On a March evening in Kalk Bay, we reunite with Dr Megan Jones at the Olympia Café. Over sparkling wine and amazing pasta, we catch up with our past English lecturer, completely entranced and inspired by her current project.
After the passing of her mother, Alison, Megan decided to dedicate her time to finishing the novel her mother had spent most of her life working on. To garner interest and attention, she started a podcast. The podcast itself became a work of art; an intimate portrait of an undulating relationship drenched with love. It made me laugh on my jammie trip and cry in the Checkers queue. Absolutely head over heels with the project and our past lecturer, we decided to get the rest of the story.
Our conversation went something like this:
Ash:
Can you give us a summary of the book? In your own words.
Megan:
The book is about a woman called Therese, a South African born and raised artist living in London with a difficult teenage daughter. And Therese ends up becoming the romantic obsession of a corporate type… a billionaire actually, called Sir Nicholas Tarrant, who’s very embedded in the higher echelons of the British government. And he pursues her against her will. And then it turns out that he’s actually the Persian god of war, Mithras and she is the reincarnated goddess Anahita. But Mithras has evil plans for the world so with the help of MI5-
Steff:
It’s even better hearing you say it.
Megan:
She needs to kill him.
Ash:
That would be a great blockbuster, don’t you think?
Steff:
It’s so brilliant.
Megan:
When we lived in England, Alison wrote a novel, which was about leaving and growing up in Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia, moving to England, having an identity crisis, getting divorced… And it was very well written. She found an agent, but the agent couldn't sell the book, because nobody wanted to read about Zimbabwean nostalgia. So her agent was like, why don't you write something sexy? And that's what she started doing.
Steff:
And it is sexy.
Ash:
And it is so cool. It's really well done.
Megan:
But it didn't used to be [sexy]. I don't think it had sex at all to begin with. That got introduced later.
I don't know how far she got when we were in England, but, because she's my mum and she was very smart, and well read, and very into Greek mythology and Aristotle, Socrates, the Iliad, she was always going to bring in some of that. She went for Mithras and Rome because we went to visit my uncle in the north of England, and we went to a place called Hadrian's Wall that has ruins of a Mithraic temple. And she was just like, “this place is magic.”
I think the initial draft was not very long and also not that sexy, but then Ilana said, you need to ‘sex it up’.
Steff:
The story of how your mom and your best friend Ilana became friends is honestly
so special. It's hysterical too. Like, that's what they were presenting back and forth. One of your best friends telling your mom to be “sexier” and “more rude”.
Megan:
And they would bitch about me! “Megan’s so sensitive. Megan can’t handle this”…
Ash:
It’s your mom writing sex scenes! I think you’re allowed to be sensitive.
Megan:
It was so sweet when Ilana came to visit my mum when she was very ill. My mum was pretty bedridden by then, and she made Ilana sit with her the whole time and I would see them laughing and laughing away while my brother and I packed up her house. It's so amazing that Ilana did that. That is really a special friend.
Ash:
How are you handling, like, copying the writing style of the novel? Are you finding it easy?
Megan:
No, I mean, my writing style is more literary. It's a bit more like, trying to be pretty with words. Alison also did that, but yeah…maybe she was less pretentious! I think the book is also quite funny and so do I try to maintain that. Because the characters are already set up, I can kind of get into their mindsets and write the way she would write them.
But I think it's more in the kind of the descriptive scenes that I struggle. And I'm gonna have get a bit more poetic, you know? Her writing could be poetic and really beautiful, but I have to reign myself in and not go Full Metal Flowery.
Steff:
That must be really hard. Continuing writing someone else’s work.
Megan:
Yeah, but I knew her. She was my mum. I have a real sense of her and her voice is so strong in the book. Um, but I don't know… I don't know how well I've done it. So maybe I don't succeed. Maybe I don't have to succeed.
Ash:
You have to because I have to read this book.
Steff:
You've got your readers already.
Ash:
No, exactly. I'm in the store. I'm buying the book immediately.
Megan:
I remember the book mostly… every time I would come home to her house in Pietermaritzburg, as soon as I walked in the door, she would be like: here we go. Here’s the novel. And then I'd read it and engage with it and offer critique. But it's hard when it's your mother. It's hard to read it objectively. You are either too nice or too critical. It was only when I started re-reading it after six years had passed that I could appreciate just how well Alison could write. And that makes me very proud.
Ash:
Did you want to write creatively before?
Megan:
I did a creative writing MA at UCT with André Brink.
Ash:
How was he?
Megan:
He was very nice. He was always very kind to me. None of that break them and remake them kind of bullshit. That idea that you’ve got to make people cry in order for them to become real writers.
