Jenny Bayliss & Karen Swan

Show Notes

This week, Jenny Bayliss and Karen Swan join Jack for this holly, jolly Christmas Mostly Books Meets special.

Jenny Bayliss is the author of the 12 Dates of Christmas and The Winter of Second Chances and her latest book is the wonderful Meet Me Under the Mistletoe.

Karen Swan is the author of this year's The Last Summer, which is the first in the five-book Wild Isle series, and has now treated us to a second book this year, the brilliant The Christmas Postcards.

Purchase Meet Me Under the Mistletoe here

Purchase The Christmas Postcards here

• (01:43) - Jenny Bayliss and Karen Swan's Childhood Reads
• (09:09) - Reading Through the Teenage Years
• (15:48) - Jenny and Karen's Favourite Childhood reads
• (20:59) - Jenny Bayliss' Recent Reads
• (22:39) - Karen Swan's Recent Reads
• (29:21) - The Books That Changed Their Lives
• (39:36) - Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
• (43:08) - The Christmas Postcards
• (51:36) - Balancing Light and Dark Themes

Welcome to Mostly Books Meets, a weekly podcast by the independent award-winning bookshop, Mostly Books. Nestled in the Oxfordshire town of Abingdon-on-Thames, Mostly Books has been spreading the joy of reading for fifteen years. Whether it’s a book, gift, or card you need the Mostly Books team is always on hand to help. Visit our website.

The podcast is produced and presented by Jack Wrighton and the team at Mostly Books. It is edited by Story Ninety-Four. Find us on Twitter @mostlyreading & Instagram @mostlybooks_shop.

Meet the host:
Jack Wrighton is a bookseller and social media manager at Mostly Books. His hobbies include photography and buying books at a quicker rate than he can read them.
Connect with Jack on Instagram

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe is published in the UK by Pan Macmillan

The Christmas Postcards is published in the UK by Pan Macmillan

Books mentioned in this episode include:
Watership Down by Richard Adams - ISBN: 9780241953235
The Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann - ISBN: 9783407743954
The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes - ISBN: 9781474972147
Wild by Cheryl Strayed - ISBN: 9780307476074
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry - ISBN: 9780571230587
It's Too Frightening for Me! by Shirley Hughes - ISBN: 9780140311587
The Road by Cormac McCarthy - ISBN: 9780307387899

To find more titles, visit our website

Creators & Guests

Host

Mostly Books

Award-winning indie bookshop in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

What is Mostly Books Meets...?

Welcome to Mostly Books Meets, a podcast by the independent bookshop, Mostly Books. Booksellers from an award-winning indie bookshop chatting books and how they have shaped people's lives, with a whole bunch of people from the world of publishing - authors, poets, journalists and many more. Join us for the journey.

Sarah Dennis
Welcome to Mostly Books Meets. We the team at Mostly books, an award-winning independent bookshop in Abingdon. In this podcast series, we'll be speaking to authors, journalists, poets, and a range of professionals from the world of publishing. We'll be asking about the books that are special to them, from childhood favourites to the book that changed their life and we hope you'll join us for the journey.

Jack Wrighton
It is my great pleasure to welcome onto the podcast this week, not one but two authors, Jenny Bayliss and Karen Swan who are joining us for this Holly Jolly Christma, Mostly Books Meets special. Jenny Bayliss is the author of the 12 Dates of Christmas and The Winter of Second Chances and her latest book is the wonderful Meet Me Under the Mistletoe. Karen Swan is the author of this year's The Last Summer, which is the first in the five-book Wild Owl series, and has now treated us to a second book this year, the brilliant The Christmas Postcards, Jenny Bayliss, and Karen Swan, welcome to Mostly Books Meets.

Jenny Bayliss
Thank you. Hello.

Karen Swan
Hi, Jack. Thank you.

Jack Wrighton
Thank you so much for joining us. We're very excited to have two guests on today. So as you know, on Mostly Books Meets, we love to talk to authors about the books that they love, the books that have shaped them. Jenny, if we start with you, as a child, we love to sort of start in those sort of formative early years. Were you much of a reader? Were you a passionate reader? Or did that come later on?

Jenny Bayliss
I loved reading and both my parents used to read to me every night and my dad especially and he would do all the voices. So books were always like a, you know, I really loved reading from a young age and a lot of my memories are of them reading books to me.

Jack Wrighton
Oh, wonderful. Okay, so really, I think when you know, someone when you're a kid who can do the voices and really sort of puts their all into it, I don't know, that's always such a magical experience and Karen, how about you? Were you much of a reader when you were younger?

Karen Swan
Do you know what I really was, but I didn't necessarily think of myself as bookish. I was always reading. I mean, one of my earliest memories is of being such a geek, actually, I was about five or so going up to my teacher at break time and asking if I could please have the next book in the Janet and John series because I was sort of moving through so quickly and, you know, I was a kid of the 80s, you know, obviously, long, long before the internet, frankly, long before MTV, and I used to just go to my local library, and I would sit on the floor in the library next to the revolving bookcases, and I'd pick up books and I would just start reading and I would sort of sit there all day and I honestly thought that was quite a normal thing to do. Certainly with hindsight, I think maybe that's quite bookworm-ish. But it was just about I did.

Jack Wrighton
That's the wonderful thing about kids, they just sort of enjoy what they enjoy, without thinking too much about it and it's only as you get older that you look back and think oh, I was a nerd, I suppose you might say, oh yeah. But that's alright. We like nerds here. We're all for nerds and the bookish here, and Jenny from your early times reading are there any books that particularly stand out for you that you enjoyed?

Jenny Bayliss
Well definitely The Worst Witch, that was the first book that I sort of read, like all by myself, but The Tompten and the Fox, my dad used to read to me all the time and so that was also a comfort book that if I ever just needed a moment, I'd just go and read The Tompten and the Fox. So yeah, but The Worst Witch was my enduring love for many years until I was far too old to be reading it really.

Jack Wrighton
Oh, but I think yeah, I was at a conference over the weekend and you know, one point that came up a lot, which I agree with is I think, you know, children's books, they are for everyone. I think when you're younger you have that idea that you know, oh, I'm too old to be reading this now. But if anything it comes full circle as you sort of get older and you don't really care about you know whether something's the right age for you. You actually think no do you know what, I will read that now because a good read is a good read at the end of the day. So yeah, The Worst Witch, still a great classic for us and still one that we sell quite regularly at the shop and Karen how about you? Any titles that particularly stand out for you?

Karen Swan
Well, I was really dog obsessed as well as book obsessed when I was little. Still am really, I still am that person ad so I was always reading animal books. So I would read Lassie, I would read The Animals of Farthing Wood was when I remember, The Incredible Journey I was obsessed with about these, you know, the owners move home and the dogs make this incredible journey, what seemed like across America, but then I got to Watership Down and I came to an abrupt halt on that particular genre. It was pretty brutal.

