Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest with Kae Tempest

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

This week's book guest is Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest Sara and Cariad are joined by the incredible spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist and playwright Kae Tempest himself.In this episode they discuss addiction, school, access to reading, seaside towns and lager tops.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest is available hereFollow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclubProduced, recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. And I'm Carriead Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we created The Weirdo's Book Club.

A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. Each week we're joined by amazing comedian guests and writer guests to discuss some wonderfully and crucially weird books, writing, reading and just generally being a weirdo. You don't even need to have read the books to join in. It will be a really interesting, wide-ranging conversation. And maybe you'll want to read the book afterwards. We will share all the upcoming books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram, Sarah and Carriads, Weirdo's Book Club.

Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is Having Spence Life Seeking by K Tempest. What's it about? A teenager, Rothko returns home to his English seaside town after 15 years away. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club? Well, Roscoe lives with a dog called Donovan. Count us in. In this episode, we discuss addiction, school, access to reading, seaside towns, and love. And joining us this week is Kay Tempest himself. Kay has published plays, poetry collections, non-fiction, Sunday Times bestselling novels, released six studio albums, been nominated for the Mercury Prize, basically a very incredible, talented person. Hello, welcome. We are so excited to have

Kay Tempest with us. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Talking about your amazing new book, having spent life seeking. I love this title, by the way. Thank you. It's really nice. I feel like it's quite hard with titles when you're looking too hard for them or when you're trying to make, there's a moment I feel like in everything that I've ever titled when suddenly it crystallises enough to the point where you understand

what it is it's trying to be and then the title it's such a weird thing when someone says when you say to someone on what you're working on someone with a book or an album and say what's it called it's such a weird like intimate thing to explain yeah yeah even though still being formed

Yeah, and because people are quite, they don't mind telling you like, what? Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That's what I think the weird thing about promoting something you've written is, because you've spent lots and lots of time with it, and someone else, and this is like your life now, but like someone else has just been like, but basically given a fact sheet about it. So what they've got to go on is your career and the title, and that's the first thing you have to justify.

And you were like, if it was that easy, I'd have done a tweet, I think, rather than, you know, written an entire novel. But also you don't want that moment, they had that joke on family guy where you get the title. You know, whenever someone says, like, where someone is like, if someone in this book, which they don't suddenly said, I guess I've stopped having spent life seeking. And you're like, oh, there it is. There it is. I guess he is the Lord of the Rings. I wanted to ask you, Kay, K, about writing.

When you started writing, when did words become your favourite form? of communication. I actually don't know how to answer, honestly, because I don't remember ever starting. Just, I think I just always, I think before I can remember, I just always loved, like, reading, stories, like nursery rhymes, even songs, like everything about words.

Yeah. There was no, like, eureka moment. Yeah, you didn't find them, no one introduced them, they were just always there. I just always liked it so much more than other people liked it. Yeah. Yeah.

I just really liked it. My dad's mom was taught nursery school, and she knew loads and loads and loads of rhymes. I really remember sitting on her lap. She knew all these rhymes, and they were like, you know, they're really old school, like morality, like Jewish morality stories. And there would be like, there was always like some raw message,

and they were quite dark. But she was so nice. Yeah. I remember that. I was probably like free or something So that's amazing in terms of like your DNA as a creative person

the fact that it's sort of rhyming and morality and went to dark places Yeah, that's what happened You've got to be very careful what you do with kids You don't you think? But I think that when you look at home

In America they're like Oh yeah, have a go on that gun They're very powerful I go on that gun I think they're doing like Yeah I think in some places Is that as part of your coming to be? I remember I was doing a slight clear-out,

or my mum was forced me to do a clear-out recently, and I found some childhood books, and I was like, oh, this is embarrassing because you can literally be like, there's basically Brambly Hedge and the Grimm's fairy tales. And I was like, oh, that's me. I like, I like cute things, but they have to be quite dark.

And I was like, oh, it's embarrassing that you can narrow it down to two authors, but like maybe that's quite... This is the thing about, like, finding out who you are, which does link a lot to this novel, that you can go on quite an expansive journey, journey and then the answers are really

like building blocks right from the beginning or you sort of come back to yourself don't you? Or accepting, oh it is that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you already had the answer which I think we haven't said already but it's such a beautiful novel. Yeah, it's so, so beautiful. Can you tell us about it

because you'll probably do a better job of like... I don't know if I will do a better job. You know, and you'll be you're so inside something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a love story. Yeah, it's a love story. A love story about Rothko. Yeah.

And it's set in a place called Edgecliffe, which to me really reminded me of like, which I don't know if it's... Oh, it's giving me Kent Coast is what it was giving me. I guess I've got Essex Coast. You got Essex Coast. No, it was giving me Herm Bay is what it was serving me. But maybe, I don't know, it's got that kind of quite harsh seaside English coast vibes. I googled it. Oh, did you?

Yeah, quite early on because I wanted to see pictures. Oh, is it real? Is Cliff real? No. There's an Airbnb called Edgecliff. Do you know this? So if you Google it, what comes up is Edgecliff Airbnb. Oh, okay. Someone's running's got great reviews.

