10:31]I did interview somebody in Grittet,
[10:33]Telly, and we wrote a whole book about joy.
[10:34]That was in the beginning of my podcast,
[10:36]maybe two or three years ago.
[10:37]And she said, if you look down at pops of color
[10:40]and have like rainbow nail polish,
[10:43]you will automatically feel joyous and happier
[10:46]and have a better day.
[10:47]So I experimented with having every nail
[10:49]a different color for a while.
[10:51]And I guess it kind of worked.
[10:52]And then I was like, this is too high-maintenance.
[10:54]That was so long as chips, that's really on it.
[10:58]You know, I was surprised here,
[11:00]the way that you and the book talk about race
[11:04]and there were some sort of like inside things
[11:06]where they say to each other,
[11:07]oh, you can't say that.
[11:08]You sound racist yourself and all of that.
[11:10]And so in Boo's section,
[11:12]this is where now in chapter 11,
[11:13]her daughter says, Mama, you look like a black woman
[11:16]with an exclamation mark and then to a bell,
[11:18]did you a stop to kiss her?
[11:19]But who are you and one of you done with my bell?
[11:21]It's like cheating on my wife.
[11:23]So in other words, they're trying to say she looked so pretty
[11:27]that she looked like a black woman, right?
[11:29]Like, so tell me about that.
[11:31]I think it was more about the hair.
[11:32]So Boo has wavy hair that's sort of not remotely afro.
[11:37]It could be called white hair if you like.
[11:39]And so when she puts on this black's
[11:41]quotation, Pam Grier afro,
[11:43]she looks like a transformed character.
[11:45]She looks completely different.
[11:46]And what I wanted to do was play with beam x-rays
[11:50]because it's a complicated thing.
[11:52]And sometimes it's quite,
[11:55]I think sometimes it should be almost defined
[11:56]as it's raised on its own rather than being black or white.
[11:59]And I think also, I was interested in how three people
[12:03]with exactly the same racial makeup
[12:05]could feel so differently about their race.
[12:07]But I wanted to explore,
[12:09]you can't have mixed-race characters
[12:10]and not touch on colorism, class, race.
[12:14]And I wanted to explore them, but in quite a real way,
[12:16]because black people, brown people,
[12:19]we can have isms too.
[12:20]We can have prejudices just the same way anyone else does.
[12:24]I didn't set out to solve these problems
[12:26]because if I could, I wouldn't be writing books.
[12:28]I'd be running the UN.
[12:30]But I wanted to actually say it as it is.
[12:32]The truth is, colorism is a real thing.
[12:35]And arguably, I've benefited from being like skins.
[12:38]And I certainly have a totally different experience
[12:40]to a black man or even a black woman.
[12:42]But it's not always a positive thing
[12:44]that downsides that come with it too.
[12:46]And I do find that, certainly in my experience,
[12:50]mixed-race people often clock each other
[12:52]and form a bond, because we're the only people
[12:55]who have experienced what we've experienced.
[12:57]It doesn't really, we don't have white friends or black friends.
[12:59]I have both.
[13:00]But often, if I meet someone who'sangred and Nigerian,
[13:03]there's a shared history, a shared connection
[13:06]that only we can understand.
[13:07]And I wanted to explore that
[13:09]without making my characters perfect
[13:10]or without solving the problems.
[13:12]So some of the things Bruce says are atrocious.
[13:14]But the truth is, we sometimes say atrocious things.
[13:17]Yeah, I'd like her lack of filter.
[13:19]I don't know.
[13:20]She, it endears her to me.
[13:21]It's a real.
[13:23]Yes.
[13:23]And then as the, there was this one,
[13:27]well, actually, I feel like I shouldn't give it away,
[13:28]but the scene would, I'm gonna just like skip it.
[13:31]And sometimes with fiction, I wanna go places that are,
[13:35]I feel like maybe I shouldn't bring up.
[13:36]So I think I'll skip it.
