Alice Feeney, BEAUTIFUL UGLY
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
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[0:44]Alice Vini is the author of Beautiful Ugly, a novel, and by the way, this is my Zibi's
[0:50]book club pick.
[0:51]I loved this book, I underlined like a thousand sentences, plus the plot was great, but
[0:56]really the writing was amazing, and so good.
[0:59]Beautiful Ugly, Alice Vini.
[1:01]Alice Vini is the New York Times best-selling author of Sometimes I Lie, I know who you
[1:05]are, his and hers, rock paper scissors, and good bad girl.
[1:09]Her novels have been translated into over 25 languages, and have been optioned for major
[1:13]screen adaptations.
[1:15]Alice was a BBC journalist for 15 years, and now lives in the Devon countryside with
[1:19]her family.
[1:20]Welcome, Alice.
[1:21]Thank you so much for coming.
[1:22]And moms don't have time to read books to discuss beautiful Ugly, congratulations.
[1:27]Thank you so much for having me, it's lovely to be here.
[1:30]Alice, this book was so good.
[1:32]I could not stop reading it.
[1:35]All the twists and turns, all the one line zingers that I started like numbering because
[1:40]there were so many of them.
[1:42]So good.
[1:43]I mean, so, so good, congrats, it's so good.
[1:46]Thank you very much, thank you.
[1:47]So why don't you start by telling everybody what the book is about?
[1:52]Well, beautiful Ugly is about an author called Grady Grady, who is having the best
[1:57]worst day of his life.
[1:59]And basically, Grady's waiting to find out if his latest book might be in New York Times
[2:03]bestseller.
[2:04]And you really hope that it will be because things have been a bit tough in career-wise.
[2:08]His marriage is not quite what it used to be, and he's hoping if he's has this moment of
[2:12]success, perhaps his wife's going to look at him the way she used to.
[2:15]He really wants her to be there for the call, but she's working late again, so he gets
[2:20]the call.
[2:21]The New York Times bestseller, everything's wonderful.
[2:23]He causes a wife to tell her.
[2:24]And then when they're on the phone together, he hears the sound of screeching breaks.
[2:28]He hears Abby get out of the car and walk away.
[2:31]And then he hears nothing.
[2:33]The car's not so far away from where they live, so he runs.
[2:36]He tries to find the car.
[2:37]He finds it, but the car door is open, the engine's still running.
[2:40]The windscreen wipers are still going.
[2:42]A phone is still in the car, but his wife is missing.
[2:45]A whole year later, Grady is still devastated.
[2:48]He's going through grief.
[2:49]He's wondering what's happened to his wife.
[2:51]He can't sleep.
[2:52]He can't eat.
[2:53]He can't write.
[2:54]And his agent suggests he goes to a little tiny island in Scotland to try and get his
[2:58]life back on track where the impossible happens.
[3:02]And he sees a woman who looks the spitting image of his missing wife.
[3:06]So that's the opening of the book, which has been such a fun book for me to write.
[3:10]And then we follow Grady's journey, and we try and find out the truth about what really
[3:14]happened to his wife, Abby.
[3:16]Wow.
[3:18]Well, your imagination is amazing.
[3:21]The way you created this island community with no birds and why that even was the case and
[3:29]the walkie talkies and all the interrelationships and the fairy that had sort of nebulous
[3:36]start and end times and the male and all this cast of characters like, oh my gosh, I don't
[3:43]know, this is such a feat of imagination.
[3:46]And then all the twists, oh my gosh, anyway, and then have you have part of it from Abby's
[3:51]point of view and most of it from Grady's point of view, but that and some of the articles
[3:56]that Abby wrote, how did you just like, how did you even conceive of this whole book?
[4:01]How did you put it all together?
[4:03]What came first?
[4:04]Like just tell me the whole story.
[4:05]I'm fascinated.
[4:06]I feel as though, thank you.
[4:09]You've been very lovely about my book.
[4:11]I'm sorry.
[4:12]The book's not out yet, so it's always a bit scary when the book isn't quite obvious.
