Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For September that debut is Small Joys of Real Life by Allee Richards, out now from Hachette.

The night Eva shared a smile with Pat, something started. Two weeks later, lying together in her bed, Pat said, ‘You can’t live your life saying you’ll get around to doing something you know will make you happy. You just have to do it.’ Eva didn’t know how devastating those words would turn out to be. Pat dies and the aftershock leaves Eva on unsteady ground. She is pregnant. And she has to make a choice.

First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Allee about the book and the experience of writing it at a live online event hosted by Yarra Libraries.

Our theme song is Broke for Free’s ‘Something Elated’. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt.

Further reading:

Read a review of Small Joys of Real Life in our September Books Roundup.

Read about Allee’s favourite books and reading habits in this month’s Shelf Reflection.

Read Allee’s short story This Version of Her from New Australian Fiction 2019.

Small Joys of Real Life is available now from your local independent bookseller.

Stream or subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Soundcloud / Google Podcasts / Spotify / Other (RSS)

Let us know what you think by rating and reviewing in your app of choice!

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TRANSCRIPT

Alice Cottrell: Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings podcast. I’m KYD publisher Alice Cottrell, and today I’ll be bringing you our September First Book Club interview. Our pick this month is Small Joys of Real Life by Allee Richards, out now from Hachette. The following audio is from an online event we hosted in partnership with Yarra Libraries, with Allee in conversation with First Book Club host Ellen Cregan. Enjoy.

Ellen Cregan: So we’re going to begin with a reading, but before that I will introduce Allee to you. Allee Richards’ short fiction has been published widely in Australian literary magazines and anthologies, including Kill Your Darlings, The Best Australian Stories, New Australian Fiction, Best Summer Stories, the Lifted Brow, Voiceworks and Australian Book Review. Small Joys of Real Life is her first novel. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Richell prize for Emerging Writers, and the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. She lives in Melbourne and works as a theatre lighting technician, and I think you can all see that tonight with the lighting she’s got going on. (Both laugh.) So Allee, if you wanted to read from the book for a minute, just to give everyone a taste of what it’s like, please go ahead.

Allee Richards: Thanks so much, Ellen. Thank you all for coming. And before I start reading, I will also acknowledge that I am also coming to you on Wurundjeri Land. So I’m going to read a short section in the book, quite a way in actually, but it doesn’t give away any spoilers, so don’t worry if you haven’t got to it yet. Okay.

There’s something I haven’t admitted to you yet. It’s about Virginia, the one with the striking face and thick eyebrows, who you taught to make passata. After I saw her comment on your Facebook page I clicked on to her account and trawled through her photos looking for you, obviously. But there was nothing I hadn’t already found on Travis’s page. There’s a photo of the three of you sitting on bikes in front of a suspension bridge over the Merri. You look sweaty and lively. Her smile is wide, her face alight with laughter.

Underneath, you had written:

Fitzroy North Riders.

Virginia had added:

Watch out.

After your death Travis had gone back and added:

Riders for life.

Virginia echoed:

For life.

I googled her and found she teaches yoga at a studio in Brunswick. I searched the studio’s website and found photos of her looking sweaty but content, with lean, sinewy arms. Missives of health and wellness under the photos. The reason I’m mentioning all this is that very early on—you were dead, I knew I was pregnant, but I hadn’t told anyone—I went to one of her classes. It sounds insane, but it wasn’t really. It was just a yoga class. Scanned the studio’s timetable, found out which classes she taught, then booked myself in for her next session, which was at three o’clock that day. I arrived at the studio and told the woman at reception that I was there to do Virginia’s class. She told me Virginia was not in that day and that she would be taking the class instead. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I told her. She was one of the first people I told. She reassured me she would let me know if any positions weren’t safe.

I wasn’t sure what I was trying to achieve by stalking Virginia, but I guessed that the reason she wasn’t at work was because she was too upset. Can’t teach a yoga class crying.

I did the class. I held my body in ways it didn’t want to go until my muscles wobbled, all the while trying to breathe on command, and I decided then that you had left her. You broke her heart once, now twice. I wondered if maybe your relationship didn’t work out because you were too sad.

I never went back to the yoga studio. I didn’t try to find her again—although occasionally I look at her online.

After the birthing class I had a dream about being in labour. Virginia was there, coaching me through the contractions. She held my hand and told me to feel my body and be in touch with it. She exhaled with me, loud and breathy. She told me if one position was uncomfortable, I was welcome to change. I woke suddenly from that dream, gasping. It was morning. For a while I lay in bed and imagined you being my support person. I tried to envisage you rubbing my back and counting through contractions. The image was absurd. We were never at that stage of comfort with each other. I wouldn’t be having the baby if you were here. We wouldn’t have been doing this together.

Just for a moment, I felt relieved that you’re dead.

For the rest of the day I looked at photos of you, my old favourites. Comforted that they still made me sad.

Ellen Cregan: Thank you Allee. That is such a great passage to read, I feel like it really succinctly kind of explains the quandary our protagonist is in. But can you give an overview of the novel for those who haven’t read it yet?

