Abbie Greaves, ANYWHERE FOR YOU: A Novel

[0:58]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 to 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 and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Abby Greaves is the author of Anywhere For You. She's also the author of The Silent Treatment. She studied English literature at the University of Cambridge and worked in publishing for three years before leaving to focus on writing. She currently lives in The UK. Welcome, Abby. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss anywhere for you. Thank

[1:56]Abbie Greaves: you for having me. Thank you. Now you talk. I was just admiring with the cover of your book, my book rather, because I'm mid move. So I have no books behind me, but no, it was just inspiring it there. Thank you so much for having me. Well, I'll just keep holding it up so you can see it. Yes, it's a beautiful blue cover with stars and this little sort of train station with subtitle,

[2:21]Zibby Owens: How Far Would You Go for the Love of Your Life? Aw. So, Ami, why don't you tell listeners what Anywhere For You is about? And also, I want to know why the different title for The UK edition and like what's

[2:33]Abbie Greaves: how did you pick which one for which area and all that? Yeah, brilliant question. So first of all, I'll you tell a little bit about Anywhere For You. So it's the story of a woman called Mary O'Connor, and she's 40 years old. She lives in Elin, which is in London. She works in a supermarket. But what's unusual about her is that every day when she finishes her shift, she walks to the tube or subway station, and there she stands with a sign that says, Come home, Jim. And no one knows who he is. No one knows where he's gone. That is until the beginning of the book, seven years on from when Mary last saw Jim, she gets a phone call from a man who she thinks is him and it sets into motion a whole chain of events where suddenly she needs to come to terms with just what happened when Jim disappeared. So it's a love story really at its heart. It's a mystery. I've got a lot about mental health, which is a subject really close to my heart. And yeah, I loved writing it. In terms of the titles, that's a really good question. The title I chose, or my working title I suppose is a better way to put it, was actually The UK title for this book, which is The Ends of the Earth. And it doesn't give anything away really to say that that's because it's a promise in the book that Mary and her partner Jim James make, which I suppose is a promise that we make to many people who we love, which is that you will go to the ends of the earth for them. And in the book, you're seeing Mary come to terms with that promise when Jim is no longer there. Like, what does it mean to have made that promise if it can't be helped? So that was the title I had working. But with my US editor, I think she was a little bit worried that the ends of the earth sounded a bit sci fi of all things. Yeah. And I can see that because I think publishers, they like a really clear proposition. They may be like clear title, clear strap line, clear cover. So together, we came up well, we came up with everything. It was a long process. We came up with a few things, riffing on waiting because obviously, she's waiting there with her sign, but nothing there quite worked. And then we came up with Anywhere For You, and it just kinda stuck. So, yes, two titles, Anywhere For You in The States, The End to the Earth in The UK. Yeah. It's kinda it's fun and it's different and I don't know. I've grown to love them both, I should say.

[4:46]Zibby Owens: It's so neat, this whole, like, you get your own cover and your own title. It's like a it's like a focus group experiment in real time with The US and The UK. I feel like every book should try this. Like, not that it dictates the success of the book by any stretch, but just, you know, even which one feels more authentic to you and that you relate to. And anyway, I was debating if I should throw out a few other titles. It could have been as well, but

[5:12]Abbie Greaves: maybe I'll stop. You know, I would happily this time last year, I was tearing my hair out over this. You know, every day I was, you know, to my mom, to my boyfriend, to my neighbor, oh, any ideas like what I could do with this? So I love hearing them. I kind of love him alternative titles.

[5:28]Zibby Owens: We should have chitchatted. I love like brainstorming. I don't know. I think Waiting for Jim would be interesting, but that maybe that's not as interesting. But it doesn't really, of course, capture the whole thing. But anyway, it's a great title. Moving on. So in your novel, first of all, you're struck by the fact that Mary, who is your main, you know, who's your protagonist, is both sort of lost and yet has this regal beauty to her. And yet she's sitting in like the basement of the train station with a sign as if she's a beggar, like looking for money or something, which of course is not the case. She's just like searching for her love and wondering where he is. And the first thing that's interesting is how people are responding to her, right? So all the people who walk by, the people who try to give her money, the people who try to help, very few people who try to help, and then finally the woman who decides to like exploit this whole situation for her own sort of gain. It's like the whole gamut of how people respond, right? The selfless, the self motivated. And it's sort of like a mini commentary on society and the way that they just treat her as she sits there sort of desperately hoping to reunite with someone in this, like, heartbreaking

