Sweet Delights: Mary-Lou Stephens on writing The Chocolate Factory
Episode Summary
In this episode of Writes4Women, Pamela Cook chats with Mary-Lou Stephens about her novel THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY and her life as a slow traveller. Mary-Lou delves into the themes of her book, set against Tasmania's chocolate industry, blending espionage, love, and resilience. She shares insights into her journey from radio to embracing minimalism and slow travel, enriching her writing and perspective. Discussing the research behind her work and the challenges posed by AI in publishing, Mary-Lou underscores the importance of storytelling. This conversation offers a glimpse into her adventures in writing and life, highlighting the transformative power of embracing change and the unknown.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi everyone. And welcome to another episode of rights for women. Today, it's Thursday, the 20th of March as I'm speaking. And we have a great guest on the podcast today. It's someone that I have. Spoken to on the podcast. When her first book, the last of the apple blossoms came out, Mary Lou Stevens is also a guest host from time to time. On the podcast.
[00:00:21] And we actually got to meet in real life a few weeks ago when she came out for the launch of her. Book the chocolate factory. And when I say came out, she actually came to Australia because Mary Lou is currently doing a slow travel. Around different parts of the world, which I find absolutely fascinating.
[00:00:39] And we talk about that in the course of this interview, where we also talk about the chocolate factory. I'll tell you a little bit more about Mary Lou in just a moment. I've just come back from a fabulous meeting with my writing group, the inkwell. Colloquially known as the inquiries.
[00:00:55] And we always have a fabulous writing session where we share what we're doing with our writing. We share articles that we've listened to podcasts that we've listened to all about writing. We talk about different things that come up in workshops or webinars that we've done. We do some feedback, giving feedback for each other on blurbs or chapters or whole stories at times.
[00:01:19] So it's a fabulous supportive group and I wouldn't be writing without them. You've heard me talk about them on the podcast on many occasions. But today, one of the things that came up as a result of actually a webinar that Jane Friedman had on her website, and you can check that out.
[00:01:36] I think it's already. Already been, I don't know if you can actually tap into the resource there, but it was held by Tiffany Yates, Martin on the Jane Friedman website. And it was about secrets, twists and reveals and. The discussion at the inkwell came on the back of a podcast.
[00:01:53] I listened to called the shit. No one tells you about writing. And a fabulous podcast. I'll put a link to that in the show notes where a couple of agents and an author. Have combined forces and the agents look at queries, talk about the queries and then also pull apart the openings of the books that, that writers send into them.
[00:02:12] So there's lots of book discussion, lots of really hands-on book discussion, and there's some great tips to be had there. But this notion of twists and reveals and openings and how we introduce the character to the reader. It gave me pause to think about this whole idea of narrative perspective and point of view in our writing.
[00:02:32] So it's just something I wanted to talk about quickly, as a bit of a writing tip or thought for this week. And this is this idea of who is actually. Really telling your story. Obviously you are the writer. And you are also the narrator and in some sense, you're also the character. You're creating a character and you're filtering your words through that character. Now, depending on whether you write in first person. Third person. Close point of view, omniscient point of view.
[00:03:00] There's going to be some decisions you have to make about what you reveal to the reader and at what point. So I always like to say, and this, isn't my own idea I've read about and heard about it in other writing. Writing places and courses, but think of your your lens, if you like the lens that you're looking through, the story at, as, either a wide angle camera. A medium angle or a real zoom in.
[00:03:24] So we might often start a story because we want to introduce things to the reader. We might start with this kind of wide angle lens. Lens. And give an overview or a perspective. Now I think one thing you need to decide is. How close is your connection or how close is the narrator's connection to the point of view character going to be. So if you start with something like a very broad overview, let's take a classic opening line from Dickens. A tale of two cities.
[00:03:53] It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Now that's obviously an omniscient narrator. Telling the reader, something about the time setting that this story is setting.
[00:04:06] When you have an omniscient narrator, they have the power or even in any outside, Nereda coming in. They have the power to tell things to the reader that the character might not know about in advance.
[00:04:17] So it's almost like you have. The narrator as the second character telling the reader things, and then you're showing the reader things through the characters actions. So we need to think about how close we want to get to our character in terms of point of view. If you want to really close connection with the character that you want the reader to have that really close connection in there almost been no. Kind of barrier between the point of view character and the reader. We essentially need to minimize that outside narration as much as possible and go straight into the point of view characters experiences. Thoughts feelings. And if you want to be really close, there will essentially be no secrets as such between the reader and the character. So in true deep point of view, which is what I aim to write in. And it is really hard to pull off for a whole book.
[00:05:10] There are times of sometimes when you need to come back out of that point of view in order to make things clear for the reader, but you need to do that in quite a seamless way. But if you really want to be deep point of view, the idea is to be fully in the character skin. So the character. We'll be revealing things to the reader quite upfront.
[00:05:30] We're going to be in that. Character's head from the word go. Not obviously in the character's head all the time. But we want to be, knowing what that character is thinking, feeling doing. And we want to know the characters motivations. If they're aware of them. Now, this is where you can play around a little bit with deep point of view because there will be experiences from the character's past or perhaps even in the present that they don't want to acknowledge. They don't want to talk about, they don't want to. Even think about.
[00:05:57] So if any thought like that comes up. In the point of view, character's head. They might then immediately, go and do something else or do a different action to divert themselves from thinking about that. You can use this kind of deep core point of view.
[00:06:14] Perspective. As a way of showing that there is something in the character's mind or subconscious that they don't want to reveal like a series of breadcrumbs that are sprinkled out there and the reader will follow them. And eventually, because we're putting the character under pressure. They will reveal whatever that is.
[00:06:29] So that's a great way when you're writing in deep point of view to actually build up to some kind. Of reveal where the reader knows that there's something going on for the character, because they've hinted at it. But then they've shied away from actually revealing that. Similarly with first person, that direct access to the character, the coats, first person, its eyes.
[00:06:51] So it's up to the character then to decide how much they're going to reveal in the telling of their story. And they might not want to reveal everything up front. They there's going to be things that they hold back and there's things that they hold back are going to be. Integral to creating tension and suspense and pulling the reader through the story in terms of getting them to turn the page and find out why aren't they telling us more about this?
[00:07:15] Why are they showing away from that? Why is that? Issue not being addressed here up front by the character, whether it's third office person. Going around in a little bit of a circle with this, but just think about in terms of the narrative perspective.
[00:07:31] How close do you want the reader to B2 your character?
[00:07:35] Do you want them fully inside their skin? Do you want them sometimes inside the skin and sometimes just slightly out, maybe sitting right on their shoulder. Do you want them. To be at times completely outside. So we are looking onto that character with a more objective viewpoint. You can play around with that.
[00:07:53] And this is also a really good thing to notice in books. You're reading. If you're a writer, it's always great to read as a writer. Analyze how your favorite authors do that and have a look at how is the narrative perspective working in the stories that you're enjoying?
[00:08:09] Let's get onto the chat with Mary Lou.
[00:08:11] But before we do that, I will tell you a little bit about her. Mary Lou Stevens was born in Tasmania and studied acting at the Victorian college of the arts and played in bands in Melbourne, Hobart, and Sydney. She's had the most amazing career. Eventually she got a proper job in radio. Where she was a presenter and music director first with commercial radio and then with the ABC. She received great reviews for her memoir, six drugs and meditation published by Penn Macmillan in 2013.