Allee Richards: Yep. So it’s narrated by a young woman called Eva. She is an actor, she’s in her sort of mid- to late twenties. She has a one night stand with a guy named Pat. A few weeks after that happens, she finds out that he’s died, and then a few weeks after that she finds out she’s pregnant with his baby. And she is pregnant and has decided to keep the baby, that’s where she is at the very beginning of the book.

Ellen Cregan: And so the book kind of goes over the course of her pregnancy, and there’s a whole bunch of things that happen with her friends and her house. Um… Sorry I’ve lost my train of thought, but yeah, so sorry. The passage you read, I think really is a great one because you kind of see this strange position she’s in, where she’s having a baby that maybe she wouldn’t have had if this terrible thing wouldn’t have happened to her. So I first read this book as a manuscript—I was lucky enough to read a very early version as a judge of the Victorian Premier’s prize for an Unpublished Manuscript. You were, of course, shortlisted for that prize—what impact has this had on the book and your writing, and maybe even in the drafting and all of that kind of stuff?

Allee Richards: In terms of drafting, it’s just really good to have a deadline to work towards, just as a goal, so it’s good to kind of just be able to track if you’re doing enough work, or maybe you might feel like you need to do more to hurry up. I actually remember I was limping to meet the deadline for that. The final sort of quarter of the book was quite sloppy, and then in terms… and then it’s also good to have a time away from it. So there’s, I think, two months that they have before they announce the shortlist. So even if you’re not shortlisted, which most people aren’t, you get—it’s sort of like nice to have that time to be like, I’m not even going to think about it now, I’m going to forget about it, I’m just going to live my life and put it down for a little while. So by the time you go back to it, even if you haven’t been shortlisted, you probably have a little bit of freshness there that you can look at it again. But I was really lucky I was shortlisted, so then it just sort of, it makes it a whole bunch easier to get interest in your book. I got an agent and I was able to get her—I mean, you can get an agent, even if you’re not shortlisted for a prize, but that helped me sort of scoot my manuscript to the top of her pile, because it was kind of time pressing, because I had publishers emailing me and stuff, so, and then you also get the publishers already interested, and it kind of pricks their eyes up before they read it. So she was able to negotiate that with me to get published. In terms of now, I have absolutely no idea. I mean, it’s written on the cover that it was shortlisted, and it’s always mentioned at things like that, but I don’t really know if that necessarily means buyers are like, I don’t know if anyone sees a sticker on the rot of a book, and then it’s like, I’m gonna buy it now. You might know more about that than me.

Ellen Cregan: I feel like the longer I work in bookselling, the more I think that prizes kind of don’t matter on the cover. I think, what I actually think matters the most is word of mouth, and I think your book has had really amazing word of mouth, like people are loving it, and then, of course, they’re telling other people that they loved it, and then those people are loving it and so on and so forth. So you’ve had the book released during lockdown, obviously, which is, you know, just a grim reality. But I wanted to ask if there have been any silver linings of having a book released in this, in this really strange time.

Allee Richards: Certainly in terms of the lockdown itself, it’s been nice, because it’s, it’s been like a thing that’s been keeping me happy and like, giving me joy in this otherwise fairly bleak time. Um… (Laughs) and this one’s quite a funny one to say, because I saw at the start when some people were popping on that one of my colleagues popped on, but because I work in the performing arts like Eva does, so I can’t go to work at the moment. But I had—I think I went to work on my pub day because we weren’t quite in lockdown yet, and everyone was like, oh, you’re a famous author now, don’t you have to work anymore? And I was like, I had to respond to that, like, 50 times, so… (Laughs) there’s a small part of me that’s like, I’m glad I don’t have to go in and talk to my colleagues about it all the time, even though I love my colleagues. So I’m like, it’s okay, I don’t mind getting attention in this sense when there’s, like an interview. But sometimes in everyday life it can be a bit embarrassing or something. And I don’t know, maybe some people are reading more, I’m not sure, maybe that’s a silver lining. I mean, hopefully, I guess it makes me feel good that I’ve had a few messages from people who’ve said, like, ‘I found a lot of comfort reading this in lockdown, and it was nice to read about places I can’t go at the moment’, and a few people say as well, because it’s quite an easy read in some ways, like, it’s not dense. So a few people have said I’ve been in a bit of a reading rut or my concentration is really bad in lockdown, and your book helped me—so that’s been nice, too.

Ellen Cregan: When I first read the book, the thing that appealed to me about it was very much like, the core ideas of the book. It was just something that dragged me in and I really connected with it. But something that was nice about reading it for a second time in lockdown, in order to do this event was actually, as you said, like, visiting all the places, because really, it’s quite a whirlwind trip around Victoria, almost, or like Melbourne and outer Melbourne…

Allee Richards: (Laughs) Yeah. And I got that same experience in, last year when I was doing the editorial with my publisher, that was during stage 4 lockdown, so I sort of got to have that as well, like living vicariously through the characters.

Ellen Cregan: So there is a lot of different themes in this book, but two that that kind of jumped out to me were friendship and community, and the people that are around Eva and the people that support her. This is kind of a bit of a roundabout question, but does community and friendship and things like that have an impact on your life as a writer, and how you actually write your work?

