May 10, 2025 • 15 mins
Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time has been regarded as one of the of successful books of 2024 - and it's got quite a history attached to it.
The book was initially written as a fanfiction project intended for a small group of friends over the Covid-19 lockdowns, but it went on to become an instant hit.
Ahead of her appearance at the Auckland Writers Festival, Bradley opened up about her creative process - and the journey that led to the creation of the book.
"It's been a real pleasure to see that there are people out there that have connected with it and who care about it - when I started writing is, I didn't expect it to get beyond the original 15 readers. It really is very thrilling."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks edb Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The Ministry of Time was hands down my favorite book
of twenty twenty four, so it was a surprise to
learn the book was born from a lockdown experiment. This clever,
thrilling book almost never saw the light of day. The
book is by Callyanne Bradley, and I am excited to
say that she is heading to the Auckland Writers' Festival
this week. Callianne, good morning. Thank you so much for
being with us.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Thank you. I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, I am very excited you were here, because, as
I was just telling you before we came to air this,
the Ministry of Time was my favorite book of twenty
twenty four, and I normally struggle to find just one
book that I will say is my favorite book. But
I absolutely loved it. And I'm sure that this is
the kind of response that you have been getting since
you released it.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
I wish I could I had responses as kind and
enthusiastic as yours all the time. It has been a
real pleasure to see that their heart people out there
who have connected with it and who care about it.
When I started writing it, I didn't expect it to
get beyond the original fifteen readers. So it really is
very thrilling.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
We'll talk about that in just a moment. Now, lockdown
inspired you to write some science fiction? What was it
about the lockdowns that brought that out of New Well.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I couldn't go outside.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
I wasn't really doing anything, and my brain, you know,
during lockdown, we had all these this strange space in
our brain where you know, things like going outside and
meeting people and going to work would have been during lockdown.
I started watching a TV series called The Terror, which
is about Sir John Franklin's Lost eighting forty five expedition
to the Arctic. That introduced me to the Lost eighting
(01:47):
forty five expedition to the Arctic, in which one hundred
and twenty nine men and two ships vanished, but also
one of the officers on that expedition, a.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Man called Graham Gore, who I.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Found just by accident, just looking up what I thought
was an interesting name on Wikipedia, and then.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I saw his photo.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
I saw his photo on the Wikipedia page, and I
was dazzled.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
But quite smitten by him. Aren't you.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I was, I really am.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
At the time, it felt, you know, eyes across the
crowded website, really electric. But it's partly because his biography
makes him sound like a very calm, very competent, very
likable man who was you know, he was very quite
senior by the time he went to the Arctic, so
someone you could.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Trust to be in charge.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
And during lockdown we were not being led by kind,
competent and likable people in the UK. So I think
I really latched onto this figure from history who I thought, God,
it'd be great if he was here now, Actually it isn't.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
An amazing Most of us were getting fixated on how
to make breed and here you were getting fixated on
this man who's led to this book. Do you still
have the huge picture of him hanging in your office
right behind you on the zooe? So how did he
end up? How did you end up putting him into
(03:04):
this book of fiction?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Again, this was a sort of surprising lockdown mistake. So
when I started finding out about this expedition, the Lost
Expedition of eighteen forty five to the Arctic, and as
I was trying to find out more about this officer
of course, I couldn't actually go anywhere. I couldn't go
to archives, I couldn't ask any questions. I only had
the Internet. So I went on the internet, did a
bit of googling that searching around, and I found this
(03:28):
community online of people who were either very interested in
the TV show we'd watched, or the expedition or polar
exploration in general. And they were very, very generous with
the research they already had. So there were experts out
there who know much more about Grahame more than me.
They very generously shared their research with me, and I
began writing what would become the Ministry of Time as
(03:49):
a kind of gift for them, as sort of joke,
what would it be like if your favorite polar explorer
lived in your house? Because we all had favorite polar explorers.
That was definitely a thing that was all going on
for us.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
It's amazing. So you initially started writing this story just
to entertain some new friends and lockdown.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Exactly, and because you know, I had no way to
reach these people. We all lived in different parts of
the world and different countries. You know, we couldn't go
out of the house. It was lockdown. It felt almost
like a way, not only to have a conversation with
this person I'd become fascinated with this historical figure, but
to continue having a conversation and building a friendship and
building a community with these friends that I'd made in
(04:33):
my computer.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Basically, So, how did it turn into a novel? At
what point did you realize its potential?
