Sarah McCoy, MUSTIQUE ISLAND: A Novel
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[0:41]Sarah McCoy is the author of Mystique Island, a novel.
[0:43]Sarah is the New York Times USA Today, an international, best-selling author of the novels,
[0:48]Barilla of Green Gables, The Metmaker's Children, The Baker's Daughter, and The Time It's
[0:53]Note in Puerto Rico.
[0:54]Her work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly,
[0:58]Huffington Post, Writer Unboxed, and Other Publications.
[1:01]She hosted the NPR WSNC Monthly Radio Program bookmarked with Sarah McCoy, and previously
[1:08]taught English and writing at Old Dominion University, and at the University of Texas at
[1:12]El Paso.
[1:13]She currently lives with her husband and orthopedic sports surgeon, their dog, gilly, or
[1:18]maybe jilly, and their cat, Tula Rosa in North Carolina.
[1:22]Welcome, Sarah.
[1:23]Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss Mystique
[1:27]Island, a novel.
[1:28]I'm so happy to be here.
[1:30]This is sort of like a celebrity dream come true for an author to like get on and be able
[1:36]to talk to you and to all your readers, and it's been such a safe haven, actually, for
[1:43]readers and authors to be able to come during the pandemic and listen to your podcasts.
[1:48]I listened to your podcasts all the time.
[1:50]I was like, that's, there's my friend.
[1:53]Brooklyn, Julian, and how they're alive, we're alive in this together.
[1:57]Thank God.
[1:58]So thank you for continuing to do those and doing so many of those during the pandemic.
[2:04]Oh, it was my pleasure.
[2:05]And I know it's like we were chatting before.
[2:07]I was like, I feel like we've been Instagram friends for so long.
[2:11]It just feels like a while.
[2:12]Maybe it wasn't that long.
[2:13]But I don't know.
[2:14]It's nice.
[2:15]It's just nice to meet even over Zoom.
[2:16]So yeah.
[2:17]And I was so excited to see, so you were picked.
[2:20]What was it?
[2:21]I was really surprised and they don't like lead you into this.
[2:31]It's just sort of like your team at my team at Harper Collins just send you an email
[2:36]and says, oh, by the way, Amazon picked you as a best book of literature and fiction
[2:43]for the month.
[2:44]And on we go and it sort of told you because I wasn't expecting it and I was thrilled
[2:51]and I'm so happy that the book is getting out to leaders and that it was chosen.
[2:56]So exciting.
[2:57]Well, why don't you tell listeners about like what Mr. Garland's about and how you said
[3:03]it here?
[3:04]How this whole thing came about inspiration, you know, all that good stuff.
[3:08]Sure.
[3:09]Absolutely.
[3:10]The book opens in 1972 when a Texan D'Worsay named Willie May, Dr. Bow on Mystique Island.
[3:19]It's this exclusive enclave of celebrities and royal residents, Mick Jagger continues
[3:27]to have a place there at the time.
[3:29]It was Mick Jagger and Bianca who were there and Princess Margaret.
[3:35]She is one of the most notable and famed residents.
[3:39]She was given as a gift because don't we all get this as a wedding gift.
[3:44]She was given as a wedding gift piece of land by the owners, Colin and Antenant who
[3:50]owned the island.
[3:51]And that's a whole nother like component of the book is purchasing an entire island of
[3:59]everything.
[4:00]Land, people, industry, everything in the 1960s, you know, it just seems to ancient
[4:08]time.
[4:09]Does that make sense?
[4:11]People still buy islands with people living on them.
[4:14]That's crazy.
[4:16]But they they gave a piece of that to Princess Margaret as a wedding gift and then she built
[4:22]her own mini palace, really, where she could do is she, please, she is out there.
[4:30]That's another resident that's there.
[4:32]It was full of fashion models and gangsters, really, it was anyone who, and this is
[4:40]fascinating to me to write about anyone that Colin, Tenant, decided was beautiful enough.
[4:47]And he was the master ceremony ringleader of who, you know, he was the gatekeeper of who
[4:53]was allowed to come onto his island because they registered as most beautiful for him.
[4:59]So you had to be beautiful and you had to have money.
