Emily J. Taylor: The Otherwhere Post

00:05 - Julia Golding (Host) Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today I'm very excited to be able to welcome onto the podcast Emily J Taylor, whose second novel, the Otherwhere Post, is. Is it about to come out, Emily, or is it already out? How's it? 00:32 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) is it on the verge? It's, it's already out. It's out in the UK. 00:35 - Julia Golding (Host) Just out. So that's really exciting for people listening because they can immediately go and find the book Wonderful, which is published by the Pushkin Press, which is a really exciting independent publisher. So, Emily, welcome Now. Emily, you aren't sitting in Oxford or Oxfordshire like I am. Tell us where you are. 00:58 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) I am in beautiful, very warm right now, Minnesota in the United States. We're very close to Canada. It's usually cold and snowy most of the year, but right now it's pretty warm. 01:11 - Julia Golding (Host) But looking at your bio, you are originally a California girl. 01:14 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) I am, I am. I grew up in California and I moved around quite a bit and then my husband and I kind of landed here and we've been here for a for a little while now. So this is pretty pretty much home. 01:25 - Julia Golding (Host) But so we're going to be talking mainly about the other where post and writing that kind of fantasy, but let's work out how, how you got here. So what was your journey to being an author, and which of the authors that you've read had inspired you along the way to being a writer? It could be people you've read had inspired you along the way to being a writer. It could be people you've read and thought, well, I'm definitely not doing that, or those I'd like to be them. I don't mind. Whichever way you take that question. 01:53 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, I read so much. It's interesting. My path to becoming a writer was a little winding. I worked in advertising and I worked on the creative side, so I actually was an art director for years and years before I started writing books and I always read. I was a voracious reader. I always was reading a book. I read quite a bit and I loved reading, but I never felt, I never knew that you could be a writer. It's funny like growing up as a little girl I never thought that, oh, I could write books. I just I never entered into my brain space, but I was a creative and I feel like creatives, like we're authors, are creatives, like we can take that creativity and apply it to a lot of other things. But yeah, so I worked as an art director for years, so very visual, but I wrote a lot of commercial scripts. 02:45 I wrote quite a bit for my job and I read a lot and I would say the books that I loved reading. I read a lot of fantasy. From a young age I remember particularly reading. I remember reading like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and I was really young and loving that. And then I also read. My mom had this collection of. They were these gothic suspense novels from I think there was this one, daphne du Maurier. I read her and then I also read this one, author, victoria Holt. I don't know. 03:20 - Julia Golding (Host) Oh, yes, yes, it rings a bell, I don't know. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, I read everything she wrote growing up and then a lot of that less published for sort of YA readership at that time. This is a category that I read Victoria Holt, jean Plady yes, jean Plady, yeah, so these are historical. 03:57 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Historical Gothic suspense In a sort of pre-Raphaelite vibe? 04:02 - Julia Golding (Host) Yes, yes. Oh well, so thank you for taking me down memory lane. 04:07 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yes, Nobody, nobody knows who I'm talking about when I say her name, so thank you. But yeah, I was. I was deeply into those and I read those when I was very young, very impressionable like middle grade, high school level, here and then and then. I think the first YA I ever read was Twilight. I think it was a lot of people's first young adult book that they read and that kind of tipped me into YA and I remember reading everything I could get my hands on that had a vampire in it for a little while. 04:44 - Julia Golding (Host) I wonder if I was maybe a bit older than you? I probably am. I remember vividly. My daughter was reading Twilight and I heard of the phenomenon. So I remember vividly sitting in a car park waiting outside whilst one of my children had a drumming lesson. I didn't go in for the drumming lesson because I found it a bit painful. Um, I remember sitting in the car park reading this book and finding myself fixed, you know, absolutely in that moment, in that world, but also sitting there wondering why does this work? What is the secret to making this work? Um, because in a sense, it's not know. There are things which plot wise. I mean you can pick it apart. There's some elements pick apart and criticize, and I think what I decided was that it managed to capture that obsession and breathlessness of a certain stage in your teen years I completely agree, yes. 05:45 It's really about that. I mean, the vampires is a nice lens to do that, but I did feel as though I was that 15, 16-year-old again, with a crush on somebody who would really not suit me if I thought about it, anyway. So that's what it's funny, that't it? That so to write the ya, you have to sort of channel that inner teen, I think. Oh, 100. 