Alex Michaelides, THE FURY
[0:04]Welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Be Books with Zippy.
[0:07]I'm the host, Zippy Owens, I am an author, my latest is blank, pub date March 1st and
[0:13]novel.
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[0:27]Go to Zippy Owens.com to learn more and follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens.
[0:33]Alex Mikey-Lietis is the author of The Fury, delighted to have him back.
[0:38]Alex was born and raised in Cyprus.
[0:40]He has an MA in English literature from Trinity College, Cambridge University, and an MA
[0:45]in screenwriting from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
[0:49]The silent patient was his first novel, debuting at number one on the New York Times best
[0:54]seller list, and has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide.
[0:59]The rights have been sold in a record-breaking 51 countries, and the book has been option
[1:04]for film by Plan B. His second novel, The Made-Ince, was an instant New York Times
[1:08]bestseller, and has been option for television by Miramax Television and Stone Village.
[1:13]Welcome, Alex.
[1:14]Thank you so much for coming back on Momstone of Time to Read books to discuss The Fury.
[1:18]Thank you very much, Zippy.
[1:20]I'm really happy to be back on the court course.
[1:22]So tell everybody what The Fury is about.
[1:25]Okay, The Fury is a thriller, and it's about a famous ex-movie star who invites her
[1:30]six best friends to spend Easter with her on her private Greek island, and then they
[1:34]get trapped there because of bad weather, and then there's a murder.
[1:38]But that's just the beginning, because what I really wanted to try and do with this thriller
[1:42]was to take all of the expectations that we bring to a classic setup, like that, where
[1:46]people are trapped in an island, and then try and turn them on their head.
[1:50]So I had a lot of fun coming up with the twists and turns.
[1:54]Oh my gosh, the voice is so great.
[1:57]So it's told, essentially, you jump around, but Elliot is the person who's sort of telling
[2:02]us this story, and you get to know him as he is sort of, you know, over a martini, kind
[2:07]of like talking to you about what's going on.
[2:09]How did you decide to like find your way into the story with that lens, and then, you
[2:15]know, sort of showing us and backtracking through time, and I mean, you did all sorts of tricks
[2:20]and, you know, structural elements.
[2:23]Why Elliot as one narrator?
[2:25]Well, that's a great question, because that's my favourite part of the book, really.
[2:29]So basically, there's a couple of things.
[2:30]But I wrote this in a different way to the era of my first two novels.
[2:33]The first two books I plotted them for about a year, and then I wrote them, but it really
[2:38]kind of took the joy out of it for me slightly, it becomes a chore.
[2:41]And so this time I thought I would just try and just tell myself the story as I went
[2:45]along.
[2:47]I didn't know who the murderer is going to be, and I didn't know that victim was going
[2:49]to be.
[2:50]I just had the characters in the situation, and I had died of death.
[2:52]And then when I got to the end of the first draft, I wrote it in the third person.
[2:56]It just sort of felt lifeless to me.
[2:58]I didn't know I have a problem with the third person.
[2:59]I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm never going to do a book in the third person again.
[3:02]I just can't seem to get inside the character's heads.
[3:04]And I was walking along the beach at night where I live, and I just started to recite
[3:08]the opening lines of the novel to myself.
[3:10]And for the first time I asked myself who is talking, and then I thought, oh, wouldn't it
[3:14]be fun?
[3:15]If it was a minor supporting character, that's who Elliot was at that point.
[3:19]He's a British playwright, and he's kind of sarcastic and dry.
[3:21]And I thought, wouldn't it be fun if he's telling the story?
[3:23]And so then I rewrote the whole book from his perspective, and he just took over, and
[3:28]he changed the plot and he changed everything.
[3:30]So it was really creative for me, yeah.
[3:32]And was it fun?
[3:33]Was it as fun as you hoped?
[3:34]It was a lot of fun.
[3:35]I mean, you know, a pantsing, so to speak, it leads you into other difficulties.
[3:39]And so there was a lot of rewriting, but I think it's what has taught me is that next
[3:43]summer I write a book.
[3:44]I'm going to try and combine them both.
[3:45]I'm going to plot more, but then I'm also not going to be tied to that plot, and I'm
[3:50]going to allow myself to change.
