Natasha Lester

Natasha Lester was our very first guest on the podcast and she was fabulous. We covered so many elements of writing The Paris Secret including first lines, prologue, plot twists, dual narratives, her research process and so much more.

Remember, because we’re taking a deep dive into The Paris Secret, the episode does contain spoilers. If you’d like to read the novel before listening, you can buy it from all the usual places, both paperback and ebook.

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle Barraclough  Welcome Natasha Lester. Thank you so much for being the inaugural podcast guest on Writer's Book Club

 Natasha Lester  Thank you so much for having me. As soon as told me about this idea, I was just so excited and I'm so happy to be here. And thank you for letting me be the first guest.

 Michelle Barraclough  Oh, I'm so thrilled.   You've always been such a generous member of the writing community. I learnt how to use Scrivener from your blog post. Thank you very much. Anyone who's listening, I highly recommend the Natasha's blog. It's a font of much knowledge in the writing sphere.   What does your writing life look like at the moment, Natasha?

 Natasha Lester  So we're in a kind of fun phase at the moment where we're getting ready for the publication of The Riviera House on August the st. And so that means lots of book cover designs are coming through,  we've just finalized the cover for the North American edition. And it's just the most stunning cover I couldn't be happier.

The Australian one is coming along as well, so that's all the fun stuff. But I'm also, usually I'm working on three books at a time, so promoting one, editing one and writing another. So I've just submitted next year's book to my publisher. So the edits for that should come back in about a month.

 I would say it depends on how bad it is like. And I've just started writing a first draft, very rough for  book. So, and then I'm juggling end of publicity for The Paris Secret. And starting to think about publicity for The Riviera House.

 Michelle Barraclough  First of all, it won't be bad. Second of all, oh to be in your head. I don't know how you compartmentalize all of that, but you've had a few years practice now. Haven't you?

 Natasha Lester  Yes. And I think if they were all at the same phase, I think that would be much harder, but because they are all at very, definitely different stages, I think that just makes it so much easier. Editing is such a different mindset to first drafting, which is such a different mindset to publicity. So I think that really helps a lot.

 Michelle Barraclough  Yeah. And do you find that you use certain parts of the day for each of those different jobs?

 Natasha Lester  Yeah, pretty much. So really school hours nine till three is writing or editing. So I won't ever do an edit for a book and be writing a draft of a different book at the same time. I'll stop the draft and just focus on the edit for that month or whatever. So that there isn't any kind of cross influencing happening.

 And then I try to do all the admin and publicity stuff in the evening or on the weekend, so that the writing work comes first. And I can change my mindset, I guess. I'm too tired to write at night, whereas admin and questionnaires and interviews and things are much easier, right?

Michelle Barraclough  And not forgetting that you have a husband and three children as well who probably want a little bit of your attention. Yes. I hear you. So our listeners  have really delivered and sent in some fantastic questions. So should we dive in to The Paris Secret?

 Natasha Lester  Right. Lets.

 Michelle Barraclough  Let's dive in. Our first question comes from Pamela Cook, who is an author that we both know and love. Hi, Pam. Thanks for sending in the first question. Pam asks "This book has more of the main characters backstory than most of Natasha's books. Why is that? And how does she handle back story?"

Natasha? It's a big question.

 Natasha Lester  And it's a very good question too, because Pam is absolutely right. Part of there's about three chapters at the start of The Paris Secret that Skye, the main character's childhood, and sort of explores her friendship with a young boy called Nicholas. And I've never written my characters childhoods before.

But when I very first conceived of the idea for the book and the character of Skye because my books always have kind of the main plot of the woman trying to do something unusual for her time in history. And then the subplot is usually a romance kind of subplot. I do start thinking about, well, what kind of romantic relationship would that be?

 And I don't know. And I try and mix that up a bit, you know, there are those typical kind of tropes of love at first sight or whatever, and it just struck me that it would be quite fun to do a story about two people who met as kids and then fell in love later as adults. And so that was part of why I decided to delve into this beautiful. I hope childhood friendship between Skye and Nicholas. And it's also there because I think, you know, Skye's pretty Bohemian and wild for that time and history and in fact I was just talking about this on the weekend. And of course I was teaching Whenever your character is sort of transgressive in terms of society's expectations, you have to make that believable so that the character doesn't appear anachronistic.

 And so it was really important for me to establish what Skye's childhood was like, so that the reader could believe that she would become a female pilot, which at that time was totally transgressive. So there was those two reasons that were really important to me to have that sort of childhood storyline in the book.

 And because it was the first time I'd ever done it, it was much longer when I submitted it to my publisher because I had so much fun writing those themes.

 Michelle Barraclough  They were great.

 Natasha Lester  I knew it was a bit slow and that I probably had gone a bit overboard, but I always figure, you know, submit it and then you can work out what to cut later.

 So in fact that section probably lost about two chapters. There's a bit of cutting involved. You know, because yeah, so it was really just for those reasons of wanting to write this particular love story in that particular way and needing to make Skye's character seem believable and authentic, given that she was a bit wild for her time.

 Michelle Barraclough  And given the fact that it is a dual narrative and also that there is so much going on with the war and the plot twists and all of that, I guess it would have been a little bit tricky to sort of weave in that childhood or those childhood scenes within the narrative, because there was already so much going on.

 Right.

 Natasha Lester  Yeah, there was way too much going on. I always said this was the book that nearly killed me because there was far too much going on really for any one book.

 Michelle Barraclough  That's what makes it so wonderful. I think this is your best. It's just brilliant.

