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Speaker 1: What if one of your closest friends or your most

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Speaker 1: trusted work colleagues actually had a secret side to them

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Speaker 1: that you weren't aware of.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's more common than you think.

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Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Art Simone and I'm on a quest to

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Speaker 1: uncover the interesting sides that ordinary looking people keep hidden,

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Speaker 1: because what's.

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Speaker 2: The fun of hiding it? Let's get it out of

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Speaker 2: the shadows and celebrate it.

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Speaker 1: The tricky thing is I don't know who I will

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Speaker 1: be speaking to or what they're concealing from us. I'll

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Speaker 1: get to know them, ask three questions, and from there

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Speaker 1: I'm confident we can figure it out together. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: conceal it with me, Art Simone, Our guest is here.

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Speaker 2: Roll the time.

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Speaker 3: Hi.

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Speaker 4: I'm John, I'm fifty. I used to live in Sydney,

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Speaker 4: but now I live in the UK. I've been a

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Speaker 4: writer for thirty years. I'm married, I have two step children.

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Speaker 4: I like traveling and I like reading a lot, and

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Speaker 4: I mean a lot. I don't think Art will guess

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Speaker 4: what I'm concealing, because I even managed to conceal it

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Speaker 4: from my best friends.

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Speaker 2: Hello, John, how are you going very well?

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Speaker 3: How are you?

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Speaker 1: I'm doing very well, So we've never met before. This

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Speaker 1: is very twenty twenty. We are meeting through the wonders

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Speaker 1: of technology. I'm talking to you all the way in

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Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. Now, how long have you been in

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Speaker 1: the UK?

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Speaker 3: For three years? Oh?

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Speaker 1: Okay, okay, fairly recent then, yeah, okay, three years? Am

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Speaker 1: I alowed to ask you what brought you to the UK?

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Speaker 1: Or is that delve into your concealingness?

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Speaker 3: No? No, I can be very open about that.

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Speaker 4: I caught a plane, you bitch.

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Speaker 2: All right, Okay, so a plane brought you to the UK.

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Speaker 2: Good for you.

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Speaker 1: For me lived in Sydney. I won't hold that against you,

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Speaker 1: but I'm glad you got out.

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Speaker 2: Sorry.

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Speaker 1: I love Sydney everyone, and I love every place in

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Speaker 1: the world. It's my favorite. I'm looking at you through

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Speaker 1: this beautiful screen at the moment. You've got glasses, you've

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Speaker 1: got a bit of a stubble, bit of bed, wearing

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Speaker 1: a nice tablecloth.

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Speaker 2: Sorry, I mean shirt.

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Speaker 1: It's wonderful, you know, just look like everyday, wonderful, pixelated

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Speaker 1: person in front of me. I'm going to ask you

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Speaker 1: three questions. So question number one, John, what was your

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Speaker 1: favorite subject in school?

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Speaker 4: Oh? That's as tough one. I wasn't very good at school.

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Speaker 4: I wasn't a very good student at all. I think

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Speaker 4: probably i'd have to go with biology, maybe, I mean, yeah, biology,

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Speaker 4: how we tick, why we work, that sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I just think of biology and cutting up rats.

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Speaker 1: But I know, I mean that could work too. And

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Speaker 1: you're saying earlier that you love reading. Yeah, and you're

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Speaker 1: a writer. I wasn't very good at English, and you're

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Speaker 1: a writer.

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Speaker 3: Now I know.

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Speaker 4: It's bizarre, amazing.

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Speaker 1: Now anything can happen, Anything can happen, dreams can come true, guys.

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Speaker 2: Question number two, do you have a favorite superhero?

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Speaker 3: I do, but.

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Speaker 4: It's so boring. It's Superman. I mean it's I mean,

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Speaker 4: he's got to be the most boring superhero you can have.

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Speaker 4: He's pretty much indestructible.

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Speaker 2: Why do you like him?

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Speaker 3: I like the inevitability of him, I do. I do

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Speaker 3: like that.

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Speaker 4: I like the complication of the dual life, but I

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Speaker 4: do like the inevitability of his power is strength never.

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Speaker 2: I can't even write that word inevertability. He never yes

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Speaker 2: that word?

