Welcome to Booky! The friendly, snob-free podcast for readers and for writers. Nicola's first guest on Booky is a true literary superstar. On this first episode in the series Nicola is joined by Milly Johnson.
Join journalist, writer and presenter Nicola Adam who will be asking authors from across the genre and geographical divides to share their ups and downs on their journey to publication. Plus a few tips for budding authors along the way. At the end of each podcast Nicola will share the latest news and opportunities for writers and book lovers.
Join journalist, writer and presenter Nicola Adam who will be asking authors from across the genre and geographical divides to share their ups and downs on their journey to publication. Plus a few tips for budding authors along the way. At the end of each podcast Nicola will share the latest news and opportunities for writers and book lovers.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello, I'm writer and journalist and presenter,
00:09 Nicola Adam, and this is Bookie,
00:11 your friendly and snot-free podcast
00:14 for book lovers, for writers, all across the UK.
00:18 Each episode, we talk to authors
00:20 from across the genre divide,
00:22 and they will share their ups and downs
00:24 of their journey to publication
00:26 and a few other stories as well.
00:28 Plus, they'll be sharing tips for budding authors
00:30 and writers, so make sure to listen to the end.
00:33 So get a cuppa, get a sneaky G&T
00:35 and cozy up in your bookie nook,
00:37 because it's time for our first guest,
00:40 the amazing Millie Johnson.
00:42 She's a champion for the North
00:44 and for women's fiction in general.
00:47 Millie was born and raised in Barnsley in South Yorkshire,
00:50 and she's adored by her readers.
00:53 Her books are absolute page turners.
00:56 She does not shy away from those difficult subjects
00:59 within relationships, yet she celebrates women.
01:03 She celebrates friendship in all of her novels,
01:06 and her fans love her for it.
01:08 She sold more than 3 million books,
01:11 including my personal favorite,
01:13 "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day."
01:15 I absolutely love that.
01:17 And she's one of the top 10 female authors in the UK,
01:21 which is just incredible.
01:23 Her new novel, "The Happiest Ever After" is her 21st,
01:27 and it's published by Simon & Schuster,
01:29 and it's now available in hardback.
01:32 It tells a story of the very much taken for granted
01:34 Polly Potter, who created a feistier,
01:37 bolder version of herself in a novel,
01:39 but then the line starts to get blurred,
01:41 and I'm not going to give away the rest of the story.
01:45 But with no further ado, here's Bookie.
01:48 - Welcome to this week's bookie guest.
01:52 It's Millie Johnson.
01:54 So Millie, with no further ado, let's start with you.
01:57 Tell us about yourself.
01:59 - I am a 50-something, until February,
02:04 author living in Barnsley, South Yorkshire,
02:07 about to launch my 21st book.
02:12 I didn't start my writing career
02:16 until I was over the 40 mark.
02:20 So all my pals are now retiring,
02:24 and I think I'm just getting going.
02:26 Absolutely love what I do.
02:28 Very, very happy that my books about the North
02:32 have built me a career,
02:35 as much as the lovely people in South Yorkshire
02:39 who have lifted me up onto their shoulders
02:41 and built me up from the ground up, you know?
02:44 So I am apparently now one of the top 10
02:48 best-selling fiction female writers in the UK.
02:53 - That's incredible.
02:55 And by my calculations,
02:56 you've been chucking out a couple of books a year
02:59 since you were very young.
03:02 - No, just about one a year.
03:03 There's been three years,
03:07 three or four years when I've done an extra one.
03:10 But, you know, I've always produced one book a year,
03:14 you know, round about the same time.
03:16 But it's hard work producing.
03:19 I mean, how anybody produces two or three,
03:21 you know, it's hard because you've got a life as well.
03:24 You've got kids, you've got elderly parents,
03:26 all that sort of caught with.
03:27 So I've kind of just harvested
03:30 what's going on in my own life
03:31 and made books out of it.
03:33 You know, nothing is ever wasted when you're a writer.
03:37 - So just tell us, how did it all start for you?
03:39 Because I think a lot of people will be thinking
03:41 you get to sort of the age around 40 or so,
03:43 and you think, "Oh, goodness, you know,
03:44 "it's too late for me to start anything."
03:46 Or, you know, "My life is sort of set."
03:49 But you must've felt at that point
03:52 that you could start again?
03:54 - Well, I'd always wanted to be a writer.
