Bookwild - Ava Glass: Alias Emma

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

On this episode, I talk to Ava Glass about her relentlessly suspenseful spy thriller Alias Emma.You can also watch the episode on YouTubeAuthor LinksInstagramGoodreadsCheck out the book hereAlias Emma SynopsisNothing about Emma Makepeace is real. Not even her name.A newly minted secret agent, Emma's barely graduated from basic training when she gets the call for her first major assignment. Eager to serve her country and prove her worth, she dives in headfirst.Emma must covertly travel across one of the world’s most watched cities to bring the reluctant—and handsome—son of Russian dissidents into protective custody, so long as the assassins from the Motherland don’t find him first. With London’s famous Ring of Steel hacked by the Russian government, the two must cross the city without being seen by the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras that document every inch of the city’s streets, alleys, and gutters.Buses, subways, cars, and trains are out of the question. Traveling on foot, and operating without phones or bank cards that could reveal their location or identity, they have twelve hours to make it to safety. This will take all of Emma’s skills of disguise and subterfuge. But when Emma’s handler goes dark, there’s no one left to trust. And just one wrong move will get them both killed. Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

Hi, my name is Kate and I love to read. Like, I was carrying books around with me before Kindles were a thing. So I decided to start a podcast where I interview the authors of some of my favorite books, ask them all of my questions so that I can read between the lines of the books. Welcome back to another episode of Between the Lines. Today I'm here with Ava Glass, who is the author of a fantastic spy thriller at Red Reefi. recently called Alias Emma. So thank you for being on the podcast, Ava. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. So before we talk about the book, I did want to get to know a little bit about you. So when did you know that you wanted to be an author or when did you know you wanted to write a book? It's funny because I've been a writer most of my adult life. Actually,

I, but I was nonfiction. I was a journalist. And then I worked for sort of of different kind of nonfiction book companies. But it never really occurred to me to write a fiction novel until after I took a job working for the British government where I worked quite closely with people who work in intelligence. And I wasn't in intelligence myself, but my job sort of I encountered them. And I found it so fascinating, just so completely different

from my own world. That's probably when I first started thinking someday I should write about this. Really cool that you were just like, working around something like that and that made you want to write something kind of about it. Yes, exactly. It's sometimes being on the outside sort of looking in is, um, is a, is a very clear view perhaps, maybe clearer than when you're actually on the inside. And I feel like that's where I was. I could just see things, but I couldn't, I wasn't part of it. So I remember in one building

I went into, there was a sign on a door that said, if you're not top secret clear, do not even touch this door. And I always wondered, what went on behind that door? I would never know. But that fires your imagination. Yeah. Yeah. That would have me wondering.

I'd be like, what are all the stories happening behind the mirror? Exactly. Exactly. I still don't know. But then in fiction, you get to make it up. Yeah. Yeah, that is the fun of it and the fun of reading it. So what is your writing process like?

Do you know mostly how a story is going to unfold or do you figure it out as you're writing? It depends on where I'm at in the story. So at the very beginning, I sort of begin sort of imagining the plot. I sort of envision what could happen with the plot. And sometimes for over a month, I will just be just sketching out the book. So this is the beginning. This is the middle. this is the end. And so sometimes I'll just have two paragraphs and then I go back and fill in more about,

okay, so how does the middle happen? Like, how do I get from the beginning to the middle? And in that way, eventually I get to where I've got about eight pages of just plot, sort of an outline, but a very loose outline. And once I have that, then I can start writing and it stops me from getting stuck. I kind of have a destination to go to. Yeah. I feel like that would make it like a lot easier to, do the actual writing process where you're just kind of filling it in basically. Yes, I've spent, like I tried writing, just writing, what they call pantsing it, where you write by the seat of your pants. And what I found was I would just get, I would have a real like burst of sort of creativity and plot and I would be writing along.

And then I just hit a wall and everything would stop. And sometimes for a really long time while I tried to figure out what to do next. And that's just for me, it just, it was two, those long times were too scary. Yes, I would imagine. So what about characters? So do you mostly know them when you go into it, or do you kind of develop them as you write? Yeah, I suppose, okay, for the main characters and in alias Emma, there are really three primary characters. There's Emma, there's her boss, Charles Ripley, and then there's Michael,

the man she's rescuing. And really, in a main, In many ways, the book is a three-hander because the two, Michael and Emma, are the, like, they're on the page all the time because they're on the run. And we don't get anybody else's perspective because I wanted it to feel claustrophobic around those two because they're so cut off. And so I spend a long time developing those two characters. And Emma was loosely inspired by an actual spy I met years ago, the one, a young woman who was I think, I still don't know because you never know, but I think she was assigned to background

