The Path to Getting Published

Every writer's journey is etched with the ink of persistence and passion, and my good friend Paul Schiernecker is no exception. Grab a cozy spot as we traverse the landscape of Paul's writing odyssey, from the pressures of youthful promise to the crowning moment of a publishing deal. With the authenticity of long-term friendship, we peel back the layers of what it means to chase the literary dream while juggling the pragmatic demands of a day job. Paul's candid recount of his path to authorship is a beacon for every closeted writer yearning to emerge and claim their space on the bookshelves.

As the conversation unwinds, laughter mingles with introspection—Paul's foray into comedy not only serves as an outlet for his creativity but also as an unexpected weapon against anxiety. We share tales from the front lines of stand-up gigs and the shared resilience within his comedy troupe, drawing parallels between humour and healing. Our dialogue then takes an intriguing turn, with a sneak peek into Paul's novel, "The Counterfeiter of Auschwitz." This unique blend of history and humor reveals the depth of Paul's craft and the influences that shape his storytelling, offering listeners a glimpse into the essence of blending genres with grace.

Amidst the personal narratives and laughter, we don't shy away from the broader strokes of the creative canvas. We tackle the encroaching shadows of AI on the arts, discussing the implications for the future of writing and authenticity. Yet, the episode comes full circle with a celebration of our roots in Southend’s burgeoning creative hub, where independent spirits fuel a renaissance of arts and entrepreneurship. So join us to uncover the joys, the struggles, and the unending pursuit of creation, all wrapped up in the warmth of community and the unwavering belief in following one's creative compass.

You can find Paul's website here https://paulschiernecker.com/

The JobsWorth website is here www.jobs-worth.com

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Contact me using hello@jobs-worth.com

Chapters

• 0:00 An Introduction to Paul Schiernecker
• 8:06 Career Progression and Transition to Management
• 13:42 Balancing Passion and Career
• 23:47 Embracing the Writer Label
• 29:34 Supportive Parents Engage in Conversation
• 41:21 Overcoming Anxiety Through Comedy Performance
• 51:26 The Counterfitter of Auschwitz Concept
• 1:02:39 The Path to Getting Published
• 1:12:43 The Writer's Journey and Advice
• 1:20:12 AI and Creativity
• 1:24:37 Creative Hub in South End
• 1:29:11 Mum's Closing Question

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh, give him something so he can keep a hug, isn't he, mate? Don't be silly. Thank you for joining, you're welcome, oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 0:06

That's very kind of you. You're welcome.

Speaker 1: 0:09

This is lovely as well. I've drunk this before. It's amazing, that's really nice of you, paul. Thank you, that's alright, mate. I've just got a bottle of wine from Paul, just for the anyone that's listening to this gift.

Speaker 1: 0:18

Jobsworth season two, episode three the Path to Getting Published. Welcome to the third episode of Jobsworth season two. Today I'm speaking with Essex-based writer and comedian and my good friend, Paul Sheenica. I've known Paul for the best part of two decades. We meet at college and whilst we don't see each other all that often, our orbits will often cross at point where a coffee and a chat is exactly what we both need. Handy then that I've now got two microphones and a nice, warm office to record it in.

Speaker 1: 0:58

For as long as I've known him, Paul has been a prolific writer, Whilst I'm unsure, he'd label himself as one. I'd go as far as to call him an artist. Once you had musician, songwriter and comedian to his list of talents, it feels like a title he's certainly worthy of. In 2023, Paul achieved most writer's dream and signed a publishing deal for his debut novel Ahead of its release in 2025, as I record this, it's already due to be published in three languages.

Speaker 1: 1:23

We sit down to discuss the years of graft, perseverance and determination that made it happen. In addition to a behind the scenes look at how he went about securing this career defining deal, we also talk about how he juggles his creative pursuits with a nine to five job as a subject matter expert on financial crime. The resilience needed to carry on doing what you love in the face of rejection. And Paul shares his view on whether everyone really does have a book in them. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to one of the most genuine and talented people I know, Paul Sheernikker. Take me back then, let's say Paul, age 11, sort of starting secondary school with these visions of what you wanted to be when you grew up. What did you want to be?

Speaker 2: 2:04

when you grew up At 11, I don't think I knew. I remember having feeling a lot of pressure on myself to know what it was that I wanted to do, because I was very driven. I was told when I was a kid that I was gifted and that I was a pleasure to have in class. I was like that kid who is now anxious and depressed. That seems to be the general journey for people who are told that they're good at school, right, okay?

Speaker 1: 2:29

So again our teachers are fucking as well. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 2:33

So at 11, I don't think I had a clear direction on it, but I knew that I needed to work something out because at that age, and probably generationally as well, you weren't told about the breadth of jobs that there were. It was always doctor, policeman, fireman working in an office or working in a factory.

Speaker 2: 2:52

And none of those really appealed to me. And then, when I was 14, we read Tequila Mockingbird. And what happened was I misinterpreted it and I went down a path, and now, in hindsight, I recognize what I should have done. So I read Tequila Mockingbird and I read about Attica's Finch and was like this guy is absolutely incredible. I want to become a lawyer, right, I want to become a human rights lawyer and I want to live his morals like to live to that level, yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:27

He's sort of your star.

Speaker 2: 3:28

His compass was one that you could yeah, exactly, and then if you've read Ghost Set A Watchman, the sequel that came out, it kind of in questionable circumstances where I don't think Harper Lee ever intended to publish it and there was some dispute over it. She was very old when someone found the manuscript and there were issues around almost like conservators or ship where someone Right understood.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Yeah, yeah, Someone's taken advantage of it.

Speaker 2: 3:53

See, in that Attica's Finch has got older and in the way that people apparently get older and become more right-leaning, he had become slightly detached from this hero that I'd imagined in Tequila Mockingbird. So I read that I was like I'm going to become a lawyer. I went to college and studied law. I wasn't very good at it. I somehow got into university and studied law. I still wasn't very good at it. I got a degree and then I was like, right, I need to get a job. So I got a job and then I recognized that the thing that I wanted to do was write and that the mistake I'd made is that I'd read about Attica's Finch and thought I wanted to be Attica's Finch, but what I want to do is create stories and worlds like that in Tequila Mockingbird. So it took a long time to come almost a decade.

Speaker 1: 4:35

What a great way to think about it, and do you feel like you fell into that trap because of the lack of guidance, support, transparency around what was available as a career? Because, like you say, you pretty much highlighted the roots that in our generation or at that age we were expected to go down?

Speaker 2: 4:53

Do you?

Speaker 1: 4:53

feel like that played a part.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Yeah, I mean, there's so much stuff that I can unpack there around. I was always. I always wanted to be like the good boy in my family. I'm the eldest brother of three and my brothers are so incredibly different from me, but the same at the same time and this like good boy narrative that I'd built up in my head I was. I then thought, well, I have to just toe the line across everything, and that meant going to college and studying like a proper subject and then going to university. And like I had to go to university, it was a big deal. I was the first person in my family to go to university.

Speaker 1: 5:30

So when you say just quickly, when you say you had to, is that you had to Me, me, me. Yeah, but your parents weren't driving there.

Speaker 2: 5:36

They weren't driving, they were very. They were really good at recognizing that the three of us were different and that that meant that we need our needs for different. So I can remember for Christmas Christmas is they would buy me they bought like the first home computer and they made sure that there was a word processor on it and I would write short stories when I was seven, eight years old. I wish I had any of those and I can remember them printing out on the, the paper that had like the perforated edges.

Speaker 1: 6:05

Yeah, you peel away.

Speaker 2: 6:07

And I had, they'd buy me like art supplies and I'd do a lot of stuff with like Plaster Paris and kind of not construction but kind of creative ways of working out.

Speaker 1: 6:19

There's an upright there for you, yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:22

And now I'm like, well, that's all of the, all of those things I really enjoyed I was really when I was young, I was really into drama and performance, but I was also very shy, so that was a balance to make. So, yeah, there was this, this recognition of the things I wanted to do, and also this need to tow a line that I had created for myself and is something I've had to unpack in therapy over years with multiple therapists. But, yeah, there's like good boy narratives that I'd built for myself. So it wasn't until the other side of university that I was like right, cool, I've done everything that I needed to do to for that. Those are the things that you're supposed to do when we're at.

Speaker 1: 7:00

You've checked those boxes, yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:02

And then I was like, right, okay, and now I've got a job and I started writing and haven't stopped.

Speaker 1: 7:09

Yeah, yeah, okay, let's, we'll move on to what you've done with your writing. And I think I was going to be surprised if you hadn't had an inkling at a very young age that writing is what you wanted to do.

Speaker 2: 7:21

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:22

I've had some curve balls, as you might have heard, like my mum's answer as an example to that question, but I was. I would have been really shocked if you hadn't had this desire or drive to do something with your writing at a young age.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:36

It doesn't. It doesn't surprise me in the best possible way. Let's go back a step and I just want you to fill the gaps for me, because I'm hyper aware of you and we've been friends for years, but I'm hyper aware of what you were doing through college.

Speaker 2: 7:48

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:49

And then, really like most people, I didn't go to university. So anyone that did it was kind of just an alien world. Everyone was on a foreign planet and I was. I was just doing my own thing, staying in my little section of Essex. You know however many years I'm still here. So can you feel the gaps for me? So you went to, you left college, went to university doing law, and then you and then you got a job. So can you kind of feel the gap from the first job you got out of uni maybe, and then tell us what you're doing now? Give us a bit of a potted history, yeah of course I can.

Speaker 2: 8:20

So I finished university and my parents always had a role with all three of us that you were either in education or you were working. Right, so my brothers went to university. So my next, the next brother down who's two years younger than me, rob, was working before I was, because he finished college and then he just had to start working Straight out into I'm going to say real world in a close spread out.