Jack Wrighton
Oh, yeah. Watership Down is... you never forget the first time that you've read Watership Down. It's an early trauma, I think for many readers, but an important one and a beautifully written one. Either of you, do you think there are any particular sort of things you looked for in stories as a child any sort of themes that you feel cropped up such as Karen for you, you know, your love of animals? Jenny, do you feel there was any, you know, adventure or any sort of genres that you reached for then?

Jenny Bayliss
I think it was, I liked anything witchy, anything spooky. Shirley Hughes wrote an amazing book called, It's Too Frightening For Me, and I thought it was the best thing I'd ever read. So yeah, anything spooky and I've sort of continued on with that really, I still like that kind of stuff. But I used to like the Blackberry Farm books. So they were about sort of naughty animals. So I liked those, and there was George the kitten and then as soon as I was old enough, I got a cat and called it George.

Jack Wrighton
So yeah, those are the ones that caught your eye if you're in a library or a bookshop, and Karen, anything other than the animals? Was there any other sort of genres or, or themes that caught young Karen's attention?

Karen Swan
Well, once I've sort of got over the trauma of Watership Down, I then diversify and really, I would pick up anything that was lying around and that would include, you know, anything my mother was reading, it was pretty diverse. I do remember when I hit about 11, I discovered the Sweet Valley High books, which were just, I mean, honestly, I look back now, they're hilarious. But actually, for a very shy girl with braces, who went to an all-girls school, the idea of this sort of California glamour of these two, high school twins, you know, it was such an escape, it was so different to my reality. Of course, that was a series and I and the thrill of when you find a world you want to go into, and you find characters that you aspire to, even if you don't relate to them, I mean that was why I would spend so much time sitting on the library floor, because I could get through about four of those books a day, I would just sort of, you know, go into those. So then I got really into a series of books, and, you know, really enjoyed staying with characters for as long as I could.

Jack Wrighton
And that escapism is so important and so formative and I love also the contrast between sort of the escapism of, you know, a Californian school or it sounds like sort of castles and witches for you Jenny, you know, but that's the wonderful thing, there are so many worlds to escape to and particularly for children, you sort of enjoy exploring all those different areas, and then finding the one that you think, oh, this is a world I want to spend, you know, a good few books in and is always exciting.

Karen Swan
When my daughter sort of hit the same age, I actually bought her as many of the Sweet Valley High books as I could, with the original covers that I actually could still remember and again, she just got really into them, they were just right for that age group. They were very innocent and escapist, and glamorous and, and it was lovely watching her, you know, and her life was a lot more glamorous than mine ever used to be at that age. Tragically, but, you know, it gave her what it had given me and that was so nice to see.

Jack Wrighton
Yes, because I think that's an interesting thing. Because, of course, you know, kids these days, you know, there's multiple forms of escapism, particularly, you know, in the age of the Internet, mobile phones and things like that. So books have to vibe with that a little bit and we sometimes find that in a child's teenage years that there can be a little bit of a drop off in reading, and then they sort of get back to it later on. But that seems to be true, even sort of pre-internet age, I feel, you know, or not pre-internet, but you know, it's everywhere these days, you know, sort of when it was not as accessible and Jenny did your love of reading to that continue sort of strongly through your teenage years or did you ever sort of take a break and rediscover it?

Jenny Bayliss
It sort of carried on during my teen years, but then it did drop off when I started to go to parties. So I think it probably dropped off from when I was about 16, and then I have my first son when I was 20 and after that I just didn't read. I read to him all the time. But I didn't really read for myself because I just there wasn't a time and if there was ever time, I just wanted to close my eyes. So I really got back into reading again, once he was a little bit older, and you know, and then I had my next son, and yeah, then the whole cycle started again.

Jack Wrighton
And how about you, Karen?

Karen Swan
Well, tragically, I still wasn't going to parties much in my teenage years, I was still stuck at this rotten school where there was just no social life going on. So I actually got more and more into books and I started moving more into the classics and sort of the literary genre, and I ended up going to uni and reading English. So I was reading, you know, a lot throughout those years, obviously, all the Jane Austen's who, to this day remains my literary icon. I just love that woman's write tone, and sarcasm and yes, I just sort of really went through what you would consider to be the English classics. So that by the time I got to uni, I'd read an awful lot. But you know had I had a more fun teenage-hood, I like to think I might have dropped off a bit.

Jack Wrighton
But no, it said stayed pretty diligent by the sounds of it and particularly going... there always seems to be a period for readers where they start exploring the classics and that can be a really interesting time because you find things that you love. But then also, there's the inevitable moment where you stumble across something that you know, is considered a classic and you think, actually, this isn't for me, and initially, you can feel like it's a fault with you that you know, that oh, you know, I'm not kind of smart enough to appreciate it. But I think over time you realise, Oh, it's okay to have the things that you like, and the things that you don't and Jenny, did you ever sort of go through one of those sort of post or pre-kids, did you look through the classics and kind of work out you know, what was and what wasn't for you?

Jenny Bayliss
I did, I did. So, I mean, like, Karen, I completely fell in love with Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice is still like one of my favourite books, you know, ever and I sort of read some Dickens but I still stumbled on Bleak House. I still haven't there are some that I still haven't managed to read. But you know, HG Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle and I just sort of yeah, I went through a phase where I just suddenly was hoovering up. You know, I'd left my Nancy Drew days behind and I was just hoovering up the classics for a long time and once you've done that, I think they do become favourites. So I mean, like, you know, one of my comfort books now is the War of the Worlds it's probably not very comfy for many people. But for me, that's like, ooh, I'm a bit stressed, lovely, let's read some cosy Martians.

Jack Wrighton
Forget cosy crime, cosy Martians is the next publishing craze.

Karen Swan
Someone tell Richard!

Jack Wrighton
Yes, yes. No, don't tell Richard. Yeah, he can have the cosy crime we'll give someone else the cosy Martians. Yes. Now, Jane Austen. Yeah, I also have to absolutely agree with that. I think every time I pick up a Jane Austen novel, I'm struck with, firstly, how readable it is, you know, the style is just... it's so elegant, it's so well written, that it just flows. You know, it almost doesn't feel like reading, you're just kind of engaging with the story and as you said, Karen, the sarcasm, the character observations, you know, the observations of human character are just absolutely fantastic and Jenny, also, I struggled with Bleak House and have also not finished Bleak House.

Jenny Bayliss
That makes me feel better.