06:11 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, I like to say I'm like perpetually 17 years old yeah, wonderful. 06:20 - Julia Golding (Host) so, um, we, I was looking at, uh, the sort of the material that came along with your book when I sent a lovely finished version and it was like a little origin story they sent with it. But for those of you who don't get sent the origin version, we'd like to tell us where the other wear post came from. 06:39 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, I don't remember what I wrote on that. 06:42 - Julia Golding (Host) I'll give you prompts. You said it came in two parts. 06:46 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Oh, yes, okay, so the first part. So it actually started. I remember the exact moment it started. It was during the pandemic and I had a newborn at the time, so I was very sleep deprived. And I remember walking to the mailbox just to get mail and I had just sold my first book, hotel Magnifique, which is a standalone fantasy, and I was trying to think of a new idea to pitch as kind of a second, like a follow-up to Hotel to present to editors. So that was in the back of my mind. But I remember walking to the mailbox and staring at at the mailbox as one does when they're sleep deprived. 07:28 - Julia Golding (Host) What is this for? I know? 07:30 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) I know I remember I think it said like property of or approved by the postmaster general. I'm like, oh, there's interesting world building. But the the idea of, oh, what if mail wasn't ordinary, what if it could be magical, what if we could do things with it, like enchant it to leap off the page and form a missing relative in the air, and that idea of this enchanted mail really gripped me. And then I thought, oh, what if we could deliver mail to other worlds? And that was kind of the big, sparkly idea. That and I always kind of start my books with. It's funny, I always do, but I've only written two books 100% track record so far yes, 100% track record. 08:18 But, these questions of taking something that is ordinary and adding a magical twist to it. So I liked this notion of oh what if we can deliver mail to other worlds? And all these ideas started coming to me and I immediately ran back home and came up with my main character, maeve, who is the protagonist of this story, and it's about her. Do you want me to give a little pitch for the book? 08:45 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, tell us about the book and then I'll make you tell me the second okay, okay it involves edinburgh, if you'd forgotten yes, yes, yeah, yeah. 08:56 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) So I'll give you a pitch for the book and then we'll. So the story is about this girl named mave, and Maeve's father committed this horrible crime and she is essentially running from her. She doesn't want anybody to find out that she's his daughter, so she moves from place to place. She's afraid of making friends, she's afraid of getting close to anybody, so she doesn't go on dates. It's this really heartbreaking existence for her, until one day she receives this letter letter and it's not any ordinary letter. It's enchanted to be delivered right to her. 09:29 It's from another world and it tells her that her father was actually innocent and she has to figure out if it's true or not, because it would completely change her life. So to do that, she sneaks her way into this apprenticeship at this magical school where she learns kind of this dark magic that allows the couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds. And there she meets a boy and there's this great tension because she has to figure out this big mystery while also being undercover. And she's falling in love for the first time. So she has to learn how to trust and learn whether or not she can trust other people. 10:09 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, so when you say school just for those who are listening from a sort of European side we mean university-level college as opposed to younger kids, harry Potter-esque stuff. It's more like a trade school in a way, because they're learning the skills of scriptamance, you know things to do with the letters. It's got a theme running through it, it's not. 10:35 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, I would think it's like a dark, yeah, like a dark academia apprenticeship. 10:40 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, yeah, so we're moving out of the Harry Potter world of starting at 11. It's not that, yes. No, this is much darker, and I mean I suppose death rates in Hogwarts are quite high as well. But there is a real risk associated with this crossing between the worlds of letters. It's not an easy. It's more like going to the armed forces or something, or the Air Force. It's got a sort of death toll associated with it. So stakes are high, as we like to know in stories. So tell us about this is probably more to do with the world building but tell us about Edinburgh as a spark for this idea. 11:22 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, so I had the idea, went to the mailbox, had the idea and it was just that it was an idea and I kept. I wrote a little bit, I did some free writing on it and I couldn't. I couldn't figure out where, like what it looked like. I'm such a visual person. I come from art direction, so I love to have. I pull a lot of scrap. I have a lot of. I like to create kind of the feel for my book visually so I can picture it perfectly as I'm writing the story. And it didn't really