Juliet Blackwell is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels based in France, including The Vineyards of Champagne, The Lost Carousel of Provence, Letters from Paris and The Paris Key. She also writes the Witchcraft Mystery series and the Haunted Home Renovation series. As Hailey Lind, Blackwell wrote the Agatha-nominated Art Lover’s Mystery series. A former anthropologist, social worker, and professional artist, Juliet is a California native who has spent time in Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Italy, the Philippines, and France.
How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing.
Transcript
Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.
Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 169 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.
So thrilled that you’re here with me today, as I’m recording it is February 20th, 2020 and we’re talking to one of my darlings – that creek brought to you by my dog opening the door behind me. Today, we’re talking to one of my darlings, Juliet Blackwell, who has a new incredible book that just came out last week, and she’s one of my best friends and I’ve never been able to talk her into being on the show before, and we have a lovely chat and she is just one of those radiant, brilliant personalities that I personally can never get enough of. And she really knows the craft of writing. She has written so many books. She’s a New York times’ bestseller. She is everything. She writes mystery, she writes now, women’s fiction/literary and it’s beautiful. So I hope that you enjoy our conversation. I think that you will.
And what’s going on around here. I am seriously on deadline now, the book is due in two months, but that is fully revised, so I need to finish it and do a full major revision. I kind of have about a month for both of those things. The book is halfway done and, don’t tell my editor, but, I have realized that the whole first half is flawed. So in my scrivener file, I keep all the scenes on the left hand side. You can kind of, you know, run your eye down them and see what happens in each scene. And I’ve color coded one of them red, and it says it’s just a simple empty scene that says change all to here and I’m moving forward because that’s the way I write my drafts. I keep going no matter what. If I stop and go back to the beginning right now and fix it to the way it should be, I don’t have any way of knowing if that is correct or not. And if I went back and started to revising to revise it to the midpoint, I might get it wrong. So what I’m doing is I’m going forward as if I have made all the changes that I have told myself I will, and I write it to the end. Hopefully my fixes in my brain that I’ve written down on my beloved post-its will be correct, and then I’ll just go back and in that big revision, I will incorporate all the changes I need to make to the entire first half of the book, which was a flawed premise.
And if I get that wrong, then I figure something else out, but that is what I’m doing right now. I am having a little bit of a hard time getting to the page and you’re like, I’m treading water, but sometimes grabbing a mouthful of salt water. So it’s a little bit difficult right now. But we are writers and we keep going and we keep writing, and the goal is words on the page, just words on the page. You can fix the words later. That is another goal to fix them later. That’s the fun part. I can tell you how, and I do go back and listen to my revision podcast, which was, I don’t know, like episode 116 or something like that. But if you’re not getting words on the page right now. Ask yourself why you’re not? Is it a time thing? Is it a place thing? Is it a fear thing? Get a journal, write it out. Start breaking apart. Why you’re not doing the words. Are you tired? Are you doing too much? Is there something you can offload? Single mothers of four children are screaming at me in your car right now and I apologize you cannot move anything off your plate. You will get your writing done when you get it done. Everybody else, you can do it. You can find the time. I want you to, try to work that out and figure out what it is that’s preventing you from getting to the page. If there is something you can always write and tell me about it. I love to hear from you on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron or on my email, which is www.rachaelherron.com but you have to spell it right. Anywhere else you can hit me at www.howdoyouwrite.net is working again. So you could even come leave a comment on the Share notes, which nobody ever does because that redirect wasn’t working for so long. www.howdoyouwrite.net is now working So come say hello!
Very quickly, I would love to thank new Patrons, we have Mary Rose. Thank you, thank you so much. And Alex. No, sorry, Alice, Alice is a new Patron. Thank you, Alice. Alex Wolfson just edited their pledge to the $5 mark, which means they get to ask me any question that they want at any time, and I will answer it in the mini podcasts and let’s see who else? New Patrons, Sandy Kirschner. Hello, Sandy! It’s a wonderful to have you here. I do apologize for not getting a show out last week. I was – I was on my fourth trip in five weeks, and I have to tell you, I am exhausted. I’m very glad that I’m home until we go to Barcelona on the writing retreat at the end of April. I don’t have any more trips planned. I really need to be at home. Just working, traveling that much was difficult, but I have to tell you, the last trip I took was this last weekend. So podcast didn’t go out. I was with my goddaughter as she had a major necessary surgery, but not necessarily a bad surgery. We weren’t talking about like a cancer operation or something like that. We’re talking about a major surgery that was healable and I went down to San Diego to take care of her and we got an Airbnb, and I have to tell you that I accidentally forgot my charging cord for my computer at home, so I couldn’t do, I could not do any of the work I had meant to do while I was there.