Allee Richards: Yeah. I mean, that’s, and I mean, that was sort of probably one of the sadder things I think, actually, about releasing it during lockdown is I have met a lot more people in the industry, such as yourself or other writers and stuff, and then it’s sort of like our relationship mostly exists on Instagram. (Laughs) So I’ve been like, I’m really looking forward to being able to, like, meet some of these people in real life. But certainly friendship and community, and in my actual life is, I mean, it would have to be the number one thing that, I would probably give away every other thing in my existence before I gave away that—like I would give away oxygen before I gave away friends and community, because I just wouldn’t be able to cope without it. And certainly in terms of writing and getting everything done in my life, and I guess the transition of becoming a published author or dealing with negative feedback or anything, like, it’s really nice having people around you that ground you, and they’re just sort of, it’s the constant in your life, really, even though people change and people die. But that’s yeah, that’s the thing that keeps me going.

Ellen Cregan: So the book, as we mentioned before, is structured around Eva’s pregnancy. We start as she finds out, or she sort of knows, but it’s early days, and then the end is quite close towards the end of her pregnancy. Was this always the planned trajectory of the novel, or was that something that came to you a bit later on, that you are going to structure it in this way?

Allee Richards: No, it was always planned. I came up with the premise and I just started writing, and I don’t remember when I thought of the ending, but I don’t remember not knowing the ending. It was very early that I had the final scene in my head very clearly. So I knew that that was where I was always working to, because I think—and this has come up in interviews a few times, so it’s not a huge spoiler, it’s hard to talk about the book without talking about it, but yeah, she doesn’t, like we’re just near the end of the pregnancy when it ends. But she’s sort of done this really radical thing, like to hit a hard reset on her life, she’s quit her job and is doing this, like, quite rash, made this huge decision to completely turn over her life. And she sort of says outright a few times that she’s hoping that this will fix it, and after this everything would be different and everything would be new. And I think that if we went beyond that, I would have had to answer that question. It’s also why it’s not written in the past tense, because then it would be Eva, Eva would know how that actually impacted her. Whereas I want to write it in present tense, where she’s, she’s hoping and she’s sort of suspended in hoping that everything would change after this.

Ellen Cregan: And sort of thinking about that last scene, actually—I think that her situation, because she’s got these two best friends who are with her the whole way through, and who she lives with one of them initially, and then at the end, they kind of all end up in that last scene together. And I think her situation demonstrates a kind of a modern notion of family, and that sort of support you get in those difficult times. So she has her mother, but the mother is, is not as present as these two friends. Was that sort of really contemporary, like, support circle and different version of family, something you wanted to explore in your writing with this book.

Allee Richards: In all honesty, initially, I mean, the premise came to me and I had the two friends there, and I could sort of—because Annie and Sarah, her friends, they’re almost more your typical kind of duo in a book, there’s usually like, a millennial novel is usually written by, narrated by a meek and self-effacing young woman who has a wild child friend. But then I sort of did another person and put those two as her friends. And then initially when I started writing, because, and then once you add in, like, Travis, and you add in Pat, and she has a relationship with a guy called Fergus, I just didn’t have room for her to have any family. I was like, she can’t have siblings, I don’t have room on the page, like, I don’t know how. (Laughs). She can’t have many friends, she can only have two, like, I just had to… So that was sort of the decision initially, was that she would just have a mum, because I didn’t want too many people coming in there and taking up space because I’d written in so many friends for her. But then I also liked it, how it came to be that it was sort of mirrored that her and her mum raised her alone, so then now she was going to do the same thing. And that was a mirror in a way.

Ellen Cregan: One thing that’s so great about the friends is this the dialogue that you write. Your dialogue is so good, and it’s especially awesome in moments of like, discomfort and pettiness between friends—because they’re extremely close friends, they’re like primary school or early high school sort of friends. How do you approach writing your dialogue? Are you like an eavesdropper, or is it just kind of straight out of your brain?

Allee Richards: I always remember everything that people say. I have this intense memory, but not for, like, useful things. Like, I don’t remember—I don’t remember how electricity works no matter how many times I read about it, but like, I’ll remember everything that the like, teacher who was teaching me about that said about the other thing he did that day. So I don’t know, it’s like this, I definitely like, go over it a lot in my head. But I, so I used to write plays as well, and I also work in a theatre so I hear a lot of theatre. So I had a lot of practise in dialogue for a while, because I’d written two sort of longer plays, and then a few short ones. So I’d had a lot of practise with that. And someone described the book recently actually as having not much dialogue in it. And I was like, oh, I didn’t realise that, but if it doesn’t I should probably put more in, because I feel like that was something that I was always more confident with at first, than I was with writing kind of scenes and narration.

Ellen Cregan: But I think the reason the dialogue is so good is I can’t even think if there’s a lot or not, I just know that it’s good. Like it’s high quality. And what I like is there’s a few really great scenes—I’m thinking of one scene in particular where they’re—again, it’s early in the pregnancy and they’re riding their bikes to a house party, and one of—I can’t remember which friend it is, but she turns around and she’s like, ‘you’re gonna be too fat to ride a bike soon’. (Both laugh). And it’s this place of like bitchiness, but also kind of this weird care. And I think that so perfectly describes those friendships you have that go back before school. Where it’s like, it’s like a sisterhood kind of.