[13:37]Okay, so let's go back to character development as a thing.
[13:42]So even with the background of loving to write
[13:45]and all of that, you still made these four women
[13:48]and the other characters, the husbands and the spouses
[13:52]and the bosses and everybody has their own
[13:55]very clear personality on the page.
[13:58]So do you just naturally know how to do that?
[14:01]Or did you have to take any classes?
[14:03]Or like, how did you,
[14:05]like I find that very challenging to do?
[14:07]So how did you do?
[14:08]What's it exercising all my life?
[14:09]And I've worked in planning and in copy.
[14:11]And with advertising, there's no detail that is too small.
[14:14]When you've got a 30 second commercial,
[14:16]everything has to be perfect.
[14:18]So there's so much work that goes into the background.
[14:20]I mean, we could do a year's work to shoot 30 seconds.
[14:23]So I'm really about the planning stage.
[14:26]So I had this spreadsheet.
[14:28]It was ridiculous.
[14:29]When I printed it out, it was taller than me.
[14:31]It went through for each character.
[14:33]They were about a hundred questions.
[14:35]I had to answer.
[14:37]I had to know everything.
[14:38]They're inside leg measurement.
[14:39]How old they were when they walked.
[14:41]Their favorite color of lipstick,
[14:43]the first boy they kissed, their favorite record.
[14:45]I mean, things that would never ever make it into the book.
[14:48]How they'd react if X happened or why happened?
[14:51]And I kept building this spreadsheet
[14:53]and also making sure that my girls were different.
[14:55]Even little things like DJing T or DJing Coffee
[14:59]or you more of a charlotte type of person,
[15:02]which meant I got to know these people so well.
[15:05]I probably know them better than I know myself.
[15:07]And they became real living, walking women,
[15:10]which helped me, it really helped me write the book
[15:13]because I actually knew how they'd all react to any situation.
[15:16]So when I threw all these were halol at them,
[15:18]I knew what they'd do.
[15:20]So when you were doing your spreadsheet
[15:22]and you were answering those questions,
[15:23]did you think, okay, well, maybe I'll have her like tea
[15:25]or were did they come to your head fully formed?
[15:28]Like, oh yeah, obvious.
[15:29]Oh, no, it grew and grew of it.
[15:31]The spreadsheet was only six questions.
[15:32]And then as I wrote the first draft,
[15:35]I started filling in for them.
[15:37]And it almost felt like the girls were telling me
[15:40]what they were like.
[15:41]I was dreaming of them.
[15:42]If I went shopping and I saw a girl with a ponytail,
[15:45]I'd try and walk around to see what she looked like
[15:47]because it could be my boo.
[15:48]And I think one of the things a lot of writers do
[15:51]is we exceptionally nosy, we eavesdrop.
[15:54]I was on a train to London yesterday
[15:55]and I was supposed to be working.
[15:57]And instead of working,
[15:58]I was earwicking on these conversations behind me
[16:01]because that's how you sort of learn how real people talk
[16:04]and you get that real conversations
[16:06]that your dialogue actually feels real rather than forced.
[16:10]I think that might be the biggest difference
[16:12]between novelists and any other kind of writer.
[16:14]What does it mean?
[16:15]I think, no, just as the eavesdropping
[16:19]and what you do with the eavesdropping,
[16:21]like I could, I could eavesdrop
[16:22]but that would be the end of it
[16:24]versus eavesdropping and then turning it into
[16:26]an entire narrative in your head
[16:27]and then coming up and like writing about it
[16:29]and turning somebody into a character and I don't know.
[16:32]I think it's awesome.
[16:33]I'm more of like, I wonder what that person's doing
[16:36]with that person.
[16:37]Is that a first day?
[16:38]Like, what are they doing together?
[16:39]Maybe they were friends from high school people.
[16:41]What are you about as well?
[16:42]And the other thing is you never know
[16:43]when ideas are going to strike.