[6:39]Abbie Greaves: moment. So tell me a little bit about that and how you thought about that. Yeah. That actually ties in almost to my inspiration for the whole novel because I first had the idea when I was commuting in London, and I'm sure New Yorkers or anyone else who lives in one of the big commuting centers in the world, you're flying through those ticket gates twice a day minimum. And you're right, you see the full spectrum of humanity passing by you commuting, but also just in the station. And that really got me thinking about people who stand out there, the people who go against the flow, which is obviously Mary with her side. And I think we've all seen it, you know, there's someone distress in the station for whatever reason. There is that group of people who run to them. There's the group of people who run away from them. I think the greatest group of people are those who just turn a blind eye, and I think that's what we see in the novel. For like seven years, Mary's behavior has gone, not so much unchallenged, it's just kind of ignored, because there are so many people who just kind of sink into themselves, I suppose, instead of dealing with that for whatever reason. And then as you say, you get this one character who enters a few chapters in who ends up holding the key to getting to the bottom of what happens. And her name is Alice, and she's a journalist, and that she starts off from a place of self interest, but I suppose her arc in the book like Mary is is to come to a realisation of just where that might have come from. But yeah, it's amazing what you can pick up on your commute. Like when I think about this novel, when I hold it in my hand, when I hear from readers, think, honestly, I have that idea of like, oh, I don't know, a Monday or a Tuesday flying into the office probably late. I'll never not think about that.

[8:18]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, that commute, you've now completely can definitely write that off for like taxes or something. And another interesting thing about Mary is that despite the fact that she is sort of in distress from her own loss and, you know, almost grieving for this lost character, she still decides to sort of pass the time by getting a job at, you know, at helpline overnight and helping other people. And you just mentioned a second ago about your own connection to mental health. So tell me a little bit more about the crisis hotline,

[8:52]Abbie Greaves: why she's drawn to that and what your own sort of role in this is. Yeah. So it's interesting. I didn't necessarily when I first had the ideas, I was just staying then on a commute. It wasn't immediate that I had the idea of her working at a crisis line. But as I began to research missing people, particularly the kind of processes in The UK which have many, many holes in them, I mean it's a complete minefield how we go about dealing with missing people. But I kept coming again and again to the crisis lines that exist for missing people. Obviously got me thinking more broadly about crisis lines, be it something like the Samaritans, which we have in The UK, suicide lines, lines dedicated to children, the elderly, all of these. And I thought, as I was digging into Mary's character, not only she was not the sort of person necessarily who would phone one of these lines, but she was the sort of person who would entirely understand the importance of them and want to be involved. As you read in the book as well, you see that there's a slight element of, not so much self interest, but kind of hope and desperation there too. Know, if Jim needs something from her she can be on the end of the phone. And I really enjoyed writing that part of the book, not only because it helped me to introduce a whole cast of other characters, the sort of people who would be working for a crisis line like that. But as you say, because I just think it's such an important theme in my writing of Anywhere For You, also in my previous book The Silent Treatment, and that we all know it don't we? Mental health affects all of us, we all have one, whether we feel it in that moment or in a particular moment of crisis. So it's something that is always not even beneath the surface of my writing, but I just think it's a really important part of all my characters to show how they are authentically in their minds. So yeah, it's very important and I think having the book released at this time as well, it's something that readers have really responded to. And I kind of see it as a theme in the messages that come through, saying that it resonated. Yeah, that means a huge amount to me.

[10:53]Zibby Owens: I mean, you actually manufactured many ways to include like a ton of characters. I mean, if this is a movie, you'd have quite a casting, you know, you have to hire a whole casting agency, I feel like. You know, even at the grocery store at like Janet and you have Ted at the hotline and you have like, like there are people and the people on the then you can have, you have your great scene on the train where she's like, I can't fucking breathe. And this is like now a whole big thing. And I feel like you should make a hashtag wears gym t shirts. I don't know. You have like a whole thing going here. Have you thought about this becoming,

[11:27]Abbie Greaves: you know, a version on the screen or anything like that? I think like any author would be lying if they didn't say that. You know, they've never asked. I know. Why do I even ask? I shouldn't even ask. No. It's definitely true. And it's obviously a challenge when you write a larger cast of characters because you can't give everyone equal breathing space or you don't have a main character, but you want everyone to feel like a fully round achievement. So it's obviously lovely to hear that you can kind of remember all these characters and I think about them too. I go into my local supermarket and I'm looking for the jabbit there. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then like that, I think it was with Anywhere For You why I felt it was important to see this network was because Mary feels very isolated and has done in those seven years. She's the sort of person if you said to her, oh, do you have many friends?' She's like, none.' But actually what I wanted to show to the reader is that actually you don't need to kind of force a network down someone's throat. It's just there. If you have a job, you have a network, for better or worse. If you have a network where you live, you have a network of people that you just come into contact with when you're putting the bins out. Yeah, that I suppose, towards where it came from in terms of casting those kind of subsidiary characters. You know, I even have favorites. I shouldn't really say that, but it's Kit. It's okay. Wait. Yeah. Oh yeah. If anyone reads it and feels similarly, let me know. I have had quite a few people say, Kit, bring him back. I don't know, maybe sometime. Yeah, that's kind of the joy of just coloring in the side characters.