[00:08:40] The true story of how meditation changed her life saved. Saved her job and helped her find a husband. Her debut novel. The last of the apple blossom was published by Harper Collins HQ in 2021. And the chocolate factory has recently come out in the last couple of months right now in 2024. Mary Lou has worked and played all over Australia.
[00:09:01] She's now slowly traveling and writing mostly. So let's get on and chat to Mary Lou. It's a fantastic chat with her and we cover so many things about the writing process, the writing life. How her own experiences in life have informed her writing, including her attendance at a Quaker school when she was younger and to quite interesting. Religious. Upbringing.
[00:09:25] And also we get on to talking about her slow travels, which are just absolutely fascinating. So sit back, grab a cuppa. Pop your walking shoes on whatever it is you do when you re listen to rights for women. And don't forget, you can also watch the videos on YouTube. There is a YouTube channel you can subscribe to.
[00:09:42] So if you feel like sitting down and watching a video, instead of listening to the podcast, find that at rights for women on YouTube. And don't forget that the transcripts are also available on the website rights for women.com. And also don't forget that you can become a Patrion supporter of the podcast just as Mary Lou is actually, and you will receive a monthly bonus.
[00:10:05] Now this month monthly bonus, which if anybody signs up before the end of March, I will. Get that out to you, even though it has already gone out to the Patrion supporters. It's basically a little tutorial from me analyzing four different openings of books and talking about what gives them hooks, what the hooks are in these openings.
[00:10:24] What makes them great openings? What I find really interesting about them and a little bit of analysis on the writing. I'll be doing different types of videos each month as the bonus for the family patrons. I might be doing book reviews. I might get on and talk about my writing process.
[00:10:40] I might do critiques as I've done this month of Of published works. I could even critique. Your work, if that's what you wanted as a Patrion subscriber. And do that. And provide feedback that. then other people can share and learn from. So have a think about becoming a Patrion supporter of the podcast.
[00:10:59] If you're not already, it helps me to pay for the editing, the distribution for my fabulous VA. And he Bucknall. And it just means that I'm able to keep the podcast going and coming out weekly as it is currently doing. So it's only the cost of a cup. cup. of coffee for a month per month, $5. And it shows that you support the podcast and love what I'm doing here and what the guest hosts are doing here at rights for women.
[00:11:22] That's it for the intro. Let's get onto the chat with Mary Lou.
[00:11:25] Pamela: Mary Lou Stevens. Welcome to the Rights for Women Convo Couch.
[00:11:29] Mary-Lou: Hello, Pam. Here. We're back in Virtual
[00:11:33] Pamela: Reality. Back in Virtual Reality after actually meeting last week at your book event At Better Read Than Den for the first time. We actually met in real life, IRL as they say, which was wonderful. And that was a great event with Claudine Ellis from talking Aussie books, doing the hosting.
[00:11:50] Pamela: And we had a lovely catch up afterwards with a number of writer friends. So it was really nice.
[00:11:55] Mary-Lou: And it, I felt as though I already knew everyone because we've done so much in on Zoom over the years and it was just like, this is really the first time we've met in real life. Because I feel as though I already have, but we hadn't.
[00:12:09] Pamela: No, it's so bizarre, isn't it? And I have to say a massive thank you to you, Mary Lou, too. As I mentioned in the intro, for your support of the podcast over the years, you've been a fabulous Patreon supporter and you're always, supporting the podcast on social media. So I really appreciate that.
[00:12:25] Mary-Lou: I love what you do. It's easy to support it.
[00:12:28] Pamela: Thank you. Thank you. Now before we get into talking about the Chocolate Factory. And all the research involved because I'm really fascinated. It was fantastic to hear you talk about that at the event last week because there is so much great historical detail in this book.
[00:12:43] Pamela: Before we start, so everybody knows what we are talking about, could you tell us what the Chocolate Factory is about? Although the title does give it away somewhat.
[00:12:51] Mary-Lou: I don't have a copy of the book, but I have this. Ah, beautiful. A lot of the Chocolate Factory is about this. This was the most popular chocolate in the world in the early 19 hundreds.
[00:13:05] Mary-Lou: George Capri Jr. Invented it in 1905 and, it was quickly the subject of the chocolate spies. So everyone wanted that recipe. It was kept in a vault. And if you knew it, if you worked at Bonneville and you knew it, then you had to sign a legal declaration saying that you would never, ever divulge the recipe.
[00:13:26] Mary-Lou: So I knew this, and I also knew about the Cadbury's factory in Tasmania. I grew up in Hobart. How could I not? But it started in the early. And I thought what would happen if the chocolate spies try to get their hands on the dairy milk? Recipe thought they might have an easier time of it in Tasmania.
[00:13:46] Mary-Lou: And so all the industrial espionage that was happening in the UK between the chocolate factories, what if that came. Over to Tasmania. So I have two main characters. Dorothy has been working at Bourneville for many years and she's been handpicked to help start off this new factory and train the new staff.
[00:14:04] Mary-Lou: And there's Maisie, who is a local Hobart girl. She's only 18. She's been working for years. Everyone started working so young back then and sees a job at Cadbury's as her way out of poverty and to help her family and to make sure her younger sister can. Stay in school instead of having to go to work.
[00:14:23] Mary-Lou: And so Dorothy is Maisie's trainer. She has great hope in her, and she's rising up the ranks when all hell breaks loose. Pretty much. There's been a few kind of. Signs that things were going off the rails, but then bang, everything happens. They're caught up in this plot. There's blackmail, there's intrigue.
[00:14:46] Mary-Lou: There's suspense and there's also romance. Like I do love a good love story in there as well. And there's a couple of them, but it, yeah, it boils down. To everyone, including the Australian manufacturers, wanted to get their hands on the recipe for this.
[00:15:01] Pamela: And I am fully in support of that because dairy milk is actually my favorite.
[00:15:06] Pamela: I always say to people that, my family, don't buy me an egg. Just buy me a block of dairy milk. I'll be happy. It's my absolute favorite. So I was really drawn to the book for that reason, if, and many others. But this is of course your second book, Mary Lou, following on from the Last of the Apple Blossom.
[00:15:23] Pamela: Another fantastic story about was the beginnings of the Apple industry, apple growing industry in Tasmania?
[00:15:29] Mary-Lou: No, it's actually the demise. Oh, it was the
[00:15:32] Pamela: demise, wasn't it? Sorry. Yes, it was the apple
[00:15:34] Mary-Lou: aisle for a long time, but from the sixties through to the seventies, it all the wheels fell off the whole thing.
[00:15:40] Pamela: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's a while since I've read it, so thank you for that reminder. But I know for that first book, you had been working on that for quite a long time, and before you of course got your publishing contract with HQ at Harper Collins and then you were contracted for this second book, how different was the experience of writing a book?
[00:16:01] Pamela: I can, I know already how it's gonna go, but 'cause we've talked about this, but you had all the time in the world, of course, to write the first one and submitted it when you felt it was ready and it had lots of work and you had mentoring with MoneyGram, McInerney and all that sort of thing.
[00:16:13] Pamela: But this was a different kettle of fish, wasn't it?
[00:16:16] Mary-Lou: Look, luckily I'd already done all the research for the chocolate factory. So when they offered me a two book deal, lastly, apple Blossom was a one book deal. Then they offered me another two books and said You'll have all the time in the world to write it.
