ADELE PARKS – Why She’s Grateful For The Challenge of Dyslexia

Adele: I think it’s a really important thing in life, admitting to yourself that you do things that are not up to scratch and that’s okay. And I think that’s obviously the whole point of your podcast. You know, there are things that we didn’t, that didn’t reach its full potential, and maybe that’s fine because we’re just learning from them.

And learning is all part of life. Everything can’t be perfect straight away.

Laura: Hello, I’m Laura Shavin and this is the Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life here, the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity paved the way to subsequent success.

My guest on today’s episode is Adele Parks, MBE, born in North Yorkshire. Adele is the author of 24 novels, including several Sunday Times Bestsellers and her 25th novel. Our Beautiful Mess is published this summer. Her books have sold over 5 million copies in English and been translated into a further 31 languages.

She’s also written for national newspapers and magazines and served as executive producer on a feature film, an adaptation of her novel, the image of you. And added to that, Adele is also an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency, and in 2022 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.

Adele Parks, welcome to the Offcuts Drawer. Hello. 25 novels in 25 years. That is so impressive and must be very organized. Do you have an end plan though? Do you have like a magic number you are aiming for? Do you know?

Adele: I don’t, which I, I, I’ve struggled a bit this year ’cause this year is 25 and 25 and I have been very focused on 25 in 25, and now I’m going, oh.

So now I’m doing 26. And then I suppose 27th, what come, you know, when is the end game? But I suppose at some point there will be an end game. But um, but I feel 25 and 25 years I should be quite happy with. I shouldn’t overanalyze.

Laura: It’s like the wedding anniversaries, isn’t it? So this would be your silver novel?

Yes. And if you make it to 50, it’ll be your golden novel. I’m not very clear about the ones in between things like, well

Adele: hilariously, the proof for this 25th one was this beautiful golden cover and I sort of said, oh, don’t you think it should be a silver cover? ’cause it’s 25. And then we all looked at each and thought.

There’s no way I’m gonna get to 50. So we were, yeah. No, gold’s good. Gold’s great.

Laura: Right. Well, let’s kick off with your first off cut. Can you tell us, please, what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

Adele: This is an outtake from my 2020 novel called Both of You.

Actor 1: At the bar. Everyone had been so shiny and groomed, way more groomed than she remembered.

People being in her day, men in her day smelt their clothes were awful. Checked shirts, red trousers. Still, she had fancy to fair few attracted to their wiffy pheromones. Despite the challenge, sartorial sense, she really resented getting old because amongst other things it meant she fancied no one and was fancied by fewer Still.

Women weren’t as well groomed back in her day then neither her day. Oh my God. But then she thought, and she hoped, this wasn’t just wishful thinking. She thought maybe they talked about bigger things and they had more fun. They were more sincere. Jesus. If that thought ever drifted onto paper out of her head into God forbid her voice box, they’d make mince meat out of her.

The careful emotionally vulnerable. Millennials and Zeds were so easily upset. But they had, it was true. They had more fun and they spoke about bigger stuff. They were their authentic selves, although the wanky phrase hadn’t been thought up, the only time the word authentic was used was in conjunction with antiques.

That’s how authentic they were. This station Waterloo had witnessed some of her most drunken dreadful moments. Some, not all. It would be hard to prioritize and categorize her drunken moments. There had been a few, but then again, too few to mention, sorry, outdated reference. Frank Sin er, if you’re interested.

Hell of a voice. She didn’t believe that talent had stopped. She’d never say they don’t make ’em like they used to because they did. There were numerous incredible singer songwriters, young enough for her to have given birth to. They could hold a candle up to Sinatra if they’d been given years and years of support.

But no one was Nowadays, they weren’t even given 15 minutes of fame, just three or four. It was reflecting on it impossible, probably to find your true, authentic self in three or four minutes. When she was 21, she’d been at no fixed abode. Now they’d call her homeless. They’d say she was sofa surfing at the time.

She just knew she was okay. If she could sleep on the sofa of a friend with more money or experience, it wasn’t great. It did affect her mental health, but again, that’s not how they described it. Then she was just seen as weird, bonkers, highly strung, maybe on a good day, creative.

Laura: This reads very scatterbrained to me. The, the character’s always digressing. Is that the character in the book or was it the way you put down all your thoughts as they occur to you and then you tidy up later? I mean, whose voice is it? Is that yours or is it the character’s voice? Do you

Adele: know this character and the reason this isn’t off cut.