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[16:15]Zibby Owens: So how did you begin writing fiction? Tell me about your whole, like, sort of writing journey. Yeah. A great question.

[16:22]Abbie Greaves: I mean, like so many writers, I was always a reader. It never really struck me that I could or should write, though, until post graduation when I ended up working in publishing, just because I love her books. I worked in a literary agency. I was an intern. I worked my way up to an assistant. I was agenting a few non fiction projects. And I suppose just that proximity to a first draft really gives you a sense of it maybe not being quite so unattainable because the book you pick up with the lovely cover and whatever else, that's been through umpteen edits. Like, you you don't want think how many rewrites that's gone through. So I suppose that got me thinking it was more possible. It also got me thinking I need a really good idea to kind of sustain me for 80,000 words, to then get the attention of an agent, to get attention to a publisher. So I suppose I kind of waited for that idea to come along, and fortunately it did. And from that stage, I just started writing it early mornings before work, before the commute. And I was fortunate enough to get an agent and to get a publisher for my first novel, The Silent Treatment. And a little while later I decided to go freelance, so I just had a little bit more time to work on my writing, because it was a very full on day job. So that's me now, freelance writing. Like everyone, it's a different path, right? But I'm grateful for the steps that brought me here. It was, you know, it was definitely eye opening working in a kind of entry level in publishing for a while.

[17:56]Zibby Owens: And The Silent Treatment came out during the pandemic. So what was that like as a debut novelist for you? Like, you know

[18:03]Abbie Greaves: It was, you know, it came out right at the beginning of the pandemic at that stage where the supermarkets were empty. I don't know if you have that in The States, but we did empty supermarkets, closed shops, kind of sheer panic. So I think having gone from my debut being at the forefront of my mind for the moment, from the moment I really started writing it, and definitely since I got a book deal for it, it kind of then just fell to the back because you're worried for your family. You're worried just to kind of how you're going to get through the next few weeks. So that definitely was sort of psychologically a little bit odd. But it definitely made me appreciate A) our glorious booksellers who have been heroic, how much we need them. But also just the readers and the different ways you can connect. Because I think while on the one hand, we're so connected Zooming during the pandemic, you can also feel really disconnected. So getting an email from a reader who's taken the time to find your details to say, this book resonated with me, or even just you know drop you a DM on Instagram or Twitter or whatever to take the time to share with their book group, to take time to share with their neighbor. That I think means more to me than you know it could have done outside of this climate. So I suppose that's a long way of saying it's far from ideal, but, you know, books have been my sanctuary in this time. I'm sure they've been yours too, to some extent. So to feel that I might have done that for a few people, wherever in the world they might be as well is, yeah, it's a lot. A lot that I'm grateful for too. Yeah, they have been my sanctuary for sure. I'm debating if this is becoming sort of a problem. I'm like, what

[19:45]Zibby Owens: is it with bugs? Maybe this is not healthy. I should probably get back into the real world. Somebody yesterday was saying to me, Books allow you to, what did she say? Just constantly be in other people's lives. And I'm like, it's not that I'm unhappy in my own life. Like, what does it mean to be such a huge reader? But I don't know. There's something about the magic of it that I find sort of irresistible.

[20:11]Abbie Greaves: There's something so reassuring to seeing someone else's life reflecting problems in your own, even if it's not a one for one mapping. You might be feeling anxious about, I don't know, say your kids starting a different school and you read a book about someone who's having a completely different anxiety. And there's something in the phrasing, there's something in a sentence and it just clicks. I don't know. It's magic. It's absolute magic.

[20:36]Zibby Owens: It's true. Or at least I can forget about my own anxiety for a few minutes. Yeah. Deal with it. Yeah. Yeah. Know, book got me thinking too, right? Mary in her dedication for seven years is often like, what would I be willing to throw my whole life behind for seven years? Like, what would happen? And would I ever get to a point where I would be handling it this way? Like, this point of sort of desperation, like, what ends up meaning that much? Like, have you thought about this? Like, what would you do for seven years? What's worth the waiting? I mean, go ahead. You know, that's such a good question. And

[21:13]Abbie Greaves: I think when you have it like, for me, that question was felt so keenly that I could write the book. I needed a question that burnt inside me. I think it must be incredibly hard. Through the research process of this, I've read a lot about missing persons. I listened to a lot of podcasts, particularly as a series UK based I think, called missing people, run-in conjunction with one of the charities, where they interview friends, family of the missing person. And in some of the cases we're talking like twenty-thirty years on, and there's something, and this is something I explore in Anywhere for You, about the lack of closure, meaning that moving on is for many people simply impossible. And that's something Mary struggles with in the book, although obviously you know in a book you've got a finite space of time, so obviously there's going to be some closure there. Yeah, it must be incredibly hard. And yeah, that's like why the strapline on the front of the book still gets me thinking. It's like, how far would you go for someone you love, particularly someone that you've promised the earth to? I don't know. I'm not a terribly patient person, but I am fiercely loyal. So I suppose there's kind of elements of me and Mary. And I suppose through her character, I was trying to figure out some of those contradictions in myself. Yeah, I like that she's got people thinking, whether they're like, woah, I could never do that myself, or I can completely see how she got to that point because desperate people do desperate things. Yeah, Get some thinking.

