Imaginary Worlds - The First Three Lives of Catherine Webb

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

You may know her as Claire North, author of the best-selling novel "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August." You might also know her as Kate Griffin, author of the urban fantasy series about modern day sorcerer Matthew Swift. You may have read her Horatio Lyle detective novels, which she published under her real name, Catherine Webb. But even if you haven't read any of her novels, you're in for a treat. I talk with Catherine Webb about being a wunderkind author who got published in high school, and why she might be on the verge of coming up with yet another pseudonym. Featuring readings by actress Robyn Kerr.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Eric Molenski. I'm a bit selective about the literature that I read. And it's not just that I want a good story, but I want to become enamored with the way that a writer crafts their stories, from the tiniest word choices to the big themes that I want to think about long after I've put the book down. And about a year ago, I was really excited to discover the work of the British author Claire North. Her novels were actually recommended to me by a listener, and I started with her best-known book, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which came out in 2014. It's about a man named Harry August, who keeps reliving his life over and over again.

And the scale of the story is epic and global, but it's also deeply personal and existential because for Harry, experiencing his death again and again isn't as bad as experiencing his dysfunctional childhood over and over again. And then I learned two things about Claire North which blew me away. First, she was in her 20s when she wrote that book. And this was the first novel from Claire North. But I thought it had the sophistication of, you know, like a mid-career novel. And then I learned something else which blew me away. The first 15 Lives of Harry August may have been the first book written under the name Claire North, but she had a whole other career before that,

writing urban fantasy novels under the name Kate Griffin. But her name is not Kate Griffin. It's Catherine Webb. And before she was writing as Kate Griffin, Catherine Webb was known for writing young adult novels. And yes, if you're doing the math, she's writing novels that are being published when she's a teenager. I really wanted to talk with her to learn more about what inspires her to write and why all the pseudonyms. And by the way, this episode will have minor spoilers as I explain what her novels are about, but nothing more than you would find in a typical book summary online. So as I said earlier, her real name is Catherine Webb, but she goes by the nickname Cat. And Cat has always been a high achiever. She also has that

very British, self-deprecating sense of humor. Like when I asked how she managed to write her first novel at the age of 14, she said. I didn't get out much as a child. I'm an only child, so it was just kind of me and my Playmobil and the voices in my head. And growing up, I was one of those kids who spent a lot of time just kind of playing with the Lego set by myself. And my summer holidays were spent in the local library because I was that cool of a kid. And by the time I was about like 12, 13, I'd read the entire fantasy section from Douglas Adams to Roger Zelazny, which is a really good way to bookend it actually. And was a bit like, what do I do now? I can't go and hang out with friends. That would be laughable. And you know, the library is shut

on Thursdays. Like what's left? so I started writing and I wrote a lot of really bad stuff because I was very young and it happens and you know just terrible nonsense nor will ever see the light of day ever um and eventually wrote a book called Mirror Dreams and I showed it to my mum and dad and they were a bit like eh you can't spell but you could have done worse. Assume it will fail. Like assume that you're going to end up dying young. But just in case it might not, here's some advice. And then you're, I know you come from sort of a literary family. Your parents, writers or professors?

My dad was a publisher and my mom was a writer. And as a result, growing up, my publisher father would turn around to me and go, writers are the worst people in the world. Oh my God, they're so needy. They're so whingy. Never be a writer. They're just nightmares. And my mum as a writer would turn around to me growing up and go,

publishers are just driven by commerce. They wouldn't recognise a bestseller if it bit them in the bum. All they care about is money. They have no integrity and no art. Never be a publisher. And so I kind of grew up with that. So then, as you kept, I mean, what did they think when you kept writing? And were they just thinking, oh, God, you know, maybe she'll grow out of this phase? I think they were thinking that to an extent. They were conflicted because on the one hand, it's not a proper job for grownups. And they were a bit like, you're going to to be a lawyer though, aren't you? You're going to be a dentist. You're going

to do something that will support us in our old age, right? But then on the other hand, they were struggling with the fact I seemed to be quite happy. They're a bit like, oh, oh, we can't really stop you from being happy. Damn. And by the time we got to 18, I'd written enough that I was able to pay my own way through university. And that, I think, cheered them up no end. They're like, okay, so maybe you won't support us in our old age, but hey, we can go on holiday now. Her early books were young adult novels about a Victorian detective called Horatio Lyle. In the meantime, she went to the London School of Economics, and then she studied lighting design at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. And then one night, she had an epiphany. She came up with a much darker story about a modern-day

sorcerer named Matthew Swift, who dies in a battle against a more powerful sorcerer. But then Matthew Swift returns from the dead with something supernatural inside of him, from the dead with something supernatural inside of him. Blue angels, which are not angels. They're supernatural beings created by the residual energy of human voices in all the phones across London. I can remember kind of the moment when ideas hit. I can remember the lightning strike of, oh, this. And then everything sort of flows logically for that.

