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

Hi @Strongle,

😂I know. I keep OMGing at the idea I am a novelist now!

Hi @limebasilandmandarin,

I am so thrilled you are reading it – thank you!

I'm pleased you feel sympathetic to Kate. I wanted to write a complex character who may be doing something that we consider to be morally wrong – cheating on her husband – but that doesn’t mean she is a bad person, because life, and people, are complicated. I think that is something women will be able to deal with about another woman whereas perhaps we would be less sympathetic to a male character. But also, the book is in many ways about the mental load of mothers, so I think as women maybe we can empathise with her on this, and understand her reasoning, whereas we might find that a bit harder if I had written it from the point of view of a male character.

Hi @Albababa,

I had one work of fiction turned down before this one – a middle grade fiction (aged 8-12) that I sent to as many agents as I could find but no one wanted it. (I have also previously published non fiction, but that's a whole different process).

I think the only secret is perseverance – I had already resigned myself to this one not getting picked up, and starting another, when agents started to express an interest. I saw an interview with the novelist Erin Kelly once where she said the only thing finished novels have in common is that someone finished them, which I loved.

Also, when my agent signed me it was on the understanding that the manuscript I had sent her was just the beginning. We spent six months editing it together, including a full structural edit where we pulled it apart and put it back together again, including introducing multiple timelines, before she felt it was ready to submit to publishers. So I suppose that’s a second ‘secret’ – you have to be prepared to edit and work at it.

Hi @countrybumpkin1,

Yes! It’s read by Hattie Morahan and it’s amazing – I listen to loads of non fiction but usually I read fiction, so I hadn’t really realised that they are ‘acted’ more than they are read. I was just astounded at how Hattie gave each character a unique feel and conveyed all the emotions. I am going to listen again very shortly and the good thing about audiobooks is no one knows what you are listening to so no one will realise quite how egotistical I am being!

Hi @CharlotteRumpling,

I am pleased you are enjoying it – thank you for reading!

It was deliberate – I wanted readers to wonder if Kate was having an affair with an older man because she has ‘daddy issues’. But also I didn’t think she was the kind of person who would be into younger men. She likes serious, thoughtful men (which younger men can be too, of course). But also I think she is attracted to James because he is older and in a powerful job – I don’t know that would work in the same way if he wasn’t older. We know that she likes ‘older men’ as her husband is also older than she is (not that I think women have to stick to a type!).

Hi @MoiraRoseVibes,

Thank you! Great question as Mumsnet is one of distractions.

I can’t work very well when people are in the house, and the school day is short, so I like to get any writing done at home (or sometimes in a coffee shop), when it’s just me before my children come home. But I find a few hours of concentrated writing is the most I can do at a time anyway, so after that I turn to reading what I have written, or editing, or other things. I like to have internet access so I can look things up as I go rather than have my text littered with notes to check things, but other than that I don’t really need anything, except maybe a cup of tea.

I can work late at night too – when everyone else is in bed – as long as I think I won’t be interrupted.

And editing things I have already written I can do in a more bitty way, grabbing time here and there or when other people are around – I just tune them out.

Ah I am another one currently reading! My question is about characters - I really really dislike Vic, but I'm not sure I'm supposed to!? Do you have strong feelings about whether you like/dislike characters when you write them or are you really attached to them all in different ways?

Hi @cakeflower,

Thank you! I think it’s just a case of making yourself write the first draft and finish it, because you can always go back and change it. If you stop too long to think about what you are doing then you lose momentum.

Hi @manateeandcake,

So pleased you are enjoying it! Thank you.

When I submitted it to my agent it was all set on the day of the siege (not a spoiler – that’s revealed pretty early on!) and it was my agent, Felicity Blunt, who is also an amazing editor, who said she thought it needed to be in separate timelines. Implementing that was the biggest change as it meant I basically had to take it apart and put it back together again in three strands – how Kate met her husband, how she met her lover, and the current day. After that though the edits were more tweaks than big changes – lots of my agent and then my editors saying in the margins ‘can you add a bit more about what she is feeling here?’

Hi @Nerdle,

My main inspiration was when my kids were younger – for a while I had three under five – and I was just so tired that all I wanted was to go to a hotel by myself and sleep. And whenever I said this out loud people thought I meant with a lover, which was not the case at all, but it quickly became apparent that it was almost more transgressive for a mother to say she wanted some time alone than to say she wanted to take a lover.

And also, post 9/11, I was very moved by the answerphone messages and notes that people left their loved ones when they knew they were going to die.

So these two things combined in my head to give me the idea.

I am working on the draft of another book, but not a sequel!

You can private message me on here and I’ll try to answer!

Oooh – a real life friend! Hello @LouHullHall [waves]. So pleased you were at the launch – it was such fun!