Allee Richards: Yeah.

Ellen Cregan: Do you have a favourite character in the book? And if you do, who is it? And why?

Allee Richards: My favourite character is Sarah because she was the most fun to write. So she’s like the wild child one, and she drinks too much, and I have been Sarah at certain stages of my life. So I feel like it’s good to kind of put her on the page. And it was, when I first, when the ARCs, the earlier copies first started circulating, I had two friends of mine both told me how much they disliked Sarah and really didn’t like her, and then some early reader feedback was that no one was liking her, and I started getting really worried that I’d failed in writing her. But since then I’ve had a lot more people reach out and say that she was their favourite. Actually, I went to work today, and a colleague who’d read it said that she was her favourite. So that was really nice. But yeah, just because she was fun to write, and when she was being very belligerent and doing some really obnoxious things, it was just really fun to do totally.

Ellen Cregan: Yeah. There is quite a lot of obnoxiousness there. But what’s so good about these characters is, as you said before, it’s like the two friends are the opposite end of the scale. There’s like this sensible friend and the wild child friend. But then you also kind of switch them up at the end, like you—again, no spoilers, but—and then to have Eva in the middle as this person who’s got different traits, like from both sides of the spectrum, sort of.

Allee Richards: Yeah. I mean, I think that I sort of think that I am all three of them at different times, because everyone has traits and things like that at different times. So I think that it is true to life that people go through different phases. And I don’t think, because it comes up and interviews quite a lot that Eva’s quite unlikable and prickly and obnoxious. But I think that she’s…we’ve caught her at a bad time in the book. I think she’s like, a much softer, nicer person, and I think she actually does like being an actor, and like at other times in her life, she has, yeah. It’s just this one window of time when we’re seeing them.

Ellen Cregan: Totally. I think there’s a lot of interesting conversation in the moment in book world about, like, the concept of an unlikable character and what that even means. Like, because somebody is unlikable, they can still be interesting, and we can still feel connected to them. It doesn’t mean that, you know, when somebody calls the character unlikeable it doesn’t mean that you don’t like them as well. It kind of, it just makes more interesting in some ways. And, but I agree, Eva is kind of, like, you can see she’s having a rough trot.

Allee Richards: Yeah. (Laughs).

Ellen Cregan: We kind of answered this before, but I’m gonna still ask it. I want to know if you’ve imagined futures for your characters. So we know you didn’t imagine past that final scene, but maybe in a more broad, like, ten years from now kind of way—have you imagined a future for, maybe not Eva, maybe the other main characters?

Allee Richards: I have—not so much ten years later, although I definitely think that Sarah will, she will end up being like completely sober and like wearing a kaftan and, like, living in the hills or something and being, like, really thin. But it was interesting because I wrote it mostly in 2019, and so then it wasn’t really a decision so much as it was all just happening so far. So I didn’t put COVID in there and I didn’t add that in, but if I was going to, it would have sort of come in just at the end. So it was interesting thinking, like, beyond that, trying to imagine them going…I imagined them a few times going through the pandemic and I think that Annie would have done terribly, like I think she would absolutely be losing it. And yeah, it was fun to sort of imagine that. But yeah, so I have, but I’m not intending to write anything more about them.

Ellen Cregan: Yep, yep. No book two, or part two.

Allee Richards: Yeah. Not on these two characters.

Ellen Cregan: Sorry guys, my light just exploded again. It did this last time we did one of these. I might need to be shrouded in darkness. Oh—got it. Sorry about that. Hopefully we can edit that out of the podcast. So I have one more question for Allee. So if you all listening want to put some questions in the chat, I saw one come in before I think, please put them in and I’ll read them out. But yes, I do have one more before that point. So as we said before, it’s a book full of iconic inner north locations and settings and a few other Melbourne areas. Can you talk about the importance of place in the book, and why you wanted it to be so specific? Like, it’s very specifically Melbourne’s book.

Allee Richards: I really enjoy writing about places that I’ve been before. I remember when, because I was writing short stories for a while before this as well, and I had this realisation one day that I’m pretty sure everyone else realises the first one they sat down to write, and it was that if you based it somewhere that you’d been, it was way easier to be evocative about the landscape—like it’s so obvious, but it didn’t occur to me, and then one day when I thought of it, I was like, oh, I could just make this house my friend’s house and then I’ll know exactly what to say about it and what the feel of it is. And I think too, I really love Melbourne and I love the inner north where it’s set. And before COVID, I was never really a homebody, and that’s something that I’ve had to really become, which has probably been good for me to learn how to really make a home a home, not just a bunker that you sleep in. But I used to just spend a lot of time on my own, but just outside. So I really love summer, so I would always just go to the pool for the day on my own, or then go and sit in a cafe on my own, and I would go to a bar and write on my own. And I would just spend a lot of time out, as opposed to being at home. And so it was sort of very natural for me to, to have that in the space that I imagined the story in.