[00:16:30] Mary-Lou: Meaning a year. Yeah, I can actually do that, I can do that. But I got the deal on the strength of a synopsis and three chapters. And so that was a completely different playing field. As you say, I was used to taking all the time in the world, having a finished product, seeing if anyone wanted it this time, writing to contract.
[00:16:53] Mary-Lou: It's just I've got this synopsis. Which I really liked 'cause I already had a very strong idea of the story and my characters before I started writing. And and I thought I better stick to it. Even though I know a lot of authors do, picture a synopsis and then, go off on other tangents and stuff.
[00:17:08] Mary-Lou: But I like this synopsis, but it is completely different writing a book to a deadline and knowing that it's gonna get published. It's a very different space. And when I was editing the chocolate factory, I was writing the next one and I had never been in that position before because chocolate factories has come out, the jam make's coming out next year.
[00:17:34] Mary-Lou: So to be in that position that I know a lot of authors are in and friends of mine are in, when you're on a book a year contract, gave me such a new respect for those authors. 'cause it is tough. Plus I was slow traveling through Asia at the time, I wasn't at home. Yeah,
[00:17:49] Pamela: we're gonna talk about that too,
[00:17:51] Mary-Lou: but I just went, wow.
[00:17:54] Mary-Lou: And to be quite honest, at the end of it, my husband said, please don't do that again,
[00:17:58] Pamela: because I just
[00:17:59] Mary-Lou: spent most of my time in a room working. And it is very different experience.
[00:18:04] Mary-Lou: Yeah. Did you find it
[00:18:05] Pamela: stressful, having that pressure of knowing you had that contract? Looming and the deadline looming.
[00:18:10] Mary-Lou: Look, I'm so good at hitting deadlines. My job at the A, B, C, it was deadlines all day, every day. You go into work and you just have to hit deadlines to get a program together and breaking stories and guests and this and that and the other, and not having a lunch hour and just powering through.
[00:18:27] Mary-Lou: So I am good at that and I think my slightly kind of control freak brain just goes, bang. This is what we are doing. We get it done
[00:18:37] Mary-Lou: right.
[00:18:38] Pamela: Yeah. You've gotta have that mindset, haven't you, really? Because like you say, you've got that very condensed period of time.
[00:18:44] Mary-Lou: What I did miss was I did a masterclass at the RWA conference many years ago, Kate Forsyth, and she talks about how she daydreams a book into existence for a year.
[00:18:54] Mary-Lou: She doesn't even write anything down for that first year. So if I'd done the research and I was daydreaming my book into existence while I was doing the research, but having that real luxury of time. I think, and that's happening with me now because yes, I'm doing the edits for next year's book, but I'm just my brain is being tickled, my brain is being tickled, and there's no stress, and there's no pressure, and there's no deadline.
[00:19:22] Mary-Lou: It's just it's nice, when you get a new idea and you're thinking about your character and what could possibly happen, it's a delicious time.
[00:19:28] Pamela: I love that brain being tickled. I love that phrase, it's great.
[00:19:32] Pamela: As you say, a lot of authors have this experience, particularly if you are on a book of year that you are editing one book, drafting the next, how do you go about mentally taking, separating those two and of course it's a completely different story and set of characters are and everything, possibly a different vibe.
[00:19:49] Pamela: But did you have any ways of really switching Headspace around those two processes,
[00:19:55] Mary-Lou: I would keep them completely separate. I know people sometimes will be writing one book in the morning and editing the other one in the afternoon. I could not do that. I can't. I put my brain into different compartments like that.
[00:20:10] Mary-Lou: I would have a bit of an idea when the edits came in and when. One round of edits were about three weeks later, I must say. It did throw me off 'cause we were traveling and I'd set myself up to, to be in this one place and to, to receive those edits and to do them there and that got blown outta the window.
[00:20:26] Mary-Lou: But yes, if I was editing one book, that's what I'd be doing. And then that was done. I would get back to writing the other. But I tell you what I have found really interesting, and this is when people won book a year. I don't know how you do this, but I'm promoting the Chocolate Factory and I've written a whole other book since then.
[00:20:49] Mary-Lou: I'm going, yeah. Oh, now, oh, is that in this book, or is that in that book? Because they're both. All my books are set in Tasmania. They're all foodie fiction, they're all historical. So I'm going, oh, now what part of Hobart are we in? And is it Maisie or is it Harriet? Or you know that? Yeah. Yeah. That's tricky.
[00:21:09] Pamela: Yeah. That would be hard actually 'cause it's. It's like for you that book's done, you've finished it, you've moved on to the next one, but now like you say, you're having to talk about it again and publicize it and all those sorts of things.
[00:21:20] Mary-Lou: Yeah. Which has been glorious and it's been fun and it's meant lots of this.
[00:21:24] Pamela: I know I partook in that chocolate last week. It was very nice. Thank you very much. So you, you mentioned then that your stories are all set in Tasmania. Of course you grew up in Tasmania. Spent some time there. Very familiar with it. What was it about this particular story, the chocolate factory, that kind of grabbed your rightly imagination and you thought, was it the spy angle that's what grabbed you or was there, were there other things that really grabbed you and thought, that's what I wanna write about?
[00:21:54] I really wanted to write about Cadburys. I remember, the tours I used to do there when I was a kid, and that complete sensory overload. And as writers were always being told to include all the sensors. So being in a chocolate factory, bang, they're all there. The smell is overpowering. The sound, the heat, the taste, everything is there.
[00:22:15] Mary-Lou: Everyone who's done one of those tours will never forget it because not all the smells are good. In fact, at the early stages of chocolate making it smells dreadful. It's horrible. So that's a smell that stays with you too. And I talk about that in the book, how it changes the process. There was that and when I found out about the chocolate espionage and how Charlie and the chocolate factory was inspired by the truth.
[00:22:40] Mary-Lou: Ro dah, knowing about the espionage that was happening when he was a boy, he went to a boarding school near Cadburys. He the boys were taste testers for Cadburys. They visited the factory. So Ro Dahl had a lifelong love of chocolate because of that. So in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Grandpa Joe says to Charlie the reason that Willy Wonka has shut the gates and they're locked and you don't see workers coming in and out is because of the chocolate spies.
[00:23:09] Mary-Lou: I went, ah, okay. They're all trying to steal Willy Wonka's recipes, and so he just gets rid of everyone. Cadbury didn't resort to that, but they certainly did employ chocolate detectives to try and root out the spies who posed as employees trying to steal their recipes. There was that, and there were the Quakers and this.
[00:23:32] Mary-Lou: Is really the part that touches my heart. I went to the world's largest Quaker school, which is in Hobart. My grandparents were Quakers. My great aunt was known as the Peace Angel. She was the Quaker activist in the first World War, and I really wanted to write a book about Quakers. I felt more and more in line.
[00:23:52] Mary-Lou: I feel more and more in line with their philosophy the older I get. And I thought not everyone is as fascinated with Quakers as I am, but the Quakers started all the big chocolate factories in the uk. They cadburys, round trees, fries, terries, all Quaker families because of their history with encouraging people to drink hot chocolate, hot cocoa instead of alcohol.
[00:24:15] Mary-Lou: Temperance is a quite, ah,
[00:24:16] Pamela: okay. That's the connection, right? I want it. That's the connection. Yeah.