So it wasn't really a lightning strike of Matthew Swift. It was that moment of being sat on top of the 341 bus at two o'clock in the morning, just kind of watching the city and kind of watching that sodium streetlight and people staggering home in the dark and all that life, just all this buzzing 2am Saturday night life in the city and thinking this is magic. And that kind of light bulb moment of life, magic, magic changing its definition and not just being saying spells, but magic as wonder, magic as something marvellous. And then kind of things sort of click around that to make that work. So in many ways, the characters sort of came last.

Here is the actress Robin Kerr reading from the novel A Madness of Angels, which was the first Matthew Swift novel. When we answered, we spoke without my noticing, with a word that slipped out as naturally as breath. Revenge. Once spoken, it seemed so right, so honest and comforting, that I was amazed I hadn't said it before. I want revenge. Against? The one who attacked me? Who left me to die? And against the one who brought us back?

She hesitated. Her narrow eyes flickering to and fro, her fingers dancing a tiny rhythm at her side, the jury jangling like wind chimes. Where have you been? She murmured. I had the feeling it wasn't a question intended for me. Then clearer.

Do you have a plan? Not yet. Does anyone know that you're... that you claim to be swift? No. And if you tell anyone, if I tell, she snapped, defiant.

We will kill you, we said gently. You are nothing before us. We can stamp you out like a whisper of static in the wire. We will kill you. I'm sorry about it, but that's just how it is. She didn't seem frightened by this. More curious. She put her head on one side and breathed.

Huh. Interesting. Really? You keep on saying, we? I shrugged. Now, Kat grew up in London, and the city features prominently in all of her novels. And I told her that the way she appreciates London reminds me of the way that I appreciate New York, because I feel like New York is so full of energy, it actually gives energy

back to me. I also love New York, but New York to me feels like a young city. All of America feels young, she says snobbly from her Latin post-colonial studies chair. But you know, whereas London feels like every single street has a secret beneath a secret, like where I live is in a 1960s block and two minutes walk from me is the remnant of a Roman wall. And like another four minutes beyond that are silver skyscrapers.

It feels like everything has been built up so much on so many other people's stories that you'd have to work really hard not to find something new and something inspiring about it. So she was very pleased with this new world that she created of sorcerers battling to the death in modern, gritty London. But when she brought the story to her publisher, she was surprised to learn that they wanted her to change her name. They said her writing had matured, and the young readers who expect Catherine Webb novels to be family-friendly might be put off by her new work. And so my publisher decided I needed a pseudonym,

and specifically they wanted a pseudonym that wasn't at the bottom of the bookshelf. When you go into a bookstore, you look at the shelf, and at the bottom there's W, right next to the Star Wars spinoffs and the Star Trek porn. And they're like, yeah, let's give you a different surname. Specifically, let's give you a surname so that when you go to the fantasy section and you look to see if Neil Gaiman has written another one and you realise he hasn't, as your eye kind of drifts downwards in despair, you go, hey, but what's this Kate Griffin? Under the name Kate Griffin, she went on to write six books that took place in the Matthew Swift universe. In the meantime, she put her degree to work

and became a lighting theater designer. And she still works in theater tech, touring all over the UK, which seems strange to me because I thought the university degree was a backup career. But Kat says that she needs them both in her life, writing and lighting. I think there's two parts of it. There's a health part and there's a pure love part. On the pure love part, light is just beautiful. I don't know what it is about my brain that just

gives me tingles at beautiful light. I have a condition called synesthesia, where I associate kind of words with colours and sounds with colours. And that's always been just who I am and what I do. And light, I think, is probably just the logical extension that my brain is wired to go, ooh, colour and light in a way that other mediums don't do for me. I also love stories, and books and theatre do very different kinds of storytelling. Even if the humanity in both is the same, the way that story is told is completely different. And I really enjoyed that, and I love the collaborative element of it in as much as the story you start out with on day one

of rehearsal could feel completely different four weeks later. And I love the fact that what I do changes that story, even if the words remain the same. Yeah, I mean, it also must be so different in terms of, you know, when you're writing, you're all alone, and you put the books out there. And I mean, I guess you could read the Amazon reviews if you want to get the kind of feedback. But I mean, it must be so different from the experience of putting on a show night after night in front of a live audience. And then, you know, I also hear people in theater say that, you know, the show changes every night, depending on the audience. That must be really gratifying, too, I imagine.