[3:51]So it's been a wonderful exercise for me, yeah.
[3:53]This is like setting pretend deadlines and then changing them as you go.
[3:57]Yeah.
[3:58]I'm a master of that.
[3:59]Yeah.
[4:00]Oh my gosh.
[4:01]Well, we don't even find out who's been killed until the beginning of part two, basically,
[4:05]or the end of part one, beginning of part two.
[4:07]Was that how you conceived it?
[4:09]I know you were just going from the city of your pants, whatever.
[4:12]But once you figured out who was going to die, does it give it away if we talk about
[4:16]that?
[4:17]I don't know.
[4:18]I mean, we shouldn't.
[4:19]Okay.
[4:20]Once you figured that out, did you consider, I feel like most stories would bring that
[4:22]up a little bit earlier.
[4:24]So you know, like, okay, here's who it was, blah, blah, blah.
[4:27]Is that part of the charm?
[4:28]Yeah.
[4:29]I think so for me.
[4:30]I wanted it to be like a character study.
[4:31]And I, you know, I think what I enjoyed about it was there are only six characters, essentially,
[4:35]because one of them dies, you said.
[4:36]So it becomes a very much smaller canvas.
[4:40]And I think with my second novel, the Magens, I overstretched myself somewhat, and it
[4:44]was too many characters, and I couldn't get into them in the way that I wanted to.
[4:48]And so this time I thought, I really want to focus on who they are as human beings and
[4:51]just trying to really nail the psychology of them.
[4:54]So that took a lot of time to set up.
[4:55]I really worked hard at that.
[4:56]You know, I wrote pages and pages of stuff about all of their childhoods, which I didn't
[5:01]put into the book, because it just felt important that I know that, but I didn't think
[5:04]the reader needed to know that.
[5:06]I guess my ambition is to try and merge a genre novel, like a detective story and a proper
[5:11]novel.
[5:12]I shouldn't say that.
[5:13]I mean, a novel where character, not necessarily obeying the plot and the characters
[5:18]are deep and rich and real.
[5:20]And see if it's possible to try and create something, you know, like a hybrid, because
[5:23]I think the very best crime writers do that naturally.
[5:25]And that's what I aspire to.
[5:26]Yeah.
[5:27]Maybe you should do like an offshoot when they're all kids and call it like, you know,
[5:31]not the baby fairy.
[5:32]It's the name of like a small wind, you know, like a small or something.
[5:36]The breeze.
[5:37]I love that.
[5:39]I mean, I've heard you think things about children that hasn't occurred to me, but
[5:43]you've heard it here first.
[5:44]You heard it here first.
[5:45]Give it a shot.
[5:46]Maybe you don't even realize that it's the same character or something.
[5:49]So the fury, of course, has many meanings and one that we find out fairly early on is
[5:54]it's Kate's anger, right?
[5:56]Because she's just not who she really wants to be, especially in Lena's shadow and
[6:00]everything.
[6:01]I love about that anger and where the fury itself came from and go from there.
[6:05]The fury is the name that locals give the wind, and I don't know if you have been to
[6:10]the Greek islands, but I grew up in that part of the world.
[6:12]And the wind is crazy.
[6:13]And the germ of the story came to me about 20 years ago, and I was actually long with
[6:18]30 years ago.
[6:19]I was stuck on the island of Niggolos for three days because the wind was so bad that
[6:23]no boat could leave and no boat could arrive.
[6:25]And that was when I first had the idea, oh, that's a really great way of trapping people
[6:28]somewhere for a story.
[6:29]And then as I wrote the novel, it became about the fury became kind of metaphor for the
[6:34]characters' emotions.
[6:35]And like you said, Kate's anger and the other characters, like Elliot's suppressed anger.
[6:39]And so that became, it was a very kind of happy accident, but I had a lot of fun exploring
[6:42]that.
[6:43]Yeah.
[6:44]I have been to Niggolos, and it was insanely windy, and I remember calling the travel agent
[6:47]being like, nobody said anything about this wind.
[6:50]Like, what is it going on?
[6:51]Like, I can't even sit outside.