Ellen Cregan: Do you feel like having changed into more of a homebody now, that the way you write place…Although I guess you were kind of working on this last year—but do you think that in future projects the way you write place will have changed because of COVID and and because of that time spent at home?

Allee Richards: I’m not sure necessarily because of that. But then, I have been working on my second book, and that, because that sort of follows characters when they’re in high school, at least to begin with. And because of that, I feel less confident of really being super specific about where it is, because something about that to me, and it’s written in past tense—there’s something about the way that you imagine high school, I think you can sort of make it this mythological kind of place. And it doesn’t have to be, I don’t know, I’m really scared of pinpointing where it is in that. And I think also because once you do that, it really, like, what high school it is or where it is will sort of add all this context to it, which I don’t really want. So I’m, there’s like a decision in this one to try and be more vague about it. But then I’m finding it really hard, because every time I write I want to be like, ‘and then they drove down the Nepean Highway,’ it’s just, (Laughs) I don’t know what it is. I’m just, I just keep doing that. And someone, one of my, like, negative Goodreads review said that it did read like I was giving people directions… (Laughs).

Ellen Cregan: (Laughs) That’s such a specific criticism.

Allee Richards: Yeah, it’s like yeah, I probably do.

Ellen Cregan: The thought of, or just hearing the words like ‘high school’ and ‘Nepean highway’ in the same sentence is throwing me into a panic, so I’m going to move on to audience questions. (Both laugh).

Ellen Cregan: We’ve got a question from Theresa Noble. ‘Hi Allee, whenever I’ve written fiction, I can’t help but…’ Oh, sorry, you’re just putting so many questions in, the chat moved! ‘Whenever I’ve written fiction, I can’t help but create one of the characters in my image. Did you do this with any of your characters? Is this something you do too?’

Allee Richards: Um, I think all of the characters are a little bit me. So I’m a bit…I can be, you know, as I said before, I’ve had my Sarah moments, probably when I’m going through a bad time. I am quite high achieving and studious and can probably be a little bit judgmental of people like Annie, and then I can also be a bit withdrawn and like, keep things to myself and be a bit shadowy and such like Eva is, and probably a bit prickly like she can be too. So they’re kind of all pulled out from myself, but probably stretched out to the most extreme extent of me. But yeah, I don’t think you can avoid putting yourself on the page unless—I think the only time when I’ve seen writers really manage to not have themselves in their work is when they’re someone who’s written so many books that by their eighth or ninth or tenth novel, they like…but even then, I’m not convinced that you can ever really do it. You are always going to end up on there. But it’s good because it’s fiction, so if anyone asks you like, ‘you don’t think that do you?’ You can just say no.

Ellen Cregan: We’ve got a question from Roscoe R saying, what advice would you give to other writers who are trying to get the attention from publishers for their manuscript?

Allee Richards: Definitely doing the the prizes are a good way to, they’re probably the best way to get attention—it’s just hard when you say that, though, because then most people don’t get shortlisted, so it’s a bit of a bummer if you sort of go down that route and then it doesn’t work out, because that definitely doesn’t mean that you should not keep going. Other things, I mean, trying to publish short fiction really helps. Again it’s quite hard, it’s quite competitive. So just because you can’t get—I know people who’ve published books who were unable to crack into the short stories, just because it’s so, it’s so competitive getting in the journals. But then other than that, failing that, it’s, I mean, if you’ve got a great manuscript, it’s always going to find someone. So polishing your work and thinking about the work is definitely foremost before thinking about publishing. But then just read a publisher’s guidelines really clearly on their submissions, and get very clear about what their process is of how they want submissions to arrive, don’t just email their info inbox with like, a manuscript attached, because that’s probably not what they want. So publishers and agents will have those on their website, they’ll say how they accept manuscripts. So just going going by that. And something that, just to jump in on that, that we hear so much in these, like in these First Book Club conversations is the importance of agents. Like your agent’s going to be your kind of your hero and really represent your book and really push it to people and have those connections. And it’s, you know, everybody who I speak to in these sessions just loves their agent, which is really beautiful.

Allee Richards: I cannot speak more highly of my agent, Grace Heifetz at Left Bank Literary, and of having an agent. There was so much, I had so many people tell me when I was younger, ‘don’t get an agent, they’ll just take 15 per cent of your commission’, but she has made me more money, and she has made the whole experience fun and stress free. It’s just the best thing. So definitely, definitely do that.

Ellen Cregan: We have a question from Alice. Thank you, Alice. ‘Are you finding the process of writing your second book similar or different to writing your first?’ That’s a very good question.

Allee Richards: It is similar in the way that I just had a, like the way that life got in the way in a very similar order of time. So the exact same thing happened both times, where I got out about 30-40,000 words just in like a really rushed sort of flurry of creativity, and then I got interrupted by different things that meant I couldn’t work on it, and so then I’ve returned to it after a time away. So that’s been similar. But overall, I’m finding the experience better, because—so far it’s better, I’m still pretty early on though. But I’ve just learned a few things that I did from last time, like I learned that the hardest part of Small Joys of Real Life to write was the first quarter, that took me so long to get that right. And I kept going back to the beginning and then reading it and being like, ‘oh, it’s not good,’ and then really freaking out and getting a bit down about it. And then when I get to the second half of book, I’d be like, yeah, this is good, this is going okay, this is fine. So this time, this time it’s the same. In the second half I’m really confident on, and the first half I know isn’t there, but I’m just gonna, you basically need to have the—I need to have the second half of the book done, so then I know everything that needs to be in the first half, so. And I’m finding, like, having learnt a few tricks like that a bit easier.

