Ep. 239: Kirsty Capes on Using Tips from Screenwriters to Write Novels

Kirsty Capes works in publishing and, as a care leaver, is an advocate for better representation for care-experienced people in the media. She recently completed her PhD which investigates female-centric care narratives in contemporary fiction, under the supervision of 2019 Booker prize-winner, Bernardine Evaristo. Careless is her first novel.

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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.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 239 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am so thrilled that you’re here with me today. If you’re watching on the video, I am in a friend’s house who is out of town, housesitting for her, so that’s why it looks a little bit different. Might sound a little bit different, that might keep happening for a while on the show. As you know, today we are talking to Kirsty Capes, and we are talking about stealing or borrowing tips from screenwriters in order to write novels and she was, as all my guests are, delightful, so, I know that you will enjoy the interview, stick around for that. 

[00:00:52] What’s going on around here? Well, moving is continuing a pace. It’s been a very exciting, very incredibly busy week. Probably the busiest we’ve had so far as we completed cleaning up the house, getting the interior painting done, getting the staging done. We, I just realized this morning when I was journaling that we are not homeless because we have a house, but we are without a home. Our home has gone. The staging is ridiculous. It is just ridiculous. If you look at my Twitter, I have linked, or on my Instagram too, I have posted pictures of what the stagers did to our house. It is so fancy. It is mid-century modern; it has clean lines; it has light colors. It’s white carpet. Oh, it’s white carpet. All of that has been done. All of that has been put in and as of yesterday, people are coming through the home and hopefully somebody will want to buy it as soon as possible. I’m here in this friend’s house for another few days, and then we will go back to the house and we will live in the staged furniture, which makes me very nervous, especially when it comes to my wife and her coffee cup on those white carpets so that’ll be interesting. I’m just planning on buying drop cloths, drop cloths and putting them absolutely everywhere because I don’t trust us, I don’t trust myself and I don’t trust her. So, it is a weird feeling. We have everything that is hours that we need for the next, however long with us. We have our clothes, we have our computer setups, everything that is not packed and ready to be put in a shipping container is with us, besides our kitchen stuff, we did leave a minimal amount of kitchen stuff in our kitchen because we are cooks and we will keep cooking and we will pack up the spices and our favorite two pots at the very last minute, right before we leave the country at the end of July. 

[00:02:54] So, for the next two months, we are without a home, home. Without our home that we created together and have lived in together for the past 15 years. But what was home? What is home, really? Home is my people, my wife, my family. Home is my writing, home is reading. Home is talking to you all, home is thinking about writing. Home is teaching, home is being with my students, that is all home. That’s all the home that I need. Get back to me in six months and see how I feel about that statement. But it is pretty exciting right now. And I’m feeling, I’m pretty good, I really am. I’m glad that we rehomed our cat Waylon when we did, because he is settled in so beautifully and that makes me so happy. And my little dog dozy is actually going to be living in this home behind us until we can send for her, until we buy a home and can send for her. She’s going to be living with my friend Sophie, and that’s the house we’re in. So, it’s really pretty nice that we’re spending 10 days in this house, with the house with dozy so that she can get to know this as her new home as well. And, when it comes to writing, I can admit that it, except for the two hours, twice a week, where I’m in RachaelSaysWrite, where I’m writing, that’s about the only time I’m writing right now. It’s been, rough and that’s fine because I’m actually not on a deadline right now, I’m just doing different projects, finishing up some revisions of things. And I do get those four hours a week, but on the other days I have been, I’m not a step tracker, but my aura rank that I wear, that tracks my sleep, I am a sleep tracker because I have terrible sleep and this has really helped me to get better sleep. It also tracks my steps and I was really impressed when I started to get 11 and 12 and 13 and 15,000 steps a day as I was, you know, moving around the house, packing, moving, cleaning, doing all this stuff. But over this last weekend, I was getting 23, 24, 25,000 steps a day. Absolutely exhausted. So much to do. And it’s, it’s seemingly never ending. So, I think that now that the whole, the house is open for business and people are coming through, there’s really nothing left to do. There’s nothing left to pack. I would like a nice 5,000 step day where I just walk from the, this desk to the bathroom and back, and maybe out for a coffee.