[5:03]And it's such a scandal usually.
[5:05]So that was the island.
[5:09]And then into that came these outsiders.
[5:13]So it's Willy May, she's the first one and she's the mother.
[5:16]And she comes to this island and is wooed there by Colin and Anne and looking for a place
[5:24]to settle after she has been black bald from good English society by divorcing her
[5:30]brewery, Baron husband, who then subsequently dies.
[5:36]So she is no place to go.
[5:40]And she goes from a sneak and they say you're, she's an ex beauty queen.
[5:45]So they say you're beautiful.
[5:47]You've got the money now that you've taken quite a bit from your divorce settlement
[5:52]and your husband is gone and you're kind of scandalous.
[5:55]So come on over and set up shop and she does.
[5:59]And she invites her to daughters, Hilly, who is a vogue fashion model and Joanne, who is
[6:07]a young musical sort of prodigy student, who are both there equally sort of lost in the
[6:14]world trying to find their way.
[6:16]And it's the 70s or early 70s when that definitely mirrored women's movement at the
[6:23]time where they were trying to find their footing as empowered new women, but not quite
[6:30]sure what, what that meant or where that was.
[6:33]And all that for me really echoed this whole island climate of each person is their own
[6:39]solitary floating island trying to find where they belong.
[6:44]And then you've got this one place where we're all now deserted on an island together.
[6:51]And one of my writing teachers, she said, the best thing you can do for your characters
[6:57]is put them in a room by themselves and lock them up and make them all just like figure
[7:03]it out in there.
[7:04]And so an island is a natural sort of room that you lock your characters up in.
[7:10]So that's exactly what this is.
[7:12]And it's a, you know, it's like lighting a flame in a box.
[7:17]It just sort of like all just goes on fire and a little mini bonfire.
[7:22]So it was a lot of fun for me to write, especially since it was grounded in that it's
[7:28]historical fiction.
[7:29]So it's grounded in real facts, which city people think I make this stuff.
[7:36]I did not Oh my goodness.
[7:40]So you asked my inspiration.
[7:43]I got inspired by this story during a time and actually really rough time for me because
[7:50]I didn't know what I was going to write next.
[7:52]I just written my book, Morilla of Green Gables, which is a very different island.
[7:58]I mean, Prince Edward Island, Avon Lee, the sort of like very g-rated, lovely, beautiful
[8:05]place.
[8:07]And I, they said, what are you going to write next and I didn't have an answer.
[8:10]And I know you know, you're an author that is terrifying.
[8:14]That is like more tear.
[8:16]I mean, I broke out a little in the sweat right now talking about it because I'm like,
[8:20]oh my gosh.
[8:21]So I didn't know what I was going to write next.
[8:24]And when I get like that, I tend to go to other sources that make me happy.
[8:30]And one of them, creative sources, one of them is I have a real issue with binging
[8:39]biography, like film biographies, right?
[8:43]So anything that's like a documentary on someone's life, how they started as this tiny
[8:50]thing and that tiny thing bloomed in some big idea that just took over the world and
[8:55]changed.
[8:56]I love that stuff.
[8:58]Like I will watch that every day nonstop.
[9:01]So that's what I did.
[9:02]I started just watching documentaries.
[9:05]I just watched everything on HBO, everything on Netflix.
[9:08]Like cleaned it out.
[9:09]I got, I have a PBS subscription because that has the best stuff in there.
[9:15]Yeah.
[9:16]I literally just didn't read very much even.
[9:21]I was just watching and I listened to audiobooks.
[9:23]That's another of my big things.
[9:25]I love listening to a memoir, a celebrity memoir, a historical person memoir, where
[9:33]I get to hear like that story coming through.
[9:38]So I'm telling you this because these are all the things that are sort of already influencing
[9:41]my, how I'm hearing the story coming to me is through these sort of historical and memoirs.
[9:50]So I picked up this and I know, I know I'm still old, it's like who has DVDs anymore.
[9:56]I have a whole cabinet behind my couch full of DVD.
[10:00]because I don't know what to do with them.
[10:01]So I am, I'm sure so.
[10:05]I absolutely love them.