03:58 That was the thing.
03:58 And I, you know, I didn't think,
04:01 honestly, didn't think that women like me
04:03 who came from, you know, places like Barnsley,
04:07 who lived in terraced houses,
04:09 whose parents had ordinary jobs,
04:11 who had an ordinary background,
04:13 I didn't think that we got those sort of prestigious jobs.
04:16 You know, I thought that you needed to be in London,
04:18 you need to have connections.
04:19 And I knew, you know, I had nothing.
04:22 I just had this burning ambition to write books.
04:26 The thing about me was that I couldn't have written
04:29 the books that I write now in my 20s,
04:32 because I needed to be kicked around the ring a few times.
04:36 What I was producing in my 20s
04:38 and sending out to agents was rubbish,
04:40 'cause it had no, it had nothing behind it.
04:43 And also, I didn't think that anybody
04:45 would be interested in hearing about the North.
04:48 All the books at the time were very London-centric,
04:51 and I couldn't write authentically about life in London,
04:54 'cause I'd never lived there.
04:55 So I just had this burning, as I said, burning ambition.
05:00 I was splitting two.
05:02 Half of me was thinking, just get a proper job
05:05 and, you know, keep it as a dream.
05:07 And the other half was going, but, you know,
05:10 really wanna do this.
05:11 And I got to 40, and I thought,
05:13 God, you know, if I never do this,
05:16 if I don't give it one last push,
05:18 I'm gonna really regret it.
05:19 I didn't want to get to sort of 80 and think,
05:23 well, you know, I've never been on a private jet.
05:25 I've never, you know,
05:26 I've never seen Justin Bieber live in concert.
05:30 Could I live with that?
05:31 Yes, I could.
05:32 But the idea of never having my name on a book
05:36 was something that I just couldn't bear.
05:41 So I gave it one, and ironically,
05:44 all those years I'd kind of been avoiding
05:47 setting books in the North
05:48 'cause I didn't think they'd be popular.
05:50 It was only when I embraced my northerness, if you like,
05:54 and wrote a story about ordinary Northern women
05:57 that I got my first publishing deal.
05:59 - Wow.
06:02 So you must've been writing for some years
06:05 before then, though.
06:06 Did you write other books based in the South initially?
06:09 - Well, no, they were set nowhere.
06:11 They were set in no one's land.
06:13 It was like, I did think in my young arrogance
06:16 that if I didn't actually put where they were set,
06:18 that nobody would notice.
06:20 So I'd written all sorts.
06:23 I'd written premises and sent them out to an agent.
06:26 I'd written a whole story about this sort of 19-year-old
06:31 who falls in love with an older guy
06:33 who turned it out to be a vampire.
06:34 I think I was before my time, you know?
06:37 I think I'd landed it round about when
06:39 "Sucky Stackhouse" came onto the market.
06:42 But I was more or less told, you know,
06:43 "This stuff's never gonna catch on, 'Paranormal Romance',"
06:47 which was, you know, I love "Paranormal Romance."
06:51 But I was getting just rejection letters,
06:54 but they were getting nicer.
06:56 I chased the agent that I ended up with for 15 years.
06:59 And every time I said, "What about this as an idea?"
07:02 You know, and they'd come back and say,
07:04 "Eh, it's a bit glib, blah, blah.
07:06 "Let's see how we go.
07:06 "Write me a few chapters."
07:08 But as I say, you know, I'm not a natural writer.
07:11 I'm a bit like Vincent van Gogh was.
07:14 And he wasn't, I don't think, a natural artist.
07:17 He just had a burning ambition.
07:18 So he drew and he refined his craft, you know,
07:22 and got better.
07:23 And hopefully that's what I did.
07:25 You know, I wanted to write.
07:26 I was okay at writing.
07:28 But the more you practice,
07:30 the better that you do get at it.
07:32 So what was happening was my writing was getting better.
07:36 My plots were getting better.
07:37 I was just living and harvesting my life.
07:40 And after 15 years, I thought,
07:43 I think I knew I had something special this time, you know?
07:46 And I thought, I'm gonna write a story
07:48 based on my pregnancy diaries and sent it off.
07:52 And I knew it.
07:53 I just knew that I had something a bit special.
07:58 And sure enough, they rang me and said,
08:01 "This is the one we've been waiting for."
08:03 - And I think two things that a lot of people
08:05 won't know about you is one, that you were a joke writer.
