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Hello and welcome back to the Classics podcast with a really exciting episode.

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Today, I I'm delighted to be joined by bestselling author and former classicist Jennifer Saint.

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Hi, Jenny. Hi. Thanks for having me on.

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It's all right. It's our absolute pleasure.

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As you know, the series is about classics and careers and what a fascinating career journey you've had so far.

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And it only seems to be going to bigger and better and more exciting things all the time.

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We know that you studied classical studies at King's College, London, but we'd love to go back.

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As a child, what was your fascination with the ancient world?

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How did you get into mythology and what were some of your favourite texts and books to read at that point?

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Yeah, of course. I mean, it's really hard to unpick, I think because it was just Greek mythology was just something that I really, really loved.

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And I've kind of I've said a few times when people have asked me that my,

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my parents had friends who lived in Cyprus and say when I was very small, we went to visit, we went to the ancient sites of Kurion.

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I have got really vivid memories of being in the theatre there, the huge, huge theatre.

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It probably seemed huge because I was very small at the time and and I'm sure that this is where it began,

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that I became kind of fascinated by the existence of the ancient world.

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And I in particular remember in Paphos, looking at mosaics and just really thinking in that way.

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I think you just pay attention when you're very small of like, Oh, simply put, these little tiny pieces down.

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And it was it was 2000 years ago, 3000 years ago.

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It was all this time, all this time ago. And we can still look at it and not touch it.

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You're definitely not allowed to touch them.

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But that feeling that this is something kind of tactile and physical, which makes me sound horribly precocious as a child.

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And I'm sure that I did not articulate that full thought process, but it's more kind of looking back and thinking, Well, what can I say?

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It just just made it click for me. And it was definitely that sense that the ancient world is like a real place because we can go with that.

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We can actually walk among these, you know, what's left to us, the variants, the fragments, the pieces that we have got left.

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But what is whole, what remains to us? I mean, obviously not in its entirety.

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So much has been lost as well that we have the stories, we have the mythology, we have the texts and the literature.

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And that has survived, that has made its way through to us. And that is a more profound connection because that is an emotional connection.

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That is a way of feeling that it's not just that we are the same people physically as we have always been,

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but it's this kind of this idea that if we share these stories, which are at the heart about what it means to be a human being,

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to experience love and loss and betrayal and grief and war and catastrophe and disaster and magic and all of these things,

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it just makes me feel that we are all part with that.

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We are all part of something bigger than us.

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And I think to kind of feel that place within that is probably what drew me into the ancient world is probably kind of when I look at it,

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try to look at it from the outside, what it is that makes it so fascinating to me.

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And in the first book I remember the really absorbing of Greek mythology.

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It was Anselm Green's tale of Troy, and it was in particular what really stood out to me.

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What I really remembered was that you get Helen's perspective in this novel.

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You got this real insight into Helen as a very sympathetic character.

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So she's not she's not blamed, she's not vilified.

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And she's she's kind of I think she's presented like as a kind of the prisoner as a victim very much.

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But she's got this richness in her life.

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And these feelings, which I would say in retrospect, kind of set the tone for me to think about the women in Greek mythology.

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And while all these kind of bigger stories are playing out on the battlefields, what is going on?

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What kind of other conflict over this story is happening that maybe isn't always told?

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It's so interesting and there's so many different things to unpack there and to talk more about.

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Some will come on to the feminist retellings that you've told and the inspiration for so many of your excellent novels.

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But just to go back to you, being that child on holiday in Cyprus and Crete and having that kind of tactile experience,

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and I know you say it's perhaps not something you're aware of at the time where you're having such profound thoughts.

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But I think it's a really, really powerful connection that you have as a child to understanding the past or feeling like you're in the presence of,

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you know, that people have walked here before and that they might be similar to you.

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Were you aware of had you been told were you learning about some of the stories at the same time as when you were on holiday,

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when you were young, as well as having that kind of physical experience? Was it also kicking off in your imagination at the same time?

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Yeah. So that whole explosion of everything happening at once.

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Definitely that and I think I think you know as a parent when you when your kids are interested in something and then you indulge it, you know.

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So definitely my parents split with would go get me the books, tell me the stories.

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And and they're probably so pleased to have a child who was happy to go to all of these sites and and look around.

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So yeah. So it was definitely something that I was really fortunate to be encouraged.

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And and I know you're a parent yourself now.

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I know we've moved on in time quite a bit there, but how do you introduce your children to the ancient world?

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Is that through plays, through story?

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And do you think that you've done it in a different way to perhaps you would have done it if you had been the parent of yourself in the past?

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Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, I think, the same. I mean, I was I was so excited.

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And I think here I as my husband is really looking forward to watching Star Wars with our kids.

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And I was really excited about, oh, I'll read these to them.

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And and I was a teacher, I was an English teacher.

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And when my children were born and I definitely found that in the classroom,

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bringing mythology into into a lesson was like a way to get kids to sit up and pay attention and really be engaged in what you're doing.

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So I was really excited to read this, I'm sorry, to my children.

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And and it's again, I think something that I've told quite a few times and that the whole idea for

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Ariadne came from reading the story of Theseus and the Minotaur to my son,

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that actually we had like the Aslan books, the Minotaur looks really ferocious.

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Theseus is really handsome and brave and and Ariadne kind of drops out of the pages, and she just.

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She disappears partway through the story. Why did she go? Why didn't she get back to Athens with Theseus, I wonder?

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And it was. It was my son kind of asking some questions about that, saying what happened to Ariadne?

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Why did she go? And that made me that actually made me think, oh, no, that there is a great story here.

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I could tell this story. And that really that was the kind of catalyst I needed to actually write the novel in the first place.

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Well, thank you on behalf of everyone for bringing her story to centre stage.

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I think it was very much needed and it's obvious from the success of your work as well.

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I think just how enthralled people are by the real focus upon bringing those women's stories to life and sort of the focus as they should be.