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Speaker 1: Okay, biology Superman, I can't piecing it together. A Question

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Speaker 1: number three, and the final question I have for you

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Speaker 1: is who is your favorite musical artist.

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Speaker 4: Well, I've gone through three major crushes through my youth

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Speaker 4: for music, and the first was Kiss, and the second

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Speaker 4: was Culture Club and the third was Bowie. So there

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Speaker 4: was a kind of a theme running through them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, flamboyance, costumes, makeup, excitement, right right, right, Okay, Okay,

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Speaker 1: so we like Kiss, we like kissing rebellion in school.

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Speaker 1: Good guys, superhero, This is really hard today. Normally there's

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Speaker 1: like little hints in there, this is okay. And you're

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Speaker 1: in the UK and you're a rider and you're okay,

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Speaker 1: and you've hitden it you said, even your best friends

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Speaker 1: you've hitden it from Oh my god, this is chaos. Makeup,

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Speaker 1: all right, I'm going to stick with the makeup alright

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Speaker 1: because I like makeup, right, and I'm going towards makeup.

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Speaker 1: You like biology. I'm going to say you invented makeup.

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Speaker 1: I've just woked that you invented makeup. You've been time

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Speaker 1: traveling and you are the inventor of makeup because you

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Speaker 1: like the people that wear it in the music's And

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Speaker 1: you know Clark Kent, he dresses up, but he also,

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Speaker 1: like you know, has his kryptonite, and you know, you

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Speaker 1: like biology. So that's like almost like putting things together.

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Speaker 1: You invented makeup? Am I right?

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Speaker 4: Yes, I'm one hundred and eighty five years old and

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Speaker 4: my makeup is extraordinarily good.

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Speaker 2: Sarcastic, I'm writing that down.

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Speaker 4: Okay, you know me as John, but actually un Natasha Walker.

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Speaker 4: Under the pseudonym Natasha Walker, I published three erotic novels,

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Speaker 4: The Secret Lives of Emma Beginnings, The Secret Lives of

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Speaker 4: Emma Distractions, The Secret Lives of Emma Unmasked. They went

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Speaker 4: on to sell sixty thousand copies in Australia.

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Speaker 2: What how many hats are we wearing today?

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Speaker 3: You've actually got a real double life here.

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Speaker 2: Oh my god.

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Speaker 1: All right, so we've just found out that no, John

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Speaker 1: is not the inventor of makeup, which is a real

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Speaker 1: shame because I thought it could give me a discount.

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Speaker 1: But he is instead a writer who writes erotic novels

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Speaker 1: under the name of a lady.

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Speaker 2: He's got a he's got his own drag name. I'm

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Speaker 2: so confused.

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Speaker 1: Also, how many kilometric pens is he used to write

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Speaker 1: these books? You must go through a lot of pins.

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Speaker 2: I needs me all right.

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Speaker 1: So we've just met John, but we found out that

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Speaker 1: John is also Natasha Walker. He was sickly writing erotic

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Speaker 1: novels under that female pen name. Oh my god, it's

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Speaker 1: so exciting. There's so many hats here. How did this start?

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Speaker 1: How did this happen? Did you just wake up one

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Speaker 1: day and decide today I am Natasha Walker?

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Speaker 2: What happened?

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Speaker 4: Well, what happened was that I was a writer who

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Speaker 4: was getting absolutely nowhere with my work. I had an agent,

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Speaker 4: I landed an agent. I was like, yeah, I'm going

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Speaker 4: to get somewhere now. But nothing happened. But I had

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Speaker 4: written quite a lot of very rude stories many years before,

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Speaker 4: and my agent was asking around, going, please, have you

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Speaker 4: got anything else, anything else you can show me because

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Speaker 4: the book you've given me I love, but I can't

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Speaker 4: find a publisher for right And so I gave her

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Speaker 4: these pages. She came back to me saying, you just

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Speaker 4: cannot know. No one should see these pages. These are

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Speaker 4: just filth. You'll be carted off to jail for these pages.

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Speaker 2: It's like, what is this muck?

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Speaker 1: Exactly what I think in my pigeon hole right now,

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Speaker 1: you filthy man.

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Speaker 4: So I took them away, but about a week later,

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Speaker 4: on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald was

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Speaker 4: the story about fifty Shades of Gray, Yes, bursting onto

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Speaker 4: the scene and having this enormous publishing contract with Random House,

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Speaker 4: and suddenly the world went paorn crazy.