08:10 - Yes, yes.
08:10 - And also that you,
08:13 not only were you on "Come Dine With Me,"
08:15 but you won it.
08:16 (both laughing)
08:19 - It's really funny.
08:19 Every time I do a sort of an event or whatever,
08:22 and they'll say, "Oh, she's got this amount of,
08:24 you know, millions of books and blah, blah, blah."
08:27 And then they come to the, "Come Dine With Me."
08:29 And that's the fact that gets the, "Woo!"
08:32 You know?
08:33 Which is great.
08:34 You know what I did?
08:34 - It's impressive.
08:36 - Yeah.
08:37 Well, I, you know, I really, you know,
08:39 you are at the mercy of editors.
08:41 And this was before, of course,
08:44 that they realized that television programs,
08:47 when people are out there and in sitting rooms,
08:50 people get very attached, you know,
08:51 and they write to you and they almost,
08:53 but you know, it can get quite dangerous.
08:56 I mean, the guy I was on with,
08:57 he got death threats and everything.
08:58 You know, it was very scary.
09:00 Oh yeah.
09:01 But this was before that I think reality TV programs
09:06 realized that they maybe had a duty of care to,
09:09 you know, the people that they had on the TV.
09:12 I was very lucky, you know?
09:13 I mean, there were awful,
09:15 lots of things that went on behind the scenes.
09:18 I thought, "Oh my God, if that, you know,
09:19 if that came out, we were all steaming every night."
09:22 You know?
09:23 But yeah, I mean, I did it really,
09:27 because I thought this, you know,
09:29 I like cooking, et cetera.
09:31 And I thought it might be fun
09:32 and it might help my career a bit.
09:34 And my God, it really did.
09:36 The joke writer thing came about
09:38 because years ago when I was traveling to work on the train,
09:43 I've always loved jokes, always loved jokes.
09:45 And I was in my twenties and I was skint.
09:49 You know, I had all these office jobs
09:51 that didn't pay very much.
09:52 And I'd loads of time on the train,
09:54 always written little jokes and poems and things,
09:57 wrote off to a firm,
09:59 asking really if they would buy these jokes
10:02 to fit on their greetings cards,
10:05 just so I could get an extra 10 or a week.
10:08 It was a very, very lucrative.
10:10 And the firm took me on,
10:12 asked me to ghostwrite
10:13 for the very first purple Ronnie cards.
10:16 So I had a few of those to my credit
10:19 and that looked great on my CV.
10:21 So when I lost my job a week,
10:24 a week before I found out I was pregnant,
10:29 I wrote off to loads of greetings cards firms
10:31 and said, will you employ me as a, you know,
10:33 a greetings card copywriter, writing humor.
10:37 And that's what I did all the way through my pregnancy,
10:40 all the way through my second pregnancy,
10:42 all the way through my divorce.
10:45 So that's what I did.
10:46 My bum was on my seat.
10:48 And it was very relevant really,
10:51 because you had to have your eye on the pulse
10:54 of what was going on out there.
10:56 I worked for a very progressive firm
10:58 who liked to have a joke out there.
11:01 You know, the Beckhams could have a new baby
11:03 and they could have a card on the shelves
11:06 with a joke about the new name
11:08 of the Beckham's new baby within two days.
11:11 So you were always looking to see what was on the pulse,
11:13 what was the relevant humor,
11:15 all the things that bind us.
11:16 And of course that informed my writing career.
11:20 - I mean, that sounds like this is one,
11:21 this kind of partly answers the question I'm about to ask,
11:24 but what do you think is the biggest challenge
11:27 that you've had to overcome in your kind of
11:29 professional stroke personal life
11:31 going through the process of becoming a writer?
11:34 - Well, you know, I was very lucky in the fact
11:37 that I could drop the day job after about,
11:39 I think it was about six, eight, eight books,
11:44 you know, but still some people have got 20 books out there
11:47 and they're still having to do the day job.
11:49 And that is the day job.
11:51 Your writing is a full-time job as well,
11:53 because, you know, writing the book is the easy part.
11:55 Then you've got to put it out there and go on tours
11:58 and talk about it, all the social media, et cetera.
12:02 So if you've got two jobs, you're doing two full-time jobs.