And while I regretted that time lost on working, I also really loved just being with her and cooking her food and making sure she was comfortable and taking her pills on time and we just sat around and watched reality TV and ate good food and instead of working, when she napped, I napped. It was really marvelous and it just made me remember again, how everything we do, including this writing gig, is about connection. And right now the fact that you’re listening to me is about connection and caring, and we bring that into our work and we share our words because we want to have that connection because that caring is so important in our lives. So I don’t know, I’m just kind of pretty high on that feeling right now. So I hope that you are also feeling it. I hope that you’re getting some words done, and if you’re not, try to figure out why and send me a note, or if you’re getting your word Zen and you love it, tell me about that too.
[00:07:00] Now let us go into the interview with the marvelous Juliet Blackwell and we will talk soon my friends. [00:07:08] Hey writers, I’ve opened up some coaching slots. I’m not taking clients on a weekly basis right now as I’m working on my own books, but I am doing one-offs. I call them Tune-ups. Tell me your plot problems and ask your character, quitters. Let me know what stumbling blocks you’re up against. Get tips and tricks to get you back on the right track.Ask me questions about all things publishing. Together we’ll brainstorm your specific plan of action, making sure you’re in the driver’s seat of your book again. You’ll receive a 30-minute call over Skype or FaceTime, giving you the honest encouragement you need to keep getting better or a polite ass kicking if that’s what you need and ask for it. Plus, you’ll get an MP3 audio recording or MP4 video, your choice of our chat so you can re-listen at your leisure. And if you want a little more help, I can also critique either 10 pages or your book’s outline and talk you through my findings. Just check out www.rachaelherron.com/coach for more info. I’d love to work with you.
Now on to the interview.
[00:08:12] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, one of my truly very best friends in the entire universe, Juliet Blackwell. Hi, Juliet.Juliet Blackwell: [00:08:22] Hi Rachael, it’s good to be here
Rachael Herron: [00:08:24] Right before this, we were talking about how, I can’t believe that I have never wrangled her to be on this show, but I’m so excited to talk to you today. Let me give you a little bio for people listening. Juliet Blackwell is very fancy, New York times bestselling author.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:08:38] Not so fancy.
Rachael Herron: [00:08:39] Yeah, she’s not very fancy, I added that. Bestselling author of several novels based in France, including The Vineyards of Champagne, which is the most recent one, The Lost Carousel of Provence, Letters from Paris and The Paris key. She also writes the Witchcraft Mystery series and the Haunted Home Renovation series. As Hailey Lind, Blackwell wrote the Agatha-nominated Art Lover’s Mystery series. A former anthropologist, social worker, and professional artist, Juliet is a California native who has spent time in Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Italy, the Philippines, and France. You’re really one of my coolest and most fancy friend, so honestly,
Juliet Blackwell: [00:09:20] You’re so sweet. You are definitely my closest friends. So, you know, whatever.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:25] I was just remembering while I was reading that bio, the day that you hit the New York times for the first time and
Juliet Blackwell: [00:09:32] Definitely that was a special moment. It was the best.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:33] I think you texted us, and I know that at least Sophie and I and maybe other people converged upon your house with champagne.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:09:41] Yes. You were the first to arrive
Rachael Herron: [00:09:43] Was I?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:09:42] With champagne, I will never forget. That was beautiful. So that’s one of the things we talk about loving, right, is that we have such a great community of writers, which is, which is really amazing, and we can really honestly rebel in each other’s success, I think.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:00] Yes, and I think that’s just one of the most important things to have as a writer, and I’m always going on and on and on and on the show about that. But you, I really wanted to have you on the show. We’re going to talk about your new book at the end, but this is a show about process, and you have a process that is not like everybody else’s, you, you do not show up at a page
Juliet Blackwell: [00:10:24] Panic induced?