She never appeared. It never happened. No. Um, yeah, she didn’t, this isn’t the character that ends up in the book, but she was my starting point. So yeah, there was so much, so much in that. It’s really interesting to listen to it because. Pretty much none of that gets in. First of all, she sounds as though she’s in her fifties.

That character, both of you. Character is in her forties, so she’s a good decade younger, so a lot of that is irrelevant ’cause she is a millennial. But it was the first. I quite often start writing or think of my book whilst I’m still coming to the end of the book before. And I remember being in Waterloo Station and watching a whole bunch of.

Mostly women. I mean, men were there, but I tend to focus on what women are up to. Uh, saying goodbye to their friends, saying goodbye to their lovers, getting on trains, saying hello to all those people coming off trains. So there was a sort of stream of consciousness going on and I was definitely looking at it, but I.

Was already trying to feel a way into a character who did have some kind of emotional instability and physical instability. You heard straight away that she sofa surfed. In the end, the character and both of you, and I’m really talking around this ’cause I’m really trying not to give a spoiler, but. She’s as mad as a box of frogs in some ways.

Sorry, very terrible thing to say, but I don’t think I’m offending any books as frogs yet. But she has a very deep rooted problem, uh, she goes missing in this book. And there are two women that go missing in this book and, and both of them are very deep rooted problem. I was feeling my way into that.

Laura: So you didn’t have an equivalent of her then?

You didn’t go, well, I’m gonna make her 10 years younger and have a different name. But it’s

Adele: No. Do you know, in fact, she didn’t become Art. She was a management consultant, one of them. And the other one was a sort of woman who’d married well about married a younger man. So didn’t work at all. But both of them were incredibly organized.

The only thing they had. In common with this character is they had, as I say, some emotional instability in their early part of their lives. So they were still reacting to that, and I would say that was the only thing they had in common really.

Laura: So are you not tempted to maybe sort of put her aside and then drop her into another?

Adele: Do you know? Many, many of my characters in my books are. Slightly bonkers. And I think that was, Hmm. Uh, well, you know, it makes a good psychological thriller to have a, a unstable narrator. I mean, it does. And I, I think at the time with both of you, I wanted to move away from that. But I have written a woman since that I think could be this woman.

I don’t think she is to be abandoned. I think there’s a lot of ideas and a lot of people in my head that may or may not come out in the future. And, and I like her. I like that stream of consciousness. She’s like a, a sort of slightly mad, low down at heel Mrs. Dalloway, isn’t she just out there saying her thing?

Laura: Well, I was reading it going, this is like everyone I know Yeah. People, people of a certain age. Um, just go, yeah, that’s basically, that could be me. Well, time for another off cut. Now. Tell us about this one, please.

Adele: Well, this one it’s called the warning and it’s a short story I wrote when I was 12 in 1981.

Actor 2: Don’t be daft. Chris, you don’t want to go in there. Yes, I do. Why? I wanted to read my cards. You know, tell me if I meet a tall, dark stranger. They began to giggle. Then as Chris was so headstrong, she went along in inside the stage green caravan. It was dark. In the center of the room, there was a round table with a green and white spotted tablecloth.

At the back of the table, a woman with jet black hair sat. She frightened. Chris, sit down child. Don’t be scared. The fortune teller spoke in a clear voice. I’m not scared. Chris tried to be as confident as she sounded. The fortune teller chuckled. Chris, how’d you know my name? Chris asked. Again. The fortune teller chuckled, but did not reply.

Child, the fortune teller continued child. I cannot answer your question because all I see on the cards is one thing. What is it? Death Chris let out a whimper despite herself. Your death where when? I can’t say exactly, but child, be careful of the number. 8 0 1 and the color red. This is my warning. Chris didn’t listen to anymore.

She ran. Ran out of the caravan. Straight into Sue. Hey, what’s the hurry? I’ve just been on the eggs with You’ll never guess who? Steve Carter Sue walked briskly in the night air. Hey, is there anything wrong? What did the fortune teller say? Oh, nothing much. Just that I’d meet some guy. It’s probably Steve.

He’s asked us around his house tomorrow to play some records. That’s nice. Hey, I thought you’d be thrilled, ecstatic, or at least pleased. I’m said Chris, and normally she would’ve been. The next day was Saturday. Chris woke up and looked at our clock, nine 20. Heck, she’d have to hurry. She was meeting Sue at 10.