check me because she was sort of in my, I think, I still, I will never know, but nothing else makes sense. And it was right after I started working for the government. And I was given sort of make work jobs for really, like six weeks while they waited for my security clearance to come through. And I've lived in, I've lived in both America and the UK. So my security clearance is tricky. And even though we are allies, our two nations, it is everyone's still a little suspicious. So it was, I didn't know what I was waiting for because the written part of the security clearance was done, but nobody seemed to know. They said they were just, we're just waiting for paperwork. And it was during this time that I was sort of adopted by this young woman.

He was about my age, super cool looking, very friendly, very interested in my background and my life. my family, what did my brothers do? You know, oh, your uncle was in the military. How interesting. When did he serve? And like questions that I didn't think about because she was really, really good. And I was very accepting. And so she, after a few weeks of just sort of coffee and chatting and running to each other spontaneously in the hallway, she disappeared.

She disappeared. Her email disappeared from the office email. I never saw her again. It was like she'd never existed. And I just thought, well, obviously I thought something weird had happened, but also I was by then suddenly I was given work. I was doing my job and I was really busy. And I honestly didn't think about it for a really long time. And then one day, I just thought, wait, she was she was backgrounding me.

She had to be. That's so sneaky. It seems like it. Yeah. So she inspired Emma. Yeah, just going, just being gone. And I'm like, I'm sure she's never thought about me again. I was just one of many jobs, but I have never been able to get her out of my mind.

I've thought about her for years. And so, yeah, she became, she was my inspiration for Emma. Oh my gosh, that is the coolest answer for character development that I've heard so far. You're like, it was actually someone who was background checking me. So what is your favorite part about writing spy thrillers then? Oh, it's so excited. Like it's, I wrote alias Emma during the pandemic, so lockdown was quite fierce.

And I couldn't even go to London. I only live 20 minutes from London. And I couldn't even go to personally check the route they take across the city because we weren't allowed to go that far. So I had to just use maps. I lived in London for many years and now I live in like outside it. So I used my memory and maps and just had to end Google my street view to make I was getting things right in my mind.

But so for me, it was this absolute escape. It was complete escape. I could in my mind, I wasn't in my house, trapped, unable to do anything fun while the pandemic rage. I was running through the streets of London, rescuing somebody from Russian assassins. And it was just absolute. And I hope that comes through in the book

because I just poured all of that into it, my desire to be outside, my desire to go do things again, and all of that, like, it was just joyous to write that. us to write that sort of thrill ride of a book, you know, rather than a thinky book. It's more of a thrill ride of a book. Yes. Yes. I definitely think it came through because I was, I was like so sucked into it. I read it all like in one night and like was staying awake because I felt like I was there. When you said that you didn't even like actually get to walk the actual route, I was

shocked. Like so much of the book is like it really feels like you're trying to get through. London, like to the whole other side of it, um, in one night basically without going, or without getting detected. So that is, that's cool that it was, that you were even able to use technology to make it that realistic. Yes, that was so handy as well. I mean, and I did intentionally set it in places I personally know, um, so that places I had been to so that I could give it my own memory of the place on top of the images I could see. The images were just to make sure I wasn't completely wrong about where a clistled park was, or how do you get from Camden to the, to the canals, for example, what's that crossing look like?

Because I'd done it, but you know how you do things without, like, observing yourself doing them? And so, like, to write somebody doing it, I then had to make sure, oh, wait, there is a staircase isn't there. And, like, once I could double check that, but the rest was just my own, it was almost like a, my own trip through London. And I did love it. Right. Yeah, it was fantastic. How would you describe alias Emma in a couple sentences? Okay, let's see.

I would say it's a book about your resilience, people who are stronger than they think, a fight, the Cold War that is not yet over, and perhaps has never ended. and also it's an absolute, it's meant to be a roller coaster ride from start to finish, just a nonstop roller coaster ride. That's what I want. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly how it felt. So was it most, you mentioned that the main character, if we were going to pick that one main character, was kind of inspired from someone that you met, but what inspired the story for alias,

Emma? Well, I think the very beginning of this particular book is probably the attempted assassination of Sergei Scrippel and his daughter in England about four years ago. And that was when, I don't know if you remember it, but somebody, and it's believed to be Russian assassins painted nerve agent, a nerve agent on his doorknob. He was a ex-Russian spy who had defected to the UK and had been here for a very long time. An older man living in peace, his daughter was visiting. He was in a safe house. He was meant to be quite safe. Nobody knew he was here.