Rachael Herron: [00:10:26] Panic induced
Juliet Blackwell: [00:10:24] I’m in a panic induced process, yes.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:29] You don’t show up with a page every morning and do your 1300 words or whatever. Tell us what your process looks like. I know what it looks like, but tell the listeners…
Juliet Blackwell: [00:10:38] But I would say, I do try to show up,
Rachael Herron: [00:10:40] You do
Juliet Blackwell: [00:10:41] Most mornings, and theoretically I have a 2000-word count, but what, what actually happens to me usually is I usually start off great guns like a lot of people do. And then do get bogged down and what happens, I think, and I’ve been thinking about a lot because I’m at that trying to emerge from the bog right at the moment, but I think it has to do with, by the time I get to maybe the 50,000-word mark,
Rachael Herron: [00:11:08] Yeah.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:11:09] I start having so many threads of so many plots or subplots or issues or whatever it is. So many threads that I, that I get bogged down and how to – how to bring them all together. And that’s a, that’s a hard time for me. That’s when I start doing avoidance stuff and, Oh, wouldn’t, wasn’t that shiny thing over there would be more fun than what I’m working on now and then about, usually about six weeks before the deadline, I start to panic and realize I need to actually get my rear and gear in have that all happen?
Rachael Herron: [00:11:41] Can we talk a moment too? And just about, because I think this is really illustrative and useful. Can we talk about how you feel at that point when you’re, when you go into panic, there’s something you always tell me about your book when you hit that point? Do you know what that is?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:11:56] Well that I don’t know what the ending is?
Rachael Herron: [00:11:58] You don’t, you always say, I don’t have a book.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:00] I don’t have a book.
Rachael Herron: [00:12:01] That’s right,
Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:01] I don’t have a book, yes.
Rachael Herron: [00:12:02] There’s no, you don’t like the plot, you don’t like the characters
Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:04] Right. I will start all over again.
Rachael Herron: [00:12:05] You always, and you mean it like,
Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:07] I want to call it professional, to finish my book. I need some professional intervention. I need to hire up an actual author, to make this thing for me
Rachael Herron: [00:12:19] But, and you’re never exaggerating. That’s how you feel
Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:22] Right. That’s how I feel. Yes,
Rachael Herron: [00:12:24] And I really identify a lot with that because I think, I think I just string out my existential panic a little bit longer than you do, so I’m always feeling it in a, on a on a little bit lower basis, but then you really do, you do take care of that by going kind of underground, is that right? Like you head down
Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:41] I do, generally, yeah, just kind of duck out of everything. I think my, my, my friends, my neighbors are used to like not seeing me or hearing from me for, for at least the last month before a book is due usually, and I just, I just need to be in that head space continually. And actually I just had a little talk with my boyfriend this morning about, he’s like, is everything okay with us? And I was like, yeah. And he’s like, you seem to be, not really all there, like connecting. And I was like, I just, I’m in my head now. I’m in this book, you know, I just am in this book and I can try to turn it off like in the evening or something. But it’s, it’s hard for me and I think it’s hard for people around me because I am, half of me is always now, in the book.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:27] But this is your process. This is how it works for you, and it works.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:13:31] It is. It is and it’s painful. I would love to be one of those people who could just sit down every day, make my word count, and then bring it together and then have a few months at the end to just polish it and that kind of thing. But, at this point, you know, I do think that the only thing that gets me to finish the book though is having a deadline. Like I think, I don’t know, it would be interesting for me if somebody just said, just write a book and see how long it takes and no worries. I don’t know that I would ever finish. I really don’t know if I’d be able to push through that hard part. You know? I think I’m forced to push through the hard part because, because that’s the only way I’m going to ever get to the deadline. Luckily I will also say, luckily I have a really good relationship with my editor. We’ve known each other my entire publishing career. As you know, I have the, one of those rare stories where my entire publishing career has been spent in the same publishing house. So they know me well by now and my editor, and I have a great relationship and, and I can now kind of give her what, it’s not exactly a rough draft, but it’s, but it’s essentially what some people would call, maybe not a finished product for the deadline. You know, I keep working on it because I always feel terrible that I gave her something that wasn’t polished. And then she comes back with her comments. But by that time, I’ve already been working on it, polishing for a few weeks, and then I can incorporate all of her queries into it. And so, so, you know,