It's nothing like where this book is set. But all of the first links. So basically, whoever runs Edgecliff B&B is really, really good with web presence. But now they're going to get people going. Because it's like 10 different listings I found on different websites, but everyone says the breakfast is phenomenal. And that's what you've written this book about, isn't it? Okay, but Edgecliff, no, it's set in the town of Edgecliff, which is kind of like...

I would love it if they gave me like a free writing residency there or something. So give them a shout. Well, the breakfast is great, so... Yeah. It's the most important thing, isn't it? You could do like a little mini book event there. Yeah. Isn't that why we all write to get the free stuff?

Free breakfast. But yes, it's about Rothko and it's set in Edgecliff, which is, yeah, seaside town, and it's a love story. Should I say... What could I say? It's hard to know how much to say. about the decisions that go into any of it because so much of it, it's not really about that anymore.

It's about whoever discovers it and whatever the setting reveals to the person who's reading. But I have this thing about the sea and I'm so attracted to it as a place of reflection. It's kind of, it's the unconscious, isn't it? Or the subconscious or the collective conscious or something. And this thing about the coast

where you are at the edge of the land and so often when we're at the edges of ourselves or our experiences of how much we can take our kind of sensory body is full and then we can just for some reason I find that going to the edge to the coast it's this kind of mythical place that brings us back into balance

or sends us completely off-kilter I think like it's like a fictional town based on all of the coastal towns that I've known in my life and they've been quite, I've been very close to people from the Kent Coast and from the Essex Coast

and from the, and from like Hastings and that side, what's that Sussex Coast? And I've spent a lot of time there. And like, it's just, it's a landscape, it's an internal landscape that exists in quite a full way. But then also it's kind of, every time I create fiction,

it's usually rooted in a place that exists in truth in my life and it's usually like New Cross in 2002 it's like very specific like there's something there's something that I've been trying to work out in my fiction about a particular feeling that I got from a place

and that's kind of in every place that I ever write but then also it's a fictional place so it can be anywhere I think why the coast works so well I mean when you're talking about the sea then I'm thinking about that scene with Meg, who, and it's sort of like... He's Rothko's mum in the book.

And so she's outside a pub, I think it is, but looking at the sea and not in a good place, but at this point the sea is calming, the fact that the sea seems to be sort of like having their own issues that day. It's all like dealing with something, and there's something nice about projecting onto the sea emotion rather than just energy and movement. I don't think there's any human being that doesn't feel the effect of the expanse. and the fact that it's water. Because you know that like evolutionary theorists sometimes think it's because we used to live in the water.

Yeah, of course. That we have like this pull to it. But yet it is this dangerous place. We don't just run in. But that's like that's also the subconscious. We were living there before we lived here and it's dangerous. Yeah. And there's this pool towards it.

And every night we sleep and we go back there and then we wake up and somehow there's a part of it in our day. And obviously we are like we're pulled by the moon. Like we are so much of us. responds to the tidal forces. Yeah. But then this, like the danger of it and the, like, the total destruction of it. And then within it, the gentleness. And then the thing about being at the edge and looking back at the land

and then realizing that all this, all of this, it's just built on land. It's a mass of cliff or rock or chalk. And that's all this is. Like, this is just a thing floating in the sea. And like when we're in it, the same with Rothko, there's moments where they're, they go up high to seek perspective and they have this realization of how temporary

these like impossibly involving structures are of cities and life and sometimes I think remembering that it's just we're just one tiny little accidental speck in the drop of something much more major I find it really reassuring

there's this map they did which is a fish's perspective so you know like the globe map that we're used to but they moved it So it's like what it looks like for a fish. What does it look like for fish? So the land is like all around the edge and you realize how much all the water is connected up.

Yeah. And you don't see it. It's like, oh, that's that ocean. That's that. They're separate. You're like, oh, fuck. They're all like this. The fish world is like this completely different shape.

Completely different. Yeah, perspective. And I saw it. And obviously, you know, there's a whole thing with maps because our maps make all the planets. And countries the wrong size as well. So you've also got that. But I was like, oh, yeah. Like that lovely feeling that I think people do seek when they go to the,

the edge of the world. Having had experience of those coastal towns as well, you really sum up, like, who gathers at those coastal towns? Because some of us know them as visitors, you know, like the daytrippers and the, like, the loveliness of like being there. And the surface level, like the holiday nest, they're having fun. But being somewhere where it's cold and it's gray and it's raining at those coastal towns. Also, that's what a pub is in itself as well. Yeah. You'll have people having, you know, a lager top outside, you know, in such a festive, lighthearted mood and then you have addicts in the same place people who

have to drink to stop their hands shaking people who have to drink to get through the day Roscoe starts their life in such a precarious position I think you write about Rothko's parents so lovingly and so empathetically but you've got two parents who choose very different

tools to try and survive and then they've got two children and had children, like, sort of, you know, at a point in their life where they were still formative, and then mistakes are made, and they're not very good parents to Roscoe. As in Roscoe doesn't have stable, understanding, support for who they are. So we should say Meg is the mum. And don't, this is a spoiler, is it? So Meg is an addict.