[10:06]So I got this DVD and I was watching it.
[10:10]And it's about Princess Margaret and her being a rebel.
[10:12]And there was a tiny little snippet
[10:15]about how she was given this island as a wedding gift.
[10:19]And I am Puerto Rican, my mother's Puerto Rican.
[10:22]And so I wrote my first book called
[10:25]The Time and Stone Puerto Rico.
[10:26]It was set in 1960s, Puerto Rico.
[10:29]And it was about similar kind of like the island
[10:32]figuring things out and do they want to be independent
[10:34]or do they want to go and be part of the United States?
[10:37]So that was a real struggle at the time.
[10:39]So during the writing of that,
[10:41]I thought I had researched everything
[10:44]there was snow about the Caribbean.
[10:46]I was a little, you know, I, that's pompous even.
[10:50]And that, you know, pride is this, right there,
[10:54]I should have known, I was going to find something
[10:56]and I didn't know because I was like,
[10:57]I know everything.
[10:58]I've researched this whole way.
[10:59]I, you know, these are my people,
[11:01]the Tainyo Indians.
[11:03]I mean, I went deep with this.
[11:05]And then when I saw on the documentary
[11:08]that there was an island in the Caribbean,
[11:11]privately owned called Mystique,
[11:15]I had never heard of it.
[11:16]And I just thought, no, so I've never heard of this.
[11:19]What is this?
[11:19]No, so I went and I am very type A
[11:22]and I had to Google everything on the planet
[11:26]that had this name in it and find out more about it.
[11:29]And so that sort of what started me down the journey
[11:33]of researching it.
[11:35]And then once I did, the stuff that the internet gave me.
[11:42]And it was like beyond fiction.
[11:45]I mean, it was crazy the stuff that content it did.
[11:49]So further Googling, speaking of Amazon, thank you, Amazon.
[11:54]I found, because Amazon also partners
[11:56]with very small bookstores across the globe, right?
[12:01]So on there, I found one copy of Collinton.
[12:07]Look at this thing.
[12:08]Wow, look at this cover.
[12:10]It's just, I love it.
[12:11]Everything about it though.
[12:12]Oh my God, I can't believe it.
[12:13]It's so dated.
[12:14]It's like, yes.
[12:15]How could this ever have been?
[12:17]No.
[12:18]No, one copy of this through a tiny bookseller
[12:21]and Somerset in the UK.
[12:23]And so it took like three weeks to get to me.
[12:27]I got it.
[12:28]I, you know, I went through and started reading it and zippy.
[12:32]Just, I don't know if you have you looked it up,
[12:35]anything about this island or about it?
[12:37]I have not.
[12:37]I mean, I've heard of Mystique,
[12:38]but I had not read anything about it.
[12:41]Just scandalous.
[12:43]I mean, just like things that things that not just make
[12:47]my mama blush, they make me blush.
[12:49]And I'm like a modern person, you know,
[12:50]who has watched 50 Shades of Grey.
[12:53]And I mean, the things that he just so openly wrote about there
[13:00]and wrote them as facts.
[13:02]I think that was what was interesting to me
[13:04]is that it made me realize that history is written
[13:08]by the colony, by the authority, right?
[13:12]Who never is an authority?
[13:13]And it is whatever they decide is what they want the world
[13:17]to remember about them and about what they've built or created.
[13:21]And so I actually think this is probably way more fiction
[13:24]than anything I wrote.
[13:26]I mean, it's just, some of it's just absolutely insane.
[13:29]I couldn't, I couldn't write some of the stuff or I did.
[13:33]I tried to write some of the scenes.
[13:35]And my editor was like,
[13:37]not sure that's gonna fly, you know,
[13:39]we can't like put that out there.
[13:40]So that is where a lot of the content
[13:45]and the scandal came from.
[13:47]And then I realized though that again,
[13:50]this was coming through a nail,
[13:53]colonizing white person's perspective, all of this.
[13:58]And I just to be honest didn't believe him.
[14:01]I just didn't believe him.
[14:03]And so I thought, you know, this is my opportunity
[14:06]to write for as a Puerto Rican woman from the Caribbean
[14:10]to write not just from a female perspective,
[14:13]but also to give the islanders a voice.