Speaker 4 (04:41):
I think this came in two stages. So there was
the stage where I began to take what I was
writing more seriously, because to begin with, the Ministry of
Time is about a ministry that is dragging people out
of the past to put them in the twenty first
century to find out whether time travel works. To begin with,
the Ministry was just the apparatus I needed to get
Graham Gore into the twenty first century so I could
(05:02):
torment him with Spotify and washing machines. It wasn't at
that time the most important thing about the book, But
as I kept on writing it, and I kept on
really trying to imagine and really engage with both the
historical figure, his context, and the emotional and psychological experience
of being pulled into the twenty first century, being told
(05:23):
you have to assimilate to this new land, this new
country with its new rules. I started to see these
parallels between Graham Gore and the other expats from history
and the experience of refugees. So at that point I
started to take the story a little more seriously, and
I started to build it out a little bit more.
I was at the time writing what I thought would
be my serious debut novel, which was about Cambodia, the
(05:46):
Khmer Rouge, and the diaspora, because I am half Cambodia
and my mother's Cambodian, so I thought that was what
I had to write. I was thinking about. I was
really struggling with that novel, and I was thinking what
should I send to agents, what should I send out?
And one of my friends, who was reading along with
the Ministry of what would become the Ministry of Time, said,
do you now, I think what you have here as
a novel? I think you could. You could really send
(06:09):
this out and no one would laugh at you. I
think it's a I think it could be your chance.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I think that's really interesting what you said there. How
you felt that you hit to write your mother's story,
the story inspired by your heritage and your mother's refugee experience.
Does it put a lot of pressure on you, though,
trying to tell a story.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Like that, absolutely, and I think it's both that sense
of pressure and the nervousness of living up to the pressure,
and then the constant questioning that comes with that kind
of self imposed responsibility. Am I the right person to
be writing this? Am I getting this right?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
You know?
Speaker 4 (06:50):
My family don't want to talk about the Khmer Rouge?
Should I How much should I fictionalize? How much should
I take from my own family's past. There's that, and
then there's the sense of obligation. Obligation is actually, I
think a kind of death wish for creativity. Just because
it was something that I thought about a lot which
preoccupied me, it didn't mean that I was going to
be able to metabolize it into good fiction. So in
(07:12):
fact it wasn't going anywhere, I think, not because it's
not a story worth telling, but because I couldn't find
a way to tell it.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
But in a way, you had, as you say, you
didn't completely abandoned that concept. And this is one of
the brilliant things about this book, is this concept of
bringing someone from another time into the twenty third century
and trying to get them up to speed with the
current modern world. I mean, it's fascinating, and I wonder
(07:42):
was there a particular person from a particular time that
you had the most fun trying to adapt to the
twenty first century.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
I think the most fun I had was with a
character called Margaret Campbell, who is pulled from the Great
Plague of London. She's a Jacobean woman. She's brought into
the twenty first century, and you know, multiple things hit
her all at once, such as you can have you
can be a woman and be unmarried, and you're just
allowed to move around in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
She's introduced to the word lesbian.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
That's very exciting for her because now she's got a
new word to describe herself and to a describe a
community she can find. She's talked about cinema. She loves
cinema that you know, just as a concept. That's something
she's never had or could imagine. She finds out about
Riot Girl. She wants to go clubbing. It's like to
be able to write someone who is experiencing the disorientation
(08:34):
of a refugee, but it was also thriving is looking
for joy.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
That was that was loads of fun for all that
it's fun and the humor in it is absolutely fantastic.
It's also a really amazing way for us to reflect
on our humanity because there is a point in the
book where one of the bridges, and our protagonist is
a bridger and is responsible for adjusting, helping these expects,
as they called adjust to the modern day. You know,
(08:59):
it is wondering how to explain the Holocaust, for example.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
So this was again as I tried to imagine what
it would actually be like to engage with these characters
and trying to looking back at recent history is from
the point of view as both an observer and someone
whose identity.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Has been influenced by recent history. It became.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Quite difficult actually to step outside that and to face
up to some of the things in our recent history.
In the book, the Ministry chooses to hold back certain information.
They withhold the news about what happened in the Holocaust,
They withhold things like nine to eleven. And they say
(09:44):
this is because they don't want the expats to be
too shocked, you know, they don't want to drive them
into shock and to have their assimilation disrupted. But in
fact there's a certain kind of kind of lying by
your mission there, because if you show someone this kind
of atrocity, it makes them ask, well, what kind of
person are you that you came out of that past?