And Ezra Rothko's father is much more, I guess, conventional, get a job. Or makes those decisions because. How else do you support your kids? But also goes away and isn't present. So, yeah, I thought you wrote about... It isn't available emotionally. I thought you wrote about their relationship really beautifully of like... Which I think we all have as you get older of like looking at parents and being like,

how the fuck did this happen? Like what? Like you captured the bit in their youth where they could meet and it made sense. And then how that curdled and how relationships... And you can despise someone that, you know, a few years previously, It was everything you wanted from life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was really moving the way that you captured the complicates, the nuances of like a mum and dad and why it goes wrong.

And you spent a lot of time with Meg's addiction and the focus on that I was really grateful for because it wasn't a plot point. It's not, oh, and then this person is struggling because their mum has, you know, often let them down because of their addiction. We spent so much, so much time in her struggle. and in the the wide spectrum of emotions that Megas experiencing

and sometimes not wanting to experience and you spent a long time writing this because in your bio it says like a decade in the making Well it's been a decade since the last novel Yeah The truthful like gestation period for the novel It's quite hard to put my finger on because these characters or moments from their life

or scenes they I was thinking about them for a long time before putting pen to paper but I was probably working on it like solidly for three years, solidly. And for a couple of years before that, just thinking about it, starting to like move towards them. But then the character's taking shape, the play starting to become solid,

and then the world starting to be real, investigating how these characters spoke to each other, and then suddenly they start to speak. And then it's actually not about you, asking them to say things, you're just listening to them, talk. And then I went through loads of different drafts with a life of a novel.

It's like, it's been double the length. There was characters that you'll never meet that have gone. Like, yeah, I've been on a big journey with it. So can I ask, this is like a writerly question. So did you pitch your novel to your publishers? Because that can sometimes be difficult if you've said, I'm writing this story. Right, no.

Have a bit of money. No, no, you wrote it all first. As far as I'm aware, you have to write the novel before you can get any money. Okay. But that might not be the case for other people. But to be honest, that's what I didn't want anyone to see it. I didn't want anybody to have any eyes on anything until I'd done my time with them because these characters mean a lot to me.

And I didn't want anyone else's, even my idea of what their idea might be influencing the character. There's a moment in the book where Rothko's talking about a name. Maybe there's a name and they don't want to break the shell too soon. and the thing doesn't hatch. That's how I felt about the novel, about the characters. I wanted to go on this journey with them and go as far as I could go before opening myself up to letting people know there was this thing coming,

this idea, these characters. But then from the first draft that I showed to my agent, and then I worked it to another draft that I took to publishers and then I went with my publisher, and then it's been through two more drafts since then. and the way that I respond to notes, this is probably really boring for everybody else. No, no, it's really fascinating.

This is like absolute catnip. Yes, please. When I get a note, I have to take it on, but I have to, I'm just, I'm so chronically afraid of upsetting people or getting things wrong or my kind of like imposter syndrome or whatever it is means that like when I, I have to really go through that note. Yeah.

So even if the note is something that I disagree with, I have to work that disagreement all the way. way through the novel from beginning to end to really like shore up why, why I want that character to respond in that way to that thing or why I think it's, this is something I want to fight for because this is actually something you haven't understood. So then I need to make it clearer that that was my intention or actually, yeah, you're right that that isn't a particularly believable interaction or you're right, I have skirted over. For example, in one of the first drafts of the novel, we didn't know as an audience where Rothko had been. I didn't want to dwell on the hardest

part of their life. And that was a choice that I made because I wanted these characters, although they'd been through these hardships, I didn't want that to be the B-O-1-ender would be experience. I didn't want it to, I wanted to meet them in a moment where they're starting again, and just live with them in that. But then it was like, well, the absence of this part of their life, actually it felt like, it just felt like a hole in the story.

You don't want a reader to feel cheated out of something. Or distrustful of a narrator. Yeah. Or distracted. I think sometimes you get, because you just are like, Like, I don't, I just wonder where they were. Just where were they? And then as soon as you have the answer, which you do give us,

which I don't think is a spoilt to say they've been in prison, I think you do get a sense. And to go back to what you said, it's not a plot point. You're not using it to say, Rothko's been in prison, therefore they are this type of person. You're just telling us this is what's happened to them. And I think that's really... And it keeps Roscoe in a sort of arrested development.

Yeah, yeah. And that's why it is important as a detail. And I think the way that you'll give us... give us information in the book is very masterful. Yeah, yeah. Because I always felt that you were in control as an author of what I needed to know about Roscoe at any point. 15 years away from your hometown for whatever reason,

but even more so if you've been in a place that doesn't have like self-checkouts in a supermarket, you are seeing the place that made you with such sort of new fresh eyes and the memories of your former self running around, which gets much obviously stronger to. towards the end of the book, all these past selves, but pre-16. I didn't want to like spoon-feed the information of how hardship can affect a person because sometimes it's like, well, if that's just normal to you, it's normal to you. Someone's been away, that's normal.