 Natasha Lester  Yeah. I mean, I love it too. And like, I feel like I did pull it off in the end, but there were plenty of times during the writing of it, I thought, Oh my God, I have bitten off way more than I can chew. So, yeah. But it's nice. I like challenging myself. I don't want to write the same book every time and I want to try something harder.

 So it stretches me as a writer so that I stay interested in what I'm doing. And so, you know, I guess also you know, going right back in time to my character's childhood was part of you know, that, you know, something different, it was a challenge. How will I make this scene? And how will I make backstory?

 Which is interesting.

 Michelle Barraclough  Yeah. And also I think by putting it into scenes, it brings it alive. It's, you know, the very definition of showing, not telling isn't it, by having those childhood scenes as scenes.

 Natasha Lester  Yes. Rather than, you know, the character doing that thing where they pick up a photograph and they

 Michelle Barraclough  I remember when.

 Natasha Lester  exactly, which is such a cliche. And it also means that, you know, when you are imparting, sort of backstory to the backstory, which I am doing because we have to explain how Nicholas comes to be in Cornwall.

 I always do that through dialogue, and that makes it therefore showing and more interesting rather than just having a paragraph of narrative telling how Nicholas came to be in Cornwall. So, you'll find that a lot of that kind of information is always conveyed via dialogue and exchange  of words.

 Michelle Barraclough  Yeah, I thought that was actually a really good example. If anybody is wondering how to get that sort of backstory across I think it's in the first or second chapter, we have two examples there. First of all, when Nicholas' Aunt Finella, is talking to Skye's mother, Vanessa, the wonderful Vanessa, and for the first time we learn about what may have happened to Nicholas's father and it's sort of, you know, speaking in front of the children, so , as readers we, we sort of understand that Nicholas's father has not had a good first war and something's happened to him there.

And then the second way I think was really clever in which you did this was you have the two children because they don't know each other. And  they're roaming around the Cornish this beautiful Cornish Cove and they're having all these adventures and they go into the cave and it's dark and they're lying there.

 And they're sort of telling each other, these stories and it was such a beautiful image, but it was also a really wonderful device, for telling the reader as well, how the story of their families and their parents. And I thought that was really well done. It's a very good example, listeners.

 If you're looking how to weave in backstory to look at the first couple of chapters of The Paris Secret.

 Natasha Lester  Oh, thank you. And I think also, you know, the other thing there is having it split over two scenes enabled me to dripfeed the backstory, which I always like to do rather than, and also every time there's backstory, it's serving some other purpose. So they're in the cave, because the cave becomes a really important motif through the story and we see the cave come up a few more times in the story. And so you aren't just there to impart backstory you're there to set up this motif, this place that's really special to them. And that Skye will often remember and refer to as  an adult.

Michelle Barraclough  And,  even with the aunt and Vanessa, Skye's mother, you're getting just this short exchange. You get a very clear picture of the uptight Finella, who's very sort of downtrodden and quite hardly done by and having to take in this terrible sister and her son, and she, you know, she's so put upon and Skye's mother who's just very much let kids be kids and she's very much a free spirit.

 So you're  imparting or telling the reader, what sort of characters these people are. So you do that really well.

 Our second question comes via Instagram from Gemma and Gemma's handle on Instagram is @readingforkeeps. Thank you for sending in your question, Gemma. The question is "For me, the amount of research involved in The Paris Secret was amazing.

 I guess I want to know more about that process. Where does Natasha start with her research? How does she fund it? How does she. Does she find one piece of information that leads to another, et cetera. And then we also had another question from Fiona Taylor @fionawtaylor on Instagram along the same lines, I'd like to ask Natasha how much research she did for The Paris Secret. And did she do it before writing her first draft or during?" So there you go. There's a meaty research question for you, Natasha.

 Natasha Lester  I'm going to address the funding first, so we can all clear that up.

 I open my purse and my credit card comes out. So when a writer chooses to do research, for their book the writer has to fund that because you don't have to do it. There's no obligation that your publisher is putting upon you to during the research so it's entirely up to you, whether you do or don't do it, therefore you have to pay for it yourself. However, you can plan your own travel expenses. Of course, as a tax deduction. And people, keep all those receipts.. So, that kind of covers off that part of it. I mean, I will always say that, on the ground location based research is the most valuable research that you can do.

 So that would always be something I would prioritize when I've kind of, you know, budgeting my writing dollars. Especially for people who are just starting out and haven't earnt a lot of writing dollars yet. You know, even back when I was writing A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald, so that was my first historical. Before I had a contract with Hachette, I just went, no, I'm going to spend the money and I'm going to go to New York and I'm going to student in the Columbia medical school archives because I take the book better.

 And I feel like all those small investments have paid off and I well and truly get the money back because you know, it made the books better and then more people read them. So we sold more books. And so it was totally worthwhile for anyone who's considering that

 Michelle Barraclough  An investment, not an expense.

 Natasha Lester  Exactly. Definitely. So in terms of how I start with research and whether one piece of information led to another, I pretty much just taught a three hour workshop about this.

But yes, that's essentially how it works. Because I write the first draft without having done much research what I'll do in that, first draft, so that the story comes first and then my imagination run wild so I'm not constrained by what the research told me is possible, I put off most of the research until the end of the first draft. So during the first draft, all I will do is read a couple of books  about the broad topics. So for example, in The Paris Secret. I found a book that was about the experiences of the female pilots of the air transport auxiliary given that's where Skye works, that was important, so I read that with the perspective of a number of different women through the author had interviewed or read their memoirs and had collated together. And so then if you start with a generalist book like that, the next thing you do is you're always going to the bibliography and you go through the bibliography and look at what other research sources are going to be important to you based on now, you know, the names of the other people in that organization.

