Mandy Robotham – International Best Sellers

Mandy Robotham’s first World War II story The German Midwife was an international best seller, and she hasn’t looked back since. Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today on The Joys of Binge Reading Mandy talks about where the idea to write a book about Hitler’s baby came from, why WWII stories are hot, and how she transitioned from being a midwife herself to a fulltime author. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Where the idea of Hitler’s baby came from The importance of finishing the book ‘Instant success’ takes time Her passion for midwifery The writers she’s learned most from Why WW II stories are so popular Where to find Mandy Robotham:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mandy-Robotham-Author-and-Midwife-324181038399367/ Twitter: @mandyrobothamuk Instagram: robothammandy Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/mandy-robotham What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Mandy Robotham – author Jenny: But now, here’s Mandy.  Hello there Mandy and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Jenny Wheeler: You appear to have enjoyed instant success because you’ve written two books so far and they’ve both had very good sales. You are a Globe and Mail, USA Today and USA and Australia Kindle top seller. That is a pretty remarkable achievement but I doubt very much that it did happen overnight. Tell us about that. Introducing Mandy Robotham Mandy Robotham: No. Like many writers, I went through a fair few rejections with the first book, lots of people saying, we don’t know where this fits in the market, don’t know what this is about. Then I would question, is this a really silly idea, the idea of a midwife helping Hitler’s baby. And then I would question it again. I don’t know, something in me told me that I had to have faith in the book. I was on the point of giving up for about six months. I thought, I’ll take a break from writing. I couldn’t deal with rejections again and again and again. Then a friend of mine called Lorraine Ferguson who’s a writer said Avon are taking open submissions without an agent. I thought I’ll give it a go and I popped it off to them and then I completely forgot about it. About three months later they came back and said, we love this book. It was a jumping around the room moment, I can tell you that, getting that email. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. As you’ve mentioned that book was called The German Midwife and it looks like it had a very fascinating plotline. It is the story of a prison camp midwife who was charged with the care of Eva Braun, who’s pregnant, and all of the philosophical and moral questions that raises – does she serve the Third Reich which she loathes and keep the baby alive, or what does she do? How on earth did you get to start out on that sort of twisted story? Write what you know… Mandy Robotham: There’s always a thing in writing to write what you know. I felt that my first book should be about midwifery since I was in the middle of it and embroiled in it at the time. And then midwives always chat a lot about births afterwards – that was a beautiful birth, that was fantastic, what happened here? We chat a lot and we talk about the minor morals. Should you tell someone this? Is it worth mentioning that? It got me thinking, where would our morals go to if we were really, really tested? Would there be a certain situation where we wouldn’t actually want to help, or we would hold back a bit from helping a certain mother or a baby? I got to thinking, well, there’s only one family line I can think of at the moment. It mushroomed from there really. Jenny Wheeler: How long ago was that? When was that book published? Mandy Robotham: That book came out in 2018, but it had been about three years in the writing, making, marketing, selling, so it had been quite a while. Then The Secret Messenger came out in 2019 and now I’m on to The Berlin Girl which will come out later this year. Jenny Wheeler: Already at that time World War II historical fiction had started to rise in popularity, hadn’t it? Have you got any idea why that popularity seems to be so hot at the moment? The fascination with WW II Mandy Robotham: I think it’s because it’s one of those periods still in relatively living history in that there aren’t that many survivors still around but there are relatives of those survivors. I think we divide up the 20th century into pre-War and after-War. It was such an iconic catastrophic point. Whether or not we’ll talk about the pandemic in those sorts of ways later on in history who knows, but it was such an iconic period of time that I think people don’t want to forget it and I don’t think we should because I think we should never do it again. Jenny Wheeler: It is interesting that that period was already quite popular and yet you still had difficulty at the beginning finding someone who could see the potential in the book. The German Midwife – Mandy Robotham Mandy Robotham: I think it was because I didn’t write it as a World War II book; it just happened to be set in World War II. I didn’t write it as a romance; it just happened to have a romantic line to it. I was quite