Zibby Publishing’s Start at the End by International Bestseller Emma Grey

[1:19]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to totally booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. Emma Gray is the author of start at the end. Emma is the author of seven books, including two international bestselling novels. And if I'm saying that with a smile on my face, it's because we actually publish them at my company, Zippy Publishing. Her international bestselling novels are The Last Love Note and Pictures of You, which was the winner of the American Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal. Her adult and young adult novels have been translated internationally, optioned for film, and adapted for the stage. She lives in Canberra, Australia surrounded by her three children, stepchildren, and grandchildren. Enjoy Start at the End. Welcome, Emma. Thank you for coming back on Totally Booked to talk about Start at the End, your latest novel. Congratulations.

[2:50]Zibby Publishing: Thank you so much. It's lovely to be here again. I just I feel like we were only just here the other day. I know. This is crazy. As you know and now listeners know, I'm

[2:59]Zibby Owens: Zivvy Publishing is your US publisher, and we are so honored starting with The Last Love Note, moving on to Pictures of You, and now your third novel start at the end. You're just cranking them out, Emma. Unbelievable. Okay. Well, why don't you just take us back? And I know even before those two, you had other books and music. I mean, you're just all over the place. Start with The Last Love Note. Give like a one sentence for the other two so that we understand how you arrived here at Start at the End. Sure. No. It's it's been it does feel like a little whirlwind, doesn't it? Because it was 2023

[3:36]Zibby Publishing: that you and I first met. And The Last Love Note was a novel that I wrote in the wake of my husband's death. Geoff had passed away a few years before that. And I wanted to write a book about a midlife widow who was falling in love again. And I always have to clarify that part is not based on my life. People always ask, do you have a hue?

[3:57]Zibby Owens: And I have to let them down. Anyway. One day, Emma, you can stop making that joke and you will

[4:03]Zibby Publishing: Look back and say, Oh, I shouldn't have said that all those times. You very kindly published that novel. And that was my first novel in The US. And I have just felt completely embraced by American readers ever since. It's been incredible. I'm even staying with somebody I met at one of your events when I come over on my upcoming book tour and I've just made friends with so many people. I'm so grateful. And then Pictures of You was my second adult novel. And I wrote that and that the theme in that is coercive control. And that really grew out of my daughter Hannah Robertson's research. She's just handed in her PhD thesis here in Australia and studies gendered violence. So she and I together are actually now working with the TV producers on potential TV series based on that novel, is hugely exciting, which we hope to get to the screens over there as well with you, because I think it's just such a universal topic, unfortunately. And then start at the end. So this is a very special year for me. It's the tenth anniversary since Geoff died. And I feel like it's a chance for our family to really commemorate him, but celebrate us having made it through a whole decade on our own. And so we've got some really fun sort of family trips and things planned and just some little ways that we're going to give ourselves a pat on the back, I think for surviving something so difficult. And I feel like this book is part of that. It's this real sense that I love this idea that now I'm 52 now and I love the idea that life can begin again at any age. And I do remember being young and looking at women our age and thinking, wow, that's really old. And not imagining this sense of excitement that we can still have at this age. And I love this idea that we haven't yet met all the people we're going to meet. We haven't seen all the places we're going to see and love. We've got hobbies and interests in our future that we haven't discovered yet. And photography for me was like that. And that's a big theme in pictures of you. That was something that Jeff never knew I loved. I didn't know I loved it. I picked that up in the last few years. And so there's other things like that in our future. And we really don't know that the person that we are going to become. And there's something just so exciting about this idea that of late blooming, of picking up career changes late in life of and I know every time I post anything on social media about this kind of thing, about being in midlife and starting again. You know, I'm just flooded with people sort of finding that inspiring and sharing their own stories about midlife transformation and that kind of thing. So really all of that comes into this book. And tell thank you for that rundown.