 So it was the same with the French photographer, I read a book about the experiences of the female war correspondents, and so I learned the names of the other war correspondents. And so then you go and look saying, or did any of them write memoirs? And so in The Paris Secret, there were three, four key pilots who had written memoirs.

 So that was the next step. I found the name of the memoir in the bibliography then went and purchased second-hand copies of the memoirs and read those. And so that's kind of how you research. It's a bit of a trial. You, always start off with the broad sources and then the broad sources led you to the more specific sources.

So generally start with a secondary source which is the book kind of written after the events. And that leads you to the primary sources, which are from the perspective of a person who experienced the events and are written around the time of the events. And they're obviously the most valuable kind of sources.

 So, and then from there, again, usually from the bibliography I'll find archives that have documents. So, many of these books, about the air transport, auxiliary reference the national archives in Kew, which hold all the papers about the Air Transport Auxiliary.. So then, obviously that was somewhere I needed to go.

 I went to Kew I ordered all the documents I needed to look at online. So they were sitting there waiting for me before I got there. Then I spent my day snapping photos. I don't make any notes because I'm not going to waste that time on writing the notes. I photograph everything I can make the notes later.

 So that's kind of how that trail sort of works. And then in terms of Fiona's question I guess I've covered that off a little bit in terms of whether I did it before my first draft or during, I do a very small amount during, and then the bulk of it, once that first draft is finished then I'd take a whole month off writing and I spend the whole month, researching, usually traveling, obviously not in the world of COVID, but that's really important maybe because I am a pantser, not a plotter, so I don't really know what I'm writing until I've got to the end of the first draft. And if I was to research up front I don't have a scope. I would research it forever because I wouldn't know when to stop because I don't know what I need to put in the book.

 Whereas my first draft acts as my research blueprint, it defines my scope I'm researching to flesh out the events and the people and the time that I have captured in that first draft. So it means I can be more efficient and focused and not waste time with my research. So that's how that kind of process works for me. And then of course it's all about going back into the book and using that research to enhance the story that's already there. And again, talked about this in the course I ran on Saturday. It means that story always comes first. You know sometimes you read historical novels, and you feel like you're just being taught something and the being really didactic.

 And I feel like there's no danger of that happening because I've written the story first. And then I'm just using the research to, enhance the sayings scenes already there to add detail and authenticity to those scenes. You know, I'm not going in to say, Oh, here's an interesting piece of research.

 Now I'm going to craft a scene around that because I think story works like that. Not to me anyway.

 Michelle Barraclough  Yeah, I agree. And I think that's what lends itself to the layering and the intricacy of your stories as well.  The layers of information in there are so beautifully woven in. I wanted to just talk about chapter five, because this is what stayed with me. The research that you'd obviously done about the delivery of the Tiger Moths to Scotland and the appalling conditions in which the women worked, which of course the men didn't have to work in.

 The men got all the, you know, the warm flying suits, et cetera. And the women had to fly using only their sight. They hardly had any instruments. It was the dead of winter. And it was a freezing cold winter to the point where, when they landed they literally could not use their legs. And unfortunately had to be helped out of the planes by men.

 When I went back and re-read the novel for this podcast, it really made me look at the emotion that that sort of research helped evoke. My emotions were aroused. They were indignation, first of all, on behalf of those women, I was like, my God they got back, they couldn't walk, they were frozen to death and they had to get out of these warmish togs and change back into skirts and stockings on the base, you know, so I was just like but also enormous empathy for these women. So, I just think for anyone listening, Natasha's research, she uses it in a way that also helps to evoke those emotions in the reader. And I think that's something we don't really think about when we think about research, we do think about, you know, going to archives and doing primary and secondary resources.

But then how you use it within the writing is also really important. Isn't it?

 Natasha Lester  Yeah, I think so.

 I think again, that comes down to trying as much as possible to show the research. So, when we find out what are the dangers inherent in being a pilot with the ATA it's Pauline telling the other women that. And they're hearing it for the first time, like the reader is, so we are actually being placed as the reader in the same spot as the female pilots are.

 Shit.

 That's crazy.

 You know, if again, if you just put it into the narrative, it becomes much more diluted much less powerful, and it allows you to kind of build the degree of danger because, those are the first dangers we hear when Pauline sets up the flying conditions. And then we see Skye experiencing those dangers when she's flying to Scotland and freezing her butt off and being shot at, by the Luftwaffe.

 You know, each incident is a little bit more dangerous and a little bit more risky, a little bit more scary than the next one. So it kind of ratchets the tension up whereas if you start with the big dangerous incident, then, you've lost, you've already lost the tension. So it's all about, you  know, kind of layering and also, you know, when you have a great piece of information research information, like the fact that these women were made to fly to Scotland, you want to then use that to develop character.

 And so that's why you see you know, Rosemary bringing in the shawls and the fur wraps . And you see the grit of all of them, that they just keep flying those planes back and forth, freezing their butts off and they never once stop. So again, you're using the research to develop character, which I think if it's only in there for research, it's got to come out.

 It has to do with something else.

 Michelle Barraclough  Yeah, I think that's, what's referred to as an info dump, isn't it? When

 Natasha Lester  Yes.

Michelle Barraclough  Yeah. So you also used it to show tension, you know, because eventually the women sort of think, well, this isn't exactly how we want to live our lives. And so, they eventually do go head to head with the powers that be.