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Speaker 3: So there I was with a big.

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Speaker 4: Pile of pawn and my agent ran off to every

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Speaker 4: publisher in town and they snapped it up.

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Speaker 1: You said, you like fifty Shades of Gray vibe ha.

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Speaker 1: So what made you write all this erotic fiction in

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Speaker 1: the first place.

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Speaker 4: It was a kind of competitive spirit. My girlfriend at

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Speaker 4: the time was working this really dull job and one

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Speaker 4: of the girls that was working with her, her boyfriend,

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Speaker 4: was writing these erotic stories and sending them in and

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Speaker 4: so all the girls were reading them, and I was

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Speaker 4: I was kind of jealous. Really Enviously, these incredible power

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Speaker 4: over this room of girls, and so I wrote my own.

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Speaker 4: The problem was that they were very critical that you've

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Speaker 4: got a whole lot of girls in the room and

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Speaker 4: it's like a reading group, isn't it. And so they

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Speaker 4: sent back my work with red marks all the way

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Speaker 4: through it and critiqued it and ripped me to shreds. Really,

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Speaker 4: it was a very tough lesson to learn that I

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Speaker 4: could not write erotica. And so from then on, of course,

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Speaker 4: the competitive spirit kicked in and I tried to perfect

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Speaker 4: my art.

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Speaker 1: So you're like, all right, you've been your homework's been

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Speaker 1: handed back to you. They said, absolutely not fix this,

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Speaker 1: This would never happen. So in these books, you're writing

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Speaker 1: from a female's perspective as Emma, but you're also writing

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Speaker 1: from Emma's perspective as Natasha Walker. Why make it so complicated?

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Speaker 1: Why did you create Natasha Walker?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, So one of the things that happened when I've

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Speaker 4: got the book contract was that it was a really

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Speaker 4: women led movement. Fifty Shades of Gray. They weren't aimed

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Speaker 4: at men like a most erotica in the history of

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Speaker 4: writing has been aimed at men. This was squarely aimed

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Speaker 4: at women. And so the publisher really wanted to publish

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Speaker 4: me as as a woman. They thought it would be

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Speaker 4: much much better for sales and for everything. Really, so

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Speaker 4: we count with a Natasha Walker and use that as

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Speaker 4: my pseudonym, and it did changed the way people read

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Speaker 4: the books. People will pick up a book by a

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Speaker 4: woman and read in one way, and pick up a

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Speaker 4: book by a man and read in another way. The

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Speaker 4: only problem with my stories was that my Emma very

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Speaker 4: different to fifty Shades. The heroine in that is an

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Speaker 4: eighteen year old virgin who was seduced by a billionaire.

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Speaker 2: By life story, Actually.

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Speaker 4: Emma, Emma is a thirty year old married woman who

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Speaker 4: seduces an eighteen year old neighbor next door.

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Speaker 1: Oh, she's the girl next door. Did not all with

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Speaker 1: the boy next door?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: I mean in the first Emma book there was one

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Speaker 4: hundred page sex scene.

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Speaker 1: One hundred pages. Jesus Christ, I can't even last that long.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, there'd be like a four part series.

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Speaker 2: Jeez.

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Speaker 1: How many descriptive words do you have to use in

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Speaker 1: one hundred page sex scene? Or is it just so

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Speaker 1: descriptive as like and then he took off his sock,

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Speaker 1: and then he took off the other one, and then

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Speaker 1: then he just stood there for a bit and looked

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Speaker 1: at her, and she was just having a good time.

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Speaker 1: And then anyway, Actually, I think I could write a

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Speaker 1: hundred page It would be very good, wouldn't be engaging,

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Speaker 1: but you wouldn't see what's coming. There's always surprise in

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Speaker 1: the bedroom with me. So you are writing as Natasha

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Speaker 1: but also as Emma. But also you were John, this

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Speaker 1: is hats on. Hats on hats sometimes and I put

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Speaker 1: makeup on, I'm like, wait, who am I today?

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Speaker 2: What's going on? What's my tone of voice? Who are you?

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Speaker 1: But how do you even like get yourself in that mindset?