But then I had to kind of have a word of myself and be like, do not let a kind of an idea or a kind of gripe affect what you're doing in creating this world. The world has to have, the world of a novel has to have as much. many laws, rules and boundaries as this real world that we live in. I need to know everything as the novelist. I need to know everything. Like, you don't need to know everything. Yeah, yeah, but you do.

I do. I need to trust that someone else. And I need to know how time moves. And this thing that you're saying about arrested development, when someone's been away in an institution or when somebody has been through something as totally involving as addiction or an illness which is as debilitating, then time stops. or time changes.

And there's a lot in the book about these different modes of time that exist at the same time. Yeah. But the idea of what being absent from the social world for 15 years would actually do in the last 15 years, the changes that we just accommodate in our lives have been fairly rapid. And if you weren't there to see it happen, this idea of, like, Rothko's alienation,

I want everybody to recognize in that our, own alienation that we feel, but it's kind of the incremental. Yeah, yeah. Alienation is, we've kind of got this like solid core level of things creeping up on us that now it's just that's the way it is, it's fine. But when you look through the eyes of somebody that hasn't had the training, then I wanted that to feel like I wanted to, my dream is that that evokes a tenderness for Rothko, but also for all of us.

Yeah. I don't know if that's what happens or not, but I love that person. I love Rufko so much. And you were saying about Meg, Meg, Meg's addiction. Like, I love Meg. I love them all. I love Ezra.

I love them. On my studio wall, when I was writing, I had these three kind of like maxims or compass points for me, emotionally to come back to. And one of them is no one should be condemned. No one should be condemned. I feel like so often when I'm reading or I'm engaging with narrative in whatever form, like the addict, or it's something, it's like this, this like trope that is

used quite often at the expense of who that person is. I understand that an addiction, it can take away so much about who a person is, but it was essential to me that Meg lived as a person, as a full person with their own beautiful, like terrifying nature outside of their addiction. Yeah. Of her addiction. But also it's a massive thing. Yeah.

And it's massive for Rothko. And the, this thing of Ezra and Meg, they're like the kind of two, well, again, two compass points, two, two poles in the life of their children, of course. And I was writing, I wrote this non-fiction long essay called On Connection over lockdown. And in it, I was talking about my discovery of Jung's The Red Book, which sounds a bit high,

but it really isn't. I just found it one day and it really blew my mind. And in it, I learned about this idea that Jung has, who's a psychoanalyst or one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. I apologize if I'm getting that wrong. But just to anyone who doesn't know, I just feel. Like it's important to say it's then. And also it's like a, it's a really, I think, it is the kind of thing people find at sixth form college

if someone does want to go and look it up on the internet. Yeah, it's there. Yeah. And it's big ideas, but it's not ideas that you can't grasp and, you know, think about. Well, what he talks about in this book, it's called The Red Book. And every night he would go and he would go on these journeys towards his subconscious. And sometimes he would take himself to the point of real madness. And this was so that he could understand his own neuroses and meet the collective subconscious.

I was really blown away by what I read when I read when I was. was reading this because it's so poetic, it's like this, it's not academic, it's the subconscious talking. And he talks about the spirit of the depths and the spirit of the times and how in all of us we have these two spirits moving and kind of challenging each other for our soul. And the spirit of the depths is the part of us that is ancient and responds to ancient symbols and rituals. And that's where our kind of madness, our neuroses are the deep, the deep, the deep, the deep, of our character, the part we have in common with the natural world and the animal world, you know, and then we have the spirit of the time which cares about the things that the time

cares about, the part of us that wants to achieve the things that we are sure we should achieve in order to live in ways that feel fruitful or, you know, that we achieve these things like security, safety, family, the respect of our peers, looking after our parents so that they're okay. All of the things that we do in our life, there are these two spirits that drive us. And I was so blown away by that. And I think Ezra and Meg, really, for me, they're real, they live, their people, their characters, but also they were informed by this idea. Well, imagine the spirit of the depths and the spirit of the time were lovers and they had this child. And that's who Rothko is. That's amazing. So Ezra really is the spirit of the time. He's gone so far

towards ambition, making himself in the eyes of other people is all he cares about, respectability. He had a fairly tough time growing up and now he just wants, all he wants is for them to have a better time than he had. His main driving pulse is, I must provide. His whole value system and ecosystem is about what we've been taught, what he's been taught in the age that he grew up. And then Meg is the opposite.

Meg is like, of nature, of, of, of, the depths, you know, and her madness is real, but her beauty is really real. And then Rothgo is somehow kind of caught up guided by these two stars and unsure of what, which, where to ground themselves, really. But then they have this sister, Sorai. And I think it's so interesting when two siblings go through the same childhood, but respond so different. Yeah. Yeah. The coping mechanisms can just be in opposition to each other. Yeah. And you go, but that That's how you made yourself safe and that's how you made yourself safe or that's how you protected yourself.

Well, also, we talked about this, having, we both have two kids, that you are completely different parents and I don't think I ever realise that. Interesting. What? To each child? Yeah. You're just different, you're in a different place. So, you know, there's three years between my kids.

