WEBVTT - Plan The Perfect Murder with Ruth Ware 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.480 Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books. 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:05.320 Hi. 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:08.480 I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked. 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:09.160 By Reese's book Club. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:15.080 Today we're talking with the queen of the modern thriller, Ruthware, 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:16.920 And I've got a little question. 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:18.320 If you made your. 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:23.720 Living telling stories about committing the perfect crime, what would 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:24.840 you be googling? 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:29.000 I mean, if I ever get investigated, I am absolutely 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:34.159 going to prison, like forty years straight. It's all how 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.800 long would it take a body to decompose under these circumstances, 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:40.960 and what dostage of insulin would prove fatal? In more, 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:43.120 you know, it's just appalling. 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.520 There's something about a murder mystery that stirs something deep 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:50.080 in us. I mean, how many of us were glued 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:53.720 to our screens each week dissecting every glance and clue 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:57.320 in the white lotus or big little lies, whether it's 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:01.400 glamorous vacation gone wrong or a shadowy figure in a 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:05.000 locked room. The mystery genre taps into our obsession with 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:08.880 secrets and power and the thrill of not knowing who 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:11.680 to trust. And when it comes to building that kind 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:14.840 of tension on the page, no one does it quite 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.480 like Ruth Ware. Ruth is the modern day master of 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.440 the mystery thriller, loved by millennials. 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:23.319 Say that three times fast. 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.200 A New York Times bestseller, she's been called the Agatha 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:30.520 Christie of our generation, but she's truly in a league 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:34.240 of her own. Her psychological thrillers are so immersive that 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:36.280 you'll forget it's the middle of the day and you're 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:39.200 safe on the couch and nothing can hurt you. 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:40.080 Right. 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.800 Her latest book, The Woman in Sweet Eleven, just hit 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:46.920 shelves last week, and it's the long awaited sequel to 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:49.240 The Woman in Cabin Ten, which, by the way, is 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.280 headed to Netflix soon. Here's the rundown on the pair 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:56.640 of novels. Laura Lowe Blacklock has been through it like 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:00.160 through it. A decade ago, her home was broken into 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:03.000 and then her travel assignment aboard a luxury cruise ship 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:04.480 turned into a murder mystery. 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:05.160 Wrapped in a. 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:08.880 Near death experience, she fights and claws her way to 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.519 the truth behind the disappearance of the Woman from Cabin ten. 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.600 And when we meet Miss Lowe and Sweet eleven, she's 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:17.520 turned her trauma into a best selling book. Kind of 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:21.880 meta and what do you know, another luxury journalism trip 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:25.520 falls right into her lap, but instead of the open seas, 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.840 she's now surrounded by opulence in a glittering Swiss chateau 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:34.520 with very very dark secrets and maybe even a ghost 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:38.919 from her past. In today's episode, we're diving into the 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:43.399 magic of what it takes to craft the perfect murder mystery. 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:47.280 And for someone who traffics in crime, Ruth is the 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:51.640 loveliest person in real life. She's so charming and playful 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:54.280 it's hard to imagine that she's responsible for some of 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:57.840 the most wicked crime stories of our generation. We're finding 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:00.880 out what convinced Ruth to write her first ever sequel, 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.880 how her character evolved across time and trauma, and why 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:07.800 the scariest people aren't the ones lurking in the shadows, 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.160 but the ones signing the checks. Get ready to unlock 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:16.680 the mystery and maybe how to commit the perfect crime. 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:26.760 Let's turn the page with Ruth Ware. Ruth, Welcome to Bookmarked. 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:28.640 I'm so happy to have you here. You are the 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:34.480 queen of thrillers, and specifically psychological thrillers, and the psychological 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.440 thriller that has me in a choke hold recently. Is 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:40.400 a specific celebrity scandal. I don't want to name any names, 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.960 but if you were to make a modern day thriller 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:46.760 out of a real life scandal, which one would you 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:47.480 want to write? 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:49.800 In all of my books, I'm kind of obsessed with 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.840 the idea of the super rich, and I'm totally fascinated 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:57.240 by the phenomenon of billionaires building these bunkers to get 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:59.960 away from the rest of us. And I was recent 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.119 in Hawaii, and of course Mark Zuckerberg's bunker over there 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:07.280 is like massive local gossip. So I would love to 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:13.760 set a thriller in a celebrities bunker, either after the 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:16.280 end of the world has actually come, or maybe just 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:20.680 when they think it's come. There'll be so much juicy 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:24.520 material of you know, the billionaires and all their entourage 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.719 kind of quietly melting down in this post apocalyptic world. 