I think I would start with what information you’d want to write down for your partner if you were in Kate’s situation (whether with a lover or not).

I loved Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s The Art of a Lie last year – I put it down halfway through reading and lost it, and I was so desperate to carry on that bought another copy rather than wait for it to turn up. (It did turn up, so I gave my extra copy to a friend!)

Hi @Code7baby,

I know! It’s so surreal – she posted about the book on Instagram the other day, and again today, and she has ten million followers!

Sarah Jessica Parker is a massive bookworm – she was even a Booker judge. And in the US she has her own imprint, SJP Lit, which is part of a publishers called Zando. And that is who is published Room 706 in North America - it was released there today in fact.

It’s crazy because just a couple of months before they offered me a deal, I was watching SJP on the stage in London when she was in Plaza Suite. And we went to a restaurant afterwards and the waiter saw our programme on the table and was telling us how much they loved her and we were agreeing. And of course I grew up watching her in things, most notably Sex and the City which first aired when I was a student, and I remember watching it at the time with all my housemates, as well as many more times once I got the DVDs.

So yes the cover quote is amazing, as was hearing her say my name on her Instagram video and on US tv. It’s like it’s happening to someone else!

Hi again @TooManyCatsSpoilTheBroth,

My pile of books to read is so tall! At the moment I am reading two types of book. The first is books by people who have said nice things about mine, such as Chip Cheek (great name!) who wrote Cape May, Alina Grabowski who wrote Women and Children First, Tracy Sierra who wrote Nightwatching and Hazel Hayes who wrote Out of Love. T

The other type I am reading are ones by other debut novelists, as loads of us are on a big Whatsapp group together to share information and be supportive. There are too many to list but include MK Oliver’s A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage, Rebecca Fallon’s Family Drama, Rebecca Hannigan’s Darkrooms, Tanya Sweeney’s Esther is Now Following You, Linda Wilgus’s The Sea Child, Matilda Wilding’s The Waiting List. I have proofs of some of these and am also buying them as they come out. (And now I feel bad for all the ones I haven’t named, but there are so many!)

I also love non-fiction and am really looking forward to Rebecca Coxon’s Inconceivable, and I just finished listening to Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton, which has been out for a while, and is just wonderful.

Hi @GreyGooseDown,

Thank you! So pleased you like it so far.

Next I am trying to write the next one. I’ve done a first draft but I now know that is just the end of the beginning, so a long way to go. And promoting this one, which means going to ask many bookshops and literary festivals and book groups as I can fit in (which so far, I love).

Hi @Arlanymor,

Definitely somewhere in between. I knew the setting, the key points, and the ending, but the characters revealed themselves to me as I wrote. I don’t know if it’s a finessed process, but there were lots of similarities to the way I have written the first draft of my next project, even down to both weirdly being within about 100 words off each other in terms of word count at the end of the first draft.

Hi @MelMelMelanie,

Thank you so much for reading!

A lot of people tell me how much Vic seems like the perfect husband, which always surprises me as I find him a bit wet. I don’t know that I have strong feelings about whether I like my characters or not, mainly because I have tried to make them as complex as anyone you meet in real life. So no one is all good or all bad, and everyone has their strengths and vulnerabilities. By the time Room 706 was through the editing process, I had lived with the characters for so long that they felt like family, and as with family, in the nicest possible way, they’re your family whether you like it or not.

Ah that's so interesting - I definitely don't see him as the perfect husband, I think he'd drive me mad😁

Hi Ellie, I haven't read the book but will based on this chat! I've always wondered with creating characters whether writers map out their whole lives in detail beyond what's in the story. Is that something you do? Or is it more like a vague idea of what they've been up to outside the perimeters of the book?

Hi @GloriousClark,

Thank you – that’s really kind.

So my guess is that every writer is different, but for me I didn’t map out their whole lives unless I needed that detail for the story. What I did do was keep detailed spreadsheets about what happened when, so I always knew how old each character was, and at what stage of life, in relation to the other characters. So they each were given a date of birth. And, for example, I know how old James (the lover) was when Kate (the main character) was at university.

I also gave each important event - eg every time Kate and James meet in a hotel for sex – a date, so that I could be right about, for example, how many times they have met in the past few years.

Thanks everyone - that was fun, talking (writing) about myself for two hours! I hope you like the book, and I'm pretty easy to find on Instagram if you have questions once you've finished it. x

Thank you. Good luck with the book!

@EllieLevenson Thank you so much for replying to my question. I've added all your recommended books to my "to read in 2026" list. I haven't read any of them so really grateful for the recommendations.

I can't stop thinking about Room 706 and I want to talk to everyone I know about the ending, and about Kate, so I've been telling all my friends to read it so we can discuss!

Belated thank you for this answer. Just catching up. Seeing 706 everywhere.