12:06 So, you know, I was very, very lucky,
12:09 but I, you know, I did work extremely hard
12:12 and I was very lucky in the fact that I had a great,
12:16 a great fan base, as it were,
12:19 who bought all the books and sent them out there.
12:22 And, but, you know, one of the biggest challenges,
12:24 of course, is being a female romantic comedy writer
12:29 in the world of publishing, which is very slanted,
12:33 very, the worst kind of,
12:36 if you want a job that's got a level playing field,
12:39 if you want a job where you are accredited
12:43 for the effort that you put in,
12:46 and if you want a job where you don't want to see
12:48 the office junior suddenly shoot up the career ladder
12:52 way ahead of you, don't pick writing
12:54 because it's a very tilted playing field, you know?
12:58 You've got to put a lot into it.
13:00 As I say, writing the book is one of the easy parts of it.
13:04 I've got a great fit with my agent,
13:06 I've got a great fit with my publishing team,
13:08 but there's all sorts of other factors that alter
13:11 how successful you are in your job.
13:14 It's a lottery and it's a scary thing,
13:17 but it's like nobody would ever go into being,
13:21 into a medical career to be a doctor
13:24 if they looked at it and thought,
13:26 how many hours do I have to work?
13:27 What's my starting pay?
13:29 You know, you just do it for the passion.
13:30 It's a vacation.
13:32 I just couldn't not do it, to be honest.
13:34 I write because I can't not write.
13:37 - You mentioned, and I think that obviously feeds
13:39 into your readers and the fans of your work,
13:41 and you mentioned that, you know, they're very dedicated
13:44 and they share everything you do
13:46 and they follow your journey,
13:48 but you've also impacted their lives, haven't you?
13:51 Tell us a little bit about how your relationship
13:53 with your readers.
13:54 - It's bonkers, you know, some of the,
13:58 I mean, we never set out to preach.
14:00 I don't like a preachy book.
14:01 I don't like a book that tells me how to live my life.
14:04 I write about characters and you never realise
14:08 that a lot of people will read your books
14:11 and they will almost climb into the skin of the characters
14:14 and follow in their footsteps.
14:16 So you've got real people following in the footsteps
14:19 of fictional characters and changing their lives.
14:22 You know, I've had all sorts of wonderful letters,
14:25 great outpourings, pages and pages.
14:27 I've got files of them.
14:28 I save all the emails of people who write to you
14:33 to say, look, you know, I've changed my life.
14:36 I've read this book and I've packed my job in.
14:39 The one that comes to mind is a woman and her friend
14:44 who packed in their jobs after reading one of my books
14:48 about cleaners and said, we've set ourselves up
14:50 as a firm of cleaners, just me and my mate,
14:53 two women and a mop, they called themselves.
14:56 And presumably two mops, but they were.
14:58 And also scary ones, like, do you know what?
15:04 I've left my husband because of you.
15:06 And you think, whoa, you know, and I realised that,
15:09 I never actually realised I was in an abusive relationship
15:12 until I read this woman in a book and thought,
15:15 why aren't you getting out of that?
15:16 And then thinking, actually, that's me.
15:19 Why aren't I getting out of that?
15:21 Even the last book I did together again,
15:25 the first day I was in Barnsley and signing,
15:28 and a woman came in early to talk to me and said,
15:32 do you know, I left my husband because of you again.
15:36 And you think, it sounds nuts, but this whole story,
15:40 which is almost, it's not comedic,
15:43 but it was almost the way she told me.
15:45 She said, you know, I was sitting in the fracture clinic
15:49 up at the hospital, she said, and I thought,
15:51 I don't want to go back to him.
15:52 She said, I just read your book, she said,
15:53 and I thought, I don't want that life anymore.
15:56 It had opened up, my book had opened up her eyes
15:59 to a life that with even a few tweaks, just a few tweaks,
16:03 you could have a much better life, she said.
16:05 So I rang my son from the fracture clinic and said,
16:08 I don't want to go on, can you put me up for a bit?
16:11 And he did, and I said, did you ever go back?
16:13 She said, no, I'm divorced, I've never looked back.
16:16 And I thought, I hope these blokes don't know where I live.
16:19 (laughing)
16:21 But it's not just one, it's a few.
16:23 Bonkers, it's absolutely bonkers.
16:25 But you know, you realise just how powerful your writing is
16:29 if it's a simple story about a woman just like us.