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When you were a child, what did you want to be a writer?

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Was that something that you kind of really always had in the back of your mind that you wanted to do?

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Yeah, Always, always, always. So I was writing stories and my whole life, and if somebody asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up,

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I would always say all that until I reached a particularly, I guess, self-conscious time in my life, probably in my teenage years.

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But that started to feel like a really ridiculous and such a gift because that just that wasn't an option.

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You don't just get to be an author, you don't get to tease that.

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And so, yeah, so I stopped saying it because I thought that was actually quite a laughable ambition to hold.

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And it was something that I definitely just just kept inside my head.

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And from then on until the time that I actually I mean, I was I think I was 35 when I started writing of me,

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and it was the first time I'd kind of vocalised out loud for a long time.

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I want to write a book. I'm going to write a book that's going to make me a writer.

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And I don't sort of have to wait for somebody to give me permission. And I think there is such a kind of feeling that people have that.

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Can I say that I'm a writer? Well, yes. If you're writing something, you definitely can.

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You are. Yeah, that's really interesting how people perceive themselves and perhaps fairly can't take ownership of the role that they want to be

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or they feel they actually are because they haven't necessarily actualised it yet in their career or in an in a published sense.

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But if they are writing they are a writer.

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And the same way that so many people who love classics in the ancient world might not be career classicists,

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but they are classicists because that's what they love. That's what they love, that's what they enjoy and pursue.

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So you chose to do a classics degree and at university.

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Did you do any classical subjects before you went to university and what was that experience like for you?

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So, so my high school didn't offer the classics,

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I think like most as just a normal comprehensive high school in Leeds and the classics was not in the curriculum.

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And I think there is one one high school in Leeds now that offers it at key Stage three and definitely not in the nineties.

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And so yeah, so I had no idea really that actually classics or something that you could study that it wasn't just a hobby,

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that it wasn't just an interest and it was I had already started sixth form when I realised

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that there was a college in the city centre that offered a classical civilisation,

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A-level, and that just that I just,

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I couldn't believe that I had and I hadn't gone there and that this opportunity was available and I hadn't taken at.

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And again, my parents are going to come back and they're going to, they're going to come looking fairly well in this podcast.

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They're very supportive parents. And I remember saying to them, you know, just I've made such a big mistake.

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And my mum saying, but that's not the end of it.

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You can you can drop out of sixth form and you can be enrolled next September in college and you can study at and she never gets it in.

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I think I thought that would be such a huge failure when in fact it was it was the opposite of that because it was choosing making this,

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I think kind of you go through the education process and it's very easy to just

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kind of get carried along and not make any particularly proactive choices.

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And and I think, you know, that that maybe can be the real failure sometimes to kind of not not do the things that that you really, truly want to do.

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So yes, So so I did so I did exactly that.

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I dropped out of sixth form. I got a job in an office for a little while, and then I re-enrolled the following September,

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took classical civilisation A-level, and I loved it so much that I didn't have a career path in mind.

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I didn't know I was going to do with it. I knew that that was what I wanted to do to a degree.

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And and, you know, this I guess a real luxury of being able to think about studying in that way,

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though, that you can, you know, you got to follow your passions and your interests.

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You are very lucky. And so I feel that I really was.

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Yeah. So you then went on to university, to King's College London to to do classical studies.

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And what were some of your favourite aspects of the degree? It must have been exciting that from that stage you could then study it for a

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further three years and explore different aspects than you can just in an A-level.

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Yeah, that's right. Well, sir, I was barely surprised to discover how much I enjoyed learning Latin.

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It was compulsory in the first year. I don't think I would have picked it otherwise.

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But because I had to, like I've had a very fixed idea that I was not a languages person and I really was.

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I loved learning Latin. I think I really look back and regret now that I didn't take Ancient Greek as well.

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And because the, you know, even I suppose in three years you don't there's any to say anything.

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Guess. And the idea that you can actually kind of read some of these ancient texts in that original

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language and get some kind of meaning out of them is a really special way to relate to them.

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And so Latin came as a huge surprise to me that that it was so it was so satisfying, so rewarding, just like unlocking a puzzle, I think.

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But it was really, I think the most transformative thing that I studied at university was the module that I did.

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I think my second or third year of it, which just I had managed to not come across of it until then and somehow,

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you know, read about obviously the Homeric ethics and spent a lot of time on the tragedies.

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And then when we read the metamorphoses and we read the hero, it was it was it's it's just a diary into another world.

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It's just incredible. I think the way that Ovid tells their stories, the way he weaves so many story them and connects them all together.

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It's the thing that I love so much about Greek mythology that you have the way that the way that you navigate out of it.

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And I kind of, you know, you sort out, you start to make your way in and and you just you end up in this labyrinth, shall I say, of, of myths.

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And that just that just go on forever.

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And so I, I really, really loved, loved that discovery.

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Yeah. And I think the Heroides, they are well, to use another pun,

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they are tantalising in that there's so much kind of to them and but implied in so much you kind of more you wish that you could explore with

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some of the characters that he weaves into the myth which of course you then did because I know the parodies were such an inspiration for you,

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weren't they, with Ariadne, your first novel? Can you tell us a bit more about that?

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Yeah, well, so, you know, people do ask me and kind of why why now for feminist retellings.

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And as there it's kind of a brand new thing and some aspects, you know, the popularisation of these myths from a female perspective,

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you know, is near and is very much of the time and is inspired by the world we are living in now.

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But all of it was writing in women's voices back in the first century.

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And the you know,

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the latter the latter in the heroic is in the Voice of Ariadne to Theseus was just it was the foundation of writing the novel for me.

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It was there it was. And she writes this letter on Nexus after she's been abandoned.

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And she is so full of anger and she is so full of rage against Theseus for what he's done to her.

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And it it really kind of it gave me when I start to write a novel, I usually have kind of wouldn't seem really crystal clear in my head.