And I love that because there's just a sort of a microcosm of a resolution in that isn't there, which I, which I think was very satisfying.   Speaking of research last year was the first year we haven't had the vicariously living through Natasha Lester's fabulous Instagram with, you know, visits to French chateaux and beautiful English high teas. Anything on the cards for , are we thinking it might be a  proposition.

 Natasha Lester  Yeah. I'm thinking it might be . I had a fabulous trip planned for June, including a publicity tour of Norway, which I was going to, which was going to be so no, that's all on the back burner and I'm just kind of waiting to see what happens and just being grateful that we're happy and healthy.

 Michelle Barraclough  I know we are very lucky. We can't complain. The gorgeous French Chateaux and Riviera homes and English high tea houses will just have to wait another year.

 Our third question comes from the lovely Penelope Janu @penelopejanuwriter. She is quite an accomplished writer in our own right. But she's pretty much about the romance. So her question is "I'd like to know something of Natasha's process in respect to writing love stories. What comes first? I suspect it's the woman's individual story, but I'd like to know, how the love story evolves or changes as the manuscript progresses. How did Natasha develop the love story between Skye and Nicholas in The Paris Secret. And by the way, my absolute favorite perfume, and it's been that way for decades is Miss Dior." Over to you, Natasha.

Natasha Lester  Well I first of all need to say that I've been wearing Miss Dior for the last year as well, so excellent taste I'm right with you on that one. So in terms of the love story you're absolutely right. It is definitely the woman's individual story that comes first. The thing that always sets me off on the path of writing a new book is thinking about a woman who's going to do this particular thing.

 And in this case, obviously it was flying airplanes during the second world war as Skye does, but then very quickly thereafter because all of my books do have this sort of love story subplot. I'm starting to think about, well, what's that going to be for this book? And, again, try and mix it up a bit.

 And so, you know, we kind of, like next year's book is totally enemies to love. And then I had so much fun with that. Like it probably the best one I've ever had. You know, and so we say all, but those are tropes, but, and they are, but they still useful because you know, Pride and Prejudice was the first enemies to lovers and we still love that trope.

 So it's just these things that people can identify. So for this one, like I said I always knew that Skye and Nicholas were going to be these very close childhood friends whose friendship never evolved into romance, but you just know that they love each other. And then they meet later in life and Nicholas engaged.

 Michelle Barraclough  And I love the way Skye says "You're handsome!" She hasn't him for so seen seen him him for so long and she's sort of, that's that kind of moment of, Oh, you're not exactly the childhood friend anymore. Yes. You're a handsome

 Natasha Lester  And I think it would be a bit like that. If you used to think someone as your childhood friend, then you see them as an adult. They are suddenly a man and quite different and processing that. And of course Skye processes everything aloud. So of course it comes out of her mouth, which is highly embarrassing for her at the time. So in terms of how I develop that, so it's really again just writing the first draft and seeing what they want to do.

So with this one again, I had a real problem with word counts. It was such a long book. And so initially when I submitted the manuscript to my publisher Skye and Nicholas didn't have very many meetings as adults before they kind of realized they were in love with each other. So, which really put a lot of pressure on the childhood storyline to make it seem believable, that the love would sort of come back relatively instantaneously.

 And I thought, no, that's not right on the unnamed to slow that adult falling in love down a bit and just either make the scenes that are there work harder, or actually add in a whole new scene and so I added in, there's a scene if you've read the book, you will know the scene it's where Nicholas comes to Hamble where Skye is working and he brings a bag of oranges and he tells her he's going to take her out to dinner because Skye's been living on rations and Nicholas gets hot cooked meals for him because the male pilots get that the female pilots don't of course. So they go out for dinner to the pub and they have an opportunity to, talk sort of one-on-one in a way that is quite hard when you're on an air base with a lot of other people and you don't have a lot of private time.

And it was also good because that scene enabled me. I had a, there's a scene that comes soon before that where Skye's flying an airplane, it's a big bomber sorry it's a Spitfire, flying it, in the cloud of terrible weather and she can't see and this big four engine bomber nearly lands on top of her in the sky and it's quite a terrifying experience.

 And when I first wrote it, I was thinking it's just another flying scene, you have to be kind of careful. Obviously she's a pilot so you've got to have flying scenes but if you have too many, you're really going to bore readers who aren't interested in flying scenes. But then, that becomes a bonding moment for them at that dinner because Nicholas hears about it, and he realizes that Skye nearly died because the plane nearly landed on top of her and they made this promise to each other at that dinner that they're not going to die. And the idea of Nicholas keeping promises and not breaking his word is again another motif that reoccurs throughout the book.

 And so it gave me another chance to really pull that back into the story and bring readers attention back to that. So, it ended up being this great theme cause it serves so many purposes, as well as being that critical centre. I think where the reader really gets the strong idea that these two are in love with each other, even though they don't know it yet and they're made for each other and that we totally want everything to work out well for them.

 Michelle Barraclough  Ah, Natasha. I know what you're referring to there. You did leave us hanging for a very long time. Actually, when I was reading through, I thought, that is such a beautiful scene, but they still don't get together. Do they until like, or do they, but you know, it's no, but they do, but you've put all these wonderful barriers to their relationship in.

 Natasha Lester  And that was really like, I knew that, I mean, at that time, obviously you know, If someone was engaged, you know, people didn't have affairs, they didn't cheat on their partners. That was really taboo. And also it's not part of Skye's or Nicholas' character to do that. So if he was engaged that wasn't going to happen.

 So therefore I had to respect that. And so that automatically, I guess, created a lot of those barriers that, you know, when the reader discovers, what's actually the story with the engagement and that just makes it all the more torturous, I guess, which is kind of nice. Again, you're able to ratchet up that tension and that's what we're always trying to do as writers.