come together until I was traveling. I actually did a writing retreat in the UK and then I went north up to Edinburgh and I remember standing I don't. Someone asked me what was the square that? 12:05 I was standing in and I don't remember what it was called, but it was. I remember they were the. They had all these covered alleyways called closes and they I remember standing staring at the buildings and the city itself has a lot of Gothic architecture and it has the buildings have this amazing black sediment dripping down the sides because of the weather there and it almost makes them look ink-stained. And I saw that and it just kind of clicked and I thought, oh, this is my book needs to feel like this, like this is my story. I'm literally standing in my magic system right now. And that directly inspired the main world that Maeve lives in and the setting. So it really wasn't the first free writing and stuff that I did. It wasn't a dark academia, it wasn't really until I went to Edinburgh that it became what it is and kind of gelled for me. But I would say people ask so, is it Edinburgh? And it's not Edinburgh, it's just inspired by that moment. 13:03 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah. No, it didn't feel like Edinburgh to me. Yes, I mean, edinburgh has a very unique architecture because the castle sits on a volcanic plug. Oh, I didn't know that Interesting. Okay, yeah, so you've got the old town, which is what you're talking about. 13:17 Yes, Going up to the castle that's the older part and then around, sort of in the flatter area, where the railway station are and where the festival is, are the more um the later streets with broader shopping streets and things like that. Uh, so it's, it's a, it's definitely a city with lots of different parts to it, different architectural periods, periods and I think, thinking around, you mentioned the closes that's in that bit. 13:49 That's the ancient ancient heart. Yes, the ancient ancient part, yeah, yeah, nice. And fantasy suitable for fantasy? Absolutely yes. So, thinking about your process, for those of you who are watching this on the YouTube version, I can see behind you you've got a whiteboard of some sort with. Are you a person who sort of pins up your plots and your ideas? You actually have a physical expression of your story. People are always interested how people write a book. Do you need to get it out there to look at it in order to write, or is there some sort of document on your computer? Or these photographs? 14:33 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, my process is so chaotic. There's both. I kind of tend to take notes everywhere, but I do have in my office I have one wall is just made out of cork so I can pin things up to it, so as an art director, like I always would. But so in as an art director, like I always would pin like kind of create a mood board in front of me and so I could like physically take scrap down and put scrap up, and I loved that process and I kind of continued doing that as I started writing books. 15:07 So I like to pin different scenes and I'll print out like little pieces of scrap or even I kind of I tend to take inspiration from everywhere, so not necessarily like visual, but I might find I love fashion, so I might find like a, like a designer that is doing cool things and pin like a piece of clothing from like their, their show up, or like a cool little antidote from traveling, and create something that is next to me so that if I am stuck sometimes I just turn and look at my wall and stare at it for a moment. But I think it helps for me. It helps just to see things visually and have something up. 15:51 - Julia Golding (Host) So that sort of goes to my question about you've got a number of worlds story, including one which is sort of closed off. Um, I don't think that's a plot spoiler, because that's established at the beginning and you have a map at the beginning of your book. But of course they can't do the map of everything because I know that would be impossible, um, to visualize. But the map is of the um the other way post, sort of like the university, um, the college buildings, which is rather lovely. Um, I didn't use that whilst I was reading. I looked at it later, thought, oh, that's nice, but I didn't feel the need for it. So do you keep? How do you keep your layers of worlds? 16:37 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) I can remember three there might be, yes, there was just there's three. Yeah, three, yeah, good, I got that I read it properly. 16:46 - Julia Golding (Host) Um, how do you keep it straight in your head? Because they're sort of layered on each other like parallel worlds. That's probably not quite the right word but it's not like going to america and going to england. It's like you go to this version of england and then another version of england and then another version. Is that right? 17:02 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) yeah, yep, it's a, it's a multiverse, so it is. It's essentially parallel worlds that are layered on on top of one another. Um, and I don't know how I keep it straight, I just do. 17:17 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, I can picture everything. They actually travel quite a long way in one of the worlds, don't they? Yes, away from it's like a train journey, so you have to sort of. There's always that jeopardy about are they going to get back? Yeah, there's always that jeopardy about are they going to get back? 17:33 Yeah, it reminds me, did you read any Enid Blyton books when you were growing up? There's one called. It was like the standard kids' fair here, called the Max Faraway Tree, where the big jeopardy, which used to really worry me as a kid, is that if you stayed in, the land too long it would move and you couldn't get down the tree again. 