Yeah, that's great. And that's kind of the health part, to be honest. I have never read my own Amazon reviews, because if I get good ones, I I'll be like I am God, bow before my might and if I get bad ones I'll be like everybody hates me so I just don't read them but you're right, it's a very lonely job and as a lighting engineer I am arguably the most kind of apathetic of all the departments

we specialise in people coming up to us and us kind of going no mate, no mate, no, you can't, no mate, no we don't have the cable for it, don't have the DMX, you know what I'm saying, mate? And hope that scares them away. But it is also still a human interaction. And again, making something with people,

I think is a really good experience. I think it's also quite healthy to be reminded that what you do isn't the be all and the end all. I've seen a lot of writers go crazy over their books because it's your baby. You spend years working on it by yourself. And then you go to a theatre and you watch directors go crazy over their play. You're like, oh, that's what crazy looks like. Let's not do that.

Let's just stay sane and chill out because, guys, it is only a play. It is not a cure for cancer. So she found a good rhythm, working in theater tech and writing urban fantasy novels, often doing both at the same time. Little did she realize that another creative epiphany was about to arrive. And that flash of inspiration would change her career all over again in ways she didn't expect. More after the break. So I mentioned at the top that I first discovered her writing through the novel

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. That book is part sci-fi, part magic realism, about a man who keeps reliving his life over and over again. And eventually he discovers he's not the only person who can do this. Every century, a few people are born and reborn, and they eventually formed a network called the Kronos Club. And this was one of those ideas that just popped in her head. She was actually in Stratford-upon-Avon taking a break from a theater gig, and she thought of this idea of the Kronos Club, ran back to her laptop, started typing furiously.

And one of the early choices that she made was she didn't want her main character to, you know, always live until the present moment, you know, discovering Twitter before he dies. His lifespan is mostly constricted to the 20th century. And I wondered why. It's an optimal time period for things changing. Yes, between kind of 1801 and 1901, a lot changes in terms of technology, the Industrial Revolution, politics to a certain extent.

But even then, you still kind of imagine men in tight trousers and a certain kind of hat. It feels like culturally there's not such a huge shift. Whereas between the dawn of the 20th century and the end of the 20th century, we go from the death of Queen Victoria to, you know, Bill Clinton and we begin the 21st century with the two twin towers. It feels like there's such a monumental technological, It feels like there's such a monumental technological, but also cultural and social and global shift that changes everything in a way which I think was unprecedented in human history. And to be able to explore that is a gift. It also is a period I know quite well, or at least well enough to be a bit like Wikipedia. I think you're lying about this bit.

So kind of avoid some of those minefields. The character of Harry August is a little bit like a dramatic version of Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day, in that he uses his strange circumstance to learn an incredible amount of skills. And he goes deep into places defined by the 20th century, like Maoist China, Soviet Russia, and New York in the era of Mad Men. Maoist China, Soviet Russia, and New York in the era of madmen. But he's also plagued by loneliness, because he can't maintain relationships from lifetime to lifetime except within the very limited group of immortal people like him.

His biggest heartbreak came with a wife he had in one of his early lives, when he was less jaded. So in love that one night, for no very special reason and without much very special thought, I told her everything. I said, my name is Harry August, my father is Rory Edmund Hull, my mother died before I was born.

This is my fourth life. I have lived and I have died many times before now, but it is always the same life. I have lived and I have died many times before now, but it is always the same life. She punched me in the chest playfully and told me to stop being daft. I said, in a matter of weeks, a scandal is going to break in the US which will topple President Nixon. Captual punishment will be abolished in England and Black September terrorists will open fire in Athens airport. in England and Black September terrorists will open fire in Athens airport. She said, you should be on the news, you should. Three weeks later, Watergate broke. It broke gently at first. Aids sacked across the sea. By the time capital punishment had been abolished,