[00:24:20] Mary-Lou: Because back in those days, water town water would probably kill you. So people were all drinking beer, small ale, even kids. And so the Quakers went, this is a real problem. Society's falling apart 'cause everyone's drunk.
[00:24:33] Mary-Lou: There's this healthy new drink. Cocoa hot chocolate. Let's make it free. Not freely available, but cheap. And available. And the water is boiled, so it's not gonna kill people. So that's what they did, and they sold it and they encouraged people to drink it, and that's how they all got into being chocolate makers.
[00:24:53] Pamela: Yeah.
[00:24:54] Pamela: So fascinating. It's really amazing. Yeah. And I was really interested that the Cadbury factory wasn't just a Cadbury factory, it was Fries and Pascal as well. So it was like a conglomeration. Is that right?
[00:25:07] Mary-Lou: Yeah, so born Phil in the uk, just Cadburys. They had by the time they came to Tasmania, merged with Fry.
[00:25:14] Mary-Lou: But their business was worth a lot more than Fry's. So Fry's kind of just got absorbed. And Pascal, they got on board as well because they needed a lot of money to fund a brand new factory. So halfway across the world, down the bottom. So it was Cadbury Fry Paska when they came out. And then through the decades it just became Cadbury's, but it was consortium of three and out of all the founding families, it was at actually a Pascal who came out at the start.
[00:25:47] Mary-Lou: And so there was some suspicion that he did that to try and get his hands on.
[00:25:54] Mary-Lou: Everyone's under suspicion in this book. I'm just telling you.
[00:25:58] Pamela: Yeah. Which is great for the tension. I love it. I love it. So you've got your idea, you do a lot of research. Do you do a whole lot of research before you sit down to actually start writing? How does that part of the process work for you?
[00:26:12] Mary-Lou: Yes, I do. And there's a reason for that. It's because the research in part informs the writing for me. So I will have. This overarching arc of the historical points, most everything that happens in this book, which you know, like the water or the scaffolding accident or this, that, or the other, they're actually true things that happened.
[00:26:35] Mary-Lou: So then when I'm writing the book I pin my character stories and their responses to these historical events. So I'm, I don't call myself a plotter, but I would say having that. Scaffolding already in place is like being a poet. Poet, but I actually don't know what's how my characters are gonna respond to these events until I start writing.
[00:27:00] Pamela: Yeah. So you've got that kind of factual scaffold and then you are building the fictional kind of building around it, aren't you on top of that? Yeah, I have. It's interesting,
[00:27:10] Mary-Lou: and I have a fabulous editor who then queries. A lot of the factual stuff that's in there.
[00:27:16] Pamela: Yeah. So
[00:27:17] Mary-Lou: I go okay. I'm, I think that's right.
[00:27:19] Mary-Lou: I'm, I researched this, but I'll go and double check and, oh yeah. Actually that's right. Okay.
[00:27:26] Pamela: So you've got, as you mentioned, two protagonists Dorothy and Maisie, and they come from quite. Different worlds. Obviously ones Dorothy's come from England. Maia is a local girl that who gets a job in the factory.
[00:27:38] Pamela: But tell us about each of them and how you went about developing their characters in line with all the factual research that you've done.
[00:27:46] Mary-Lou: Dorothy came from some fabulous academic papers. Mainly one by Emma Robertson. So there were a couple of academics who'd written papers and theses there's quite a few of them.
[00:27:56] Mary-Lou: And it was the same with the last of the Apple Blossom. People had written a lot of academic papers about the demise of the Apple industry, and so finding them and reading them, but especially Emma's, which was about, in particular, about the group of women who came out from Bourneville, these very experienced workers who are all for women.
[00:28:15] Mary-Lou: Who'd been given promotions to come to Tassie as well, and so Dorothy was just built. Out of their stories in a way. I know. She has a completely different story arc to them, but I knew about the women coming from the different companies, from Pascals and Fries as well as Cadburys. I knew their positions, what they were brought out to do.
[00:28:37] Mary-Lou: I knew where they lived. I knew that there was a matron in charge of them to keep them safe. The Capris were very concerned about keeping women safe out in the colonies and, and I could get a really great idea from the photos and also the stories and the historical research of what these women did, how they lived, and I.
[00:29:00] Mary-Lou: From that, I my research because there's backstory about Dorothy and her life in Bonneville. So there's a bit about Bonneville in there as well and the things she did and how she lived there. And there's certainly a lot of history about Bourneville and I was very grateful to these academic papers because there are history books about Cadburys, but they don't really have much on the Tasmanian factory at all.
[00:29:24] Mary-Lou: Ah, it's all about what happened in England. And so to find his academic papers and then to find the heritage officer in Melbourne, Bruce Smith, what a gem he is. And for him to be able to gain access to the archives back in England at Bonneville and send me stuff was, yeah, just a gem. Now, Maisie, it's 1921 when the book begins, and it's a hard time not only in the UK but Australia after the war, it's, there's still rationing, there's poverty.
[00:29:57] Mary-Lou: The return soldiers can't find jobs. And the war widows of which there are many get a pension, but it's a pittance.
[00:30:03] Pamela: So
[00:30:04] Mary-Lou: they're struggling to survive. And also the fact that if you were lucky, you stayed in school until you're 14, which if you were bright. What did that do? A girl just had to go off and be in domestic service or whatever.
[00:30:17] Mary-Lou: So I thought, what if her, for her motivation, if her sister is about to turn 14 and has to go to work, and Maisie, who's the oldest of the three children. Thinks, I want her to have a better life. She's very bright. Lily is very bright, and I want her to be able to succeed. And she can see it's the 1920s women have the vote in Tasmania.
[00:30:41] Mary-Lou: They still don't have the vote. In England. A women of in class have the vote in England, maisie, not 21 yet, so she doesn't have the vote, but there's still a lot of space opening up in Australia. There's a female member of Parliament, so things are really changing very quickly in Australia, and Maisie wants her little sister to have a chance in this changing world.
[00:31:06] Pamela: I love that you gave her that motivation and it is such an interesting time period, isn't it? Because that post-war time period where, as you say, there's still, everybody's still experiencing trauma from the war, so there's all that. But, and the changing role, of women coming into the 1920s but also still very much, being the second class citizens, but working in the factory gave the women a kind of.
[00:31:32] Pamela: Sense of independence, didn't it?
[00:31:35] Mary-Lou: Yes, having their own money, being able to make their own way. And Cadbury's especially treated their workers very well. They, the Quakers also really big believers and supporters in education. So at Bonneville, if you did start work at 14, you would get paid to go to school a day a week until you turned 18.
[00:31:56] Mary-Lou: And then there were other things in place, evening classes, night school, very strong. So they brought that in. In Tasmania as well, once the factory got up and running and encouraged the girls just as well as the blokes, if not more so to go to evening school so they could advance their chances of promotion.
[00:32:14] Mary-Lou: There were still a lot of young women who saw marriages the way out, and so there was a much higher turnover of girls rather than the men who would stay, but still they were given every chance and they could see. That there was a different kind of possibility for them if they chose to go down that route.
[00:32:32] Pamela: Are you someone who does character bios and things Mary knew, or do you just learn about the characters as you write? How does that work for you?
[00:32:40] Hi everyone. It's Pam here. Sorry to interrupt Mary Lou, but this is a little word from our sponsor, which is actually me. And in fact, my writing retreat that's coming up in may from may 16 to 19, the next chapter writing retreat. You may have seen this advertised on Instagram or Facebook or come across it on my website.