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And I know that that scene is going to be enough to to build a novel from.

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And it's it's the thing that that captures me.

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And it was that scene for Ariadne there was waking up on Nexus and I had Ovid's Ariadne

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in my head for that entirely that she's been she's been so betrayed and furious,

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so righteous. And she's not just rejected women are scorned.

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Woman And she she had a right to expect something from Theseus.

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She has betrayed her, her whole country and her father.

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And she is an exile and she has lost everything when she when she leaves Crete with him.

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And there was just something about about that in her that this is not just the story of a romance gone wrong.

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This isn't just the story of a broken heart.

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There is so much more depth and richness to Ariadne and why she made that decision to go with him and how she how she makes a

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life for herself after Theseus has gone and and what she does with with all of all of that experience that she's gained,

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that just made me think, yeah, this is a whole I'm a complete woman who we can understand and explore, not just in relation to this one event.

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There's one kind of moment in a hero's journey that actually she has got her whole,

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whole entire interior life that this just seemed so ripe for turning into another.

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Which of course, you did with wonderful, wonderful success.

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I think it's interesting to pick up there on this idea as well of female rage,

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because that's an idea that writers in the ancient world really picked up on themselves.

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And so they've sometimes turned it to very much perceiving that through a male gaze of female rage.

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And it brings in terrifying and scary in a known other.

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But it's something that we maybe also as women as well reading it, you know, read and interpret in a different way.

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And that's a key to your second book, Electra as well, of different types of Rage,

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how that feeds through Electra and Cassandra and Clytemnestra, sort of the three protagonists in that.

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How how did you relate to that? Was that kind of also like a personal emotion that you felt sort of come across

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the ages from those ancient stories and then weaving it into your writing?

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Yeah, I mean, I think that really for me, that story, although ended up being about Electra, it didn't start out that way.

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It did actually start out. And being about Clytemnestra and her rage in particular as a bereaved mother,

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that her rage comes from grief and the fact that her daughter has been murdered in front of her.

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And there is something about when we talk about the ancient world,

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when we talk about it being something so separate and something so alien to us and say,

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you will you will have people kind of talk about infant mortality and the death of children as being so common.

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It's almost as though that doesn't matter.

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And I think that that can be a kind of like, well, well, you know, it happened all the time.

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And it's not just a modern phenomenon. I did an event with Sarah Clarke, who wrote Women's Law,

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which I was really recommend to anyone listening to this podcast would be fascinated and all about,

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and female mythological monsters and demons and how the perception of them has been shaped.

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And she just had a really interesting thing about Cicero writing a treatise about how women shouldn't

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be upset when their children died and then when his own daughter died discovering that actually,

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no, that's a very sad thing.

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And so and that really struck me, actually, what she said about that is I think that can just be there's this temptation to just say,

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oh, well, it happened all the time and all these other horrific things that happened.

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Women being taken captive in war as another example of that, which then things happened to Cassandra story.

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And as they oh, well, it's just inevitable. So let's not treat it as the tragedy that it would have been.

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And for any any anyone who has got when you start to put yourself in in the position of that character,

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when you start to if you're writing a novel about them,

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to treat them with human empathy, and imagine if the whole point of a novel is to put as it's to,

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so that we can walk in somebody else's shoes, that we can live somebody else's life.

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And then Clytemnestra is not this unreasonable woman.

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She's not just this really, really bad wife.

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And she's not just she's not like a kind of this nightmare that that men have constructed to be afraid of.

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And this idea of like, what a woman might do if you don't keep her under tight control.

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And we see her as a woman who lost her daughter in horrific circumstances and just cannot move on.

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She just can never, ever let that go. And I was really fascinated by the way that grief can hold us.

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I'm frozen in the same place and how difficult it can be.

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To ever and to ever find a path through that.

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And kind of Clytemnestra's path through that is is one that feels like it is such in some ways such extreme kind of wish fulfilment.

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You know, when we read about Agamemnon and I don't think anyone of us doesn't want to hack him to death in a bath,

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to be honest, that that is justified.

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And he's, you know, he's awful all the way through the Iliad. Agamemnon is awful and we all despise him.

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So I think, you know, he can just really fail reading these stories sometimes.

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And going back to all that, I just said that he I love it. I love it so much.

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But there is something extremely depressing about reading Metamorphoses in some ways because you are reading

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just this kind of catalogue of sexual assaults of women denied their autonomy and women denied that agency.

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And it's so beautiful and it's so wonderful in so many ways.

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But that is one thing. And I think Stephanie McAllister talked about that a lot in in her translation of the metamorphoses and how she handled that.

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And so so when you have a woman like Clytemnestra who actually who who was not.

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He was not constrained. He finds a way to take her revenge.

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And then she is. She is such a rich, fascinating, satisfying woman to write about.

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And that's really why I began with her. And then, like I said, you know, Cassandra's narrative fits in.

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And then Elektra and I found myself just so jaunty because I think she was less explicable.

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I think we totally understand why life and that's just coming from.

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And I was quite interested to come at it from the opposite side of that mother daughter

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dynamic and find out how and how her daughter feels about the actions that she takes.

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And that ended up consuming me more than I expected, says.

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Yeah. And I think the ethics and the the the reactions that you can understand with a mother who

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has lost a daughter and then the revenge that she enacts sort of make a lot more sense to us.

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It's easier to to understand. But then seeing that,

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as you say from the reverse perspective and these very complicated relationships with both mother and father and brother and wider family,

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where that situation is so much more complex for does create that even more depth to the character, doesn't it, to her situation.

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Yeah. And that that tension between the two of them and that mother daughter relationship which was just it was it was really irresistible.

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I think it's kind of delved into it from both sides and to see how how alike the two of these these women actually become.

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Yeah. And there's so many different stories around Clytemnestra, more obviously, and so many contemporary accounts as well.

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So we have a range of ancient texts.