Speaker 1: 8:42

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker 2: 8:44

And so I, at 21, had to get my first job. I went to a temp agency and they had some work going at a bank and I was like, oh God, that really the thought of getting into banking and working as a bank, of not me at all. So I picked up some temp work and then some that was based in Southend. They had an office in Southend and then that position they were closing the whole of that office and during the couple of months that I had where I was being held over there, some jobs became available for the same bank, but working in London in card fraud Right, and I had a degree in law and had watched. Catch Me, if you Can.

Speaker 1: 9:31

Yeah, amazing and was like well, that sounds.

Speaker 2: 9:33

if you're going to be in banking, you might as well do something that's a little bit more interesting, and I'd always imagine myself in, like the Leonardo DiCaprio character.

Speaker 1: 9:42

Right, yeah. If you're going to be in Catch Me If you Can. In Catch Me If you Can. That's the. Yeah, I'd argue that might be the sexier role, yeah instead I'm like a bloated Tom Hanks character, carl, without the bloat Carl Renhati and Renhati.

Speaker 2: 9:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, so I moved into that working in card fraud and I loved it.

Speaker 2: 10:02

There was something about it that really worked, because it's so. The rules around it are really binary and a lot of the ways that I think fit like that. And I have these two sides of me that exist now where there's all business, and that I'll dig into what I'm doing today, because that was 2010. Yeah, started working in London, and then the super creative side, which is all of the stand-up and improv and writing and all those new demos as well, and yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:32

And they vary. They're split Like left and right brain. So I started working in Cardfraud and loved it, got promoted a couple of times, moved into a wider financial crime element. So you're then looking at money laundering investigations, drug trafficking, tax evasion and moved into a team that kind of a little more specialized. They'd only pick up a case if it had a value of over 25 grand, I think. So quite high level stuff that we were looking at. And as part of that I then did a professional qualification and was trained in internal investigations as well. So I started doing internal investigations. So a lot of it was branch staff who had been Everyone's favorite person, basically.

Speaker 1: 11:20

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:21

So branch staff who had been like, either caught up in debt or got involved with gangs and were then selling on customer data or making transfers that they shouldn't have done.

Speaker 1: 11:31

This feels like a podcast episode all in its own. I know you can only share so much on this. Yeah, I'm not mad.

Speaker 2: 11:36

I'm not even here to really talk about that. But it sounds crazy and yeah yeah, so I did 10 years working for that company. I'm not saying the name on purpose, but you can find it on my LinkedIn. This is not a secret. And then there was a case that I bought this sounds like so Haggard's old cop one day before the time I like it Go on.

Speaker 2: 11:57

And I worked this case and it just changed the way that I thought about how I'd been working and I didn't want to be a part of that company anymore and I wanted to move on. And I'd done 10 years and they gave me a watch for the 10 year anniversary and like the next day I had it in my notice and was like I'm done here Really and then moved to a FinTech or Challenger Bank. This was five years ago now. I moved there, kind of a sideways move there, worked as an anti-money laundering investigator and then managed the team. And then COVID happened and I was managing from my bedroom in my flat, managing 12 people for the first time. I'd never experienced line management before and there had been no because it was a start up. There wasn't really. I think I had like half an hour chat about what was expected of me as a manager and then I was in Good worse one.

Speaker 2: 12:51

And then we took on. There was some additional work, so there were then contractors that were brought in there under me as well, so I had 20 plus people, I think, and I was like no prior experience, no training. Yeah, yeah, and I just thought none of these people realised that I don't know what's happening at all, and I've since been told by people who are much more professional, much higher up, that nobody knows how to adult.

Speaker 1: 13:14

I was going to say that Nobody knows how to do their job.

Speaker 2: 13:16

And then since then I've moved into more project management side of stuff. So I'm looking at the strategy and the reasons that customers behaviour is a particular way and how we can combat that, so using artificial intelligence and using data to drive the way that we then investigate the why are monitoring concerns?

Speaker 1: 13:36

Wow, yeah, it's, and that's really interesting because part of the part of the conversation I wanted to have with you is how do you juggle? Is there, I guess, my thought processes, or was is there almost this element of resentment about the fact that you have to keep a nine to five going to fund what it is you really want to be doing? But what it sounds like from the way you even talk about it is actually, if you can separate those two things on each side of your brain and you're working a different way, you sound like I'd say equally maybe not equally, but really into what it is you do.

Speaker 2: 14:06

Yeah, I think that has come over time where if you'd said to me at 22 that I would be working in banking for a decade, nearly 15 years it wouldn't have been cool because I was like pushing back against the system and the man at that point. But actually being in a position where I have a regular wage and I'm then able to use that for the things I enjoy the vast majority of the time I get to work from home, so I can work on creative projects before work or after work, or both in some instances, and I find that consistency really helpful for my mindset and my mental health. To go where you have a structure to five days of your week and then the other side to be able to do what I want with all the rest of my time, is that for the time being, it's a really nice balance. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:59

Don't get me wrong If someone, if my agent, called me after I get out of this podcast and said we've got the biggest, the biggest publisher in the UK who is going to take it, and HBO are going to make a mini series of your book. You can quit working now. I'd go.

Speaker 1: 15:16

The answer is going to be pretty straightforward and fast yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:19

But I think the part of the journey that I've been on has then informed the things that have happened to me in the last couple of years. I then really, really appreciate them and see them as being these high tide marks of what I've achieved and it's not in no way is it an overnight success, but it's. Every step of it has helped me grow and helped me reach the point that I'm out.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Yeah, that's really good. I think that's really nice insight and also quite heartening for people to hear that might be in a similar situation, where they are having to juggle this pursuit that they are intensely passionate about and obviously have a talent for with something that they know gives them security, gives them structure, and maybe you're getting to that point where they're thinking about taking a leap or ending one to pursue the other more wholeheartedly and you just don't have to do that. I think zooming out sometimes and finding an opportunity that works so you can have both of those things transition seamlessly but maybe more easily, is doable, because you're an example of that.

Speaker 2: 16:29

Yeah, I think I'm so in awe of people who are able to make that leap, because I know that you have. You were working under other people and then you've made the move to be self-employed and to go out on your own, and I think that's so cool, not having to answer to anyone else, and I'm sure it presents a whole league of other challenges. Yeah, it does, but yeah, for me, I've found a balance in what I'm doing currently. Nice, that's really lovely to hear.

Speaker 1: 16:59

I'm going to take you back in time, back to secondary school, back to college, back to this teenager. That is so my memories of you were always being creative, always with a guitar, always telling jokes, always being quite extrovert, in my opinion, in that kind of magnifying glass that I've got back on that time, but definitely being into writing, being creative, being into drama, being, I would argue, more sensitive than your average teenager going through college, and I would classify myself in a similar way. But what do you at that time? How do you feel that was perceived by your peers and by people around you? Because I have memories of where I used to I still write poetry, I write a lot of poetry and I used to get the piss taken out of me all the time for writing poetry. So how do you feel that was viewed at the time?

Speaker 2: 17:56

I found it really difficult and it's one of those things I'm sure you have this as well where you look back and you think I wish I could go back and sit down with 16 year old John or Michael Paul and tell them that it's okay to enjoy the things that you do and that a lot of the toxic masculinity that still was around even that I suppose it was like 20 years ago a lot of that has been smoothed out. Yes, but I always I struggle with it because there's a part of me that lent into the idea of being slightly outsider or thinking that I was misunderstood, and I think there's a cliche where you, like I was listening to the Smiths a lot.

Speaker 1: 18:37

I was going to say I remember maybe music might have played a part in that. Yeah, yeah, of course, and the lyrics and everything that you're kind of immersing yourself with at the time. I say you again with the broader sense that a lot of people our age at college were doing a very similar thing and really leaning into it. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:52

And I think that age, because I'm now at a point where some people that I know have teenage children and you can see them going through those motions and a lot of that is them trying to find themselves and trying to find their place and work out who they are. And I have to settle with that, that all of those things and the ways that we would play out. You're just trying to find out who you are and you have to kind of push boundaries and wear ridiculous outfits and paint your nails or write awful songs. In my case, I'm really well at. And also when you said about me always kind of like playing songs or having a guitar, I watched the Barbie movie and really cringed at the idea of Ken playing guitar. At you, Right.

Speaker 1: 19:44

Yeah, so I still haven't seen it. Obviously, barbie is even bigger conversation over the last couple of days with the Oscar nominations and everything. I haven't seen it, but I've heard lots about that, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:53

So the idea of a man thinking that the biggest compliment you can give to a woman is to sit them down and make them listen to the song that you've written. Yeah, that's my concern, that there is somewhere in my history a girl or a girlfriend of mine who's like yeah, you did do that.

Speaker 1: 20:12

I asked the question about the perception back then because I've got, as you know, I've got two young sons, five and two silly names. It's very silly names.

Speaker 2: 20:20

Five and two.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Five and two yeah, marginally worse than their actual names, but I'm joking but they, I worry for them in a number of ways. There's so much anxiety about their future. I think that's just being a parent in general, but also just seeing the world. The way the world is working and it has changed a lot since we were at college and you know, even the sort of vernacular that would have been used to describe people that were sensitive or wrote poetry or whatever has changed massively. Now there's a lot more acceptance. But I still look at my kids and think God Finley, my oldest, five years old, I think he will. He wants to go into drama. You can see it in him. He wants to be on stage and there's this element that's like I'm going to support and push him to do that, if that's what he?

Speaker 1: 21:04

wants to do, but I also worry what he's opening himself up to and I don't want to be bogged down by that kind of stigma, that kind of self perpetuating view that I have based on my experience as a teenager.

Speaker 2: 21:17

Yeah, it must be hard not to dwell on your own experience when you're seeing what could potentially be coming down the line for your son.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Yeah, it's a really interesting one, but, like you say, I think we are living in a very different time where. I don't know if you even describe it as sensitivity now. It's just, as you say, like embracing the things you like doing.