[00:33:00] Pamela cook.com.edu. But I really want to let you know if you are in Australia or perhaps even if you feel like flying into Australia for a fabulous writing retreat in may, there are only two spaces left. So the writing retreat runs from Thursday, the 16th of May to Sunday, the 19th we are going to be covering all sorts of things from. Characterization plotting. You will have some time to write.
[00:33:28] We will be looking at putting tension into your writing. We'll be looking at writing in scenes. And I will be sharing a whole lot of expertise that I have gained in over 20 years of writing and also bringing my teaching experience to the fore in this writing retreat, we've got a fabulous bunch of women writers. And I'm really excited to be able to be doing this writing retreat encourage on at beautiful Corona house.
[00:33:54] If you'd like to find out more about the retreat. Pop onto my website. Look under the coursesPage@pamelacook.com.edu. And be quick if you're interested, because as I said, there are only two places left and it is going to be an absolutely amazing retreat. Fully catered in a beautiful location and I just cannot wait.
[00:34:15] Would love you to join us there for the next chapter. Writing retreat. Back to Mary Lou Stephens talking about her characters and whether she does bio's or whether she just learns about them as she goes.
[00:34:28] Mary-Lou: I have I do character timelines. I do character timelines. About Dorothy. I do it more in my head than write it down.
[00:34:36] Mary-Lou: I, and it's more emotional than clinical black and white, this, that and the other. It's more of a feeling. I've very much operate off emotion. And someone said to me the other day, actually, a couple of people have said this to me, you don't actually describe your characters physically very much.
[00:34:54] Mary-Lou: It's just like a rough sketch.
[00:34:56] Pamela: Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
[00:34:58] Mary-Lou: Yeah. And I think it was actually, yeah, it was the chocolate factory and my editor went, can we have just a bit of physical description?
[00:35:06] Pamela: You know what I mean? I think that's great in a way because it's leaving room for the reader. You're giving them all the information about this, we learn so much about the characters, so you know what's wrong with the reader coming up with the picture in their head.
[00:35:20] Mary-Lou: Yeah. And I think because I do work very much from that emotional core, I know what they're like emotionally. To me their appearance is secondary. It's, I know I. Maisie's hair is like her dad's, it's hard to control That actually becomes, just a little bit of a plot point later on.
[00:35:40] Mary-Lou: Yeah. And Dorothy has dark hair, which she keeps neatly behind. She's worked in a factory. Of course. She has to keep her hair neat.
[00:35:46] Pamela: Yeah. And
[00:35:47] Mary-Lou: she has this little habit of doing this, which becomes a plot point later on. So little things like that I will put in if they're important to the story.
[00:35:58] Pamela: Yeah.
[00:35:59] Mary-Lou: But there's this very funny story. My first job in radio, I worked at two TM and I had to work Christmas Day, so this is in Tamworth, and I was at the radio station all on my own and the doorbell rings and I got a song on. So I go out to answer it. And there's this woman there with this full Christmas dinner and she says, oh, this is for Mary Lou because she has to work Christmas Day.
[00:36:20] Mary-Lou: And I thought she'd love a Christmas dinner. And I went, that's fabulous. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And she says no, it's for Mary Lou. I'm like, I'm Mary Lou. She says, no, you are not. Mary Lou is short without curly hair. I. Actually she's not. I know she got pissed off at me. She was, how dare you look like yourself?
[00:36:42] Mary-Lou: I wasn't the person she had painted in my head, in her head from my voice. And I think perhaps that stuck with me somehow is I'll let my readers just have the description. They, they want of this person from the emotional description that I'm giving. And if suddenly I'm halfway through the book, they find out that, dorothy has blonde hair, which she doesn't. But they might have that jarring effect. That woman in Tamworth, she was not happy. Yeah.
[00:37:10] Pamela: Oh, I love that. How dare you. How dare you. So we've got Dorothy and Maisie protagonists who are a few of the other people that we meet in this story.
[00:37:19] Mary-Lou: There's Sarah. She works in the office at Cadburys. She's very different to the rest of the women who stay in the hostel. So Sarah she goes off to work in town while everyone else goes to work at the factory. And she's really an aide to Dorothy in many ways. And when Dorothy needs a friend, she's there because relationships in the hostel start to break down prompted by a real cow of a character called Esme.
[00:37:43] Mary-Lou: And it's always fun to write a cow. Yeah, I bet she was fun to write. Yeah, I had to give her, one little saving grace. It did not last long. We also have Gertie, who's Maisie's friend, who was a joy to write because. It is the 1920s and women are starting to bob their hair and there's movie stars and all that kind of stuff that people think of the 1920s.
[00:38:03] Mary-Lou: They think that's what's happening. When in reality in Tasmania it was not happening. Things were pretty dire. So Gerie is there, but she's this kind of bright shining and she's got blonde hair. She does. And I describe it getting cut. There's a physical description there.
[00:38:17] Pamela: I have to say Mary Lou, I loved that because my grandmother's name was Gertrude Gerie and she was a really fun.
[00:38:25] Pamela: A real character. So I really was channeling her as I was reading Gerie.
[00:38:30] Mary-Lou: Yeah. And we have Ida, who is Dorothy's best friend and through her we get a sense of the history that they've had together at Bourneville and what they've gone through. 'cause Dorothy is a war widow.
[00:38:41] Mary-Lou: Her beloved Freddie died at the Western front. There's friction between those two, which is, which goes through the book and is a. One of those kind of little sad saw points that of worries. God, I feel like crying, but it does, it worries away through the book and it, yeah.
[00:38:58] Mary-Lou: Anyway, there's that do get so emotional about my characters and and then there are the men, so there's Thomas, Dorothy meets him on the boat out from England and she realizes that something's not quite right and so she vows to help him with that. And he does remind her of her late husband, so she has a particular attachment to him.
[00:39:22] Mary-Lou: And for Maisie, there's the lovely Frank and there's another love interest as well, who's a very good looking young man who loves chocolate. And so those stories are all intertwined to Thomas was an interesting character to write and I. Needed to be particularly sensitive there because he does have shell shock.
[00:39:46] Mary-Lou: And so I did a lot of research on shell shock and I was horrified about a lot of the stuff that I read about how those men were treated during war. They were often shot as cowards when they came home. They were often stuck in asylums, they were. ridiculed dismissed. And they had to do their best to keep it hidden or keep themselves hidden to avoid being locked up.
[00:40:10] Mary-Lou: And the various forms of treatments were as ridiculous as eat porridge every day, or just get over it. There was a hospital in Devon that was doing great work with being outside in nature, working the land. Farming pretty much
[00:40:27] Pamela: right?
[00:40:27] Mary-Lou: Just getting the men outdoors in and out of cities and giving them jobs to do, and out of everything that worked.
[00:40:35] Mary-Lou: But Dorothy researches all this kind of stuff because of Freddie, because of Thomas, and that's woven through the book as well.
[00:40:43] Pamela: Yeah. I love the way you weave those different threads through the story. There's a lot of depth, there's a lot of layers to the story.
[00:40:50] Mary-Lou: But there was a lot of stuff going on.
[00:40:52] Mary-Lou: Plus she was a Cadbury's angel during the war. The Cadbury's turned two of their buildings at Bourneville into hospitals and everyone volunteered. And so Dorothy has had some experience with shell shock victims in those Cadbury hospitals and caring for them. So it's not as if she completely half cocked.
