News: My Debut Novel ANOTHER LIFE Lands This Month⚡️

Performed by Kingsley Ben-Adir & Erin Doherty for Audible

Sep 03, 2024

Just over four years ago, I finished writing the first draft of a novel I thought would probably never see the light of day.

Back then, writing over 100,000 words felt like a big enough achievement on its own. I’d always (falsely) believed that novelists were magical beings bestowed with a divine gift. You couldn’t just do it. You had to be one of the chosen ones.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The biggest lesson of my 11 year writing career so far is that creativity is a muscle. It would be ill-advised to wake up one morning and begin writing a novel if you’ve never written anything before. But a short film, play, personal essay or short story might be a good place to start. Then maybe you’ll write a half-hour comedy pilot, then a full hour of drama, all the while building that writing muscle.

Embarking on any of these things might seem daunting without the necessary tools - as would building a house with your bare hands. These days, I really believe anyone can write a novel as long as they have a robust writer toolbox. I’m grateful to be able to impart some of the skills I’ve picked up along the way via the Writers Workshop section of this Substack. I also teach privately and I’ve found it so joyful to guide students from the start of a project, tooling them up so they feel confident enough to complete it.

If I hadn’t learnt these skills myself from screen jobs, stage work and mentoring, I don’t think I would’ve ever had the belief I needed to write this book. However, I do think there’s also a more emotional requirement of novel writing that a decade of writing professionally has given me: resilience. Maybe you don’t need resilience for the actual writing but you certainly need it for the pitching process.

The writing itself was one of the most joyous experiences I’ve ever had. It was like an addiction. I couldn’t stop thinking about this book. My fingers would itch, desperate to get back to writing it. I had a busy work schedule at the time, chocka with screenwriting projects, but all I wanted to do was get back to this book.

In retrospect, I think I felt I had to get as much satisfaction as possible from the process because I wasn’t sure this novel would ever sell. It’s cross-genre - there’s elements of women’s fiction but half the book is narrated by a man. It’s also speculative, so there are sci-fi elements but it’s still quite grounded in reality. This is the sort of stuff that makes print publishers panic: What shelf would it sit on in bookshops? How would we market it?

And so, I thought Another Life would live, forever, in a folder on my hard drive, like countless plays and TV pilots I’ve written. As soon as I finished writing it, I got to work on novel number two - a way of protecting myself against the inevitable disappointment of my first book not selling.

But, almost five years to the day since I first started writing Another Life, here we are.

When Audible made an offer on this novel, I was impressed by their creative vision and how much the concepts explored within the novel resonated with the team. They didn’t need to worry about what shelf in a bookstore this novel would sit on. Instead, we got to have exciting conversations about what talent we might attach to the project and whether we’d use soundscapes or music to build the world the novel is set in.

Sure, this wouldn’t be a paperback you could hold in your hands but the idea of releasing the book in such an accessible way really appealed to me - particularly as accessibility is already one of my highest values. This was a story that would reach dyslexic/neurodiverse people, people too busy to read (perhaps due to caregiving responsibilities) and people who didn’t usually like reading or had been failed by the school system. Of course, if a print publishing deal comes along one day too, I’d be keen to consider it, but I realised that prioritising that would only come from a place of pretentiousness and ego. Nothing ever matters more than the message of the story so I couldn’t be more grateful that this will reach such a broad audience.

Here’s the official blurb…

For fans of Octavia E. Butler, Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman, a thrilling, heart-wrenching debut novel from Karla Marie Sweet, exploring disparity of privilege, the quest for identity and the human need for connection.
When the External Womb Programme is launched, the news is controversial. Hundreds take to the streets in protest, feeling strongly that growing a baby outside of the human body is "unnatural". But thousands more people rejoice: at last, an alternative for those who wish to have children but worry about the physical toll it may take. A chance that throwing a baby-shaped grenade into one's career path might not derail it entirely.
For Lucy, whose acting career is finally taking off, the news is well worth celebrating. Could having a baby this way mean she can have it all? As she and her husband James embark on their journey, however, it becomes clear she's not being entirely honest with him and, as an old flame returns, everything is thrown into jeopardy.
Decades later, the use of external wombs is commonplace. But a corrupt government stepping into power leads to this groundbreaking piece of technology falling into the wrong hands, forcing everyone to reckon with a challenging new world and their place within it.
Performed by Erin Doherty (The Crown) and Kingsley Ben-Adir (Bob Marley: One Love), Another Life marks the arrival of a brilliant new literary talent that will thrill, entertain and challenge you from beginning to end.