Rose Carlyle: thrill ride

Your second novel, No One Will Know, was released in October. What is it about?

It’s about a young woman who finds herself completely alone in the world and unexpectedly pregnant. Then she receives what seems like the dream job offer to move to a remote, windswept island off the coast of Tasmania to work for a wealthy couple as their nanny. It all seems too good to be true, and obviously it is because this is a thriller, but what I love about this book is I feel the twist is really unguessable.

The Girl in the Mirror was described as an overnight success. Did it feel like that?

The joke is that you slave for years to achieve overnight success so, no, it didn’t feel like that, but compared with how long it takes most writers to get published, I think it was pretty quick.

I actually wrote a novel while I did my creative writing masters in 2017, then I stuck it under the mattress and never looked at it again. I started writing The Girl in the Mirror almost immediately afterwards. It was written in six months, I spent another six editing it, then foolishly sent it to one publisher. They didn’t read it because anyone who knows what they’re doing gets an agent, but I didn’t know anything about publishing.

At the time, I was doing a mentorship through the New Zealand Society of Authors, and my mentor was a retired agent who said, ‘I might send it to my old agency’. I let the publisher know and next thing they’ve read it and they wanted it.

From that point on, things really started happening. They sold it to HarperCollins in New York and then to other publishers in other countries in the English-speaking world, and then in translation. I was just learning as it happened. I would get an email saying, ‘you have a book-to-film agent’ and I would think, ‘Oh, there’s such a thing as a book-to-film agent?’

How did that success impact the experience of writing your second novel?

There’s a lot of pressure. Nobody cares if you succeed or not with your first novel; if you sell 500 copies then people probably think that’s more than you might have sold. But when your first novel is a success, then people expect that of your second.

I only ever wanted to be published, so that goal is achieved and it’s not enough to just get published anymore – and I understand more about how my publisher is banking on me.

On the other hand, I’ve learned that all I can do is write the book, then it’s up to other people to design the cover, do the audio book and the marketing strategy. I leave that to the experts, and I just write the books.

What did you most gain from doing your Master of Creative Writing?

When you start writing, you’re entering a profession, and most professions require three years of study for a degree before you can start practising them. Whether you do a degree to become a writer or you find other ways to learn the craft, you’ve got to put in the time to learn.

It’s fantastic that creative writing is recognised as a degree course because it gave me an opportunity to make a career shift at quite a difficult time in my life, and to do that with a sense of validation and motivation. The course is taught by acclaimed, published authors and there’s also great companionship because you’re a group of 12 on this rollercoaster together. It’s been great to have people around who are on the same journey.

rosecarlyle.com