Chris dashed out of our house, bang, splat into Sue. Hi. Hi. I’m sorry I’m late, but don’t worry you’re not. They walked and talked as they set off towards Steve’s. This is, it said Sue with a grin. Chris looked up the steps at the red door with a brass. 8 0 1 hung above the letter box. The fortune teller’s warning came back to her.

Beware of the number 8 0 1 and the color red. Chris began to run. Chris, come back, Sue, yelled, frantically, look out. But Sue’s yelling could not be heard above the noise of the traffic. The young girl had no chance. The driver of the red bus number 8 0 1 couldn’t stop

Adele: laughing so hard right now.

Laura: Um,

Adele: yes. I didn’t really get the brief on this. I really, that’s not showcasing my best work is it? That is just giving everybody a big giggle. But

Laura: this is really important ’cause this is what you were writing at. 12, there’s not many 12 year olds that will be able to write something quite as coherent and complete and, um, with a twist at the end, or two twists as it turns out.

Very, I impressive that double twist. Double twist. I’m always,

Adele: I still do a double twist. Uh, maybe Do you think I read it squirming because I’ve always thought. I was a good writer and always thought it was my thing at school, and I found this in an excise book, and I just thought it was really funny because I didn’t think it was very good.

When I look back, I think my 12-year-old son probably wrote better. He’s not 12 now, he’s 24 now, but I think when he was 12 he was writing way better than that, but I might inflated ego with the distance of past. I thought I was great and looking back at it, no, not that great. Average.

Laura: Oh, I dunno. Well, I think you’re probably comparing your 12-year-old self.

Thank you. And what you know today to be good writing and, and you can pick out points that are maybe false with a, a weakness maybe. I mean, my only issue is it with, it was possibly that you’ve never been to a fortune teller before, because that’s not generally how they operate. Sense. They don’t tend to say things like, I see one word death and can you imagine?

Adele: So adorable. Dramatic, isn’t it? You know, it’s got everything in there. There’s a romance, there’s a bus, there’s a fortune tell of everything’s going on. I mean, that could be, that could be several short stories, really, couldn’t it? Yeah.

Laura: I was impressed with that. I thought you, you sent it to me to go Look, look, see how clever I was when I was young.

Adele: Oh gosh. No. But I suppose it did point out that I always wanted to be a writer. Yes. Well, I was gonna ask you. I really always did. Yeah.

Laura: What were you like at school? Were you really good at English, et cetera?

Adele: I was. I was good at. I tried. Yeah. And

Laura: were you good at everything or just was English clearly the way forward?

Uh, well

Adele: even English wasn’t clearly the way forward ’cause I’m dyslexic. Oh. So I think I had lots of imagination and I had a fair amount of confidence and I liked school and I liked my friends and we had a good giggle, but I think it came back over and over again ’cause I hid it very, very well. You know, I was clever enough to be able to hide it, so I did hide my dyslexia.

I didn’t even know I had dyslexia. I just thought I was really, really rubbish at spelling out. My di dyslexia wasn’t um, diagnosed until I was 21, about a month after I’d graduated. Oh, right. So I just. Spent a long time thinking, why doesn’t it stick with me the way it does with other people? And I just put it down to my northernness that people would say, spell it, how you say it?

And I thought, well, I have, I just have said it. But it said, uh, how I speak was different to a lot of other people. I was then meeting who had sort of queen received English, and I absolutely didn’t because there was all of that going on. And actually, the other thing about dyslexia, people think, oh, it’s about bad spelling.

And it, it’s that it’s not, it’s not just about that. It’s so complicated and so confusing, and you don’t know why you’re not like anyone else. And you don’t understand why you might have known something the minute it was being taught to you. You really got in, you really understand it. And then when you try and write it down or explain it back to someone, you can’t.

Laura: Mm.

Adele: And that was all part of it. Um, and my left and right was very bad and lots of things were confusing for me. But on the other hand, I do to this day now believe that my dyslexia. Helped me think around things more creatively and made me who I am. So I’m actually very grateful that I had it. But going back to the question of how did I do at school, I would say I was a mixed bag.

’cause I could go. To one exam and get the highest mark in the class quite comfortably, and I could go again to another exam and get the lowest mark in the class quite comfortably, depending on how stressed I was and Oh, really? Okay. How the dyslexia was kicking in and Yeah, so I wasn’t. Particularly consistent, but I tried so hard that it tended to get me quite far, you know, the kid in the class that underlined everything and put borders around everything and drew little pictures and um, you know, and I did that with all my English story.