So, yeah, in three years, I'd become a completely different person and I'd also become a mother and gone through that, like, whole transformative, that's not the word, the process. That's so interesting about second. child as well. Yeah. So you're a different parent. It is. Yeah.

You are meeting a parent who's already giving 100% of themselves to one child and then you are added. And that, for some people, can be a breaking point. Oh, yeah. But I think I didn't, I have an older brother. And I think when you're younger, you're like, oh, parents are the same. Like, we've got the same parents. And I think as you get older, and especially then if you do become a parent, you see, like,

oh, you're just, you're dealing with completely different set of circumstances. in the same way that if you, like, you know, you met someone and they became your friend at the start of university and you met them at the end of university or a job, you are different. But I think we sometimes just think parents are this sort of monolith that don't move because that's our experience of them as children. And like they're just a mum and a dad. That's what they do. Also, if parents do break up or if they break up in a dramatic way, a couple of years age difference, experiencing through that is another thing that's very different. Yeah, huge, huge, yeah. Seven compared to five.

And I thought you captured that so well. with the siblings that they had both experienced the same people in completely different ways. And also when you have a parent, you also see how different, my children are complete opposites. Like absolutely, we joke, but they are like chalk and cheese. And I see you can put the same thing into that machine, and the machine produces, you know, one produces strawberries

and one's producing apples. It's just completely different people. So some people just seem to be able to conform and find the world. easier place and I don't think that was going to ever happen to Roscoe wherever they were. Yeah, but that's what I mean. Like you can have, you can, those two, the spirit of the depths of time can make one child that can conform and can make one that just, that's not how my brain works.

That's not how I process this. But I thought you, I thought you really got that sibling relationship so well of the frustration of being like, but why do you see this? Because they've grown up knowing the same people, but it's like I said, it's just produced a completely different effect. With the parents and with the sibling relationship, you underwrite it. It's love first and then all of these other layers on top, which is inability to perhaps communicate properly or be there for each other,

to let each other down. But the love is really strong and it is a very positive place that the book ends as well because of that. Yeah. It isn't. But especially when dealing with addiction in a family as well, because I think that's, I think you write about that. There's a line which you say, which is you can love the person and not the addiction. and I think you, yeah, there's a very positive way of...

I've got to say, that's not mine. You know what I'm saying? You're not in the book. I didn't want to say it's not yours in case it was yours, but yeah, it is obviously a famous aphorism about dealing with people, helping people with addiction. If there is a parent who is dysfunctional, whatever that dysfunction is,

I feel like what's interesting about Soraya, Rofgo's sister, is her clinging to functionality. Yes. It's like she just wants to. wants to function and she's done it. She's done all the things. Now she's got her three kids. She's living the life.

She's got a lovely partner who she's been with forever. And she's doing it. And then I just feel like I haven't seen that explored. I don't think, but then that could be my ignorance, really. I just haven't read that partnership between the functional sibling and the dysfunctional sibling, both kind of like trapped in their own, yeah, frustration, but like desperately tender, really, no matter what had happened. I was scared because three quarters of the way through,

I didn't know. You could have taken them in lots of different places. And I was scared because I thought, I'm going to, I can't read this in public in case you're about to break my heart. It's so amazing to just hear a conversation about these people. Just have to say, like, this is you all at the beginning. of this journey, this is your life now. Talking about the book,

about these characters of people that your readers have met. Can we talk briefly about the character of Angel? Oh yes. Angel Douglas, yeah. Because that's another person I think you're really compassionate towards to, but as a reader, I spent quite a lot of time wanting to hit her. Did you?

Yeah, especially like teenage her. And I know this is where you're very much of her. It's like you showed the influences around Angel and why Angel is the person that she is. So I still wanted to give her a slap. Angel's another person. person who lives in Edgecliffe who affects Rothko's life early on and later on, but they sort of aren't completely aware of each other. She's half like viewer of Roscoe and half she's

going through her own journey of discovering who she is and dealing with self-loathing and low self-esteem and, you know, huge stuff. And we meet her as an adult in a pub having a gin and tonic because she needs one. Yeah. Not being honest with her partner, going through, you know, IVF and all of the emotions. of the hardest thing you can do to become a parent and not knowing if actually you want to be a parent and also very hard to think about becoming a parent when you yourself are not a place of really knowing who you are.

Yeah. But yeah, in the flashbacks I was like, I hate this bitch. And I thought it was good that you were so compassionate towards her. But I think again, it's just terrified of it. I was on that bus. I was like, I would pet my head down. I would not make eye contact with this woman. But I'm older than her.

I'm 44. I don't know you're thinking I can have her I bet you were thinking she's year below I could take her yeah yeah it's really

sometimes the little bitches in the year below are worse yeah the year nine bitches because they're proving something I was very scared

of Angel but yeah I thought Angel was a really and becomes so important to the book yeah but so interesting because we sort of forgot about her

sometimes and then she would come back and I'd be like oh Angel what's Angel doing and again very masterful she wasn't overused

she wasn't underused and she's so important the story but how would we know that the first time we meet her but you knew yeah yeah it's been an interesting journey i don't i so i don't know how much to say but oh fuck it i'll just say it like in one in the in the draft before this draft so the third this is the fourth draft so the third draft i one of the notes was angel wasn't quite so present and wasn't quite as defined that they're a bit more kind of um uh what's the word for like paintings when it's like Like impressionist.