17:58 So there was this thinking of would you be able to get back through the door again if you stay too long, because when you go from parallel worlds, it seems to always be a massive issue. So one of the things I wanted to ask you about is you're writing in a sort of version of a historical time period which I would say is early 20th century. 18:15 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yes, yeah. 18:16 - Julia Golding (Host) Almost into war. Really I'd have thought with the technology, how do you go about? But it's not within the politics of that era. It's not referencing specific things. It's just the level of technology, the clothes, some of the gender assumptions and, um, the way people buy and sell things. It's all that you know. You can tell from that level where you are. How do you go around, choosing for your fantasy which period to set it in Um, and are you choosing negatively? I, I don't want to do this period because too many people have done it. 18:56 You know how do you find it? 18:58 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think with this book I chose that particular period because I wanted. Why did I choose that period? There was a big reason for it. Why did I choose that period? There was a big reason for it and it was. 19:15 I think it came down to the magic system, where I had developed this magic system with inks and quills and I wanted it to feel. I wanted the world to feel accessible. So accessibility is a big thing with my writing, like I want someone to be able to read it and be able to instantly understand what this fantasy world is, even though it's a second world fantasy, because it's slightly based on things that they already know. So with my first book, the world itself was based off of the Belle Epoque, because I was really fascinated with this idea of this Belle Epoque hotel. 19:49 So the first book that I wrote is about a magical hotel that travels, where you wake up every morning in a different location, across this kind of fantastical world. And that time period was because I wanted the hotel to make feel grounded and not anachronistic, like I wanted it to feel like it fit naturally with this world and this whole idea of I got really into researching inks and quill feathers and like how people choose different quill pens to write. So the magic system is all based on handwriting and that's like a big part of the world building. So this was really based off of wanting that magic system to make sense, while also wanting a world that felt a little bit more modern, but not so modern that people wouldn't use that type of writing. 20:52 - Julia Golding (Host) I don't know if you have thought this, but I think one of the reasons why the early 20th century works for this is it's like the high watermark of the letter writing practice. So we've got family papers, including the occasional postcard where I know some great grandfather would write to his wife I'll be home by three o'clock Because there were so many posts. It's like it would have happened before he did. 21:20 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yes. 21:21 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, I love that. And of course, the mail, the trains delivering, you know, the steam engine, the night train, which, of course, is a famous poem, I think by oh, I'm trying to remember, I'm looking it up the Night Train poem. I put it in the show notes so it romanticizes the idea of the post moving through the night across the country. Presumably the same in America, though you had more of the Pony Express, didn't you? 21:52 - Speaker 3 (None) That's not this world world. 21:53 - Julia Golding (Host) It feels more of a doesn't feel like an american world. It feels more like a kind of uk that sort of the size of it, feels more like a kind of european uk, absolutely, absolutely. 22:04 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, I wanted to set it in a place where it felt more modern too, but then there was this deep well of like ancient history that you could feel in like the architecture and as they're walking, walking through it, that you can't. You can't. I mean, you can have a couple of places in America, but it's really difficult and the I actually did some research on the for a little. There was a little blip where I thought about setting it in the in the US and in the West about because our postal system actually started was the reason why we built a lot of our infrastructure, so, like our, all of our freeways and stuff were built and railway systems were built because of the yeah, starting the postal system. But I but I wanted that. I didn't want that it to feel like that, I wanted it to feel more like a European city yeah, it definitely does. 22:56 - Julia Golding (Host) A european city yeah, it definitely does. So another theme that I was interested in as I was reading this is the idea of isolation. Um, so that in fantasy and sci-fi you've got this possibility in different ways of making smaller communities isolated. So what I mean by that? You can take it to the extreme of something like oh Lord of the Flies, you know where it's, a community, abandoned on an island and you see what happens. But all the idea of being a place being cut off from the rest of the world and that has happened to one of your worlds in this story and in a way, they're all cut off from each other, with just this link of the post still holding them together. Yeah, so I mean, I've got some views, but tell me what you feel about the potential of the, the plot of isolation for a writer. Does that offer you? 23:54 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, it's interesting, no-transcript. It lets you do things that you aren't able to do when you don't have isolation, like you can create kind of this. 24:13 - Julia Golding (Host) I'm curious what you, what you would think yeah, I think it's a bit like, uh, looking at sort of crime fiction, the sort of agatha christie country house murder. The thing about isolating a world or isolating a community is you can intensify it but also not make it too difficult to explain. 