[14:17]And so that's one of the greatest joys I found
[14:19]in writing this book is where the minor character,
[14:22]supposedly minor characters, the minority of this book
[14:26]were so powerful.
[14:28]Others a character called Titus,
[14:30]who is basically the Collins right hand man
[14:34]and the overseer of all the business side
[14:37]and trying to help this crazy person navigate this island
[14:42]and keep everyone staff paid and working
[14:48]and surviving.
[14:51]And I loved writing him and he's from the islands
[14:54]and he is educated and bright.
[14:56]And he was based on so many of my uncles,
[15:00]my Tios and my grandfather and cousins in Puerto Rico
[15:06]who are bright, brilliant people educated.
[15:10]And yet because of the color of their skin,
[15:12]they are often seen as maybe they aren't as educated
[15:17]as some of the other people on the island
[15:19]who are of the majority.
[15:21]So that was really fun.
[15:23]And then of course, the mother daughter stories.
[15:25]I love a good family saga.
[15:29]Like that just speaks to my heart when I read them
[15:34]and I write about them.
[15:36]I love that interaction between family members
[15:40]and fascinated by siblings.
[15:42]Like birth order, don't even get me started.
[15:45]We could do a podcast on birth.
[15:47]I would be, I'm always like, what number are you?
[15:49]You're a result, aren't you?
[15:51]Aren't you a second job?
[15:51]Yeah, yeah.
[15:52]What are you?
[15:53]What are you?
[15:54]A first, first, so am I.
[15:57]Yep, yep, first born.
[16:00]I was sort of guess that about you, yes.
[16:02]So I loved that insider insight that we all,
[16:07]that what's interesting is that we're also unique
[16:10]in our sibling dynamic wherever you won't fall in that.
[16:13]But we all share like the exact same sort of like
[16:18]personality experiences and that's where
[16:21]as a collective reader nation, we can come together.
[16:24]And so I write a lot about siblings
[16:27]and about former dynamics and women relationships
[16:31]are really fascinating to me because they're so different
[16:35]from I have two brothers.
[16:37]So I'm the eldest and the next two brothers.
[16:39]I don't have any sisters.
[16:41]And I think that is absolutely part of why I write a lot
[16:45]about sisters because I live vicariously through my characters.
[16:49]And I'm also trying to like, fear that dynamic out.
[16:52]My mother has the youngest of three girls.
[16:57]And I grew up, I love my very close with my teachings, my aunts.
[17:01]And I grew up being able to objectively sit in the room
[17:05]with my mom and my tts and listen to them.
[17:08]And they would be fighting one minute
[17:11]and loving the next minute.
[17:13]And I always found that so interesting
[17:15]to be a little girl just sitting there listening to them
[17:18]because I didn't, it's different with my brothers.
[17:20]It's different with boys in general, you know.
[17:23]So I write a lot about sisters
[17:25]and that was certainly in this book
[17:28]in the mother-daughter dynamic.
[17:30]I am just rambling.
[17:31]You weren't even asking him to get in the house,
[17:33]can he question?
[17:34]It was great, thank you.
[17:37]It's amazing.
[17:38]I don't think we made it easy for you.
[17:40]Not just, oh, you made it great, it's perfect.
[17:43]It's totally perfect, I loved it.
[17:45]So when you were, well, first of all,
[17:47]did you get to visit Mystique?
[17:48]Did you go?
[17:49]Oh man, this is a fun one.
[17:52]So I planned, it took me a year to plan it,
[17:55]a trip to Mystique because it's not so easy to get there.
[17:59]I didn't, well, I knew it would be difficult.
[18:01]And I have gone to every location
[18:04]that I've ever written about in all my books.
[18:06]And that isn't like, well, I started to think,
[18:09]and I think that was where the writing uses,
[18:13]taught me a lesson.
[18:14]I started to think that that was the trick
[18:16]that I needed to do that, that that was essential.
[18:18]Otherwise, how would I do it?
[18:20]But I planned this trip to Mystique
[18:23]and you go, I would have to go from where I live
[18:27]to Miami, from Miami to St. Lucia.