Ash:
So, after you did your creative writing MA, you went quite academic?
Megan:
Yes. I got a PhD and didn’t become a real writer!
Steff:
So how is it now switching back into it?
Megan:
Amazing. It's so amazing, because as you know, academic writing, it is… you can’t really relax into it. It is very, very hard work.
Steff & Ash (knowingly):
Yeah.
Megan:
It’s made me very happy.
Steff:
This is a purely selfish question, but do you have a writing routine?
Megan:
Not really. Academically, yes. What I do is wake up early and start writing straight away. You don’t do anything else. That’s the only method.
Steff:
I was playing your podcast out loud to my roommate earlier, it was us alone at our flat, and when it got to the sexy scenes she was like, “Turn it down! Turn it down!”
Megan:
I mean, that's the thing is I think I definitely [desexualized] my mother. I'm sure when we grow older with our parents, particularly our mothers, we erase them as a sexual being. Once you become a mother, that's it. Your whole identity must be your kids. Society says: Why are you having sexual fantasies? How dare you? And I mean, I… I still don't love reading them!
Steff:
Are you becoming more desensitised to the smutty scenes?
Megan:
Not really. I mean, there's this whole other chapter: Chapter 19, which I've found belatedly. Like a mystery chapter. I opened it, and my mother had been reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That was another one of her favourite books. And in this scene, Therese has Sir Nicholas tied up naked. On the bed. She's got a knife. She's cutting him with the knife. And she's about to slice off his nipple. I was like, Jesus!
Ash:
She really did say she was going to sex it up!
Steff:
Also, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo! I need to reread that.
Megan:
You can see the influence in all of her MI6, MI5 writing. John le Carré is there too.
In the book, I do worry a bit like, because I know romantasy is the shit at the moment. Everybody wants to read romantasy, but this book is definitely not like Sarah J. Maas. It's not straightforwardly romantic. It's uh, much more complicated. And then there are all these political thriller and spy aspects. I don't know if it's maybe trying to do too much. I guess it would be the job of an editor to decide that.
Ash:
How do you go about editing your mother’s work?
Megan:
I took out a lot of descriptions of furniture and interiors. A lot. Like, just before one of the intensely confrontational sex scenes, there’s just five pages of description of a velvet throw Therese bought at a market on Portobello Road. And some obscure Russian antique. Which is…unnecessary? It’s harder to know what to do with all the spy stuff. Later on in the book, she meets her love interest, Major John Waring.
Ash:
Killer name.
Megan:
He’s an MI6 agent. I find him a bit boring to be honest. But there are also amazing characters. My favourite and I know my mum's favourite character was Charles Bantry, who runs a secret branch of MI6, or MI5, and he's fantastic. So, I don't want to get rid of all the MI5 bits, and I've started writing those in as well. But I don't know if they're just complicating the picture. I can't make a decision. I need somebody else to decide that for me.
Ash:
So you'll be writing it from the beginning?
Megan:
No, no, no. I'm just picking it up. I think there are only four chapters left to write. She wrote 450 pages.
Steff:
I'm in.
Megan:
The thing is like enormous. And, um, I'm not gonna end it the way she would've ended it, because I want to wrap it up.
Ash:
Did she leave room for a sequel?
Megan:
I have planned for a sequel. Basically an evil god syndicate. I hope it’s not like Percy Jackson but with sex and stuff.
Ash:
Oh my god, I need this book!
Megan:
I know, I need to finish it and then I need to push to get it published somewhere. But that easier said than done. Getting published is really difficult.
Steff:
Why did you choose to do a podcast on the book?
Megan (laughing):
My cousin sent me a skit actually. Have you heard of the Podcast Police? These two guys in Los Angeles and they're dressed up as cops. They're like: “It's an epidemic in LA! And then you get the two guys next to a microphone and the one's like, “well, I hear that uh, sugar water is really good for your testosterone”. And then the podcast police are like: Hold on! Podcast Police! Stopping white men from giving pointless podcasts across the country.
Steff:
Oh, we need that. I really love that.
Megan:
That was so good! But, honestly, it was quite easy to make a podcast.
Steff:
How do you do it? It sounds so professional. Like a microphone?
Megan:
No, I sit in my kitchen or at my dining room table with my phone. That’s what COVID taught me. Adapt and overcome.
Ash:
We loved the podcast.
Steff:
And the book sounds absolutely brilliant.
Megan:
It's so, it's so lovely for me to hear this. Because she's my mum. She's so close to me and we were so emotionally enmeshed and entangled. It's so wonderful to me that other people are interested. And that they love the idea of the book.
Listen to the podcast by following the link below:
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