[4:15]It's lovely that you've read it and you've liked it, so thank you very much.
[4:18]That makes me happy.
[4:19]But a few of my books have started the same way, actually, in that they wake me up between
[4:24]three and four.
[4:25]Is that a dog?
[4:26]Oh, yes.
[4:27]Yes.
[4:28]That's my dog.
[4:29]I had a black library door.
[4:30]So you do?
[4:31]I can see the black lab.
[4:32]Yes.
[4:33]Her name is Naya.
[4:34]Yeah.
[4:35]No.
[4:36]Mine's asleep just down there.
[4:37]Oh.
[4:39]We had the same dogs.
[4:40]I wish my bookcases looked as beautiful as yours behind you.
[4:43]But I'm sorry.
[4:44]I'm waffling on.
[4:45]We were talking about serious things where the book came from.
[4:47]I love your things behind you, too, the penguin, old fashioned penguin covers.
[4:51]Those are so cool.
[4:53]Oh, my God.
[4:54]Yes.
[4:55]They have strange things on them.
[4:56]So one of them just has, please leave by nine and take your shoes off.
[4:59]Oh, I love that.
[5:02]I would.
[5:03]Wow.
[5:04]I loved this.
[5:05]OK.
[5:06]Sorry, back to the book.
[5:08]So a lot of my books have started in the same way in that they wake me up between three
[5:13]and four in the morning.
[5:14]That seems to be my witching hour.
[5:16]And that seems to be sometimes that I happen that way, beautifully, definitely happen
[5:20]that way, too.
[5:21]And it happened in November 2020.
[5:23]So it's quite a long journey from having that initial idea, three o'clock, one morning,
[5:28]in 2020, to publication, which will be in most places January 2025.
[5:34]So the books tend to look inside the back of my head for a long time before I write them.
[5:39]So I never just have the idea and start writing.
[5:42]I'm really jealous of authors who literally make things up as they go along.
[5:46]That feels like real magic to me, whereas I tend to think and think and get to know the
[5:50]characters in my head.
[5:52]And I'll go up for dinner with a friend and I'll accidentally order what the character
[5:55]would order instead of what I would order.
[5:57]Sometimes they order things I wouldn't like, but they might like.
[6:00]And so it exists.
[6:01]So you're ordering a lot of lamb.
[6:03]Exactly.
[6:04]Lots of lamb is going on.
[6:06]And so it sort of starts like that.
[6:08]And then they reach a point where just quite naturally, I'll know that I know the characters
[6:13]well enough to be able to write this story, at which point I do a big board in the room
[6:18]where I write and plot it all out.
[6:20]So every character has their own cards, every chapter has their own cards.
[6:25]And I mark where my twists are.
[6:27]I mark other certain points before I write a word in the book.
[6:31]And then when I write the book, it tends to often be quite
[6:33]well behaved, not always.
[6:35]Lazy darker took me five years to write.
[6:38]His and hers was the best, best behave book.
[6:41]That was three months, three drafts in the game.
[6:43]I didn't leave the house.
[6:45]I had birds nesting in my hair, but that was a really well behaved book, which is soon
[6:49]to be a TV show.
[6:50]So I love the journey for that book.
[6:52]And with beautiful ugly, it was about a year of writing.
[6:56]And of course with all plans, things can change.
[6:58]So some parts of the story, I knew other parts would just pop into my head as I was
[7:03]writing.
[7:04]But I loved writing this one.
[7:05]I loved writing beautiful ugly.
[7:06]I loved the characters.
[7:08]I loved the thrill of me knowing the secrets and gently just planting those breadcrumbs
[7:16]hopefully for readers to find and enjoy so that when they reach the end of this particular
[7:21]roller coaster, they've had a fun time and we can all look back together and go,
[7:26]oh, now I see, now I see.
[7:29]Now I have to go back.
[7:30]I feel like I need to read or like skim the whole thing to find out where I missed the
[7:35]clues because I was so surprised.
[7:38]But anyway, I feel like I'm like the worst reader.