[18:30]And that was on a United States flight
[18:35]and then you get off in St. Lucia
[18:37]and you have to charter your own plane,
[18:40]private plane to St. Vincent.
[18:42]St. Vincent, you get off and you get on the ferry
[18:45]and then you take the ferry.
[18:47]I mean, this is all, if you're a normal person,
[18:49]you don't have a private plane that can take you straight
[18:52]to Mystique, which some people do and that that
[18:54]is probably the best way, you're right to go.
[18:58]But then I would have to get off and St. Vincent
[18:59]and take the ferry to Mystique
[19:01]and then when you get to Mystique,
[19:02]you aren't allowed on unless you have a host.
[19:06]And that can be a hotel.
[19:08]So the Cottonhouse Hotel is there.
[19:10]The Firefly that I wrote about was there,
[19:13]but it's no longer through the pandemic.
[19:15]It didn't make it, but so I had done all that planning
[19:19]and booked a week at the Firefly,
[19:22]which is the setting in the book too.
[19:25]And I was going to leave Zibi, ready for this?
[19:29]The Funfire, so fun, life is so fun.
[19:32]I was going to leave March 30, 2020 was my ticket.
[19:37]I'm sorry.
[19:38]Yeah, no, you know, I've been a couple of years.
[19:42]The pain, the ripping of my heart out,
[19:45]it's healed back up again.
[19:46]But so I didn't get to go, obviously,
[19:50]because everything got locked down.
[19:51]And I got vouchers back for the US,
[19:56]but everything else just sort of went into wherever
[19:59]everything.
[20:00]went during the pandemic and the people that let the firefly at the time said, well,
[20:05]we'll give you a year to use it. But of course, you know, we all know the year came and
[20:11]went. We still, everything was locked down. And then right after that, I saw that they had
[20:18]closed their hotel. It didn't make it and they moved everything over to another island.
[20:23]So, and you know what, I'm okay with it though, because actually it could be, if I can
[20:27]honest with you. And I haven't said this anywhere else. There was so much pressure
[20:31]then though that you wrote a book about it. You paid all this money or you're just going
[20:37]to lose all the money. You have to find a time in a way to go. You have to, you have to. It was
[20:41]very, and I just felt like I've written the book. It's already getting published by the long book
[20:49]floor. And right, and you know this, you're an author. Right after this, I'm going to start getting
[20:55]what I got right after Morela, someone tapping. So what's next? Are you ready for that? And
[21:02]I, you know, that is, I didn't to then plan a trip to Mystique just because I have this, you know,
[21:10]this balance hanging over me. I just thought, you know what, if I, if I went another, another person
[21:17]who actually gave me the best advice and sort of freed me from my guilt was George Saunders,
[21:23]who I mentioned because he is the great and almighty, right? So we all are just, and I was,
[21:29]when I found out that I wasn't going and I had to cancel everything, I was talking to him in an
[21:35]email and just whining basically. And he wrote me back a very George Saunders loving, but stern
[21:42]email and he said, Sarah, your fiction writer, just Google it. And so I thought, you know what?
[21:51]If someone of his stature and respect is telling me just Google what you need,
[21:58]I think I'm going to do that. So that worked out great. And I had the background of the Caribbean
[22:03]being Puerto Rican. And to be honest, all that, that whole island area, the breeze is coming
[22:09]off Puerto Rico. They're going right by Mystique. So I definitely used all of my sort of childhood
[22:15]backgrounds for that. But yeah, I didn't get to go. My first book I hadn't gotten to go. But
[22:21]I'm at peace with it now. Like I feel like this is the way. And I think you understand, this is
[22:27]the way sometimes a book will take the author on a journey, as much as it is a journey for readers
[22:35]or to write or whatever, but it took me on a journey. And I realized that there is no pattern
[22:42]for how you should write anything. And there is no pattern to how a reader should read anything.
[22:48]And I think that's what I also learned through the pandemic is that don't put definitions or
[22:54]parameters on what you think the world should be like, because it's going to blow your mind.