Rachael Herron: [00:15:07] That works really well.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:15:08] I work certainly on deadline, but I feel like there is another, you know, there’s another cushion there afterward ‘cause you get your edits from your, your editor and, and that’s also so helpful. And that’s something that a lot of people who don’t, who aren’t yet published or they don’t have an editor, they don’t have that part of the process, which is, I think also really difficult. I love having the – those professional eyes reading my manuscript and giving me, and of course a very honest opinion because my editor wants my books to do well too, and she’s not going to accept something that’s not working.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:40] And have it you said that she will, she’s, she’s pretty blunt with you.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:15:44] She’s very blunt. Yes. She is.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:47] Which I honestly prefer
Juliet Blackwell: [00:15:48] I do too. I do too. She’s just, yeah, she, she doesn’t, you know, she doesn’t use bad language or anything. But I often, I read into her thing, you know, a lot of WTF’s, like, I don’t get what you’re doing here, you know, and it’s, but I sort of love that about her. She’s just very, she’s very straightforward. And again, you know, she and I have been working together for so long. I know she loves my work and I know she wants my work to shine,
Rachael Herron: [00:16:14] Yeah
Juliet Blackwell: [00:16:15] So, so I just really trust her when she’s, when she’s telling me that. Yeah. And I don’t need the flowery language. I just need someone to tell me like, this ending doesn’t work. You know, just something else. So I love that.
Rachael Herron: [00:16:28] I also love that. I love that you mentioned that it’s painful. I have, I think the reason I do this show is there’s – there’s a lot of reasons I do the show, but I’m always looking for the magic bullet, the thing that’ll make writing easy for me. And, and I am taking this class with Becca Sime called, Write Better Faster, and it looks, it looks at your core strengths on the Clifton strengths strength finder, which is like a Myers Briggs, but turned up to 11. And, and we were, we had our one-on-one the other day and she was like, well, you know, you’re doing this particular book, which I’m writing differently because I have such a complete synopsis, so the book feels like it’s easier. But I’m less emotionally connected to it. And she pointed out why I am emotionally connected to my books, that’s from my core strengths. And she said, “Yeah, it might just be that your way is painful.” Like it sounds like your actual, your true good way just hurts. And we’re all trying to avoid suffering. And that’s why writing is hard…
Juliet Blackwell: [00:17:23] You know, that’s, that’s an interesting way to look at it. I think that, I was asked just the other day about, you know, if I write from a, from an outline and, or, or by the seat of my pants, and I was saying that I definitely write by the seat of my pants. I, I, I try to have a synopsis. I try to have an outline and it never sticks to that. Like if I try to stick to the outline, it kills what I’m writing. If I already know what I’m writing, it does that in it for me. It takes a lot of that, that emotion out of it, and I think the emotion, even though we’re, we’re feeling it as pain or –
Rachael Herron: [00:18:00] Yeah
Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:01] Fear or whatever it is, it’s – it’s I think it enlivens the writing, which is interesting. And which might be why, why people don’t write more.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:11] I think it has to be why people don’t write more, because it is not a pleasant process a lot of the time – a lot of the time it is.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:18] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:19] It can be joyful, but
Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:20] You know, if you walk into the store and see your book on the shelf, that’s very joyful.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:25] It pays. It pays for all of that.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:28] Right. But the actual process of writing. Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:30] Yeah.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:31] Having written is wonderful.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:33] Yes. I –
Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:33] It’s wonderful.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:34] I was telling you before we came on the air, I didn’t write today and I’m just like, ah, I just feel terrible and I know that I would’ve felt better if I write.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:42] Yes
Rachael Herron: [00:18:43] It didn’t happen today. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:49] Just what been talking about schedule and getting it done. Yeah. yeah. I, I, I, I think that’s being really, really consistent is, is difficult for me. I think – I think – I think perhaps just because what we were talking about, because it is an emotional process for me it takes, it takes a while and I have to do the things like walking in the woods and whatever, but I’m not calm while I’m walking in the woods. You know, I’m actually, I’ll
Rachael Herron: [00:19:21] You’re thinking about a bad, yeah
Juliet Blackwell: [00:19:22] Yeah. So that, it would be nice to reduce that part. That part would be really nice to reduce.