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Speaker 1: Or do you just write everything like yeah, I'm writing

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Speaker 1: this job. It would just slap another name on it.

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Speaker 4: Pretty much my whole writing life is so far has

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Speaker 4: been writing from the point of view of a woman.

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Speaker 4: I don't know whether that's just that's just how naturally

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Speaker 4: whenever I have a character in my head, it's generally

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Speaker 4: the strongest character that I'm dealing with is a female character.

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Speaker 4: And so far I've written, I've published five novels, and

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Speaker 4: all five novels have a strong female lead.

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Speaker 2: So basically, you're kind of a drag queen. I'm putting

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Speaker 2: it out there. You're kind of a drag queen.

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Speaker 1: Just you don't look like one, but you're still kind

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Speaker 1: of getting in drag.

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Speaker 2: Mentally, I'm probably just a drag queen. So have you

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Speaker 2: ever tried drag? I have to ask you, Well, I'm

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Speaker 2: wearing it now.

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Speaker 3: This is this is my.

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Speaker 4: Restaurant tablecloth, as you referred to it earlier.

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Speaker 2: Yes, very pizza.

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Speaker 1: Hut, it's beautiful now okay. When they sat down, they said, oh,

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Speaker 1: do you want to try, you know, like going under

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Speaker 1: a pseudonym, you know, a female name.

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Speaker 2: What was your reaction? Were you like, oh, it's fine,

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Speaker 2: or were you like, I don't know.

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Speaker 4: I first wrote my first novel when I was twenty one,

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Speaker 4: and Natasha Walker happened when I was forty, So I

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Speaker 4: was desperate to get published, to see my name on

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Speaker 4: the front of a book. In one sense, I was

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Speaker 4: dying inside because all I wanted was my name on

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Speaker 4: the front of a book, and I wasn't going to

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Speaker 4: have my name on the front of the book.

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Speaker 3: But on the other.

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Speaker 4: Side, my professional life was booming at the time, and

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Speaker 4: I thought it probably best not to be known as

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Speaker 4: the porn guy at the same time, so having a

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Speaker 4: pseudonym might be might actually work for me.

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Speaker 2: So just your agent knew?

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Speaker 1: Who knew that when you were like in the closet,

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Speaker 1: essentially in the library.

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Speaker 4: My parents knew, my wife knew. Before I even signed

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Speaker 4: the contract, I kind of went up to my boss

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Speaker 4: at the time and said, I don't want to bring

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Speaker 4: the company's name into disrepute. By my behavior outside of work.

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Speaker 4: But I've done this thing and they want me to

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Speaker 4: publish it, and I'm going to use a pseudonym to

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Speaker 4: protect myself and my family and the business. And they're like,

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Speaker 4: you know, can I do this? And he just laughed.

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Speaker 4: He loved it. He thought it was the best idea ever.

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Speaker 4: So that my boss knew, my family knew pretty much.

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Speaker 4: So I had to live this lie day in day out.

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Speaker 2: Oh it's tough for you, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: You walk past the bookshop and you know there's a

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Speaker 1: Natasha Walker and you say to the person, she.

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Speaker 2: Must be a cool chick. She just be pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: But I totally get it because I'm a fool, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, narcissist. But I've managed to just live through

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Speaker 1: my drag name. But it could be really hard. You

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Speaker 1: spent your whole life being wanting to be published writer

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Speaker 1: and then you know your name is it on the book?

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Speaker 1: But maybe just an idea, you could legally change your

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Speaker 1: names to Natasha.

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Speaker 3: What do you think I think I should by?

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Speaker 4: Now? I was interviewing writers at the time too, so

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Speaker 4: I was interviewing her best selling authors, and I just

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Speaker 4: wanted to scream at them saying I'm a writer too.

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Speaker 2: Guys.

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Speaker 1: Take me seriously, Come on, guys, I've got a book

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Speaker 1: two it's really popular. They were like, yeah, all right,

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Speaker 1: like you, Kasha, Yeah, what's that like? Have you ever

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Speaker 1: told someone to like prove it?

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Speaker 2: Prove it? You be like, oh, I'll write something now,

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Speaker 2: I don't know what.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I had a few encounters where people just laughed. They

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Speaker 4: just laughed so much and they thought it was funny

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Speaker 4: and they had no sense of it being true. And

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Speaker 4: it was a few days later that count to me

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Speaker 4: and going, wait, it was true what you were saying.