[6:59]Zibby Owens: And I'm so sorry. I know that the ten year anniversary, I mean, it's hard to believe you've gotten here so far, so fast, and yet, I know it feels like yesterday and then so far away, and it's just insane. Grief is so crazy, and your family and you have been just through the ringer. And I'm so glad selfishly that you have turned to writing to get yourself through because it has ended up helping so many people, and you have just built this amazing following of people that you have been helping so much. And I'm sure the new book will do the same. So bravo to you. You know? Thank you. And and it has been very much mutual

[7:38]Zibby Publishing: help. And one of the most beautiful moments in my whole career happened on my book tour last year in Grand Rapids. And we were at a book event with Kelly Hook, who I'm sure you know. And we were talking about we're actually talking about pictures of you, but there was a woman in the audience who had lost her husband fairly recently, a couple of months earlier. And at some point she said she was appreciative that I was there and speaking the way that I was because it was giving her hope that she would have a chance to recover from her loss and to move into a life that she might actually still love in the future. Then she became really emotional. We just stopped the event. I got off the stage and just sat beside her and for a few minutes we just spoke about grief and loss together. I'm giving myself goosebumps again. Every time I think of this story I feel that every person in that room just held us in this moment of mutual compassion for this woman. And we were all crying and it was absolutely beautiful. Then it sort of ended and I got back up on stage and we continued on with our conversation. But for me, that one moment was worth all the work that goes into writing a book. It's touching individual readers that makes all the difference because it's such a lonely pursuit as you know, writing novels at home. And then when you actually go out and meet your readers and realize the impact that you're making, it just makes it all worthwhile. It's just so rewarding.

[9:19]Zibby Owens: Oh, I love that. Oh my gosh. I wish I had been there. I feel like crying just hearing about that that event. Oh my gosh. Well, you did make that event possible. So Oh, well. Like that. Sort of. Sort of. In a roundabout way. And now you have Start at the End. Talk about that.

[9:37]Zibby Publishing: Well, so I think this novel, I guess the quickest way to describe it would be that it's sliding doors meets P. S. I love you. And I think all of us question sometimes the what ifs in our lives. We all imagine sometimes whether we've had events happen to us or we've made choices and decisions that have sort of pushed us down a different path. We get to this certain place in life and then we kind of look over there and think, what if this had been the other way around? What if this had unfolded differently? Am I in the right place? Have I done the right thing? Would that have been better or worse? And you can get quite caught in that sort of comparison thing and worrying about whether you've engineered the right set of circumstances that has taken you to this point. I wanted to write this book to convince myself that even though another path would have been different, it could still have been great. It could still have worked out for everyone. In my particular case it was that Geoff had died and I wondered so many times since then what would have happened if this was the other way around? What if it had been me who had died? How would that have impacted all of the people around me, my children? Where would they be living? Would it have changed their lives, their careers, who they met? Would they have moved somewhere else? It could have been completely transformational for just so many different people. And so it was sort of those thoughts that led me to write this book. And I also wanted to I'm always trying to tell myself an uplifting, hopeful story. There's I kind of see this book as a movie and there is this big scene near the end that reminds me of that joyous airport scene at the end of Love Actually, where everything's folding in and, you know, there's this chase and it's all coming together in a beautiful, uplifting kind of way. And that's what I want to leave people with, that sense of hope. And you mentioned the musical. There's a musical in this book and one in my life as well that I've co written with a friend who's a composer based on my teenage novel. And I think I borrowed some of that just excitement of theater kids and the ability to escape onto a stage and be a completely different person. I'm not the one on the stage in life normally, but it's such an escape. And so there's a lot of that in this book as well. Well, there's a lot about careers,

[12:08]Zibby Owens: family, loyalty, truth and secrets, ambition, disappointment. I mean, you really have a lot in here when you pack it in, as you always do. I mean, your books are about one thing, but they're about a 100 things. Right? You tackle all the things in life that people wonder about. Did I should I have gone this path? Should I have stood up to this person? Should I have you know? And but the cool thing about this book not that not that the other books aren't cool. I didn't mean that. I mean, let me let me rephrase. One of the cool things about this book too is that you take two different viewpoints in the present, and then at one point, it shifts. And then well, I mean, it's always two different viewpoints, but then it becomes sort of hypothetical. I mean, I guess all of fiction is hypothetical, but it becomes, you know, parallel. That's right. There's a parallel world, and that was so much fun. I mean, that really was. And I do