Rachael Herron: [00:19:28] I agree. Let me know if you figured that out. Cause I’d really like to know
Juliet Blackwell: [00:19:31] But I don’t have to, like, I don’t have any particular like dialogue I find pretty easy and, descriptive passages sometimes take more out of me because I, as a reader, I often find description boring, so I take a lot of time to try to make it not boring
Rachael Herron: [00:19:47] And you’re really good at it because I have such a hard time with setting both writing it and reading it. I always, not always, but I often find it boring and I’m always transported into the place that you write about and I didn’t know that about you, that you, that you spend so much time making it not boring.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:00] It, it – Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:20:02] It works
Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:03] Because I am a, I do tend to skip over a lot of description when I read. So when I’m writing a book, especially a book that, so dependent on setting.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:12] Yeah.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:13] I feel like I really need to spend the time on that and get that across to people.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:17] Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m going to back up to your process one more time because, I know that in some of your books, if not all of your mysteries, you don’t know the ending,
Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:26] Right? I don’t, I don’t know the ending.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:26] You don’t know. You don’t always know who did it.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:31] Yes, I don’t. I once knew who did it and the mystery and I and I completely without meaning to unintentionally signaled the murder or through the whole book, so everybody knew who the murderer was. So I changed it at the very ends, so it was completely leading up to one, and then I’d change it to somebody else. But then I had to go back and put in at least a few clues to lead up to the other person.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:55] And I love talking about that because people think that, you know, mystery writers, when you’re writing your mysteries and not the women’s section, like they must have a plot, they must have a detailed outline. And you don’t
Juliet Blackwell: [00:21:06] Right
Rachael Herron: [00:21:07] Oh, you’re such a good example of so many things. What is your, what is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:21:14] The biggest joy is, is probably what you’ve heard from a lot of people, I think a lot of us feel like those very rare days in between all the painful days when somebody is not, it’s not a whole day, sometimes it’s an hour or even 15 minutes of just writing, and you forget time and you forget whatever, and you’re completely in your story and it’s coming together. You know? That’s the best, especially if it’s been giving you a hard time, and then suddenly, something happens and you’re like, “Oh, that’s what needs to happen!” This, this, this, this, and it just feels right. And it’s just, it’s like drugs.
Rachael Herron: [00:21:50] It is like drugs. It’s like, it’s a drug I can indulge in. I wish I could indulge in it more. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:22:02] Craft tip? I was at the reading – reading the other week and I was talking about what I don’t write with an outline usually, at least not a detailed one. I have a sense of where it’s going, but I don’t have a detailed outline. But what I have started doing, and I thought I discovered this, I thought this was like the Julie technique, but apparently it’s a thing. I’ll read, we’ve been written about, which is called a reverse outline. So I, I write basically a rough draft of, of my book and then, and I often don’t have the ending cause I don’t know the ending yet. But otherwise a rough draft, and I will then go through and write an outline of the book I already have, and then I can look at the outline and looking at the outline really helps me you know, by the time you have 350 pages, it’s so, it’s like a- an octopus. You can’t, it’s so cumbersome. You can’t remember what’s going on where, and the outline I think allows me to then see from afar, like where, where I need more action, where I can insert something, where you know, where I can go back in and work something out. So that that really works for me.
Rachael Herron: [00:23:10] That is one of my favorite things to do, and I am really happy to call that the Julie outline. That’s not a problem for me. The Juliet Blackwell outline process, what you don’t know, it?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:23:21] If somebody ever ask, it has a copyright on it.
Rachael Herron: [00:23:26] It is one of the most useful things that I love how you called the, that draft and octopus cause it is just always slithering one arm out when you’re like, you think you got everything tucked in and then another one comes out –
Juliet Blackwell: [00:23:36] And then that one comes out and you just can’t keep it down. Yeah. It’s so good. That’s so good.
