Get Booked – Orcun Can, Writer And Lecturer In Digital Economy 161023

You are listening to Get Booked with me, Hazel Butterfield, for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Welcome to today's show. On today's show, we have the lecturer in digital economy, Dr. Orkan Can. Orkan was born in 1990 in Alanya, Turkey. He holds a BA degree in international relations and an MA degree in film and TV. Having worked as a television journalist first, then as a lecturer, Can moved to London in 2017 to pursue a PhD at King's College in London. His scholarly work focuses on televisual storytelling and internet television. He has published 3 children's books, which I will not try to pronounce because they were written in Turkish and my Turkish is not so good. Uh, we're going to be chatting to Orkun about anything and everything books related and film related and the associated academic and fictional writing that he gets involved with. I am super excited. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Okay, next on the show we have Dr. Orkan Can joining us on Get Booked to talk about a plethora of subjects concerning his writing, both fiction and academic, which is written in Turkish and English depending on the need. Orkan has a Turkish children's book series and has also written an academic chapter on binge-watching and contemporary television studies. He is a writer and lecturer in digital economy. His research focuses on narrative forms in television in the age of streaming. Most recently, he's developed a formal analytics tool, the STNA model, that allows to map out narrative structure in multiple episodes episodes of seasons of television shows, and currently he investigates how the streaming industry is situated within the broader digital economy. Orkan has written a number of children's books which I'm not going to try and pronounce because I'll be thoroughly embarrassed, but we're going to chat about that a little bit further in a jiffy. Firstly, thank you for joining us on Women's and Men's Radio Station. How are you? Thank you so much for having me. I'm all right. I'm just at the tail end of a fresh flu because teaching just started at university. So if I get into a cough fit, please don't worry. At least it's not COVID. Do you know what? I hear when men get flu, it's a lot worse than when women get it. Is that true? I don't know if it's a lot worse or we're just a lot more wimpy. Well, thanks for pre-warning us and fingers crossed. That you're going to be fine. I think you're going to do fantastically. And, you know, we've got so much to chat about and really want to get stuck into this. But first of all, can we talk a little bit about your children's book series? Sure. Yeah. So unfortunately, they're not out in English yet, and my agents have been trying very hard to get them to the US and the UK as well. But It's a trilogy. It's what we would call a chapter book for ages around 9 to 12. The trilogy itself is called the Sky Kingdom series, starting with the book The Girl Who Fell to the Sky. It is— I think the first have been out for 10 years at this point, so it's been quite a while as well. Um, it tells the story of this, uh, little girl who jumps up too high on some sort of magical, uh, dimension-traveling trampoline and falls sort of, uh, into the sky where, you know, when you look up you see the Earth and everything is sort of in a contrasting sense. And then she's mistaken as an imposter for whoever would be the princess of that kingdom, and then adventures await from there on. But yeah, it's great. It's from a publisher called Ye Kaye in Turkey, which is also the publisher of books like Harry Potter. So it has a really good home there. And I'm just, yeah, excited to see if it can actually travel elsewhere. Well, hopefully. I mean, I love the idea of— because I, even now at the age of 41, I jump on a trampoline like no one's business. I absolutely love it. And it just, it gives you that childlike kind of feeling. It's very reminiscent of when you used to just want to go higher and higher and higher and you just didn't care whether there was any danger or anything. And, you know, that thought of being able to go so high. Absolutely. You know, an adventure could start. And I tried to do my research for today's interview, and unfortunately there's just very little information unless I speak fluent Turkish, of which I do not. But I kind of got the feeling it was very kind of, um, if you need Blighton. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's definitely some Blighton there. Um, It's, again, it's, I think, what's the word I'm looking for? So yeah, I would say it's, I mean, it's a little bit like the Narnia books, a little bit like the, I can never remember their name. Do you remember those, that series of books? There were like 60 or 80 of them. Which was just a group of kids who had to solve all these sort of horror-infused mysteries. Oh, like hard horror? No, they would have very cheesy names, like The Mystery of Baron Pizza, stuff like that. So I can't remember it now, and I hate that I can't remember it because they were one of my favourites. There was millions of them. I used to kind of rob my mother blind because I'd get through like a book a day and they were like Maybe they are actually, because, you know, when I was reading them, obviously they were— they had their Turkish titles. So maybe I'm just completely alienated to the original names. But anyway, so yeah, there is a little bit Blight in there. There's a little bit, um, C.S. Lewis, Narnia sort of stuff there. Um, I, I think I have been influenced quite a lot by Neil Gaiman's more children work. Um, but yeah, you see, I like— I love it that we encourage our children to have these imaginations, and then as we get a little bit older, it's all kind of less focused on imagination and more on reality, which is probably why, uh, we're all a little bit depressed. Um, yeah, we need a bit more imagination in our world. Actually, a few books recently, and I read a lot, and the ones I'm really loving at the moment. And I used to not like sci-fi or anything like that, but it's ones that just really kind of force you to be a bit more imaginative and get your brain to work a little bit more and not focus on the mundane day-to-day. Absolutely. Yeah, we need, we need