[00:05:20] So, that, because Sophie lives in a place where there is walkable, I have to tell you, this is one of our dreams, is to someday live, where we can walk to things. For 15 years, we have lived in a place in east Oakland. There is nothing to walk to, even the liquor store is closed. There’s literally nothing to walk to at all. Here, at Sophie’s house, there is a Trader Joe’s, there is a Pete’s, coffee shop. There is a Chipotle, there’s 31 flavors. There’s a comic book shop, like literally two blocks away. So, someday in New Zealand, we would love to move someplace where we can walk to some place. Walking to a cafe, isn’t that amazing? And we’re entering a time where, perhaps, you’re getting closer to being able to write in cafes again. In New Zealand, of course, we’ll be able to write in cafes because they’ve been opened since last June of 2020. But all of us in the United States, too, we’re getting to a place where perhaps the writers are going to be able to go out and write again. And for a lot of us, that’s kind of a big deal. However, we have gotten used to writing at home, haven’t we?  So that’s been something that’s one of those silver linings of the pandemic. Perhaps we all had to learn how to write and revise in our homes, which is something that I’ve heard from a lot of writers, is something that we were really bad at, a lot of us were really bad at. So, that’s exciting. I’m just going to jump in to the interview right now. I’ve updated you on all the important things. So please enjoy this. Please get some of your own writing done, whether that’s in your home or in your car, or on one of those car lap desks like I have. And then come find me where I am on the internet and tell me about it. I really, really love hearing from you all about where and what kind of writing you’re doing, what you’re struggling with. Please, let me know. I will be doing a mini episode soon, probably within this next week. So, if you have any questions, I have a couple of questions that are waiting in the queue that I will get out in that mini episode and I really love doing those. So, if you are at patron at the level at which I am your mini coach, which is $5 a month, lay some questions on me. Let’s get some good ones in there. There are already good ones in there. Let’s get some great, a great selection to do a mini episode on and thank you all for listening. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for being writers cause you’re amazing. Okay. Bye. 

[00:07:41] Hey, is resistance keeping you from writing? Are you looking for an actual writing community in which you can make a calls and be held accountable for them? Join RachaelSaysWrite, like twice weekly, two hour writing session on zoom. You can bop in and out of the writing room as your schedule needs, but for just $39 a month, you can write up to 4 hours a week. With our wonderful little community, in which you’ll actually get to know your writing peers. We write from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on Thursdays and that’s US Pacific Standard Time. Go to RachaelHerron.com/Write to find out more.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:21] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Kirsty Capes. Hello, Kirsty! 

Kristy Capes: [00:08:26] Hi! Thank you so much for having me, so lovely to meet you, Rachael.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:29] It’s a thrill to have you on the show and I’m so happy to talk about writing today. Let me give you a little introduction. Kirsty Capes works in publishing and, as a care leaver, is an advocate for better representation for care-experienced people in the media. She recently completed her PhD, congratulations, which investigates female-centric care narratives in contemporary fiction, under the supervision of 2019 Booker prize-winner, Bernardine Evaristo. Careless is her first novel. And when this releases, it will have just, the book will have just released. So, congratulations on that. 

Kristy Capes: [00:09:05] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:07] Have you, we don’t have a term that I can think of, and it may be a blind spot in my vocabulary. And I shouldn’t even say the word blind spot, but using more sensitive language, but we don’t have, we don’t use the term care leaver here in the states, as far as I know. Can you explain what a care leaver is?

Kristy Capes: [00:09:25] So a care leaver is anyone who has spent time in the care system at any time in their life. I think generally, from like a policy governmental perspective, it’s six months in the care system. Although I might be wrong on that, it might be three months. And they have left the care system. So, you know, they’ve either aged out or they’ve left whatever care situation they were in.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:59] I feel like here, at least there, people, I hear conversation, people talking about there should be a term. We should have a term. Instead, we just have foster kids who’ve aged out and that’s, I mean, there might be a better phrase for that, but I love that you are an advocate for this and talk to me a little bit about how your first novel is about this subject. Did you always want to do this or is this just kind of what came out of your body as a care leaver yourself? 