 How can I make this more tense, more conflict? Make the reader sit even further on the edge of their seat than already are.

 Michelle Barraclough  And always ask the question. When will they kiss? Luckily we also have the contemporary story to keep the romance bubbling along as well. I loved also even just the introduction of the oranges, you know, Nicholas bringing the oranges and I think it might be after he leaves and Skye realizes "Hang on a sec. Where did he get these oranges? There are no oranges in England. Is he going to France putting his life at risk?" He promised he wouldn't die, and yet he's obviously flying into enemy territory. So, again, just another, element of tension that you brought in there, which is just great.

 It's very, you're very clever, Natasha.

 Natasha Lester  Not really? No, I was saying this in a talk on Friday night. My subconscious knows exactly what it's doing and it is very intelligent. As for the rest of me. I'm just catching up to my subconscious all the time.

 Michelle Barraclough  Are you sometimes surprised when people ask questions and say, so what did you mean by this motif? And, Oh, well, yes, that motif. Oh my God. What did I mean by that motif? Did I even know that I had that motif?

 Natasha Lester  That was a total accident, but I'm glad it came across, like it was planned.

 Michelle Barraclough  I know that one wasn't an accident though. 

Now we also had another question by Pamela and I think a lot of listeners will be interested in this. " How does Natasha write the dual timelines? Are they written separately and then threaded together? Or does she write them concurrently and how much fiddling does it take to get them right?"

 Natasha Lester  Okay. To the second part of that question, the answer is a lot. I am rearranging the order of the scenes right up until the last minute. I, in fact, In the proof, the second proof read of The Riviera House and not even the first proofread I was deleted a whole scene like you normally, you're not supposed to delete scenes in proofreads.

 And it was just like, no, this has got to come out. And luckily my publisher is so nice and they let me remove it. So literally I'm fiddling right up until the end with that kind of stuff. So I write them separately, always the historical storyline first, because that is the that's the meat of the story.

 That's the key thing that's driving the story. And then I write the contemporary storyline second. And in fact it wasn't even until I'd started writing so I'd done the historical storyline, I'd started writing the contemporary storyline and Kat the main character in that storyline, is a fashion conservator.

 But for the first quarter of that contemporary storyline, she was something else entirely. And then I stumbled across, across the fashion concept. I think it was like, Oh my God, she's going to be that. So again, rewriting as you're discovering things. So I love Scrivener because I can literally write the whole historical thread then write the whole contemporary thread and then look at how those things are woven in together.

 And a lot of that has to do with the motifs and I think really when you're writing dual narratives or triple narratives or whatever this one ended up being those motifs are so important. So for example, Nicholas had this pocket watch and that's quite a strong motif the book. And we see that reoccur in the historical and in the contemporary storyline.

 And, you need those connections, those things that tie one storyline to the next, so that the reader isn't just lost and wondering how would these things relate to why am I suddenly jumping out of this storyline that I was quite happy with Skye and Nicholas, and now I'm suddenly going to meet and get to know this person called Kat

 Like, what if I don't want to do that? So you've got to have those little pieces that pop up to make us connect back to the other storylines. So, there will always be a number of those little motifs. Like the Gitanes that that Skye smokes are another motif that become quite important. You know, you're like a detective in reverse. You're scattering the clues rather than trying to track back what the clues mean.

 Michelle Barraclough  Oh, that's a good way of putting it actually. Yeah.

 Natasha Lester  I mean, sometimes you don't actually know what you're doing. Like it was literally an accident, smoking the Gitanes and then I could use job subconscious. So yeah, I would say that one of the biggest jobs is that threading and, you know, part of that is being aware of the word count. So for me those historical parts of that storyline, are usually around , words and I don't really want them to be too much longer than that.

 And the contemporary storylines are always a bit shorter, but you want them to feel, you don't want them to feel too long, so you've got to make sure you're cutting away at a time, tense enough that the reader is like, Oh no, I want to find out what happens, and you're not just kind of cutting away on a, you know, a weak moment and that you've got those motifs working.

 The word count bridge part is okay. And that you're not you know, you don't want to introduce the motif in one part and abandoned it for three parts. It's always back in the next part. So those kinds of things help with that structuring.

Michelle Barraclough  Yeah. You do that on  page  is when part one ends so that's when we've got the childhood, the friendship between Nicholas and Skye. Skye and Liberty have to go and live in Paris. And on the day that Liberty turns , that's Skye's sister,  it's a real turning point in her life because she feels free to then go and live her life. And she's not leaving on a great note. There's a lot of unresolved tension and conflict there. And then boom, we're going to the contemporary story and Kat's story. So we're ready then aren't we? Is that why you put that in there?

 Natasha Lester  Yeah, I think so. And initially that childhood storyline actually ended with that scene where Skye and Nicholas say farewell to each other in the cave and he goes to New York, and I didn't have that bit where she does go to Paris and my amazing editor, Alex, said to me I feel like because I had to do a lot of work on Liberty, we need to see what happens with Skye and Liberty in Paris? And she was absolutely right of course, she's always right. So that kind of led into that. And obviously, because Liberty is such an important part of what happens in the end of the book, like you couldn't miss that bit out, that is now in there in Paris.

Otherwise, you know, the whole story kind of falls apart. So, so again, I think where you leave a part signifies to the reader that, that's important. Cause you always lean on her on something striking. And so it alerts the reader to be, to pay attention to that because that will become important later.