[00:41:13] Pamela: And interesting, that you were saying just before Mary Lou about being emotional, getting emotional at the thought of, the friction between the characters. But I think that is so important that as the author, that we have that emotional connection to the characters because getting that onto the page is then allowing the reader to make that emotional connection, isn't it?
[00:41:35] Mary-Lou: Yes. Yeah. And I do, and I can't write a book without it. There's no point in me writing a book that I'm not that emotional about. With the last, the Apple Blossom, I cried on every single page. It was just such a flood of tears. And with this one too, I would get so emotional while I was writing.
[00:41:55] Mary-Lou: And when you are writing it. A book, it's a couple of years out of your life. So for me, it's not something that I can just do with my head, my whole heart, my whole being has to be there to sustain me through the entire process. With historical fiction and with other fiction too. I'm researching for a year.
[00:42:14] Mary-Lou: I'm writing for a year. Then there'll be editing. You really need that kind of sole sustenance to carry you through.
[00:42:24] Pamela: Yeah. I think that's a great point. One of the things, Marilee, that I wanted to mention to you and to talk about is obviously there is a lot of research, there's a lot of historical detail in your stories, and one of the things I really noticed particularly well, I know you did it in last to the Apple Blossom too, but as I was reading this recently, the Chocolate Factory is the way that you use dialogue to really.
[00:42:46] Pamela: Let the reader know a lot about that historical detail. So the, and in this case, because Dorothy is very experienced in. Already in the whole chocolate making process. So she's come from England she's already got that knowledge, but it's part of her role to impart that knowledge, isn't it, to the other characters.
[00:43:07] Pamela: So that must have been a great vehicle for you to be able to then get that historical detail in through the dialogue and you weave it through so beautifully. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:43:18] Mary-Lou: Two things about this so one, I love dialogue and I think it comes back from my days as an actor where you're working with a script and it's all dialogue or it's maybe a little bit stage direction, but that all comes from the director and from your character.
[00:43:31] Mary-Lou: All the blocking and stuff like that to start off where you're just working with dialogue. There was one chapter in the Chocolate Factory and I was editing it and I realized it was all dialogue. Oh really? Nothing but dialogue. And I went okay. I think we better put, a few different elements in here.
[00:43:47] Mary-Lou: I do love it. And as far as weaving the historical research in, I my first commissioning editor who worked with me through the last, the Apple Blossom, she was forever telling me that I'd got stuck in a bog with my research and to just. Pull out swes of stuff and I was just these little markups on and I track changes.
[00:44:09] Mary-Lou: Bog, bog, love that. Bog, get rid of it, don't care, not interested. And she messaged me after it was clear that the chocolate factory was doing really well and she was so proud because she's the one who'd commissioned it. And she said, and I've read it, and she said, your writing has improved so much. Oh wow.
[00:44:31] Mary-Lou: Weaving. This detail through seamlessly and I and an in interesting and entertaining fashion. So that was high praise indeed. From the woman who just wrote bog. Yeah, you've come a long way.
[00:44:46] Pamela: You're outta the, but I think, as I said, because of the setup in this book, it really was the perfect way to get that information across, wasn't it? And I imagine in your edits, you then had to go through and still probably pull some out and cut back or whatever but yeah, it is a great vehicle for getting information across.
[00:45:04] Pamela: I think no matter what genre you're writing.
[00:45:07] Mary-Lou: Yeah, I do love it. And I think now that I've written three historical novels, the third one will be out next year. It's just knowing I have a better idea now of how much research to do, how to use it, what to do with it, which with the last of the Apple Blossom, it was my first historical novel and honestly.
[00:45:28] Mary-Lou: When I read the first draft, I was bored with the amount of research was in that me, which I found everything about apple's fascinating. But I was just reading it going, oh my God, Chuck that, pull that out, that goes away. So my first drafts aren't as research heavy. Yeah.
[00:45:44] Pamela: Any
[00:45:46] Mary-Lou: which is good for me and for everyone else.
[00:45:48] Pamela: Yeah. Brilliant. What's your preference, drafting or editing revision?
[00:45:53] Mary-Lou: Oh gosh. That's really interesting
[00:45:58] Pamela: because some people just love that whole, getting into the flow of the draft and just being lost in that whole story meandering around, whereas other people really prefer that more meticulous process, of pulling it apart and putting it back together.
[00:46:12] Mary-Lou: I'm wrecking my brains here. It's quite obvious. I'm sure, because I love. I love that, the brain tickling the daydreaming, the kind of forming stuff in your mind before anything really solidifies. I love getting the story down and finding out more about my characters and letting them grow and blossom and really become part of my heart.
[00:46:33] Mary-Lou: And I'm editing next year's book at the moment and it's quite exciting 'cause I haven't seen it for months. 'cause my deadline was December and I'd just got my edits. And so it's a whole new experience with this book and getting to know these characters and the story again. And having my notes here and I'm my commissioning editor.
[00:46:56] Mary-Lou: Once a few things changed and this explained more and this expanded, and so I'm working out how to fit it in. But in the meantime, I'm becoming reacquainted with this story and going, Ooh, I like this. I really like this book. So I. Do not have a clear answer for you. Okay. I, yeah, I would say that every aspect of it fascinates me and it's the business end.
[00:47:24] Mary-Lou: When the book is out and the rubber hits the road, I'd say, that's where the tricky stuff really starts, sits. It's outta my control. It's not a lot I can do about, I can do some things, but not really a lot. But in this whole imagining and writing, and even with edits and I love being edited, I love it when someone just picks up on something or goes you know this.
[00:47:48] Mary-Lou: And I go, oh yeah, of course. So I love having that input. So yeah, that's all the stuff. I love
[00:47:55] Pamela: the
[00:47:55] Mary-Lou: process. I'm where to go. I love it. It's fantastic. The whole thing.
[00:48:00] Pamela: Yeah.
[00:48:01] Pamela: Do you revise as you go when you're drafting or are you someone that starts at the beginning and just goes through to the end?
[00:48:06] Mary-Lou: Yep, yep. I've, I'm chronological the only time I haven't done that is in my memoir. Which, is a two timeline thing that came out 2013 with Pam McMillan. And I'd have chunks of stuff. I use Scrivener, which I love. So I'd have chunks of stuff in the binder just going, where is that gonna fit in?
[00:48:24] Mary-Lou: Where is that gonna fit in? Where is that gonna fit in? But with this historical fiction, and it's all been one timeline that may change in future books. But if I'm just doing one timeline, then I'd like just going from the beginning. Finishing at the end, and I just keep writing. If I need to research something, I'll make a little note.
[00:48:46] Mary-Lou: I won't research it at the time. I just keep writing. If I think something's not working, I'll leave it a note. I'll just keep writing. If I think it needs something added here, I'll leave it a note and just keep, okay.
[00:48:59] Pamela: Yeah. That's interesting. It fascinates me the way. Everyone has such a different process, there's overlap a lot of the time, of course, some people write a scene, go back, revise the whole thing before moving forward.
[00:49:09] Pamela: Others like yourself, just keep going, beginning to end. It's so interesting to me that we all have a different process and often changes for each book.
[00:49:17] Mary-Lou: Yeah. With the memo, like I said, it was different. But I did write three practice books before I got published, and one of those is the dual timeline.
[00:49:27] Mary-Lou: But even that's pretty much how I operate. It may change in the future, I dunno.