[16:45]So I walk my dogs for about 19 minutes every morning
[16:48]and they are now used to stopping,
[16:50]stock still and suddenly sending myself a voice message
[16:53]because some thought has popped into my head
[16:55]and they look just like, oh, it's just her doing her thing.
[16:58]90 minute walk.
[16:59]Oh, everybody is like a routine.
[17:01]It's like a thing, not very fast.
[17:02]This isn't a power walk.
[17:03]This is just an ample route.
[17:06]That's so great.
[17:08]Wow.
[17:09]That is my dog for my dog.
[17:10]She just, I do not want her hard enough or long enough.
[17:13]I'm like, God of the fact that I got to get home.
[17:17]Wow.
[17:18]And I read on your Instagram that it's going to be a BBC show.
[17:22]Is that right?
[17:23]I still pinch myself.
[17:24]When anybody says that I feel a sort of glow in a real,
[17:27]is did I make this up?
[17:28]But yes, before the publishing deal was announced,
[17:32]I already signed with a lady called Liz Kilgare from Firebird
[17:35]who's going to produce it.
[17:36]And the BBC have commissioned it.
[17:38]So it's not just an option.
[17:40]It's going to happen six parts, one hour on Telly
[17:44]and it'll be streamed worldwide.
[17:45]So you'll get to watch it, Libby.
[17:47]And it's going to be phenomenal because when I was writing it,
[17:49]I had pictures of actresses for each of my women
[17:52]and they were on a board behind where I write
[17:54]and I'd look up to see, I can't tell you who they are now,
[17:57]obviously, because they're not going to be the real people.
[17:59]But I can't wait to see who they cast and see if they match
[18:03]my inner imaginings of what they look like.
[18:07]And that's so cool, by the way, so exciting.
[18:10]Are you involved in the adaptation at all?
[18:12]No, they did ask, but writing a book is really hard.
[18:15]Rising your script play, definitely above my pay grade.
[18:18]And I've got this amazing script writer.
[18:19]She's called Theresa E. Cocoa.
[18:21]She's angler and I drew.
[18:22]And so she gets it.
[18:23]She gets all the food references.
[18:25]And she was back to nominated for rocks.
[18:27]So I know she'll do 10 times a better job than I ever could.
[18:30]And I think it's quite nice that it's not my baby.
[18:33]They're being very collaborative.
[18:34]They're telling me what's going on.
[18:36]But I consider to distance.
[18:37]And if it's awful, I can say nothing to do with me.
[18:40]And if it's wonderful, I'll say, I...
[18:42]I don't know.
[18:43]I don't know.
[18:45]For a vote.
[18:47]That's great.
[18:48]Well, that is so exciting.
[18:49]I can't wait to watch it.
[18:50]Do they even know when it's going to come out?
[18:52]Or probably not?
[18:52]They're going to shoot this year, so hopefully it'll be on air
[18:55]next early next year, fingers crossed.
[18:58]Oh, no.
[18:58]So exciting.
[19:00]And you have another book.
[19:01]Great. You saw this in a tuba field.
[19:02]So what's up with the next book?
[19:03]Well, two is so hard, Zippy.
[19:05]If they told me what they do now, I'd be one book to you.
[19:09]Because when you're writing your first book,
[19:10]you're just you and your book and your words,
[19:12]no expectation, and you don't even know that much about writing.
[19:16]I didn't think about Sean Ruhr, or point of view.
[19:19]Well, you know, you're just writing from the heart.
[19:21]And then suddenly you got a deadline, a clock going tick,
[19:24]tick, tick, tick, which obviously makes you freeze and do nothing.
[19:28]And you got expectation.
[19:29]You've got people saying things about your book, which
[19:32]are mostly lovely, but you haven't really
[19:35]imbued your book with all of this.
[19:37]So suddenly there's the, oh, my God, will I be good enough?
[19:39]But I am writing book two.
[19:41]I've got 90,000, not very great words, which I'm pulling into shape.