(10:05):
And what kind of person the you that you just
have to sit and live with.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
That very recent past. So there is yeah, there's a
friction there.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
We've mentioned sci fi, and I've obviously mentioned the humor
and things, but there's so much more to this book.
It's also a romance, and there's mystery in here, and
there's a little touch of thriller. It's got everything.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I'm really glad that those different genres landed with you yet.
So it wasn't intentional for me to write a book
that has so many different genres fall into a chordron
and mixed up like a like a wild magic potion.
But I think partly because I was never I began
writing this for friends rather than with publication in mind.
I didn't feel boxed in by markets, or didn't feel
(10:48):
boxed in by genre, so I felt able to be experimental.
Then I realized that the tropes of some of these
genres can be fun to play with. It can be
fun to seduce a reader with a romance and then
surprise them with the kind of horrific thriller underneath, And
it can be fun to play with the elements of
sign fiction only to reveal that what's going on as
(11:08):
a kind of emotionally realist story, and all of these
genres mesh and they all I think, contribute to each
other in this book in literature in general, so it
was a lot of fun to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I still find it had to believe that this was
just a lockdown mistake. This from a lockdown mistake. So
I'm sure that there is a second novel on the go,
and I'm wondering whether you're sort of using a similar
tactic for fighting you know, your premise and your purpose
with their book.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
I'm sorry to say I have not yet fallen in
love with another random dead person on a Wikipedia page,
which is a shame because I think it would make
my work much easier. I am writing a second novel.
I'm about to get notes from my editors, actually very
nerve wrackingly. I think one thing I am still playing
(11:59):
with is this idea of genre being both a seduction
that pulls us along as story we expect, and then
being able to upend that relationship with genre. So it's
a sort of a fantasy novel, sort of a mystery novel,
sort of a novel about dealing with the fact that
we all have to die.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I love it. You initially submitted The Ministry of Time
under a pseudonym. Why was that?
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Well, I work in publishing, and I thought, first of all,
I was slightly masochistic, and I thought, I don't want
to leverage my contacts with literary agents that I know,
because then maybe the book isn't you know. I wanted
the book to be good enough to pass Muster without
leveraging that.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
But also I.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Had this terrible feeling that what if I sent it
to all these agents I know and respect and have
professional relationships with, and they all go, oh no, oh, no,
how embarrassing. Oh she's written this really embarrassing book. Oh
we can never work with her again. Delete her number. Oh,
don't look at her at parties. So that's one of
the reasons I put it out under a pseudonym for.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And of course the complete opposite has happened. The book
has been hugely successful. Your sessions here at the Auckland
Writers Festival sold out ages ago. The BBC have picked
up the rights for the book You Are So and demand.
That's quite exciting. Is that for a TV or for
a film adaptation?
Speaker 3 (13:24):
That's for a film adaptation. So it's being produced by
a twenty four Alice Birch, who wrote More People. That
is good.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
I know, like, let me time I say it, I'm like,
is this real? Is someone going to descend and say sorry,
it was all the joke? You don't actually get any
of this. Alice Bert, who wrote norm People's writing the
script and the BBC have commissioned a series, so I
don't know when it will hit the screens, if it
ever hits the screens. As you know, things that are
commissioned don't always make it all the way to TV.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
But fingers crossed do you feel like that?
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Do you?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Are you kind of do you sort of sit there
going wow, I can't believe all this has happened, but
it might all end tomorrow. Do you think like that?
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Constantly, I have a really strong sense of I think
I really whind people up with it, a real strong
sense that I don't necessarily deserve every nice thing that's
ever happened to me, and that I should be working
harder to make sure I'm worthy of it, and the
minute that I stop working hard.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
It would be right for it all to be taken
away from me, or for it to just turn out
to be a silly joke played at my expense.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You cannot tell me that the result of their book
is not from hard work. It's fair too clever.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Thank you. That's very kind of it is.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
I'm happy to admit that the published version of Ministry
is draft number nine.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
So we did do a lot of work. We did
do a lot of editing.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I love it. It's been a delight to talk to you.