[00:49:31] Mary-Lou: Do you think
[00:49:31] Pamela: any of those books will ever come out of the drawer? Nah. No. I love that. No. Thinking about that. No.
[00:49:38] Mary-Lou: No. I know with the first one, quite a few people are disappointed. And I did work for a long time on that book and I had a mentor and people loved my main character, but it's time has passed
[00:49:49] Pamela: right
[00:49:51] Mary-Lou: for me.
[00:49:52] Mary-Lou: As I've said, that emotional attachment, I think people who've read it are more emotionally attached to it than I am now. Okay. Because I've gone big journeys with other characters to other places, and I have so many more ideas just tickling around. I wanna keep, I wanna move forward. I don't actually wanna go back to those books.
[00:50:12] Mary-Lou: It's that was a different part of my life.
[00:50:14] Pamela: And you would be a different writer now too. Yeah. The way you wrote then, too.
[00:50:19] Mary-Lou: I do love my memoir. And it's stood the test of time and when it got remained, it, I republished it myself. So it was, 'cause I didn't want it to disappear. I wanted it still to be available.
[00:50:30] Mary-Lou: I earn about $5 a month if I'm lucky, and that, but it's still out in the world. And of course it's my memoir, so I have a huge emotional attachment to it. But the books that I, my practice books, that emotional attachment has gone.
[00:50:44] Pamela: Now I wanna get onto talking a little bit about your slow traveling, but I found it really interesting, Mary Lou, obviously, we've talked a little bit about the Quaker element of the book.
[00:50:54] Pamela: I remember when you started. Preparing for your slow travels and you were packing things up and selling basically everything to go on the road and do this lifestyle of slow traveling. And then last week, particularly at the book event, hearing you talk about the Quaker influence in your life, it really struck me and it made more sense to me in terms of what you are doing now at this point and your ability to let go of those.
[00:51:22] Pamela: Physical material, things that you did let go of in order to do this slow traveling. Can you talk a little bit about that and how much that kind of Quaker upbringing, and those influences on your early life, how that is still with you, and do you think that is part of your this kind of ability that you have had to just take to the road and see what happens?
[00:51:46] Mary-Lou: Wow. That's an interesting question. My, I went to a Quaker school, but that was very different to my upbringing. Quakers, there's no hierarchy. Everyone's equal. You go to the meeting room, it's a philosophy. It's not a religion. So there's no rights or rituals. You just sit in silence and if there's the light of God within you, urges you to speak, you stand up and speak.
[00:52:07] Mary-Lou: My home life was very different and those who've read my memoir will know this, that it was it's Pentecostal, I guess it was called Charismatic Movement. So it was speaking in tongues, healing, the sick prophecy. It was all a bit crazy at home for a lot of the time. The Quaker influence in my family had actually gone by the time my parents were on the scene and my dad became a born again Christian at a Billy Graham crusade.
[00:52:32] Mary-Lou: Oh wow. Okay. So you've had quite a few different influences going on there. Yeah. I would say what really influenced my love of decluttering, it was before Marie Kondo and then someone said to me, ah, this is Swedish. Death cleaning, but I didn't know I had a name back then, but my father had died.
[00:52:55] Mary-Lou: He'd left behind when he was 61. I was in my twenties and he had left behind so much stuff. Then my brother died and he was 52 and he left behind so much stuff and then my mother died and she didn't leave behind as much stuff. But when you are going through someone's belongings after they've died and it's stuff that they have held onto for a long time and you are going well, it must have been precious to them.
[00:53:28] Mary-Lou: So what do I do with it? It's hard just to throw it out or give it away. It, it meant something to them. Am I supposed to keep it? And quite honestly, Pam, I didn't want to, I'm gonna cry now. I did not want to do that to anyone else. I didn't want anyone else to be left with my pile of stuff going, what do I keep,
[00:53:50] Pamela: what
[00:53:51] Mary-Lou: do I throw out?
[00:53:52] Mary-Lou: And feeling bad about it and not knowing. So when I left the A, B, C, I became the queen of decluttering. My husband had to start nailing stuff down, otherwise I'd give it away. And the Swedish death cleaning, which I did learn about later, is you don't leave anything behind that could possibly hurt anyone who is left behind.
[00:54:13] Mary-Lou: So there's that whole emotional aspect to it as well. And when I finally went, yeah, let's go slow traveling. It took me a while to get my head around it. My husband was very keen from the get go and I went, okay, yeah, let's do this. One of the most exciting things for me was, we're gonna get rid of everything.
[00:54:34] Mary-Lou: I finally get to get rid of everything, and that's what thrilled me most. And slow traveling isn't. For everyone because a lot of people are attached to stuff and to their things. And I had one friend who was so attached to me having things that she said, you can't give everything away. There's gotta be something for you to return to.
[00:54:55] Mary-Lou: I've got a big house, I'll store some of your stuff for you. And so to keep her happy. I said, yeah, sure, you hang on to some of my stuff, but I was not attached to it. Really not. There's a few little bits and pieces, but not a lot.
[00:55:12] Pamela: I just find it so interesting.
[00:55:14] Pamela: So you said your husband was really keen on it from the get go. We're the same, around the same age, I'm guessing, as we get older, we start to think about. What we wanna do with our life, the bucket list, all that sort of thing. But what was it in particular about slow traveling that really appealed to you?
[00:55:31] Mary-Lou: When I left the A, B, C, which was some years ago now, my husband said to me, what do you wanna do next? And I said, all I wanna do is travel and write. Now we are low income earners in Australia. We have super, but it's not a lot. So he went away and thought about it and came up with a plan which involved bicycles and a tent, which is how we could afford to do, travel around Europe and everywhere else.
[00:55:56] Mary-Lou: And I just went, that's not happening. Then we met some friends who were house sitting around the world, and that's the way, that's how a lot of people do it, how they afford it, they house it. You need good references. So we house that locally. We got some great references, and then after one particular house, my husband went, no, this isn't for me.
[00:56:15] Mary-Lou: You are living someone else's lifestyle choices, which is very true. You have their pets to look after their house, to look after their garden, to look after, and it's not. Not necessarily the way that you would choose to live. So we were stymied, but my husband is a very good researcher.
[00:56:30] Mary-Lou: He does most of it on YouTube, and he found these people traveling the world with the sink would slow travel. And because you go to places that are cheaper than the place where you usually reside, because if you stay in one place for long enough, then you get big discounts on accommodation. And because you're not spending a fortune on airfares because you're staying in one place for so long.
[00:56:51] Mary-Lou: It becomes very affordable. So he started talking to me about this and I was still not convinced, and I had a book to write and da dah. And then he showed me a particular video of a couple. Now, most of these slow traveling people with their YouTube videos, they concentrate on budget and geography and food of the places that they go.
[00:57:17] Mary-Lou: This couple talked about the emotional aspects, the relationship aspects, the mental health aspects the spiritual aspects, all the things that are important to me. And I listened to them and I went, ah, now I get it. Now I'm interested. So I said, okay. Let's do this and let's get rid of everything.
[00:57:46] Pamela: Amazing. So is it a year now that
[00:57:48] Mary-Lou: you've been going or a bit longer? It's a bit longer now. And we are heading off to South America next for an indefinite amount of time. We are learning Spanish because a lot of the places we go, no one speak will be going, no one speaks English. And I was a little bit homesick for a while and what I really missed was talking with other writers.