Yeah. Sort of like just, yeah. Yeah. It was more impressionistic. And one of the notes was like, you know, what I need to know a bit more. Because when we switch perspective from Rothko was so involved, like, why should I care about this person? So then I just followed Angel, like, I went laser focused on Angel. And then at one point, Rothko, we go back in time, we meet Rothko's a teenager.

Loads of stuff happens. They set a fire. and in a previous draft we stayed with the person that was in that flat and then everything changed and we followed the lives of the people that lived in this flat

where Rothko had set the fire and the grand child of that family was Angel but then so then it was like Angel's uncle then I'm there with Angels mom and then Angel's Nan

and like it was a whole other story for like a whole other section and then it was like, well, hang on, I think you've just written two novels here, really. I was going to say, this is the sequel, follow up, please. Yeah. When I was working on the record, the most recent record that I made

was called Self-Titled. I was working with a new producer, this guy called Fraser T. Smith, who's amazing. And when I was working on that album, we had this kind of conversation about no unintentional repetition. Like, so you start making into nothingness. There's no pen and I've got nothing written down. He's got nothing.

We've got nothing. We start. We're getting the studio. We start. We're looking. We're following. At some point, you've generated enough to start leading.

But for a long time, you're just following ideas. And then you end up with a whole bunch of kind of demos and ideas. And as the album started taking shape, we said, okay, no unintentional repetition. And that really stuck with me. And when I was there with this whole new family and Angel's whole life,

I was like, hang on a minute. Like, this is 160,000 words. That was going to fucking read it. And like, kind of what's the point? I was like, hang on, no unintentional repetition. Why is there another sibling relationship? Why is there another kind of fairly unwell, older woman? Like, why is there another, like, lonely teenage, like, child?

Like, why, why? And then actually it all became a lens for me to see the characters, my character, my principal characters better. And then Angel kind of emerged from all that, like I was saying earlier. I've got to know everything. You don't have to know everything. But so I know Angel's entire life. Wow.

And then actually what's important for you to know about Angel is I wanted it to give the feeling that you have if you're from a place and you inherit by proximity information about the people around you. Yeah. You might not spend a lot of time, but you know them. Yeah. You know who they are. You kind of know what they're about.

You know if they've done something off-key. You know if they've done something like cool with their life. Or, you know, you might know, their sibling or that kind of feeling. So I didn't want anyone to feel like overloaded with oh I don't, I've forgotten about this character now they're back, what am I meant to

and you've got to refresh your take on them. But actually they're, I love them. And in fact, I'll just go even further I'll talk about this. In the interim years of the 10 years between the last novel and this one, I wrote another novel but it got rejected by my publisher

at the time. I was in a really dark place. it basically like my editor at the time said what did you think I was going to say wow you know what again this might be really hard for you to talk about but I think it's so important to people to hear

because I think they think everyone's just really successful and things are really easy and actually to say that you can be at your level of working and still someone goes yeah we're not going to publish this yeah yeah she was like what did you think I was going to say and I was like well I thought you were going to say it's the best thing you've ever read in your life

that's why email did it attached it I thought it was good. I bled this feeling. But it was dark. I was in a dark place and the novel was dark and there was a lot in it that was heavy. But there was a character in that novel who was basically angel, this angel. So after I went on that huge journey with Angel, her whole family, like, writ a whole novel about them, then I was like, hang on, it's still, I've gone that far towards this character, but it still isn't like immediately clear. who and why Angel exists in this world.

And then I just had this like nagging feeling. I had told myself in my writing life, never write backwards, only write forwards. If you go back to something that hasn't worked, you're tricking yourself into believing that you won't write again tomorrow. Like if I've written a song and it hasn't worked, leave it. If I've, that novel, let go of it, move forwards. But then also working on this album that I just made last year,

I did go backwards in time. I wrote a song that was a kind of dialogue between myself now and myself as a younger because I have this like whole lifetime of writing rhymes and recording. So I had this like real time dialogue between selves anyway. And that experience made me realise that actually it's safe to write backwards into time. It doesn't mean you're not going to write. And also that can be progression.

And this links so well to your ending. Yeah. And it's actually, it's a very therapeutic thing. But accepting yourself at every age, even though some of those ages can be so incredibly painful. But you can't be you now unless all of those selves are inhabited at the same time,

even the really, really difficult ones. And so your dialogue with your song and actually I think what happens with writers if they try and leave things too far in the past is they end up writing the same thing again and again because they haven't dealt with it. Yeah, they haven't had the conversation with it. We interviewed an author about grief.

