AMA with novelist (and former MNHQer!) Ellie Levenson, Tuesday 20th Jan @ 6pm

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi there,

We’re delighted to announce an AMA with novelist (and former MNHQer!) Ellie Levenson, next Tuesday (20th Jan) at 6pm.

Ellie is a freelance journalist and her first novel, Room 706, has just been published: “a heart-stopping, original debut novel about an ordinary woman caught somewhere she shouldn't be when the worst happens”. Sarah Jessica Parker called it 'poignant, immersive, and utterly human’.

The novel follows Kate, who should be heading home to her husband and children but instead finds herself trapped in a hotel under siege - with a secret that could change everything.

Please post your questions for Ellie below, and join her on the thread on Tuesday evening to hear the answers.

As always, please remember our guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil.

Thanks,
MNHQ

Former MNHQer? Tell us more about THAT and I'll buy your book, Ellie! nc so as not to look like a pick me

This is exciting! The book is excellent.

Which aspects of the book did you find hardest writing?
what are your tips by getting an amazing agent?
As a former MNHQ-er… tell us do you have a secret notebook of anecdotes picked up from threads here that could 100% be woven into a novel because they’re so juicy/improbable?!

I loved your book Ellie; when you had the gist of it in your head; did you always intend to leave the ending unanswered? And if you were offered a movie deal, would you insist the ending remained the same?

Hi Ellie,

Can you tell us more about the book and is it the kind of book that you usually enjoy reading yourself?

Thank you 😊

Oh wow!!

Hi Ellie, I'm currently reading your book! I find myself feeling very sympathetic to Kate in a way I probably wouldn't if she was a bloke having an affair - do you think it would have been harder to write a male character doing the same to his family in a sympathetic way? Thank you!

Hi Ellie, was it difficult to get published? Did you have lots of previous novels turned down before this success? What's the secret!!?

Have you listened to the audiobook? Is it weird hearing your own book being read?_

I am halfway through the book.
Enjoying it but I wish James wasn't so much older than Kate. Makes him seem quite a perv. Was that deliberate?

Hi Ellie! Can’t wait to read your book. How do you avoid distractions when you are writing?

Really enjoying the book. Do you have any advice on writing / publishing a successful novel?

Another one enjoying the book very much. It is such a strong idea -- you must have known you were onto something from early on. I'm wondering if the book went through a lot of changes during the writing process and if so, what were they?

In terms of writing nuts and bolts, how many hours/pages constitutes a good writing day for you?
Did you plan a lot in advance or just let the story and characters unfold as you went along?

What was your inspiration for this book? And lots of people are talking about the ending - I’ve not read it yet but are you writing a sequel?

I have much to ask about the ending but hard to ask without spoiling!

Hi Ellie
It was fab to be at your book launch!
I am part of a school book club, so alas no wine 🍷. So here is my question. Which discussion question would you kick off with to open a discussion about your book?
Second question. With time so precious , which book from last year- (read/or released last year) was your must not miss?

Looking forward to reading this! How on earth did you get the SJP quote on the cover?

LOVED your book and now wondering what to read next. Any particular books on your recently-read or to-read pile that you could recommend?

I'm half way through and loving Room 706 - what a brilliant book! What comes next?

Hi everyone! Thank you for the questions. I'm two mins early so let me take a few moments to read through the questions and then I will try my best to answer them. x

Hi @ConstancedeCoverlet,

Haha – I am fairly sure I signed an NDA! But I’d been an avid Mumsnet user since I was TTC (which took a couple of years) and then worked my way through various areas of the talk boards, from Baby Names to Children’s Health, My current favourite is Christmas, and I always look in on Chat and AIBU. I was working as a freelance journalist and media consultant alongside my other job lecturing in journalism, so when the opportunity came up to take on some freelance work at Mumsnet I was overjoyed, as I spent so much time using the site anyway.

Hi @WizzyBizzy,

Thank you – I am so pleased you enjoyed the book!

Without giving too much away, I think the hardest part was working out how to convey a sense of fear without the main characters actually meeting the terrorists, which was important as I deliberately don’t name the terrorists or what they represent as the book is not meant to be political in that way, but about the lives of my characters.

@WizzyBizzy

As for getting an agent – if you read everything online it’ll tell you to send your query letter and sample to maybe ten at a time, wait for feedback and then if you get rejections to incorporate this into your query and try again with ten more. But I am quite an all or nothing person, and also if you did that you could be waiting months for any response at all, so I sent it to every agent I could find. Which isn’t necessarily the right approach as then there’s no one left to send it to if you do get feedback or make changes, but it did stack the numbers in my favour!

Regarding a secret notebook – I don’t need one, I can just Google anything and a Mumsnet thread always comes up in the results!! If anything, it has made me more scared of writing things, as there is always someone on a thread who calls it out as bullshit, even when you are fairly sure the poster is completely genuine.

HI @Kateakakaty,

Thank you! Again, no spoilers, but it was always going to have the ending it has, and when I met agents, and editors, that was the one thing I wasn’t prepared to change in the edits. (I mean I was prepared to work on the writing to make it as good as possible, but not to change what happens.)

But I see any film or tv adaptation (here’s hoping…) as a different piece of work. It’s not an area where I have any experience other than as a viewer, so I think the only way it could possibly work is to let the experts get on with making what they think is the best thing they can make, and not be too precious. But ask me again if it happens, and we’ll see what my reaction is to anything that gets made…

Hi @TooManyCatsSpoilTheBroth,

So the book is what publishers would call commercial reading group fiction, but I have termed in my head ‘Books for women who are clever but tired’. Which is all Mumsnetters I think. And in fact in the book my main character Kate works for a magazine that is for this group of women too. (Of course I would like men to read it too!). But what I mean is that it will hopefully be a page turner, and make you think, but there aren’t too many long words and you won’t have to reread sentences to understand them.

And yes, that is exactly what I like reading myself. I’m not comparing myself to these writers at all, but books I have read recently that I think work for clever but tired women are things like Alison Espach’s The Wedding People, Katherine Heiney’s Early Morning Riser and Elizabeth Strout’s My name is Lucy Barton (I was late to reading this but I found it on the shelf of a holiday cottage we were in last year and devoured it). They’re all American but there are British authors I like too. I have loved everything by Kit de Waal. Oh and I loved Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis which I read last year.

This is exciting! Mine is a simple question - pantser or plotter - or somewhere in between? I am the former but I do have a Post-It note addiction and I love a set of highlighters and a whiteboard... do you have a finessed process that helps you to develop from genesis to ending? Congratulations by the way!