to, um, I mean, this is why I used to love reading to my children. It annoys me a little bit that they're at an age where they don't do it so much because the books are a little bit more fun and kind of you know, get the brain working in a positive way. We, we don't use our imagination enough as we get past 16. Absolutely, absolutely. So you're, you're now back into sci-fi, did I get that correctly? Yeah, I used to really just think it was all a bit too literally, actually, alien, um, but I'm loving the idea of something that's just a bit more outside the the box. That is so interesting because I found myself, especially in the past few months, too, um, drawn towards sci-fi as a reader, not as a writer, as well. So maybe it's, it is something to do with the sign of times. Maybe. I think so, yeah. I mean, because I read a lot, I like to make sure that I mix it up. With Women's Radio Station and Men's Radio Station being mental health focused, I do get a lot of books through the door that are on anxiety, or they're memoirs, and they're focusing on— and I think there's a place them, and I think they're brilliant. I really enjoy them, but I do have to mix it up, otherwise, you know, my brain might slightly implode or explode. I'm not really sure which one on a daily basis. And I think there is— I need the humor, I need the horror, and I now need something that kind of ignites my imagination as well. I mean, any kind of fiction or non-fiction is great for your mental health, whether it's escape or understanding somebody else's world or, you know, getting you to empathize in some way, shape, or form. But I do have to alternate. Absolutely. Perhaps the only exception would be a book like, you know, the 1000 Triggers of the World for Your Anxiety. That can't be good for your mental health. But yeah, other than that, I, I agree for sure. Yeah, I have come across ones like that where I'm going, oh good, you give me something else. I never even thought that could be an issue, but yeah, that does scare me. Do you think if you do finally get your, your children's series over to England and the US, will you do the translations? Um, so I, I've actually worked as a translator for quite many years, and I, I have actually translated, um, literary works from English to Turkish as well. Um, I was the translator for the Turkish edition of The Goblin Emperor by, um, Katherine Addison, for instance. So I have— okay, I have given it some thought, and there is the sense that, you know, it would make promoting it much easier, just not promoting after it's published but actually promoting it to potential publishers, um, here as well. But I really shy away from it. I don't, I don't know why. I think in my mind they're just finished, they're done. The 3 books are done. And I think it was 2019 Christmas where I've written the epilogue and the thanks acknowledgements. And then I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure I don't want to go back to this text as in working on it. So I don't think I would be doing that. I think, yeah, it's kind of going backwards, isn't it? When it's something that you've already kind of dealt with. I'm going to Just fast forward a little bit to talk about the more academic side of your writing so that we can understand a little bit more about some of the other questions that I have for you. So just to let our listeners know that you wrote a chapter for an English academic book called Binge Watching and Contemporary Television Studies. I have read it. I've read the chapter. I was quite surprised at how much kind of of analytical science and adhering to certain parameters goes into producing a hit series, such as in this particular case, the Gilmore Girls. And it's these styles utilized that's kind of specifically aimed for people to binge-watch. And we do. I mean, the amount of people I say, oh, Hazel, you read so much, I don't know how you find the time. I'm like, you watched a whole Netflix series in one night? Yeah. But do you think Understanding these parameters and knowing what, what tactics producers, directors, writers use, do you think it's fair game or a little bit naughty? Well, it's so— okay, let's just start with the very short answer. I think it's— yes, it is naughty. But then again, the entertainment industry as a whole is built upon this notions and notions of naughtiness. So it's not, you know, we shouldn't really be surprised by it. And so hopefully in the next couple of years, something that has evolved from that chapter, hopefully you're going to see it as a full book called Bingeable Narratives, where I talk about actually what makes some television shows more readily available to just gorge and just stuff into our minds in just one night, as you said, and some of them we just simply cannot do that like that. But to go back to your question of, you know, using these analytics and statistics and everything, I think it is again just sign of the times really. It's, it's not that much different than, you know, how when you Google something, The search results really just algorithms based on everything that you've done. It's the same with TikTok, isn't it? You search for one thing, before you know it, the next thing the cookies are feeding your information as to what they know is going to be of interest to you. Exactly. Everywhere. And I think it's still a little bit better than how we used to have it in 2000s and perhaps early 2010s because If you remember around that time, the same thing would actually still happen, but because the entertainment industry wasn't that personalized and it was still broadcast television and mass media, mass broadcasting things, when something felt like it would be really, it was really popular, then you would get all of these offshoots, but instead of them coming into your personalized screen, you would just see them everywhere. So like, you know, you would have something like Harry Potter or Twilight that just went crazy. And then you would see these so many offshoots and spin-offs and, you know, knockoffs everywhere, and you couldn't really escape them like you can today because they weren't in your personalized screen, but it was actually in your local movie theaters every night on every TV channels. And you were like, okay, I'm just really sick and tired of it, but there's nowhere to