Caun't white for you to arrive in Auckland, and I
know that the fans out there are going to be
thrilled to hear you at the Auckland Writers Festival.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking
forward to coming to Auckland and meeting everyone.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
That was the author of the Ministry of Time. Kelly
Am Bradley cally Am will be part of the Auckland
Writers Festival this week. For more information here to Writers
Festival dot co dot MZ.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks a B from nine am Sunday
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks edb Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The Ministry of Time was hands down my favorite book
of twenty twenty four, so it was a surprise to
learn the book was born from a lockdown experiment. This clever,
thrilling book almost never saw the light of day. The
book is by Callyanne Bradley, and I am excited to
say that she is heading to the Auckland Writers' Festival
this week. Callianne, good morning. Thank you so much for
being with us.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Thank you. I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, I am very excited you were here, because, as
I was just telling you before we came to air this,
the Ministry of Time was my favorite book of twenty
twenty four, and I normally struggle to find just one
book that I will say is my favorite book. But
I absolutely loved it. And I'm sure that this is
the kind of response that you have been getting since
you released it.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
I wish I could I had responses as kind and
enthusiastic as yours all the time. It has been a
real pleasure to see that their heart people out there
who have connected with it and who care about it.
When I started writing it, I didn't expect it to
get beyond the original fifteen readers. So it really is
very thrilling.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
We'll talk about that in just a moment. Now, lockdown
inspired you to write some science fiction? What was it
about the lockdowns that brought that out of New Well.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I couldn't go outside.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
I wasn't really doing anything, and my brain, you know,
during lockdown, we had all these this strange space in
our brain where you know, things like going outside and
meeting people and going to work would have been during lockdown.
I started watching a TV series called The Terror, which
is about Sir John Franklin's Lost eighting forty five expedition
to the Arctic. That introduced me to the Lost eighting
(01:47):
forty five expedition to the Arctic, in which one hundred
and twenty nine men and two ships vanished, but also
one of the officers on that expedition, a.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Man called Graham Gore, who I.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Found just by accident, just looking up what I thought
was an interesting name on Wikipedia, and then.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I saw his photo.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
I saw his photo on the Wikipedia page, and I
was dazzled.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
But quite smitten by him. Aren't you.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I was, I really am.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
At the time, it felt, you know, eyes across the
crowded website, really electric. But it's partly because his biography
makes him sound like a very calm, very competent, very
likable man who was you know, he was very quite
senior by the time he went to the Arctic, so
someone you could.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Trust to be in charge.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
And during lockdown we were not being led by kind,
competent and likable people in the UK. So I think
I really latched onto this figure from history who I thought, God,
it'd be great if he was here now, Actually it isn't.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
An amazing Most of us were getting fixated on how
to make breed and here you were getting fixated on
this man who's led to this book. Do you still
have the huge picture of him hanging in your office
right behind you on the zooe? So how did he
end up? How did you end up putting him into
(03:04):
this book of fiction?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Again, this was a sort of surprising lockdown mistake. So
when I started finding out about this expedition, the Lost
Expedition of eighteen forty five to the Arctic, and as
I was trying to find out more about this officer
of course, I couldn't actually go anywhere. I couldn't go
to archives, I couldn't ask any questions. I only had
the Internet. So I went on the internet, did a
bit of googling that searching around, and I found this
(03:28):
community online of people who were either very interested in
the TV show we'd watched, or the expedition or polar
exploration in general. And they were very, very generous with
the research they already had. So there were experts out
there who know much more about Grahame more than me.
They very generously shared their research with me, and I
began writing what would become the Ministry of Time as
(03:49):
a kind of gift for them, as sort of joke,
what would it be like if your favorite polar explorer
lived in your house? Because we all had favorite polar explorers.
That was definitely a thing that was all going on
for us.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
It's amazing. So you initially started writing this story just
to entertain some new friends and lockdown.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Exactly, and because you know, I had no way to
reach these people. We all lived in different parts of
the world and different countries. You know, we couldn't go
out of the house. It was lockdown. It felt almost
like a way, not only to have a conversation with
this person I'd become fascinated with this historical figure, but
to continue having a conversation and building a friendship and
building a community with these friends that I'd made in
(04:33):
my computer.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Basically, So, how did it turn into a novel? At
what point did you realize its potential?