[13:03]Zibby Publishing: always thank my editors deeply for everything that they helped me with because that was really complex. And that's such a mind experiment to go down that path. I think it's always fun to explore something fictionally that you imagine in real life as well. I wanted to make it okay for all these characters. I wanted each of them to find their way through the same problem or the same event in their lives and see how each of them would have handled it differently. There's a big story of creative resilience in this book. We all know when we're in a creative field that our career is never a straight line and that there are setbacks. And I talk a lot about failure and rejection and I feel like I'm becoming an international expert on being rejected. I keep getting asked to write articles about it. I love it because I feel like when I hear other authors talking about this, it really helps me to sort of normalize what I go through and what we all go through. And I see so many authors, they haven't learned how to be rejected yet. And so as a result, they sometimes give up. And I often think about the brilliant manuscripts that we're never going to see because somebody has given up. So one of the characters in this book is a classical composer and she goes through a really serious career setback early on and she allows it to really knock her completely. And I think this is the thing. Things can happen to us that are very serious, that aren't fair. And to some extent we can kind of wallow a little bit at the time. But then there comes a point where if we continue to wallow and allow that to stop us, then we've taken that problem on ourselves and we are the solution to it. So I gave her a really big problem and it was just such a joy to see that she managed to get her act together in the end and reclaim her career. And again, to know that it's never too late to do that. And that's the exciting thing. I actually love the fact that my own children who are now in their 20s and one teenager are able to see me, my career pretty much starting in midlife. I have been working all these years in different jobs and writing different books and things that were published but didn't set the world on fire necessarily. And so to now see this happening in midlife, I think is such a great message for young people that it is never too late. I completely agree,

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[18:30]Zibby Owens: In this book, like last love note, there is one child who is a a huge character in the book. And in the in the book, you talk about your son a little bit towards the end. Talk about writing children, how you have to tap into some of, like, the joy and the angst and all of that. I mean, it takes a certain skill. I know you mentioned you had written, you know, for younger readers before, but that can be a challenge. Talk a little bit about that. Really can. In fact,

[19:01]Zibby Publishing: when I wrote the teenage novels, my daughters were the age of the character. And people said, hey, how do you remember what it feels like to be a teenager? Or how did you capture the way they talk and how they act so closely? And I said, well, I was just surrounded by it all the time. That was the language I was hearing from my girls back then. And I also kept very detailed diaries of my own when I was a teenager. So I was able to tap back into that. I do every so often threaten to put those online to just take snippets of those, but it's so embarrassing. I'll have to get the courage. But I think somebody then said, well, would you write another one now? Another teen novel? And I thought, well, my son is a completely different person. He's a gamer. He's in his bedroom all the time. He doesn't talk as much. So I don't know if I could capture exactly the same, the language and all of that side of it now because my girls have moved on and I'm just not surrounded by it as much. So I think part of it is to be it's either remembering what it was like yourself if you can when you were younger or it is being surrounded by kids of the age that you're trying to write about. And so I've got a little neighbour next door who's about the age of the child in this book. So that's helped me as well. Just remembering and I've occasionally messaged friends who've got kids of that age and said just to sense check is for an eight year old, would they say this and what are they into? All those sorts of questions because you just get so quickly out of touch when your children grown up a little bit. But I loved the character in this book really. She's the hero of the whole story in the end. And I absolutely loved writing a very empowered child character because I do look at children and think they are the future. You know, they know what they're doing. They teach us so much. I learned so much from the young people in my life and just attitudes towards things and the way they just, I don't know, everything about the way that they're encountering the same world that we're encountering. So it was such a thrill to be able to give her such a big storyline, make her the hero. And people have already said she's their favorite character in the book. I could see that. I could see that.

[21:17]Zibby Owens: Well, and maybe penguins. We should have had like a little penguin as a hidden thing on the not that they play a big role, but, you know, they play a role in bringing people together sort of in the beginning, but certainly not towards the end. I also really liked Maggie. I love that you have an ex wife and sort of a blended family situation and how it doesn't always have to be so confrontational and how new alliances

[21:44]Zibby Publishing: form throughout life. And I found that really interesting. Yes. I've I was very deliberate about Maggie. I wanted to make there to be a little bit of friction and angst that was real between her and the others. Was believably, it wasn't all golden and wonderful the whole time. So there was this little bit of friction, but she really comes into her own. And in both potential realities, she steps up in a way that I'm so proud of her. You know, I feel like they're all real. But I am so proud that she was able to set aside any of the angst that she might have been feeling and say, here is another human being who is in our family orbit. How can I help them? And I'm really pleased with the way that I was able to write that divorce storyline in a positive manner, because I do think that it can be like that. I like to be able to sort of write these role model relationships into books, not in a preachy kind of way, but just in a so that we can see alternatives, I guess, to how things could be. I love that.