Kathy Rensonbrink. Yeah, amazing, amazing writer. When we interviewed her. So her brother died when she was a teenager. Her brother, no, her brother had a very serious car accident and was, he was in a vegetative state for a long,

long time. And they were one of the first families to go to the courts and say, we want this to end because we don't think this is a good life. And there was a case before them that was granted to them. So he was in a co-o-frey long time. So she wrote an amazing book about love and about love letting someone that you love so much, and you don't want to go. And then what we were talking with her when she was writing,

she came to talk to us about her novel about writing grief and how every time she sits down to write a new thing she thinks don't write about grief and then it becomes another story about grief and sometimes you just need to keep writing about well I definitely, we talked about it a lot yeah everything I sit is about grief

and it doesn't mean you're not progressing I don't think that someone who No you're having some different conversations as well aren't you like progress Yeah it's the same maybe it's the same heart of pain But you're approaching it as a 15 year old A 25 year old of you know 43 year old with two kids now

Like you're approaching it from different angles. And this novel, which if it is, to understand you correctly, less dark than the one you wrote before, but is the product of the darkness? Oh, yeah. Like, the fact that this character came, was informed by that draft, that novel that never went anywhere. Yeah.

Like, it's like this novel is holding the entirety of my life up to this point, holding it. There's been a massive process of, feeling that's gone along with writing this novel in my life, what I was dealing with while I was writing this novel, these characters literally put me on their back and carried me through some of the heaviest stuff. It's been an amazing, amazing, amazing few years for sure, but some heavy shit's been going on. And this novel has really, it's carried me. And I'm so grateful that I've had this world, this form, these characters, this process to just throw myself

into because it's given me so much like it's taken a lot from me writing a novel is hard work but this this tenderness that's running through it the love that I have for the characters it's real love they say this I feel like it saved my life this novel and and it's right that it has all these different moments from my life are kind of wrapped up in it like I knew I wanted I knew I needed to write that teenager I knew it I knew I wanted to write like Ezra the elder I knew it from the beginning. And thinking about how far it's come, those very first glimpses towards these characters

four or five years ago whenever it was. Like actually, like we were saying at the very beginning, you know, like we were talking about nursery rhymes and three years old and how that becomes your, it's the same in the life of the novel. One little glimpse at something. I worked it all the way through all these different drafts, but it kind of has come back to like that resonation

I first hoped for it. It is running through the kind of chord of the novel. And the fact that something survived from that previous draft, it just feels right. And I think that when it feels, with creativity, you have to work really, really, really hard. Really, really hard. It's hard graft.

It's like, it's not as hard graft as like, you know, breaking rocks. But it's uncomfortable in a different way. Like there are days when you would much rather do physical labour. Yeah. Yeah, breaks some rocks rather than write that story. Your muscles aching. Yeah. The whole world makes sense for physical labour.

Creative labour can unsettled. Yeah. But then sometimes it feels like you're in this real strong current and you're just going. And that's really important to kind of acknowledge and be thankful for out loud as well. Like there's these fleeting moments where you're swept up in it and then the rest of it you're just like breaking rocks basically. I'm so grateful for it.

There's a bit at the end, when you sort of switch into a much more poetic tone, it like stopped me in my tracks because I was like, my eyes were like, well, okay, hang on. I have to slow down and I have to take this in. And then it reminded me of how good you are,

like that form of poetry. And obviously, it's amazing novel. I love the novel, but to suddenly switch back to that and be like, fucking hell. Like, oh, you're really, this is like, the way that you can rhyme and keep that and the flow of that section is just incredible

but I wondered was that why did you feel like or did it just come out suddenly you needed to be poetic in that section or did it show enough that you can like I'll do karaoke I was like also I can do this yeah Kay is really good at poetry

yeah yeah the reason that that happens everything within the form has to be defined by the content of what's happening, right? It's not just like, hey, let's... Yeah. Let's rap. Like a politician on the news.

Doesn't attract the young people. I think I should wrap this, basically. Within the content of what's happening, like what happens when you get lost in the troubles that Rothgo is lost in, which for them is like heavy, heavy, like kind of partying. Suddenly they're kind of not really living anywhere. Now they get into like, it gets heavier. Their drug use gets heavier.

they start smoking crack things start getting pretty gnarly but they don't really realise it and when that kind of stuff is happening the way that the world feels to the character within this world merits the time signature

changing. When we were talking earlier and I said oh I didn't want people to know what happened in those interim 20 years like you meet Rothko present day then you go back you meet Rothko 20 years ago and then we come back to present day but then there's this 20 year period that I hadn't really been dealing with in one of the very early drafts.

And then this thing about, well, I don't want to dwell in trauma because then, you know, for us all like to sit comfortably with our paperback and read about something like extremely traumatic, it just doesn't sit right with me. And it doesn't feel real to how the character experiences it. It's not the most important moment in the character wouldn't be dwelling on their life in that way. They'll be dwelling in, especially Rothgo, they're dwelling in the present tense. They're so grateful to be in the present.