Kristy Capes: [00:10:25] Yeah, so I think there was definitely a part of it that it just came out of my body as you say. So, I grew up in foster care myself and I always wanted to write. I always wanted to be a writer. I was a really big reader as a kid and I had, I went to university and I did creative writing at university. And a lot of the creative writing that I was doing, were kind of short stories and poems and things like that, that were kind of influenced by my own experience growing up in care. So, I had all of these kinds of bits and pieces of writing, where I was kind of looking at the care experience, dealing with my own care experience, kind of working through some of that. And I got to the point where, I was, I felt as though I was ready to start writing a book and it seemed very natural for me to write something about care because I’d been through it myself. I had so much firsthand experience of it. I had a lot of writing already on the care experience and it felt like it was something that I needed to do for myself to kind of have some sort of catharsis maybe to, you know, kind of deal with some of the sort of unresolved bits of my own experience. And also, you know, I was very, very aware that when I was growing up in care, there were very few representations of people like me in the books that I was reading. And as such a big reader, especially as a child, it was so it felt very important to me to write something that felt very true to my own experience, but also felt more of a positive and hopeful representation, of someone who’s been in foster care. And that’s kind of where Careless came from it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:28] It, I’m not done with it yet, cause I just started it the other day a little bit late, but it is beautiful. 

Kristy Capes: [00:12:34] Oh, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:35] Your writing is just sublime and it deserves all of the accolades that you are getting. I’m so excited to read more of it. Let’s talk a little bit about what your writing process is like. How do you get it done? Do you have a full-time day job? Are you working around that? Are you working on the next book? Tell us all about that.

Kristy Capes: [00:12:56] Well it’s interesting that this podcast has fallen when it has, because I just sent my second book to my editor yesterday, first draft.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:08] Like, and as we’re recording this, I think your book comes out in about a month. Is that right? 

Kristy Capes: [00:13:13] Yeah. About three weeks. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:15] That’s exactly the timeframe I had for my first two books. And I hated turning in my second book before the first one had come out. It was also, 

Kristy Capes: [00:13:22] Yeah, it was really insane. So, yeah, I mean, it’s all at the front of my head at the moment, so I can tell you all about it. But, I had, I do have a full-time job. I have a nine to five. I work for HarperCollins, funnily enough. For mills and boon, which I think in the states is called Harlequin. So, lots of lovely romance. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:46] I’m also a romance writer, so 

Kristy Capes: [00:13:49] Oh, amazing! So yeah, I do my nine to five there. And, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:55] What do you do there?

Kristy Capes: [00:13:56] I do marketing, which is loads of fun. I love working there. It’s just the best. So yeah, so it’s been, it was quite intense. And I think originally when I got my book deal, back last year, in February last year, they kind of asked me when I would be able to deliver book two. And originally, they wanted January, 2021. And I was also doing a PhD at the time last year as well. So, 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:31] Oh my God.

Kristy Capes: [00:14:32] It was quite a lot going on. But, so originally, I was kind of doing my day job and then my PhD was kind of evenings and weekends. And then I went straight from that into writing book two. So, I kind of said, can I have April, please? January? And very, very gratefully, they said, yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:54] Mark you. Yeah.

Kristy Capes: [00:14:57] So, yeah. But, most of my writing, not so much for book one, for catalyst, because I was writing that as part of my PhD, but definitely for the second book, it has been, kind of a little bit of a balancing act in terms of balancing my day job with the writing. And at the moment, because I’m working at home because of pandemic, I found it quite difficult writing in the evenings because I’m essentially turning off one laptop and turning on another and kind of not really moving or anything, so. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:35] How do you manage it? 

Kristy Capes: [00:15:37] Well, at first, I told myself that I would, my weekday evenings was for me, no writing in the evenings. So, I sort of protected my weekday evenings as kind of like my me time, my nap time or whatever. And so I was writing on the weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, and then it got towards, it got closer to the deadline and I realized that I needed to write more. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:11] As we do. 

Kristy Capes: [00:16:12] Yes, exactly. Didn’t quite, my meticulous word count planning did not work out. So yeah, I ended up to sort of the last month or two. I was kind of doing lunchtimes, evenings, weekends, like any, any spare moment I could grab. So yeah, it was quite intense.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:33] But as we speak, when did you ship it? 

Kristy Capes: [00:16:36] Yesterday. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:37] Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. And did you spend the night in front of Netflix and bottle of wine?

Kristy Capes: [00:16:42] Yeah, glass of wine. Absolutely. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:46] One thing I want to point out that, is that there, that is really, really important, I think, and this is something that I forget and that people I talk to always forget, but you said first, I protected me time. And we have to. We have to have our downtime planned. Otherwise, as writers, we always have that nagging, like I should be writing. I should be writing. I should be writing, but not if you’ve planned it. So that worked, I bet that worked as well as it could until you ran out of time. 