run. So at least in this new ecosystem or landscape or whatever you want to call it, when they do throw things at your face, you are able to say, you know what, maybe I'm not that into vampire romance, or maybe I'm not that into dystopian teenagers. Well, yeah, it's good to have that choice, isn't it? It is interesting though when my kids actually steal my Netflix log in, how all of a sudden the things that Netflix thinks I like changes, which can be quite annoying. Absolutely. It's a bit, that is the more scary part, I think, because we, there's something that makes me quite uneasy that we can never even see what we, all the options that we can have on our Netflix. And then we will just always have a curated list of categories that are given to us based on, you know, yeah, what you watched for the last 6 months or something. Yeah. And, and, and the crazy thing about it is like, we— I don't know if you've ever noticed this, like there are some really interesting categories on Netflix. Like sometimes as you scroll, they will say, uh, zombie films with funny woman in them, for instance, like very like specific categories. And you're like, excuse me, what? And, you know, as part of my, my PhD research, I've looked into them and there are actually more than 6,000 categories that they've defined like that. And that's a lot of categories. And, you know, you never even get to see all of these categories. Like in any given instance, you're given maybe 20 or 30. So it's a bit scary how much thought they put into this hyper-personalization of your viewing experience, if that makes sense. Completely. I mean, actually, Lachlan, I struggle sometimes to fall asleep, and I like to have something to fall asleep to. So I'm a huge fan of YouTube, and I'll watch things like SNL because it's extremely funny, and it just means that there's not really dodgy dreams happening or anything like that. The other day I couldn't watch YouTube, so I wanted to just put something on Netflix that wasn't particularly binge-worthy, so I wasn't getting really involved with it. So I just searched out, I think it's like The Secret Life of Pets or something like that. Okay. And just because it's, it's quite cute, it's— you're not gonna binge on some sort of reptile that likes paragliding over the Everglades or whatever, although you might do, to be fair. And the next day I was surprised at just how many different series there are on Netflix that are pet-related. And because I watched that one thing, it just all changed. And because I fell asleep, which was the intention, I'd watched supposedly quite a few episodes, and it just changed that quickly. Now you, you are a pet enthusiast for Netflix, and there's nothing you can do about it. No, no, I mean, there are things you can do about it, but the things you can do about it is to just sort of put something on while you're out of the house, but it has to be again something different that you haven't done before. So maybe put some animes, and now you become an anime woman, which I don't know if you are, but you know, the only thing you can do is just change. It's, yeah, it's a little bit mental. I mean, to be fair, as I was reading your chapter, I I kind of went on a little bit of a journey because I was reading about the, this, how it's changed with Netflix, how you don't have to be— the, the beats can change because there aren't adverts, um, that you don't particularly have credits anymore these days. It just automatically goes on to the next episode, and it's changed the way that things are done. Whereas I remember back in the day when I was a huge fan of Desperate Housewives, and you got one episode a week. Um, after maybe series 2 or 3, they developed that whole, um, functionality where you could go on to Plus One and watch the next one, but that was about as much as you could binge. And it— there was a different level of excitement. We just get too much too easily now. Yeah. And even, even when you wanted to watch all of it together back then, um, which I, I think Desperate Housewives would be a really good example for that because If I'm not mistaken, that's like 7 seasons or 9 seasons. So that's a big show, right? Yeah. And it was a network show, which meant that every season was 20 to 25 episodes as well. So even if you did want to binge them, let's say you want to get into it or something, what you would have is, if you remember these like massive DVD box sets, which meant that you were, you still had an investment. I mean, first of all, you needed to invest like really a good amount of money because that's like 40 or 50 DVDs for all of the seasons and it costs money, but also like it costs storage space, like it's a big, you know, chest-like box. So, um, once you like— it was a commitment to binge it, you know, you needed to because you would always see the box and you knew that you paid good money for it and then And it was this physical thing and they would have this like cheesy bits of extra there and each season would have a new DVD cover and everything. So there was, it was an emotional investment, it was a financial investment, it was a time investment. So there was quite a lot of thought that went into actually binging a series, actually being a fan of the show. But now it is still a time investment and, but as you said, even the time investment has been cut down quite a lot because you know, no commercials, no credits or anything. So you are able to shave off some time, but it's still a time commitment, time investment. But all the other parts of that investment are gone. So, you know, I mean, I don't want to sound cheesy and say, oh, binge watching is not as worthy as it was before, or something like that. But, but it has definitely changed. And I think that especially after the pandemic, we've sort of started to see that maybe it being a norm isn't really that good, and maybe people are sort of yearning a little bit for the weekly drops now, which is perhaps why we have, you know, Disney+ or Apple TV+ that are strictly trying to not do the binge release model. Well, actually, I'm really into Only Murders in the Building, and it is only— of course, it's so good, but I've just seen this morning that the, the 10th episode in season 3 has just been released, and I'm like, yeah, I'll get this. But I had to wait for the whole of