[7:40]I miss a lot of clues and thrillers and mysteries.
[7:44]And then me too, though, and I think that's the joy of it, isn't it?
[7:47]It's this puzzle that we're all trying to put together.
[7:49]I guess I love reading books with twists and I love watching TV shows and films
[7:54]with twists.
[7:55]And the thing I love most about those stories is when I think I've guessed it.
[8:00]And I sit there feeling all smug thinking, oh, I know already.
[8:03]I know what's going to be, how very disappointing that I already know.
[8:07]And then I don't and I love that having the rug pulled out for me and actually things
[8:12]aren't quite what you thought, things aren't quite what you've seen because for me, that's
[8:16]real life.
[8:17]That's, that's every day, you know, we all judge people or we first meet them.
[8:22]Even if we don't mean to, we make judgments based on their appearance or how they look
[8:26]or how they sound.
[8:27]And I like to play with that within the book and hear the characters in the books.
[8:32]And I want you to fall in love with certain characters and then perhaps realize that the
[8:36]person you were rooting for might actually be the person who's done all the things that
[8:40]perhaps you didn't have quite a proof of.
[8:42]So it was a really fun book for me to write and enjoyed it.
[8:45]You do that with the character from the fairy when Grady's going to her house and you're
[8:51]like, well, this is quite a surprise, like I didn't expect you to have this nicer house
[8:57]and what's going on here then?
[9:00]Yes, I love that.
[9:01]I love that.
[9:02]I think we will go to you that from time to time.
[9:04]It's human nature.
[9:05]It's human nature.
[9:06]You see someone and you make up a story about the manual head and sometimes you can
[9:09]be very, very wrong.
[9:11]So I think what I love the most is that you interspersed these very wise, one line singers
[9:20]and you clearly are writing about not only the active writing itself and the publisher
[9:26]interesting industry and all of that, but just the nature of grief and the nature of love
[9:30]and sometimes the demise or the paths that marriage can take both parties and yet in
[9:39]the midst of this, there's then this propulsive plot.
[9:42]So I was hoping I could just read a couple of the things, all of which I feel like could
[9:46]be like Instagram posts of their own.
[9:48]Can I read a couple of the lines?
[9:49]That's right.
[9:50]Thank you.
[9:51]Okay, there are so many.
[9:52]Oh, well, this is a good one.
[9:53]I used to be so independent.
[9:54]It ambitions and a life of my own, but it feels as though I've been fading since I met
[9:58]my husband and falling.
[10:00]and I can no longer remember whether I jumped or was pushed.
[10:04]Love that.
[10:05]And you said, you can only rearrange the furniture
[10:07]of your life a number of times
[10:09]before things look the same as they did.
[10:12]So good.
[10:13]No, I love that one too, thank you.
[10:14]Writing is like being beaten to death by your own dream.
[10:18]That's a really good one.
[10:20]Is a writer still a writer if they can no longer write?
[10:24]Parties are my idea of hell.
[10:26]I'm telling you, these could all be like pillows.
[10:28]Nobody wrote anything worth reading on an empty stomach.
[10:32]They were all magicians of words.
[10:34]And that was my favorite kind of magic.
[10:36]That's how you talked about authors.
[10:38]Oh my gosh, constantly lying to yourself
[10:41]requires a special variety of stamina.
[10:44]Oh my god, I could go on and on.
[10:46]Am I giving too much away?
[10:47]No, no, it's lovely, thank you.
[10:49]I keep thinking, who wrote these things?
[10:50]That's very nice, very nice.
[10:52]Here's one that he's chasing something he'll never find,
[10:55]but we're all guilty of that.
[10:57]It was strange for me because I remember when I handed
[11:00]in the book my editor in America, lovely Christine,
[11:02]said, there's so much of you in this book.
[11:05]Well done, and thank you for going there.
[11:08]And I thought, does she mean?
[11:10]Does she think just because it's about an author
[11:12]that it's about me?
[11:14]Of course, isn't about me.
[11:15]And it was only when we were recording the audio book
[11:18]with Richard Armitage narrating Grady.