[22:56]Zibby Owens: It also raises the question of when is it okay to speak out to those in power? Like Yes. Because it's a really interesting question, and you don't know necessarily when you're young if it's you, if you did something wrong, if you can, raise flags. I don't want to give things away so I'm being a little cagey, but when there are people in positions of power doing the wrong thing, it's not always so easy to speak up. That's right. And in this particular case,

[23:25]Zibby Publishing: this is a career setting, somebody does the wrong thing and it is a person in a position of power. And what's really disappointing is that another person who she very much counted on as a friend and a colleague lets her down in a really big way. And so there's two people. So then you are thinking, is it me? Is it me? Because there's two. And I think that's part of the storyline probably is a bit of a through line from Pictures of You as well, where we have this coercive controlling character in Oliver and his father as well. And I think to my being influenced by my daughter Hannah and her research, she's got countless stories that she's found of people in powerful positions doing the wrong thing. And it's often women and young women who are in that position of if they do speak up, what is the consequence? What will happen to her career? And so that was one of the things that Audrey in Start at the End is tackling and something that has then taken so much from her. And it's the thing that she needs to reclaim. And so I'm so glad that she does because she then I think she also realizes it's not just for her. It is for her stepchild. It is for other young musicians. Think, you know, you know this, where we get to a certain point where we become the mentor figure for the next generation coming through, certainly as writers. I mean, the young woman that does the playlists for all of my books for you, Zibby Publishing, I'm kind of a mentor too now in a way because she's a writer and she's at university now. And she just happened to do a playlist and send it to me when she was in high school for the last Love Note. And we've kept in touch and then we met in Chicago at my event last year. And she interviewed Hannah and me for her student newspaper and just the whole stories. I love that kind of connection that you can make. But I look at her and think I feel like I'm kind of position now as a creative person with somebody now in her early 20s just entering this. And you know that she's going to have setbacks like we all have. And I think the more open that we can be when we are, particularly if we're successful. Because in fact, was invited back to my old high school last year to deliver the graduation speech and it was seven minutes. And the first six minutes were everything that's gone wrong in my career since I left that school. It was every failure and rejection. And all the one star reviews and the criticisms

[26:15]Zibby Owens: and the- Emma, you're making it sound like we're publishing the worst author ever.

[26:20]Zibby Publishing: I said to them, what nobody says about getting, you know, this many one star reviews that you have to have sold, you know, thousands and thousands of books to get to that point. So then, you know, kind of all then built up into but here's what's gone right. And I don't think that here's what's gone right bit was going to be anywhere near as powerful if they hadn't seen that it's okay, that all the way along, all these other things didn't work out. And that what actually happened was just an awful lot of persistence and picking yourself up when things go wrong. So I said to them, you can have nearly all your reviews of five star and four star, but you can focus in on those one star reviews or that sort of thing. That can be enough to sometimes stop people from doing this anymore. So we really need to develop this sort of different perspective to get us all through. And I think when you can write characters that are going through something similar and explore how they get through it, I always think it's the same with grief. I wanted to write about a character surmounting the emotional challenge of grief, because I think sometimes you can read all the self help kind of books in the world and it still doesn't penetrate through. But when you read a novel, something happens and you forget who you are. You inhabit that character. And if they're okay, you can almost take that on yourself and imagine that maybe you can be okay and feel what it feels like to get through something.

[27:50]Zibby Owens: I think it's the power of fiction. Amazing. Emma, this was so great. And we didn't even get into all the music of it, which was beautiful. I see a piano behind you. You have a lot in the book of how real musical prodigies actually hear music, which I found fascinating, and the way that they interpret things and write things. And I don't know. There was just so much. And, anyway, thank you for sharing your beautiful soul with us yet again and

[28:17]Zibby Publishing: for all of your hard work. And I can't wait for readers to discover a start at the end. Oh, thanks, Sibby. And thank you again for publishing it. I can't wait to come over there and see you again and chat with readers. Yes. We'll see you soon. We're gonna live.

[28:30]Zibby Owens: All right. Thank you, Ella. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.