Rachael Herron: [00:23:42] What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:23:46] Oh, in a surprising way. I would say, I mean, the thing that most surprises me is how often I come up with characters when I’m on public transit.
Rachael Herron: [00:23:58] What? Really?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:24:01] It’s actually, I tweeted about this once and the public transit people retweeted it like thousands of times. They were like, yeah, we were on transit and I was like, okay. Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that. But it’s just whenever I go, I take Bart, which is our, our subway system for people who don’t know, into San Francisco. And I don’t do it that often, but every time I do that, it’s, I think it’s just the, I don’t tend to be on my phone a lot in public. So I think it’s one of the rare moments where I’m just looking at people and just taking it in and kind of in my own head space, but also observing people and, and you know, you get very interesting people on Bart and in the Bart station. And I almost always come out with, with an idea for a character too. And I’ll put in there, not a main character. It helps me bring even secondary characters really alive by, by just like focusing on someone I’ve seen in Bart.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:58] ‘Kay and do you have a good recall of, of like the looks of people? You’re an artist, which is why I asked.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:04] I always carry a notebook and I do often sketch, sketch up,
Rachael Herron: [00:25:09] I didn’t know that
Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:11] There are little sketches, like little mini sketches and, and, and even just silly things, you know, orange sweatshirt, you know, with the ruins logo or whatever. I mean, but something that I wouldn’t think of.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:23] I bet you actually saw that because you’re not a sports person.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:25] Right? Exactly. Yeah. It’s just something you can, but it’s really helpful then when you’re, when you’re trying to write,
Rachael Herron: [00:25:31] Right.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:32] You know, people in some sort of distinctive way. I think we all have, we all have little ticks, so we have things that we will write over and over and over again
Rachael Herron: [00:25:39] Yes
Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:39] And it helps get me out of that rut, you know, by, by presenting me with people that I wouldn’t have thought of.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:45] That so, so, so, so smart. And I’m gonna try to do more of that. I usually have like their cheeks were red and they had a potbelly there. I’m done. That’s all I got. And every single man who walks onto it looks like that. Yeah. Yeah. So, that’s awesome. And I love that you scratch it. What is the best book you’ve read recently and why did you love it?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:26:05] I read a book that you recommended to me, which was Educated by a, what’s her name? Tara… Westover.
Rachael Herron: [00:26:14] Westover. Yeah.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:26:15] Which I found really interesting. And I’m actually writing a book now that features a character who grew up in a survivalist household. So it was really, very interesting that way. But that’s not fiction. Of course. It’s
Rachael Herron: [00:26:27] No, it doesn’t matter that, that character doesn’t, that, that character in the memoir doesn’t leave you very easily. Like, I think I will always remember –
Juliet Blackwell: [00:26:33] Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:26:34] -that character and I, I do teach the books I think I’ve read it more than more than most people, but, it just kinda gets inside you.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:26:43] It’s a, it’s a really good one. It’s a really good one, in fact, that the thing I thought to myself was, I need to make sure that I’m not invoking this character too much with my character. You know, I can’t, you know, my character is very much not her. And I started to look long before I read it.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:00] Yeah, I think you’re probably not in any danger
Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:02] Because her, but because her character is so strong, it’s like, I don’t want to, you know, accidentally try to steal her soul. And those ones I was just, I was just mentioning, yeah, I just wanted to show it ‘cause it looks so, I would think this cover is so cool. It is gorgeous.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:22] I know, that’s called Euphoria by…
Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:23] Or a bark.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:22] Oh, wow.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:26] It’s by Lily King. It’s called Euphoria. And it’s a book that’s based on, Margaret Mead and some sort of romantic triangle she had, and I just started it. But this was a recommendation from a bookstore manager. So I always, I always like their recommendation.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:44] That was, that, that was basically written for you, like you the anthropologist, here, you know?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:50] Well, yes. Exactly. I was like, “Ooh! Margaret Mead”
Rachael Herron: [00:27:55] Yeah.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:56] And it’s more interesting than the one I would’ve thought
Rachael Herron: [00:27:58] And you know the thing about the book recommendation, I- that’s how I buy books now. Either buy books on my Kindle, or get them from the library after reading about them. But if I go into a bookstore, I just go to the bookseller and I say, “Here’s what I like. What, what can you not sell enough of? What do you, what do you keep running out of? What are you, what are you recommending the most?” And I just buy it. I don’t read the cover. I just buy.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:27] Yeah. Exactly, exactly. That’s my favorite way
Rachael Herron: [00:28:30] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:32] I’ve done that with you in bookstores.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:34] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:35] Well, right now, will you tell us about your most recent book, which I have told you in person, is just my favorite book of yours. I think it’s
Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:44] Thank you.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:45] So incredibly rich and so deep and so heartfelt, but tell us a little bit about the Vineyards of Champagne.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:50] Oh, thank you. Yes, it is out now
Rachael Herron: [00:28:54] As I have, like last week. So it’s, it’s pretty recent?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:56] Yeah, it came out last… Yeah, just a week ago on Tuesday. It’s, the Vineyards of Champagne is about Rosalyn. Rosalyn is the main character and she is a working for a wine buyer in Napa, and she sent to the champagne region of France, which is in the North of France, to select some champagnes for her, I keep putting my hands down.