this season on a weekly basis. And do you know what? Well, exactly. But I just think I've enjoyed the actual excitement of it. There's no fun in getting what you want immediately all the time. Absolutely, absolutely. So I'll get back to my question of who do you think did it? I haven't watched the final episode too, but you're absolutely right. I mean, me and Milys, my partner, who you know nearly dearly, we have a couple of shows like that too. So the Only Murders in the Building is one of them. The Morning Show on Apple TV+ is another one of them. And because we don't have TV right now, we don't have a TV license. Please don't come to me, TV license people. We don't do live TV anymore. We simply don't. You don't need a TV license if you're not watching. Exactly. The licensed channels. Exactly. So we don't do any of that. So it was such a nice breath of fresh air that we have these two shows that are weekly drops and we're like, okay, great, it's Wednesday night, so let's watch this show and we'll have a little date night with it. We'll open a wine, we'll cook something for it and we'll make it into something. And that's something that we've realized that we've really sort of missed about broadcast television. So yeah, who do you think killed Paul Rudd? I think it's going to be thrown on its head. Obviously, um, at the end of the 9th episode, we had a pretty good idea as to who they were wanting us to think it is, but I think it's going to be more down the route of, um, who has actually been bankrolling this production because there an interesting dynamic. Okay, okay. So the mother and the son. Yeah, I think so. I think so. I'm pretty sure it's going to be the mother, Donna, but they've already given us too much that it might be her. So you're right, they might just completely change it and say like, oh no, it was the janitor or something like that. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, he did it to himself. But it has been renewed for a fourth season, so yay. I mean, I've got to say, though, I mean, I love her to pieces. I've always loved Steve Martin, but Martin Short wasn't hugely on my radar before. I think he's brilliant. I think the three of them are just— I'm jealous that I don't have two dodgy, weird, theatrical old men taking me out for wine. Although that's the weirdest invitation ever, really. I'm absolutely on the same page. We were too. We were like, I mean, sure. Of course we knew Martin Short and we watched him, but we were never, you know, Martin Short fans. Steve Martin I always loved, uh, because there's also, um, you know, from our generation, in our childhood, you know, we had quite a lot of films that were very cozy and dear to us that had Steve Martin. Scoundrels, Father of the Bride, all of them. Exactly. And then Yeah, it was such a strange feeling to wake up one day and find out that I'm a Selena Gomez simp as well, because, you know, I can't think of another trio to do it. Sorry, let's— I've sidetracked your whole episode to talk about Only Murders in the Building, but that's literally what I do as a television scholar. Just, you know, let me be and I'll talk about our favorite shows for days on end. Well, I'm interested to know, actually, does your work as a lecturer in digital economy make you want to read more? Um, so a part of the work really, really makes me want to read less. And, uh, maybe you can relate to this because for some reason you read that whole chapter, but it's, you know, I mean, we can both agree, I think it's boring. It's trying to make points and in order to make those points as scientifically and scholarly as possible, it has to be like very methodic and very boring. And because the part of the work is in academia is all about that research, a lot of the reading that we do and a lot of the writing that we do is really, really just plain boring. And, you know, I have a very good friend who also have written in that same book that I've written, Lisa Perks, who is an American scholar. And we were having a chat last year and she was like, I'm— I've started writing a children's book. And then she said, and I got a writing coach for it because I was so stuck in that writing for academia mindset that I needed someone to literally come in and help me change the way I write so that I can write it in an exciting and entertaining way. Oh, it's like you're reading the questions off my page. So it's like, you know, I mean, I thank God I don't need a writing coach. I hope, I don't think my fiction writing is boring, but like, so that part really, I remember at the top of my PhD, there was a year where I've re— I've checked my notes and I've noticed that I've read like maybe just 3 or 4 fiction books and everything else I've read was just, you know, articles and book chapters and theoreticians and everything. So that, that's, I'm gonna have to say no, it really doesn't want you and doesn't make you want to read more. But then the more entertaining parts of that work is when it's not directly tied into your research or when you're, you know, during term time and you're doing these lectures or you're preparing the lectures and you get bits and pieces of new ideas and information. You're like, oh, that would be so interesting. Oh, that would be so interesting. And that they do make you want to read more. Like, just last year, I was running a module on research methods, and one part was about, you know, making sure that you design your research project in a way that takes into account all kinds of— what's the word I'm looking for— prejudices and bias and everything. And that single week, for instance, introduced me to an amazing book called The Invisible Woman, how the modern world statistics don't really take into account women. And I was so happy that I was able to get into such a book with the avenue of my work. Um, so yeah, it's mostly no, but when it does, it does really good. The thing is, I suppose the sticking point here is that being a lecturer, you've got a lot of academic reading to do, writing to do, and all those of your students. And, and so that's a little bit harder. I do find that I just need— I mean, I do, I love TV as much as I love reading, and I know that I just need to reprogram my brain sometimes. And I find that reading, and reading a physical book, not something on a screen