[6:52]It ruins being on the beach because you're getting stand flung at you the whole time.
[6:56]And so, you know, I just, I thought it'd be really fun for a novel.
[6:59]It's just muttering this panel with thriller writers and talking about like, what
[7:03]is it about these situations that are really terrible that make some people just like deal
[7:09]with them?
[7:10]They go through and others like hang on to them and like they're like, well, okay, this
[7:14]is inconvenient.
[7:15]But actually, let's pretend the whole everybody's trapped here and this is going to be
[7:18]a novel.
[7:19]And you know, like, where does that instinct come from?
[7:21]Is it just like an anxiety coping mechanism or like, I don't know, where does that come
[7:25]from for you?
[7:26]What do you think?
[7:28]You know, like a big part of the novel for me is this ancient Greek philosopher who
[7:31]said the characters fate coming from like psychological background, like I do where
[7:35]I studied psychotherapy and stuff.
[7:36]I find that really fascinating.
[7:38]And essentially that means, you know, what we do, who we are is what we do.
[7:42]And it's a way of kind of seeing that things don't just happen to you in many ways you
[7:47]make them.
[7:48]And so, you know, I'm like, you like, I would be on the phone to the travel agent.
[7:51]Yeah.
[7:52]But somebody else would make the best of it.
[7:53]And I think that just comes to, you know, our childhood, that kind of how we approach
[7:57]life really.
[7:58]So you and I probably have maybe similar childhoods.
[8:01]I don't know.
[8:02]I don't know.
[8:03]This is a good thing or a bad thing.
[8:05]I don't know.
[8:06]Oh, my gosh, all these worst case scenarios all the time.
[8:09]What if this, what if that, you know, I live in a constant state of anxiety, which is good
[8:14]for my writing, you know, I suppose.
[8:16]Yeah.
[8:17]I'm always like, no one's going to know that I'm in this like, deli grabbing a soda.
[8:21]What if something happens in the, what if they can never find me?
[8:24]What if this happens?
[8:25]And I'm like, why, why can't I just like get a drink?
[8:27]Maybe it's like maybe it's a protective mechanism because I think I'm always thinking
[8:30]worst case scenario.
[8:31]I'm kind of prepared for, you know, the worst that happened.
[8:34]Yeah.
[8:35]Maybe that's what it is.
[8:36]Ultimately, it doesn't work though because when terrible things happen, I'm still like
[8:38]knocked off my feet.
[8:39]But I like to believe.
[8:40]I'm a mess.
[8:41]I'm like the biggest mess there is, you know, but yeah, I like to trick myself into thinking
[8:47]it is stealing me in some way.
[8:48]Yeah.
[8:49]I know exactly what you mean.
[8:50]Yeah.
[8:51]You weren't annoyed at all when you were rewriting this from a different point of view.
[8:55]You weren't like, this is a pain.
[8:56]You were like, I'm just like going to enjoy it and get into it.
[8:58]Oh, you know, it's speaking to what we're talking about.
[9:00]It was a really good lesson, I think, in not panicking because I could have panicked at
[9:04]that point.
[9:05]But I didn't.
[9:06]And I think the reason I didn't is that I was just enjoying myself so much writing the
[9:09]novel.
[9:10]You know, I spoke to Diego about that she wants and I asked him how he chooses what book
[9:14]to write next.
[9:15]And he said, you just have to choose something you're still going to be into in two years
[9:18]time.
[9:19]And it's the best advice anybody ever gave me.
[9:21]And so for example, with the majors, I chose really sad subject matter and a grieving
[9:25]heroine.
[9:26]And then three years later, I was really depressed.
[9:29]This time, I thought, I want to choose, I want to live in that world that I love the world
[9:33]of all about Eve and all black and white movies where people like to figure out centric
[9:36]martinis and dress deeply and being sophisticated, witty banter.
[9:40]And why I chose a movie star, you know, a theater actress and a playwright is the three
[9:45]leads.
[9:46]And I thought, there'll be a fun world to live in.
[9:48]And so I think I've just had so much fun and have a single world.
[9:51]I felt quite happy to dive back in and approach it from a different angle.
[9:54]Turned out your next novel is going to be a rom-com.