16:36 And I think that's probably where the power is,
16:39 that people can see themselves in these characters
16:44 and realise that they've not done very much,
16:48 but they've got a confidence.
16:50 They've not chased after a bloke who's run off from them.
16:55 They've decided to leave it and think,
16:59 I'm gonna change my life, I'm gonna...
17:01 And they've read it almost how to guide in your books,
17:05 which is, as I say, it's a great responsibility.
17:09 And it's not one that I've gone out to...
17:13 I've written a story and people have seen themselves
17:16 in the characters and it's really quite heartwarming.
17:21 - It is a remarkable responsibility, as you said,
17:25 and you must feel, 'cause you're writing fiction,
17:28 but it's translating into real life.
17:30 It's amazing that you've had that impact.
17:32 Right, I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit,
17:35 what do you think is your biggest win
17:36 as an author over the years,
17:38 but also what's your biggest fail, perhaps?
17:41 - My biggest win, I think, is being ordinary.
17:48 And I say this because a woman had waited two hours
17:52 in a queue once and got to the front,
17:55 lifted her glasses up, went, "Oh, aren't you ordinary?"
17:58 And I think, and I know what she meant.
18:00 I know what she meant.
18:02 I think with authors, and I'm certainly,
18:05 I've met authors like, Nikki French, that duo,
18:08 and Helen Fielding,
18:12 and I've been surprised at how lovely they are.
18:15 You almost want them to be of another world
18:18 because their books have affected you so much.
18:22 And then when you realise that they are people like yourself,
18:26 that you'd probably meet in a chip shop queue
18:28 or shopping in Asda,
18:30 there's kind of an oil and water thing going on.
18:34 And I think that the fact that people have seen me
18:38 as ordinary and know that I am one of them,
18:41 I'm not removed, I write about women like you
18:45 because I'm one of you.
18:46 I'm writing about myself and my own friends.
18:49 That has been a great strength because people,
18:54 and I think also one of the strengths
18:56 is coming from this county.
18:58 You know that people have,
19:00 know that they've seen me walking around.
19:02 They've recognised me and they've wanted to lift me up
19:06 and I'm one of theirs, I'm one of our own, you know?
19:08 And it's, they've bought my books,
19:12 not to be sniffed at, you know, the Grey Pound,
19:14 because they are the ones who have bought me
19:17 and they've plenty of time to read.
19:19 I'm very lucky in the fact that my books are read
19:23 from people who are, you know, teens to in their nineties.
19:28 And that sort of stretch, that spectrum of readership
19:31 is quite rare and wasn't planned,
19:34 but it's done me great favours.
19:37 Also, as I say, because I'm, you know,
19:40 the Yorkshire people have built me up.
19:41 I think it's been a massive strength
19:44 that they've built me very slowly.
19:46 I've not been one of these flash in the pans
19:47 that had a million pound advance
19:49 and hadn't had chance to build up.
19:51 I built up slowly instead of it.
19:55 The biggest weakness, maybe it's the fact that with this,
19:59 you know, I'm so grateful, I think,
20:01 I'm still like a red set of puppy.
20:03 I think it's a very obsessive.
20:05 Some people treat it more as a job.
20:07 I've treated it more as a life.
20:10 And that can be really, really annoying
20:15 for people in your family, because they never see you.
20:20 And I know that with my other half, he said to me,
20:23 "What have I just said?"
20:25 And I'll say, "And I can't, because he said something to me
20:29 and my head's on a plot."
20:31 It's really ignorant, you know?
20:33 But it's obsessive, I am an obsessive.
20:37 And I think that's worked for me and against me, you know?
20:41 It's dreadful for people that I'm around,
20:46 because my head is always in the book world.
20:48 I must be the world's biggest bore to live with.
20:52 - I think that that investment of strangers into you
20:55 and into your books,
20:56 and the fact that they feel you're accessible
20:58 says an awful lot about your warmth, Millie.
21:00 So I wouldn't worry about that.
21:02 - It's nice, it's nice, but you do,
21:05 there does come a point where, you know,
21:06 I mean, I'm not at the stage where
21:08 I'm someone like Ricky Gervais,
21:10 who gets 3 million emails,
21:11 and I feel desperately that I have to answer
21:15 all the emails that I do get.
21:17 There will come a point where I just can't answer them all.
21:22 But that will be a shave really,
21:24 'cause I do like, however short,
21:26 especially when people have poured out their heart to you.