just resets me quite often. Absolutely. I'm a very physical book person myself as well. And in fact, something that I've realized is I almost always read scholarly work on screens or as ebooks. I have quite a big phone that I sort of use as a substitute Kindle. And any leisurely reading that I do, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, that's all— that will always be a physical copy. Yeah, brilliant. I mean, the thing is, I always, when I have PRs saying to me, oh right, can you read this book? Can you send us a review? Or can you interview the person? I'm like, yeah, cool, but send me the physical book. And it's only on the times when they just say, we literally just don't have any. And for whatever reason, it's extreme emergencies that I will take the electronic copy because I just want to completely distance myself from the tech. I just think it works better for me, and I also get through it a lot quicker as well because it's not as easy to just distract myself and I'll just check Twitter and see how well that posted on Instagram. Absolutely. You did actually say before that your friend, your colleague, sorry, was saying about the different mindset in completing academic work and fiction work. And so you find it quite easy— well, not easy, but you've got it down really, how to switch between the two different mindsets. Yeah, I mean, the switch between mindsets is— I think it comes a bit more naturally to me because I simply work differently for two things. I'm a— when I'm writing fiction, I'm quite a— I work in bursts. So what will happen is, you know, I won't do anything for a few months and then 2 weeks that will be the only thing I do except for, you know, eating, um, and doing the barely minimum daily work. And in that 2 weeks I will get quite a lot of thousands of words of a draft for something. And then there will be another couple of weeks or months that I do nothing. Whereas when I'm doing the academic work or scholarly work. It's, it's like, okay, 2 hours on a Tuesday and another hour on a Thursday, and oh look, today I've written another 300 words. Um, I'm, I'm pretty sure that because of the, um, affordances of more modern lifestyles, I should try and change my fiction writing to this as well because I can't write as much as I want to. Um, but at least I do have a very distinct and clear difference between the two. Yeah, I mean, I think I can understand that there are lots of different people and they have different ways of doing things, but I think I'd probably be able to compartmentalize it a little bit more as well. I did do a psychology degree and I used to have to do a lot of, um, psychological analytical research, um, for my BA and Yeah, I managed to switch. It was something that I was kind of happy to do, but at least I only have to write in one particular language. And I guess your predominant language that you're writing in at the moment is English, isn't it? It is. So do you think when you go back into writing fiction, do you ever think, "Oh no, what if I'm not knowing the Turkish as well?" Is that something you'd ever worry about? I worry about that quite a lot. Um, wow. Hold on. I hope I'm not making you feel more anxious about it. No. Um, I worry about that quite a lot. Mm-hmm. Because especially after those, again, periods of like long periods of being heavily involved with one language or the other, um, it always becomes when you switch to the next language, it always becomes a moment of reflection. You're like, Wait, can I not do this? Like, sometimes I will feel bad if, um, that I haven't read, um, I haven't read a Turkish book for a few months, for instance, because I'll be like, but what if I'm losing my language? What if I don't have the vocabulary anymore? Oh, it's the issues of identity especially. I mean, you've been living in London for what, nearly 10 years or so, would you say? Um, yeah, so it's, it would be convoluted, 10 years. 6 years this time that we've come. Well, yeah, there's so many issues of identity, especially in your line of work as well. But being in London where, you know, you, you want to kind of forge a career and a culture forwards, but it's— yeah, how much, how much so do you, do you actually get involved with that? Yeah, it's always a negotiation really, um, between those two things. But I am— I mean, I would be lying if I didn't say that I'm not more and more steering towards English in my fiction writing as well, um, because I think at some point it's, it's simply not sustainable to always having outputs in two different languages again, especially with necessities of the modern life. So you can't be working full-time and taking care of all the other things and then doing your creative output, whatever it is, in two languages. I mean, some people can perhaps, but I just don't think— I just think there's so much that we always have to do, and you have to kind of draw a line somewhere, which kind of takes me on to my final question today, because we're a mental well-being focused station. We're running out of time, but do you have three top tips on trying to have the best, the healthiest mental well-being? Okay, 3 top tips. So, um, sure, the first one I would say, and these are all coming from a personal place, so, you know, just take it on your own risk, I guess, at your own risk. Um, the first one is, um, talk, because, you know, especially as men We have a tendency to not talk until it is very late. I've had my very nasty mental breakdown right at the middle of my PhD, and I did not talk to anyone about it or talk to anyone about how serious it was for a long time, which was so unnecessary and which just simply made things worse. Well, you didn't do it intentionally, did you? But it's just sometimes hard to find the right words, the right outlet. Absolutely. Absolutely. But just, you know, there's no harm in talking and you don't really even have to start by talking to a licensed practitioner. Just talk to someone. Just talk to yourself, make an audio note about what you feel, write it down, whatever it is, just, you know, wherever you think you are at a bad mental place, just start by writing it down. The second one would be to eat some salad, which is, you know, because like exercise really helped with my mental health issues, but I can't always exercise because of time