Jack Wrighton
I know, I mean, to any Dickens fans listening to this, you know, particularly for a Christmas special one, because obviously, the Christmas Carol, which is an absolute classic, which I do enjoy, is brilliant. But yes, yeah, Bleak House. All that fog at the beginning, it was a struggle for me and of course, that's an interesting thing. I'm right in saying that you are both parents, and I think that's very interesting for reading as well, because it's something we see in the shop is, you know, for reading, actually, a lot of reading that parents come across is the books that they're reading with their children, or they're, you know, reading to their children and so again, there's that sort of second enjoyment of children's publishing and fiction, and I think, you know, some of the best books out there sort of know that they're appealing to the parents as well, that there's, you know, a few things in there for the parents who are enjoying them.

Karen Swan
Hugely. My son would never consider himself a reader. But he would say that some of his strongest childhood memories are of me reading to him and I remember I was reading the northern lights to him, and well to him and his brother and sister and we were getting to the end and I was beginning to cry because I was so emotional about it and I remember this look on his face, to see his mom crying just from reading a book and he was sort of a bit baffled that a book could do that to you that it could make his mummy, this grown woman burst into tears. But I was so sort of obviously, you know, absorbed into that world and it has been one of my greatest joys of motherhood, reading books to them and they've each got a particular book that absolutely reminds them of, you know, being little, being read to, and they only need to look at it, and they're sort of they've got that really strong association and all those memories, and I love it so much.

Jack Wrighton
Oh, yes, it's true. Yeah, those books that actually you look at and I don't know, it's, it can be almost emotional because you remember how much you loved it as a child. For me, a title that always has that is... um... I've forgotten the title now, which is terrible, I'm a bookseller for goodness sake. It's Tell Me How Much I Love You or, or the one with the two rabbits where they're sort of saying I love you to the moon. Listeners can then email in and tell me if I've got the title wrong. That one yes, I look at that and there's always a part of my heart that sort of goes back to being a child, and Jenny, any sort of ones that stuck out from reading to your kids, or any sort of favourites for them?

Jenny Bayliss
They liked... so I went through a phase of trying to pick up all the old Ladybird Books that I used to read, I'd find them in a secondhand shop. So I would, they would have Bobby Bushtail and The Two Naughty Kittens and all that sort of thing. So I used to read those to them a lot and then we went through the Harry Potter's obviously and my youngest son was really into Charlie Higson books, and Anthony Horowitz books as well, so I feel like I've done all the Anthony Horowitz's because I sort of love him as a as an adult author as well. But I read such a lot of middle-grade anyway, because I write middle-grade books as well. So I am constantly reading middle grade. So it's wonderful, because not only are they really excellent and underrated books, but they're just so much fun and you know, I've reached the age now where I don't even care if I'm quite blatantly reading The Haunting of Aveline Jones or something in the doctor's surgery and I'm just thinking whatevs.

Jack Wrighton
You're encouraging people to ask you, you know, are you reading a children's book? So you can go yes, I am actually, and you should be to. There's that wonderful book that came out a couple of years ago by Katherine Rendell, which was about how everyone should read children's books.

Karen Swan
I'm obsessed with her. I know, I'm really obsessed with her.

Jack Wrighton
Your face changed quite dramatically then!

Karen Swan
I love her so much because what I love about her, particularly for girls, is that her heroines are, they're tomboys you know, they're not pretty princessy girls, you know, they're wild, they're quite feral and I just loved reading these characters to my daughter and, you know, the way she gets language. I remember in The Roof Toppers, there's a scene where, you know, they're jumping between the roofs of Paris and she's asking, you know, how far is it we have to jump and the boy who lives on the roof says, it's about the length of a pig and I thought, Oh, God, you so understand how kids think, you know, normally an adult writer would go it's about a meter, you know, she just absolutely knew that for a child, they wouldn't think in that way, especially a child, you know, without an education, without parents, you know, living on a roof. It's about the length of a pig and I just think she is absolutely brilliant.

Jack Wrighton
Yeah, it's a real skill writing for children. I'm sure Jenny, this isn't that you can sort of talk about more is because I imagine now, I'm not a writer, I'm a bookseller. But I imagine, you know, there are two quite different minds. You know, when you're a writer, you know, part of that is, I'm sure sort of going into different minds, different worlds, thinking from different people. Jenny, do you have sort of two different brains as it were for writing for adults or writing for children? Or is that a silly thing to say, you know, it's just the one mind.

Jenny Bayliss
It's true. No, it is two brains. For children's books, I feel I can let my imagination be a bit more wild and it feels much freer and it is yes, it's a very different mindset when I go into adult books, so if I'm jumping from having written a, you know, done a draft for children's book, and then I know I've got to start on my adult book. I have to leave a couple of days because otherwise it just doesn't work because I'm not in the right headspace yet.

Karen Swan
I've got so much respect for you for being able to jump between the genres like that, because I really don't think I could do it at all. I think it's amazing that you can. I'm very jealous.

Jenny Bayliss
Oh, thank you!

Karen Swan
No, I'd love to write, in fact when I first said I was going to write a book, I thought I would write a children's book and I just realised that I just couldn't, I couldn't make that leap, you know, to their consciousness. So, you know, when I see it done really well. I'm like, Oh, I wish I could, I'm so jealous!

Jack Wrighton
Well, maybe what might not seem possible now, might do in the future, you know, things do change. So maybe we will see a children's book from Karen Swan in the future.

Karen Swan
Well, you know, my kids, slightly accusingly say to me, Mommy, you said you were going to write a book for us. I feel so bad. But now I'm like, when you're 20, 18, and 16, I'm not sure you care in the same way.

Jack Wrighton
There's no greater people to put the pressure on than family. They never had to do it like no one else. They'll say what no one else, you know, even a publisher or publicist would never say to you, so I'm sure that your family will. So we discussed, you know, the wonderful world of children's books, but now going into the future, you're both successful writers and as well, as you know, I'm sure reading and you know, research for your own books that you've managed to make time for your own reading, as well, for reading just for enjoyment. Are there any sort of titles that you've recently read that really spoke to you that you really enjoy? Jenny, we'll start with you again, anything from your recent read list?

Jenny Bayliss
Well, actually, it was a middle-grade book. I mean, I did just read the latest Richard Osman, which is obviously, you know, brilliant. He's just hilarious. But I read a book called The Haunting of Tyrese Walker, by J.P. Rose and it was so beautiful. It was set in Jamaica, and it was about Jamaican ghosts and sort of history and legend, a myth. But it was also centred around loss and Tyrese had lost his father and it was how he wasn't dealing with his grief because he couldn't and that meant that the ghosts sort of latched on to him because of his grief and it was one of those books that absolutely breaks your heart, but also just fills you up as well, it just had everything but it was so emotionally deep. It was really, really good. I'd recommend it to you know, grownups and children.

Jack Wrighton
You've sold it to me from that description, absolutely. And Karen, how about yourself?