24:34 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yes, that is true, you get basically, it's a form of microcosm. 24:37 - Julia Golding (Host) You microcosm your world so that you know when Alice goes into Wonderland, she doesn't go into the entirety of Wonderland, she goes into the small area around. Yes, yeah, she doesn't go into the entirety of Wonderland, she goes into the small area around. Harry Potter, certainly, to start with, it's not the entire Wizarding World, it's just Hogwarts. So you basically have little communities which you explore and for you in your book, I think it's mainly obviously the college, the school for the postal workers and the area immediately around the towns, immediately around, that you're not doing the whole globe of or no. 25:18 Maybe not the globe? I don't, I don't want to. 25:21 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) I'm too. No, I'm just kidding. 25:24 - Julia Golding (Host) Could be a flat earth, but I think maybe that's why, instinctively, all writers choose something like that, because it allows us to do the sort of the small and beautiful world building, as opposed to hey, we're going to do a war and peace style epic, um, you know that's. That's a very heavy lift doing that. 25:48 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, yeah, I definitely do it, for, like, there's a reason why there's only three worlds and one of them is cut off. It's already a complicated enough concept that I wanted to make it as simple as possible and easy to digest as possible, so you really focus on the characters and the um, the story, and you're not so confused by all this extra world building um and it I wanted. Oh, what are you gonna say? 26:19 - Julia Golding (Host) yeah, I was going to ask how much. Uh, if, if, if, if it did, how much did the book change from its first draft to the published version? What was the effect of having your correspondence see the link, your correspondence with your editor on it? 26:36 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah. So this is a I tell a lot of people this the first draft of the Otherware Post is not the version that you're reading. There was a draft that I wrote of the story that was completely different. It had a different antagonist, the plot was different, the characters were all there. They were a little different. Tristan was definitely different. He was more of like a stereotypical love interest than he is in the final version. And I wrote it and it wasn't working. So I just deleted it and started over. So that draft is completely different than what is published. 27:14 But the first draft of like the version that exists now, I would say it was more complicated. My process I love to put too much in sometimes where I'll complicate things too much. So it's just like really boiling down and simplifying and simplifying to get the final results as clear as possible, because my magic systems and my world building tends to be like a little bit more complicated. So it's how can I do something that's very easily digestible and then I say that, but then we add it a lot more into. So it's like it's it's simplifying and making things easily digestible, but then also like layering on top, like world building, so you feel really immersed in the story yeah, I think in a way the first draft you write for yourself and then yes, after reading somebody else um, and that's oh 28:12 - Julia Golding (Host) that's such an interesting take, because what you know and what you're it the phrase kill your darlings is getting at this. It's what you really enjoy and what, where it may have come from, is that stew pot going on inside your head, all these ideas, whereas you don't actually need to inflict that on everybody else. Actually, you can get rid of some of that and craft from that material as something that comes together, or that's the idea, and that's where an editor can really help. You see, what you can't see, yeah in the shaping of it? 28:51 yeah, so, um, would you say that your the story is complete, or is there more plans for um maven the other, where post are you going? Is this a standalone or is? Are you carrying on in this world? 29:06 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) I it is a standalone. Yeah, I crafted it. It's funny. I always feel like this after I'm finished with a book. I'm like, oh, there's so many more things I could write in this story, because you make a world, you build this entire world that feels rich and deep, that has other stories going on in it. But I think that that's the beauty of doing a world justice. But I feel like this is this is the story for now. This is this is the story I wanted to tell and it's it's definitely a standalone. 29:39 - Julia Golding (Host) I'll never say never. 