Kristy Capes: [00:17:13] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think, I always think that, like writing is a little bit like setting yourself homework. And you know, you’ve never, you can never do enough and you can never, you know, have enough of a word count down in a single day or a single week. And I think it can be quite difficult to kind of combat that sort of the guilt that’s associated with that. If you’re not writing, if you’re just, you know, going out with friends or, you know, watching Netflix or whatever it may be, to kind of stop yourself from feeling guilty about not writing whenever you’re not doing anything.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:00] How do you,

Kristy Capes: [00:18:01] Because I find that quite difficult.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:02] How do you manage to do that, when you manage to do it? If you manage to do it? 

Kristy Capes: [00:18:08] I think having a really robust schedule for me is really important. And rather than kind of thinking about word count and things like that, I kind, I give myself kind of allotted times, whether it’s, you know, a few hours or a lunch break or a morning, a Sunday morning or whatever it might be. And, this is kind of gross, but on the weekends, I write really well in the morning. The morning is like the perfect time for me to be writing. So, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, I wake up, I walk the dog and then I tell myself, you can’t take a shower, you can’t get dressed, you can’t do anything until you have written for two hours.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:56] I love that. Yes!

Kristy Capes: [00:18:59] And it does work. It’s not, maybe it’s not the healthiest strategy, but,

Rachael Herron: [00:19:03] I think it’s wonderful! As writers, we probably, as writers, we probably shower less than other people, anyway. I mean honest, that’s my biggest goal in life. What is the biggest challenge do you have when it comes to writing? 

Kristy Capes: [00:19:19] I think for me, the biggest challenge, especially with writing the second book has, is I think it’s the kind of isolation and aloneness and loneliness that can come with writing. I think it’s, you know, it’s, by nature, it’s a very solitary pursuit and I think it can be very easy to get very lost in whatever story you’re trying to get down on the page and kind of forget the world around you, forget to talk to people, forget to go outside, all of those kinds of things. And I think because of the situation we’re in at the moment, all of that has been exacerbated so much. So, it’s been quite difficult to find the right balance. And I think as well, it’s quite hard to go from doing something that’s very personal and very introspective to then, you know, going out into the world and being a social being. And, you know, having conversations with people and stuff like that, it can be quite difficult to go from one to the other very quickly, so, yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:38] And the going out and talking to people is also fraught with literal danger.

Kristy Capes: [00:20:43] Yes.  

Rachael Herron: [00:20:44] It’s never been this way for writing. It’s always felt like this for writers, perhaps. But it’s, 

Kristy Capes: [00:20:50] Just that nice little extra added anxiety for, 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:53] Frisson of terror, yeah. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

Kristy Capes: [00:21:01] Oh, also a very good question. I think my biggest joy is the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve written something really good and being quite smug and proud about it.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:15] Yes! I love that feeling.

Kristy Capes: [00:20:18] It’s the best feeling ever, when you know you’ve had a really good session and you’re like, yeah, that is really good stuff what I’ve just written down there. I love that feeling. So, 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:29] That particular brand of smugness is something I think about a lot. It’s so delicious, like you can’t, you can’t share it with anybody because then smug goes wrong. But like inside your heart, you’re just sitting, you know, especially if you like sit on the couch with something delicious afterwards, you know? Oh, it’s literally the best.

Kristy Capes: [00:21:46] Exactly, yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:49] Can you share a craft tip of any sort with our readers?

Kristy Capes: [00:21:53] Yes, I can. So, something that I’ve found really useful in my writing, and I think it’s probably a bit unconventional is, I really like using screenwriting craft for my fiction writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:11] Like what?

Kristy Capes: [00:22:12] So, things like, there’s a great screenwriter theorist called Blake Snyder. He wrote a book called Save The Cat, but he has a beat sheet, you can look it up online, it’s free to view online. And it’s essentially, it’s kind of like a story structure, but it’s specifically for screenwriting. But it, he basically lists every single beat you need to have in a story to make it cohesive. And it’s just a really nice, it’s almost a little bit like paint by numbers.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:46] Yes. Hand it over. 

Kristy Capes: [00:22:49] Yeah, exactly. So, it’s really nice to have someone telling you, this is what you need to do to make your story work. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:55] Yeah.