limitations and everything. And sometimes things are just really shirty that I just want to have a drink or two or six and have just order McDonald's. So what I've found is even when I do that, if I can just have salad next to it, I can still let myself know that I'm still taking care of myself. You need to have the nutrients. There are actual reasons why we need these nutrients. And you know what? If they're there, you're more likely to pick at them. And it's all about balance. Exactly. And, and the third tip would be just be It's— I think it's okay to be just a little bit self-centric so that you can learn to love yourself. I love that. Um, I think they're all— they're 3 great reminders, and thank you so much for those. Um, it's— we do have to look after ourselves, otherwise we don't have the emotional capacity to look out for other people too. Um, thank you so much, Orkan, for joining me on Get Booked Women's Radio Station. I've really enjoyed chatting to you, and all the best. Well, thank you so much for having me on. This was a blast. Hopefully, hopefully your wife will take us out for drinks at some point. Yes, yes, absolutely. We should do that. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you. I really enjoyed today's chat. There's a little bit of a, a different kind of interview today on Get Booked, and I love that. I absolutely love doing this show, just opening discussions and offering support by the incredible writing community out there, people with passion about what they do. Come and join us, get involved. If you want to catch up on previous shows, you can at womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked and on our SoundCloud. For those of you that are wanting a book to get excited about, it's not due out until January of 2024, but definitely one to put in the basket or pre-order. It's The Best Way to Bury Your Husband by Alexia Cassell. Now, what Alexia has done with this comedic work of fiction is quite frankly remarkable. The issue of violence in the home against women is prolific, but during COVID the figures assaulted horrifically. So The Best Way to Bury Your Husband looks at what if a group of women in a similar predicament who unfortunately killed their husbands in self-defense just happened to find each other during this unprecedented time? How resourceful, clever, intuitive, and collaborative we can be despite being relentlessly told otherwise. When survival and our loved ones are paramount. We rarely know what's going on behind closed doors or turn a blind eye for whatever reason has been deemed necessary. This book provides an interesting and, and comedic look at domestic abuse, serving as a conduit to highlight what is going on in an alarming number of homes. That's The Best Way to Bury Your Husband available in January of 2024. I'm Hazel, and you've been listening to Get Booked for Women's Radio Station and Men's Radio Station. Catch me here every day of the week at 5 PM at Women's and every Tuesday at 4 PM at Men's, and catch up on previous shows at womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked. Many of my book reviews go on my website too at hazelbutterfield.com, and you can follow me on Twitter @nuttybutty. To end today's show, we're going to be having a sneaky peek at a previous show to whet your appetite. I hope you enjoy this. Right, my lovelies, now it is time for today's guest, Maria Lewis, and her book, The Graveyard of shift. The Killer is out there and they're listening. I love thrillers, and I read this in the perfect setting too, just kind of holidaying alone while also being a radio presenter who is regularly in the studio solo. It's a good old thriller slasher akin to the kind of Scream franchise, but with far better writing, less cheese, and a great dose of pop culture. Now, just how far will some people go to not not have their dreams slashed. Ah, so I did that to hold their ground when the world is oversaturated with competition and egos. Tinsel Monroe has finally worked her way through the ranks to have her own paid radio show, The Graveyard Shift. Literally, although a show focused on cult thrillers is going to attract a certain clientele, what unfolds is beyond most radio presenters' level of comfort. Luckily, Tinsel's sister Pandora is on hand with her investigative expertise to uncover what the hell is going on. Maria, thank you for joining us on Get Booked. How the devil are you? I'm good. What an amazing intro. I don't know if anyone in my— I don't know if I will take any compliment stronger and more seriously than saying the writing in the graveyard It's better than Scream. That has absolutely tickled my pickle. Definitely better than Scream 3 for sure. But I don't know if I'm quite up to the standard of the others, but I'll take it. It's— I mean, because it was kind of a little bit— I mean, you write characters fantastically, um, and I love how you kind of I was kind of giggling sometimes at a book about someone getting kind of constantly slashed and people getting murdered left, right, and center. But I think it was kind of like how you brought a lot of normalcy to these kick-ass characters who are still in, you know, shitty relationships and still kind of failing in other areas and smashing it in others. But that's normal, right? And I assume that was quite intentional. Yeah, I just think this idea, um, and it's a very old-school idea, I think the narrative on this is changing, but um, you know, separate to this being a slasher, right? Each character existing and having their own life. Like, this is the thing with stories like this, is I think the best kind of characters and the best sort of immersive storytelling— it doesn't feel like you're at the beginning. It feels like you've immediately stepped into somebody's life. You've stepped into the middle of their story. And this idea that women can have it all is a fairy tale and maybe impossible. And it's just like, I don't know about you, but I've never really had that thing where it's like, my career will be going great and relationships are going great simultaneously. It's like one thing or the other, or like one thing is up, one thing is down. Or like, you know, your health might be growing really great and then something else might be not going so great. And just that feeling, like the, you know, the, the