[22:44]Zibby Owens: By the way, the way that British people pronounce Mary is just the greatest. It reminds me of Downton Abbey with Lady Mary, but like the extra syllable or whatever, extra like the drawn out A, it's like so I love it. I could just sit here listening to you talk about Mary all the time. There's another book recently I had on Hannah Mary McKinnon as an author. It was a more of a thriller about a missing love interest. You should maybe check it out. I can send you a link afterwards. But it's her latest book and the husband, not even husband, the paramour basically disappears and the woman goes in search. Then they it's not seven years. It was only a couple of months until the rest of the drama sort of unfolds. But it was that same thing of like, know, it did this person drown? Is this person dead? Is this did this person live? Like, how do you go about like waking up and making yourself breakfast the next day with that, with the whole ground beneath you so uncertain? I don't know. Anyway, it's just such an interesting question.

[23:43]Abbie Greaves: That sounds brilliant. That sounds really good. I think one thing since writing the book that I've been thinking about a lot as well, and you can kind of see it in books and popular cultures, like this culture we now have of ghosting people, not seeing people and then they don't reply to your text, or they just disappear, and maybe you've been seeing them for a few months, and how psychologically affecting that. If it wasn't so affecting, you wouldn't have such a wealth of culture coming out about it. It feels really prevalent. Everyone has some experience, and some people are okay to chalk that up to the way of life. But I think for a lot of people, probably more than who let on psychologically, you know, you obsess on it because your mind hooks on worst possible scenarios. That's just like the torment of the mind really, regardless of the truth of it. So yeah, that sounds brilliant. I'm going to look that up. Yeah, I love that the theme can take you in so many different ways as well, you know, to a thriller, to a love story, to a kind of book club Yeah, it's really fascinating.

[24:47]Zibby Owens: I said that my sister-in-law is sort of like in the dating world now after a very long time of being in a relationship. And you know, she was showing me some texts with with a guy and she's like, yeah. But then, you know, then he just stopped. And I was like, is he okay? Maybe he's not okay. And she's like, no. No. This is what everyone does. And I was like, how do you know, though? How do you know? Like, maybe you should just, like, send him a message and just be like, are you okay? And she's like, no. I'm pretty sure you'd like to post in somebody else's feeders. And I'm like, okay. Fine. Anyway,

[25:16]Abbie Greaves: so are you working on another novel now? I am. I am. I've definitely found writing the pandemic quite tricky. I don't know if any other authors have told you that, but I kind of had a lot of ideas that I could not quite settle on. And I wondered that was just like a symptom of all our minds kind of lily padding, leapfrogging from idea to idea. So, But finally I settled on something which myself and my agent are both very excited about. So I'm in the process of writing that. I'm super superstitious though when I'm writing. So I'm at that stage where I'm kind of, don't want to breathe a word in case some of the magic kind of like- No worries. But it's going. And I'm tentatively hopeful that as things brighten up, the writing's going to kick in a bit faster too. So yeah, it's good. It's good in its own way. And do you have any advice for aspiring authors? Yes. Although I always feel like I want to caveat that by saying, no one trusts me. Mean, the best advice, I think, is just to read widely. Try not to be scared of authors who perceive to be way better than you. I have that right now just because, yeah, you always want to be inspired, right, to aim up. So read widely, read everything, kind of in your genre but in other genres, cause you can learn. I learn plotting from crime novels, detail from historical novelists. So read widely. And I suppose not to get too hung up on waiting for the muse because I think bum in the seat, typing words gets the book done. And yeah, thick skin. That's another big one. But you can't. It's just a learn thing, isn't it? Those would probably be my top three tips to aspiring writers.

[27:04]Zibby Owens: Excellent. Great. Okay. Can you just say Mary one more time? Mary.

[27:09]Abbie Greaves: No, I love it. Mary.

[27:11]Zibby Owens: So great. All right. Well, thank you, Abby. Thanks for coming on and yeah, congratulations on all of your success and we can't wait to see what you write now. Well, thank you so much, Zibby. Thanks for having me on too. Okay. Take care. Bye bye. Bye bye. 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.