I really liked art as well. So I did that with all my English, uh, homework assignments. It was illustrated. I tried so hard. I actually am quite good at. Mass. Mm-hmm. Um, sport was a real letdown for me. I hated sport and I was really bad at that. But you know, I was at a local comp where sport was sort of two hours a week and nobody cared.

So you could get away with not being good at sport in my school.

Laura: Well, listen, 25 books in 25 years, we are not worried about whether you’re good at netball. Exactly. That’s not an issue. Right. Well, moving on now. Let’s have your next off cut, please.

Adele: Uh, this is from 1988 when I was at university, and it is a clip from my second year dissertation.

Actor 3: Seduction is a theme which recurs in literature. Psychoanalytic and feminist critics argue that in literature, whether the woman is the seducer or seduced, she’s portrayed as more sinful than the male protagonists. Critics suggest Adam and Eve precipitated a literary tradition, which mistrusts women. The female seducer Seducable is condemned as unnaturally, aggressive, and simultaneously ruined.

Where did these stereotypes originate from? What is their purpose? I have decided to carefully examine four female literary characters who were subjected to the temptation of seduction. The characters are Middleton’s Beatrice from the Changeling. 1622 Milton’s Eve from Paradise Lost 1667 and Richardson’s Pamela 1740 And Hardee’s Tess from Tess of the Villes 1895.

The genres play epic poem. Epistolary novel and novel are unified by the aspects of the archetype seduction, which they have in common. Seduction is physical and spiritual. To seduce is to lead astray, tempt into sin or a crime. Corrupt persuade a person into abandonment of principles, especially chastity or allegiance, persuaded by tempting ness or attractiveness.

All the women are seduced either physically or spiritually. They are all part of a triangular relationship of one female, two males. All texts depict several seductions. The texts are written by males primarily considering a female point of view. I wish to consider if surface similarities justify the claim that the Biblical Eve as archetypal seducer is perceptible in all sexually subverting females, and why these common elements reoccur in the fallen woman myth I.

Laura: Fun stuff there.

Adele: Yet again, I’m cringing. As I say, I didn’t realize the brief was to put me in a good light. This is definitely not doing that.

Laura: No, no. This is, again, it shows that you have a serious academic background. You gave it some serious thought. Were you doing English at university? It sounds like you were.

I was, but English was your degree. Where were you? Where did Le you go? Lester? And how did you find university? Were you very social or were you sort of cloistered away being academic? What kind of teenager were you?

Adele: Uh, I was very social. I was very, very social. Yeah, I was very, very social until the final year really, when I thought I better do some work.

But I’m laughing a lot at the ambition of that, you know, four genres, three centuries, all the great works. Oh, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna do them all. I’m gonna do them all. I think, um, what that shows is I didn’t know how much. I didn’t know. And I think that was quite interesting about me ’cause I, you know, first generation university and all of that.

So I really didn’t know what to expect And um, I actually, and this is, I’m just telling you all my failures all at once, but I had applied to university the way everybody does through uh, you know, through in those days cca. Mm-hmm. And I’d have five rejections which nobody could understand because I was, you know, I dunno, I’d done gold dv You predicted to

Laura: get AS and stuff I imagine?

Yeah, and I’d done

Adele: gold DV. You know, done, um, a student, sorry, gold Duke of Edinburgh. Yeah. Who did the gold Duke. Oh. Oh goodness. And I did student governor and I was, I was as swaty as they got in our, in our little comp, you know, and you

Laura: got five rejections. How did that that happen? And I got five rejections.

Adele: Well, how it happened, well, first of all, if you remember back, you, in those days, you hand wrote your replication and I’m dyslexic, and they didn’t know. So it will have been littered with mistakes. Mm-hmm. You know, we didn’t pick up on. Mm-hmm. But secondly, because I had no idea how university worked, I thought she went there to learn things.

Now I understand that’s not necessarily always the case. So I knew I wanted to do English, but I thought, gosh, this would be a great opportunity to learn something new as well. So maybe if I went to York, they’re really good at music, I could do English and music, and if I went to Warwick for example, I could do.