narrative is that's abnormal, but the reality is that's normal. That's the human experience, right? Is that your life comes in seasons and there are sometimes that are like career season, sometimes a love season, sometimes a family season, all that kind of stuff. And so I wanted Tinsel and Pandora, both of them specifically, like, obviously Tinsel's our in-character. She's the one who brings the audience into the story and she's, you know, sort of the driver of narrative. But Pandora is such a big part of her world, and I really wanted those two sisters to feel really real and lived and authentic. As they are living through a slasher, you know what I mean? Yeah, it kind of interwoven really, really well and just kind of— you kept on getting these surprises of kind of what you would expect a certain character to be or what they would admit to. And then— no, I enjoyed it. I just— it kind of felt a little bit comforting in a weird way of a thriller slasher. Yeah, I mean, horror movies are my favorite thing in the world. It's like my favorite genre, period, whether that's TV, film, books, whatever. And it is a comfort for me, which I think it is for particularly like women's place in horror. I think it's a comfort for a lot of women is because you're watching the horror happen to somebody else rather than happen to you, because, you know, statistically women are the ones who horror happens to. And so the final girl mechanic has, I think, always been something that's really connected to me because it's like you watch these women who are interesting and complicated and prickly go through stuff and come out the other end. And yes, okay, maybe sometimes that's Michael Myers getting decapitated and somehow he comes back with a head in the next movie, but the like central message is, you know, it's there, it's, it's comforting in that way. And I was sort of— I've always been a fan of the literary slasher but as a genre, it really died off sort of in the '70s and '80s. And like, you know, I Know What You Did Last Summer was a book that I really loved. And sort of like, as slashers were taking over in the film space, they were sort of dipping off in publishing. And it's exciting as somebody who loves to consume them and had a lifelong dream of getting to write one, that we're at this intersection now where there's actually like quite a few slashers bubbling up pop culturally in film and television, but also in the literary space, which is wonderful because it means I can like elbow my way in there. Well, I was having a look actually because you've written quite a few books, and I'd say this is quite— this is slightly different, isn't it? It's what you normally— the normal genre. The Graveyard Shift is my 10th book, uh, and all of my previous books have all been, let's say, fantasy in some regard. Um, urban fantasy used to be the big term, but that sort of like died off. But like speculative fiction, You know, I've written a superhero book for Marvel. I had a series of 8 novels that was all about different types of women as monsters. So a banshee book, a werewolf book, a witch book, a medium book, a sprite, a selkie, and they all crossed over into like a big finale in book 8. So I'm better known for fantasy and speculative fiction, but genre broadly is the space that I operate in. And, you know, books are something that has always been my passion, but my primary job is as a screenwriter, and so I primarily work in film and television, writing on TV shows, writing films, stuff like that. And that space, I have done a lot more horror, but it's just really fascinating, like, especially when you do an event or a signing or something like that, or you pop it up at a pop culture convention, it's always really fascinating to see where people— like, what's the Venn diagram of intersection of where people know you from You have your book fans, obviously, but, um, you know, I also— in Australia, I was on this, um, live nightly news show for years called The Feed, which was like youth news. So you have a lot of loyal Feed watchers, and then you have people who know me from more of the film and television stuff, and it's intersex and all that way. But I started out my career as a police reporter at a local newspaper, and so yeah, it had always been something that had been really interesting to me, and I'd always had to do radio work in some capacity, whether that was on guest— guesting on other people's shows, or— and as I moved into more film and TV stuff, it was something that popped up all the time. So it was always like the world of radio was always in my life as a function of my job, but crime was always something that I was like covering and doing and familiar with the mechanics of, um, and trying to find a way for the two of them to intersect. And like, okay, yes, it is a slasher and there's always an element of disbelief, but you know, you see things like the Moscow Murders, for instance, and you're like, actually, this stuff happens all the time. Stuff like this happens every day. And young people, people from all different backgrounds, get caught up in this essentially like cycle of terror. And I think there's a lot to talk about in terms of like PTSD and women and how they move through that space. And I was just seeing so many literary slashes, um, talking about female trauma that were written by men or written by men under female pseudonyms. And it was really giving me the shits. And I was like, you know what, okay, I'm like 9 books in now. Like, it's really hard to pivot when you're known for one thing to shift to another genre. And so I was sort of hoping that horror broadly, which is what the, you know, The Graveyard Shift fits into, wasn't too much of a left turn from what different publishers know me for. And so I was thankful that my agent, um, Ed Wilson, was like really able to sort of, you know, fight to get it out there. And this being my first murder mystery, I hope I get to do more because I love the genre and I love getting to sort of like elbow my agenda in there, whether it's pop culturally or diversity or, you know, women and like different ages of women as well. I think is really important, this sort of like idea that everyone's, um, an 18-year-old virgin in stories. I'm just like, actually, there's a whole breadth of world and possibility