[9:56]Oh, maybe.
[9:57]I mean, it ends in death, of course.
[10:00]You do have a moment in here where Leo is sort of alone and he has a moment where he's like,
[10:09]he knew for sure that something terrible was going to happen.
[10:12]Like he could just feel it in every sense and he was convinced.
[10:15]And then nothing terrible totally happens in that moment, but he can't like shake the
[10:19]feeling and instead he just gets sick or whatever.
[10:22]So tell me about those moments and like putting your characters, like you had him be
[10:27]so afraid and then, you know, it's like the foreshadowing thing, is that what you were trying
[10:31]to do there?
[10:32]Yeah, I think I was and I was thinking I was also touching on this kind of slight supernatural
[10:36]vibe that's going the novel.
[10:38]So you know, I'm always fascinated by Greek mythology and it's something that we even
[10:42]told my books just because it's where I grew up, it's like a really great heritage to draw on
[10:46]because it's school and in Cyprus they teach you Homer and Euripides not Shakespeare.
[10:51]And so you learn about myths from a very young age.
[10:54]And the very first thing I did when I knew I was going to set a novel on an island and it
[10:58]will have wind.
[10:59]I looked up the goddess of the wind.
[11:00]She, the goddess is, they don't have a goddess of the wind, but they have a goddess of
[11:03]the breeze and she's called aura.
[11:05]And so I named the island after her.
[11:07]And then the more I looked into her, she's not a benign goddess at all.
[11:10]She's quite terrifying.
[11:11]She hated men and she would go hunting for them with Artemis and then when she gave birth
[11:15]to a son, she ate him.
[11:17]And so, again, fed into the metaphor of the wind being on those islands, being quite devouring
[11:22]and being quite scary.
[11:24]She plays it a part later on in the novel too.
[11:26]So I wanted to weave that in in terms of like, you know, occasionally scaring the characters
[11:29]like she does with Leo at that moment.
[11:31]So that was a lot of fun to put in here.
[11:34]You know, you're talk of, you know, Martini is an old film star.
[11:37]I don't know.
[11:38]Have you seen the movie Maestro?
[11:39]Yeah, it was bright.
[11:40]Not yet.
[11:41]No, I'm looking forward to that.
[11:42]It's so good.
[11:43]I don't know.
[11:44]It was robbed.
[11:45]It's a golden globe.
[11:46]But anyway, they do it so that in each decade, they film it the way it would be filmed at that
[11:50]time.
[11:51]Oh, well.
[11:52]In that time, it's kind of black and white and very mood-like and exactly sort of the
[11:56]way you're depicting.
[11:58]And then it moves up to the next decade.
[11:59]And then the 70s are all like, cool.
[12:02]And that's great.
[12:03]I love that.
[12:04]Yeah.
[12:05]I should see that.
[12:06]I watched, like, what about Eve?
[12:07]And then vertigo again.
[12:08]And again, while I was writing, I was just trying to get in the right mood for that kind
[12:10]of world.
[12:11]And also, you know, I was a screenwriter and I worked in Hollywood.
[12:13]And I was around a lot of famous people.
[12:15]And I saw a lot of quite outrageous behavior from the original name, nameless.
[12:20]And at the time, I just kept my eyes open and my ears open and I just kind of thought
[12:25]undame in a right about them all.
[12:27]And so when the fury happened, I thought, oh, really, what a fun idea to take these
[12:31]badly-paid film stars and then trap them on a Greek island and then throw in a murder,
[12:35]felt like a good, you know, world to live in.
[12:37]It's a good recipe.
[12:38]Yeah.
[12:39]Yeah.
[12:40]It sounds like it should be one of those assignments you get in like an MFA program or something.
[12:43]Like, maybe elements.
[12:44]Like, go ahead.
[12:45]Now do something with them.
[12:46]Yeah.
[12:47]Absolutely.
[12:48]It's quite a mess it up.
[12:52]So the title is the fury.
[12:54]What are you angry about these days?
[12:56]Oh, wow.
[12:57]I mean, the state of the world, really much, you know, I don't think I'm going to get
[13:01]angry sometimes.
[13:02]I think I have a very long fuse, but then when I lose my mind, I go crazy.