English and acting. And if I went to East Anglia, I could do English and art. And so I applied for five very different courses, which obviously we all know shows a lack of focus, which actually I do have, um, lack of focus. So, you know, fair, fair that I was pulled out on that one. Um, and so they just said, God, this kid doesn’t know what she wants.

Or, or you know, maybe it was the spelling, how

Laura: wrong they turned out to be. How wrong? 25 books in 25 years. Hilarious. They, they have no idea. I

Adele: mean, I think it’s quite fun. I mean, it wasn’t fun at the time. It was heartbreaking at the time. Everybody else was getting offers and my headmaster and to his credit said, well, you’ll get the grades and then you’ll be able to have your pick.

You’ll go through clearing and you’ll have your pick. And there were two places. In clearing available Royal Holloway and New uh, and New Bedford. And this one, uh, Leicester. And I went to Leicester ’cause it wasn’t as far away. And I went to uni and I met amazing people there who are still my best friends.

Now I’ve got, you know, great people from Leicester University and I’m so. Prior to the friendships I made there, but I think I was very, very, very unprepared for what that experience would be.

Laura: Who were you at 18, 19, 20. What were your, ’cause obviously you’re in between living at your parents’ house and then getting a job and settling down into the rat race.

Who were you at that age? Who did you want to be? Who are you dreaming of being at that point? I was

Adele: definitely dreaming of being a writer. I was quite artsy. I had this. My hair’s actually supernaturally curly, even though I now always blow dry it to a smoother version. But I had this sort of big pre ruffle light hair going on.

I was always in my dunes and my dms. I was quite this sort of. Screaming feminist slash I’m a pre ruff light muse. I mean, what is that? If not a split personality? I didn’t, you know, I was trying everything out, which I think excellent is. Yeah, it is excellent. It’s exactly what young people should do when they go to university.

I was trying out lots of different versions of me. I think I’d like, I mean, you’d have to ask the other people I went to uni with, but I didn’t take myself particularly. Seriously. I don’t think, you know, I tried lots of, I dunno, clubs and things and I, you know, I had

Laura: a gigle. I had Gigle Yes. As we all did.

Yeah,

Adele: exactly. And um, and I had a giggle and it was fun.

Laura: But you dreamed of being a novelist specifically or just. You didn’t know exactly. Maybe you’d be a journalist, maybe you’d be a novelist, A researcher. A novelist. A novelist. You already knew that. Never,

Adele: yeah. Never crossed my mind to, in fact, funny story.

I thought I had kept it a massive secret though, because everybody, there’s 40 people on that English course back then, and I think everybody probably wanted to be a novelist, so I felt slightly embarra. Because, you know, it’s a, it’s a relatively vain thing to think you want to be, that you think you have something to say that other people should read.

And I was self-conscious of it and, and didn’t want to say it. And then many, many years later, ’cause I wasn’t published until I was 30, but when I did get my book deal and I rang up all my friends and told them, I went, you could be so surprised ’cause such a secret. No one ever knew this about me until the last person they said.

No, every time you got drunk you would say a funny in office. Every single time you would bang on about it and you were so boring and you’d tell us your parts and they were really boring and we didn’t wanna know. But you’d do it. And the funny thing is, obviously I blanked that out. The next day I get up smiling, thinking my little secret was still mine, Kar.

Uh, so yeah, funny old days. Yes.

Laura: And you never worry about running out of ideas. Kind of after 25 books that you’ve written, are you still as hopeful and positive about it as you were at 1819? Do you still think Yep. I’ve still got loads to say.

Adele: Uh, well, interestingly, no. Interestingly, I think I’m. I’m in a better place now than I was then, I think 18 or 19.

I desperately wanted to be a writer, but nothing had ever happened to me or nothing I was prepared to talk about. Um, and even if I was prepared to talk about it, I didn’t really have the skillset to, to do that. Um, but the skillset being. Uh, genuine empathy for other people’s points of view. Um, so, which I think is a really important skill for a novelist.

Laura: Yeah,

Adele: so I think now I have more to say. I’ve, I’ve been a mother, I’ve been a, a wife twice. I’ve, um, had friendships come and go. I, I’ve had. Great successes and huge disappointments. I’ve had gains and losses. I’ve more to say now than I did then. So I don’t worry about running out of ideas. I think I’m in a particular situation now where I’m writing psychological thrillers and I am very much known for my twists and my twists and my twist.