 Michelle Barraclough  Yeah. And of course you want to be able to get back to their story because you've elicited all this emotion, we're really invested, even in just those  pages. We're very invested in Skye. She's such a great character and we really do want to find out what happened, so we're  keen to get back to her and Liberty. You know, of course she was this nasty little child, but probably also just a bit of a lonely little girl. But we get to see her growing up as well. And so that sets up the future  tension between the two sisters as well, which as you say, becomes a really important part of the story.

 Next question is from Carole Handel. Carole sent me this via email. Thank you, Carole. "Natasha, I've read four of your books now. Loved them all. Do you write in sequence or do you put bits of the story together as you write each one of them?"

 Natasha Lester  I guess within like within the historical storyline and within the contemporary storyline, I don't necessarily start at the start because I don't know where the start is. So I am running a bit out of sequence usually until I get to about , words. And then I feel like I know what I'm doing. Okay. That's a lie I don't know what I'm doing, but I know enough of what I'm doing to be able to then write in sequence.

 Not uncommon for that first , words to just be scenes created around, snatches of dialogue I have in my head or ideas for scenes that I have in my head. You know, you just want to, in that first , words, just want to get words on the page. So what's important is to write a scene that doesn't matter where that scene's going to fall on the book, just get it down and you can work out later where it goes.

 So I do write like that probably up until about that point.

 Michelle Barraclough  That's really good advice. I mean, even though you say you're not a plotter for somebody that is writing a novel and they just don't have any idea where to start plotting,  the advice of just to start with a scene that excites you or interests you is a great way. And then sort of the plotting comes in later when you're deciding where to go.

 Natasha Lester  Exactly.  My test is always you want to be more in love with your story at about , words than you were when you started. And if you're not, I think that's where you might want to ditch it and try something else. And so the way to fall more in love with it is to write all the scenes you want to write.

 Don't write the scene that you're scared of or don't really want to write or don't know how to write, just write the ones that seem like they'll be fun to write, and then you'll be much more enthusiastic at , words and you'll have the knowledge and the confidence to then write the hard scenes.

 Michelle Barraclough  Yeah. I remember talking to Hannah Richell once about that, and she said it's a good idea to write a scene that you really want to write, or that you're excited about if you're experiencing writer's block or if you're you're sitting down and you're, Oh God, where am I up to? I don't know. I'm getting so confused. Just sit down, write a scene that you really want to write, even if it's, you know, going to be put much later in the novel. Just go where the passion lies.

Natasha Lester  No one will know that you wrote the last

 Michelle Barraclough  Now prologues. Can we talk about prologues because The Paris Secret has a prologue and I did check your other novels and it's the first time you've used a prologue since your first historical novel A  Kiss From Mr. Fitzgerald. Now I'm partial to a prologue. I like a prologue, but people seem very divided on them.

 Why did you begin this novel with a prologue and what purpose do you think a prologue serves?

 Natasha Lester  So you're right there. I have read lots of articles by agents and publishers saying we hate prologues ban the prologue. But I think that's because often writers use the prologue to dump backstory. So it's like, well, I've got all this stuff that I really want the reader to know about my character, but I can see it doesn't fit in those first couple of chapters.

 I'm just going to put it all in the prologue and that's obviously not the purpose of a prologue. So the purpose of our prologue is to arouse the reader's interest to asking "Why? How has that person come to be like that? When I met them at an earlier time, you know, a few chapters in and they're not like that at all" So they want to, and again, raises the tensions so in the case of A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald, which was where I used my first prologue Evie's on the stage at the Zigfeld Follies, and then we flick to the start of the book where she's embroidering in her home. Well, like how the hell did that happen? So in The Paris Secret, the prologue is Margaux at Christian Dior's first showing, being dressed in the iconic Bar Suit. And she is the model who shows the Bar Suit to the world.

 And then when we meet Margaux a bit later, she is, Nicholas' fiance and she is working at an airfield in England. And so again, where the hell did that happen? So it's that, you know, how did that happen? Kind of question. And it just creates more tension. I love a prologue when you can do that. And, I loved writing that prologue and you know, talk about writing out of order.

 So it's the first scene of the book. I wrote that prologue after I finished the first draft. There's, maybe six scenes from Margaux's point of view, like that prologue in the book. And I wrote them all after the first draft, I just literally had this vision or voice up here in my head one morning.

 Saying all those words in the prologue. And I bolted into my office. Then I started writing down, and I hand wrote out that prologue and typed it up and it's virtually unchanged. And you get some scenes like that, that just literally come from the muse fully fleshed out fully formed. And you just go, thank you muse for being on my side every now and again.

 Michelle Barraclough  Maybe it was Catherine Dior who was visiting you?

Michelle Barraclough  Now the first line is compelling. "I can see your underwear" is the first line. Was this always the first line and how important is the first line and why?

 Natasha Lester  Yes, always the first line. In fact, if I had my notebook here, I could pick it up and show you my scribble of "I can see your underwear."  I do find that I often have, I don't know what the right word is. Visions will be too much.

 Yeah,

 Let's call it a vision thing. Visions of scenes suddenly appearing in my head and I could see this boy and this girl and the girl was upside down and I think she was hanging out of a tree in my initial perception.

 And, you know, this boy says to her "I can see your underwear." And I'm like, look at that, it's how the book is starting on that. There's no other way for this book to start and also that line and that vision just gave me the character, literally instantaneously. So I knew who they were from the moment I conceived that line.

 And I think first lines and first chapters are so important and, that's probably where I would spend most of my time and just making sure you're capturing the reader from the outset and also you know, from another perspective, which is,  I worry that this might sound a little bit contrived or something like that, but you want a really good first scene so when you're doing a chapter reading at an event, it holds the audience's interest. You know, it's gotta be short enough to fit into kind of less than five minutes. It's gotta be engaging. It's gotta be a good, readable out-loud scene.