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Speaker 2: After you go and tell them, do they go and

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Speaker 2: have a little read? Do they let you know?

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Speaker 4: Most people, thankfully, people I know well decided for their

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Speaker 4: mental health, not to which I think is good. I'm pleased.

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Speaker 4: I remember a friend of mine gave it to his

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Speaker 4: mum and she devoured them. That was awkward.

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Speaker 1: I would love you to like hand the books to

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Speaker 1: someone without saying anything like did you like it? Like,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, that Natasha Walker. She's a dirty bitch and

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Speaker 1: you well surprise trick jar, trick chair. I'm tashi now

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Speaker 1: with Natasha Walker? How did you pick this name? Where'd

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Speaker 1: it come? From, you know, because there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: ways you can pick a name. Did you live in

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Speaker 1: Walker Street and your first pet was called Natasha?

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Speaker 4: What I wanted was because the title was strong, it

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Speaker 4: was Secret Lives of Emma, and I really wanted a

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Speaker 4: dull name. So the name wasn't the thing. It was

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Speaker 4: just the title of the book was the thing. And

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Speaker 4: I created a spreadsheet of boring names and made a

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Speaker 4: list of them.

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Speaker 1: I just want to say, if Natasha Walker, a real

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Speaker 1: life Natasha Walker is listening right now, we love your name.

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Speaker 1: And it's very special, Okay, very special. It's really unique. Okay,

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Speaker 1: if you're out there, Natasha.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: So people didn't know who Natasha was. They couldn't see

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Speaker 1: her face, they didn't know what she looked like, they

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Speaker 1: hadn't spoken to her. Was there ever a bit of

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Speaker 1: a witch hunt of people trying to work it out

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Speaker 1: and be like, you know, fool like me right now?

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Speaker 1: Many people actually guess correctly, unlike me.

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Speaker 4: Within the book community. Definitely, because I was working in

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Speaker 4: the book industry at the time, because it's very small

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Speaker 4: industry really, and the number of writers who know each

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Speaker 4: other and people were there were suggestions because it was

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Speaker 4: set in Mossman. The bookshop in Mossman was rife with

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Speaker 4: accusations that they were writing it someone they knew, and

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Speaker 4: so there was a lot of speculation around, and the

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Speaker 4: publisher really wanted to keep it that it was a

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Speaker 4: woman who wrote it, and so there was kind of

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Speaker 4: a little bit of pressure on me to keep it secret.

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Speaker 3: I had people come up to me.

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Speaker 4: One person't come up to me at a dinner and

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Speaker 4: pretty much declared that I was Natasha Walker to the

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Speaker 4: group that I was standing in, and I pretty much

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Speaker 4: had to say, under, there's no chance that I had

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Speaker 4: any time to write. Everyone knew that I was very

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Speaker 4: busy at the time. Their business I was involved with

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Speaker 4: was booming at the time, and I was taking on

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Speaker 4: more and more work, so it seemed plausible that I

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Speaker 4: had no time to write this kind of smut. So

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Speaker 4: I was able to back out of that one. But

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Speaker 4: there were twitter conversations in front of me, and conversations

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Speaker 4: that I was a part of where I couldn't join

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Speaker 4: in really because all I wanted to do is go,

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Speaker 4: it's me, and I couldn't do that.

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Speaker 2: It's me, guys, I'm a treasure.

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Speaker 1: And then what happens when you know someone wants to

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Speaker 1: interview Natasha about a fabulous book, like You're like, no

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Speaker 1: phone interviews, no phone interviews. Do you put a voice

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Speaker 1: changer on or can you do a very convincing lady voice.

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Speaker 3: That was the worst part of it. I mean I did.

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Speaker 4: I absolutely considered some dark room interviews with me and

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Speaker 4: drag with wonderful silhouettes. I didn't say no, I said

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Speaker 4: I'd think about it. It was difficult because there's so

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Speaker 4: much promotion needs to be done for these books at

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Speaker 4: the time, and I think things would have gone even

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Speaker 4: better if I had been able to do interviews. But no,

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Speaker 4: because of the pseudonym, it just became text interviews and

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Speaker 4: email interviews and that was really all I could do,

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Speaker 4: which was a real bummer.