Nobody knew anything about him. And two GRU assassins painted Nervijit on his doorknop, which he then absorbed through his skin. He and his daughter both did when they touched the door. But it was slow acting. So they walked across this town, which is just a few miles from where I live. It's a small, you know, medium-sized town. It's your basic Kansas in England. Like the Salisbury is just a normal country place.

It's this most extraordinary place for this to happen. And then they collapsed in the town center where they were discovered. And if it hadn't been for a very smart ER doctors, they'd be dead. But the doctors figured out. from what he was saying that he was Russian and that he thought he'd been poisoned. And then they began figuring out and they did it in time and he lived. But the two assassins, the nerve agent was in a perfume bottle. I mean, this reads like a novel, doesn't it?

That's what they carried the nerve agent in a perfume bottle, which they then dropped in a park and it contained enough nerve agent to kill 10,000 people. And the police only found it when a young woman picked, it up, opened it to smell it, and it nearly killed her. I think it did kill her, actually. She was the only death. Wow. All of that happened four years ago. And so I think when that happened, it was the most extraordinary, like, moment when the doors opened. And you could see that while we're going about our lives, there's a war going on between our nations, I think, and Russia. Like,

it's always there, this cold war, this undeclared spy versus spy. And that was when I started thinking it would be fun fun and i used fun loosely because people have suffered but it would be very exciting to to go into that world with my own background and my own knowledge and um and try to explore some of that war yeah that is so cool like it definitely that really did sound like a novel was being written with headlines basically so that exactly it's so absurd yeah there's just so many details there. But I love that it like inspired you to like kind of think of something similar, basically. Yes, yes, it made me want to write about there are a lot of ex-Russian spies living in the UK. And a lot of them have died under really unusual circumstances in the last

decade. Things that look like suicide, but probably are not. And so that started me thinking about Russian revenge and you know there's that line in it in alias Emma and Russian never forgives or forgets. That's certainly what it feels like over here. Yeah. Yeah. That is so cool. So we are going to talk about the book now. So I always tell people there will be spoilers. So if you haven't read it, just pause and go read it and then you can come back. Otherwise you just keep listening. So at one point, Emma is able to defend Michael by surprising one of his attackers. And she thinks every man everywhere, no matter how much you train him, underestimates a smiling young woman. And then later, as Michael is getting to know Emma, he says, you could do anything, why this?

And she says, would you ask a man that? So did you go into the book thinking about how a female spy would, have some advantages because women are underestimated in that field so often? Absolutely. In fact, I mean, my own experience with that young woman who inspired the book shows that I myself, you know, knowing that I was working with people who were working in intelligence, never thought for a second a young woman who dressed as casually as she did and was as friendly as she was could possibly be a spy.

Like it never occurred to me. And that, I mean, what a wonderful experience. to have. I would think in terms in intelligence to be underestimated constantly. What a marvelous way to get ahead of everybody. So that's and then wouldn't you learn as a young woman that you had that advantage and know how to use it and that was something I wanted to play with a little. Yeah, it might as interesting as you were saying that it was making me think it might be one of the few professions where it is kind of a man's world, but you can actually use it to your advantage. Like that doesn't

up happening very often. No, exactly, precisely. So being underestimated can be helpful sometimes. Yeah, in this one. And so there are so many like breathtaking action scenes. Like I was glued to reading it the whole time. And the whole book is pretty much just like problem solving one thing after another while like enemies are just like closing in the whole time. So how did you approach creating such like different and distinct scenarios for them to get out of. Oh my goodness. That was the hardest part. I'm going to be honest.

Like getting them into trouble once they were underway. I had to just use the fact that the CCTV cameras in the book have been hacked. And so London has CCTV cameras absolutely everywhere on every street corner. You don't notice them because they're up very high. But once you're aware of them, they are they are omnipresent and so that gave me a really good way for the Russians to always find them like that made sense to me if the Russians hacked those cameras then they can always find them so that meant that that opened things up for them to um constantly get into trouble constantly

be caught yeah and then constantly have to escape again yeah yeah yeah that would It was just when you brought up earlier that you kept it with them as the only, like, characters on the page for most of it to make it feel claustrophobic, I was like, that is exactly what it was. Like, you just, like, constantly feel like someone's, like, about to come after you the whole time. Yeah. I mean, imagine with cameras constantly watching you, you would feel like someone's on your back. And so just trying to imagine that sense of being pursued.

and the fact that she doesn't tell him that she knows the Russians are going to find them. It's just a matter of when and that kind because they will. There's no way. In my research, what I found is because this is how the city of London, how the police track criminals. It's how they find terrorists. And it literally always works. It's just the cameras are so everywhere. I knew there was no logical way.