Speaker 1: 21:35

If you like writing poetry, if you like writing music, if you like drama, whatever it is, then it's just accepting that. So I think that's, and I think, without you leaning into that, without pushing against it and being comfortable, sitting maybe left, just slightly left of like what is the norm at that age, you wouldn't be where you are now. You could argue that, yeah, yeah, completely.

Speaker 2: 21:55

And I. Sometimes I talk to people at work and they don't. It surprises me when they don't have that other thing, like they have their job and then they might have a hobby. But when I list off the things that I'm involved with and the things that I'm doing, they're like you're what? Why?

Speaker 1: 22:15

why is the time yeah?

Speaker 2: 22:16

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's the recognition Like I was an overachiever as a kid and I'm still trying to hit that, so that's a part of the reason that.

Speaker 1: 22:26

I do. Do you think that is one of the motivators for you that you are trying to overachieve, or is it that you're just embracing the things that you enjoy doing so?

Speaker 2: 22:34

it's probably both. I think that there I wouldn't do anything unless I didn't deeply enjoy it, especially when it comes to you only have a finite amount of time, especially, yeah, things you're doing outside of work.

Speaker 1: 22:46

Yeah, yeah, you want to make sure that they are so.

Speaker 2: 22:49

I make sure that I bury myself completely myself, completely in the things that I enjoy, and so a part of it is definitely that that's what I get a lot out of I the idea of sitting in front of a blank word document, knowing that I'm about to try and write a new book is like the most exciting feeling to me, whereas I know other writers who hate first drafts, who hate staring at a blank page, who get writer's block, and it's interesting the way so many people can be creative, but that creativity looks different and the way that you function in that space can be different as well. Yeah, the overachiever in me, I think, is just trying to get approval and that use. When I was really young, that was directly to my parents and I think as you get older that just becomes a wider set of people.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Yeah, I think we're all guilty of that in some way, shape or form, to a lesser or greater degree, maybe the label writer. How comfortable are you with it? And then and then, when did you start to? Did you adopt it or did you start to embrace it because other people were calling you it?

Speaker 2: 23:57

It's a good question. I, as you said, the word writer. I kind of like bench a little bit.

Speaker 2: 24:02

I'm currently reading do you know, Garth Marengi I know, I know Garth Marengi, but I wouldn't have read his work, yeah, so I'm reading Garth Marengi's in Casarot at the moment and he describes himself as like artist, writer, dream weaver, as this kind of farcical character that Matt Holness plays Garth Marengi, and so there's a part of me that is uncomfortable with it because, in the same way that if you were to tell people that you're a comedian, they're like well, tell me a joke then yeah. If you tell people that you're a writer, they're like where's your book?

Speaker 1: 24:40

Yes, and.

Speaker 2: 24:41

I am able to produce results. I can show the receipts for that, but it's still it's a word that clangs slightly, I think the element of it that I'm comfortable with. I remember years ago my friend, ben Spall, said to me that I should get into writing a journal and blogging and fortunately the website PaulShenneckercom was completely available. That's so funny isn't it?

Speaker 1: 25:06

I wouldn't imagine that.

Speaker 2: 25:08

So I started blogging on that and then had a conversation with him about at what point do I call myself a writer? And he was very comfortable. He blogs and he's got a website and all of this cool stuff that he does. He's based in New York now and he said if you start calling yourself a writer, then other people just believe it.

Speaker 2: 25:27

He's like whatever your Twitter bio is, people just go. Oh yeah, I guess that is the case. So that's I started adopting it at that point. I guess in 2012-ish it probably would have been, and so I have to deal with the fact that, yeah, people are going to call me a writer and we're talking to you and we're going to go on in a lot more detail about the book deal.

Speaker 1: 25:48

We're talking to you now as someone with a deal and that you know. If there's any time that you can call yourself a writer, it's then.

Speaker 2: 25:56

Yeah, probably. Now there is a level of legitimacy to it that didn't exist before.

Speaker 1: 26:00

Yeah, it's strange because there are. I have this, I guess, this internal thing in my head all the time about labeling myself and label labeling yourself in line with what you do. So I have a problem calling myself a recruiter because I have a lot of issues with what I do for a living and the stigma and the stereotype around the industry.

Speaker 1: 26:20

So I say I work in recruitment as a recruiter, but I don't want to label myself as a recruiter. It's very different from saying you're a writer when I speak to my brother, who's an artist. Yeah, he's, he's an artist is one way of describing what he does. But he's also a published author. Yeah, Now, his books are predominantly visual and less written word, less copy. So he has a real issue of calling himself an author, but he's a Sunday Times bestselling author because he released the book.

Speaker 1: 26:48

So labels are quite difficult and they do make you feel certain ways, but I, I, I would. It might just be my view, I'm much, I'd be much more comfortable embracing writer as a label than recruiter I feel like it should be more comfortable with that.

Speaker 2: 27:03

Yeah, the only the downside of it is when, in a WhatsApp chat, I either something auto corrects incorrectly, or that I've get the wrong tense or something, and someone now is bound to respond. I thought you're a writer. You can be a writer. It's the editor's job to catch that stuff.

Speaker 1: 27:22

Yeah, well, we're talking about the process a lot more, because I remember talking to you when you were going through I think you'd done, you know, a few drafts, or at least two drafts of the book that you've gone on now to secure the deal through at the time and you were telling me about the editing process. You were telling me about these conversations with your agent.

Speaker 2: 27:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:40

And I was like no, I would have given, like I would have given up already. So that kind of tenacity and that view to go, yeah, I can take notes and I can take feedback and still want to craft something that has to be like this intrinsic drive in you that pushes you.

Speaker 1: 27:54

But we are going to talk about that in a bit more detail, if that's all right. Yeah, you, I remember from a young age you started down the route of self publishing. Yeah, so how many books have you self published? Five, five, okay. And do you feel that maybe, putting yourself through that process, did you try and get those books out to agents or did you just decide I want to put something of my work out into the world and this is going to happen?

Speaker 2: 28:19

There was a combination there. I somewhat I can't remember who mentioned it to me, but somebody turned me on to the idea of independently publishing or self publishing and gave me some links to a couple of. There's an Amazon subsidiary which is now called Kindle Direct Publishing.

Speaker 2: 28:37

Right, so you then books are printed to order. You do all of the work yourself in creating the copy and then creating the cover or getting someone to create the cover for you, and then each book that is then made by Amazon you'd get a very small cut of, and if you were selling on a large enough scale then you could do very well out of that, right? But I wanted to try that out, so I wrote a book of short stories called when Did All the Money Go, which is about my experiences of university. So it's 10 short stories in there and I self published it to see what that felt like, right, and see how that went. My friend, adam Gardner, designed the cover for me and it's one of my I'll still go to my book show.

Speaker 1: 29:18

Yeah, it's one of my favorite things that he's done for me.

Speaker 2: 29:20

But we've worked on other stuff since then as well and it was fun. It was really good to have something that I I could send people a link for and they could read. I think my parents were quite upset because I don't think they've realized how debauched. And at one point One of I think my mom called me having read the book and she was as soon as I opened that. Soon as I answered the phone she went cocaine, paul, cocaine.

Speaker 1: 29:55

Yeah, you had that conversation. They're very reading it. I mean that's nice.

Speaker 2: 29:59

Yeah, I know they're very liberal, my parents, but I think that might have been yeah, much for it too. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:04

Wow, you mentioned your parents. What was their reaction when it became clearer that you really wanted to pursue writing? What was their reaction? Were they supportive of that?

Speaker 2: 30:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, really supportive. And we, I think with the recognition that they were taking me to Drama lessons and doing bits and pieces and they would read things that I'd written when I was much younger. So I think it probably felt like a puzzle piece slotting in for them as well, yeah where I don't.

Speaker 2: 30:38

I know that they're happy that I'm I've got a job and I'm paying my bills and that that in some ways, is Satisfying to me. I enjoy what I do and when I talk to them about it, they can tell that it's something that I genuinely care about, I'm knowledgeable about, but the that I think they know that writing is my passion and my dad's all along the way. When because for a long time I was writing things, sending them off to agents, getting rejected and then hitting like a depressive period because you, at that point I thought if I don't do this now, then I'm never gonna achieve anything. I'm gonna end up at some point giving up on it and just accepting that all I'm gonna do is work on. I'm five and that what sort of age was that? It was really.

Speaker 2: 31:25

I was really struggling with it probably around 25, which is silly, because 25 is nothing now in hindsight yeah, yeah, of course but at the time I think so I was in bands when I was in college and University and then into my 20s, shout out to negative pandas.

Speaker 2: 31:44

I was just about to say yeah and sock yeah and then that there was a myriad of reasons that that didn't work out, some of which were on me. And then I was doing more writing and wanted to write books and Whereas wanting to be a rock star. When you're in your early 20s, there's a very finite period in which you can do that, but as a writer you don't have that same Pressure. There's no time pressure.

Speaker 1: 32:13

Yeah, it's by every day. Yeah, far, far later. Yeah, exactly like.

Speaker 2: 32:18

George RR Martin as an example, or, I know Harper Lee was in her late 30s or early 40s, right killer mockingburbers released and. But even with that I I didn't want to settle into just having a nine to five I'd and I'd really struggled to know what I was supposed to do with all the rest of my time if I wasn't Pursuing something. So at that point I had you and I was sending off to agents in the post. This was before they had online portals to the way that it works. You send the first three chapters to an agent. They take two, three months to review it because it's sat in a big slush pile with all the other manuscripts, and then you'll get A.

Speaker 2: 33:00

Generally it would be a photocopied message saying thanks, but no, thanks, right, and they might write Paul at the top of it, just so it feels like you've had some involvement. And I would get, and you'd have to send a self-addressed envelope to the agent. So I then get my an envelope back in my own handwriting with my rejected manuscript in it. And that went on for a long time probably. I'm trying to think when the first one I might have sent off in 2010, 2011, when I first wrote and finished a Story so what?