Rachael Herron: [00:29:19] That’s okay
Juliet Blackwell: [00:29:20] For her, for her boss. The only problem is that she doesn’t like Champagne. She doesn’t like France. And, and the really, the problem is she doesn’t like anything at the moment because her, her husband, who she was very much in love with, died two years prior to the book beginning. So she’s still really mired in grief. And she’s trying to figure out what’s next. You know, why she has this dream job, everyone’s like, “Oh, this is amazing. You’re working for this wine guy and get to drink wine and talk to people about wine, you get to go to France.” And she’s like, yeah, that’s great. So she spends a lot of time pretending that she’s okay and that, that everything’s fine and it’s not. So she goes to, to champagne and on the, on the airplane ride over, she meets Emma, who’s a woman from Australia. And Emma is this irrepressible. She’s very excited and exciting and she has with her some letters that were written to her aunt during world war one from a soldier, who was on the front lines in champagne. And so she herself is heading for champagne. So that a little coincidence that, she knows the area and, and so she, and she and Rosalyn basically start working through the letters and discovering a mystery that involves the, I guess the thing that got me excited about the book in the first place, that set me on this whole path, they discover that, that the people in the city of what we call Reims, and, and France, they call it a class, but the, the people who stayed behind during the war had to seek refuge in the, in the champagne caves under the city. And they actually lived there for years while their city was being destroyed by the Germans for four years. They were shelled for years and years and years. They had a massive old cathedral that was very reminiscent of the Notre dame that was just ruins, brought to ruins. And, well that 90% of the city was destroyed. But the most amazing thing is they’ve moved underground and they moved their schools underground. They moved cafes and bakeries and hospitals, and then the soldiers were billeted down there. So there was this whole mélange of like thousands of people living underground under the city of Reims. And then they also extended the tunnels out under the vineyards and the women brought in the, what they called the victory vintages every year, despite, despite the war. But they had to go out at night to pick the grapes. And, and there’s no actual record of how many people were killed, but they say that at least 20 children were killed trying to bring in the harvest.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:06] Oh my God.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:32:07] So it was just that, to me, it was just amazing that they, first of all, that they lived down there and they survive down there, and then they managed to bring in the harvest. And why would you bring in the harvest? But they always said it was to make the wine, you’d have to make the wine. And to me it was such a, it was such a wonderful metaphor, ‘cause they have to, the champagne has to sit for years before it’s drinkable. So there’s this hope in the future.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:32] That they will have victory and they will
Juliet Blackwell: [00:32:34] That they will have victory and they’ll be able to drink their, their wine then. So when Rosalyn goes and she discovers all of this, and she meets people, of course, um, and, and they track down a mystery that’s in, in the tunnels. And I think through that, what she’s seeing. And I think that’s what people are reacting really well to in the book, which is nice. I think she, she really, she finds a real connection to a people who didn’t give up no matter how awful it was. It was a, awful, awful war, as we all know. But these people kind of they kept going and they didn’t just keep going, but they made the wine was, I guess the, you know.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:14] I’ve heard this before and every time I hear it, and I’ve read the book, of course, and every time I hear it, I just get chills. And you do that dual timeline.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:21] I do.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:22] You do the historical timeline then, and the current timeline, but just you as a person, you have this almost preternatural ability to find very cool stuff,
Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:31] Oh
Rachael Herron: [00:33:32] You know, from that nobody knows about, I, every time I’ve seen you talk about these underground, you know, the caverns where they lived. Everyone leans forward and goes, “Really? I didn’t know that.” And then you turn these into the books,
Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:46] That’s exactly the same thing.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:48] Yeah, yeah.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:49] But how did we not know this? I mean, how did we not,
Rachael Herron: [00:33:51] I don’t know
Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:52] – Learn this in history class?