Karen Swan
Well, I've just finished I tend not to read other people's books when I'm writing because I have this real fear that I'm going to absorb their tune, and also steal all their work, you know, just completely rehash it as my own. So I really, I'm so paranoid about it that I don't. So the book and I have just had a very intense six-month work period that only ended yesterday. So the only books I've read recently have been a trilogy by this gentleman called Finley J. MacDonald and it's actually The Scenes from a Hebridean Boyhood and it was sort of background research for my summer series, which is set in 1930, in the Outer Hebrides, and I was wanting to just get, I just wanted sort of, you know, background scenes of, you know, Hebridean life, you know, the crafting community, but also the turn of the 1930s and what I wasn't expecting was how funny it would be, just the community spirit, the jokes that they would play, I thought, God, they were so inventive and these were real-life events that he was recounting. He's died now but he was an excellent writer and, you know, given that this man grew up on a Croft in the 1930s on the Isle of Harris, you know, his education would not have been, you know, I don't think he would have gone for example, to university, but he was so articulate, and so well read and had this beautiful style and he was recounting these wonderful escapades and I wanted so badly to put them in my book, because I was like, this is just so good. It's so good and I was like, well, it's just like the counting someone else's story and I couldn't bring myself to do it because I thought no, that's stealing from him. He's put it in his book. I can't use it. But it was really wonderful just to see you know, the mischief on these aisles at that time and given that I was reading them for research purposes, I didn't expect to enjoy them so much. I really came away just thinking, you know, I want... there was actually a TV series made on these three books, and I've been trying to find it. BBC Iplayer says it has it, but it's not available at the moment, so I might have to buy a DVD player so that I could buy a DVD to watch it.

Jack Wrighton
Yes, so need to see the TV adaptation that you're willing to go back to DVDs.

Karen Swan
I've read all the books, I just want more.

Jack Wrighton
And of course, that's interesting, isn't it, because I'm sure that's hard for any writer not to absorb what they read in some way and from other authors that I've read to a degree that is a natural part of writing, you know, not absorbing, you know, entire sort of plot points or like chapters or whatnot. But, you know, just the kind of the enjoyment that you get from reading even just the energy from that, you know is kind of absorbed, and then I think put sort of into the writing. Do you find that Jenny, if you've read a book that you've really enjoyed that... does it sort of gear you up, ready to kind of, you know, tell your own story?

Jenny Bayliss
Yes, sometimes it can, particularly if you've really loved someone's writing style and I must admit, I have started writing, and then I've sort of thought,well, no, hang on a minute, that's not necessarily my voice and so yeah, you know, so although I'm not taking what they've written in any way, I have to be careful that I don't write in their voice and just write in my own if that makes sense.

Jack Wrighton
No, that does, it makes me think of like tuning a radio almost, that you know, you have a sort of a frequency that you know, oh, that's me, like, that's me there. But you know, that there's this kind of grey area, either side where you're like, oh, that sort of me, but maybe it's kind of, you know, going elsewhere as well.

Jenny Bayliss
Yeah, I think that's a really good way of describing it. Yeah. So luckily, it hasn't happened very often. But every now and again, I've had to go oops, no.

Jack Wrighton
And I feel as well sorry to explain to younger listeners used to have to tune in radio. I feel we're already getting to a point where, unfortunately, I think there'll be people go oh, what is he talking about? What do you mean tune a radio, you just press the button?

Karen Swan
What is a radio?

Jack Wrighton
Yes. Exactly. Yes. Well, also, I've realised you know, this is a Christmas special of the episode as well. I have prepared some sort of quick Christmas questions for the both of you. The first one is to you, Karen, a favourite Christmas food?

Karen Swan
Oh, it has to be a mince pie. I mean, I will not look at a mince pie before the first of December. I feel absolute fury If I see them from like, September onwards, I'm like, why are you doing this? And I will look away with my nose in the air. But come the first of December, I will be loading up my trolley and then I just gorge for the entire month of December and then come January I don't want to see it again for another 11 months. It's just Christmas to me. It's just festive spirit.

Jack Wrighton
Yes. Yeah and I agree. I think there's a point where the mince pie hunger kicks in, and once that kicks in, it's there and no amount of mince pies will quench it. For you, Jenny, my question for you is a favourite Christmas song, a favourite Christmas tune?

Jenny Bayliss
Oh, there's a Christmas tune called Santa Is Coming For Us by Sia and I love it, I love it so much. I mean, I was always a fan, you know, I like most Christmas music to be fair, I really really gorge on it. But yeah, that one is just joy. It's so good.

Jack Wrighton
I don't think I've come across that one. I'm gonna have to look that up because I like some of Sia's previous songs. So yeah, that's a completely new one to me. I don't know. That's nice. You know, with these things you I've got wasn't necessarily expected to come across something I hadn't. So I will be looking that one up after this and give it a listen. It might be a bit early. Now for our listeners. We are recording this in very early November so I might have to leave it for a couple of weeks.

Karen Swan
Yes, we don't want to peak too soon do we?

Jack Wrighton
Yes, exactly. I don't want to set off the mince pie hunger too early for my own sake and now going back to books as well. We have a question on our podcast, which I always feel, I say this in every podcast, and maybe I should stop repeating myself. But I always feel slightly guilty for asking, because it's a book that changed your life. But when I asked that I'm also interested to hear, you know, sort of your response to that question because for some people, that means several books, it's no single book at all. It's just, you know, their reading has over time slowly affected them in ways that you can't measure at any given point, but what is your response when I asked you that question? Jenny for you, is there a single book that comes to mind, or is it many?

Jenny Bayliss
There's probably a few. I mean, I have like, there's books that broke me which one of those is The Road by... is it Cormac McCarthy? Yeah, so that is the book that broke me and then there is Wild by Cheryl Strayed, which just broke me and then built it back up again. That was my first introduction to memoir. I'd never read any memoir at all, I'd purposely always steer clear of it for some reason, I think it's because I was always put off by the things you see in the shops, where it's like, you know, tragic childhoods, and I'd be all like ooh, no. But this was, because I went to uni as a mature student and so we did a module on memoir, and Wild was the one I read and it was so wonderful. It was such a feeling of second chances, and hopes, and, you know, overcoming trials and then at the end of it, I was sitting, was in the cafeteria, and I was reading it in the university cafeteria, and I finished it and I was shaking because it was so good and I had no one to talk to about it and you know, when you just read a really good book, and you need to talk to someone about it and I was just looking around me thinking, who can I go over and speak to but you're already the oldest one here. You don't want to make yourself look even weirder by going up again, because I read Wild, I really need to talk. So yeah, that was it. That was the one for me.

Jack Wrighton
Shaking people being like, have you read Wild? Please, you know, I need somebody to discuss it. Shockingly, it's a book I've not read and I should because I actually have a friend who, in the next couple of years plans to do the exact walk that she does in Wild, which blows my mind because I love a walk. But I love a sort of gentle kind of flat walk, by a river?

Jenny Bayliss
With a cafe at the end.

