Spicy Coming Of Age YA Romance | Episode 113 | Author Interview

We are living in a world that we should be further ahead with women's rights and women's wants and desires. You have to know yourself before someone else knows you. Yeah, I think that's what I really tried to go back into my teenage self and what she wanted, you know, during those like very, very important times in your life where you're having your first social experiences, but then also the risk of, you know, pregnancy and like the impacts and consequences on your life can be drastic. So I'll leave the readers with some tantalizing cliffhanger there. Tosh Daugherty, welcome to the Bookaholic Podcast. Thank you so much, Deidre. It's a pleasure to be here. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So I want to go ahead and just dive into what you're offering. You have a YA romance novel. I do. Although it's not your typical YA romance here, in case anyone can see the video, it's these perfectly careless things. It's more of a coming-of-age spicy novel and because romance readers have very specific definitions of what they like when it comes to the ending and those kinds of things, so I won't give it away, but it's more like romantic fiction, I would say. Okay, all right. Now, so famously I have said on this channel, romance usually has turned me off, but I've come a long way and I have read some romance. As a matter of fact, and I'm getting on here talking about this, Fine Print, Lauren Asher, I've read one of those and I'm on the second one and I like it because it's got great sex in it. I didn't want the kind where it was a warm embrace and they finally kissed on the last page. I didn't want any of that kind of romance. I wanted romance with full-blown adult sexual activity and that's what that offers me. And is this what this book offers people? So it does and the interesting thing is that the main characters are 15 years old, so it's like their first love story. So it's even more intimate in the sense that you're getting to see for the first time these characters as they're falling in love, different sex scenes. There's even a self-love scene in terms of the female main character masturbates as well during the book, which I think is important because we never get these depictions of female pleasure and you really actually get to explore what is her sexuality, what does she want, and is her 15-year-old boyfriend, first lover, able to give that to her or not? Exactly and you know I agree that is very important in the fact that we are living in a world that we should be further ahead with women's rights and women's wants and desires and we seem to be going backwards. Right. So this is definitely something that people need to know and see. You have to know yourself before someone else knows you. So that's very important in a coming-of-age story and learning about your first love. It's very important. Yeah, exactly. It's also semi-autobiographical in those scenes as well and I really, I had all my journal entries from much earlier in my teenage years and yeah I think that's what I really tried to go back into my teenage self and what she wanted, you know, during those like very very important times in your life where you're having your first social experiences but then also the risk of, you know, pregnancy and like the impacts and the consequences on your life can be drastic. So I'll leave the readers with some tantalizing cliffhanger there. Yes, yes, yes. Well, tell us a little bit about the book, the main character and her boyfriend. Give us a little insight. So the first scene is the main character, Abby. She's at a party with some very fancy teenagers in the private school London scene and she's just, you know, desperate to fit in, desperate to get the boys' attention because that's how she's going to feel like validated, you know, when she's first starting out but then she also has dreams of becoming an artist and a creative and so and that's very against her mother Charlotte Chesterton's desires. So she's trying to like discover herself, you know, her own identity and then at this other house party that she goes to she meets Jonah Wood who is another 15 year old, they're the same age, and he's from New York so he's a very like American. This is, the book is set in London and he's one of those 15 year olds who smokes a lot of cigarettes and reads Proust and thinks that he's like the most intellectual, you know, kid who understands philosophy and so at least for a good chunk of the book in the first part is just their exploration together and all of the ways that he in his, you know, dark and like interesting character brings out her abilities and capabilities as an artist and what does it mean to be an artist, you know, and another central theme of the book there is how, you know, we always think of artists as very troubled people, right, like do you have to be depressed and like cut off your ear in order to like create good art, you know, and Jonah kind of thinks that you do have to do that and Abby isn't so sure so she has to also decide for herself like what artists are and if she can be one. Then another central theme of the book is once she goes off with Jonah, you know, she's not as grateful for the people that raised her, you know, her mother, she has a housekeeper, you know, she's quite a privileged West London girl and so it's really reckoning there as well of like once you have these new characters in your life, whether it's a boyfriend or a partner, are you just going to ditch everyone who's, you know, who's ever mattered to you including her best friend Julie. So yeah, lots of themes to explore there and I really enjoyed writing the book. It took me a way too long to write it so I'm very glad that it's out in the world now. Well, I'm sure that is a relief. You know, there are times in your younger life that you