21:29 You don't have to write in the same length,
21:31 but I think it's important that certainly I acknowledge them
21:34 because I've got this thing saying,
21:35 well, that's really ignorant.
21:36 How would you feel if, you know,
21:38 you'd written all that to somebody and they'd not even,
21:41 you don't even know if they've got the email.
21:42 So, you know, it's finding that balance
21:46 and I'm rubbish at it.
21:47 - Right, we've actually run out of time.
21:50 So I'm going to leave it there,
21:53 but what I'll do is I've just got a little tiny quickfire
21:57 round for you at the end, if that's okay.
21:59 - Oh yes, please do.
22:00 - We're calling it the bookie look.
22:02 And the first question is,
22:04 what is the most read book on your shelf?
22:07 - Jane Eyre, without a question.
22:10 The book that kind of made me move to
22:12 How Worth Changed My Life.
22:13 The book that I think is in a little bit of Jane Eyre
22:17 is in every one of my books somewhere.
22:19 - Okay, so I think this might add,
22:21 you may have answered this question already,
22:23 but the book that you wish you had written.
22:26 - No, it's not that.
22:27 The one for me is Bridget Jones' Diary.
22:30 I absolutely, I read that and I thought,
22:33 my God, this is just, it hit the,
22:36 yeah, so yeah, Bridget Jones' Diary.
22:38 That's the one I wish I'd written.
22:40 - And what's your favourite reading spot?
22:41 If you wanted to curl up with a book,
22:43 where would you go?
22:44 It can be anywhere.
22:45 - The bath, the bath.
22:47 I sit in the bath, bibble bobble,
22:49 a cat on the side there,
22:51 who likes to sit at the side of me,
22:53 and I read in the bath.
22:54 'Cause I can't do anything else in the bath.
22:56 Everywhere else you're kind of distracted,
22:58 but in the bath, reading time.
23:01 - And just a final one,
23:02 what are your top three tips for budding writers,
23:05 people who would like to get going,
23:07 maybe they haven't even picked up a pen
23:10 or got on the laptop yet,
23:11 or perhaps they've written their book
23:13 and they're trying to get published.
23:14 What are your tips for budding authors?
23:17 - Okay, well, my first one is that
23:20 if you want to be a writer,
23:22 you have to have the backbone of a steel rhinoceros.
23:26 You know, this is not an easy job at all.
23:29 And you do have to have some talent.
23:31 You know, you need both of those.
23:33 And if you have got both of those,
23:35 then you should not stop until you get what you want.
23:40 But do be mindful of what people in the industry tell you.
23:44 Take the advice.
23:46 One of my other tips would be that I don't plan.
23:49 You know, I have no idea.
23:50 When people say to me,
23:51 I'd love to write a book, I don't know where to start.
23:54 Then I will say, neither do I.
23:55 So I just start and see where I go.
23:58 Don't be frightened of words.
24:00 One word will bring out another one.
24:02 You don't, there's no right way to write a book.
24:05 If you plan, that's great, I'd love to.
24:07 If you don't, then, you know, that's your way.
24:10 You have to find your way.
24:12 My other top tip would be,
24:15 if you read, read analytically.
24:18 Yes, don't stop reading.
24:20 Always find the time to read
24:21 because you'll absorb so much in the way of plots
24:24 and vocabulary by reading.
24:26 Read also for pleasure, read for pleasure,
24:28 but also read the same book afterwards analytically
24:31 and just see how things go into place.
24:34 You know, with a book that you've really enjoyed,
24:36 you can kind of switch your brain
24:38 onto reading in a different way.
24:40 So those would be my three top tips off the top of my head.
24:44 - Well, that's fantastic.
24:45 Well, thank you so much, Millie.
24:47 That's gone so quickly.
24:49 I feel like we could get so many more stories out of you,
24:52 but we should probably send you back to do some writing
24:54 'cause I have a feeling that you chat all day, so.
24:58 - I'm not very good at answering short questions
25:02 with short answers, am I?
25:03 I probably ignore the time upon one question.
25:06 It's been a joy, obviously, to talk to you, Nicolette.
25:08 So thank you very much for having me.
25:10 - Thank you so much.
25:11 - And I hope this leads on to many authors coming
25:15 and chatting with you and your podcast is a great success.
25:19 - Oh, thank you.
25:20 Thanks, Millie.
25:20 - A pleasure.
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