Jack Wrighton
Yes, with a cafe at the end. Exactly. So yes. That style of walking. I'm like, Oh, wow, that you know, so yeah, that's one that's definitely sort of, you know, been bumped up my to-read list and Karen, what's your answer to that rather big question?

Karen Swan
I would say it's two books, or it's two books and a series. The book is A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, which I actually read a long time ago and I don't remember the finer details of it. But it's a hard read. It's not a fun book, doesn't particularly even have a happy ending. But it really sort of... it was all about, you know, following some characters in India, and you really had an insight into true poverty, and deprivation, and oppression and you had these multiple perspectives and, you know, an insight into the caste system, hierarchy, just the things that people will do for survival. I mean, it was really a survival book really, because this was not a book about people chasing happy endings and it really showed me, you know, I've been very fortunate that I've lived a very sort of uneventful life, you know, not, touch wood, nothing awful or terrible, has happened and so I suppose I, you know, I don't get the highs, I don't get the lows. But you know, I've lived a very nice life, and to go into this world, which was brutal, really showed me just how life isn't fair, you don't get the happy ending, necessarily. Nonetheless, you can find happiness or contentment or satisfaction within that, even amid all this hardship and suffering, you can still forge a contented life. And it sounds so dreary to say it, but I just think we're often fed this narrative of rural, you know, the perfect ending the perfect life, a happy ending and it was just the most realistic book I'd ever read and it stayed with me for so long and I do sort of want to go back and read it again, because I was pretty young when I read it and I'd like to read it again now, with some life experience behind me. So it's not an easy read, but I think it's a very worthwhile one and you can't stop turning the pages. I mean, it's just absolutely brilliantly written. The series that I really love was Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series. Again, I just loved the fact that the central relationship in this series is two women's friendship, and actually also the enmity. It's again the most realistic depiction of female friendship I've ever read and what I love about it is that actually, it's saying that it's not necessarily your romantic partner, or even your children who are going to be the most important relationship in your life, it could be a friendship and it really goes through that and again, it's quite gritty, it's about, you know, starts off in Naples in the 1950s, absolute poverty, abuse, hard reading, but so beautifully written and you're just caring about these characters all the way through, and I just, again, read all the books, and then had to inhale the TV adaptations, which were absolutely brilliant, they've done about the first three books, I think, and honestly, it's like, you know, just do it already. Just do it, please, God, just give them to me, you know, there's so good. It's that rare example, where actually the TV adaptation or the film adaptation, it does justice to the books, I would always choose books first, but you know, when you read the books, and you still want to more, and you know, I just absolutely inhale that series, and I don't often tend to re-read, but that is a series I will go back to.

Jack Wrighton
Yeah, and what's interesting is, both of your choices strike me in the sense of, and this tends to come up quite a lot, is that, you know, they're all books that show the happier elements of life, you know, that they show, and, you know, particularly, you know, when we're talking about things like the road as well, which is, Karen, you were saying that, you know, your first book doesn't necessarily have a happy ending, Jenny's choice, The Road is a book that is not necessarily a happy read, but I think that's very interesting that we tend to sort of, you know, go for these books that, you know, leave you with a kind of a big mix of emotions, you know, Jenny you used this really interesting word of sort of feeling almost broken and I find that very interesting, you know, is it a sort of a bit like, when you get a sort of a massage, that's quite sort of, you know, strong, afterwards you're a bit sore, but you feel like, ultimately, it was good for you. Like Jenny would you say that's kind of the feeling?

Jenny Bayliss
Yeah, I think so, because with The Road, it is so beautiful, the writing is so beautiful and yet, it's such a tragic book and such a hard subject matter. You know, it's just the punches keep on coming, don't they, just really don't stop. But at the same time, you can separate it and be like, this prose is incredible. So, yeah, I think it is, that it does leave you with, you know, I was heartbroken. But also just like, wow, and that's a strange thing to have, I think.

Jack Wrighton
It's when someone has sort of quite, in a way you can't, I certainly couldn't express I'm sure, you know, both of you could, but they've keyed into something that feels very sort of, you know, a kind of a fundamental thing about kind of being a human being in the world, or kind of, you know, in The Road's case, this kind of, you know, post-apocalyptic kind of landscape, but something that feels absolutely true that just rings, you know, clear as a bell and when someone hits that, you know, it just stays with you doesn't matter what's happening around that, however terrible it is, or however, you know, you just think yes, this is it, they've caught that. I'm rambling, because I'm getting excited, because these are such interesting things to talk about and that's one of the problems about doing a podcast is, you know, when you're talking about what you love is, I don't really necessarily know and shut up all the time.

Karen Swan
Oh no, I think we all feel that don't we? I mean, you know, when you get a good book, you just want to tell the world about it and that's the best thing when someone shares with you a book that they have loved. I mean, I literally practically ram books against people's chest, saying you don't talk to me until you've read this. I mean, I will say to my husband, do not look at me, do not talk to me until you've read this book and he's like, Oh, my God. I don't care what you're reading. Stop it right now. Right now. Stop it, read this book, and then come and talk to me because I have to share it, you know, I'm a book bully. But when you've tapped into something raw and honest and true. It's just such a fundamental human moment and sometimes it's a song sometimes it's a painting and sometimes it's a book and you just, it's a rare thing. You know, there's not many books that really can deliver that and not many books are trying to but you know, when it works, it feels important that you sort of share that with people in your life. So you're all having this common experience?

Jack Wrighton
Absolutely. Again, it's like, you know, you're a book bully, Karen and again, it makes me think of Jenny in this canteen setting of you know, desperately wanting to find someone who's read Wild. This is the wonder of book clubs. You know, it's for things like this. It's that kind of collective experience of reading, reading is on your own, but it's also very social. It's a social thing as is, as I sort of segue here, as is Christmas. I've realised we're talking about, you know, quite dark books now. But that's fine, that's what the podcast is for and of course, both of you have out this year you know, sort of books with a festive theme, at least or a vein within it a kind of a seasonality to them and Jenny, starting with you, if you could tell us about Meet Me Under the Mistletoe, and tell our listeners about the book that you have out this year.

Jenny Bayliss
So Meet Me Under the Mistletoe really follows Nory's journey. Nory is a secondhand bookseller in London, and she is invited to a sort of week-long jolly, really a house party at a castle, which is in the village where she used to go to school and it's with her old friends and they all sort of, they were her friends from school. So she had a scholarship to a private school and she obviously had all those friends there and then they, as time went on, they sort of separated as you do, you'll go your different ways and then one of their friends took his own life a few years back, and it brought the group back together and so they've all decided, so in some degree, they've stayed close, but you know, some was some more than others and then two of her friends are getting married, and they've decided to have basically a reunion. So they all go back to this castle and it's, a lot of it, I mean she does meet a handsome gardener.