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We have both the Epic and the epic cycle and oral poetry that's constantly being changed and retold in the ancient world.

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We then have so many more contemporary writers who've written about it.

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When you've been writing, obviously have kind of all of these sources, but you also have your own threads and your own stories to tell.

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That must have been really kind of so complex. What did you read other fiction written by modern authors about it as well,

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or are you kind of trying to separate yourself from from them and from doing something different?

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Yeah. So it's really it's why the dividing line is really drawn between being a writer and being a reader.

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Because as a reader, I obviously wanted to consume all the Greek mythology content that is out there.

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And then I'm a huge kind of personal fan of all these writers and writing about it.

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So like, you know, Barker, Madeline Miller and Natalie Haynes, everybody who's writing these novels, I am devouring them as a reader.

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And when I come to write, then I really have to have I have to have this boundary, I have to have this dividing line,

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because what I want to be tell is not somebody else's interpretation of the ancient sources.

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I want to retell my interpretation of the ancient sources,

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which means that when I'm researching and when I'm writing, that is where I that is where I look.

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I look in the ancient texts that we've got.

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And there is just that I think there is so much of an element as a writer of all devices that you have to shut out of your head.

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And that is kind of that is imaginary critics and editors.

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And in in the case of, I think probably any historical fiction and the feeling that like only somebody there is somebody more

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expert than me or I can make that was basically a lady of angry classicist reading over my shoulder.

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And you have to put them behind me and just say no. And this is I think you have to kind of have that confidence to think, I have got a story to tell.

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Here I am. And I'm and so you just kind of become more practised, I think compartmentalising that and saying when I'm writing,

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I am completely immersed in whichever ancient sources it is that I'm using as research, and that has just expanded and expanded.

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So the book that I'm currently writing, I've just got this here, just how everything's texts all the time and that is, that's plenty.

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But it does mean kind of trying to put out of my head the idea of somebody else's

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maybe told an aspect of their story in a different way because that doesn't matter.

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What matters is what am I going to do with that now? Yeah, exactly.

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And you've also had the perspective as a reader and a writer, but then also as a student, a researcher, and then as a teacher as well.

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So you just have all these different voices and perspectives of looking at similar things.

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And you talk a bit about your transition to becoming a teacher because that was what you did after university.

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Was that straight away or did you do something in between? And so I came back from university, had no idea what I wanted to do at once, however,

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and I had it in my head that I wanted to write and I was trying to write and sort of around like temp jobs, casual jobs.

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And I just I did not have the book and I didn't have the voice.

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And so nothing that I wrote all the way through my twenties ever made it past the first few chapters and nothing ever really came together.

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And I realised, you know, this isn't going to work.

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I need to think about what I actually want to do.

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And I think I was working for a solicitors at the time and I had this really, and I really felt like, well,

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what I want to do with my life is to make some kind of positive connections and contribute some things that I think is useful.

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And I could do that by becoming an English teacher.

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And, you know, I'm obviously enabling students to reach their potential to get this qualification that they are going to need.

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I thought, you know, English is a core subject. It's something that I love.

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I definitely had a romantic idea about reading and writing all day, but it would just be a joy because that's, you know, that reading and writing do.

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Exactly. So, yeah, so I did my pgce and I was I was really surprised actually, to discover that I did and I did really enjoy teaching.

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I think it was something I just worried that and I was such a shy kid in school myself.

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I never like to speak in front of the class. And then I was like home. I might have accidentally chosen a job.

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That's the anything I do. But but yeah, I found and I did find all the things they things I expect to find rewarding.

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I did find them in the job.

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And even though you were teaching English rather than classics, obviously lots of these key Greek and Roman stories are part of the syllabus.

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Whether it's translated into Shakespeare or it's something people do as part of drama at A-level.

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Was that always an exciting moment when you got to bring some classics into your teaching, or did you find that it was infused all the time anyway?

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I mean, yeah infused because.

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Because everything, you know, you read Frankenstein with your GCSE class and it's the modern Prometheus and you have,

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you know, so many classical references to draw on and Shakespeare, like Carol Ann

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Duffy poetry, it's just everywhere. Classical references are.

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I mean, our stories are so many of our stories, our retellings in some way are informed by retellings.

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And so to be able to enable students actually to trace that path as well,

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and to see the ways in which all of literature is interconnected and all of these human stories and experiences build upon each other.

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And I just I think this is always something that is always really appealing when you start to see the wider context.

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So I'm not just studying this in order to pass an exam. I'm studying this because it is part of this bigger body of art that.

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The is is like a cultural experience for all of us.

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And it has shaped our thinking, whether we are aware of it or not.

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And so definitely and in fact the classics was in everything was great,

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but I would certainly explicitly teach modules on Greek mythology because it's

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really fun and it's really interesting and students love to learn about it.

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And there's a great big Percy Jackson base, which definitely helped.

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But do you think there's anything about the world of teaching or of classics that you wish was different,

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that we could use, that we could change or improve about those worlds, perhaps from more a kind of a career perspective?

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Um, I mean, so I, I did.

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I did. By the end of my teaching career when I was writing, I, I had become, you know, quite starkly disillusioned.

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And I do feel that in education, things are not not ideal at the moment in in a lot of ways.

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And I definitely found, like personally and my experience of this,

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the move to this kind of very corporate multi-academy trust approach to education I think is very stifling of creativity,

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and that's kind of teach creativity as well as student creativity.

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And, you know, I think that you might have an interest where they've got,

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you know, 20 schools or 25 schools, and there is a kind of feeling of like, okay,

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well, everybody's going to teach the exact same text at the exact same time and the exact same structure of lessons,

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because this is what gets results. And I absolutely sympathise with all of the pressures on education that you are judged on the results that you got.

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And if you find a strategy that works, then you obviously want to replicate it.

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And I just I just never felt that that is how children's minds work.