Kristy Capes: [00:21:56] And inevitably, it always ends up you know, not following, you know the structure to a T, but I feel like, I’m a real plotter, I love plotting my stuff out. So, when I’m in the really early stages of writing something new, I use Blake Snyder’s beat sheet to plot everything out. And it really helps me to kind of visualize the story and its completeness. So, I definitely recommend that.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:22] So where do you keep all of this plotting? Is this something that you’re writing along synopsis and then you’re writing the book or is it more like outline format? 

Kristy Capes: [00:23:31] It’s usually a spreadsheet that gets more, 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:35] I love a spreadsheet. 

Kristy Capes: [00:23:37] Yeah, me too.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:39] We’re weirdos, but they’re just, oh, they’re so good.

Kristy Capes: [00:23:42] You know, what’s really satisfying about a spreadsheet is dropping your word count in for each chapter and watching the total go up. I love that. So good!

Rachael Herron: [00:23:52] I’ve actually never combined the plotting with the I want to do that now. I really want to do that. I want to see that a bit.

Kristy Capes: [00:23:58] It’s delightful. It’s very satisfying. All about the small wins. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:03] Okay, so, I’d love to go granular on this. What is, what else is on this spreadsheet? Your scenes probably planned out. How much is written in each box for a scene? How much do you know about it? 

Kristy Capes: [00:24:15] Probably like not very much in the early stages, probably a couple of sentences for each scene. And then I will usually have a separate tab with my main character or main characters and then all of the secondary characters and their relationships to my main characters. So, the book that I’m writing at the moment has kind of three main characters in it. So, I’ve got each of those guys and then kind of all of their family members, all of their friends and their relationships. So, I can just keep track of the names and things like that, and then things like people’s ages, what they do for a job so I don’t accidentally change their job halfway through, those kinds of things. And then I usually have a separate tab, which is kind of a to-do list. So, as I’m writing, I tend not to look back too much as a, you know, I don’t sort of edit as I go along because I find myself getting pulled out of the story. So, as I’m writing, if something occurs to me that I need to then go back and change, I’ll kind of keep a list of everything that I need to do. And then when I’m sort of towards the end of the manuscript, that’s when I’ll go back and kind of weave all those extra bits and pieces in. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:35] I do something exactly like that, but I use post-its and I, when every time I have an idea, I jot a post-it and they’re all in one spot, and then. 

Kristy Capes: [00:25:43] Oh amazing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:44] I’ll deal with that later to fix. 

Kristy Capes: [00:25:45] I love that.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:46] But I also really like the idea of being in the, in the spreadsheet. I just love the spreadsheet. I’m less of a plotter, but I want to be more of a plotter, always. What thing in your life affect your writing in a surprising way? 

Kristy Capes: [00:25:59] I think, the thing that I’ve noticed affected my writing, and it’s only because I’m not doing very much of it at the moment, is driving. I didn’t realize, I was thinking about this questionnaire. I was like, what is it? It’s quite a hard one. But I think I do a lot of my “writing” while I’m doing things that don’t require a lot of, sort of brainpower.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:29] Yeah.

Kristy Capes: [00:26:30] Not, not to say, I mean, I do concentrate when I’m driving.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:33] No, but it’s route, it’s automatic. Yeah.

Kristy Capes: [00:26:35] Yeah, exactly. Especially if you’re driving somewhere familiar, you can kind of go on autopilot. And I realized that there are lots of things that are quite eon in my sort of daily life where I’m writing and I’ve not realized that I’m writing, but I’m just doing it in my head. So now, because I used to drive to the train station to go to work, and obviously we’re working from home now, I’ve had to find different pockets of time where I can do that kind of brain work, where I’ve lost it from things like driving. So that’s been really interesting. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:13] What pockets have you found?

Kristy Capes: [00:27:16] So, walking the dog. So, I have a golden retriever. So, when I’m walking him, he’s lovely, things like doing chores, like, doing the hoovering or washing the dishes.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:30] Dishes are good.

Kristy Capes: [00:27:31] All of that kind of thing, yeah. Any kind of cleaning. Yeah, all those sorts of things, making dinner, anything like that. So, yeah, it’s been really interesting, but I’ve realized, it’s made me realize that actually I’m doing a lot more work internally than I thought I was. You know, I always kind of thought that, you know, the act of writing was sitting in front of a page and getting the words down and, you know, doing your plotting and you’re planning and things like that. But so much is just going on kind of in the background when you don’t even realize it.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:10] And I think it has to, I think that’s a wonderful thing for people to, to think about and realize, is that you are doing the work. For me, I, the driving thing, I miss all the podcasts I used to listen to. But nowadays, when I drive, I tend to not put the podcast on because I want that time for the, for the low-grade thinking.

Kristy Capes: [00:28:31] Yeah. Absolutely. The kind of psychological space needed to think. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:36] Yeah. I could also do more walking, but you know, that, that involves leaving the chair and I don’t feel like it. What is the best book that you’ve read recently and why did you love it? 

Kristy Capes: [00:28:46] So I’ve been kind of reading a little bit outside of what I would normally read at the moment and it’s because I’m writing. So, I’m trying not to read anything too close to my own writing. And I think also I just, I’m really desperate at the moment for just lovely, uplifting romance. I think we all need it at the moment. So, I’ve been reading lots and lots of good romances and rom-coms. One of them is The Mismatch by Sara Jafari. So, I don’t, I think it comes out in June, so one for your list. And that is about a British Iranian girl who meets a white boy. He was very kind of, it’s a very opposites-attract thing, not just in terms of coming from different cultures and upbringings, but also like, he’s a jock and she’s an arty type and that kind of thing.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:43] Oh, it sounds delicious. 

Kristy Capes: [00:29:44] Yeah. It’s very, very good. And it’s kind of just about, it’s kind of an opposites attract story. But it also has, you know, some much, much more difficult issues in there as well. So, yeah, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. And then I’ve also, 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:04] The Mismatch.

Kristy Capes: [00:30:05] Yeah, The Mismatch. And then, I’ve also been reading loads of Mhairi McFarlane at the moment. I don’t know you’ve heard of her.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:13] I’ve never heard of her.

Kristy Capes: [00:30:14] So, she’s a British romcom writer. And she just does the best, most joyous romances ever. I absolutely love her. Yeah. I always go back to her, you know, if I’m feeling a bit down or I just need something really light and uplifting and you know, something to read in the barf, I just love Mhairi McFarlane.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:36] Do you have a particular favorite that you would recommend I start with? 

Kristy Capes: [00:30:41] Oh, I think, If I Never Met You as a Good One. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:48] Okay. 

Kristy Capes: [00:30:49] And the one I’m reading at the moment is called, It’s Not Me, It’s You. Great.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:56] That’s such a good title. 

Kristy Capes: [00:30:59] And I’m halfway through that. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s very good so far. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:02] Oh, thank you. Thank you. Speaking of wonderful, wonderful books, can you please tell us a little bit about Careless, what it’s about and give us a little taste of it.

Kristy Capes: [00:31:12] It’s not quite an uplifting romcom. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:16] It’s not, but it’s so beautiful. It’s so beautifully read.

Kristy Capes: [00:31:19] Oh, thank you. I would like to think it’s very uplifting as well. So, “Careless” is about a young girl who’s 15. Her name is Bess. She is in foster care. She’s growing up in a small suburban town, just outside of London. And she finds out that she’s pregnant and the story is basically following Bess as she kind of decides what she wants to do about this pregnancy. And it’s also about her best friend, Eshal, who is a British Bangladeshi and is kind of being expected to participate in an arranged marriage and she’s not so sure that she wants to. And it’s just kind of about these two girls, their friendship, you know, their unconditional love for one another and you know, how they kind of overcome all of these really difficult situations, to kind of follow their dreams and establish their own agency. And, you know, carve their own paths for themselves. So yeah, I mean, it is, it deals with some difficult issues, but I think ultimately, it’s really a story about hope, and, you know, aspiration and, 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:44] And that beautiful, and that beautiful friendship. You write, the friendship between the girls is so wonderfully, it’s, it’s evident from the beginning of the book, so. 

Kristy Capes: [00:32:54] Oh, thank you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:55] I’m glad you didn’t accidentally spoil the ending by saying, you know, and then they are never friends again. That would be unbearable. Okay, and where can we find you out there on the internet? 

Kristy Capes: [00:33:07] So I am on Twitter @kristycapes, and I am on Instagram @kirstycapes.author 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:15] Perfect. Kirsty, thank you so much for spending your time with me today. It was a joy to talk to you and may your debut novel fly from the shelves. 

Kristy Capes: [00:33:25] Oh, thank you so much. So lovely to meet you. 

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 Patreon 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/