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Speaker 1: Just go so so my phone credits run out, goers

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Speaker 1: I can't call, but you know, maybe just you know,

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Speaker 1: send me a letter.

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Speaker 2: I'll write a letter back to you.

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Speaker 1: When did you decide to finally like start telling people

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Speaker 1: because it was a secret, it sold lots of books.

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Speaker 1: You said, yeah, I reckon I could come clean that

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Speaker 1: I John M.

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Speaker 2: Natasha.

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Speaker 4: Well, publishing is a very much a rollercoaster, and I

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Speaker 4: enjoyed an incredible high, and everyone in the industry could

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Speaker 4: see that the low was coming. There was a rush

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Speaker 4: for porn. Every woman on the planet was reading porn

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Speaker 4: openly on buses and on trains, and suddenly it was

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Speaker 4: as if no one had ever read porn before, and

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Speaker 4: that reading porn was just publicly unacceptable, and so the

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Speaker 4: market just dropped and fell out. So I saw the end.

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Speaker 4: I saw the end coming, and so I decided to

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Speaker 4: reveal that it was me and get a little tiny

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Speaker 4: bit of a pat in the back before it all

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Speaker 4: disappeared and disappeared forever. And I got a little of

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Speaker 4: a spike in sales because the Woman's Weekly ran a

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Speaker 4: story about how this dude was writing all this women's pawn.

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Speaker 4: And I got on TV because I was this mysterious

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Speaker 4: man behind this mysterious writer called Natasha Walker.

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Speaker 1: A narcissist comes out, baby, it's what we like. I

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Speaker 1: knew there was one in there like me. Oh, he said,

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Speaker 1: I need to be on TV too.

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Speaker 2: Fuck you, Natasha, Fuck you. It's not about you anymore.

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Speaker 2: It's me. It's me.

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Speaker 1: So does that mean you have you stopped? Is there

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Speaker 1: no moditor Natasha Walker? No more dirty pages?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: Well, efficiently, there's no more dirty pages. I dropped Natasha

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Speaker 4: Walker at that time, the whole world dropped erotic fiction.

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Speaker 3: At that time.

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Speaker 4: Charity shops were filling up with copies of Unwanted fifty

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Speaker 4: Shades of Gray, and suddenly it was just overwhelming and

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Speaker 4: everyone just pulled away from it and just gave it up.

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Speaker 4: So there hasn't really been a market for it. I

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Speaker 4: think for Australia it ended abruptly when Tony Abbott admitted

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Speaker 4: to reading the book in his in his Budget Smuggler

409
00:20:04,640 --> 00:20:06,840
Speaker 4: as well on holidays. I mean that was a real

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Speaker 4: dampner that that really was a cold shower for the

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Speaker 4: whole of.

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Speaker 2: I really kill it. Yeah, Bloody, Tony Abbitt.

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Speaker 1: I need to think about this because you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: I want to write a sexy book.

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Speaker 2: One day.

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Speaker 1: People couldn't know that I possibly was writing a sexy book.

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00:20:21,320 --> 00:20:22,960
Speaker 1: So if I was to write a sexy book, I'd

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Speaker 1: need another name, and I've already got two names. But

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Speaker 1: I'm going to do a third name today. My pen

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Speaker 1: name could be Anita Root.

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Speaker 2: That could work.

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Speaker 1: Lovely, Amanda Rene, Amanda play with that could be a

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00:20:36,359 --> 00:20:39,560
Speaker 1: good one actually, or just like Aphelia Cox, it was

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Speaker 1: a book that said, you know, it was called The

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Speaker 1: Damp Pillow by Philia Cox. That'd be pretty good. So

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Speaker 1: John isn't the inventor of makeup. No, it's hands out

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Speaker 1: that he was hiding behind a female pen name and

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Speaker 1: writing erotic novels about women for women.

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Speaker 2: Dirty Dirty, Dirty Given.

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Speaker 1: Listening to an iHeart Australia and Kiss production Concealed with

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00:21:12,920 --> 00:21:15,399
Speaker 1: Art Simone. Listen for free on the iHeart app and

432
00:21:15,560 --> 00:21:19,399
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433
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434
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Speaker 1: with Art Simone. I look really good today, I promise

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Speaker 1: ma