naïve to the marketing and the publishing world, incredibly naïve, and I just wrote a book. I think that’s probably what a lot of debut authors do – they write a book and hope it plops somewhere into the market. I was lucky enough that Avon did see that potential. Jenny Wheeler: It became an international bestseller, I believe. Mandy Robotham: Yes, and I’m still pinching myself today about that. Jenny Wheeler: For those who might not have heard the storyline, that pregnancy was definitely a fictional one, wasn’t it? Mandy Robotham: Yes, it definitely was fiction, and I make a real point of saying that in the author’s notes in the book. There has been lots of speculation as to whether Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had a child but there’s no real basis to it. It was my imagination doing what they call alternate history, a what if? What if Hitler had won the war? What if he’d have a child, what if? It is a complete fiction. Jenny Wheeler: But it does raise that interesting question of how much you respect the history and how much you allow yourself to have some writer’s imagination – the blending of fact and fiction. Do you speak or write German, and how much research did you have to do for all of these books? Blending fact and fiction Mandy Robotham: I don’t write or speak German and at the time I’d never been to Germany. Since I’ve been to Berlin and in fact I’m trying to get there again at the moment. But how writers used to do their research without the internet is a mystery to me. There was a lot of research, a lot of internet to start with, a lot of books, a lot of diaries, memoirs that I read. Then going down to the British Library which is a fantastic resource in London and actually trawling through newspapers and some quite rare books and rare texts that they’ve got. It’s using a whole selection. It’s a lot of time I spend my nose in a book. Jenny Wheeler: Getting the facts right is important to you. Women acting as couriers – called Staffette – made up a quarter of the Italian Resistance Mandy Robotham: Yes, it is. There’s a certain point where you have to think, no, this is a fictional book, I can stray from it. But there was a certain point in the book where I really wanted Eva to have the baby on D-Day. I thought that would be a really good point. Then I discovered that Hitler was at the Berghof on D-Day and so I had to move it somewhere because somebody in historical circles would pick that up. Jenny Wheeler: Your latest book, The Secret Messenger, moves between contemporary London and Venice in 1944 and it involves the Italian Resistance. We have heard heaps about the French Resistance but very little about what happened in Italy. I wondered what drew you to that story and how you kind of found that under a toadstool or something. How did that come about? The Italian Resistance Mandy Robotham: Avon HarperCollins were very keen for me to do another wartime book and I don’t visit France very much and I don’t speak French, but I do go to Italy and I adore Venice. I started to look around Europe and find out where there were pockets of resistance. I had a look at Venice, and I was really surprised to see how little there was written about it, but there was definitely an Italian Resistance in Venice and across Italy, really brave women. But there was very little in Venice itself. I was very lucky enough to find somebody whose PhD had been about the Resistance in Venice and I made email contact and he became a really good resource for me. But again, I went to Venice and I poked around a lot of different bookshops, old bookshops and tried to find photographs. That one was quite hard research. Italian Resistance workers Jenny Wheeler: Do you read or speak Italian? Mandy Robotham: No, I’m very bad at languages but you’ll be amazed at how a little bit can get you by. Generally, Europeans are fantastic at speaking English, thankfully. Jenny Wheeler: That person who became your resource, he almost got himself into the book as well, didn’t he, in one of the characters? Mandy Robotham: Yes. I found that as I was researching the string that was the contemporary string that was set in London seemed to seem to need him. He almost wrote himself into the book in a way, because my search mirrored the search of the woman in London. So he almost wrote himself in. I did ask his permission and he was very happy for it. The Berlin Girl out soon Jenny Wheeler: The third book that’s due out in December, The Berlin Girl, is set in pre-war Germany and it’s about a fledgling reporter from London who’s posted to Berlin just before war breaks out. Tell us how this one came about. Mandy Robotham: I used to be a journalist many, many moons ago before I was a midwife and I was not a very good journalist, I have to say. I worked on local papers, I wasn’t very good at news, I was much better at features. I saw myself as wanting to be the Kate Adie’s and these wartime correspondents, the Maria Colvin’s of the world, but I was not very good at it. I think maybe there’s a little bit of me projecting myself as to what I wanted to be, in this. And the more I read about the war, the more I realized that people had seen it coming. It wasn’t this massive surprise; it had been brewing for quite some time. I wanted to get an outsider’s take on what was happening in Berlin. That’s the perfect thing about fiction. You can plant somebody anywhere you like as long as it’s conceivable and believable. And there were a vast number of women who were reporters, really feisty, strong, brave women, who were very independent at the time. The Berlin Girl – Mandy Robotham Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. You mentioned that you’re trying to get to Berlin at the moment. Is it the pandemic that is causing you problems? Mandy Robotham: Yes. I was due to go in April and of course everything shut down over in Europe, so everything was cancelled in April. I moved it to October thinking that things will be fine and then here we are in a virtual second wave. I’m due to go on Saturday. Let’s see if I get there or not. I’ve got a contact over in Berlin who says it’s absolutely fine over there. I’m not worried about going. It’s just whether we can get there. Doing research in the pandemic Jenny Wheeler: Why wouldn’t you be able to? What would be the problem? Mandy Robotham: The problem is if we need to quarantine when we’re over there, then there’s no point because I need to go and do research. Jenny Wheeler: Do you know yet whether you have to quarantine or not? Mandy Robotham: No, not at the moment, but I’m keeping an eye on it day by day. We’ll see how it goes. Jenny Wheeler: With all the research you’ve done with these three books, is there something that really stands out that surprised you or that you hadn’t realized before? Are there one or two things that stand out as startling? Mandy Robotham: I like the small details, the social history around people’s lives. That’s what draws me to the War, how people lived day by day. How did they do their washing? How did they do their shopping? Where did they eat? People have to eat in amongst all of this. It’s the little things. Telling details of daily life There was a little nugget of information that my Italian lovely man gave me, I use it in the book as well. When the food was short, they used to put up a rotten fish carcass, hang it above the kitchen table and then rub blocks of polenta on it for any kind of flavor. And I thought, that’s fairly desperate. You can imagine the whole family around the kitchen table with this fish hanging between them. The other one with the newest book, The Berlin Girl, if you read the diaries of journalists, was just how much they saw it coming. The politicians were almost blinkered. They had on their blinkers because they didn’t want to realize it was happening, but all the journalists and the analysts around them could see it coming a mile off. That surprised me more than anything, how widespread the thought was that war was coming from quite a long way off. How Mandy got started Jenny Wheeler: Moving away from the specific books to a slightly wider take on your career – you’ve mentioned being a journalist and a midwife. Give us a sense of how those previous jobs have fed into your writing career and how did that transition occur? Mandy Robotham: I became a journalist straight out of university way back in 1987. I was a small-time local paper journalist and I worked in the Evening Standard in London for a bit. I did a lot of freelancing and nothing seemed to be changing. Then I had a baby, I had my first son in 1994 and that was it. It was an epiphany, a blue light moment. I turned around to the midwife who was looking after me and said, I want to do what you do. Jenny Wheeler: Really. Mandy Robotham: Then I spent the next 23 years, three years training and 20 years as a midwife. But there was always an itch inside me that I was going to write this book someday. From a child I wanted to write a book. I couldn’t believe that people could have a story in their heads that was that long. I thought writers were so clever. I did a lot of article writing as a midwife and I never really left words alone. But it wasn’t until the children were older and I thought, I have to do this, and it seemed sensible that my first book should be about what I knew so well. Jenny Wheeler: Was it that experience of feeling birth was a miracle that made you want to be a midwife? What was behind that light bulb moment? Attracted to midwifery Mandy Robotham: I think it was, I felt so special. We’ve got a wonderful maternity unit in Stroud, a small midwife led unit and I had both my babies there. I felt so special and I thought if I could make one woman feel as special as I do now then that’s what I want to do. I felt so clever. They made me feel so clever. I helped a lot of women through some tricky births, beautiful home births. I was more at home than anywhere else and that’s why you will always see that my births take place in the books in unusual circumstances. That’s because that’s what I used to do. Mandy’ Robotham’s profession for 20 years – Call the midwife… Jenny Wheeler: And you found it fulfilling for the time you were doing it. Mandy Robotham: I did. I loved it. I think there’s a point where you feel I’m coming to the end here. It’s really intense and it gets a point where you get older and you feel you can’t give quite so much. I thought, that’s the