to get into when you're talking about, um, you know, grown adults. Do you know what I found really interesting and relatable? I mean, also your knowledge of radio and community radio really helped kind of— I was so stressed, stressed about us having this chat because I was like, there's lots of things you can bluff your way through, but this isn't one of them. And also, like, you know, lots of people who have been consuming the book and have been reaching out about their responses to it don't have your background, don't work in radio in that space, so don't know, like, the technical specifics. And I really, like, shadowed a friend of mine, Hal Lotakefu, who runs The Hip Hop Show in Australia, which is like a sort of, you know, he's one of Australia's hip-hop pioneers. And that show was groundbreaking and it was the overnight slot. So it was one thing to be like, yes, I have radio experience, but like, can I shadow someone who works in that exact slot, who is in a studio by themselves, who is the only person in there and like, Urban Legend has that scene with Tara Reid where, um, she gets attacked while doing her, uh, sex show at the college campus. And I was just like, it's such a creepy setting, and if you can find a way to sort of stretch it out of just a setting or just a mechanic, I thought that was an interesting space to play in. Uh, yeah, definitely. I mean, the thing is, you, you nailed the whole element of why you wouldn't just— why Tinsel wouldn't just back off when she was in danger. Because we work our ass off to get into these positions, and some people work in radio for 10, 15, 20 years, still do, where they never get paid but they love it, or they want to bring something to the community. And when you finally get a job where you're getting paid, you're like, you are not going to scare me out of this. And then you have especially women going, I'm fed up of being made to be scared so that I am stan, and that came across in the book. So that kind of— not only was it kind of thrilling, but I was kind of getting angry for Tinsel at the same time. I was like, yes, you might get stabbed, but no one's taking that slot from you. Yeah, no, oh my God, I, um, I kind of always have like a thin sheen of rage sort of like just under the surface in my everyday life, right? And it's not just within journalism spaces. The things that used to really frustrate me was when you would get, you know, death and rape threats from people who are mad about a film that you wrote about, or they felt like you weren't giving Zack Snyder enough credit for XYZ thing and therefore you deserve to die. And it's like you couldn't operate in certain spaces. And it took me a while to sort of really understand that, you know. And these were people who would like find out where you lived, show up at events, like really threatening, scary stuff. And it was always this thing that the, like, the line that used to, like, piss me off the most was like, oh, they're harmless, or, oh, it's harmless, or like, you need to not take it so seriously. This assumption that women are safe, they're always going to be safe, and it would always come from men. And it would just really anger me because it is the feeling of unsafety, number one, but also the reality of unsafety, number two. And I have a lot of friends who work in media as well who have gone through similar sorts of things, and so when this is happening to Tinsel and the story is unfolding, it was really important that there was— you could speak to that real life experience but also speak to the reality of what women go through. But also like how hard you bust your tits to get into those positions, and usually male-dominated spaces. And community radio, God bless, in every city there are people out there who just give up hours of their lives to go and show up and do a show that's, you know, some niche type of like Antarctic reggae or something, you know what I mean? Like they're so passionate about a certain thing and like they donate their time and they donate hours of their lives. And so trying to capture that passion that people have for radio and the reach that it can have as well, because I know people think of it as like an analog thing, but in the internet age, your audience is almost limitless. Now, if people know everything is on, on the internet, even if it's a local station, You know, I, I have a local radio show where my sister in Spain listens every single week. You know, anyone can listen anywhere. It's completely irrelevant. You're right. You are absolutely everywhere. Yeah. And people are loyal, like people who tune into a show, if it's a niche thing and they like you and they like what you're about, they will tune in. And so that was also important for Tinsel's type of show, for it to be super specific. And to really like underline that idea of doesn't matter. Like, her audience reach is international essentially, and locally it's almost like she's a little bit ahead of the curve because the station doesn't quite get it. Um, but the people who listen get it. The people who are passionate about horror movies and pop culture are really passionate about it in the same way people are passionate about, you know, ukuleles or something, you know. The thing, if you love a thing, you love a thing. Well, do you know, one thing I love about this though is that if you find a way to connect with somebody, connectivity is brilliant for your well-being. Again, if it is just about ukuleles and you find your people, that can be so incredibly powerful. But, um, I mean, going back to what you said about, you know, women wanting to be strong, but, you know, we've also got to be safe as well. I had a situation recently where my son's girlfriend, we always chat so much and she kind of sees me as this woman who kind of doesn't take any crap on whatever. And we kind of take the mickey out of my son a little bit because he's a know-it-all. But he was important. You have to let them know who's in charge and it's women. Yes. Yeah. And occasionally, like, he'll say to me, right, I'm going to be half an hour late from going out today. I'm walking my girlfriend home. And she'll go, can you believe it? He thinks in this day and age that, you know, he's got to walk me home. And I just turned around and went, honey, unfortunately, He kinda does.