[11:21]There were a few things in there.
[11:22]I thought, oh no, I do think that.
[11:24]Oh no, do you see that?
[11:26]Oh no, that has happened to me as an author.
[11:27]Oh, I see.
[11:28]I see now what perhaps she was getting out, I see.
[11:30]But I think sometimes when you're so close to the book,
[11:33]when you're in the middle of writing it and editing it,
[11:35]you can't quite see it in the same way
[11:38]that other people are going to see the story.
[11:41]It's like, you know, with your children,
[11:43]and you have your own view of perhaps of your children
[11:46]and other people might have a different view of them.
[11:48]But it's a sort of strange paradox in that way, I think.
[11:51]And it was such a fun book to write.
[11:55]But I do go there.
[11:56]I do go into the author experience.
[11:58]And I definitely did dip into one or two,
[12:00]you know, horrific moments of my own career,
[12:03]which Grady has shared with me,
[12:05]because again, I think being in all through
[12:07]is the best job in the world, actually.
[12:08]But there are moments when it's difficult.
[12:12]And there are moments of heartbreak
[12:13]as there are, I'm sure, with lots of other creative jobs.
[12:17]And I think it's always fun when I write about
[12:21]a troubled marriage, because I'm actually very happily married.
[12:24]We're about to celebrate our 20th anniversary in December.
[12:28]And I always feel so sorry for my poor mother-in-law,
[12:30]because she's on my biggest fans.
[12:32]And she rushes out on publication day,
[12:34]and she buys the book.
[12:35]And then I get the series of WhatsApp saying,
[12:38]is my son okay?
[12:40]He's got everything all right.
[12:43]And you know, I did a book called Rock Paper Scissors,
[12:45]which was about a couple who go to Scotland,
[12:47]and they have a black Labrador.
[12:49]Every year my husband and I go to Scotland
[12:51]without black Labrador.
[12:52]And of course this one is about a husband and wife of both writers.
[12:56]And you go to Scotland, and there's another dog involved,
[13:01]again, in the story.
[13:02]So I do worry that sometimes people think,
[13:05]gosh, it must be very unhappy married,
[13:06]because she's always writing about these troubled relationships.
[13:10]But I promise that part is all fiction.
[13:13]Well, I don't know if I can trust you,
[13:15]because I don't know.
[13:17]Columbus wasn't a black lab, though, was he?
[13:20]No, no.
[13:21]I'm thinking of the next that I'm already head to the next one.
[13:24]No, Columbus was not a black Labrador.
[13:26]They're often black Labrador's.
[13:27]They try and mix it up every now and again.
[13:30]Wait, tell me a little bit about the next one.
[13:32]What's going on?
[13:33]Oh, I only just finished it.
[13:34]So I haven't even practiced talking about it in my own head yet.
[13:37]But it's very twisty.
[13:39]I really wanted to write something extra twisty.
[13:43]They write this thing on the books now.
[13:44]You know, the queen of twists, which is,
[13:47]I didn't come up with that.
[13:48]And I remember when they did,
[13:49]my publishers came up with that.
[13:51]And we're very excited about it.
[13:52]I was worried and I called my agent and I said,
[13:55]what if one year I write a book with no twists?
[13:57]And he immediately said, that will be the twist.
[14:03]I do enjoy a good twist.
[14:04]So I've tried to make the next one extra twisty.
[14:08]But I think there are a few good twists in beautiful ugly.
[14:10]I hope there'll be a few surprises from my readers in there too.
[14:13]Yes, lots of twists.
[14:15]And even without the twists, it was really great.
[14:17]I mean, but then it's like jaw dropping.
[14:20]Oh my goodness.
[14:21]I don't, to be honest, I don't read that many books
[14:24]that are, I don't know,
[14:25]would thrillers psychological thriller.
[14:27]Like how do you even categorize?
[14:28]I don't know because I'm too anxious.
[14:30]Like I feel like I'm too anxious to be on the edge of my seat.
[14:33]But that is not what this felt like.