President Nixon was in front of congressional hearings. And when Black September terrorists gunned down travellers in Athens airport, it was obvious to all that Nixon was on the way out. Jenny sat on the end of the bed. All this! How did you know it would happen? I told you, I replied. This is the fourth time I've lived it, and I have an excellent memory. What does that mean? The fourth time? How is it possible? The fourth time? I don't know. I became a doctor to try and find out. I've run experiments on myself, studied my blood,

my body, my brain, tried to see if there is something in me which isn't right. But I was wrong. It's not a medical problem, or if it is, I don't yet know how to find the answer. I would have left this job long ago, tried something new. But I met you. I have forever, but I want you now. How old are you? She demanded. I'm 54. I'm 206. Are you a spy? No. Are you ill? No, not by any handbook definition. Then why? Why what? Why would you say these things? It's the truth. I want to tell you the truth. She crawled onto the bed next to me, took my face into my hands, stared deeply into my eyes. Harry, she said, and there was fear in her voice. I need you to tell me. Do you mean what you are saying? Yes, I replied, and the relief of it nearly burst me open from the inside out.

Yes, I do. She left me that night, pulling her coat on over her shift and slipping into a pair of Wellington boots. I told Kat that as I was reading the book, I kept wavering whether I thought Harry's situation was a blessing or a curse. And she says she gets that. I mean, there are upsides to never having to fear death. I think the thing that puts me off more than the repetitions is the childhood. I think the world is huge and vast, and no matter how long you lived, I think there'd always be something to surprise and excite you. But going through puberty again and again, being taught my times table again, I just think the first, oh, 15 to 18 years would be

excruciatingly dull. Oh, it'd be so boring. I'm as scared of dying as the next person, but in many ways, knowing that that comes, I think it inspires me to try harder, to do better. It's a way to live, thinking about this time has value. And if time has value,

my actions have value and should be chosen well. If you don't have that ticking clock i'm not sure you would choose well well it's funny because self-improvement i feel like comes up a lot in your or your characters just have there's something about their special circumstance where they can learn a tremendous amount of skills and see as much of the world as they possibly want is that something and i know you you've talked sometimes as well about like i'm gonna try to learn chinese or i think it's mand. I mean, is that something that you

think about as well? Yeah, it's twofold. On the one hand, having characters who can cross the language barrier and don't need to learn about how to use plastic explosive is phenomenally useful for keeping the story rollicking along. But I am also an only child freelancer, which is probably a really bad combination for getting that particular psychosis where you're like, I must answer to myself all the time. And if I am not working and improving, I have wasted everything. I think when you don't have kind of the usual ladder of career or the usual kind of ladder of family to a certain extent to answer for. And you answer only to yourself. You can either spend all your time in your underpants having a wonderful time, or I think it's quite easy to become driven to always excel. And I think I may have got a bit

of the latter bug, even though I don't actually excel in that many things. As usual, she is being self-deprecating. Because when she brought this novel to her publishers, she was told once again that her writing had made a big leap forward in sophistication. And they wanted her to have a new name, to attract a new type of reader. My publisher sat down with me and went, so, Kat, you're not Kate Griffin anymore. I was like, oh, what? But I, oh, but I was really enjoying being her. Like, yeah, but you're not. You have now become literature. And it's like, I don't even know what literature means. No, neither do we, but just go with it. You're literature. And I was quite surprised. And it meant another, another pseudonym, which for a while I couldn't even spell. I thought that Claire North didn't

have an I in it. And I was just like, oh no, I've only just got used to answering to Kate. Here we go again. Did you come up with Claire North a name or they did? I insisted on my first name being something beginning with a C or a K because I'm really bad at responding to my own pseudonym. I will sit there like a lemon in panels going, who? What? They were a bit like, can you have a surname so that when people go to the bookshelves and they try and find a new book by David Mitchell and there isn't one, as their eye kind of skims downward in disappointment, they can see you. And so that's why North happened. The change from Catherine Webb to Kate Griffin made sense to her

because she had been writing novels for kids and she was going to deal with more adult subject matter. But the change from Kate Griffin to Claire North bothered her. I mean, basically, her publishers didn't want potential new readers to know that this was the same person who had been writing about magic and sorcery. And I could see that they were right, but I also had quite a strong kickback against it, not because I object to a pseudonym, but because I am a science fiction fantasy geek. I love these genres. And the reason to have another pseudonym is arguably to try and pretend that I'm not a geek. It is that kind of slightly, almost snobby move to kind of go mainstream and kind of say, yeah, I know it looks like science fiction, but it's not. The geek within me rebels against that. The businesswoman understands it. I'm very grateful for that choice because then I can eat. But genre should be a tool

that allows us to find more books that we love. And it feels sometimes that what it actually is, is a barrier which we use to find books that we won't even it feels sometimes that what it actually is, is a barrier, which we use to find books that we won't even bother to try. Because you have to read the right book, you have to read the right genre. And we judge people by the books they read. We say, you know, you read romance, so you must be soppy. You read crime, so you must have this dark streak. You read science fiction, so you must be a geek. And I don't think that's fair on people. But more to the point, I don't think it's fair on stories. I think stories exceed all boundaries all the time. And so in that sense, I was a little bit like, I get it. I get this choice. But you're not going to be able to stop me from celebrating how much I love science fiction always, even if you want me to be literary.