Speaker 1: 33:36

we're talking? 15, no, no, 20. Sorry, we're not doing 15. This is why I don't do math for me. 25 like your mid, yeah, so that was around the time. And as you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you open yourself up to so much. Yeah, very vulnerable place to be.

Speaker 2: 33:51

Yeah, exactly, and I think still trying to recognize who you are and what your place in the world is. And you, I was definitely more secure in who I was as a person then. Then I was as a teenager but there's still stuff that's up in the air around it as well and, yeah, that that period was difficult to to deal with that rejection, I guess, but over time I Built up a thicker skin around it because you have to.

Speaker 1: 34:17

I was gonna say it's part of the course. Yeah, the series evil of the pursuit that you want to or the goal you want to attain.

Speaker 2: 34:23

Yeah, and my, my, I remember having conversations with my dad because I was living with him at that point, and he would say, well, if it's not this one, then it could be the next one, or if it's not this agent, then it will be the next one.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Yeah, he's like you are a great writer, you've got a gift. Oh, lovely, and that's. I know. I Know not every, not everyone has that support. Hmm, and, and the conversations I've had with him recently, when the news has gone in a very different way and things feel like they're finally moving and that things are changing and that it could all develop in a Beautiful way, he was like Steve, I told you I knew all along Nice to have that belief, and if you need to take a minute, you're welcome to take a minute, but.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Yeah, I think, I think we're both. It sounds like we are both graced with really supportive parents and, as you say, not everyone has that. And and like my, my mom Again going through therapy I could argue and she'll listen to this and go what the fuck do you mean? But, yeah, all the positivity my mom could my. If I turn around to my mom and said I want to be a national at 37 years, yeah, she would believe that I could be a national and like that support and that I'm sort of wielding Unyielding support that we have from our parents, I think is is amazing.

Speaker 1: 35:41

Yeah and how nice for your dad to be able to take a step back and he's always known it.

Speaker 2: 35:45

It's always known.

Speaker 1: 35:46

Yeah, it's gonna happen, yeah and now he's seen it, which is fucking amazing.

Speaker 2: 35:50

It's incredible so.

Speaker 1: 35:52

I can see. I can see that makes you emotional. Talk about it.

Speaker 1: 35:54

Yeah, of course it's an. It's an incredible thing, and I think about my boys when they're older and you know if, if they have similar goals or whatever their goals are, seeing them achieve whatever it is they set out to and struggle and blood, sweat and tears to push towards is, yeah, it's amazing, right? So he and I know he's incredibly proud of you, which is great, and so the self-publishing thing. I guess it's like giving birth to a child in a way, isn't it? And then just saying what do you think of that? Like you're leaving yourself open to judgment from literally anyone. Yeah, go on Amazon and buy your book.

Speaker 1: 36:29

Yeah, was that was that a weird time.

Speaker 2: 36:32

Yeah, it was. I had my, my circle of influence was smaller and I'd listened to people who were, who had been there beside me and knew about my writing. I'd listened to them. But then when because you can kind of Push promotion through Amazon or social media then people who didn't directly know me started to read it, which is wonderful because it then you can see the increase.

Speaker 1: 37:01

That's what you're doing it for, is it, of course?

Speaker 2: 37:04

but you're right. You then open yourself up to those people being in a position where they can. They don't have to protect you in the way that people that you know do. And some of the reviews Not just of that book, but then the subsequent ones as well people were just honest that they they downloaded it or they bought it and then it wasn't for them, and that's another thing that I've had to come to terms with, that some of the stuff I write isn't for everyone, and that's okay.

Speaker 1: 37:31

Exactly, you can't please everyone, yeah, and if you aim to do, then it becomes less of your writing.

Speaker 2: 37:36

Yeah, I'm very universal, yeah, and I don't, I'm not gonna be that writer in the same way that the, the people who I Considered to be like my personal heroes and who I look up to, they were never Like the I say Michael McIntyre. So, you know, like headlining arenas, that's not the very mainstream yeah yeah, that mainstream stuff is not where I would ever want to be. Like they say you should write what you'd want to read, and None of the stuff that I'm interesting reading is in that scope either. Yeah, understood.

Speaker 1: 38:09

You went on. So when did all the money go? Was the first book? Mm-hmm? Yeah, I Remember you doing some. You publish one of your and maybe I should have done this with the prep I was doing for the podcast, but it was something around the travel that you done.

Speaker 2: 38:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:24

I want to. I want to say it was called Yalla.

Speaker 2: 38:26

It was called Yalla. Yeah, I think it's good for that. I'm a wrist.

Speaker 1: 38:30

So how, how much? How much a part did travel play? Because you treat you still travel now like I remember seeing you just pop up in a country on on Instagram, I'm like what the?

Speaker 2: 38:41

hell was Paul. I just got off again.

Speaker 1: 38:43

How much does travel play a part in that creative process? Do you think it's important?

Speaker 2: 38:46

Yeah, it is, and you've you you might not. You won't know this because I'm taking this month off of social media, but I've just got back from Slovenia.

Speaker 1: 38:57

And I think you did mention it to me. I wouldn't know, it's like bled. Yeah, did you go to like we didn't make it?

Speaker 2: 39:02

We didn't make a case, so we I think when we spoke, I had the intention of going to like, yeah, I understood. And what? Even while I was there, it was so incredible I'd never been anywhere. That was, I've been. I've been to cold places because I've been to Mongolia, but the ice and the snow there was Incredible. And then we were staying in an accommodation in the mountains and each morning You'd wake up and go like watch the sunrise.

Speaker 2: 39:28

And just seeing the sunrise over these white peaks Just reminded me of all the other travel experiences I've had where you just go wow the world is incredible and I'm so lucky to be here and to be a part of it, and that makes all the difference compared to the days where you get up and it's gray in South End and you trudge down to Cafe Nero and you all just some sludge and then you go back to your desk. You're like why? Why is any of this happening to any of us? Yeah, so yeah, it's Travel. I there was a part of me that wanted to become a travel writer Exclusively after writing yellow. So yellow was about my experiences walking in the Sahara desert. A group of us did 100 kilometers of the Sahara for charity and this was.

Speaker 2: 40:19

This Is over a decade ago, I think. Yeah, I was like 25 and that was the first time I've been out of Europe. It was the first time that I'd done Backpacking or serious travel in that sense and similar thing. I remember that's the first time I'd seen the Milky Way. I've never been anywhere where there wasn't light pollution. Wow, and I looked up. I was like that's the Milky Way, but that's what's going on, wow, yeah, and all of that feeds into the things that I write and I feel more comfortable now putting elements of travel other countries Into my writing because, I experienced a little more in 37 years than I had at 22 when I first started writing.

Speaker 1: 41:00

Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense. And then I was always interested in in how travel, because I think the more we travel, the more we suppose our selves to different parts of the world, both culturally, the cultural sensitivity, and different People we meet along the way. Yeah different experiences of living start to seep into how we write and how we express ourselves. But on top of your writing, you've done a lot in in comedy, which I am incredibly, I just in awe of you for doing, because I I would love to experience standing on the stage, but similar to that, I would never do it because I would shit myself.

Speaker 1: 41:36

So tell us a bit about you as someone that has suffered from anxiety, suffered from depression. It doesn't always. I think. We hear about a lot of comics and their backstory tends to involve some form of depression.

Speaker 2: 41:50

Yeah, that's a the sad thing to say exactly.

Speaker 1: 41:53

But as someone that say that suffers from anxiety or suffered from anxiety what. Possesses you to want to put yourself and you've talked about the anxiety attacks, almost panic attacks, that you have before going on stage. What is she's you to want to do? It's mad, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 42:07

Because I know you said that you considered me to be quite an extroverted character when we were in college.

Speaker 2: 42:13

That is the extroverted part of me, but I am an extroverted introvert, so I have the capacity to expand out and Showcase stuff. But then I'm like, right, you need to retreat for a few days and just look after yourself and recover because that, yeah, that drains my like social battery. So I, I was always. I was really liked comedy and I my, when we were kids, my dad would let us stay up and watch. Remember Haven badly, yeah, or bottom, or the young ones.

Speaker 2: 42:46

Yeah like all of the stuff that we were probably too young to watch, that so many of the jokes went over my head and now when I rewatched, I'm like, damn dad, she really should have been exposed like a ten year old kid to this, and but it was just never something that I considered doing. But I'd look up to Rick Mao and A Edmonton and Robin Williams was a big presence when we were that age, and Jim Carrey as well, was like one of the biggest movie stars, slash comic actors.

Speaker 2: 43:16

But it was never something that I'd focused on. And then, when I started working in London, I was working with Guy called Danny, who was also from Southend, and he went to an improv improvised comedy show in Southend and at the end of that show they said if anyone wants to sign up to do the next course, we offer a ten week course where you attend one evening a week and then at the end of that ten week course you perform a show in front of your friends and family. And Danny not only signed himself up, he signed me and our other friends Sam up without us no easy.

Speaker 2: 43:50

Wow, sam. Then Danny leaves that night and then text me and said are we going to do improvised comedy? He's gonna come with me next Tuesday, wednesday, and we will do that. We turned up. There were maybe eight of us in the first class and this older he's now older this guy turns up, lee Terrell, and he's like right, this is laughter Academy. We're gonna, in ten weeks, you and Danny hand, give me any of this, heads up, because I just come to one class. If you don't like it, you don't have to do anymore. So we turn up and Lee says you're gonna do a ten week course and at the end of that you're gonna do a show in front of friends, of family and Danny. One fucking shit, why, this is my absolute nightmare. Like I'm still very sensitive, very introverted, I had. I remember my when I was really young. My grandpa told me that I had a Very dry sense of humor right, and I didn't even know what that meant.