Yes, absolutely, yeah.

So he used to be her nemesis when she was at school, because he was the gardener's kid and he's now the head gardener. So there's sort of that side of things and also that whole, when you're with a group of people that you were with when you were in your teens, and you're, you're well, you're sort of 11 until sort of 18 You're very different person, to who you are when you're in your 30s. But in some ways, you're the same, and in some ways you're not and, you know, it's like snapping back into that mould that you felt that you were in before that people expect you to be in and so there's a lot of sort of looking at how they've changed and how they haven't changed and how some of the things that were acceptable then are not acceptable now and there's sort of the class war and I'm making it sound not very romantic at all. But you know, there is a love story, but I would say it's as much a love story about her friendships, as it is about, you know, her meeting up again with Isaac, who was the gardener's son, you know, sort of a snotty-nosed kid when she was a kid and so yes, and it's all set around Christmas. So you know, there's roaring fires and shooting pheasants, and you know, that sort of thing.

Karen Swan
Jenny, you had me a head gardener, I'm reading it, I'm reading it!

Jack Wrighton
Yeah, the sexy gardener has grabbed the attention. But you know, you were saying you were worried that you weren't making it sound very romantic. But again, you know, as we've been talking about with these other books that you know, that we've read, there's that light and dark there isn't there, there's that kind of you know, the kind of joys and surprises that life throws at you. But also, you know, those sadder moments, you know, that sort of bring people together and we'll go back to Meet Me Under the Mistletoe and in a moment, Jenny, but I feel that light and dark is also true of The Christmas Postcards, Karen if you could tell our listeners about your latest book.

Karen Swan
Yes, thank you. It's a slightly different book for me because I've done a his-and-hers perspective, which I've never done before and I really loved it. I mean, Jane Austen always said write about what you know. So obviously, she never did the male gaze, the male perspective and I was like, well, you know, we do what Jane says. So I'd never done it. But I went rogue and so I did do it and I was nervous, I have to say, but so it's very much a book of two halves and it's got two very distinct tones in it and the cover depicts this lovely country cottage and that side of the book is set in Dorset and it's a woman living a really very comfortable very attractive life, when you're on the outside looking in, you know, that lovely home, successful husband and young baby and they've just had to make or break, you know, the marriage is rocky, there's something not quite right about it even though it all looks like it's good and they go on a sort of a luxury holiday to the Maldives and on their way back they transit through Amsterdam and they do an overnight stay in Amsterdam and so they get an Airbnb because they're their daughter is about two, so it's a long journey. They break it up for her to sleep and they stay in an Airbnb, and then they check out and they oversleep and they're late for their flight and then four hours later, the next incumbent into the Airbnb checks and he finds this toy that has been left behind by the previous this other family and any parent will tell you that, you know, when you have children, almost invariably, they will have a certain toy that like their entire being revolves around, it's not you, it's not you as their mother or their father, it is like this cloth that you're not allowed to wash and you've got to keep away from the dog and that's definitely been the case in our house and many evenings would be lost, you know, we couldn't sit down with a glass of wine and just rest for the evening, because the toy was lost and my husband would be looking in the garden by flashlight and I would be hunting under the sofas. I mean, it's a tyranny. So you know, and that was actually slightly prompted by a real story that I saw on social media, wherein a young girl had left behind a toy in Iceland, and it got picked up by a bus driver who was a tour guide and he took it to the airport and then someone took it with him on the plane that they also managed to somehow connect and then the father was waiting at the airport at the other end, and the daughter was reunited with a toy and it was all about the kindness of strangers. But I thought, gosh, what a great way to sort of introduce people. So it's the toy that sort of becomes the connection and what happens is that the toy is picked up by this man who is travelling in the opposite direction, they're going west, he's going east, he's checked into the Amsterdam apartment for a night, picks up the toy, takes it with him as a lucky mascot. He's a climber and he's going to track the Annapurna base camp, in Nepal, in the Himalayas, so really quite different to Dorset and we sort of start off with him and he's very mellow. He's not racing, he's not chasing the sun. He's not desperate to get there. He's taking his time. But then as we go through and, you know, contact is made between these, the family and him and as we go through the vibe slightly changes, and we become more aware that actually, he's almost like on a pilgrimage and we're sort of saying goodbye, and we get to Annapurna, the base camp, and actually it doesn't then stop there and because he's got the toy, what he's been doing is sending pictures and emails, postcards effectively to the girl so that she is consoled while the toy is in his possession because of course, he's in the Himalayas, there's no FedEx there. There probably actually is but you know, as far as I'm concerned, there isn't.

Jack Wrighton
Not in this story.

Karen Swan
So he's sending and then contact is abruptly stopped and so I really loved jumping between this very cosy English countryside setting and this, you know, domestic vibration, you know, things, I couldn't quite put a finger on what was wrong and then also this growing sense of peril in the Himalayas and then this revelation of what's actually happening there and joining them together the connection between them and this growing bond. So again, I'm not doing you know, Carol's around a Christmas tree, but it does have... it's certainly very snowy, and the Dorset scenes have got a lot of that feeling because of course, they're young family. So yes, it's typical me.

Jenny Bayliss
It sounds wonderful, but I love that about your books, Karen because I love that you will have your stories, they have light and dark and you do that so well. I love the way that your characters are so strong and you know, they can carry that story. It doesn't need to be you know, all sort of twinkly and sort of super romantic because that romance is there, that love is there, but that there is like you were saying Jack, there's the light in the dark there and I think you do that really well.

Karen Swan
Thank you. That's so lovely. Yeah, I think I drive my editor a bit mad. She's like, why can't you just have the Christmas carols around the tree? I'm like I don't know! I can't, the book that came out two years ago was set in Amsterdam....

Jenny Bayliss
Together at Christmas?

Karen Swan
Yes.

Jenny Bayliss
Yeah, you can tell that I'm a Karen Swan fan!

Karen Swan
She's a war reporter with PTSD and we've got flashbacks to Syria and I only found out once I started writing it, the Dutch don't actually really celebrate Christmas is very secondary to St. Nicholas Eve and St. Nicholas Day. So I'm writing a Christmas book in a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas and my backstory is in the Middle East, in a warzone. Interesting, interesting, how am I gonna... Why am I doing that to myself?

Jack Wrighton
I imagined the publishers being like, you know, oh, yes, yeah. So Karen's doing, you know, we're gonna get a Christmas story this year and then you come in, and you're like, right, so straight through the mountains and there's a...

Karen Swan
They have special meetings, like how we can make this work? She's a disaster, but you've got to write what you want, haven't you? You mustn't be continuing, just because it comes out of Christmas, and it has that lovely cover, of course, you're still going to give that feeling. But you know, you can do more with it. I just don't think I could do more than two books if I was only going to do that. I mean, that's just not how my brain works.