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And it's it can become, I think, very much a kind of conveyor belt towards exams, which really strips away everything that I.

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That I that I enjoyed about teaching and the idea of kind of personalising the text that

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you choose and the way that you teach them to the children who are in front of me.

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And that I mean, that's the reality of school budgets, of time constraints, of the huge, overwhelming pressures that face schools at the moment.

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And that that is kind of the way the way that things have gone.

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And it's certainly not universal across the board. And I basically I would never want to come on and criticise anything that teachers

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and schools and very like hard working professionals in education are doing that.

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I just found that and that I started writing again because I was not getting the kind of

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creative fulfilment out of my job that I used to get and it led me into another career instead.

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And what was that transition like? Because you said you'd been writing sort of the whole time, but it wasn't.

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I have to get past those first few chapters.

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It wasn't the right time, obviously, the right time, the right idea, the right story came to you and you then created that.

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But how did you go from writing alongside teaching to being able to publish and things go from there?

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How does that happen? Because I think from an external perspective, people often think, how do you get into that world?

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Because it seems sort of so. There's not really a textbook, is there, on how to become a published author.

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Yeah, well, that's exactly it. And I was thinking when when you're asking me about what did I want to be when I was younger, and I'm thinking,

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Yeah, well, you know, I stopped saying author because it never came upon like, Careers Day or anything.

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And then it wasn't like you didn't.

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I mean, obviously there are courses, obviously in creative writing, but it's not this kind of structured career path.

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And, and I never, I never did study creative writing formally and it's absolutely not a requirement.

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And just thinking about kind of other the didn't seem to be a really clear way into this.

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So yeah, so my particular path from teacher to author was it was probably quite unusual and that I'd had the,

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I'd had this idea about writing Ariadne specifically and,

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and that kind of came to me in the summer, and by the time December rolled around, I decided to make it a New Year's resolution.

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And that was, I have never plot from this or this is the only resolution I've ever kept.

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And the resolution was just to write the book from start to finish.

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I thought, Do you know what? This is a really good idea. I really think this story is good because it was a book I wanted to read, I think.

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And and I and I do think that's kind of a crucial part of the puzzle.

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I thought, yeah, if I you know, you pitched the book to yourself and I thought, yes, I did about that.

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I would want to pick it up and read it. So I'm going to write, you know, your own target audience.

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You know exactly what you need to do from both sides. That is exactly right.

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Yeah. But and I didn't really think beyond that.

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I just thought, you know, I'm going to write it from start to finish.

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And that's going to be because, like I said, I kind of felt like I wasn't there wasn't a creative outlet in my life.

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And my youngest child was four years old by that time.

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So I think I'd come out of some of that arc of early motherhood and he had started sleeping through the night.

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It did take him four years, but never mind, we got there.

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And so, yeah, so I decided that I would just write the book from start to finish, but that was my only goal.

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So I wasn't starting from the point of view of there is so much pressure and I have to think about and what I'm going to do with it.

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I just wanted to write the book so that I had written the book.

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Maybe my mum would read it, maybe nobody would read it, but I would have written it and that was the main thing.

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And, and as I was writing it, it just it just took on momentum.

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And I really did have this sense that there was something worthwhile and which obviously,

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you know, you can be so plagued by self doubt that probably never goes away,

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but you feel like you just have to give yourself, you just have to give yourself a bit of credit as well.

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Mean when when you are doing something that you think, no, this is worth doing,

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this is worth prioritising and this is a way of giving my time to and the time as always.

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And so many demands from work, from family, from everything that is happening in your life that I made the time.

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I hate it when people say I made the time that you make time for them and that that is that is what I did.

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And that just meant, you know, kind of, well, I'm not going to do either laundry.

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I'm going to sit and write my book for an hour and then my house is a tip.

367
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Please. It is maybe give you some some some readers can come along and help with the ironing because they want you to be writing instead of,

368
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you know, I had this terrible discovery that I came up with really good ideas when I was doing the ironing.

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I hate ironing. It's the worst of all jobs. And I was absolutely furious to discover, No, you have to do it.

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I mean, I got stuck on a plot point. And so, yes.

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And I feel like I'm kind of going into this like, oh, the pram in the hole.

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They like women writing and the domestic pressures. And I'm you know, I live in a very a very equal household.

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My husband does all the ironing and I'm all the time apart from when I get stuck on a plot point.

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And so yeah so I was I was able to spend the time writing and I was about halfway through,

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I think I was about kind of 45,000 words and I was on Twitter before.

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Twitter was the absolute mess that it is now.

377
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:51,290
And I was following lots of literary agents because I'd started to think, actually, maybe I will do something with this book.

378
00:36:51,290 --> 00:36:55,129
So I'm going to get a sense because you don't know the publishing industry is so opaque.

379
00:36:55,130 --> 00:36:58,280
Like you said, you don't know what the steps are going to be to get into it.

380
00:36:58,580 --> 00:37:03,110
And I thought, well, if. I, fellow agents and publishers and editors on Twitter.

381
00:37:03,410 --> 00:37:06,830
I might be able to kind of figure out what it is that you do.

382
00:37:07,540 --> 00:37:14,270
And I went to a master class by a literary agent about how to get an agent.

383
00:37:14,300 --> 00:37:15,560
I found that very helpful.

384
00:37:15,860 --> 00:37:27,049
That woman became my agent in the end, because it was when I was about halfway through and there was a there is a big auction,

385
00:37:27,050 --> 00:37:36,720
a big charity auction that took place because it was the time in the Trump administration of families separated on the Mexican border.

386
00:37:36,740 --> 00:37:42,050
And you would see in the paper every day pictures of children in cages separated from their families.

387
00:37:42,380 --> 00:37:51,830
And so this big auction that was held. Authors would give away books and publishers, you know, donating bundles of books that you could bid on.

388
00:37:51,980 --> 00:37:56,120
But what agents and editors were offering was their time was that feedback.