Speaker 1: 44:45

Yeah, we're young, yeah, it doesn't mean much yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:48

Yeah, and it's only now I'm like, oh, he is right, the things that I say, because sometimes on work calls people I don't know when you're genuinely impressed by something or when you're being sarcastic. So we did this one class and Danny said do one and you don't have to come back if you don't want to. And I did it and I Loved it and hated it at the same time. Yeah, and Danny said I'm really proud of you. Do you want to do next week? And I said, yeah, I do. So we did the ten week course and the whole way through, I don't think I can do the show, I don't think I can do the show. But I then started inviting people to the show and we have accountability.

Speaker 2: 45:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah and this the same with everything else that I've done. I'll always tell people when I start something so I'll then finish it.

Speaker 2: 45:30

And and we performed at the Royal Hotel in south end, upstairs in the Royal, and the room was packed and the people that were there and that I performed with I'm still friends with to this day and that was maybe 2011, I think, and and then, and some of them and like Ross Bishop, ross McGrane, john Oaks are now doing more stand-up, or like Ross and John are both on radio Essex together and everyone's kind of shifted. There's still a friendship group there, but we we've all grown in the things that we've done because of this improv class and Lee will love to hear that, that he's kind of had these people, that he's fostered and Improved their, their creative output in some way.

Speaker 1: 46:19

Yeah, do you feel in a way that you kind of you I mean you had a really close friendship group but you feel like you felt like the next tribe that you were part of yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:28

And I remember being angry about it because I've got enough friends, I don't need and this time for this happens often enough where, like when I, when I start, when you start any other hobby or you meet people through work or whatever else, I'm like, but I'm at capacity, guys, I can't continue to grow this out. There's only so many birthdays I can wish on Facebook and good point. But yeah, just this amazing group of people, and all of them are there because they're they're slightly Fractured in some way, like all of us. There's a run, there's a series of running jokes about everyone being anxious, everyone being depressed, everyone having addiction issues, like it's just this, it's the people that you'd expect to be drawn to doing something like that kind of something self-destructive in there at the same time.

Speaker 1: 47:15

There's a bit of a cliche when you when you out across that whole group?

Speaker 2: 47:18

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 47:19

This is all kind of like following a pattern, mm-hmm, okay, and that's so.

Speaker 2: 47:23

I did the first show in 2011 and I Finished the show and I said to Danny I'm done. I've done what you asked me to do. I've come, I've experienced it.

Speaker 1: 47:35

We did a show.

Speaker 2: 47:36

Yeah, yeah I can take it off, and then I Apologize if I get upset again and Like maybe two weeks later I, danny, had epilepsy and he had a fit in his sleep and he passed away.

Speaker 1: 47:52

Wow.

Speaker 2: 47:52

And we knew he had epilepsy. He was like taking medication for it, but it was still. It was the first time and fortunately for me, it's the last time there's someone our age. A close friend of mine had passed away and it was horrible. It's like you can tell. It still hurts me now.

Speaker 2: 48:12

And he was just such an amazing guy. It was like a real light. He was very extroverted. He would go up to girls when we were on nights out and bother them and I was like those girls do not want to be bothered, please leave them alone. Danny, he was just like that guy, he was like a party guy and he died a number of us from laughter academy and he was well known and well liked to cross the offender as well. Loads of people at his funeral and then I just tried to process it and deal with it in the weeks afterwards. And then laughter academy started up again and I think I saw pictures that they'd been together and they'd done that first class and there were more people there than there had been the previous iteration of it and I messaged Sam and said laughter academy started again. Nobody told me and he said you told Danny that you didn't want to do it and.

Speaker 2: 49:01

I said I think I have to now, I don't think I can turn away from it and that's something that I've dipped in and out of it. But I have performed as part of laughter academy and then separately from laughter academy ever since, and I've performed with people who've been on whose line is it anyway? Or people who've been on like BBC sitcoms, and it's really opened up this amazing group of people to me and this incredible set of friends who even New Year just got. Those were the people that I was with.

Speaker 1: 49:34

Yeah, that's amazing. What a lovely kind of tribute in a way that you've kept that going.

Speaker 2: 49:39

Yeah, me and Sam often say that Danny would love the fact that he's still responsible for how our social group works.

Speaker 1: 49:48

Like that really being a win for him. That's really lovely, mate. So I mean what a horrendous thing to go through, I mean first for his family and friends, the people that are left behind. I think there is something acutely painful about seeing people your your own age, because it just brings it home like how fleeting everything is. Yeah, I mean, if we can, we'll focus on the, on the comedy aspect of it and just tragedy plus time equals comedy, exactly.

Speaker 1: 50:14

Who did I? I was speaking to someone. No, there was a podcast. The other day Ed Byrne was on Radio 2. I was I myself for listening to radio 2. Because I don't care. I feel like I've jumped in that bandwagon a little bit too early. But he was saying I think he's lately stand up is about his little brother passing away.

Speaker 2: 50:30

Oh, he said exactly that.

Speaker 1: 50:32

Tragedy plus time is comedy, and with the comedy aspects, then how that was already permeating your writing and then doing stand up, has that now become a bigger part of what you do? And I feel like we're going to have to, we're just going to have to say what the what your book is that you've got to deal with a second. Because when you, when we talk about that, maybe you'd think that comedy isn't going to be an element of that?

Speaker 2: 50:54

Yeah, because arguably that's the biggest tragedy. Yeah one of the biggest tragedies in human history.

Speaker 1: 51:00

And there's that then let's, let's say what the book is. So you, after years of graph and drive and rejection, I think that's fair to say you put yourself through all that. Have secured publishing deal for your book. Yeah, tell us what your book is called, if that's OK and it maybe gives a. I don't know how much you can share, but can you give us a tiny bit?

Speaker 2: 51:24

I've not been told that, I can't say anything. So the book's called the Count Fitter of Auschwitz and it is about it's told in the modern day from the point of view of George Gottlieb, who is a 99 year old survivor of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Saxonhausen, who's in a number of concentration camps. It's it's about a true series of events, but he is a character of fiction and there were. There was a Nazi operation from 1941 until 1945, where they had concentration camp prisoners who had a history in banking and finance, who they forced to try and counterfeit currency British and American currency within a concentration camp. So they bought in presses and printed equipment from Berlin for these prisoners to try and create counterfeit currency.

Speaker 2: 52:17

The aim of the Nazis was to destroy the British and American economy is by flushing it with all of this counterfeit money. Yeah, and they were in real life. They were successful. They managed to counterfeit British currency. It was all at the end of the war, it was all boxed up and the Nazis drove it out in the way that they did for loads of the gold and the artwork and for years that money was missing.

Speaker 1: 52:42

Wow.

Speaker 2: 52:43

And the book tells the story of George Gottlieb, who's this fictional character, as I said, but in this real world situation. So it's his life story through survival In various circumstances, and I suppose the point you are suggesting as to like the comedy aspect of it is that it has a very dark, self-deprecating wit to it, which is the reason that there's been some question from publishers around what it is that the book is, because it's not a weepy survival story about a concentration camp survivor. Instead, it's trying to do something like L'Ouvrier Bell Life is Beautiful, an Italian film, or Caging Skies, which was then made into JoJo Rabbit, right.

Speaker 1: 53:34

So you're taking as.

Speaker 2: 53:36

I said, like one of the most horrific experiences in human history and present it through the lens of trying to find humour in that most darkest of subjects, and this is something that me and my agent have spoken about a lot. I feel that I am able to tell that story because I myself am Jewish. I grew up around a lot of self-deprecating Jews. George Gottlieb in his old years is very much an amalgamation of my grandfather and my great grandfather and so that kind of like curmudgeonly old Jewish man now exists on the page and that's a lovely place to be. And yeah, it's just it's been. It feels like, weirdly, the most personal thing that I've written, because there's so much of my family history that's gone into it rather than it just being me so.

Speaker 1: 54:32

I think I would have been remiss, not to mention because we're talking about comedy.

Speaker 2: 54:35

And then when?

Speaker 1: 54:35

you when you say the headline, I mean you mentioned concentration camps, you mentioned Auschwitz. Auschwitz is not always directly related to to humour or comedy, but I think I mean there are, as you said, george I rabbit is a really, I guess. I guess a kind of close example about how you can take something that is incredibly dark and incredibly tragic but find find humour in those moments. And actually they can be intensely funny, yeah, so that's really interesting. First of all, I just want to say congratulations, because I've known how fucking hard you worked to get to where you are now.

Speaker 1: 55:14

So genuinely I'm like, without patronising you, I'm proud of you, but I think it's amazing.

Speaker 1: 55:19

Thank you, so, so, congratulations, it's incredible and I'm sure it's going to be a huge success. I guess anyone that's listening to this, through whatever marketing that I put out there, may want a bit of insight into. We talked about self-publishing. We talked about how going through that process might have helped you get to the point where, now that you've got a deal but how if we can focus a little bit on the practicalities of it, which is getting an agent in the first place or actually working towards getting an agent- because, I know very little about the process we published.

Speaker 1: 55:50

My brother, as I said, is a published author, but that was that. I would say. That's fortune. Luck's probably too far, too far and Luke would be offended by that. He was scouted on Instagram.

Speaker 2: 56:01

Yeah, they approached him.

Speaker 1: 56:02

Yeah, so for you can you tell us a little bit about the process from going to writing this work, being self-published and then securing an agent?

Speaker 2: 56:10

Yeah, of course. So I had written counterfeit during the height of covid and then spent some time editing the book, and then, fortunately, technology has caught up, so you no longer have to send a self-addressed envelope to agents anymore.

Speaker 1: 56:25

You can.

Speaker 2: 56:26

Most of them have either an online portal on their website or there'll be an email address. So the process then is to look for agents who are interested in the themes and the genre of your work so mine's. Despite the comedy of it, ultimately it's historical fiction. So I looked up a number of agents who were looking for historical fiction and were open to submissions, because some of them take themselves offline when they've got such a stack of manuscripts that they want to work through it.