Jack Wrighton
It's good to keep publishers on their toes as well, I think that's a writer's job and they do and, you know, Jenny, you know, in your story, as well, it's so evident that, that that kind of light and dark is there and you know, and I know, I've been seeing Christmas books, but you're sort of like to call them kind of, you know, seasonal books as well, because, you know, you see actually books and stories sort of changing seasonally, kind of through the year, you know, anyway, the types of stories that you know, published at certain times and, of course, you know, Christmas winter, it's about coming together and there's many sort of cosy elements to that. But there's also, you know, there's coming together in that way, gently, you know, you were saying with people that, you know, you may have once had a sort of a particular connection with, but maybe that connection has changed in some way over time. Christmas itself is a time of kind of that light and dark and that seems very much sort of central to your story as well, Jenny.

Jenny Bayliss
Yes, it is. It's balancing, and trying to be everything to everyone, while still being yourself is what, you know, my character is trying to fathom how to do you know, how to be the person that her family wants to be alongside her friends who are all very different, and, you know, trying to find where she can fit in, you know, and still be herself. Because that's really hard at Christmas sometimes isn't it, when you're, you know, trying to... I mean I'm quite lucky, but every now and again, you know, there is some sort of family politics that you're like...

Karen Swan
Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, it can be frustrating when, you know, our books are reduced to boy-meets-girl, because there's always so much more human interest in there, I think, you know, be it friendship issues, family issues, you know, I tend to think that the romance is fairly incidental. I mean, it is core to the story, but it's not what actually, the protagonists are wrestling with fundamentally, I think there's always more, much more going on than that and I think that's what people like.

Jenny Bayliss
Yeah, I think that there is a line isn't there that I find that I'm quite often treading a sort of tightrope between the romance genre and the women's fiction genre and I really am, you know, quite often people will say, you know, they're used to reading romance, and then they'll read one of my books, and they'll say, Well, that was more of a women's fiction and it's a really difficult line to tread because, I don't know, I just find it really, yeah, I seem to be walking a very, very thin tightrope between those two sets and I don't know why women's fiction can't be just all fiction really why we have to sort of have one of those two different camps? Do you find that Karen?

Karen Swan
Yeah, hugely, yes. It's very frustrating to be at a dinner party and you know, someone who's never read your book before, you know, they might have seen a cover or something, or, you know, and they say, oh, you know, oh, boy-meets-girl. It's like, well, no, it was set in the Spanish Civil War and I basically taught myself and A-Level one the subject, but okay, yeah, let's go with that, you know, and it's frustrating, but then again, you know, it's, I suppose we're all guilty of it if we just reduce things down and I think that at this point, I've written enough books that my readers know what they're going to get with me. You know, they know I am a little bit darker in some ways and because I do two books a year, I just feel I need to keep my brain stimulated. You know, I couldn't sustain a career if I would just fall into repetition. I think I would be writing the same story and over and over. So I need to find new ways to tell stories, be it changing the format of the book, you know, his-her or, you know, a split timeline or, you know, a prismatic perspective, or whatever it is, flashbacks, letters. I'm always looking for new ways to construct the storytelling experience because I want to do this for a long time, and I don't want to be predictable. But you also just can't please everyone and there will be people who, you know, just think they know what it is without reading it and that's fine, that's fine. I don't need to sell to everyone.

Jenny Bayliss
No and I think I'm the new girl on the block. So I think people are still trying to work out where to put me, if you know what I mean.

Karen Swan
And it's so weird when you first get your covers, and you've you get shown your covers, and you get shown your titles because when you know, when we're writing the books, they're just documents that, I don't know whether you write in Word, but I do, I just write the world's longest word document. So to me, it's just, you know, this very long document, I have no idea how it's going to be branded and marketed, how it's actually going to look on the shelves and, you know, I've written like, 26 books now. So now I obviously do have an idea of how it's gonna look. But it's, you know, to us, it's just the story, it's just the energy between the characters, how it actually is presented on the shelves, as a finished product is, you know, that's a whole other journey. There's a whole massive team, behind the scenes, having their meetings and putting their heads in their hands going, what did they mean, the Himalayas? You know, what was she thinking? Why couldn't she just stay in Dorset? It's interesting, but, you know, how it's marketed is not necessarily how you thought.

Jack Wrighton
It's interesting, isn't it? You know, publishing has these ways that they sort of like to box things kind of sort things out, you know, where does this go in the shop? What does this mean? Who are we pushing this to? And they're useful to a degree, but I'm sure many writers, you know, feel in some way, sort of constricted by them or, or frustrated with them, because no single label will sum up a book, which is always a much deeper, you know, the book cover is the kind of the surface of the water, and then there's so much, you know, underneath and I'd like to think, there's a bit of self-advertisement here now to the shop, I'm afraid. But, you know, I like to think that sort of, you know, booksellers can be the sort of the bridge of that, you know, we're there to sort of fill in the gaps and, you know, there's many times that, you know, you someone could be holding a book, and they're sort of just looking at it, and they're like, oh, I don't know, if it's quite for me, but you know, you'll go because they've told you what they like, actually it is it's got this, it's got that things that you know, that initial glance doesn't necessarily express.

Karen Swan
Absolutely, I mean you are doing what, you know, for example, Amazon cannot. You are giving that personal perspective, you are giving feedback, you're advising, you know, you could say actually, it doesn't sound like this is what you want, you might prefer this and again, it comes back to that thing of stories, having that, that social interaction, you know, we want to share them, and you can tell from people's energy, what they might need, or what they might be looking for, you know, because if a book isn't right for you, that's just frustrating, you know, if you're wanting, if it's not hitting the spot, that can really put you off, whereas, you know, and I really do not like to not finish a book, I personally do not do that. But there's a lot of people who go, oh, no, no, I just gave up after three chapters and you know, and we, as authors feel for that, that author who has been doing their best, but a book does have to work for the reader and when it does work, it's absolutely amazing. So you as the bookseller, you know, that personal experience, that personal interaction, I think is key.

Jack Wrighton
Oh, Karen, we're gonna get that as an audio clip and we're sharing that everywhere! But that's kind of you, thank you. Although I'm aware, that's very kind, I don't want to sort of derail... you know, we're here to talk about you about wonderful authors, you know, and what you bring, but that's very kind of you to say. One thing I also want to look at, and a similarity I've seen with your books now, obviously, in two quite different ways. But loss is quite sort of central to the stories, you know, Jenny, you were saying there's this kind of, you know, collective loss that kind of brings this group of together that hasn't been there previously and of course, that's, you know, a human loss. So, you know, so it's has a sort of a wider impact, you know, and then Karen, you've got, you know, it's interesting, you've got this loss, it's a different loss. It's a loss of this child's toy, which, although not a human life is still as you expressed earlier, not an insignificant thing, when it's the favourite toy, it is felt as a loss, you know, for that child and I just, I found that so interesting that in both of these stories, that's kind of, you know, these two different types of loss are kind of the driving force behind them. Jenny, I don't know if that's something you want to talk about more or did that idea come to you and then it sort of built around that or was that sort of part of your plotting?