Speaker 4 (04:41):
I think this came in two stages. So there was
the stage where I began to take what I was
writing more seriously, because to begin with, the Ministry of
Time is about a ministry that is dragging people out
of the past to put them in the twenty first
century to find out whether time travel works. To begin with,
the Ministry was just the apparatus I needed to get
Graham Gore into the twenty first century so I could
(05:02):
torment him with Spotify and washing machines. It wasn't at
that time the most important thing about the book, But
as I kept on writing it, and I kept on
really trying to imagine and really engage with both the
historical figure, his context, and the emotional and psychological experience
of being pulled into the twenty first century, being told
(05:23):
you have to assimilate to this new land, this new
country with its new rules. I started to see these
parallels between Graham Gore and the other expats from history
and the experience of refugees. So at that point I
started to take the story a little more seriously, and
I started to build it out a little bit more.
I was at the time writing what I thought would
be my serious debut novel, which was about Cambodia, the
(05:46):
Khmer Rouge, and the diaspora, because I am half Cambodia
and my mother's Cambodian, so I thought that was what
I had to write. I was thinking about. I was
really struggling with that novel, and I was thinking what
should I send to agents, what should I send out?
And one of my friends, who was reading along with
the Ministry of what would become the Ministry of Time, said,
do you now, I think what you have here as
a novel? I think you could. You could really send
(06:09):
this out and no one would laugh at you. I
think it's a I think it could be your chance.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I think that's really interesting what you said there. How
you felt that you hit to write your mother's story,
the story inspired by your heritage and your mother's refugee experience.
Does it put a lot of pressure on you, though,
trying to tell a story.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Like that, absolutely, and I think it's both that sense
of pressure and the nervousness of living up to the pressure,
and then the constant questioning that comes with that kind
of self imposed responsibility. Am I the right person to
be writing this? Am I getting this right?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
You know?
Speaker 4 (06:50):
My family don't want to talk about the Khmer Rouge?
Should I How much should I fictionalize? How much should
I take from my own family's past. There's that, and
then there's the sense of obligation. Obligation is actually, I
think a kind of death wish for creativity. Just because
it was something that I thought about a lot which
preoccupied me, it didn't mean that I was going to
be able to metabolize it into good fiction. So in
(07:12):
fact it wasn't going anywhere, I think, not because it's
not a story worth telling, but because I couldn't find
a way to tell it.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
But in a way, you had, as you say, you
didn't completely abandoned that concept. And this is one of
the brilliant things about this book, is this concept of
bringing someone from another time into the twenty third century
and trying to get them up to speed with the
current modern world. I mean, it's fascinating, and I wonder
(07:42):
was there a particular person from a particular time that
you had the most fun trying to adapt to the
twenty first century.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
I think the most fun I had was with a
character called Margaret Campbell, who is pulled from the Great
Plague of London. She's a Jacobean woman. She's brought into
the twenty first century, and you know, multiple things hit
her all at once, such as you can have you
can be a woman and be unmarried, and you're just
allowed to move around in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
She's introduced to the word lesbian.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
That's very exciting for her because now she's got a
new word to describe herself and to a describe a
community she can find. She's talked about cinema. She loves
cinema that you know, just as a concept. That's something
she's never had or could imagine. She finds out about
Riot Girl. She wants to go clubbing. It's like to
be able to write someone who is experiencing the disorientation
(08:34):
of a refugee, but it was also thriving is looking
for joy.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
That was that was loads of fun for all that
it's fun and the humor in it is absolutely fantastic.
It's also a really amazing way for us to reflect
on our humanity because there is a point in the
book where one of the bridges, and our protagonist is
a bridger and is responsible for adjusting, helping these expects,
as they called adjust to the modern day. You know,
(08:59):
it is wondering how to explain the Holocaust, for example.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
So this was again as I tried to imagine what
it would actually be like to engage with these characters
and trying to looking back at recent history is from
the point of view as both an observer and someone
whose identity.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Has been influenced by recent history. It became.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Quite difficult actually to step outside that and to face
up to some of the things in our recent history.
In the book, the Ministry chooses to hold back certain information.
They withhold the news about what happened in the Holocaust,
They withhold things like nine to eleven. And they say
(09:44):
this is because they don't want the expats to be
too shocked, you know, they don't want to drive them
into shock and to have their assimilation disrupted. But in
fact there's a certain kind of kind of lying by
your mission there, because if you show someone this kind
of atrocity, it makes them ask, well, what kind of
person are you that you came out of that past?