29:41 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) what's your next? Um, I'm working on, uh, something that I am not allowed to talk about yet, oh, okay. 29:50 - Julia Golding (Host) I know you are working on something, so I haven't forewarned you on this question, but it's very helpful to people who are wanting to follow your tracks and get their first book published, and my first book was published so long ago that my advice is no longer relevant. I was there was still a borders when I was publishing um first got published. Um, what would you say is the best advice that you've been given on this crazy journey that is publishing? 30:23 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) yeah, I oh so much good advice. I think, um, I think, just finishing the book, like a lot of people want to write but you really need to learn how to finish a book and then go through and start revising it and that's. It's very hard to finish a book, so just work, finish a book. People ask me all the time like how do I get into publishing? I'm like, just write, I didn't start, I didn't even. I started writing as a hobby and then I finally I had written Hotel Magnifique and a lot of people. I'd tell people about it and then be like that sounds amazing, you should publish it. And that that wasn't. That was when I first started thinking about publishing, but before that I think I had like four books that I had written before that. Just for we do in I don't know if it's in the UK, but they do National Novel Writing Month in the US yeah, november, no-transcript. Learn to love the process first and and get good at get, um, confident in your own writing. 32:07 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, you're right, there's definitely a gap, isn't there? So even today I get people I know who know I'm a novelist. 32:15 you know I've written over 70 novels now and they come up to me and they say I've got this idea, yes, but I haven't got time to write it. I literally had somebody last week who I thought would know me better than this. Here's my idea. And if there you go, you go and do the work. And that's just so silly because novelists will tell you the ideas are the easy part. It's the actual boring stuff of sitting down, apply, you know, bum to seat and fingers to typewriter. That's the stuff. That actually is the difficult bit. And, as you say, moving through that to finish something is a real achievement. And of course it's not finished ever. But finishing a first draft is the persistence. Actually, if you're going to turn in a novel in november or other times of year are available, um, actually do the work yeah, just write, finish it, finish it. 33:19 Publisher is not going to like you coming and saying I've got such a brilliant idea which I can't be bothered to write. But you know, trust me, that's lovely, emily. So thank you so much for that and we wish you the best with the other web post. But before we sign off, I always like to end with taking a tour around all the available fantasy worlds and thinking about where it might be fun to find a theme from your stories. Where is the best place for something? And I thought in honor of your book, I wondered where in the best place in all fantasy worlds is the best place to be a postman, postwoman, postperson delivering letters? It's not the editing of them I'm interested in, it's the delivering of them, the delivering of them. 34:09 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) Yeah, what would? 34:10 - Julia Golding (Host) you like to get in your spaceship, your ride, your horse or whatever, and do this pose. 34:17 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) I know so many of my favorite fantasy worlds are so violent and I would never put a postman in. 34:22 - Julia Golding (Host) Well, exactly, that counts those out like Game of Thrones. 34:26 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) I would say I would say maybe like a Studio Ghibli like counts those out, like game of thrones. I would say I would say maybe like a studio ghibli like um, like like diana winn jones house moving castle, oh, but like the studio ghibli version where they it's kind of it's very like pastoral and can you imagine trying to keep up with house moving castle to deliver? Yes, that's true, that would be really difficult, but kind of a fun challenge for it. 34:45 - Julia Golding (Host) That would be a bit similar but more dangerous in the immortal engines of philip reeve, like chasing those worlds that are on that sort of amazing imagination he has. Okay, so how's moving castle world? 35:00 that's a good answer, I think I'd, because it gives you a chance to visit yes you know you have a reason for going to the door and you're sort of also outside of the communities. I think it would be a really good profession in many fantasy worlds. Um, but why don't I go a bit more sci-fi? Just to kind of? I guess it might be one of the nice ways to interact with the Star Wars world, so not be part of the nice ways to interact with the Star Wars world. 35:28 Oh, interesting, so not be part of the Empire or anything, but you could just pootle around and drop in. I like the idea of being able to travel from planet to planet. That would be quite fun. Try not to get caught up in the politics which I've never been able to follow in Star Wars. 35:45 - Emily J. Taylor (Guest) A postal worker in the Star Wars world would be interesting. 35:47 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, a different kind of force. Yes, the force be with you. Thank you so much, emily. It's been lovely talking to you. Thank you so much. Yes, this was lovely yeah. 36:06 - Speaker 3 (None) Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide.