Antonia Hodgson and Luke Brown Meet the Author

Time now for Meet The Author. Luke Brown and Antonio Hodgson

first`time novelists. Hodgson's book is an 18th`century...

Luke Brown's My Biggest Lie is a funny portrait of the publishing

industry. Two different books, but they have something in common, they

are both publishing editors. `` of their authors are both publishing

editors. This book is set in the 18th`century

prison, a grim place. For those who don't know, give us a brief

description. This is a place that people went when they had no money

which happened a lot here. It is just after the great financial

collapse. People were thrown into this prison that was run for profit.

There is a weird situation where although you have no money, you're

still bled dry by the keeper who would charge you for everything. At

the same time, on one half of the prison, it was reasonably

comfortable. On the other side, it was where people really were in

trouble, they were starving and dying. They carried the bodies out

every morning. Seven or eight and light. The trick was to stay on the

right side of the wall. This is based on facts. Several of the

characters in the book were historical figures. Absolutely. The

keeper at the time was later put on trial for murder for the brutal

treatment of the prisoners. This is a sort of, to use a technical term,

Schaller makes. It is a whodunnit and historical accounts. I love the

idea of having a murder mystery in a prison. The sense of claustrophobic

and having to solve the murder before he was the next victim. I

thought it had its own innate tension. Luke, yours is based on

fact, too, it is a satire on the publishing industry. There is a

hero, not unlike yourself, I suspect. He goes to Buena 's errors,

why? It begins with him being drummed out

of the publishing industry after being dumped by his girlfriend. He

holds itself responsible for the death of his kind of father figure,

a Booker prize`winning novelist. To get over his shame and to try and

redeem himself and live life more truthfully, a lot of those problems

come from the fact he's a liar and storyteller, he flies to Buena

Cyrus, there's an irony that as Buenos Aies is one of the... One of

the things that strikes you is his absolutely enormous consumption of

alcohol and illegal drugs and equally enormous consumption by

people around him. If the publishing industry really like that? May be on

the fringes. Most of the publishing industry are people working hard in

the office. But the world of publishing he works in, he has a

very bad role model, his boss. He takes a lot of drugs, he is known

for publishing notorious authors, the rock stars and the film stars,

so his mythology of being this had a nest is very helpful for him as. ``

hedonist. People will look at this and save ER real characters. They

are just thinly disguise. Not at all. I have borrowed details from

myself and details from archetypes, the salesman editor or the drunk,

but ultimately it is an amalgamation of different characteristics. My

friends are still queueing up to play themselves in the book. You

were until recently a publishing editor. And you still are editor in

chief at Little Brown. There is a line in Luke 's book, a few things

less dignified than adept who rates. `` and editor rights.

That question is always hard to and so. You just wants to write. You

just do it. There is no, for me, anyway, thinking that I would quite

like to write a novel one day. It is always something I wanted to do. I

always told myself stories. Really, it was a question about discipline.

So was getting a job in the brushing her displacement, the nearest you

could get to the right? Iraq I don't think so, I realised early that I

was rubbish at everything. I was good at reading, writing and talking

about books. Everything else, I was hopeless at. There was no choice in

the matter. Does your experience of being in editor and publisher,

hasn't made it easier for you? In some ways. I think it has helped me

get over some anxieties. I can recognise the hot points, the places

where for instance after you finish the book, but before it comes out,

where there is nothing you can do and all you can do is wait to get

the response from readers. It is a very, very emotional scary time.

Although it didn't stop me feeling those things, I could recognise them

and think that is a funny period. I could tell myself to calm down.

Luke, is it something you had always wanted to do? To become a publisher

to become a writer? No, but it was borne out of the same impulse. I was

reading and writing, I've always read a lot and I am interested in

style. They were born from the same impulse, I think. I am not sure I

would not have been a better editor if I did not write, I may have read

more, but as a writer it gives you a creative route into the novel, as

well, and allows you to look at things in structural ways.

Thank you both. Good evening. Today, we managed to

get up to 19 Celsius in the south`east corner. There's cold air

coming down from the North, coming behind this belt of cloud. It

brought a change to the weather. Still thick enough, it gave us one

or two hit and miss showers. Many places becoming dry and the cloud

retreats