Michelle Barraclough  And  give an indication of what the whole book is about. Gee, it doesn't have to do much, does it?

 Natasha Lester  Oh, excellent. No. So easy to rush.

 Michelle Barraclough  Just whip that up . And of course there's a beautiful mirroring scene at the very end of the novel. Where an elderly is this a spoiler? This is a spoiler,

 Natasha Lester  That's all right.

 Michelle Barraclough  Isn't it. You were warned people! Where an elderly Nicholas, whose memory is failing, remembers the girl with the underwear. I think that's the bit that made me cry.

Natasha Lester  Yeah, and I didn't have that when I wrote that first scene and I didn't know it was going to become something so important, but again, I can't remember when exactly it was sometime in the first draft the vision came and I was dashing off into my office to hand write out that scene as well.

And I was like, Oh God, again I love it when my subconscious knows what I'm doing.

 Michelle Barraclough  And it's another motif where we have the pocket watch, we have the Gitanes and we have the underwear!

 Natasha Lester  Yup. Yup.

 Michelle Barraclough  I love it. So speaking of spoilers, we had a final question again from Pamela Cook. She has all the the curly questions for us today. "In the final scene of the novel Skye reunited with Nicholas, but his memory has faded and there's only a glimmer of recognition. After all that happened to them it's a poignant ending for these two former lovers. Were you tempted to give them a happily ever after? And why did you decide to end the story in such a bittersweet way?"

Natasha Lester  It's not because I'm mean despite what many readers think.

I think, and I remember having to talk about this a lot in The French Photographer, because there were, certainly a number of readers who weren't happy with the way that ended more so than The Paris Secret. I think when you're writing a book in which three women go to Ravensbruck concentration camp and suffer unendurably and unimaginably, it becomes very callous to just throw in a happy ending for everyone. It's almost, to me it feels almost disrespectful because in reality, so many of those women didn't have happy endings. You know, they had really hard lives after Ravensbruck. So I was never really tempted to make it fully happy, but I was a little scarred by some of the feedback from The French Photographer.

So I knew I was going to make it a little happier than the ending of The French Photographer or The Paris Orphan, depending on which country you're in. And like, I feel like, and I'm sorry, they're really quite old by then so in reality for them to even be alive is a massive achievement.

 They're alive. They see each other, like there's plenty of boxes that are being  off. And I feel like for them to be completely physically and mentally intact at their age, after everything they've been through, really tips us over into the realm of being unrealistic and unbelievable.

 And I didn't want to go there.

Michelle Barraclough  And I think the happily ever after they had was very sweet and just so beautifully written.

 Natasha Lester  Yeah. And that's why, again, it's kind of good to have the contemporary story line because they get to have, so there is a happy ending. Kat and Elliot ended up happy. And I think, you know, for me when Skye's there holding Nicholas's hand, she's happy. That's more than she ever expected to have.

Michelle Barraclough  Okay. Last question from me. To show listeners how much can change between a first and final draft, do you have something you can share in The Paris Secret that was improved by the addition or the layering of dialogue or a description or the stripping back of something?

 Natasha Lester  Usually for those questions. I can talk about cutting because I do a lot of cutting. I do tend to, now, be an over-writer which is very different than how it was when I very first started writing - I under-wrote everything. So, we were talking about opening scenes earlier and in fact the historical storyline, once Skype is an adult, of The Paris Secret opens, where Skye's having a lunch in Paris that turns into dinner in Paris, that turns to an all-nighter in Paris.

Cause she's got her own plane and she can fly back and forth. And that was not the first scene of the historical storyline. Until sometime deep into the structural edit. I had two other scenes in fact. Skye wasn't in Paris. So there was one scene, where she was teaching men to fly as part of a civilian pilot training scheme, she was an instructor in that civilian pilot training, which she still is in the book but we just don't see that. And she's walking through this flying club and the flying club is a very male domain and she's got her beloved trousers, sweater and cerulean scarf on. And we see the way the men in the flying club treat her, and then she does this handstand on the wing of the airplane that she takes up just to basically give them the finger.

 And then there's another scene after that, where she's doing stunts in a flying circus, where she makes her money. And so a lot of that showed us Skye's kind of devi-may-care attitude, foolhardiness some might call it the attitude or a man and society towards female pilots at the time. So it was setting up a lot of backstory that was really important for the reader to know, but I was taking way too long with it.

 And way too long to get her to the Air Transport Auxiliary  and it was just like, okay, you just need to do that so much more succinctly and quickly. And also, Paris is a really fun place to start a book. Let's go to Paris. I was literally there thinking, she's got a plane, she can go to Paris and also putting her into Paris, enabled me to set up the global context of what was happening at the time that, you know, war is literally on the doorstep.

 So it actually worked better from that perspective too. And, you know, we see , in dialogue, she's talking with Rose her friend, who's also a pilot and Valentin, a gorgeous Parisian man, and we get an appreciation for the fact that she's teaching these men to fly, that the flying establishment thinks that she's a risk taker, and then as she's leaving Paris, she does her handstand stunt on the plane. Anyway, so we see all of those things in the space of like half a chapter rather than two really long chapters. So what I wanted to kind of really highlight there was, you know, we hear all the time. Show don't tell, but there is actually such a thing as too much showing and not enough telling.