Ellen Cregan: Do you find you like, are a sort of sticky note planner, or do you prefer to let things unfold just as they unfold?

Allee Richards: I definitely do—I sort of do a bit of both, like, I have an idea in my head of where I’m going to go, and I will be going there and I’ll think, like, this is the scene that I’m going to write today, this is where I’m gonna go. But then if I get distracted, I’ll follow that. Like, you’d always follow, follow the instincts and follow the pattern, and just follow your thoughts—because even if it’s something that gets cut, it’s always really worthwhile character development. And I think that’s why I was able to write characters that I’ve had a lot of compliments on them being, like, quite in-depth. And it’s because I didn’t plan a lot, so I had so many scenes that I’d written that I was able to get to know them in, that that was where the depth of the book came. So even if it got cut and wasn’t in the final copy, it was an important part of the process.

Ellen Cregan: So we have a question from Cath Prior, who says, ‘Apologies upfront if you’ve been asked this many times, but do you feel comparisons with Monkey Grip are valid? Cath has also apologised for having camera off, but is eating a very messy dinner. Cath, I hope your dinner is delicious, you don’t need to apologise. But yeah, Monkey Grip, how do you feel about that?

Allee Richards: I mean, it’s obviously a huge compliment because Helen Garner is, you know, she’s Helen Garner, she’s kind of privately the writer that everyone has thought of, with Melbourne for so long, no matter how many more, you know, great writers have come after her, she still kind of is that, like, matriarch, I suppose, of Melbourne literature. And look, I don’t…a part of me is like, it’s not that similar. Like, you know, my characters have the occasional ecstasy pill, but they’re not, like, having heroin every day. Like, I don’t know, part of me’s like, I don’t know if it’s really that similar, but then I don’t know if I’m also the right person to be making comparisons about my own work. So, and…yeah, I’m not sure, like, maybe you can speak a little bit to this, but I sort of get a little bit suss of the marketing and stuff, it’s like, they just put everyone under a thing, under a headline, label and then everyone is actually different, but they can be roughly grouped together in that kind of way. I’m not sure.

Ellen Cregan: I’m such a love-hate relationship with author comparisons, because I think it’s really good as a shorthand for, like, ‘if you liked this thing, you might like this thing’, but I also think it kind of undersells the new person, you know? Like maybe people get a similar feeling from your book that they do from Monkey Grip, but you’re a really different writer to Helen Garner, and I hope that people can see both of those things. And I don’t know if the sentence on the book cover that says, you know, you know, ‘this is the next Helen Garner’, I don’t know if that does the individual justice.

Allee Richards: Yeah. And it’s—especially with Helen Garner, because she has, like, disciples, so (Laughs) so you do get worried that, you know, that people then could be disappointed when they read it. And I guess Sally Rooney as well, although that one, I think, is like, that’s become ubiquitous with saying, like, ‘this is a book’, because almost everything now written by a young woman is like, ‘it’s Sally Rooney-esque’.

Ellen Cregan: Totally. It’s like, ‘Millennial woman writes book, Sally Rooney’ (Allee laughs), which just isn’t true. So we have a question from Sam saying, ‘Allee, what’s the best thing we can do to promote your book?’ That’s a lovely question.

Allee Richards: Oh, that’s so nice. I mean, tell other people, as Ellen said, that it’s great and that they should purchase a copy or borrow one from their local library. And I guess, like, it’s, you know, at Christmas time you could probably buy someone a copy or something. Or just in general, supporting other Melbourne or Australian emerging artists is really good, because I think the numbers that have come in from the lockdowns in the past few years is that more established writers have kind of fared okay but emerging writers have struggled because they don’t have booksellers kind of pushing their books into people’s hands, or they don’t, you know, by the time the book shops open again, I’m going to be relegated from, like, I’ve never got the new release table, I’ll just be up in the R section. So yeah, just word of mouth and then gifting it to people I think.

Ellen Cregan: Yeah, and no one’s ever mad at being gifted a book. Like, they’re all going to love that. So we have a question from Connor, and this is actually a question I was going to ask you after the audience questions, so thank you Connor. So ‘how do you handle or approach your negative Goodreads reviews? Do you actively look at them? How do you feel about Goodreads as a place where your ARCs can get trashed before the book is even subbed?’