So I think people read me waiting for a twist and I keep saying there may not be one. That might be the twist. That’s the twist. Yes. Yes. That might be the twist. I might give you a book that isn’t twisty, turny, because I might decide that’s what I want to write next because not all my ideas are necessarily psychological thrillers.

I know the one that comes out in 2025. It’s a psychological thriller. I know the one that is in 2026 is ’cause I’m two thirds of the way through writing that one. I don’t know. Beyond that, I don’t know if I will keep always writing psychological thrillers. I always say, I think I’ll run outta time before I run out of ideas.

I often have three or four ideas in a in a year, and I have to sort of drill down on them and make sure they’re not just short stories and they’re really genuinely and novel. And sometimes this year, 2020 book was one of those times where I really wanted to do. Two books I couldn’t choose and I, I started one and then I changed my mind and then I went back to it and then I changed my mind.

I could have done either one

Laura: and could the second book be 20, 27 or it might be, yeah, let’s

Adele: face it, that might, it’s sitting there, isn’t it? It’s asking for me to give it its attention, but there was also a reason I left it alone. And actually I’m quite brutal. If there is a reason, if there’s something and even a tiny thing that is a reason I abandon something.

Then it probably needs to stay abandoned. I’m quite the ruthless editor.

Laura: Okay, let’s move on now. Your next off cut, please. What’s this one?

Adele: This is my second off cut called the warning, but this one is a poem and I wrote it in 2002

Actor 3: to disallow the possibility of too much happiness. I married to protect myself from unadulterated pleasure.

I settled to safeguard from unreasonable horror. I paired. To avoid being alone on a dance floor at 40, you’ll marry like a diamond as big as the Ritz. You came along to fill up my tits. I was always so careful and sensible. Licentious behavior was indefensible paid my taxes crossed at the green man. Now I fuck you.

Whenever I can. My lips are sore, my thoughts are raw. Whenever we say goodbye, I just want more. I’m perpetually wet between the thighs. What we are doing isn’t, especially wise, it’s sticky and tricky, but I don’t want it to stop. If ever you ask my knickers, I’ll drop. I love you.

Laura: Goodness me.

Adele: You’re allowed to laugh. I do.

Laura: Yes. Yes. We, we all went, crikey. That was, um, well, I dunno, I’m,

Adele: I, I mean, it’s hilarious that I put it out there for you to have it. First of all, can I just say that there’s this fact that I’ve got two called the warning. I obviously spend my entire life worrying about stuff, don’t I?

Oh, don’t do that. Don’t

Laura: do that. From the age of 12 to the age of whatever that was, 20 something. Yeah. Yes. You’re busy warning people about different things. Yeah. But, um, this poem is surprising content aside. To me. It reads like two poems joined together. It’s like you’d written the first. Poem fairly sort of hardened and cynical and, and, you know, realistic about relationships.

And then like somebody called you out and you’d gone off for a drink or something, or possibly something else, I don’t know. But you come back maybe two or three drinks, uh, worse for wear. Yeah. And you’ve completely forgotten about your basic theme and you’ve been distracted by a lovely man.

Adele: I think that’s very possible.

Laura: You don’t remember? I mean,

Adele: I feel that’s my life. No, well, I do. I know exactly when this is written. So I think what happened is it was two parts of my divorce process, so I think it may not have been a quick couple of drinks and straight back to it, but, um. The poem. I mean, oh yeah. It was, uh, it was more that I would’ve written the bitter sad stuff.

And then the very first night I went out after my divorce, I met my now husband, which is unusual. I, I understand that.

Laura: The very first night you went out,

Adele: I had, oh, I had one night being single. Hilarious. Technically single. You are

Laura: kidding.

Adele: I know, I know. Weird. So I, I mentioned that I was, you know. It was a surprise that to me, that I was a single mom and I had a 10 month old baby.

And then when the baby was, I dunno, 13 months, so not much in it, three months. Um, my friend had a birthday party. She said, you’ve got to come out. You can’t still stay in the house. You know you can’t stay in the house forever. And I was like, literally have nothing to wear than maternity clothes. And she said, oh no, you we’ll go out.

We’ll go out, we’ll go shopping. And I remember buying these. Brown leather trousers from whistles. Oh, I still own them. Very lovely. And I had every objection here. I was like, oh, I can’t, because you know I haven’t got a babysitter. She said, oh, I’ve got a babysitter. And uh, so her babysitter sat for both our babies and we all went out.