are forced to recognize which path do I want to take? Is it kind of going against what people call the norm or what my parents would call the norm? I don't want to be a disappointment to my parents but then I've got to be true to myself. So yeah, definitely that's an engagement, a bridge that all of us have to cross, you know, at some time or another. So it's definitely great that that book addresses that part and it doesn't have to mean that you abandon the whole thing but that's part of growing up that you do obtain your own set of values and your own set of desires, you know, so that's growing up basically, you know. So you said you're glad that it's out in the world. So let's go a little bit back into your journey as a writer. What made you want to put pen to paper, so to speak? Well, I am now 29 years old but I actually started this book when I was 14. So it's been a long journey. I started writing, I was doing, I applied to some, there was like the Vogue Young Writers Competition and things that I was applying to when I was like 13, 14 years old. Obviously didn't win anything but then my English teacher actually showed me a couple newspaper articles at the time about a girl who went to my high school who was a published author. Like she, her family worked in the publishing industry and she had written a book in one summer and like got it published and I was like, oh how difficult. That wasn't hard. How difficult could that be? So I started writing it and I also, what's crazy to think about is that when you're 14, you're writing a book, you're still learning how to type and how to write and how to speak. So, you know, there was a lot of iterations that already had to go through there but I wrote that book for seven summers like consecutively before I got to business school. I went to an undergraduate business school and then I decided I was like, oh no, I can't write, you know, romantic coming-of-age fiction anymore. Like I'm going to be a very serious business lady and I'm going to make lots of money and I'm going to just, you know, retire in my house in like Palm Springs or something. And then, you know, through my early 20s I was just kind of unhappy. Like I was working in these tech jobs, I was making good money, living in New York City, San Francisco, like really expensive places and living a lifestyle that like I didn't really care about, you know. And actually I had a very traumatic thing happen to me when I was in this park in Mexico. So I was recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder and then that was really, you know, something, there's nothing like a near-death experience for you to be like, this is important to me. I wanted to publish this story, I wanted to finish this book. And so, yeah, that's how I got back into it and then three years later again, here we are. How did you have the bravery? Because even though you might have hated your job, there's been millions of people that hate their jobs but stick with their jobs because they've got to pay the mortgage. How did you do the brave act of you put away your six-figure job, correct? And you're a full-time writer. Yeah, I actually still do consulting, like data consulting on the side. So I do recommend for anyone who is like in the world of the creativeness, having some kind of like side hustle and, you know, we all have our three jobs these days. Yeah, absolutely. I really recommend that. But I think also it helped that I was just so unhappy in my job. I was working in like data analytics and I actually still do a lot of that work and it's interesting and like can be intellectually challenging. But I think also I had like saved some money. I have like a very high tolerance for risk, I guess. Like a lot of my friends were like, and also you said mortgage, but I would recommend not getting a mortgage. If you want to quit your job and move to Mexico and become a writer, I highly recommend not having a mortgage. So it's interesting because I'm like 29 and I want to have a family someday and I'm just setting fire to like the potential income that I like could be making. Right. But I think it's important to be happy, you know, like you've got to do what you got to do to be happy, I think. Yeah. Well, definitely. I'm much older than you. And so I will tell you definitely happiness is extremely important. Extremely. So don't ever let that go. You know, whether having children is going to make you happy or getting a PhD in ancient history is going to make you happy or living in the mountains is going to make you happy, I think. I think that's also what, you know, this near-death experience kind of taught me is just like a reckoning with that where like you don't have forever necessarily. If you want it to be done, you got to decide and then you make that decision. You're like, okay, I'm going to finish my book. I'm going to publish it. And yes. Yeah. And then we get to do fun things like this. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Definitely. There is a time limit to everything in this space. There's a time limit. So, yeah, I agree with you 100%. Now, because you said this book is somewhat semi-autobiographical, you know, so how does your family, parents, mother feel about your writing journey? That's a really great question, Deidre. So actually, what's very useful is that very little of my family actually features in the book because it's more about, you know, her experience with her friends. Obviously, the first boyfriend character appears quite, he's there in the book and I know that some of his people have read the book. I know that as well. Okay. But basically, I think actually what's more concerning to my family is like my newsletter that I write, which is a lot more about my personal love life and sex life or mis-educated. And I actually had a conversation with my dad about this a couple of months ago because I would post about it on LinkedIn and I actually get like a quarter of my traffic sometimes when I post an article from LinkedIn. So it's a very important way for me to reach new readers, like, you know, young professional women. But then I would be writing articles like how to host a naked party or like, you know, and I would just be like, oh god, like, I love my father, but I'm also just like, he's working in the bond industry and I'm like, I should just tell him, like, be honest with him, like, hey, you might not want to read. Right, right. But I approached him and I talked to him about it and I was like, look, this channel is a very important channel for my growth and like my cousins, aunts, whatever, like everyone else is reading it on here, but he's just like, yep, it's fine, just I won't read it and I won't comment on it. And I'm like, that's, in the modern millennial age, that's as much as support as you can want from your father who worked in bonds. Exactly. Yeah. So I'm quite lucky in that sense. Obviously, I would love for them to be like, oh my god, amazing, like, you're writing and pushing boundaries and doing things. But I think their tolerance and acceptance of me is definitely enough for now. Well, at least you didn't say that they wanted you to go back to some soul crushing job. True. I think secretly they, I think secretly my mother worries about my finances. Okay. But actually with freelancing, it's actually kind of a whole area that's opening up right now. You know, freelancing engineers, designers, like all these different jobs are going remote. And even I have more stability in my freelancing career than I did in my day job, whereas my day job, they could fire me, you know, on the spot, whereas in my freelancing career, I have my own contracts, like I have, you know, a couple of months worth of money and saved up. So there is actually more stability in freelancing in some ways. So yeah, definitely, definitely. Now, while going back to our world of how people are feeling about books here and there, and back to the women's rights and reproductive rights and all these things, what would you do if your book was placed on a ban list? Because of its sexual content, they're underage teenagers, some people are saying, you know, abstain, and all of these things. How do you address that group of people? Yeah, well, selfishly, I think at first, I would be very happy, because that would have meant that I would have gotten my book out there, enough for it to be banned. Like, I'm still really early in my own author journey. I think it would really probably catalyze my experiences and feelings about women's rights even more. Luckily, I also have a self-publishing platform. So anyone can just buy the book, you know, and I own all the rights to the book. So it's not like, you know, the publishers can pull it from the shelves. It's like, right, it's there, it's on the internet. I think that's also really important, right, for women authors and writers especially. Anyone who's writing and owning their own story, you want to have, retain as much rights to your work as you can. Yes. And that's also an incredible privilege. That's also why I really think writing is important, is because if we don't tell our own stories, then, you know, nobody else will. And they can, you know, censor us or just present a very unrealistic image of what it's like to be a teenager. Right, right. So yeah, I am a little bit to know. I mean, like, my book does have a lot of sex in it. I would say, like, 14-year-olds probably, like, shouldn't read it. But 15-year-olds, it's crazy because the main characters are 15. So by the time you're 15, it's like, you are already experiencing all of these things, right? So it's like, it should be completely available for those people. But yeah, you know, culture wars, it's a whole, whole thing. And I live in Mexico and, you know, I'm just like, on the edge of it, really. And working remotely on the internet, you still have a lot of power today. You know, you can post anything that you want. You can write whatever you want. So yeah, I would say keep writing, keep writing and telling your stories out there, people. Most definitely, most definitely. Now, so do you have a sophomore book on the shelf or in the queue? I do. The next book is going to be more romantic teen fiction, this time set in California. So it's the first half of the book, it's going to be a really beautiful, just like your most intense summer love story that you've, ever had, you know, like the beautiful fling with the weather and everything. And then the second half of the book is their experience meeting again five years later to see whether a summer love story can actually survive in reality, which is very different. I'm very busy, but I'm excited to be starting to write that book, start writing that book this year. Oh, that sounds very, very good. The first book took place in London, right? Yep. Okay. And then the second's taking place in California. I like how you did the geography hop. That's really good. I like that. Now, so where can readers get their hands on this book? Well, you can go to tashdoherty.com forward slash book. That's my main book page, or you can find it on Amazon and Audible. There's also an audiobook version, which I made last year. And in case anyone can't see, it's These Perfectly Careless Things. So yeah, and it's print on demand, so you can get as many copies as you want off of Amazon, which is super exciting. Thanks. Yes. Yes. Well, we certainly will have the links in this video's description box below of the book, contacting you and all of those things, as well as on my blog, on my website, book-a-holic.com. Tash Doherty, I love it. It was great talking to you, and I can't wait to get my hands on your book. Thanks, Deidre. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks.