Jessica George, MAAME: A Novel
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[0:58]Jessica George is the author of mommy novel
[1:01]Jessica was born and raised in London to Ghanaian parents and studied English literature at the University of Sheffield
[1:07]After working in a literary agency and a theater
[1:10]She landed a job in the editorial department of bluesbury, UK
[1:13]Mommy is her first novel and it's spelled M-A-A-M-E and it is not pronounced
[1:19]Mame as I found out in this podcast
[1:21]Welcome Jessica. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss Mame novels
[1:26]Thank you for having me
[1:28]Okay, can you please tell listeners what Mame is about? Yeah, so it follows
[1:34]20 something my D write who I
[1:37]Like to call a later bloomer rather than a late bloomer just because she's doing things such as moving out having her first relationship
[1:44]Her first real job a little later on in life in her peers
[1:48]But she's also doing this whilst being a primary care of her father suffering from Parkinson's disease
[1:54]So she's navigating new friendships new relationships new new colleagues
[2:00]Unconventional family dynamics love loss and grief all so I'll try and to figure out who she really is amazing
[2:08]Where did this whole thing come from? I know there were some
[2:12]Carol, okay, I'll just let you answer where did this
[2:15]Yeah, so
[2:17]I lost my own dad in
[2:19]2020 due to complications with Parkinson's disease. I'm sorry. Thank you
[2:23]when I was trying to
[2:25]Understand the grieving process because it was the first will loss that I'd encountered. I just started writing digital diary entries and
[2:33]I've been writing with the intention of getting published for eight years, but I didn't
[2:38]Have the intention of making this a book until a couple of months later when I rediscovered the diary entries or on my laptop and
[2:46]I just thought about how I could make this a story and if I could and that's that's when Maddy was born
[2:52]Well, I run publishing company now and this
[2:55]Seans of being the editorial assistant. I went in and I was like you guys
[2:59]You do know that this is what this is a bad. There is a character here
[3:02]He's an editorial assistant and it's so funny because occasionally like I do have like scheduling conflicts and I'm like what happened
[3:08]And I know it's all my faults. I'm like oh my god
[3:12]Very true to life. I like to think I'm a lot. I'm like a great boss compared to
[3:18]I'm always like this was her idea. This was her idea. You know, there's so much
[3:24]There's some idea
[3:26]You know re-appropriation going on in this book
[3:28]You know, I want to have the meal on her first date
[3:34]Mames first date or Maddy's first date when she goes to what's the same house and he makes her like three-course meal
[3:40]What is it? What is that guy's name? I can't remember Ben and okay, sorry. I'm really bad of names
[3:45]Anyway, I was like starving reading this scene of all the courses and how delicious it sounded and I was like
[3:53]Okay, I hope there is some plan to have a meal
[3:57]You know like a dinner party with this meal to celebrate this book. I hope you have that in the works
[4:02]I never thought that
[4:05]So I'm not thinking why haven't I thought that I mean I have a lot of food plans around publication
[4:12]But I never thought of how much of a cook so someone else would have to cook it for me
[4:17]Yeah, you'll have to do it at like a restaurant or something
[4:19]If you do it and you take this idea
[4:22]My only stipulation is that I have to be invited because I would like to eat this when I come to life
[4:27]So it has to be in the New York area basically or maybe I
[4:31]So funny so you said you had every intention of being a published writer for eight years
[4:35]I love that where did that come from and what why did you
[4:39]Where did I come from here? So I started off attempting to get into a more financially stable career
[4:46]So I was looking at law and then and then I was looking at international business
[4:51]But I did international business for a year before I realized how much I
[4:55]disliked it and so I was on the train one day knowing that I wasn't going to return
[5:01]And then my mom asked me the question of
[5:04]Fine, do what you like, but please go to university
[5:06]And so I said okay, I'll choose English literature because at least I can read and you know right in my spare time
[5:12]And so I wasn't enjoying my course as much as I thought I was but then it was at that point
[5:17]And I just thought I can't change again
[5:19]I have to have to stick this through
[5:21]So I was just trying to find some things that brought me some joy in there in the rest of my day
[5:26]And so that's where writing started
[5:28]But back then I didn't know much about publishing at all
[5:30]So I don't even think as soon as I started writing again
[5:33]I said, oh, this is going to be published. It was just to think a hobby at that point
[5:38]And when I started working as a bookseller at waterstones
[5:42]That's when I started learning more about how books are published
[5:46]And that's when I started writing with the intention of getting published
[5:49]Very interesting behind the scenes little scoop
[5:54]Little stealth market research when nobody's Latin
[5:57]You never know what your booksellers will do
[6:00]Every night you look at nothing. Be careful what you say
[6:03]Show up in fiction one day
[6:06]Oh my gosh, it's so funny
[6:08]Well, one of the things that I think you do particularly well is dialogue
[6:12]Like the way that you
[6:15]Have the characters just completely
[6:18]They're so clear to me in reading the voices
[6:22]Especially her mom and her brother and her and Maddie
[6:26]The friends but mostly like the family is just so crystal clear in the way that they talk and
[6:33]The flaws too that they all kind of eventually sort of acknowledge in a way because every family has everybody has
[6:41]So tell me about that and the sort of acceptance that comes with
[6:45]Accepting your family for who they are
[6:47]Yeah, it's I think it's quite a
[6:51]Hard pill to swallow I think when you realize that your parents are human
[6:55]But I'm kind of fighting with this idea that you should always
[7:00]Assume that when I when I talk about you know kind of
[7:04]Taking them off the this kind of pedestal
[7:07]I do it in mind for for both of all parties involved really I think
[7:12]Maddie had a
[7:14]unrealistic idea of what
[7:17]Her family were going to turn out to be and I think because she's been trying to get that dream family
[7:23]She's put her own mental health at risk
[7:24]She's tried to be the sport of why and she's tried to keep everyone happy
[7:27]She's just tried to keep the peace and so she can have that you know
[7:31]The unrealistic kind of normal family and then I mean without trying to add any spoilers in the end
[7:37]It's just to take a case of
[7:39]There's nothing entirely wrong with accepting who your family are. It's just how
[7:44]You can fit in with that how you can make it work best best for who you are and and
[7:51]How you want to to go further on in life. So I
[7:54]Love Maddie's family. I think that they're hilarious and they're incredibly flawed
[7:59]But I think that of everyone like I think that of Maddie herself sometimes so
[8:03]It's it's always fun to write those characters who feel real
[8:09]Do you feel like Maddie will be continued in any way and these characters?
[8:13]Um, I don't I don't know. I think I might leave Maddie where she is just because
[8:19]Although okay, so I intentionally don't have a
[8:23]An I plan for for mama to or something just because
[8:28]The way books are written now I have to put her through more emotional turmoil or some sort of distress
[8:34]So I can resolve it at the end for there to be a plot and I just kind of want to leave her alone
[8:40]I said if any publisher wants to publish a 300-page novel about Maddie just being happy
[8:46]Just visiting coffee shops hang out with her friends hang out with Sam then I will happily do it
[8:52]You've got lines have to have some kind of
[8:56]You know distress or some kind of bumpy bumpy roads and then a friend of mine said how about a short story where we just see
[9:02]Maddie having a nice time just for a couple of pages and I thought I would consider that I would do
[9:08]Well, I think if Maddie were to have kids, there would be emotional distress immediately. Yes
[9:15]So he could always fall back on that at some point in life
[9:19]Wait, did I mispronounce the title? Do you know pronounce it name?
[9:23]Is it Mami? Oh, I'm sorry, mama
[9:25]Mama
[9:26]Okay, sorry. Okay. Well, I will now pronounce it differently. What was the story of this being acquired and for publication?
[9:35]So I submitted it to a small number of published agents, and then I met my agent Jemima
[9:42]And after some months of further editing we sent it out to
[9:47]to a number of publishers and
[9:49]eight of them were interested and we
[9:52]I took some meetings and I met all the teams
[9:56]And you know Jemima and I were
[9:59]kind of keeping in touch
[10:00]because this was doing the pandemic. So we weren't in the office, we weren't going to actual meetings,
[10:03]we weren't meeting up in person or anything. So we were just always on the phone or online
[10:08]just kind of discussing where we felt the best home for this book could be. And we landed with
[10:14]Olivia in the UK and Sarah in the US. And they're from the food, which is the sort of
[10:20]instruments they Martin's. Yeah. Well, exciting. Well, they obviously like adore you and are pulling
[10:26]out all the stops. So that's nice. You can always tell when like there's a party for an author
[10:32]like eight months ahead of time, like they really have their acts together. Like, okay, noted, this is great.
[10:42]Have you been at work on another book? Yeah. So I'm working on my second book at the moment,
[10:47]and I'm focusing very much on female friendship because I really like the aspect in this one. So
[10:53]that is going to be the goal of book two. Interesting. I love it. Where do you see Maddie going in life?
[11:01]Like, where do you think she'll be in 20 years without giving anything away? Oh, in 20 years.
[11:06]Hmm. I think she'd have a family by then, hopefully with Sam, but you never know. And I think
[11:11]if she was half children, it would be a case of kind of thinking about her childhood and maybe
[11:17]the things that she doesn't want to repeat. And I think that would be something that would
[11:20]continuously play a role in her in her day-to-day. There are so many people out there who are
[11:25]caring for parents or people with illness and know the toll that it takes to have to be in that
[11:32]mindset all the time and constantly worried and all that. Tell me a little bit more about
[11:36]your own experience with that and where that dynamic came from and all of those feelings and
[11:42]such personal emotional feelings. Yeah. So I was a secondary career for my father where it
[11:48]it was Maddie and more of a primary. It's a very, very isolating place to be, I think. That's
[11:54]why I didn't have any intention of publishing this one because I just thought I thought it was
[11:58]a strange thing to talk about because it wasn't something that seemed to be spoken about very
[12:03]often. And as I was going to book shops and kind of talking about Mamie with booksellers,
[12:08]a lot of booksellers said this is going to hit home for a lot of people because the pandemic has
[12:14]created a large number of carers now. And young carers because, you know, it was COVID was affecting
[12:23]those who were older a lot, a lot harder. So yeah, it's a very difficult place to describe.
[12:30]I think it's just one of isolation and often hopelessness and obviously sadness. But there's
[12:36]some joy in it. I think my dad and I certainly got closer because I was home and
[12:43]and I'm watching over here. I often think, oh, if you were fit in well, would I have been home that
[12:47]much? And I think that sort of would have been no. So there's definitely more cons, but there are
[12:52]some pros. Well, I'm really sorry about your loss and that you had to get through that and all of
[12:56]them. So do you like to read yourself? I'm guessing. I love to read. Yeah. My goal this year is 50
[13:04]that we'll see. I'm trying to incorporate more short stories to try and reach that goal a lot quicker.
[13:09]But yeah, I'm getting sent a lot of proofs now. That's amazing.
[13:15]But yeah, I with with Manna Press and book two, I'm not reading as fast as I want to be. What
[13:22]are some of your go-to books or your favorite books or the genre that you like? Anything like that?
[13:28]Yeah. So I love Yagayashi. I think she's an incredible writer. Kani's Carti Williams,
[13:34]very de-neveresto. They're great. I love Ibiza Christie. That's always a surprise to people,
[13:39]but I think her books are brilliant. Her murder mysteries, Jesse Burton, and
[13:42]the fan of her books as well, Sadie Smith. But yeah, I often get these, you know, these,
[13:48]you know, random ones that I take from recommendation. So I might have picked them up in the
[13:53]shop. So I'm not very genre focused. I'm very much. If someone I trust thinks it's really good,
[13:58]I will read it. So word of mouth. What if not exactly?
[14:03]The elusive Holy Grail publishing word of mouth. Is there any part of the publicity for this book
[14:11]that you're particularly excited to do or have done already or that was really creative or
[14:17]I don't know, just exciting and fun or anything? Yeah. So there's some, there's some
[14:20]marketing stuff, which is really cool. I think. So we're having, my marketing team at the UK
[14:27]are putting up a mural of Mama and Maddie in West Croydon, which is where the book is.
[14:35]Oh wow. And we're partnering with West Croydon more stones and they're like going to have
[14:39]a single title table and window display and they're going to have. So the mural is going to be
[14:46]outside and then there's going to be like a trail to trail to Waterstones. And then you'll see
[14:52]the display. So things like that. I'm very excited about. I think it's just so, it's just going to be
[14:57]so fun. And I like, I like fun whenever when I'm working. Who doesn't like fun? We might as well
[15:05]right now as well. Do you have like a really close girlfriend or somebody who's helped you
[15:10]through all this? I know you have close friends and you're writing that friendship again. So there's
[15:16]you have near and true in the book or a real people love me to them. They're real people who
[15:21]are genuinely okay. There's two in and the dad or the realist captures for my life. So my
[15:28]near is called Ashley and my shoe is called Camilla. And some of the scenes in the book are
[15:33]conversations we've had and scenes that are played out between us. I have a great pair of friends.
[15:39]She was is the overshare right with like very much great detail.
[15:45]Horrifying graphic detail. I had a friend like that like oh my gosh, I don't want to know that.
[15:51]So funny. Okay, do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[15:55]Yes, it's a cliche, but I guess it's going to be keep writing just because it's the one that I can
[16:01]say I've tried and tested and it works just because I have been writing figures and
[16:07]every you know I've written five books before this one and they were all rejected. And so
[16:13]I often think oh what if I had stopped stop writing that I would love I've gotten
[16:18]to this book and with this incredible marketing campaign and publicity campaign and I love my
[16:23]teams and they work so hard and we work so well together. And so it's just the most tried and tested
[16:28]advice I can give just to keep going. Well, I hope you have a lot of fun on this road ahead and
[16:35]very exciting. Congratulations and thank you. I'll be watching all it all unfold
[16:42]with you. Thank you so much. All right. All right. Thanks so much. Yes. Bye bye.
[16:51]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books. Don't forget to
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