Speaker 2: 56:56

Yes, they're trying to filter their way through that and work out what to do. I contacted a number of those agents and said here's the first three chapters in my book the Counterfeit of Auschwitz. And I made sure in that cover letter to say it's got this self-deprecating humour in it. That might not be for everyone, it's not like the tattoo of Stavalschwitz, but I wanted the title in there because it felt like it was almost playing on something to use that and the fact that he is a counterfeiter to then almost copy another title.

Speaker 1: 57:26

Yes, understood A play. In what?

Speaker 2: 57:27

I was doing and, as I said, two to three months wait, usually once you've sent those off. And two days after I'd sent it, an agent replied and said I'd like to read the full manuscript. And in 10, and maybe it was like eight or nine years at that point, in eight or nine years of sending stuff off, nobody had ever asked me for a full manuscript before.

Speaker 1: 57:46

Go on, then tap in, if you can, that memory what is your?

Speaker 2: 57:49

reaction. So it's still height of Covid. I was living on my own in a one bedroom flat in Rochford and I read the email and I just started shaking and, in case it hasn't come across in the couple of times, I've burst into tears in the space of an hour. I'm quite an emotional person. Anyway, I had a little cry and I remember making. I then filmed a one minute video maybe of me talking to camera and saying I've been asked for a full manuscript. Like this is big. This is the biggest achievement that I've had in terms of trying to get an agent. This is cool. And then I think I like screen shot the email and send it to my dad as well, probably, yeah.

Speaker 1: 58:33

Is this before you've responded? Yeah, yeah, all of this is before I responded. It's great, isn't it? Remember this habit of doing it.

Speaker 2: 58:37

I then had a panic because I'd spent eight. I'd edited the whole thing but the first three chapters I had sat and diligently, militantly, looked through every single sentence and ensured that it was the most concise and beautiful sentence that I could possibly compose and that was you're looking at maybe 10,000 words of. At that point it was, I think, 90,000 word manuscript. So I worked on those three chapters more than any of the rest of it and then I realized that she had read the best three chapters Right and that I hadn't given the same dedication to the rest of the book. I was like, right, how long can I hold out on responding, keeping this agent interested but ensuring that the rest of the manuscript is up to scratch?

Speaker 1: 59:26

Yeah, wow, and I gave myself a weekend, a weekend, and I stayed in and read through the book, I think three times.

Speaker 2: 59:33

I don't even know Like what? Just put that into time. Honestly, I hate editing so much, like if I could. Just you know, there's that little Britain sketch. Some of them haven't aged well, but this one is really great. Where there's the female writer played.

Speaker 1: 59:51

Yeah, Matt Lucas, and she just dictates everything. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 59:55

If I could just do that and someone else would deal with all of the rest of it, that would be fantastic, Because yeah, I love the first draft. I hate editing so much I think reading time it takes me. Because I'm editing something at the moment it takes me about half an hour to read a chapter.

Speaker 1: 1:00:13

Right, okay, yeah, that was going to be, and each time.

Speaker 2: 1:00:19

there's no way that I'd send something off without having read it three times maybe. And the first one, you're doing bigger edits and then you might be finalizing the sentences, and then the third, fourth, fifth you're just making sure that you haven't missed anything. It reads alright. So I tried to do that in a weekend.

Speaker 1: 1:00:38

Okay, so you managed to get that done, because I mean, some people might have given themselves a little more time.

Speaker 2: 1:00:43

Yeah, yeah, I think they're now thinking about how long the process has taken. There was more time if I wanted it.

Speaker 1: 1:00:49

So the height of COVID? You're saying this has happened. Yeah, what was the height? There's a couple of peaks, wasn't there, I guess? Yeah, so you're talking like mid through one of the lockdowns yeah, it was lockdown 2020? Because was there any in 2021?

Speaker 2: 1:01:03

Yeah, the first lockdown was 2021, wasn't?

Speaker 1: 1:01:06

it. I don't know anymore.

Speaker 2: 1:01:07

I can't remember. I think it was 2020. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was March 2020.

Speaker 1: 1:01:11

It was late that it happened, so you don't need to worry about the chronology. No, I think.

Speaker 2: 1:01:14

September 2020,. I sent it off. Right, okay, and it yeah. So once I had one agent who was interested in reading the rest of the manuscript, I then emailed every other agent Saying I've got an agent.

Speaker 2: 1:01:27

And said I've got an agent that's asked to read the full manuscript Would you be interested in reading the full manuscript as well? And a part of it not feels manipulative. But it felt like now it feels like that gave an edge that I hadn't had before, because then agents started replying to me and five or six came back and said I'd like to read the full manuscript. Wow, Cue more tears and more screenshots sent to my dad and to the power of six.

Speaker 1: 1:01:57

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:01:59

And one of them was an agent who I won't name, but I was like in awe of his like really well thought of in industry level and I'd sent him a book before that was about me and about an experience that happened to me and a previous relationship, and I sent him three chapters and he came back and said Paul, I know you've tried to make the main character deeply unlikeable on purpose.

Speaker 1: 1:02:25

Talk about addressing.

Speaker 2: 1:02:28

That's just me with a different name, but he was one of the agents that came back and I straight for manuscript, which was amazing, and then he gave me some really lovely feedback and ultimately passed on it. But one of those agents, james. Then we went back and forth for a bit. He asked how precious I was about the plot of the book and he said if we were to work together and consider editing the parts of it, would you feel comfortable with that? Is it? How keen are you for it to stay exactly as it is? And if he'd asked me to change George, the protagonist, or the tone of it, then I would have protested.

Speaker 2: 1:03:11

But the idea of working together on something, my words and his influence, and he has been so instrumental in the way that the book is now constructed. I was talking to someone about it the other day and even there was no device at the start and end to suggest the time period in which it's taken place. So James said if you set it in the modern day, then put a chapter in where he's talking about it as an old man and then you see it all as a flashback. None of that was in there before.

Speaker 1: 1:03:41

And he makes sense, doesn't he?

Speaker 2: 1:03:43

Yeah, he's super switched on, super smart guy and he's also really into film. And he would say to me not this but you know the way forest gump sets up this then, you could do that. Or there is an element towards the end where he's like not sure shank, but could you?

Speaker 1: 1:04:00

and immediately. We're just on the same page and you're massively into movies and you speak a language straight away.

Speaker 2: 1:04:07

A big, big love of mine is film, and it took a long time. I think we're at times we're both frustrated with the process of it. He would ask things of me and I just I don't think I had taken his consideration, like how fundamentally I needed to change the manuscript to get it to that point. But we went back and forth maybe for a year and then he signed me to the agency and then we went back and forth for another year.

Speaker 1: 1:04:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah, back and forth for another year and last February he called me.

Speaker 2: 1:04:47

I know it was last February because I was doing a run of seeing all the Oscar contenders and I'd just come out and see in the whale Again sobbing. And he called me and we had a chat and he was like right, I think it's as good as we're going to get it. Can you send me a personal bio and a synopsis like a one page synopsis of the book, and we will package that and we then send it off to publishers and see if we can get some interest. And I was like, yeah, absolutely Immediately went to the pub with my girlfriend to have a celebrate repaint.

Speaker 2: 1:05:20

And one of the funny things he said to me is that some writers struggle to write a personal bio, struggle to write about themselves, so just just keep that in mind. He was like it's just just needs to be high level, nothing too fancy, and that was like the easiest thing to write because I'm like I'll happily talk about myself. Yeah, we packaged that up and then it went to the London Book Fair in April. So agents will almost have a stack of books or a presentation that they'll give to publishers and then the publishers, if they're interested, can take that manuscript away with them.

Speaker 1: 1:05:53

And that was where. So, in terms of time scales, then that happened in in April 2023. So by this time, we've gone from September 2020, which is when you started to send the manuscript out on the first three chapters and now we're in April 2023. But in a mind, you've been writing now since you're a teenager. So, April 2023 goes to the London Book Fair. What happens, how quick, between London Book Fair and you landing your deal.

Speaker 2: 1:06:20

Basically the rest of 2023. Right, that's mad.

Speaker 1: 1:06:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:06:25

Yeah. So I, as I was saying, like I knew I wasn't going to be an overnight success, because I'd been writing since I was in my early 20s- Because you would have been one already.

Speaker 1: 1:06:32

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:06:34

But I still hadn't considered the time that it would take, because they, in the same way that the agents, have to read the first three chapters, and that can take two to three months all of these publishers need to read the full book before they can make a decision on it and they have other books that are further ahead on their reading list that I have to read. And I had fairly regular check-ins with James and he was he was like very supportive and complimentary and would say, oh, I've been speaking to agents or I've got a lunch lined up or there's stuff going on. But the one of the most amazing things was going to there was a an award ceremony. No, there was due to be an award ceremony for debut novels and I had been chatting to Freya, who is another writer that's under the same agency, right and she had posted online to say that she was going to be giving a reading at this event, like prior to the award ceremony, and I went to that event and watched her talk about her book and read a section from it and I was like, fuck, I really want this.

Speaker 2: 1:07:44

This is absolutely where I'd love to be able to sit in a couple of years time I don't want to say next year, because of the speed that everything's moved out. I'm like, let's be realistic. And James was there as well, so he had a chat and a catch up and then, while I was there, freya said oh, I'm having a book launch for my second book next month. Are you available? Did you want to come?

Speaker 1: 1:08:04

I was like yeah, that'd be amazing.

Speaker 2: 1:08:06

So she then invited me to her book launch in Marlborough for the following month and I went and met James was there and a couple of other people from the agency and I was like again, this is a bit of me, this is absolutely the direction that I want to head in and seeing those things. And then Freya was really sweet and said if you ever want to talk through stuff, it's a weird situation to be and where you're at and I remember where I was at.