I couldn't make it that they don't get caught. They had to get caught. The cameras are too good. So, but then that actually makes it more for me. I think it makes it more exciting to know they will get caught. Yeah, I agree. Because even like as their like friendship and relationship is developing in some of those like somewhat calm moments, you're like, oh, it's about to get ruined all of again.

You just know. Exactly. Yeah, you never quite feel safe when you're reading it, even when they're like having sweeter moments even. in some of those moments, she ends up telling herself, telling Michael more and more about herself. And eventually she's thinking about it. And she was like, this is why it's a bad idea to open the door to the truth. It's so hard to shut again. Do you think Emma was kind of attracted to this profession because she likes the idea of

like hiding her truth and like staying closed off in general? Oh, that's a great way of putting it. I think I had friends who wanted to be spies and I knew some spies who told me what it was like in some ways. I mean, who knows if they were telling me the truth because you never do know. But their stories of how hard it is or how they adapt to never telling anybody the truth about themselves ring true. And it's something I could never do because I am too honest and too upfront and I'm quite gullible. And so I wanted to explore the kind of person who would want to do this and who would say to themselves, yeah, this is the job for me.

I could do this. I could lie all the time and I could deceive all the time. Yeah. Her past really primed her for that for sure. It also really gave her a hunger for revenge. So she's super motivated to take down the people who killed her father. And Ripley even reminds her that every day she works with the agency, she's taking her own kind of revenge.

So do you think she would be as effective at her job if she wasn't fueled by that? Oh, actually, you know, I'm going to be, I'm going to say, I think having a personal motivation like hers makes her a bit of a risk factor. I think she would be a little safer if she wasn't having this personal revenge fights because this is what's going to get her in trouble in the subsequent books, I think, is this emotional relationship she has with the enemy. me as she perceives it. So I like that she's so good at what she does, but she has this flaw, what I see is a flaw, which is she really is fighting this old battle. She hasn't let go of the

past, not yet anyway. So I kind of, and she knows she has to hide that from Ripley if she told him he wouldn't trust her as much. So some of that she keeps, she tries to keep to herself. So I like that, that emotional flaw in her because otherwise she runs the risk of being too perfect. She's quite good. And I like that she can, she'll make mistakes because of it in the subsequent books, I think. That's a really good point. Like, it would actually, because you wouldn't be being logical or practical in all of the situations because of it. So I was going to ask if there were going to be more, but it sounds like there are. So do we know when we're going to read more about Emma? Oh, yes, absolutely. Book two is already done. It's amazing to me because it's a little,

like, just seems, I know Book 1 just come out, but we've just finished working on book 2, and I love it because I get to take Emma out of London for a while, and she's going to go undercover on an oligarchs yacht and do some, in book 1, because she's on the run, you only see so much actual spy craft because most of the time she's reacting. So in book two, we get a little more actual spying, which is, which was really fun to research and to write. And it will be out in August. Nice. That is so exciting. I can't wait. When I finished the book, the first thing I did, I was like, okay, hopefully this is something that can be a series. I was just trying to find you like anywhere online to see if that was the case. And I saw a tweet that you were working on.

second one and I was like, yes, this is such good news. Oh, I'm so glad it's such a, it was a, this was fun. It was also, like we had to have my editors and I had long talks like, do we want to do the 24 hour format again? Because book one takes place in such condensed time. But I wanted to get her out of London and I wanted her to do proper like out there, dangerous James Bond style like getting into trouble type stuff. So we decided to stretch it out a bit more.

So this is, this book takes us on a yacht to Saint-Trepay, to Barcelona, to Nice. So we get some exotic locales and some juicy fighting and spying. That's amazing. I was just talking to one of my friends, we read some similar stuff. And we were talking about how like some people go on vacations and then they want to move somewhere. And like we read books in certain locations and want to move there. So I'm probably going to end up one. exactly yes i know exactly what you mean i'm exactly the same i've wanted to move to new england

ever since i read the secret history so yes yes that book was fantastic um so where can people follow you so they can keep up with everything emma well i am eva glass books on twitter and on Instagram and my website is avaglass.co.uk. And do come hang out. I would absolutely love to chat with you guys on the social media sphere.