point where I need to go, and that coincided luckily with the success of the books. I’m really grateful that I was able to able to go into full time writing. Jenny Wheeler: So you wrote those books while you were still working full time. Mandy Robotham: Yes, I did. I wrote the first two while I was working full time. I’d generally write in the coffee shop quite a lot at the time, so an hour in the coffee shop before work and an hour after, and then whenever else I could fit it in. Advice for young writers Jenny Wheeler: Amazing. Thinking about giving advice to young writers who might be starting out now, what would you say to them was the secret of your success? It sounds like it might be straight perseverance, but what would you say to somebody starting out? Mandy Robotham: I think there’s a lot of luck involved and obviously you can’t organize that. I think it’s about it, just do it. You have to write. I write every day, whether it’s anything to do with the book or something else, I write every day. And finish that novel. There are so many people saying, I’m going to write a book or I’m halfway through my novel, or it’s getting there. Just get on and do it. Sometimes it can be like wading through treacle and it can be painful, but just finish it, edit it and get it out there because it won’t get out there unless you get out there. ‘Inspired’ – William Boyd’s Sweet Caress Jenny Wheeler: What’s the worst advice you have received or perhaps heard other people giving to young writers? Mandy Robotham: I think it’s don’t write outside your genre. You can write anything you like, it’s fiction. Write anything you like, just be prepared that you have to try and market it somewhere if you want it out there. There are a lot of people who say stick where you are, it’s working. Write whatever you like. It might not get published but write it if it makes you happy. Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned that when you started out you were quite naïve about the marketing side of things. What would you say you’ve learnt over this experience that you see things differently? Are there any particular ways in which you’ve changed your mind about things? Mandy Robotham: I think it’s the idea that the marketing has such an impact on your success and your sales, if you’re talking about success being in sales. Having big sales doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a great book but it does mean you can survive as a writer. Turning to Mandy as reader I think it’s about how marketers see the book on the shelf. They literally picture it on a shelf somewhere and which shop, which chain of shops, online – because there’s such a big market there nowadays, whether it’s going to go digital. It doesn’t change the way I write, but I think I’ve learned what the market needs out of me as well. Jenny Wheeler: Turning to Mandy as reader, because this is The Joys of Binge Reading and we like to give people who are listening in some advice or guidance or recommendations for books they might like to read. Your book of course, but any others that you know of. Do you like to binge read yourself and what would you recommend to others at the moment that you’re really enjoying? Things in Jars by Jess Kidd Mandy Robotham: I read a book recently by Jess Kidd called Things in Jars which I think was amazing. I do love historical crime so when I read historical it’s usually with a crime element. I read a lot of Philip Kerr who sadly died, I think it was last year. He did a fantastic series, they’re mostly set in Berlin, of a grumpy old detective called Bernie Gunther. His are fantastic books, so evocative, and I read a lot of those, particularly for research as well. I’ll always read a new Ian McEwan when it comes out and I’m really looking forward to William Boyd’s new one called Trio. That’s coming out in the next couple of days, I think, so that will be on my order. I like the way he can write historical, but he can also write contemporary. His book, Sweet Caress, was one of the reasons why I thought you can write about correspondents as if they were real. He wrote a fantastic book called Sweet Caress about a journalist who I was absolutely convinced at the end of it was real. But she wasn’t. It was completely fictional. Childhood beginnings Jenny Wheeler: Have you always been a big reader? Mandy Robotham: Always, yes. It was one of my favorite books, it’s still in my bookshelf now called Harriet the Spy, a children’s book. I used to clutch it to my chest with my notebook and walk around the playground. That was the book that made me want to become a writer when I was nine. Jenny Wheeler: We are coming to the end of our time together so circling around and looking back down that tunnel of time, at this stage of your career, if you were doing it all over again, what would you change, if anything? Harriet the Spy – childhood favorite Mandy Robotham: I think there’s a temptation to say that I’d start it sooner. I’m 55 now and think what if I had started 20 years sooner, I could have so many more books under my belt. But I don’t think I’d be the writer I am now without my 20 years in midwifery, without the children growing up. I don’t think I would. I definitely wouldn’t