Jenny Bayliss
I think that was always going to be part of the book because I wanted their lost friend to still be a character and still have a place in their lives and in their story, even though he wasn't there anymore and I think, because it was a few years ago now, but somebody that I used to know, took their own life, and it did, it rocked everyone who knew him and when we came together for the funeral, we sort of snapped back in some ways to the people that we had been and we were so sad that we'd lost him. But there was so much nostalgia and all of those things that keep you together and we all said, you know, we'll never part again, we'll always stay in touch. But we didn't, because it wouldn't have been right for us to, if you know what I mean, we had changed, we were different and I think there is a danger of, you know, I think there's that thing, which remember when Friends Reunited came out, and there was a spate all those years ago, and there was this spate amongst, you know, it was in the news and all over the place, but even in our own sort of community, we could see where old childhood sweethearts were suddenly ditching their partners and running off with their people that they reconnected with from school, and you know, I think, but they weren't necessarily going to lost those relationships, it was just that they were so nostalgic, that it felt like it was something more than it was. So anyway, my group of friends, we did not remain in contact, but I wanted to pursue what would happen if a group of friends had remained in contact and gone back. So not having seen each other for good five years, and then been snapped back together and see where that puts them. So yeah, that was sort of where I was coming from with that.

Jack Wrighton
Yeah, and that's such an emotionally kind of potent thing, to start with, that's such an engine to drive the story, because, you know, it's something we all experience to a degree, you know, that kind of the journey of a friendship, which can be really intense, and, you know, sometimes life just makes that sort of flitter away. So, you know, that is such an interesting idea to play with and then Karen, there's this loss, but then through this loss, again, connection is found, you know, where did this idea of the toy in that way of... I know, you said you saw the social media post, you know, you said that, that you thought that was such an interesting way to bring two characters together. So it sounds like the story sort of developed from there, that was kind of the Nexus as it were.

Karen Swan
Yes, I'm always looking for interesting ways to get characters together. But actually, you know, so it is a lost toy that brings them into contact, but actually both characters are driven by loss in their lives. In Natasha's case, she lost her parents young, and that drives her into a young marriage. You know, she finds safety in being in a marriage, having a home, starting a family because she was an orphan she was alone in the world and that made her obviously feeling incredibly insecure and afraid. So she has been almost driven towards domesticity by her loss. Tom, on the other hand, has lost... Duffy has lost his... it transpires his loss to people in his family. I won't say too much. But his way of dealing with it was to almost not be feral, but to live a bigger life, a bolder life, to be fearless, to go out into the world and he's a mountaineer, and he wants to confront fear and he does that by dangling off cliffs. But actually confronting fear isn't the same thing as confronting heartache, confronting loss and so he is walking towards what he thinks is his destiny, he's going up there to face off against this ultimate fear and they've both had loss in different ways and how they've responded is completely opposite. Her life got smaller and safer and his got bigger and more dangerous and wilder, but actually also became emptier, he wasn't connecting with people in the same way, you know, he wasn't dealing with what had happened to him and so it really is a book about loss and actually, it's this very, very thin connection of this random lost toy, that, you know, they miss meeting each other by four hours, you know, and, but then their lives have sort of brought back into content, it's these glancing blows and, you know, he sort of ends up pulling her away from what she chose, and she's pulling him away from what he is choosing and it's just this tension of, you know, this growing bond and I just, yeah, I found it really interesting to... I loved as a writer to write such entirely different scenes, one after the other. It required a lot of mental agility. It was hard to sort of get momentum going, because you know, I write a scene in Dorset and I'd have to go back to Nepal which was quite tricky. But it was really good fun and, you know, we sort of have them intersecting and, you know, this sense of them moving far apart across the globe, and then this connection on the internet, but then, also towards the end of the book, the construction of the chapters, changes, so that eventually, that as their lives are merging the chapters merge and again, as a writer, I loved just, you know, the experience of writing, of constructing the book in that way, made it really interesting for me, and hopefully brings pace and drama for the reader in the finale.

Jack Wrighton
Yes, yeah, of course, I'm sure it will! It doesn't matter which authors you're speaking to, there's always that sense, they'll say something and then go and hopefully, that's what the reader will find, you know, that's...

Karen Swan
It's because there's no guarantees and for some people, it won't hit the mark, you know, but hopefully, it will for many.

Jack Wrighton
I mean, again, that's one of the wonderful things about, you know, writing and reading different books speak to different people. But that's why as well, you know, it's so important to kind of look beyond the categorisation of books as well, and to kind of just pick up the things that kind of speak to you because you can make the kind of the most wonderful discoveries.

Karen Swan
And also podcasts like this are so good, because, you know, I mean, I'm loving hearing about, you know, Jenny's book and how she's put it together and it's like, you really get to hear about the beating heart of a book, when you actually get to discuss it, when we're not even going into, you know, massive details about it because you want people to have a fresh experience when they read it. But I think podcasts are so brilliant for being able to give that extra dimension for readers.

Jack Wrighton
Absolutely. Karen, you're giving us a lot of quotes to advertise the shop and advertise what we're doing, let alone your own book! You're giving us too much here!

Karen Swan
I'm an advertising machine! What can I tell you.

Jack Wrighton
Well, I do feel unfortunately, I could speak to both of you forever about you know, the books we love and your stories, but I do have to bring us to a close. I just want to thank you both for joining us here at Mostly Books Meets. Both Meet Me Under the Mistletoe and The Christmas Postcards will be available in our shop and online as well. But it will be available in wherever your local bookshop is, it will be available in your library, just wherever you can find a copy, pick one up. I every year create a Christmas list for myself of books I'll read over the Christmas period when I have a bit more free time. You have just made selecting that list much harder. Because now I've had to add more books into the mix. But that's never a bad thing. So Jenny Bayliss, Karen Swan, thank you for joining us on Mostly Books Meets.

Karen Swan
Thank you, Jack.

Jenny Bayliss
Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Jack Wrighton
Oh our absolute pleasure, thank you. And that marks the end of the fifth season of Mostly Books Meets thank you to all of our wonderful listeners. If you have enjoyed this season, then do check out our previous episodes on your favourite podcast player and if you'd like to see what we get up to in between seasons, follow us on social media. We're on Instagram @mostlybooks_shop and Twitter @mostlyreading and of course, see you again in the new year for our next season. Thank you.

Sarah Dennis
All of the books mentioned during the podcast are available to buy from the Mostly Books website. This podcast has been presented and produced by members of the team mostly books in Abington. If you enjoyed what you heard, please rate review and subscribe because apparently helps people find us.