Although I definitely see consistent themes in the half dozen novels that she's published under the name Claire North. Most of them take elements of fantasy and ground them deep into reality. The other thing I like about her work is that her villains are really good foils for her protagonists. Like in the first 15 Lives of Harry August, his arch nemesis is another immortal like himself who breaks the cardinal rule of changing history for his own selfish needs with apocalyptic results. I've always had a problem with protagonists who you feel are overmatched against their antagonists or antagonists who are built up and then proved to be nothing. And it's never about finding the antagonist that threatens the world or, you know, your favourite puppy.

It's about finding the antagonist that threatens something that matters to your character. So in Harry August, death doesn't really matter. Death is irrelevant. What matters is value and the meaning of your life and, you know, your life having a worthwhile consequence. And so you threaten that. You put an antagonist on the page who threatens to tear apart everything that gives Harry any sense of stability or meaning. And again, with sudden appearance of hope, your antagonist can offer you promises and dreams that may be irrelevant to anyone else, but to your main character could change her entire universe.

That novel that she just mentioned, The Sudden Appearance of Hope, is a really interesting story about a woman named Hope that no one can remember after meeting her. The world began to forget me when I was 16 years old, a slow declining one piece at a time. My dad forgetting to drive me to school, my mum setting the table for three, not four.

Oh, she said when I walked in, I must have thought you were out. A teacher, Miss Thomas, the only one in school who cared, full of faith in her pupils, hope for their futures, forgets to chase the missing homework, to ask the questions, to listen to the answers, until finally, I I always sat with, and who one day sat at another table. Not dramatically, not with fuck-you flair, but because they looked straight through me and saw a stranger. I slapped Alan, my best mate, the day he forgot me. He ran from the room, horrified, and I ran after him, red with guilt. By the time I found him, he was sitting in the corridor of the science block, cheek flushed, rubbing at his face. You okay? I asked. Yeah, he replied. Face hurts a bit. I'm sorry. It's okay. Not like he did nothing. He looked at me like a stranger,

but there were tears in his eyes when he spoke. What did he remember then? Not me, not Hope Arden, the girl he'd grown up with. Not my palm across his face, not my screaming until the spit flew. Remember me! Remember me! He experienced sorrow, rage, fear. These emotions glimmered in his eyes. But where were they from? He no longer knew. glimmered in his eyes. But where were they from? He no longer knew. And the memory of me crumbled like sandcastles before the sea. Eventually, just to survive in the world, Hope has to become a

criminal. She can steal a diamond necklace in front of a crowd, and even the cops can't remember seeing her after they watch the security footage. Her main antagonist is an older woman, a master criminal who tries to help Hope find a cure for her condition, but this woman has dark motives of her own. Now, the premise of that story may sound really fantastical, but the inspiration for it actually came from Kat's daily life. I'm embarrassed to say it. It's probably one of my

more personal yarns. I didn't realize that at the time. And I'm embarrassed because I've always tried to write as far away from my own life experience as I can, because I've always thought I'll just write a glamorous, sexier version of myself if I go down that road, which I hope hasn't happened yet. But you know, it's a fear. But I am forced to admit that one of the snags of being a lighting technician or a technician of any colour whatsoever is that you tend not to exist, particularly when people get stressed. Producers, directors, actors. I have spent most of the last seven years as the lighting girl, which is offensive on several levels. Firstly, I have a name. And also secondly, girl, really? I can kill you with my thumb. Like, come on. But there is this thing where you get

depersonalized and you become not necessarily a person doing a job and trying to do the best with training and expertise and your own opinions, but you become an extension of your lighting desk or an extension of your microphone. You become a tool. And if someone feels that tool isn't working, they treat you like a tool. And you begin to kind of vanish as a recognisable human being. And I've been in a lot of kind of post-show parties where an actor has stood up and given a very long speech thanking the stage manager and the stage manager's friend Shirley

and the props lady who came in with the cookies once and then forgetting that there were also 20 other people in the room who wrung the sweat out of your costume with their bare hands and made sure you were lit and made sure you were audible and worked for months to make sure you had a stage to stand on. You kind of vanish into the furniture. And on the one hand, that's something you can be proud of, because if no one's seen you doing your job, you must be extra special and amazing. But on the other hand, if your peers and if your colleagues treat you as

a tool, it can feel quite dehumanizing. And so upon reflection, writing a story about a woman no one who can remember may have been more of a personal reaction to my career than I realized. For a long time, Kat had been very good at juggling these two careers, despite the ups and downs of being a freelancer and working in the arts, which can be very stressful. But this past year, something changed. Honestly, I burnt out.