[00:58:06] Mary-Lou: I missed my writing groups, but I. So many things were pointing us along the way of leaving Australia. Our car died and I'm, much more than that, a member of my riding group, and we were, there were only three of us at that time died suddenly.
[00:58:23] Mary-Lou: And it was just such a shock. And I went, yeah, it's time to do this. It's time to go out in the world. None of us know how long we've got. I'll get rid of all my stuff, so no one has to go through it and let's go into the world and have adventures for as long as we can.
[00:58:43] Mary-Lou: Oh, it's lovely. It's so exciting.
[00:58:45] Pamela: I'm traveling precariously through you, so there is that. But you've been so far you've been in Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia. Anywhere else?
[00:58:54] Mary-Lou: Yes. Thailand twice, Philippines spent a lot of time in sac, which is an independent Malaysian state on Borneo and in Malaysia itself.
[00:59:04] Mary-Lou: So it was all Southeast Asia and it's interesting and I always look into the history of wherever we go and it's always fascinating and heartbreaking in a lot of ways. So now, yeah, south America, which is a very big place. Lots of countries, some of them not as stable as others, but we're starting in Uruguay, which is the most stable, the most progressive, and the most expensive.
[00:59:30] Mary-Lou: So we'll see how,
[00:59:31] Pamela: what to stay. Yeah.
[00:59:32] Pamela: Yeah. So what's a typical writing day look like for you there, Mary Lou? Is it any different to a typical writing day here, apart from being in a different place?
[00:59:41] Mary-Lou: No, it's
[00:59:41] Pamela: just the
[00:59:42] Mary-Lou: same. And that's what I said to my husband before we set off. My days are gonna look pretty much like they look here.
[00:59:48] Mary-Lou: I'm gonna be in a room on my own writing. A lot of the time, are you gonna be okay with that? And it wasn't really until, almost a year that he got a bit restless. 'cause I was working so much. But I'd always have the weekends off and because we were staying in one place for so long, that was plenty of time to have a look around, see the sites, go to a zillion temples all those things.
[01:00:12] Mary-Lou: See, go to the beach. I have yet to see one, which is even a patch on the beaches in Australia. So I still had lots of time because we weren't rushing around like tourists we're travelers and we are slow travelers. So even though I was working a lot, I still had that time, but my husband said, please don't do that again.
[01:00:33] Mary-Lou: Please don't write a book and edit a book in the same year. And I went, no promises.
[01:00:42] Pamela: So have you got a, you've got a bit longer than a year for the next one or not? It is a year timeframe.
[01:00:48] Mary-Lou: So the 2025 book is written I'm editing it now. And the next idea is just doing ITing in my brain, but there's no pressure to write it. I did have lunch with my latest commissioning editor and she said.
[01:01:05] Mary-Lou: I gotta ask you, what's next? And I said it will be 2026 by then. Andis will be writing all the books by then and who knows what's gonna happen. And this does break my heart. I make a joke of it, but we don't know where there's AI thing, where it's heading or what's gonna happen.
[01:01:23] Mary-Lou: And my editor was at that lunch meeting and she said yes. And all the editing may well be done by AIS by then as well. Yeah. Which is another hate heartbreaker for me because as I keep going back to, it's the emotional connection about the work that is the most important thing to me. And there are some people who are saying AI are sentient already.
[01:01:42] Mary-Lou: So maybe they will have an emotional connection to their work. We just don't know. They're writing their own code. We have no idea where this is heading. But my commissioning editor, persisted. And I said, I'll tell you what, I'll get my AI to talk to your AI and we'll figure something out.
[01:01:58] Pamela: I love it.
[01:02:01] Mary-Lou: I'm gonna keep writing.
[01:02:02] Pamela: Because that's, we do. That's what we do. But I hope
[01:02:05] Mary-Lou: there will still be, place a place and people keep reassuring me that there will be a place for books written by people. Yeah.
[01:02:14] Pamela: I certainly hope so. You are back in Australia at the moment on the publicity trail for the chocolate factory.
[01:02:19] Pamela: How has that been coming back?
[01:02:22] Mary-Lou: It's been fantastic. It's been expensive, but it's also been really easy. Australia is such an easy place to be in. I know how everything works. I know the language. People understand me, I understand them. People obey the road rules almost all the time. I. Which is never a given in Asia, and I'm so grateful at a zebra crossing when the cars stop because they don't in Asia, so it's incredibly easy.
[01:02:53] Mary-Lou: I'm churning through the money, but I knew that I would, and that's okay. I just went, ah, and it's all tax deductible as is all of this. Being able to claim chocolate on your tax is just fantastic. That's heaven. And it's been lovely catching up with people, with family and friends and just getting a really big dose of it, just soaking up.
[01:03:16] Mary-Lou: And I think my husband and I were just a little bit interested to see what would happen while I was here. Whether I would actually prefer to stay or as planned head off to South America. And I gotta say, Pam, my life is not here.
[01:03:33] Pamela: Okay. Interesting.
[01:03:35] Pamela: Yeah.
[01:03:36] Mary-Lou: There. People say, oh, where do you live? And I say, nowhere and everywhere.
[01:03:41] Pamela: I love that. I love that. Nowhere and everywhere. I think that should be the title of your slow travel memoir when you write it.
[01:03:49] Pamela: I'm looking forward to that. I know you haven't said you're gonna do one, but I'm hoping you will at some stage. Yeah. Who knows? Who knows. So , I cannot remember Mary Lou if I asked you this the last time we spoke. But it's a question I always like to finish up with on the podcast. And it sometimes changes from, time to time.
[01:04:08] Pamela: So what would you say is at the heart of your writing?
[01:04:12] Mary-Lou: My heart. My heart is at the heart of my writing, honestly. Like I've been saying, it's. That real heart connection, that soul connection to what I'm doing and to my characters. I do, I get tears in my eyes when I know that I'm at a touch point of truth.
[01:04:32] Mary-Lou: That's what I love is that emotional touch point there, that this is true. It means so much to me. It's in my heart, it's in my being, it's in my soul. I cannot write a book without that. And yes, I could tell you, it's strong female characters. In a time when female women didn't have much agency.
[01:04:55] Mary-Lou: I could say it's about the hero's journey, except it's the heroine's journey. I could say all that stuff that's up here. Yeah. And it's certainly part of what I do, but honestly, there's part of it that I can't put into words that just bring tears to my eyes like it's happening now because it is this deep emotional connection to the people.
[01:05:19] Mary-Lou: That I write about and the places that they find themselves in. So yeah, the heart of my writing is my heart and is their hearts, and is the reader's heart. 'cause I really hope for that connection to come through.
[01:05:32] Pamela: It certainly does, Mary Lou, I can assure you of that. And I think that is a perfect place to end our chat, although I could chat to you for hours and hours.
[01:05:40] Pamela: So thank you so much for being back on Rights for Women and I really look forward to the jam maker and to hopefully seeing you back here in Australia maybe next year. On the next book tour.
[01:05:51] Mary-Lou: And a deep heartfelt thank you to you, Pam. I know it's a lot of work putting this podcast together and I deeply appreciate everything you do for writers and readers.
[01:06:00] Mary-Lou: It's very much appreciated.
[01:06:02] Pamela: Oh, thank you. That's lovely to hear. Thank you. And happy traveling. Slow traveling in South America. Thank you.