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:30.880 That is such a fabulous answer. 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.600 I feel like one of the thriller tropes that people 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:36.800 love is rich people behaving badly. 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:42.400 Absolutely. Yeah, there's just something really fascinating about just having 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.600 the level of wealth that means that you're completely untouchable. 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.360 And I think however normal people start out, you can 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:51.279 sort of see them getting weirder and weirder and weirder, 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:53.280 the longer and the richer they are, And it just 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.520 seems to be this kind of human condition that happens 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.400 to you and suddenly you're, you know, pumping yourself full 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:03.000 of REJUVENI eating serums and drinking your son's blood and 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:05.080 you know, going to Mars or whatever it is. 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:06.680 Oh, that's hilarious. 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.120 You know. Sometimes they end up on end of the 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:12.800 world TikTok, and I did yesterday. They must have been 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:16.680 overhearing me, and I saw that at Costco you can 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:20.360 buy for sixty five dollars like enough food to last 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:21.080 you for two. 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.320 Months, oh like literally just a pack. 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.359 Yes, do you do any end of the world prepping? 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:29.039 I don't do it end of the world prepping, but 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:32.040 I am a little bit of a prepper by nature. 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:34.280 One of the things that I loved about our house 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:36.240 when we bought it was that it had a pantry. 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:38.360 And this was the thing I was most excited about 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:40.680 out of the whole house. Didn't care about anything else. 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:43.160 I was just like, it's got a pantry. And I 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:45.719 love having a really well stocked pantry with like, you know, 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:50.880 gleaming jars of preserved fruit. And I would say, at minimum, 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:53.839 I probably have twenty four cans of tomatoes at any 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:55.800 one time, So I don't. I don't think of it 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:57.960 in terms of the end of the world, but I do. 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:00.760 I like to think of my as a sort of 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.800 a good hostess and nurturing person. 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:06.520 I asked you an unhinged question and you had such 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:07.520 a normal answer. 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:09.200 Oh no, I think my ardes were. 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:12.320 Quite unhinged as well, written down, quite a deep psychological 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:14.560 rabbit hole of pinterest. 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:17.279 Perfect pantry from Ruth Ware. I'm going to need a photo. 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:18.240 Absolutely. 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:22.680 Do you watch any thrillers on TV or film? Are 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:26.080 there any movies that you would consider a masterclass in suspense? 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:27.719 Oh? 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.599 What a good question. I'm a TV addict. There's absolutely 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.280 no point in being snobbish about where your stories come from, 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:38.400 whatever the medium. If you are immersed in a gripping, 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:41.359 moving story that I don't care where that comes from. 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:45.560 At the moment, I'm watching Department Q on Netflix, which 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:49.160 is really interesting and very thriller ish. It's got a 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.400 little bit of a kind of slow horses vibe. But 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:55.760 in terms of film, Gone Girl, I thought was a 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.680 really good film adaptation of a really a book that 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.880 was incredibly difficult to adapt, and they did an incredible 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:02.680 job of it. 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:04.720 It's funny because we just had Emily Henry on the 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.080 show and she was obsessed with that book too. 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:09.680 It would just changed the game so much for thrillers, 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:11.920 and you know, it's so playful and it's so meta, 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:14.640 and it opened up so many possibilities of, you know, 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.080 ways to tell a story. It just felt really fun 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:19.040 and adventurous. 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:21.720 I don't know if Weight Lotus is as popular in 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:25.120 the UK as it is in America, but everybody that 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:27.760 watches White Lotus is trying to figure out who's going 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:30.000 to die at the end, like who will be murdered. 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:32.720 And as I was prepping for this interview, I was 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.440 just thinking, Ruth must know who's going to die at 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:38.320 the end of all of these TV shows. Is there 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:39.240 a tell for you? 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.080 I don't know. I actually I don't always get it right. 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:45.480 I get it right more often in books, I think, 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:50.000 because I'm a novelist myself, and so I see the 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.720 tricks that the other writers are doing more I see 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:56.600 how they're misdirecting. I think I find it easier to 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:58.960 sort of put myself in the shoes of a book 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:03.360 writer but actually film and TV, I'm more often surprised 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:05.800 because I think it's not a medium that I ever 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:08.880 work in, So I'm sort of much more just a 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.560 regular punter turning up and being like, Wow, this is 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:15.920 cool premise. What's going on? Yeah? No, we're pretty addicted 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.440 to white Loaters over here as well. But I have 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.480 not watched the fourth season, so please no spoilers. 