Allee Richards: You know, I have a really—I think two things about Goodreads. One of them, I think, is that it’s actually awesome, because no reviewer is ever just going to say, like, ‘eh, just didn’t like it.’ (Laughs) And some readers are going to think that. So in one way, I think that you do get real, regular, general readers’ views of your book. Because a reviewer is, like, a person who reads a lot and is, you know, it’s like a different kind of understanding. And I think that at the end of the day, that most people who are going to be buying a book are just general readers, so I think it actually is good to have an insight into that. On the other hand, though, there is like a fairly snarky tone that a lot of people take on that website that then is like, a bit, people seem to like, get a bit of satisfaction out of writing, like, really mean reviews on there, and that’s like any online kind of forum. It can like—I have no problem with negative reviews, but I have had kind of issues in snark and the way that some people write on there. In terms of, like, I really don’t care, though. Like, it doesn’t bother me. And it’s interesting—I mean, maybe that is because mostly I’ve had really good reviews, both in the, like, official reviews and then on Goodreads most of it’s good, and that the minority that’s bad. So maybe if most of it was bad, I’d be more upset about it. But it’s interesting—I’ve been working in customer service again during the, during lockdown because I can’t do my other job, and I worked in customer service all through my twenties. And you would know, Ellen, you have to, like, get this, you just have to let people—if people are mean to you or angry at you or aggressive, you just have to let it slide off you, because if you let it penetrate you, it would, like, kill you. And I worked the other week and had, you know, just by the end of the day I’m always exhausted dealing with negativity. And then I went on Goodreads and I read a negative review, and I felt this, like, lurch in my stomach, that I’d never realised, but I was like, that’s the exact same feeling I get when I deal with a really arsehole customer—like it’s just like this, neutral face, I don’t care, (Laughs) what you say can’t hurt me, and I’m just gonna go get your order now. So it was like, quite funny to realise that I’d had this bodily reaction to it. It was just like, ah, I’m just gonna let this slide off.

Ellen Cregan: I think that’s wise. And I also think that there’s, something that the snarky—some of the snarky Goodreads reviews and the arsehole customers have in common, and it’s that their shitty opinion is actually more about them than it is about you. Like it’s not for all Goodreads reviews of course, there are some really insightful ones, and something being negative doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s…

Allee Richards: It’s mean, yeah.

Ellen Cregan: Snarky or shallow, but I feel like I see a lot of reviews on there that are like, ‘if I had written this, I would have done blah, blah, blah,’ or like, ‘if my favourite author had written this, they would have done blah, blah blah,’ which is like, it’s just irrelevant. That’s not anything. But I think, yeah, that’s really smart to take the customer service face and bring it to the negative reviews. And just off the back of that question, what have been some positive interactions you had based on the book, maybe from readers or from other people? Like, what are some positive things that have come out of that?

Allee Richards: It’s just been really lovely every time someone kind of messages you and says that they enjoyed the book. Gabriella Cohen messaged me on Instagram the other night, because the characters go to her gig in the book, and so it’s found its way to her, (Laughs) so she messaged me and was like, ‘thank you!’ That was pretty cool. Yeah. And even, like, all the reviews have been overwhelmingly really positive, and it’s been really great to have things kind of pointed out that maybe I didn’t see in it so clearly, and then it’s also made me think differently about certain aspects of the book. So that’s been really positive about the more in-depth reviews.

Ellen Cregan: That is nice. And I especially love a musician—because there are a few gigs in this, actually, you need to send a copy to every musician who was in the book.

Allee Richards: I think there were…

Ellen Cregan: Gareth Liddiard was in there at some point, get his take. (Both laugh). We have a question from Janine saying ‘I see some good books behind you. How do you choose what to read?’

Allee Richards: I follow, like, I follow Kill Your Darlings on social media, and I just follow a few other people, like Ellen orJaclyn Crupi, or other people who read, so they’re sort of like, and other authors, so they generally post their books and what they’re reading at the time, so that really helps to see what’s out there. So generally I’ll just see everything that’s coming out, and I’ll basically choose just off, like, what premises interest me. And then that’ll be something that I read, like, immediately. And then other things, if the premise doesn’t necessarily grab me or I don’t know the author, but then I eventually hear enough people like, as you said, word of mouth, hear enough people say that it’s great, I’ll probably give it a go. I was thinking the other day, I actually don’t often ever do this because I always have, like, heaps of things on my to-read pile. But as soon as bookshops are open, I’m just going to walk in and then, like, pick something up, and like, start reading the new release table and then just pick something up that I have no idea what it is, because I feel like it’s been a while from that. So yeah…just from everywhere, I’ll read anything, whatever comes to me that interest me.

Ellen Cregan: Yes. Knowledgeable sources, I was listed. So I’ve got one last question from Andrew saying, ‘being a male reader, I particularly like the interactions Eva has with Fergus and Travis. Was there a particular motivation for including the Fergus character?’ So this is the guy she dates throughout, or sort of on and off.