 And sometimes, and actually I hate "show don't tell" it's "show and tell", but know when to do each. You know, narrative summary is really effective for pace and you need to use it, you can't show everything. So it's being selective about what you're showing and how much you're showing, and balancing that out with a bit of telling or narrative summary.

 And that was a lesson I had to remind myself of in deleting those two scenes and writing a whole new scene. That's was a much more engaging way to pull readers in to Skye as an adult.

 Michelle Barraclough  Yeah, no, you did a great job of that because it would have been very long war if we had have shown Can you imagine?

Actually I realized that we just had one more question and it was from you.

 Natasha Lester  Oh, yes.

 Michelle Barraclough  You said in your Instagram feed,  join us on the Writer's Book Club podcast. You could ask me questions such as, how did you plot out the twist in the book? So would you like to answer your own question?

 Natasha Lester  I would. And I would like to say that I did not plot it out one So obviously this is a massive spoiler. So if you haven't read the book, you really need to turn it off right now and come back when you've read. So I have warned you. So, I knew that Kat's grandmother Margaux. I knew I wanted her to be Skye.

 But I didn't know whether I was going to be able to pull that off. Knowing that's how the book could pan out, I knew it had to be either Margaux, Liberty or Skye, it could be any one of those three women. And so I just, again, like I do what I always do, just write and see what happens. And so there's a scene about halfway through.

 I think it's like the midpoint where Kat and Elliot go to Skye's old family home in Cornwall. They go walking across  the fields, Kat climbs onto a wall in the same way Skye did when she was younger and she falls off into the gardens on the other side, and this old woman appears and she tells Kat that her name is Margaux Jourdan.

 And that's the same name as Kat's grandmother who lives in Australia. And Kat is obviously freaking out at this point. Cause then she says the same line to Kat that her own grandmother had said to her. "I never thought anyone would come looking for Margaux Jourdan.". And I wrote that scene with this old woman who I'd never imagined would be in the story.

 And I was like, Oh God, I'm a genius. This is so cool. And I'm saying that jokingly, because occasionally you need to feel like you're a genius when you're writing. So you can keep writing through the really hard parts. And that was one of those moments where I was definitely patting myself on the back. So that just opened up a whole lot of new possibilities for me for the book.

 But still at that point, I didn't know. Was that Liberty or Skye or Margaux, which one was she? Which one was Kat's grandmother? Again, I just had to write. And what I often do with all of my books is I get to about three quarters of the way through, and I don't really know how to get to the end. I still haven't worked it out.

 And so I just stopped there and go back and write a second draft. And then usually by the time I get to the second or third draft, I can then I get a little bit closer in the second. And then by the third I get all the way there. So, so it wasn't really until a couple of drafts down the track that I knew, okay, Kat's grandmother was Skye and then I could make it work and the way I wanted it to. So that was quite nice. So, no, I didn't plot it out. It was blind fluke.

Michelle Barraclough  And you really have the reader going because you like there, there are two Margaux Jourdans like you really don't know. You keep stringing us along the whole time  right up until the end. It's fantastic.

 Congratulations, it's been a huge success. How far have Skye and Nicholas and Liberty traveled? They've gone to many countries. Have they not?

 Natasha Lester  They have, and they go into more and more countries all the time. In January alone I had five new translation offers come through, which is like, wow. Five in one month is fantastic. Spain for the first time, I've never had a Spanish translation before, so that's really exciting. All through Europe, really. My Scandinavian readers are some of my favourites because they just seem to love the book.

 So of course I love them. And in fact, I've just got two boxes of books that have arrived today. One from Denmark and one from Sweden, with the translations, of The Paris Secret. 

 So it's just nice to see those things coming through.

Michelle Barraclough  It's lovely. Seeing all the different covers. I love it when you put up the different covers in all the different languages. It's so amazing. How many countries decide to use a different cover as well?

 Natasha Lester  Yeah, it is. You know, I'd love to be able to sit down and read one of the translations and find out how close it is to the truth, unless it's in French, I'm never going to be able to do that. It's the only other I speak.

 Michelle Barraclough  Well, we'll just have to assume that they've done a fabulous job since they love it so much. And so, you have a new book coming out in .

 Natasha Lester  I do. So it's called The Riviera House and it's set in France during the second world war, largely. The contemporary storyline is set fully in the French Riviera, which was immense fun research. And it's about a real life heroine called Rose Valland who worked in a Parisian museum called the Jeu de Paume during the second world war.

And as the Nazis stole every single work held by a private Jewish art collector, they sent them off to the Jeu de Paume to be catalogued, photographed, and then transported to Adolf Hitler for his Fuhrer Museum and him and Goring his private collection at his home Carinhall. Rose pretended not to speak German, but she did.

 So she recorded every artwork that entered the museum and where it was sent to so that after the war, tens of thousands of artworks could be restituted to their rightful owners. She was amazing. And I adored writing about her in this book. So I hope that you know, come August everyone goes and grabs a copy of it.

 Michelle Barraclough  Definitely. That sounds absolutely fantastic, Natasha. I can't wait to read that one.

 Hey, listen. Thank you so much for being the inaugural guest on Writers Book Club podcast.

 Natasha Lester  Oh, thank you for having me. So fun to actually be able to talk about these questions in detail, because if someone asks a question like this at an event, of course you can't answer because half the people in the room haven't read the book and they're all going " no, no spoilers" So it's great being able to, you know, dive deep and discover things about my own writing that I haven't really thought about.

 Michelle Barraclough  Okay. Underwear and pocket watches and oranges and all sorts of things. Thanks again. And I hope we'll catch up soon and good luck with The Riviera House.

 Natasha Lester  Oh, thank you so much, Michelle, for having me.