Speaker 1: 1:08:27

And if you just want to understand it, then please do.

Speaker 2: 1:08:30

And I was like you don't have to do that. And she said people did that for me when I was coming up and I'm I'm happy to talk things through and she was really lovely. And when things have happened recently, I've then sent her a message and said thanks for your support, by the way, for being offered a publishing deal.

Speaker 1: 1:08:45

That shared experience is so nice and someone that's like a few steps ahead of you sharing it and and yeah, I think that's really important.

Speaker 2: 1:08:53

It's almost like a mentor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's really, and her stuff is really good as well.

Speaker 1: 1:09:00

She writes beautifully, so if you, if you cried which I cry a lot, so if you cried when you're getting these emails back from agents saying we want to see the whole manuscript, what happens when you get informed that you've got a book deal Do? You have any say in it as in do they put something on the table? I would assume there's a contractual process beyond. But what's the reaction? Yes, there is a contractual element.

Speaker 2: 1:09:24

Beyond the day that I found out, me and my girlfriend Emily were. I think we were due to have a date night anyway, and I got the. I got an email through with the contract before I got a call, or so I've been waiting and they've been the suggestion that something was coming and there was a publisher that was really keen. And then I mean I'm pretty diligent on my emails anyway, but I just opened my emails, refreshed it and I saw this contract in my inbox with an advance and with a percentage of.

Speaker 1: 1:10:02

So they've gone that far down the line. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, commercial.

Speaker 2: 1:10:04

Yeah, and like mentioned so off the how many units before and like the percentages and then the audio book rights. Oh, my goodness, and I. I think I cried first and then I went and sat in the. I have a number of vices and nicotine is one of them and I'm always like in and out with I'm trying not to vape at the moment because I can't get away from it, because even when I'm at my desk I'll vape, whereas at least when I was smoking cigarettes I'd have to get outside.

Speaker 2: 1:10:40

So I was. I had a packet of cigarettes, so I was like this this is this calls for it, and I went and sat outside and my hand was shaking so much and just sat on the bench outside the house shed. I was in at that point and just it was like had a huge grin on my face, was shaking and crying and nobody else was at home. I was living with like three of my friends, including Lee who runs laughter Academy we ended up living together and I just like I can't.

Speaker 2: 1:11:08

I can't believe this is happening. This is so mad. And then I went back up to my bedroom and filmed like another little video as another marker of where things have got to my hairline's gone even further back.

Speaker 2: 1:11:22

I didn't know it was possible. But in those two or three years, and then I think I messaged my dad, messaged my girlfriend and Emily said well, we were, we were going out tonight anyway, but let's like go out. And there is a video of me, one o'clock in the morning, dancing alone to New York, new York, by a Frank Sinatra doing doing the kicks.

Speaker 1: 1:11:48

Oh, my doing the kicks and singing. Well, if you can't do it, then when can you?

Speaker 2: 1:11:51

Yeah, exactly, so that was the day I got the contract free and did you?

Speaker 1: 1:11:56

did you feel like I guess there's a, there's a way to go into? You've got a physical copy of the book in your hand. Yeah that's when you feel like you've completed it. But what was that sense of achievement like? Do you get to that point? Is there any kind of catharsis? That that's what I was trying to do.

Speaker 2: 1:12:11

That's a really good question, because this is something that I remember talking to my therapist about, because I don't think that I'm ever going to be satisfied, and that's something that we talked about and she said you, you're going to have to deal with this, that that's a thing that you're never going to be able to handle, you'll never complete the list, you'll never be completely satisfied. And I've used I've mentioned this anecdote before and it's like second or third hand by the time it gets to me. Matt Damon won the Oscar for Goodwill Hunting, for writing Goodwill Hunting. Supposedly Ben Affleck was there, but I think Matt Damon did most of the work.

Speaker 2: 1:12:54

Matt Damon has the Oscar in his hand. He goes to an after party, he goes into the toilet, he puts the Oscar up on the side, unzips and it's taken a piss and he's like fuck, I've got an Oscar but I still have to piss. Like life, life carries on, you still have all of the same things to deal with. You've just also got an Oscar as well, and I think not comparing this to having an Oscar, but it is like a huge personal win.

Speaker 2: 1:13:17

I it felt so gratifying, but the, I think, something it all feel incredible when I can hold a copy of the book, but I am someone who reaches the end of a project and it's like, right, what's next? And that's probably another thing that I should be unpacking a little more in therapy, because that the counterfeit to our shirts is moving down the line and all of my current focus is on the next book, which I'd like to be in a position to follow up, and that it will then generate interest and that things will continue to keep on the line, because there's an element of being on the on the conveyor belt.

Speaker 1: 1:13:55

Now, to a degree, you've got momentum, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:13:58

And I would love to to keep that momentum up and it doesn't feel like pressure. It feels like I've been knocking on the door for a long time, Someone's finally answered and I'm like, please look at all of my shiny things. Wow, man that's such a, that's such cool.

Speaker 1: 1:14:14

But I think I think it's a really important and, I think, probably common thing that happens to people. You put all this energy and love and time invested into into a goal that you think you're going to get there and feel like there's going to be this relief. But I know from my own experience in maybe in setting up the business or getting the getting to a point where the business is kind of self-sufficient and I'm not worried it's going to collapse every day. You know, get there. I'm like it's. It's almost like the climbing the rungs of a ladder there's always another place for you to go. And it's getting the balance between giving yourself that moment, give yourself that time to acknowledge the achievement. Yeah, but I don't think you can, because if you stop now, like what does that mean for you moving?

Speaker 1: 1:14:53

forward, you've got momentum you need to keep pushing. So it's it's a very fine balance I think you have to strike, but it's really interesting to have known that journey you've been on. I know we've used the word journey a lot and I tend to in these podcasts, but the journey you've been on you get to a point where all of that work has culminated in you have a book deal. You're going to have a physical copy of your book in bookshops. That's huge. Yeah, yeah, it's massive.

Speaker 2: 1:15:15

But yeah, you're feeling like what's next? Yeah, exactly, and it's really. It's an odd feeling because I it almost sounds super ungrateful, like I don't. I think some people will some people will.

Speaker 1: 1:15:30

You can't get away from that for me and a personal level and, I think, a lot of people that may be thinking the same way that I do. It doesn't, because it resonates and you can relate to it.

Speaker 2: 1:15:38

But it could potentially yeah, but yeah, I suppose that's more of a me thing, where nothing is ever yeah. I think I'd just have to settle with the fact that nothing is ever going to be that peak of achievement that I am so desperate for for any number of reasons.

Speaker 1: 1:15:57

Yeah, and then it goes back to the cliche, doesn't it? It's like it's the journey. It's not the destination, Like everything is about how you're doing and how you're working and the experience you have along the way. If you're focused too much on where you're getting to, there's always going to be that crushing sense of is this it? Yeah, is this it no, so okay, yeah, I thought it was important to at least ask the question, do you feel like you've you've completed it.

Speaker 1: 1:16:20

I'm going to ask for some advice now for people listening to this, Because again, I, would.

Speaker 1: 1:16:24

I would like to assume that people that may be in a similar position to yourself or or budding writers, are interested in tips or some advice. So I will ask the very cliche podcast question of what is? You know, you don't have to give me the one piece of advice, but could you give some advice to budding writers or creatives that are that would like to be in a position where they are pushing a project be that book, be that music, be that whatever like? What's your advice?

Speaker 2: 1:16:51

It's. I think it's really a part of it is really individual, like when, when I tell people what my day looks like if I'm writing and also working on something, when I say writing and working on something, like writing a personal project or writing a book and then also working nine to five years Though that time scale looks different for me than it would for anyone else but ultimately, if you want to write something or if you want to shoot a film or finish a script or write a song or anything like that, it's just to sit in the chair, like be in front of your computer or sat with your instrument or whatever else it happens to be, and carve out the time to make that happen. Like there are things that I've had to sacrifice to be able to do this. I'm fortunate that I have a job where I can work from home, so if I log on at nine o'clock on the dot, that means that from when I wake up until nine o'clock is entirely my own time, and that isn't the case for everyone.

Speaker 2: 1:17:52

If you've got dependents or partners or anything else going on in your life, then it's obviously going to be. It's going to look different. But yeah, all I can say, is like sitting in the chair. Yeah, it's really a point, it's like it's again.

Speaker 1: 1:18:05

if you wrap that up in a cliche, it's like you've got to be in it to win it. You have to. You have to really commit to the task at hand, and so many people are. I'm one of them and I'm going to ask you another question in a second. I'm one of these people that would love to write something, but I also do not pray. I mean, you know this because we've spoken about it so much, but I don't prioritize it and it's nothing about I don't have the time, because I have time to do like I've. I've rediscovered a love for painting warhammer. Like you'll know, warhammer from school?

Speaker 2: 1:18:32

Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1: 1:18:33

I you know I prioritize that over writing and actually get a lot of joy from it, and it's one of these things from a mindfulness perspective in the same way that when I get flow when I'm writing, nothing beats it because you are literally.

Speaker 1: 1:18:46

It's like a transcendent experience when you're in your flow state and just happens that painting small army men is my thing at the moment. So I think it's really important if you, if you want something enough, you have to sacrifice other things and commit a time to it. One of these sort of old, these old adages that are about about writers is that everyone has a book in them. Yeah, what's your reaction to that? What do you think about that statement? Do you think it's true?

Speaker 2: 1:19:11

I, I do, yeah, and I know so. As you said, I call myself a writer and therefore a lot of friends have said oh, I wish I could write it. I'm like you, absolutely can, like I. Yes, it's taken me a long time to get to this point, but there everyone has the ability to. It's so difficult Cause I'm like that's from a position of real privilege, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 1:19:34

You've got to speak from the position yeah, exactly, yeah, I think I think everyone has a story to tell, and if the the stars align and you're able to to sit and craft that into a book, then yeah, absolutely everybody does. I find I find it really difficult when people tell me things like anecdotes or like funny little, stranger than fiction elements of their lives, not to take a note of it and think, well, I'll use that one day in something that's yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:20:05

Yeah, I think everyone has the capacity to write and it's the same as anything else. It's like the 10,000 hours thing. Yes, yeah, I'm glad.