389
00:37:56,270 --> 00:38:01,280
So you could bid on feedback like your first 50 pages, for example.

390
00:38:02,030 --> 00:38:08,210
And I did. And that was the agent, his masterclass I had attended.

391
00:38:09,050 --> 00:38:15,290
And she I just had this feeling, though, that she was the right person to represent my work.

392
00:38:15,980 --> 00:38:19,850
And I had a really good feeling about her. I sent her the first 50 pages.

393
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:24,730
She really liked it. She didn't just give me feedback. She said she wanted the whole manuscript.

394
00:38:24,740 --> 00:38:30,830
It was like a fairy tale moment because what you hear about all the time and I know

395
00:38:30,830 --> 00:38:35,120
lots of I have lots of friends here access and who are going through it right now.

396
00:38:35,300 --> 00:38:42,500
If, you know, you submit your work to agent after agent and you build up this stack of rejections and it's incredibly demoralising and depressing.

397
00:38:42,740 --> 00:38:50,090
And that absolutely is a lot of people's rage. But when you send your work to the right person, then you get that.

398
00:38:50,090 --> 00:38:55,760
Yes. And I was very fortunate that the right person was the first person who saw my work.

399
00:38:55,760 --> 00:39:01,820
I hadn't actually finished writing the book, which is a complete no no, you should never submit your work of it's unfinished.

400
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:08,330
And so everything happened in a really topsy turvy way. But she was the right person.

401
00:39:08,390 --> 00:39:13,550
This was the right book. And she said, come back when when you finished it.

402
00:39:14,180 --> 00:39:17,210
So then I wrote the rest of it extremely quickly.

403
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:24,139
So I started writing in January. That happened kind of around May to June or July.

404
00:39:24,140 --> 00:39:29,840
I think by August I'd finished the book and she offered me representation.

405
00:39:30,110 --> 00:39:36,740
So I had started the year thinking, I'm just going to write a first draft, and that's all I'm going to write.

406
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:44,300
In August, I'd signed with like my dream literary agent, the person that would want to represent me more than anyone else in the world.

407
00:39:44,700 --> 00:39:51,740
And and we we worked together on kind of polishing it up because, like he said, this.

408
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:56,280
How do you know how to write a book? You know how to read a book.

409
00:39:56,290 --> 00:40:01,509
You know what you like. But it's obviously always going to need a lot, a lot more work.

410
00:40:01,510 --> 00:40:09,010
And then having kind of her input helped to help me to get it into shape so we could submit it to editors.

411
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:20,979
And in November, that's what we did. We sent out to publishers and, and, and when, as in stepped it up in what's called a pre-empt.

412
00:40:20,980 --> 00:40:31,960
So kind of like three, three days I think after it had gone out and I had had a book deal and that was November and it started writing in January.

413
00:40:32,260 --> 00:40:36,700
So it was, it was like the best year association ever.

414
00:40:38,590 --> 00:40:43,780
Basically said, Keep your New Year's resolutions. Yeah, it worked out really well.

415
00:40:44,890 --> 00:40:49,800
That's incredible and how life can change within a year as well as with that book deal.

416
00:40:49,810 --> 00:40:53,860
Did that then mean you had to write more? Was that part of part of the deal?

417
00:40:54,610 --> 00:41:01,149
How did that feel to suddenly, you know, go from not having anything to suddenly the prospect of you've got things that,

418
00:41:01,150 --> 00:41:04,300
you know, you both have to do but obviously also want to do and that promise of.

419
00:41:04,690 --> 00:41:07,960
Did you also feel pressure then, of how you'd have to produce more?

420
00:41:08,500 --> 00:41:16,560
Yes. Yes, definitely. So that's and so I signed a two book deal and it was like it was available.

421
00:41:16,570 --> 00:41:19,520
So I pitched I had to pitch a lecture.

422
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:28,240
And when I just I just written one book and and it was kind of suddenly it's like, Oh, what other ideas do you have?

423
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:32,799
And I think some writers have a huge list of all these books that they're going to write.

424
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:40,090
You know, I really envy people here have got these notebooks full of ideas that I am very immature when projects at a time person, say,

425
00:41:40,090 --> 00:41:47,610
when I'm writing one book, I, I always feel like maybe this is my last book because I have no idea what I'm going to do after this one.

426
00:41:48,340 --> 00:41:57,669
So it felt kind of very surreal, very theoretical that somebody was going to actually make that I was going to sign a contract to write a book.

427
00:41:57,670 --> 00:42:00,700
When writing a book was all I'd ever wanted to do.

428
00:42:00,850 --> 00:42:06,130
It was it was a really odd thing that I did hand my notice.

429
00:42:06,180 --> 00:42:12,750
And at school I did leave teaching at that point, and it was right before the pandemic.

430
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:21,819
So it was extremely fortunate because I think three months after I came out teaching and schools are closed and I had my children

431
00:42:21,820 --> 00:42:30,730
at home and as I was writing a lecture and that it was a really it was so I it's kind of like I've left teaching behind me forever.

432
00:42:31,450 --> 00:42:35,220
I'm going to write my book. All my children are at home and I have to homeschool.

433
00:42:35,230 --> 00:42:38,410
And this this feels a little bit familiar.

434
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:49,840
And so, yeah, so it actually took a took a lot longer, I think, for the reality to think and maybe it's always like that, I don't know.

435
00:42:50,050 --> 00:42:57,370
But I think because the world just got turned upside down with the pandemic and nothing felt normal.

436
00:42:57,400 --> 00:43:07,389
So the fact that I was writing for a living was just part of the general weirdness and that 2020, but it was all and obviously I was writing a novel,

437
00:43:07,390 --> 00:43:11,080
which is about a city which is under siege where you can't leave,

438
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:16,500
where all of these dangers are kind of and lurking outside and you don't know when it's going to come to an end.

439
00:43:16,510 --> 00:43:23,740
So thank you, World, for giving me some real like kind of method experience for writing that one.

440
00:43:24,370 --> 00:43:33,249
And yeah, so I found I found that and an incredible, incredible pressure compared to writing.

441
00:43:33,250 --> 00:43:37,149
I think just because the knowledge that somebody is definitely going to read what you

442
00:43:37,150 --> 00:43:41,230
are writing and I'm just coming to the end of the first of my first book at the moment,

443
00:43:41,410 --> 00:43:48,850
and that feeling doesn't go away. So I'm writing it thinking, Oh my God, somebody is actually it's so awful.

444
00:43:49,150 --> 00:43:53,410
And that would be refreshing for people to hear, to know that it's normal and it doesn't ever go away.

445
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:58,209
However. And, and, and a first draft has got to be just by definition,

446
00:43:58,210 --> 00:44:06,610
a first draft has got to be pretty bad because you are you are working so much out in the first draft about what story.

447
00:44:07,030 --> 00:44:08,980
This is a story I think I'm going to tell.

448
00:44:09,250 --> 00:44:16,240
And as I'm writing, oh, this is the story, I'm actually telling it something that changes through the process.

449
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:25,750
And and again, I think what at least what I have learned is that editors are used to the fact that a first draft looks nothing like a final draft.

450
00:44:26,410 --> 00:44:31,959
And because you just have this temptation as a writer, because you are reading other people's finished work,

451
00:44:31,960 --> 00:44:38,800
well, if you pick a book up and off the bookshelf, it has been rewritten six or seven times.

452
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:45,160
You are not reading what somebody the first iteration of their story.

453
00:44:45,190 --> 00:44:51,420
So when you are writing your own first draft, that can feel really painful because you just think, Why?

454
00:44:51,430 --> 00:44:54,250
Oh why, why am I so much worse than everybody else?

455
00:44:54,520 --> 00:45:01,600
And but it's because you are comparing your unfinished product to everybody else's polished, finished, edited product.

456
00:45:02,050 --> 00:45:06,910
Yeah. And it must feel hard as well to leave behind some parts of that first draft that you perhaps really like,

457
00:45:06,910 --> 00:45:10,600
but then changed in the editing process and almost that first draft.

458
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:16,719
And then the final version are two completely separate things that you might almost wish you could sort of showcase them both differently.

459
00:45:16,720 --> 00:45:20,620
Be really interesting to see also the the degree of change in between the two.

460
00:45:21,100 --> 00:45:22,770
Yeah, well, I mean, I was great.

461
00:45:23,140 --> 00:45:30,070
I found this excuse me, I'm in particular because I always want I always want to throw in far more stories than actually fit.

462
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:35,229
So I think like in my first draft for I actually I had about three chapters.

463
00:45:35,230 --> 00:45:40,209
There was, you know, Theseus' Journey to Athens has nothing to do with Ariadne Story.

464
00:45:40,210 --> 00:45:44,100
So it had to go that I loved writing it and so.

465
00:45:44,510 --> 00:45:50,090
There's always going to be that with Greek mythology. There's rabbit holes that I was talking about before.

466
00:45:50,300 --> 00:45:53,360
And so, so much of it ends up on the cutting room floor.

467
00:45:53,630 --> 00:45:58,160
For that reason, there's room for a sort of compendium of, you know, these.

468
00:45:59,570 --> 00:46:02,870
At some point, you know, in offices or Harrods.

469
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:08,720
Yeah, definitely. Well, that's. Yeah, There are so many places to go with Greek myth.

470
00:46:09,650 --> 00:46:16,010
Of course. So Atalanta was your third book. And as you say, you're working on your fourth book at the moment, which I won't ask you too much about,

471
00:46:16,010 --> 00:46:19,249
especially if you're not in a position to give us any clues about that.

472
00:46:19,250 --> 00:46:23,959
But since all of them have been, you know, mostly inspired by Greek mythology,

473
00:46:23,960 --> 00:46:29,000
is there in the Roman world something that you'd consider also also writing about?

474
00:46:30,260 --> 00:46:34,010
So, I mean, my real passion is Greek mythology.

475
00:46:34,370 --> 00:46:43,490
And so what I tend to say about that is that I have my very good friend and very talented author.

476
00:46:43,610 --> 00:46:46,069
Elodie Harper writes about the Roman world.

477
00:46:46,070 --> 00:46:53,120
And, you know, you can, if you want to kind of expand from Greek to Roman, our books go really well together.

478
00:46:55,400 --> 00:47:03,710
So, yeah, so I think for me, I just I love I love to write in the ancient Greek world, and that is why I feel most comfortable and happiest.

479
00:47:03,980 --> 00:47:09,640
And I would I kind of never want to rule anything out because I never thought I would write any book at all.

480
00:47:09,650 --> 00:47:13,310
And so, you know, where where it might take me in the future.

481
00:47:13,850 --> 00:47:17,850
Who knows? Exactly. exciting.

482
00:47:18,090 --> 00:47:20,750
And I think your journey, your story has definitely shown that.

483
00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:27,809
And also to say to people, to have to have that confidence, to kind of to back yourself because you just never know where things are going to go,

484
00:47:27,810 --> 00:47:31,200
how things will work, work out and to take those opportunities.

485
00:47:31,380 --> 00:47:35,220
So any other advice you'd give to budding authors out there or people that just love

486
00:47:35,220 --> 00:47:38,820
mythology and might be something that they feel they have their own story to tell as well?

487
00:47:39,570 --> 00:47:42,000
Well, I think everybody has got their own story to tell,

488
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:48,890
and I just think there is and that you just have to shut out these voices telling you that your story is not good enough.

489
00:47:48,900 --> 00:47:52,889
Because if you want to read, if you if you write the book that you want to read,

490
00:47:52,890 --> 00:47:57,450
then you are not so weird that nobody else will want to read it either.

491
00:47:58,220 --> 00:48:05,030
And really, the only thing that you can do as a writer to become a writer, to be a writer, is to write.

492
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:08,460
And I think I spent so much time thinking, Man, I want to be an author.

493
00:48:08,730 --> 00:48:16,650
And I would go to like an author events and look at them on stage and just think, you know, what kind of magical thing do you have?

494
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:24,689
And the idea that I am lacking and that magical thing is like they have written a book and that is that is the difference.

495
00:48:24,690 --> 00:48:27,360
If you haven't written the book, can't be an author.

496
00:48:27,660 --> 00:48:36,000
So and so you just have to write it and you have to find a way in your life to prioritise that and whatever that is.

497
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:41,970
And I think I was very put off. I got that kind of classic bit of advice of write what you know,

498
00:48:42,390 --> 00:48:48,420
and I spent a long time taking that very literally and thinking I could only write about things that actually happened to me.

499
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:50,520
But what you know is,

500
00:48:50,700 --> 00:48:59,819
is all the books that you've read and all the theatre productions you've seen and all the places that you have not necessarily even been to,

501
00:48:59,820 --> 00:49:05,360
but that you have learned about. You know, you are you are more than the sum of just what you have actually done.

502
00:49:05,370 --> 00:49:09,480
Otherwise there would be no crime fiction, no science fiction.

503
00:49:10,210 --> 00:49:16,740
And yeah, so I think kind of not not taking that to literally write the book that you want to read,

504
00:49:17,340 --> 00:49:22,590
write the story that you want to tell, and just have faith in the process.

505
00:49:24,270 --> 00:49:32,690
Wonderful. And I know that you have been involved in an upcoming publication as well with Bloomsbury Publishing in an editorial volume,

506
00:49:32,700 --> 00:49:37,080
which I think listeners will be able to read in in the near future.

507
00:49:37,420 --> 00:49:42,239
And we are also running a competition in collaboration with Bloomsbury about this so that young

508
00:49:42,240 --> 00:49:47,130
girls aged 19 and under can get involved and tell their story and their piece of writing.

509
00:49:47,510 --> 00:49:52,110
And that competition closes on the 1st of December. So to find out more, head to our website.

510
00:49:52,410 --> 00:49:58,740
But is there any advice that you would give as well to any 2 to 2 young female authors at the moment?

511
00:50:01,710 --> 00:50:04,780
You had to take those opportunities, you know.

512
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:09,420
So if you think that you've got it, then you've got an idea for this competition.

513
00:50:09,730 --> 00:50:13,650
Then don't be afraid to just go for it and submit.

514
00:50:14,360 --> 00:50:20,090
And also just. Just don't be and don't be put off.

515
00:50:20,100 --> 00:50:26,880
I think when it comes to competitions, it says there is a winner and that's only one person.

516
00:50:27,540 --> 00:50:34,470
So. And if that's not. Yeah, that does not mean that what you've written has got no value on net worth or isn't going to succeed.

517
00:50:34,710 --> 00:50:38,400
And I will share that I. This is. I forgot. I forgot to mention this.

518
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:44,910
I submitted Ariadne to you to write in competitions, and it didn't.

519
00:50:44,910 --> 00:50:51,870
It didn't even make the longlist for either one of them. And this is before I signed off my age and before I was published.

520
00:50:52,590 --> 00:50:58,770
So, you know, a book that kind of got rejected twice from those competitions,

521
00:50:58,770 --> 00:51:06,180
didn't didn't get longlisted and ended up getting getting signed signed by an amazing agent,

522
00:51:06,750 --> 00:51:10,980
got a publishing deal, was a Sunday Times bestseller the week that it came out.

523
00:51:11,110 --> 00:51:19,080
It is not the be all and end all. There will always be people who who you can't write a book that is that will please everybody.

524
00:51:19,940 --> 00:51:26,410
That's a very long winded piece of advice, but just really like everybody has got rejections somewhere in that career.

525
00:51:26,430 --> 00:51:32,800
So try not to let that make you think that you have got a career ahead of you because you do.

526
00:51:33,630 --> 00:51:41,220
Yeah, that's brilliant advice because we want people to get involved. It's 1500 words, so you can all submit your stories and ideas and concepts.

527
00:51:41,490 --> 00:51:44,640
But you're right, there is sometimes only one winner in these situations.

528
00:51:44,910 --> 00:51:48,030
But it doesn't mean it doesn't mean that that isn't still open.

529
00:51:48,450 --> 00:51:52,650
So many paths open to you as a writer in the future. So yeah, it's success.

530
00:51:53,010 --> 00:52:01,229
If it's not success, it's not failure. So that's right. So my final question is just to ask you something.

531
00:52:01,230 --> 00:52:10,080
We've asked all the guests on our podcast series. Is there a particular person or place or idea from the ancient world that really resonates with you?

532
00:52:10,470 --> 00:52:18,750
Oh, and I mean, so obviously kind of I write I write the heroines that really stand out and really resonate with me.

533
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:23,280
And so all the women that I've written about it would be the people who resonate.

534
00:52:24,330 --> 00:52:32,879
I mean, for place and I said I was in I was in Athens and twice this year, and I just don't think that there is anything comparable,

535
00:52:32,880 --> 00:52:43,500
honestly, to the Parthenon to actually to go somewhere so very iconic and so just so incredible.

536
00:52:43,500 --> 00:52:52,080
And I mean, the Acropolis Museum that I just found, just mind I could spend forever in there is such such an incredible museum.

537
00:52:52,380 --> 00:53:00,020
But I think to, you know, in terms of like a place to stand and and really feel a connection with the ancient world,

538
00:53:00,030 --> 00:53:04,620
I just think it's it's incomparable. A wonderful choice.

539
00:53:05,130 --> 00:53:08,640
Thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining us on the Classics podcast.

540
00:53:09,090 --> 00:53:10,830
Oh, I thank you very much for having me.