[19:45]And I do love my story.
[19:46]It's loosely inspired by Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.
[19:50]It's got a mixed race girl in it, because I think all my books
[19:53]will have some, I want to reflect myself in literature.
[19:56]I want to read about people like me.
[19:58]She's growing up in Nigeria.
[20:00]tragedy strikes and when she's 10, she's moved to an English family at a house called The Ring,
[20:05]so bangle in the ring and it's going to touch on phony areas of race and prejudice in my class,
[20:12]but at its heart it's a love story and a coming-of-age story and because I quite like an epic twist,
[20:18]I think they might be one of those in there. Excellent! Wow! Well, if it makes you feel any better,
[20:24]basically everybody I interview says at the start of any book they feel the same way,
[20:29]like I don't know how I do it, it's not going to work. A lot of people feel the same way,
[20:34]even 20 books in. Self doubt is what is the character traits that you need to be a writer?
[20:39]I guess so. Yes. If you are a two-secure person, run the other way. Oh, I don't know what you should be,
[20:46]but you know, not this. What advice do you have for aspiring authors? Read, read, widely, read
[20:55]in your genre, read, out of your genre, read everything you can get your hands on. Read really
[20:59]good books so that you're inspired and so you have this something to aim for and read really
[21:05]rubbish books so that when you read your work back you feel good about yourself.
[21:12]Are there any books you read recently and you don't have to, if you don't have any
[21:15]on top of my enormous, but that you have just loved books that you've always loved or anything
[21:21]or my favourite ever book is Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel. It is just book perfection.
[21:26]The woman is a superstar, a legend and I've already pre-ordered
[21:30]see a tranquillity. I would read her shopping list, so I would read anything that woman writes,
[21:35]but the last book I read is called The Made by Need to Pros, which only came out three weeks
[21:40]ago and is just shooting off the New York Times bestseller list. So that is a really good book.
[21:44]It's really sweet and the protagonist Molly made is just such a lovely character.
[21:48]I haven't read it yet, but it's a good morning America.
[21:52]Yes, it is. I've been meaning to read it and everything and I don't know. The stacks just tower
[21:59]ready books so little time. Amazing. So what's your life like now? What are you going to go off
[22:05]and do? My life is really simple and I have my two dogs with my husband and I live in Dorset,
[22:11]which is in the middle of nowhere. Look at my window and it's rolling hills and because this is
[22:15]England it's usually raining and muddy so I live in Wellies and the last few weeks have been a
[22:21]whirlwind of going to London, having many cheers and I'm actually quite looking forward to getting back
[22:26]to my normal nothing happening life apart from the occasional Nigerian lunch with my girls,
[22:32]which might just spark another idea. But this is dream country stuff. I mean it really is.
[22:37]Being a published author is the dream and it's just a maze and the fact that soon hopefully,
[22:43]in less than a year, I'll be watching a series on Telly that will say based on a novel by Nicky May.
[22:49]I mean, it's pinched me stuff. I feel like you should write a massive email to every client
[22:55]you had in advertising ever. Just be like, remember me, you probably didn't even know me or
[23:00]I worked on this campaign and blah, blah, blah and look what I'm doing. And remember those changes
[23:04]you made to my coffee while you shouldn't have? Yeah, exactly. Wow, that's awesome. My loving.
[23:11]Well, Nicky, thank you so much. This has been really fun and I can't wait to watch your movie and
[23:16]read your next one. Thank you so much,
[23:26]it took me a while. I have to say because I did this whole room at once and it took me like two days.
[23:30]Oh my gosh, send me a picture when you're done. I went to the house, but I don't think the dogs
[23:34]will be much used, but I'm gonna have to do it. Yeah, do it. Oh my gosh, send me a picture. Okay, thank you for
[23:39]having me. Bye. Thanks for coming. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have
[23:46]Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time
[23:51]to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[23:57]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact,
[24:01]texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[24:05]this fantastic intro and outro music.