[14:35]It was a very different kind of journey.
[14:37]I do think this one's a bit different to my others.
[14:40]But yes, I think you're right.
[14:41]It touches on lots of things and hopefully I've done
[14:44]the very storylines justice in that.
[14:47]I always want readers to almost see the book as a fun rollercoaster
[14:51]ride, but also a mirror.
[14:52]Yes.
[14:53]I love it when I read a book.
[14:55]And it's almost like holding a mirror to my face and seeing
[14:59]things about myself that perhaps I didn't know
[15:02]or I didn't realize straight away.
[15:04]So yeah, I wanted to be a lot of things to different people
[15:08]and fingers crossed it, it achieves that and makes people think
[15:12]about their own lives and their own opinions and their own views
[15:16]in the world in a slightly different way perhaps and just
[15:20]reexamine some of their own pre held views about others.
[15:24]Well, one group of people who will absolutely benefit from the book
[15:28]are those who are grieving or who have ever grieved the way you
[15:32]write about loss and the physical effects of it.
[15:35]And when we see Gradius just so hollowed out
[15:38]and all his thoughts of how do you go through the world
[15:41]when you're missing someone so much and loving someone.
[15:44]And all of that, all of the way you write about grief is just so
[15:49]raw.
[15:50]I mean, I know you said you have a happy marriage and that's great.
[15:53]I'm very happy for you.
[15:54]But you must have had some sort of grief because this feels so real
[15:58]and so raw.
[15:59]Or maybe you're just, you know, the master at channeling emotions.
[16:03]Where does this all come from?
[16:04]I don't think I'm a master of anything, but thank you.
[16:06]I think we all experience grief.
[16:09]I think we've all been through our own dark times.
[16:13]And I think a lot of writers end up pouring that into their work
[16:17]in a way that is almost like therapy for them.
[16:20]You know, it's a way of processing those things that you've been through.
[16:24]But I think for me, grief is almost more difficult
[16:27]after a period of time has gone by.
[16:29]And I think that's why for Gradio, I wanted it to be a year later.
[16:32]I wanted to come back and see what happens after
[16:35]everyone stops picking up the phone to see how you are.
[16:38]You know, you go through a phase where if you lose someone very important to you,
[16:42]people do, or I hope, you know, for most people, they'll have some people who will be there
[16:45]for them.
[16:45]They'll be phone calls, they'll be emails, they'll be text messages,
[16:49]they might be a casserole.
[16:50]You know, how are you? They're checking.
[16:53]And then people forget.
[16:54]And the thing about grief is it never goes away.
[16:56]I don't think so, not in my experience.
[16:58]You know, when you lose someone, there's like a whole
[17:01]inside of you, a gap that wasn't there before.
[17:04]And it rarely gets filled.
[17:07]So I think it's something that we all go through
[17:09]at some point during our lives.
[17:11]But none of us really want to talk about it too much because it makes us feel so sad,
[17:15]understandably.
[17:17]So I wanted this to be a book in that way that people can know that it's okay
[17:22]to not be okay a year later, two years later, 10 years later,
[17:27]when you lose someone you love, you lose a part of yourself, I think.
[17:32]And it's just learning how to deal with that and move on as this slightly different version of you.
[17:37]It's so true.
[17:39]You have a line that says, you know, someone says good grief.
[17:42]And you're like, why do people say that?
[17:43]It is grief is never good.
[17:45]Reef is never good.
[17:46]Reef is never good.
[17:47]Can I ask?
[17:48]And you don't have to answer.
[17:49]But who did you lose that you felt like you lost a piece of yourself?
[17:52]Oh, I've lost so many people.
[17:54]I'm sure we all have in various different ways.
[17:56]You know, the first time I saw a dead body was actually my grandmother
[18:01]because I'm half Irish.
[18:03]So it was an Irish funeral.
[18:05]And she was there in her coffin in the front room.
[18:09]It was very different to funerals I've been to in England.
[18:12]So I think from quite a young age, I understood what it is like
[18:16]to lose somebody that you care about and that that feeling never goes away.