Rachael Herron: [00:33:53] Yeah
Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:54] I mean I don’t feel like I learned much at all about world war one, I have to say,
Rachael Herron: [00:33:59] And you have a distinct advantage of having a wine importer, French boyfriend
Juliet Blackwell: [00:34:06] I do. I do.
Rachael Herron: [00:34:07] You do spend a little time in France and I, and I know that you go there with wide open eyes and an ability whenever you go and whenever you’re scouting on a new book, you look around, you say, what, what will be the fascinating, interesting thing I learned about.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:34:22] That’s, that’s it’s true. No, it’s true. And I think, you know, I have to say, we were talking about that book, Euphoria and Margaret Mead and I did study anthropology, and I think there was, I don’t know whether I was trained as an anthropologist and therefore I observe things like that, or if I was just called to that anyway, and that’s why I became an anthropologist. But what, what fascinates me is what makes people tick. And it’s not the, like when you talk about war history, my eyes glaze over. I, I, I understand that it’s important. I just don’t care what battle is waged where, whatever. I want to know what they were eating;
Rachael Herron: [00:34:49] Yeah
Juliet Blackwell: [00:35:00] You know? How did they get food to these guys? Like how did that, how did that happen?
Rachael Herron: [00:35:04] Right.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:35:05] One of the, one of the little details I read was that their tea, always tasted like the stew from the night before ‘cause they didn’t have any new pots. So they made the morning tea in the same pot and they couldn’t waste a lot of water by washing. So they did the best they could. But the men complained, that’s one of the major complaints was that their tea tasted like the night before the, a
Rachael Herron: [00:35:27] That would be a major complaint for me, too!
Juliet Blackwell: [00:35:29] It was awful. I mean, they’re already in the trenches. They are, you know, it’s just this awful, awful, awful life that they’re leading and they can’t even get a decent cup of tea. It just, but I love that. I was like, what- what life was actually, because people live under wartime situations, and so I’m always, I’m always curious about what happens to women. So many of the men are off to war and they have their experiences and they’re horrific. But the women have experiences too, and you know, and they’re also usually taking care of children and elderly people and trying to get by in all those ways. And how does that happen?
Rachael Herron: [00:36:11] And you do such a good job
Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:13] You know the people pay taxes, like what happened, like how do they get food? You know what- what’s the basics?
Rachael Herron: [00:36:20] Yeah.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:21] They didn’t even have any plumbing like what’s going on?
Rachael Herron: [00:36:23] I always think about the bathroom. Like what? What? Where
Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:25] Me too.
Rachael Herron: [00:36:23] Where were they getting the toilet paper or whatever they were using? How did that work?
Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:29] Yeah. It is awful. That’s an awful thing.
Rachael Herron: [00:36:35] Well, thank you so much, Juliet. Tell us where our listeners can find you.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:39] Oh, thank you. Well, my, my website is julietblackwell.net or .com, either one, and I’m also on, I’m on Twitter, I think it’s just @JulietBlackwell and I’m on Facebook, it’s JulietBlackwellAuthor/
Rachael Herron: [00:36:55] You get good Facebook, if people are on Facebook, it’s a great place to follow you.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:59] I’m not on Instagram cause I’m just
Rachael Herron: [00:37:02] You’re holding out.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:37:04] Hold out.
Rachael Herron: [00:37:07] Alright, well thank you, thank you so much for being on the show and I can’t wait for the next time we hang out and, and just be together.
Juliet Blackwell: [00:37:14] Thank you for having me here. Love you.
Rachael Herron: [00:37:19] Love you too. Bye!
Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patron and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/
Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.