change doing the Masters in Creative Writing. That was the real push for me. I met a lot of really good people, great writers, people I’m still in contact with now. So I don’t think I would change anything. It would have been nice to have the success earlier in life, but I don’t think it would have happened that way. Jenny Wheeler: What is next for Mandy the writer? What are you working on now? Mandy Robotham: I’m very happily contracted to Avon HarperCollins for books four, five and six. I’m working on book four at the moment, which we’re keeping under wraps, but it will be historical. A child’s eye view of the Blitz Five and six I’m going to go a little bit further afield in Europe for those, but they will generally be wartime because apparently that’s the readers would like and I’m very happy to do that. I’ve already started amassing my reading list for book five while I’m writing book four Jenny Wheeler: Was your own family affected much by the War? Did you have grandparents who served or was there any talk in your family of the War as you were growing up? Mandy Robotham: No, not really. My dad was about five when it started and 10 when it finished but his recollections are wonderful. We used to get him talking about those. He was in London and he was a typical bomb site urchin. I don’t think his mother was particularly good at keeping an eye on him and he had very much older sisters and they all went out with GIs. He would be cadging lifts on Jeeps and they would be bringing him comics and bubblegum and he’d be selling them to his friends. Mandy’s Dad – World War II through a young boy’s eyes.. He’s got a lovely story about having to go under the kitchen table when one of the V2 rockets came down very close to their home. He had a lot of lovely tales he could tell by being a child in the war. But I’m very luckily untouched by that. I didn’t know my grandparents at all. I think that’s probably why my fascination is finding out what went on in people’s daily lives. Jenny Wheeler: It sounds like it was a big adventure for him, that it wasn’t too traumatic. Mandy Robotham: Yes, I think he had a ball. He was very luckily untouched. He was one of those who saw the War as a point of freedom. Jenny Wheeler: I’m sure you like to hear from your readers and when times are different you probably do book meetings and things. Where can they find you online and have you been much affected by what’s been going on around us? Has it cramped your style in terms of being able to do book meets and things? Where to find Mandy online Mandy Robotham: Yes. Unfortunately, the book festivals are something I really enjoy going to, as a customer and as a writer as well. So yes, the book things, but generally the writing, no, because it’s all done online and at home. I’m available on Facebook, it’s Mandy Robotham – Author and Midwife. I’m on Twitter as @mandyrobothamuk. I’m on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/robothammandy/) as well although there is mostly my knitting on Instagram. That’s my knitting portal. Jenny Wheeler: Did you say knitting? Mandy Robotham: Knitting. I’m a big knitter. I’ll knit anywhere. Jenny Wheeler: I didn’t know that. Tell us about that. What do you do with it? Mandy Robotham: Very odd things. My last thing, I have just knitted some vegetables for my son who’s been growing vegetables on his rooftop in the pandemic. I decided that while he harvested them and ate them, he needed replacements, and I knitted him some vegetables. Jenny Wheeler: There’s one other thing I must ask before you go. Very recently I interviewed an absolutely fantastic Australian writer called Michael Robotham. It’s an unusual surname and it was when I was researching him that I came across your name and at the beginning, I thought these two must be related, they must be at least second cousins or something. I asked him if he’d heard of you and he said no, he hadn’t, he didn’t think you were related. But I have to ask you the same question. Are you aware of Michael at all? Mandy Robotham: I’m certainly aware because he’s had books out for a long, long time and they’re all on the shelves. But no, we’re not related, not as far as I know. A very complicated family history My father’s family history is very, very complicated and nobody knows where the name Robotham came from. It’s actually not his father’s name so it’s a very complex thing. We don’t really know where it came from, so I don’t think we are. Jenny Wheeler: It’s a funny coincidence because it is an unusual name and to have both of you doing well like that. It’s nice anyway. Obviously not at all connected. Mandy Robotham: Yes, well maybe.  You never know, I might bump into him at a book festival one day. Jenny Wheeler: You could get your genetic testing done by Ancestry.com. It’s wonderful to have had a chance to talk, Mandy, and it seems as if the World War II period is going to be popular for quite some time yet, so all power to you writing these next three books. Mandy Robotham: Thank you, and thanks very much for having me. If you enjoyed Mandy’s World War II best seller you might also enjoy Christine Wells’ stories of Second World War women spies. 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