Like, it was just too much of too much. And I had that conversation you have with the GP where you're like, So, I keep coming home exhausted and waking up exhausted. And I keep walking into doors and I can't use language in my short-term memory and my local doctor's nurse kind of turned around went hmm that happened to me once I took three months off and drank a cup of coffee and that was very nice it's like okay I'll I'll give that a go and it was both the hours because as a technician you're trained to do essentially 12 hour days six days a week and if you're not doing that you're letting the side down and also I think

a lot of women I've met have an even stronger feeling that way I've astonished at how many women I've met now I've actually turned around and gone I have been suffering from exhaustion how are you have been like oh yeah me too and you? I've been like, oh yeah, me too. And you go, really? What happened? Like, well, it's not good enough to be average. It's not good enough to be competent. To get forward in life, I have to be truly extraordinary. And I think that's a stronger cultural thing than I'd realised. The number of people who need to be extraordinary to be okay. And you can never quite control how it's going to play out. There is no guaranteed bestseller. There is no easy ladder that you climb with a clear progression. There's a series of potluck and crossed fingers. And I think that too drives a lot of people to push themselves unbelievably hard in the hope that

by working they can take control and it's a slightly deadly trap. But I'm incredibly grateful for my life, to be perfectly honest. I think I have a wonderful, happy existence and I wouldn't change it for a moment. I also need to reassess kind of what it is that makes me happy. If my definition of happiness is I have worked every hour that God sends and that means I'm great, then that's a really rubbish definition of happy. I need to do better, frankly. Well, do you feel like, I mean, you know, there's that transition from Kate Griffin

to Clara North just kind of happened. Do you feel there might be some transition to the future or is it you have just known, you don't know? Honestly, I don't know. But practically speaking, I'm 32 now. I've been doing this for what, 16 years? That's three pseudonyms. That's a pseudonym like every five and a half years. I bet there'll be another. At my current rate, every five and a half years, one's due before you know it. Yeah. And do you feel good about it? Would you love the idea that

you're, you know, throughout your life, you're just going to keep having more different styles and pseudonyms? In a way, yeah, I kind of do. I sort of feel that whatever I write reflects who I am now. And if I never changed, then that would be a really boring life. I'm totally down with changing. And I'm totally down with looking back on the last six years and going, I don't even know who I am or what my choices were. I think without change, you're not having enough fun, really. So yeah, I quite, I'm down with having 18 pseudonyms before I die. Albeit, the only snag of that is it means I'll have to spend the rest of my life explaining my pseudonyms to everyone always. And after 16 years of this business, I must admit, there is that thing where I go to events, people are like, oh, you're Claire North. Yeah, your first book has just been published. Like, oh, no, no, no,

that's no, it's so much worse than you know. That could be dull when I'm 60. Although, selfishly speaking, as one of her readers, I have to say that would not be dull for the rest of us. Well, that is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Robin Kerr, who did the readings, and of course, Catherine Webb. Her latest novel, written under the name Claire North, is called 84K. It takes place in a world where anyone can get away with murder if they can pay the penalty. And by the way, there haven't been any live-action adaptations of her work yet, but most of it's been optioned.

What that practically means is that once every nine months, one or other producer will phone me up and go, Kat, Kate, Claire, whichever one we're dealing with today, it's going so well, we're so passionate, we're so inspired by your work, we haven't got any funding for it yet, but you need to know it's in safe hands and it's going brilliantly and then they'll go away again and I'm kind of down with that

like if I'm really lucky I'll get free lunch every year and I'm like free food? Yeah bring it! Imaginary Worlds is part of the Panoply Network my assistant producer is Stephanie Billman you can like the show on Facebook I tweet at emalinski

and imagineworldspod. And in case you missed it, our merchandise store is up. If you've already ordered t-shirts or mugs or stickers, take a picture and post it on social media with the hashtag IWmerch. You can learn how to get all that cool stuff on my website, imaginaryworldspodcast.org.