(10:05):
And what kind of person the you that you just
have to sit and live with.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
That very recent past. So there is yeah, there's a
friction there.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
We've mentioned sci fi, and I've obviously mentioned the humor
and things, but there's so much more to this book.
It's also a romance, and there's mystery in here, and
there's a little touch of thriller. It's got everything.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I'm really glad that those different genres landed with you yet.
So it wasn't intentional for me to write a book
that has so many different genres fall into a chordron
and mixed up like a like a wild magic potion.
But I think partly because I was never I began
writing this for friends rather than with publication in mind.
I didn't feel boxed in by markets, or didn't feel
(10:48):
boxed in by genre, so I felt able to be experimental.
Then I realized that the tropes of some of these
genres can be fun to play with. It can be
fun to seduce a reader with a romance and then
surprise them with the kind of horrific thriller underneath, And
it can be fun to play with the elements of
sign fiction only to reveal that what's going on as
(11:08):
a kind of emotionally realist story, and all of these
genres mesh and they all I think, contribute to each
other in this book in literature in general, so it
was a lot of fun to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I still find it had to believe that this was
just a lockdown mistake. This from a lockdown mistake. So
I'm sure that there is a second novel on the go,
and I'm wondering whether you're sort of using a similar
tactic for fighting you know, your premise and your purpose
with their book.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
I'm sorry to say I have not yet fallen in
love with another random dead person on a Wikipedia page,
which is a shame because I think it would make
my work much easier. I am writing a second novel.
I'm about to get notes from my editors, actually very
nerve wrackingly. I think one thing I am still playing
(11:59):
with is this idea of genre being both a seduction
that pulls us along as story we expect, and then
being able to upend that relationship with genre. So it's
a sort of a fantasy novel, sort of a mystery novel,
sort of a novel about dealing with the fact that
we all have to die.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I love it. You initially submitted The Ministry of Time
under a pseudonym. Why was that?
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Well, I work in publishing, and I thought, first of all,
I was slightly masochistic, and I thought, I don't want
to leverage my contacts with literary agents that I know,
because then maybe the book isn't you know. I wanted
the book to be good enough to pass Muster without
leveraging that.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
But also I.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Had this terrible feeling that what if I sent it
to all these agents I know and respect and have
professional relationships with, and they all go, oh no, oh, no,
how embarrassing. Oh she's written this really embarrassing book. Oh
we can never work with her again. Delete her number. Oh,
don't look at her at parties. So that's one of
the reasons I put it out under a pseudonym for.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And of course the complete opposite has happened. The book
has been hugely successful. Your sessions here at the Auckland
Writers Festival sold out ages ago. The BBC have picked
up the rights for the book You Are So and demand.
That's quite exciting. Is that for a TV or for
a film adaptation?
Speaker 3 (13:24):
That's for a film adaptation. So it's being produced by
a twenty four Alice Birch, who wrote More People. That
is good.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
I know, like, let me time I say it, I'm like,
is this real? Is someone going to descend and say sorry,
it was all the joke? You don't actually get any
of this. Alice Bert, who wrote norm People's writing the
script and the BBC have commissioned a series, so I
don't know when it will hit the screens, if it
ever hits the screens. As you know, things that are
commissioned don't always make it all the way to TV.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
But fingers crossed do you feel like that?
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Do you?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Are you kind of do you sort of sit there
going wow, I can't believe all this has happened, but
it might all end tomorrow. Do you think like that?
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Constantly, I have a really strong sense of I think
I really whind people up with it, a real strong
sense that I don't necessarily deserve every nice thing that's
ever happened to me, and that I should be working
harder to make sure I'm worthy of it, and the
minute that I stop working hard.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
It would be right for it all to be taken
away from me, or for it to just turn out
to be a silly joke played at my expense.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You cannot tell me that the result of their book
is not from hard work. It's fair too clever.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Thank you. That's very kind of it is.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
I'm happy to admit that the published version of Ministry
is draft number nine.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
So we did do a lot of work. We did
do a lot of editing.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I love it. It's been a delight to talk to you.
Caun't white for you to arrive in Auckland, and I
know that the fans out there are going to be
thrilled to hear you at the Auckland Writers Festival.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking
forward to coming to Auckland and meeting everyone.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
That was the author of the Ministry of Time. Kelly
Am Bradley cally Am will be part of the Auckland
Writers Festival this week. For more information here to Writers
Festival dot co dot MZ.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks a B from nine am Sunday
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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