[18:20]But you know, I can see your dog behind you.
[18:23]When I lost my dog a couple of years ago, it was actually awful.
[18:27]It was like losing a child.
[18:29]And I think sometimes people who don't have pets can't quite
[18:32]relate to that or understand the huge sense of loss
[18:35]when you lose a dog.
[18:36]So I think we'll go through lots in different ways,
[18:38]whether it's family, whether it's pets,
[18:41]whether it's friendships.
[18:42]You know, we sometimes grow apart in friendships as well.
[18:45]So I think it's something that everybody can relate to.
[18:48]But seeing your dog as well and the way that you said sometimes you're not,
[18:53]you feel anxious reading thrillers.
[18:55]I always feel the need to say that it's a spoiler alert,
[18:58]but the dog will always be finding my books.
[19:01]A very much a dog person.
[19:03]So when people get very worried and anxious reading my books
[19:06]because there's a dog and maybe the dog is in danger,
[19:09]you really don't need to worry.
[19:10]The dog will always be fine.
[19:12]I can't say the same about the humans,
[19:14]but no need to worry about the day.
[19:16]Well, I'm sorry that my dog is so rudely sleeping through this interview.
[19:19]She is so not impressed by authors anymore.
[19:22]It doesn't matter who is on this podcast.
[19:24]She's like, whatever.
[19:25]I'm going to sleep through it.
[19:26]So sorry about that.
[19:27]She wasn't a black Labrador.
[19:28]She was like, keep it as black Labrador isn't from now on all pay attention.
[19:31]Yes, exactly. Maybe I'll turn over.
[19:34]But you also have things in here about abuse to women,
[19:39]right? Abuse of women and men as predator in a way
[19:43]and taking advantage of young girls and women in general,
[19:47]whether it's in plot or articles or whatever,
[19:50]talk about that a little bit.
[19:52]I didn't want it to become like a man bashing book.
[19:55]That wasn't the intention for in a tool,
[19:58]but I wanted it to be about this.
[20:00]sense of people having had enough. I think we are living in very dark times at the moment.
[20:07]It feels darker to me than it's ever been before in some ways. And I was a journalist
[20:12]for 15 years before I became an author. So I was used to sitting in the middle of the
[20:16]world's biggest newsroom and I was used to seeing terrible news and terrible stories all
[20:20]day long and having to process that. But I look at the world now and I look at the news
[20:25]now and I feel as though there's this movement in terms of people have just had enough.
[20:32]You know we've sort of woken up to what is going on around us and we're not happy about
[20:37]it and we want to take control of our own lives and the people that we care about back
[20:42]in some way. And so for me it was about that. It was about some of the characters in this
[20:47]book without trying to give anything away too much. It was about some of the characters
[20:51]in this book had had enough and they wanted control of their own lives and they wanted
[20:56]to live in a way that they wanted to live where things were peaceful and they felt safe
[21:01]and they could do whatever they wanted to do and spend time with their loved ones without
[21:05]any fear. So it was about that for me. Wow. So are you someone who reads a million other
[21:14]things and gets inspired when you're writing or do you not read other things? Like what
[21:19]is your relationship like with books and sort of contemporary versus old fiction or memoir?
[21:24]Like what is your reading life like? I read a lot and I read quite a varied collection
[21:30]of books. So don't just read my genre. I read all kinds of books. But sometimes I find
[21:35]I get so busy with the writing that my reading definitely takes a hit. I remember last
[21:40]year someone asking me at an event on tour. Do you read as much now that you're a published
[21:46]author? And I thought it was such an interesting question. I didn't even know the answer.
