The Lowe Job with Grace Alexander
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the shit show. Things are going to get weird. Get weird. It's your fave villain, Kail Lower. And you're listening to Barely Famous. All right everyone, welcome back to Barely Famous Podcast, chapter seven edition. Today I'm sitting with an author, Grace Alexander. Thank you for having me here. Thank you so much. I'm so excited because this is your first novel. This is your debut novel. That's right. And I discovered this through Book of the Month. So I this could not have worked out better. I absolutely love Book of the Month, but when did you start writing?
So I started writing actually started writing when I was on maternity leave with my daughter. So um my daughter's turning four in September uh in October. It's not September. Um and so I started sort of a coup when she was a couple of months old, so coming up for sort of three and a half years ago, started writing it. Um I was working in finance, it was a very sort of different industry, very full-on. Um and having maternity leave sort of as like this expanse of time to just be able to concentrate on something else was such an opportunity. Yeah. Um that basically every time she went down to sleep, I'd get my laptop out and just started. writing. Um so took me that time. Yeah, yeah. in
England, what what
does maternity leave look like? Yeah, that's the thing. It's very different to the States. So in England, so I was off for about 10 months.
How did Grace Alexander turn a maternity‑leave idea into her debut novel?
So it's Is that standard? It's yeah, pretty standard. People tend to take sort of between like, I'd say like nine months to a year, or maybe just over. So we get a lot longer than you guys. So whenever whenever I say that to someone from America, they're like, what the hell? How did you do that? Because you guys get like what, like a few weeks?
Yeah. Um some people get four weeks, some people get six weeks. Um some jobs uh the I think as you kind of move up in the corporate world and specialty fields, I guess you could get more time. 'Cause I was gonna say, well, six weeks probably isn't enough time for you to write a full novel, but you had almost a year.
Yeah, I had almost a year. So yeah, we're we're very lucky here. So we do get we do get longer. So yeah, I just had some such great amount of time to sort of concentrate on doing something. I've always loved writing. I always sort of wrote on the side just as something to do, something for fun. Um and so having that time to really be able to concentrate on it was amazing. That's so cool. But yeah, definitely could not have done it if I was in the States.
And what inspired this novel? Because as I started reading it, I did start it on the night before we went to France. I agree. And I was so excited. My friend had started reading my um co-host for book club started reading it before I came here. And she was like, It's kind of like a scandal. And then as I started reading it, I was like, Oh, I'm playing it in my head as a scandal reality TV vibe. Yeah. What inspired that?
Yeah, and I was so excited to speak to you about it, obviously with the sort of reality TV angle. Um yeah, so several things. Like I come from a big family of sisters. I really wanted to write about women and a family of women and sisters. Um and i it was partly that but partly also sort of working in a very male dominated industry, sort of coming from finance, I wanted to work about uh wanted to sort of write about like a kind of toxic workplace and Like like how that plays out for for women in certain sort of situations. Um also obviously just inspired by sort of reality TV. Like I love reality TV. And so you know watching sort of the Kardashians or like, you know, these other sort of like celebrity families and how they play out on TV and how their lives change and all these sort of things I s find so interesting.
So it's a big sort of combination of all of that. Already.
How did Grace’s experience in finance and UK maternity leave shape her writing process?
Well, so f some families that came to mind were the Kardashians. Yeah. And I don't know if Alex Earle, do you know who she is?
Sort of. I don't know yeah, I don't know ma masses about her, but like I know of her.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–1:22
2
How did Grace Alexander turn a maternity‑leave idea into her debut novel?
1:22–3:34
3
How did Grace’s experience in finance and UK maternity leave shape her writing process?
3:34–8:26
4
What was the inspiration behind the scandal‑driven world of *The Lowe Job*?
8:26–19:17
5
What steps did she take to land an agent and get the Book of the Month pick?
19:17–1:08:17