They're not spending their time refreshing their story in that way. But this like fever dream of like multisyllabic kind of like hallucinatory, the way it's described in the in the poem, 20 years in free fall and a vacuum of delay, which kind of gives that sense of it's like a, and the way it's set, it's set like in this tight margin to margins. Yeah, it's like you fall down this kind of silly. lindrical, like well of experience and 20 years passes and you get to see not just Rothgo's

life, but also how that affects their family. You see how it affects Soraya, how she's going around all these squats banging on the doors and then eventually at what point does she give up and what is, and who, in fact, is she giving up? And in whose mind, the people's responses to what happens become the narrative? You know, this. there's so much in it that I just didn't feel like the mode of the fiction as I'd been exploring it up to that point. I just didn't feel like it could carry in the way that I know rhyme language can carry. There's something about the music of it. It's like people understand when it becomes musical,

that something happens to the way that we require language to infer meaning. I think we're more susceptible to going with the undertones. and letting it happen to us rather than feeling like we've got to work out exactly what. Yeah, you're feeling it on such a different level. But isn't that how it happened? Suddenly 20 years went past.

And what happened? You just knocked on the door and then what happened? 20 years went past and everything's different. And I wanted it to feel like that. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a last question for you and it's about readers.

Because you're at the beginning of this your book's going out into the world now and I don't know I have an answer to this. I'm genuinely interested. I sometimes think that there are people who really deserve stories and would be thirsty for stories but don't necessarily get to them or find them. Like they might not think that reading is for them or, you know, young people, for instance, that young people who are unhappy, how are you asking Kate as old? No, do you have, when you go and do book events, do you go to places which might be like Edgecliffe?

Do you do book events that are for six formers? I guess I'm asking that. Do you have a reader in mind where you go, there are people who I really want to get this into the hands of them? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I had this idea that for every book event we do, we should do like a kind of after-hours one in the little grotty gay club somewhere,

like just for the queers of the town, but it's quite hard to organise, apparently. When I'm thinking about readers, I would hope that the novel speaks beyond the sum of its parts. I would hope that people who have no direct, lived experience with what the characters have been through will find and resonate with these characters that's my dream my hope because my belief is that all of us all of us are connected at one level to each other yeah that's my belief system and and i'm sticking to it you know because i feel that

but at the same time i'm writing this especially for the experience of um relief when you feel seen and there's not that many characters that i've encountered in fiction i have to obviously give a massive, like, deep, deep gratitude and thanks to Leslie Feinberg for Stone Butch Blues. But to see just some young butch, some queer, like this kid, like, and then held by this elder, it's important for me that that dykes read this book, that trans people read this book, that the community, that queer people read this book. It's also important to me that traumatised people that have experienced addiction, like precarious housing

that have been through like mental ill health and difficult times, people that have been incarcerated, people that have been somehow taken out to the margins and have had to strive to live and flourish out there. I would hope that this novel resonates in a particular way that feels hopefully, oh, like relieving somehow.

Sometimes when you see yourself or you see something that you've been dealing with and you see it reflected back at you, it can help me to arrive more fully in my present. And because I've received so much from literature and music, I want to give in the spirit that I've received. So my dream, my absolute hope is that somebody will feel seen, feel found by this novel in the way that I have felt seen and found by so many others.

Being told a story is so powerful. Having a story that's yours to then keep in your bedroom is so powerful. There's something about books and the precious stuff. of them. And I think maybe all of us Yeah, and someone also had to be ahead of you in the past as well. Someone much further ahead being like, I'm here and I've written this and I can pass it back. And full of forgiveness. And those

are the things that are important and not everyone can't afford therapy, not everyone. And I think also what you're saying, because we've definitely read a lot of books where the trauma has been so front and centre. And those books, you know, have their place. But that's what I really loved about this, that the trauma was was just another piece of the puzzle. of these people, and I think that is most people's lived experience of, like, trauma exists

in a place, but there's also hope and joy and tend to life after it, yeah. So what is that going to look like and how are you going to shape it no matter what the previous part of your life was like. I wanted it to feel like not, I just wanted it to feel normal. Yeah. And I wanted it to be about the

relationships beyond, you know, and sometimes that's the hardest part. Like, how do you actually get on with life? Yeah. How do you actually get on with life? Like, that's actually more, that's more pressing concern for Rothgo than like the things that they've been through. How do I pay for my shopping at this checkout machine? I don't know.

I sit here with my novel all finished, but there's a lot of life that's gone into it. Yeah. And us talking about how it finds people, it's really important to me that people that have been through some of the things the characters have been through Phil, that it's not just like, oh, here's another story about the hardest shit in my life,

told by people that aren't me sold to people that aren't me, played by people that aren't me, so people that have never lived this can look at it and feel better about their own shield. Yeah, we know what I mean. So I just like, I just think it's important to acknowledge. Your book is amazing. It's amazing, but thank you so much. Thank you.

And I hope that having it in the world is a really brilliant experience. Kay, thank you so much for talking to us. Thanks for talking to me about it. That's like, that's the first time I've sat and talked about these characters like that. That's amazing. I hope it finds its way to whoever it finds its way to and like, yeah, just so much gratitude and thankfulness for the whole, every single step of the process, including this bit. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. My picture book for kids, Where Does She Go? Is now available in paperback. And you can find out all about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing this series on our Instagram. At Sir and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club. And please don't forget, you can sign up to our Patreon where you can find lots more weird and wonderful behind the scene stuff. We also have a live event coming up in Sheffield in July at the Crosswise Festival.

We're so excited. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.