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:23.560 I won't say a thing, but it does sort of 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.040 fall into your category of rich people behaving badly. 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:28.640 Absolutely. One of the things I love about White Lotus 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:30.520 and which I often returned to in my books, is 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:33.240 the idea of a kind of a super luck setting 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.840 that is also slightly nightmarish. And I kind of very 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:38.960 much sort of pulled that from Agatha Christie and all 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:40.599 of her you know, like Death on the Nile and 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.560 Murder on the Orient express settings where she creates these 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.400 what seemed to be incredibly luxurious settings and then sort 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:50.880 of turns them into a kind of gradually tightening nightmare. 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:54.679 And I think White Lotus does that really well as well, 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:58.280 where you go to these incredibly enviable places and they're 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:02.240 just filled with awful people and encroaching dead bodies. 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.480 I'm so glad you mentioned Agatha Christie because I heard 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.480 in another interview that you said you always sort of 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:10.520 wondered if she wrote Death on the Nile as an 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:13.600 excuse to take a little trip down the Nile River. 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:17.880 And I'm curious if you've done the same for any 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:20.160 of your books. Have you ever followed any of your 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:26.280 personal curiosities towards an exotic place or an outlandish place. 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:28.600 Have you ever just walked in somewhere and thought, yeah, 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:29.560 someone should die here. 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:33.160 I would say I more often do it the other 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:36.240 way around, unfortunately, which is that I write books about 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.080 places that I'm intensely curious about but have never been. 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:42.720 And of course, my you know, ambition when I start 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:46.040 writing is that I will go, and then it hardly ever, 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:48.440 seems to happen. So like The Woman in Cabin Ten, 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.400 which is set on a luxurious cruise, I have still, 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:54.440 you know, almost ten years on from that book, never 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:56.679 been on a cruise. And my intention while I was 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.760 writing it was one hundred percent to take a cruise, 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:02.280 write it off as a tax deduction. Yeah. And One 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.760 Perfect Couple was sort of similar. It's set on this 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:09.679 sort of Maldivian island and I'd never been on a 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:12.280 holiday like that, and I got to go to the Maldives, 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.960 and I was so worried that I'd written this book 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:17.360 and that I would have ended up making some awful 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:20.280 mistake or something wouldn't be right. And in actual fact, 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.920 almost I changed almost nothing. Almost everything was exactly as 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.560 I had imagined it. But I did do exactly what 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.960 you were describing, and that everybody else was on this 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.400 beautiful island having this incredible time, and so I sort 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.120 of walked around this island all week thinking, oh, you know, 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:39.120 if we were cut off for a few days, who 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:40.240 would crack first? 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:43.560 So you just said that the Maldives were exactly how 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:47.080 you imagined it, which is wild to me, because like, 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:49.800 what does your search history look like? How do you 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:53.640 even imagine a place you haven't been when you're researching 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:54.400 for these books? 0:10:55.400 --> 0:11:01.439 I mean, my search history is an absolute bloody battleground. 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:04.320 Or I mean, if I ever get investigated, I am 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:10.120 absolutely going to prison, like forty years straight. It's all 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:12.880 how long would it take a body to decompose under 0:11:12.880 --> 0:11:17.079 these circumstances, and what dosage of insulin would prove fatal? 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.520 In what you know? It's just appalling, but I do 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.560 try to intersperse it with you know, tax for writers 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:26.080 and things, just in case someone from the government is watching. 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.760 But no, I mean I watched documentaries and you know, 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:35.520 read things and leaved through travel brochures. I don't find 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.560 it super hard to imagine myself somewhere else. Lots of 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:41.760 the details that I put in were correct, but there 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.040 were two that I one that I didn't think of 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.400 and one that I just got wrong. And the one 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:48.560 that I didn't think of was I didn't realize how 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.160 worn the sea was going to be. You know, where 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.080 I live in Sussex in the UK, even in the 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:59.360 height of summer, the sea is freezing. You walk in 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.520 and you got is so cold. And I knew that 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:06.360 it would be warmer in the Indian Ocean, but I 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:08.640 wasn't prepared for how warm it was. And I do 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:11.440 really vividly remember that shock of walking into the sea 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.680 and just thinking it's like a hot top. It's like 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:17.880 it's really really warm. So that went into the book, 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.240 that moment where my character wades into the sea and 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.559 has this shock that it's kind of it's really warm. 