Allee Richards: So a particular motivation for including him? Yeah, I mean, when I came up with the premise, you needed subplot, which this is also sort of to go, to swing back briefly to the other question about how my writing process has changed, I was very obsessed with thinking about what all the plot would be, because this is the first novel I ever wrote, whereas this time I’m much more relaxed and I realise that it’ll just come once, while I wander around doing it. But it was like, a really sort of one of the most obvious knee-jerk reactions is a romantic subplot, and in millennial books and books about young people they are really common, because people generally do date a bit in their 20s, a lot of people do. And then it really interested me for a few reasons, one being that she’s pregnant. So like having a romantic relationship with someone when they’re not the father of your baby, and definitely—a family member asked me the other day if the next book would have as much sex in it, and I was like, no—I realised I haven’t even written one sex scene in the new one, and it’s because that wasn’t—like, the pregnant thing was what interested me so much about that, that’s why there’s so much of it. And so I thought it was really interesting, though, like…she couldn’t possibly be in a good place to date anyone in the state that she’s in, so it has to be a relationship that goes really badly. And I was really interested to write about that, because I wrote, like, every single guy that treated me or one of my friends badly, I, like, scolded in a short story when I was writing those, and so this time I was kind of interested in going the other way, and looking at, why does someone treat someone else badly? Like, why do they do that? Because I don’t think—I think most people in relationships who are really selfish and unkind don’t set out to do that, but they’re probably just in a state where they’re unhappy with themselves or the circumstance, and so they use someone that’s there to have sex with them, because it will make them feel better for about 15 seconds afterwards. And so they like, use that as a support system. So I wanted to show someone doing that. And maybe—I mean, I don’t want anyone to have…empathy for Eva necessarily with how she treats him, but to sort of understand why she’s treated him. But I did also like playing with him, because he’s not really the best either, like, he’s a bit unlikeable too, so I sort of like playing with that dynamic too.

Ellen Cregan: And he’s kind of this…I found him very oblivious, I think, to being a bit of a jerk.

Allee Richards: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know if I ever explicitly said it in the book, but in my head he’s a bit young, so I think that he is actually like, quite immature and like, he’s a sound guy, which, who all like… (Both laugh) who are just on such a high rate of arseholes, I work with a lot of them, so it’s like a very particular kind of immature, like, probably quite attractive guy who would like, tell you what feminism was, was like my idea of him.

Ellen Cregan: Yes, we’ve met him, unfortunately. So I have a couple more questions before we wrap up. So we have talked, we have skirted around book two—your second book, rather, not book two. When are we going to see this second book, when can we look forward to that? And also, is there anything you could tell us about it, that you can reveal?

Allee Richards: Yeah. It’s… So I mean, it’s due to my publisher in March, which I think I’ll make? Maybe not, maybe I might have some, like, weird desire to change something that will mean a big rewrite, but I think I’m on the path to getting there. And then I think the pencilled in pub date in 2023. But, you know, these things can shift and move with the beast. And yeah, it’s sort of traverses a similar area. It’s about young women, but it’s more about, like, a rivalry and a competitive relationship between two young women, and it’s sort of about the desire for fame and then, like, failure. So there’s similarities, and then it’s sort of a lot of, some young women and based in the performing arts, but it traverses a lot more time than this one and it’s written in past tense. Yeah. There’s a few more differences, I think it’s… Yeah.

Ellen Cregan: Somebody to look forward to, for us, 2023. Get into our diaries.

Allee Richards: Hopefully we’ll be in a room all together then.

Ellen Cregan: Oh, I really hope so. I really hope so. And my final question is, for the people who are in the meeting tonight who’ve read and loved your book, what would you recommend they read next, or kind of have a look at, listen to, anything like that?

Allee Richards: Ooh, there’s…I mean, I’ll see if I can get them. If you specifically liked my book and you want something similar-ish, this one is just about to be published. Love and Virtue by Diana Reid, she is Sydney based. It’s a campus novel, and it is about consent. And that’s really good—compared to Sally Rooney. (Ellen laughs). Another one that I read recently and just finished and really liked is this, She Is Haunted by Paige Clark. It’s like, quite quirky and cool short stories, kind of…this isn’t so similar to my work, though, this is like kind of more Elizabeth Tan or Julie Koh, Carmen Maria Machado style. Yeah, they’re two good options.

Ellen Cregan: Well, I think those are both excellent books. I’m just about to start reading the campus novel—what’s it called, Love and Virtue, I’ve got it next to my bedside table, and I loved Paige Clark’s book, I thought it was wonderful. Alrighty, so that is it from me, that’s all my questions. Thank you so much Allee, it was so lovely to talk to you. As Connor mentioned at the start, please buy or borrow this beautiful book and again, buy it from your local bookshop, wherever they may be, wherever you are, there’s a local bookshop somewhere. And read it and tell everyone else to read it, because it’s just truly wonderful.

Allee Richards: Thank you so much. And thanks everyone for coming and thank you so much Ellen, for the great questions. And your great bookselling at Brunswick Bound. But I mean also thank you, because you know, you were part of shortlisting it for the prize. So I’m very thankful from one part because of you, that the book is here really. And then also Kill Your Darlings in general, they were one of the first places that ever published me when I was starting out. So yeah, it’s really great to be here. They’ve been such a big support for me as an emerging artist, as they have been for so many other people. Keep up the good work!

Ellen Cregan: Well you’re so welcome…that’s a lovely note to end on!

[Music]

Alice Cottrell: That was the September First Book Club edition of the Kill Your Darlings podcast. We’ll be back soon, but while you’re waiting, you should drop in on the KYD website for new commentary, criticism, memoir, interviews and reviews. If you’re feeling inspired to write, then check out our wide range of online writing courses. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.