[23:01]And that's better. You know, it's better if you just go with a flow through the good and the
[23:07]bad, because it's going to be good and bad. And it's going to be real bad sometimes. It's going to
[23:11]be real good sometimes. So I think we all learned that lesson. I think that's in this book too.
[23:17]I rewrote it four times. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I rewrote it three times during the pandemic.
[23:25]But I had to. I think you get this. I had to because the world wasn't the same world that I wrote
[23:31]the first draft in. And I knew that if I put it out, the way it was the first draft before the
[23:38]pandemic, it was sort of like a hollow bell. It was just sort of, it didn't have what was needed.
[23:45]And then I wrote it during the lockdown again. And that was just very dark.
[23:51]Glory to you. That was a very tragic, dark, different book. And then I wrote it twice more
[23:57]afterwards. We were all just trying to figure it out. And again, it took me on a very different
[24:03]journey than any of my other books have ever ever taken me. So I'm grateful. That's what I actually
[24:11]am grateful. Do I want to do it again? Kind of like the pandemic. Hell no, I don't. But I'm grateful.
[24:20]That's amazing. We're on to our last question, which is what advice would you have for aspiring
[24:27]authors? Wow. Well, I sort of just got up on a, on a soapbox just a second ago about like,
[24:35]you know, freak open your own boxes and do your own thing. But I think another thing for,
[24:41]for aspiring authors, I think you just have to, um, two things. You have to be tenacious.
[24:48]You have to persevere. It is writing is not easy and it is not glamorous. It is heartbreaking
[24:56]and hard and days when you don't look. I have, I'll just check. This is my row. I have it on my
[25:02]lap. Like it's like this fuzzy, like there are days you don't get out of your robe and you feel
[25:07]like a monster and gross and you stink. And you, you just have to be like, that's it. That's,
[25:13]that's the job. That's the actual writing job. And you have to love that part of it more than
[25:20]you like what I'm doing now, like talking and, and being out there and, and being a show person.
[25:28]But I think that's really, really important is to love the actual work. And I think next,
[25:34]I'm still learning this is you have to enjoy your own journey. That, that qualifier there,
[25:40]your own journey because you tell, we all tend to look, especially with Instagram and social media
[25:46]these days, even if you're not in the publishing realm, if you're just a normal person,
[25:52]we all tend to look at other people's feeds and their journey and say, look how great that looks.
[25:56]They are going through all the problems I have or they're not, they're getting all these opportunities
[26:01]that I'm not getting. Why is that? What, what can I do that's like them? And I suffer from that
[26:07]terribly, terribly. And I think I'm now coming to see that my own contentment and my own happiness
[26:16]resides in the smallness of being grateful for my journey and every day in that journey.
[26:23]And there is a beautiful piece in that that I mean, I'm just getting now in my 40s that I
[26:30]definitely didn't have any time before. So those are my advice. Enjoy your journey. And while
[26:36]you're enjoying that journey, though, just keep pushing away and working and doing your thing.
[26:42]Love it. Sarah, thank you. I've been so excited to talk to you. I just want you to know,
[26:47]I read the Baker's Daughter with a book group a long time ago when it came out and have like
[26:52]just adored it. And so it's just like very full circle-y for me to be here talking to you now.
[26:58]So I'm about Misty Island. So anyway, congratulations on another successful book. I know it will
[27:05]continue to just keep taking off and taking off. And it was so nice to hear your story.
[27:10]Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is really made my entire day, my month. I just
[27:16]go stop. I really have been wanting to meet you. And this was wonderful. So thank you for having me.
[27:23]Well, I hope we made in person soon. That would be good. Yes, absolutely. All right. Bye, Sarah.
[27:29]Have a great day. Thank you. Bye.
[27:32]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[27:37]Moms don't have time to read books. If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology
[27:42]called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids. Check it out and you'll hear from 49 authors about
[27:47]all sorts of things moms don't have time to do. All the authors have been on this podcast.
[27:51]Also, check out my TikTok at with Sivi and Tracy. My other podcast, Sex Talk with Sivi and Tracy.
[27:57]Check out Moms Don't Have Time to Write on Medium. And of course, my new publishing company
[28:02]called Sivi Bux. And now back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids.
[28:08]Hi. Hello. Enjoy the show.