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.520 But the thing that I got flat out wrong was 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:28.440 I put monkeys into the book because I wanted that 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:30.800 kind of screech, you know that they make in the night, 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:35.120 that sort of atmospheric sound. And of course monkeys don't 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:37.720 really swim, so it turns out there aren't any monkeys 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.560 on those little islands. But what there are, which is 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:44.960 even more atmospheric, is bats, these enormous fruit bats. So 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:47.320 the monkeys had to go, but the bats came in 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:48.959 to be spooky in their place. 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:52.679 Sort of in our hearing, you talk about the specifics 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:56.280 and the details that you're researching, like, I can only 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.319 imagine writing a page could take so long when you're 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:01.720 researching all these details in it. One of the reasons 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:04.480 I've always loved books is I feel like they're a 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.040 portal to a place I've never been. But I've never 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:11.600 considered that they're also a portal for the writer. And 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:13.320 now I'm hearing that from you. 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:17.280 It's always the smallest things that the hardest to research 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:19.280 as well. It's never the big things, the things that 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:21.880 you think you know when you start writing, oh, you know, 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:24.640 I'll need to consult somebody about that. It's always the 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:27.160 tiny little details, like how long would it take to 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:29.560 get from A to B? Or would this really small 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.880 plot point be plausible? And there's the stuff that you 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:35.280 just don't know. And until I went to the Maldives, 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:37.319 it didn't occur to me that there wouldn't be monkeys, 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.480 And I would never have googled that. It hadn't occurred 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.760 to me to google, do the Maldives have monkeys? But 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.600 researching is also a huge source of inspiration. You know, 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.880 I will get completely lost down Google rabbit holes and 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:53.840 Wikipedia rabbit holes and find out just fascinating stuff that 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:56.319 it never occurred to me to put in a book. 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.440 Not even always while I'm researching. Often I would just be, 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:02.200 you know, listening to a podcast or going about my 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.400 day to day chatting to a friend, and they'll say 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:08.160 something that will make me think that could be a 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.600 plot point. And I always think if I'm fascinated by something, 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:15.080 it's hopefully a good indication that the reader might find 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:16.160 it intriguing as well. 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:18.680 I'm getting sort of I don't know what the word is, 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:23.240 but almost like sparkly thinking about your imagination. I've always 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:27.360 heard that as we get older, like our imagination could decrease, 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.400 but it sounds like yours has just grown. Is there 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:32.600 anything that you do to practice it or it just 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:33.560 comes naturally to you. 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:35.960 Oh, I don't know. That's an awful idea that it 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.480 might decrease. Wow, now I'm going to feel like, is 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.800 my imagination as strong as it used to be? I 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.640 think I have a super visual imagination, which is interesting 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:47.720 because I have a number of writer friends who have 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:49.560 that thing, which I can't remember what it's called, but 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:52.040 it's basically where you have no visual imagination at all. 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.720 Like if someone says the word apple to you, you 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:56.960 know the concept of an apple, but you don't picture 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.720 an apple in your head, right, Whereas when I an apple, 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:04.680 I see an apple. So I think that really helps 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:07.800 when I'm writing. I literally see the scenes kind of 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:10.080 playing out in my mind's eye, and in a way, 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.720 that makes it much easier to write them, because you know, 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:16.920 you just you're describing in a way what your imagination 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:20.600 is providing. It also means that I quite rarely have 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.560 continuity errors and things in my books, so there's copy 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:26.600 Editors often spent a lot of time saying she was 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:28.520 actually on the left of the room, and now she's 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.560 on the right, and she seems to have teleported, and 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:34.280 that mostly doesn't happen for me because I'm sort of 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:35.400 seeing it in my head. 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:40.480 There's something called synesthesia, which Pharrell has, where you can 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:41.240 see colors. 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:42.520 I feel like we. 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.520 Need to coin a term for whatever this gift is 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:46.160 that you have. 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:49.840 I think it's just a really vivid imagination. And that's 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:52.440 all my teachers used to say on my parents' evenings. 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:54.880 Whenever my mom came in, they'd be like, well, she 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:58.080 certainly has a very vivid imagination in a way that 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:01.160 maybe didn't sound like it was a complete But I 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.800 love having a vivid imagination, and I think, you know, 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:07.400 it's part of what makes reading so pleasurable, is just 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.800 entering another world and it's so rich and exciting, and 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:13.280 it's why I love writing as well. You know, writing 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:15.920 is like reading on steroids. 