[13:06]And so it's very much a Greek thing, I think, as well, for my anger about nothing, really.
[13:11]I'm in a really good place right now.
[13:12]I asked me again in six months when I'm writing my next book and then I said, okay, do you
[13:17]have an idea for your next book?
[13:18]Yeah.
[13:19]I've got it all pluses.
[13:20]You know, I'm on tour in the US right now, which is a lot of fun in New York currently.
[13:24]You can see behind me.
[13:25]And then I'm about to go to North Carolina tomorrow and continue.
[13:29]And so it's going to keep on tour until March.
[13:32]And then I start traveling around Europe.
[13:33]And so I knew that while I had a couple of months off before all this started, if I didn't
[13:38]plot my next book, I never would write it.
[13:40]And it was a really creative time.
[13:42]I did what I always do when I write, I don't drink and I meditate a lot.
[13:46]And I exercise and walk.
[13:48]And I wrote an 88 page out by my hand.
[13:51]And I'm really excited about it.
[13:53]I feel like I've learned a lot from this last writing experience.
[13:57]And so I can't wait to get back and write this.
[13:59]Yeah.
[14:00]So where do you take them screenshots?
[14:02]I feel like I would be worried that I was going to lose the...
[14:04]Oh, Zibi, you've no idea.
[14:06]Like when I was in, it was like, for a few months ago, there was a year ago, maybe.
[14:10]There was the terrible earthquake in Turkey, and it was enough that we felt it.
[14:15]I'm on the 29th floor of a building and I woke up swaying, like being in a tree.
[14:20]And I thought I was going to die in that moment.
[14:22]And so the very last thing I thought when I left now to come on tour was, what if there's
[14:26]an earthquake and the building is destroyed?
[14:28]And my masterpiece is destroyed in the building.
[14:31]So no, I didn't take screenshots, but I worry about it frequently.
[14:34]I think I hope it's still there when I get back.
[14:36]Yeah.
[14:37]I would be worried too.
[14:38]I feel like, yeah, I would, or maybe I'd bring it with me, or I don't know.
[14:42]I know.
[14:43]Then I feel that too, but I thought what if I lose my bag?
[14:45]You can't win, really.
[14:46]You just have to hope for the best.
[14:47]But it sounds like we both expect the ones.
[14:51]Hopefully, I'll not go out here that your building is still standing when you get back,
[14:55]you never know.
[14:57]What is up with film, screen, adaptations, everything in that world?
[15:02]Yeah, there should be some news about this adaptation very soon, I hope.
[15:05]It's going to be a movie, taking a long time, but, you know, films always take a long time,
[15:10]which is part of the reason that I wanted to write novels instead.
[15:13]You're just constantly waiting when you're doing movies.
[15:16]And the main things might be a TV series.
[15:18]I'm not too sure about that.
[15:19]The Fury has been options to be a movie.
[15:21]Yeah, and I'm going to be involved in that.
[15:23]So that's going to be a lot of fun to film.
[15:26]It's kind of a no-brainer, really, for directors and actors,
[15:29]like, you know, a few weeks in Greece.
[15:30]And it'll be a fun film to make as well, I think.
[15:33]How do you make sure the wind to be fake wind, but not actually be so windy
[15:37]if you're filming in Greece?
[15:38]Yeah, that's going to be a problem for them, I think.
[15:41]I mean, presumably the wind will show up.
[15:43]Yeah.
[15:44]So maybe not at the right times, I don't know.
[15:45]Not at the right time, and I also think about, you know,
[15:47]how are they going to do dialogue and stuff like that?
[15:49]Thankfully, that's not my problem.
[15:51]Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
[15:52]So you won't be involved with those details.
[15:54]Are you going to write those scripts?
[15:56]I'll be by the pool with the money.
[16:00]I think I'm thinking about writing the scripts.
[16:01]I'm going to see if I have time, but yeah.
[16:03]Well, I'll see.
[16:04]I don't know.
[16:05]Do you have time for anything else besides touring and writing and swaying in your building?
[16:10]No, I love writing is where what makes me happiest, honestly.
[16:13]You know, I get such joy from it.
[16:16]And I lead it very quite like it's funny.
[16:18]I'm sure you know all about this.
[16:19]It's almost like you have to be two different people.
[16:21]And I've never been on tour before, because they're
[16:23]doing me with a silent patient and then the maidens
[16:25]that was doing COVID.
[16:26]So that's who I got canceled.
[16:27]And this is my first experience of realizing quite how
[16:31]different a skill set.
[16:32]And I presume that most writers are not super equipped for it, because
[16:36]we're happiest when we're alone with our laptop.
[16:39]And then you suddenly throw us into a room with 400 people where it's lovely to meet
[16:44]and then say hello to everybody.
[16:45]And I'm really enjoying it, but it does maybe be quite nervous at the same time.
[16:49]And I keep thinking I can't wait till I can go home and start writing.
[16:55]Well, the good news is most people don't have a lot of expectations.
[16:59]They just want to meet you.
[17:01]You know, they just want to see authors and they're not,
[17:05]I mean, I don't mean to say that they have very low expectations
[17:07]of you in particular.
[17:10]I just mean like the expectations of a book audience are not like,
[17:16]you know, they're not so judgmental.
[17:18]They just want to like see what you're like.
[17:20]So I mean, it's funny you said that because what I'm being amazed by is I
[17:23]thought people would be nice, but people are so nice.
[17:26]And also the temperatures that I've been traveling through,
[17:29]like, you know, Chicago is freezing and so is Pittsburgh.
[17:32]The amount of people who come out in the snow and then are so incredibly warm
[17:36]and so lovely.
[17:37]And people have said such nice things to me that I've been really,
[17:40]I've been almost moved to tears in a couple of occasions.
[17:42]Because the people are just lovely.
[17:43]So it's great readers are just the best.
[17:46]I think they really are.
[17:47]They really are.
[17:48]Get a room of readers together and you'll have a good one.
[17:51]Unlike writers.
[17:54]Some writers, most writers.
[17:57]All right.
[17:57]Well, what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[18:00]Two pieces of advice.
[18:01]I think the first one is that somebody famous said this writing is rewriting.
[18:06]And, you know, when I was younger, I would send out screen place after a first draft
[18:10]and then be surprised that nobody wanted to buy them because they were terrible.
[18:14]The first drafts are always terrible.
[18:16]And you just have to redo it again and again and again and again and again and polish it.
[18:19]I think of it like oil painting where you add layer after layer and find that you add the
[18:23]details, you know, nobody wants the first layer.
[18:25]It's just a blurry mess.
[18:26]You have to really miss it.
[18:28]And the second piece of advice is just to keep going and not give up,
[18:30]you know, like I read this on a patient for a nobody other than myself,
[18:34]just as an act of love for the genre of other detective story.
[18:38]You know, it'll be Ken's and odd hours and it's quite took me five years.
[18:41]And I kept putting it in a drawer, thinking it was terrible and then not taking it out for a few
[18:45]months.
[18:46]I'm so glad I did take it out.
[18:47]You know, and I didn't have my first book published until I was 40.
[18:50]And so I think it's a really big lesson in just perseverance, which I, you know,
[18:55]I just always encourage people not to give up on their dreams.
[18:58]It's so important.
[18:59]I have my first novel coming out in March.
[19:01]And I'm 47.
[19:02]So I mean, I'm even behind you.
[19:07]Oh, my gosh, I mean, you've done a few other things in the meantime.
[19:12]So that's okay.
[19:15]Thank you very much.
[19:16]Well, good luck with the tour.
[19:18]I hope you survive in this terrible, this is not the best season to tour.
[19:21]I have to say, you know, next time, pick spring or something.
[19:24]And I know a good idea.
[19:25]Yeah, you'll have to time your book release to a better,
[19:28]yeah.
[19:29]But anyway, congratulations, a theory, fabulous.
[19:31]And yeah, good luck.
[19:33]Thank you so much, Libby.
[19:34]Thanks for having me on.
[19:35]Of course, anytime.
[19:37]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[19:41]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Libby Owens,
[19:44]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[19:46]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[19:51]of authors on Zoom every other week.
[19:53]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[19:57]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this video.
[20:00]fantastic intro and out trim music.