[21:50]And I think the honest answer is probably no because if I spend all day at my desk, which
[21:55]I often do, so at the moment I've just been finishing off the next book, which can mean
[21:59]starting at 4am, finishing at 10pm, I don't just do a couple of hours. I will sit there
[22:04]all day when it gets to this stage when I'm about to hand in a new book. So that leaves
[22:09]very little time for reading. And this year I think, you know, I've probably read less
[22:15]than normal. And I've also been reading my own books this year, which sounds strange,
[22:19]but I'm very lucky. I just came back from seeing his and hers being filmed for Netflix,
[22:25]which was an incredible, so surreal seeing characters who lived inside my head for years
[22:32]coming to life and walking and talking. And I cried a lot. It was very emotional. But
[22:37]on the way to see the filming, I wanted to read the book again because for me that was
[22:41]book three, which is several years ago. I was actually quite surprised by how dark
[22:46]some of it was. I remember just reading it on the way to to seeing the show being filmed
[22:51]thinking, who wrote this? Oh, I did. So it can be surprising sometimes even going back
[22:57]to your own previous work when it's been several years since you've seen it. But no,
[23:02]I tried to read most evenings before bed. It's probably my routine. I find that switches
[23:08]my brain off rather than me lying awake thinking about my own books trying to fix things
[23:13]in my head while I'm asleep. Yeah. And I probably wish I could read more than I did.
[23:20]So when you think about your sort of legacy, if you will, and I know that's sort of
[23:25]a lofty word. But in the book, we're thinking a lot about Charles Whitaker's book legacy,
[23:32]if you will, and greaties and the collection of work. And where does that leave someone
[23:38]in their whole reputation? If you could design what you want people to say, right? We had
[23:46]like where what would you want them? Like what what is your greatest hope with your work?
[23:52]Oh, that's a good question. I think I always just want my readers to enjoy the ride.
[23:59]I want them to pick up the book. And it's for me, it's as though I've invited them on
[24:03]this roller coaster ride together. And we're going to go on this journey together. It's
[24:08]hopefully going to be quite fast, a bit twisty in my get a little bit dark and scary
[24:12]at points. But by the end of that journey, I hope they've had a good time. I hope they've
[24:18]seen things from a slightly upside down view that perhaps they didn't look at the world
[24:23]in that way before. But overall, I suppose I just want to offer them this escape, really.
[24:30]I think for me, I've always used reading and books as a form of escape. When the real world
[24:36]gets too loud, I read or I just appear inside a story. And I think at the moment the real world
[24:41]is very, very loud. So I want to offer them this form of escape, which can take them away from
[24:46]whatever is worrying them in real life and given this other journey to go on, this other twisty
[24:51]ride. And this puzzle that we can all try and solve together and let's see if anyone gets it
[24:57]right. Amazing. And just last question, do you need it to be as quiet as Grady did? Do you have
[25:04]to be alone? Yes. Yes. Now, on the list of things I have in common with Grady Green, that is
[25:12]absolutely one of them. I don't understand these authors who can write in cafes. I think they
[25:17]must be an alien species, but I'm very jealous to be able to concentrate and invent worlds
[25:23]with all this noise and above going on around them. I've never been able to understand that or do
[25:28]that. So I know I live in a very, very old 16th century that cottage in the middle of nowhere.
[25:35]My only neighbors are sheep. Although in springtime, they're quite loud, actually. But most of
[25:41]the time, it's very, very peaceful here. It's very quiet. I'm surrounded by fields. They're over there.
[25:45]That's why I'm looking in that direction. And it's just me and the dog. And I can just go to my desk.
[25:52]I've been having some very early starts lately. I hear owls. We have a lot of owls here. It's quite
[25:58]atmospheric. I'll be sitting at my desk at four o'clock in the morning and it's pitch black
[26:02]outside and owls are tweeting away. But no, I need quiet. It was a very short answer to this
[26:09]question. I try to make it sound more interesting than it is. I think no, I have to have everything
[26:14]being very silent in order to go down the rabbit hole inside the book, inside the story.
[26:21]Wow. Well, congratulations. This is amazing. I really loved it. And thank you. Well done.
[26:28]Thank you. It's really, really lovely to see you too. Okay. All right. Take care. Okay. Bye-bye.
[26:35]Thank you for listening to Totally Bucked with Zibi, formerly momstone of Time to Read Books.
[26:40]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[26:46]and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and bye the books.