Speaker 1: 1:20:12

Well, I think this was going to be. This wasn't actually going to be a topic I was going to raise, but now it feels like it, it makes sense to, because everyone we've talked about the adage everyone has a book in them, your. Your answer to that is is yes, or story to tell.

Speaker 1: 1:20:24

Yeah, I think to probably be more specific with the and I don't want to make this about an about AI but with the introduction of AI, how are you feeling about it and how people are using it to create creative writing or any writing of any description?

Speaker 2: 1:20:39

It's. It's really interesting what AI is currently capable of doing and what it has the potential to do in the future, and I definitely think it has a space for being able to potentially like free up human time. Yeah, within that there is also the concern that it's going to take human jobs, whether those are like copy writing or slightly more creative forms of writing, through to the stuff that's happened recently with the writer strikes and the actor strikes in America. That side of things is scary because I've someone sent me a link for, I think, a company it was called like story engine, where you put in a synopsis and it will give it, will then write you a book based on the synopsis that you've given it, chapter by chapter, and that premise is to to me at the moment is terrifying. Is it possible that there could come a point where we have AI generated creative works that are recognized as such and you also have, like human creative elements?

Speaker 2: 1:21:45

I think you're being very sort of diplomatic about it, yeah yeah, that's exactly where I have to churn it, I think, because for work we're looking at AIS solutions to things, but that's very different to it is I'm really talking about, because I'm from a family of creatives and they are.

Speaker 1: 1:22:02

Mum makes things out of mud, as anyone that would know if they listen to that episode. Luke is much more pen and ink, but creativity, as we've been discussing, it's written for him. I think he's under a threat. I started a creative writing degree with the Open University and stopped six months in because I just couldn't get my head round.

Speaker 1: 1:22:23

This was at the advent of where there was all these articles and blogs coming out and just news stories about how lecturers and people that were marking work were struggling to discern between AI and stuff. I was like, okay, well, that comes down to actually getting the degree and I don't need a degree to go into creative writing, but that's something I was passionate about and I just said I was like, well, if I'm going to start putting work out there, where is the authenticity? Where's the trust? Trust is the biggest thing for me. How do we know what to trust? I think going through the journey you're in now yeah, it's just a question I wanted to pose to you. Do you feel like it threatens the future of what writing could look like for people like yourself?

Speaker 2: 1:23:05

I do because of the I think people who see it as like a bottom line and see that there's a cost saving where you don't have to pay writers and potentially, in the future, you wouldn't have to pay actors because you could have a generated version of that even that person in the room. That's terrifying because all of the I can't see AI being able to produce original ideas. Instead, it can only produce something based on what's been yeah, what's been and what's kind of formatted for it.

Speaker 1: 1:23:41

to break down, I'm going to pose an argument which I don't believe in, but it's an argument that a lot of people would counter that with which is isn't everyone plagiarising something to a degree, Like, are we all dipping from a mixing part of something?

Speaker 2: 1:23:54

to create these ideas.

Speaker 1: 1:23:56

I wish I could disagree, but I don't agree with it, but I just don't have a counter argument to that counter.

Speaker 2: 1:24:02

Yeah, there are. As I said when my agent and I were talking about the counterfeit, the way that we would determine the tone of things is that he'd say well, what about if you used an Ocean's Eleven style thing in this point? And that shortcut for us all to understand is from the common language around creation Now. I'm more concerned than it was an hour ago. Cheers, I'm not really sorry that.

Speaker 1: 1:24:27

I've left that in your mind. But yeah, I think we can't talk about writing and not bring AI into it.

Speaker 1: 1:24:34

Okay, cool, I'm just trying to think okay, this is a topic I wanted to bring up because the running theme, like the commonality and the number of what. There's a number of common themes between all the guests in season two of Jobsworth, but one of them is that I've purposefully asked people that live in and around South End and Leonsea to come in and that could be entrepreneurial people, people who've started their own businesses, people that I classify as creatives and are getting to a point where their work is being recognised and published. This might be a tenuous link, but I feel like I have to ask it because of that common thread, and I feel like there's a high number of people that fit, though, like, check those boxes entrepreneurs, creatives in and around this area. Do you think there's anything about the area that we're in that lends itself to that or perpetuates that? Or is it just a complete fluke and I'm clutching at straws?

Speaker 2: 1:25:26

No, there's any connection, I agree. I think there is something I feel like you'd know more about the potentially the entrepreneurial people.

Speaker 1: 1:25:35

Well, I'm interested in your perspective from the creative side.

Speaker 2: 1:25:37

Yeah, there definitely is. I know people who refer to it as being like a creative hub around South End, because a lot of the, as I've said, like being being introduced to the improvised comedy world then meant that I've met all this wider group of people and that each of them is doing improvised comedy and then they might also be doing something else and that circle of influence is pretty big.

Speaker 1: 1:26:01

Like.

Speaker 2: 1:26:01

Lee estimates that maybe 500 people have been through laughter at me. Wow, because he'll do three courses a year and there's now 40, 50, 60 people that will do Wow. Yeah, it's big and I do feel like South End has something going for it. I'm fiercely defensive of it as a place to live and but at the same time, we can also slag it off because, well, you know it better than anyone, it's kind of like fighting with a sibling.

Speaker 1: 1:26:25

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:26:27

But yeah, I do feel when I think about the friends of mine and how many irons in the fire that have got different things that are going on. It is pretty incredible.

Speaker 1: 1:26:39

Yeah, I've always just found like the concentration of I'm using Lee as an example now, because I've got a lot of guests coming in that have got businesses either on Lee Broadway or Lee Road or have businesses on either side of that and that kind of radius but I just find that the concentration of people particularly high. Now it might be because I'm completely biased and I live in this area and I would know more about them, but definitely from a I can see from the creative perspective. I think, as you say, a lot of people describe this as a creative hub and I think if you look at the number of independence around where we are and we again fiercely competitive of chains coming in to this area, yeah, so I think there has to be something. That maybe I'll get to the answer at the end of the season, I'm not sure.

Speaker 2: 1:27:23

I wonder if because it's a very I feel like we're very aspirational people in Southam. There's an element where everyone wants to do well, wants to do right by their people, and there's like a cliche about Essex that is like that outward ways that you display your success, yeah, and I wonder if instead the creative and entrepreneurial sides are the internal equivalent of that. You're looking to be an aspirational figure, but it's not in the gaudy sense of your fake tan. Yeah, we don't want to say the anyways, essex, but we can say it.

Speaker 1: 1:28:07

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you're right. I like more this kind of intrinsic drive and, as you say, aspirations as opposed to. I think what a lot of the stigma is out there is that it's very superficial and and skin deep and plastic, and which it is as well.

Speaker 1: 1:28:21

But, paul, I do know what is. I could talk to you for hours and hours because I love you so much. Anyway, you're just an incredibly inspiring person. You will know the closing tradition and it's sticking around for season two. You get the question from my mum. The mum obviously knows of you. I don't think you don't think you came to the house much. I only say that because we're used to that big house parties. Literally, my mum could go to the shops for 45 minutes and I'd have 20 people in the house.

Speaker 1: 1:28:49

But, as she got back, you definitely came to a couple of them.

Speaker 2: 1:28:52

Yeah, I can remember very early into our friendship.

Speaker 1: 1:28:56

Somehow I ended up was it a fancy dress one? I feel like it was my 17th birthday. You have a toga.

Speaker 2: 1:29:01

Was it toga?

Speaker 1: 1:29:02

No, you came. You came in togas as part of the fancy dress. Didn't you have a toga party?

Speaker 2: 1:29:07

Yeah, I did have a toga party Because I came to that one. Yeah, yeah, of course, Anyway.

Speaker 1: 1:29:11

I mean I'm raising my mum because she's about to ask a question which? Obviously I haven't heard, so I'm going to play it down the microphone. I'm excited See if I can get the volume right straight away. I always brawling the dice a little bit on this.

Speaker 2: 1:29:21

Hi Paul, I was really pleased to hear of your book deal. How did you go out and celebrate? Hope it was good. Thanks, she's so cute. My mum is so cute.

Speaker 1: 1:29:34

I talked to her about these questions retrospectively and I say do you write them down? Because it sounds like they're scripted? But it's just. I mean my mum doesn't sound like a robot, as anyone would know, but that's her question.

Speaker 2: 1:29:44

So how did you celebrate?

Speaker 1: 1:29:45

You kind of inferred that it ended at one o'clock in the morning with you doing New York, new York Girls.

Speaker 2: 1:29:50

Yeah, yeah. So there was that night out and I think I've said that there will be. There will be other celebrations there will be things I do. I think when I get the advance through, there are some people that I would like to get together and take out for dinner and do a big thing.

Speaker 2: 1:30:10

But yeah, we're currently at an in-between stage where I've signed the contract. There's confirmation that there will be money coming down the line. But yeah, I think when that comes through I'll then be. I was gonna say like Scarface, that's not what I mean at all, I probably don't mean that, yeah, it's quite an image yeah, maybe like a great Gatsby. Oh no, I'm just clots to Capriar up on your wall. Yes, yeah, I'll be doing like the raising the Martini glass. We'll turn it into a GIF, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:30:42

That's amazing. Okay, and I I mean we'll update mum when that happens as well, and what debauched events occur. Yeah, of course. Of course, Lisa. You heard that You're invited, Paul. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 1:30:54

It's been a real pleasure, it's been wonderful Thank you Thanks for listening to Jobs Worth.

Speaker 1: 1:30:59

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