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:27.720 Well, your new book, The Woman in Sweet eleven has 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:29.920 been out for a week now, and you've called it 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.480 a love letter to everyone who wanted more, which I love. 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:35.600 You said you didn't plan to write a sequel, but 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:39.200 your fans convinced you. I'm curious why you were so 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.400 hesitant to continue those stories because that book was such 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:42.760 a hit. 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.880 I think I've always been slightly kind of hesitant of 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:50.640 writing sequels to any of my books, and it's I 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.240 suppose it's for two reasons. One, it's sort of One's 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:56.440 a kind of technical reason, which is, you know, I 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.280 always write about just regular ordinary people. I don't write 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.600 about police officers or you know, forensic experts or whatever, 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:08.000 and so it's quite hard to explain why a regular, 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:11.560 ordinary person would keep encountering crimes. You know, you sort 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.000 of get that murder she wrote effect where every time 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:17.560 Jessica Fletcher opens her front door, there's a corpse. So 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.040 part of it is just a kind of plausibility angle. 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:23.680 But part of it is because my characters go through 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.480 so much in my books. You know, their physical danger 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:33.119 gets absolutely beaten to a pulp, you know, frozen, half drowned, 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:38.080 gas lit, psychologically destroyed. So I sort of feel at 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:40.840 the end of it like they basically deserve a break. 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.520 And I know with most of my characters that is 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.800 exactly what would happen. They would finish the book, they 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.080 would go back to their regular, ordinary lives with an 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:53.520 enormous sigh of relief, and nothing ever happened to them again. 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:56.119 And I feel like I kind of ought to respect that. 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:02.480 But there are characters in my book who I don't 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.879 feel that is true of, who would probably might not 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:08.879 avoid danger so much as kind of run towards it. 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:11.359 I've written a few characters like that, people who would 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:12.440 seek out trouble. 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:18.040 That's like every boyfriend I've ever had see. 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.720 I keep those characters fairly in my fiction. But yeah, 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:23.480 that was the genesis really of Sweet eleven. Was a 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:28.800 character and it's not low who would not be able 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:32.920 or willing to stay out of trouble, but it wasn't. 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.679 It's interesting because you said my fans convinced me to 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:37.879 write a sequel, and I don't think that was true, 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.800 because people have been begging for sequels for lots of 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.600 my books over the years, and I'm very selfish. I 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:48.320 write exactly what I wanted to write. I think it 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:51.600 was more they're wondering about what would happen next and what, 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:53.280 you know, what all the characters would be up to. 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:56.840 Made me start to wonder and made me selfishly want 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.359 to find out. I'd say they didn't convince me so 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:02.720 much as they lit us. Fuck. 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:05.320 That's cool to hear, and I don't find it selfish. 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:08.520 There's actually this music producer named Rick Rubin, who wrote 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:11.520 a book called The Creative Act that I love. He 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:14.879 says that in order to have great success, you have 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:19.200 to do exactly what you are inspired and creative about. 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:21.199 I love that. I'm going to type that out and 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:22.520 put it above my desk. 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.240 You would love the book. Yeah, it's a great book. Ruth. 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:29.679 You said something that I was so inspired by. I 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.359 have to ask you to expound on it. You said 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.200 that children aren't often seen as the death of creativity, 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.280 but motherhood gave you bravery, and you actually don't think 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:40.840 you would have been published, especially your first book, had 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:44.760 you not had kids. That is not something we hear 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:47.760 very often. What did you mean by that. 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.199 Well, I think it comes back to the idea of 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:55.280 selfish Really, I'd written for years, ever since I was 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:58.960 a teenager. I'd written Burke after Burke after Burke, and 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.280 just I wrote them for me and I just ended 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:03.920 up putting them under the bed at the end of 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:06.639 the day because I kind of I couldn't bear to 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.000 be rejected. I didn't think they were good enough. And 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.640 in my twenties I went to work in the book industry, 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:15.800 which was incredible because I got to work with all 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.159 these amazing writers, but it made my kind of stage 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:22.159 fright about writing even worse. And then I had my 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:24.320 second baby and I was on maternity leave, and I, 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:26.119 you know, I was a bit more confident as a 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:30.080 second time mum, and I just had this idea for 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:32.640 a book that I really wanted to write, and I 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:35.359