Six women that had all had babies a year ago, and. All of the others announced their pregnancy and they were all there with the husbands. And I announced my divorce and said, you know, well he left me, you know, a while back and um, and I feel like rubbish. And then I turned around and there was this. Guy across the crowded room and I just thought, no, he’s hot.

Yeah. Oh, word. And I thought he’s hot. I think that will help tonight. And yeah, and everyone And then the romance for want a better term that sort of. Followed. The very intense were months that followed. Everybody kept saying to me, you do know that this is your rebound shag. You do know this isn’t gonna make it, and this isn’t gonna be a big deal.

Don’t lose your head, don’t lose your heart. Don’t fall for him. And I just thought, no, I have fallen for him. This is it. He’s amazing. I, and now we’ve been married 21 years.

Laura: Wow. That’s a story and a half. That one, isn’t it?

Adele: Fantastic. So I suspect there were two poems shoved together. I’ve, funnily enough, never tried to get my poems published and I think No.

Having heard that one broadcast live, yeah. I never should.

Laura: Well, well, you know, I would say don’t, don’t give up the day job. Your day job is doing so well. You so well you. Exactly. Yeah. Don’t really need to. Fun. It’s,

Adele: it’s fun that, um, it’s out there. And, and you know, the, the fact that I obviously was looking for a different way to express myself.

’cause obviously I could have, I could have done prose and actually did go on to write a, a book about mine and Jim’s relationship.

Laura: Oh, which one is that?

Adele: I, so. Oh, it’s called the other women’s shoes. Yeah, the other women’s shoes. It’s almost a word for word account. Yeah. I mean, you will now recognize the night that I’ve just described is, is in that book.

Oh, wow. Um, the only thing I do is split my character into two different women and I give myself two children. I only had one. But other than that, it’s pretty much the same thing.

Laura: Right.

Adele: Um, anyway, that aside, I do think that’s hilarious that that poem has now had an earring and I felt I’ve always wanted it to have an earring to read secretly.

Secretly I have because I was so right about him and everyone told me I was wrong and I was, you know, obviously to start with just a lot of pent up passion. Let’s go with passion. But, um, but it quickly moved on to something very deep and very important to me. So I think it’s quite fun that that’s now had its little moment, even though I accept that it’s, it’s never gonna make it into an anthology.

Laura: Did you write a lot of poetry then?

Adele: Mm. I think I’ve done 12 in my life.

Laura: Oh, I see.

Adele: Yeah. Not a lot. I think he can see that, that it needs some practice. I think I could work on that skill before we, uh, we, we rush out to try and publish them. And I think also I do write them. It’s hilarious that you said you probably went out for a drink and came back.

’cause that is. When I write them, so well done. Good spot. Yes, Ralph.

Laura: Oh, how satisfying that is. Oh, excellent. Okay. Well, right. Let’s move on to your next off cut. Now what’s this one?

Adele: Well, this is an earlier poem, so this is one of the 12. Really getting them out. Yeah, but can I say, in my defense, I think everything else I’ve ever written other than my poems has been published.

If I’ve tried for it to be published, it’s been published, so that’s why the poems are getting an airing. But this one was written in 1989 and it’s called The Ruse. I was at university at the time.

Actor 2: Would I want you if I were first? I would not. The savage satire that you are pulls me in pounding. You are appalling at articulating, expressing.

I deliberately try to confuse. But this is just a ruse as we both long to be understood, and yet it is this coldness, this icy fjord that you are impenetrable aquamarine. So beautiful, so terrible. It is all of these things that I need and want you deliberately try to confuse, but this is just a ruse. As we both long to be good.

Laura: This one’s slightly less shocking. Um, but you wrote to me, uh, when, well, it was, the note I received with this poem was when you were dating an unknowable, posh boy. This was at university, was it?

Adele: Yes. Yes. I didn’t confess far too much.

Laura: Yes. Does the Un Noble posh boy know that he was a subject of a poem?

Adele: I very much doubt it.

I don’t think the un noble, posh boy would even still know my name. Um, oh, well he must now, I suppose he may now, he might have got, yes, I think you rings bell. Uh, but I don’t think I was very important to him at all. I think I had a phase, definite phase sort of thinking, oh, I’ve gotta get out there and.

Meet posh boys. ’cause I never had, I’d obviously, you know, as I’ve mentioned, I went to a comp and all my boyfriends had went from there. And I found them fascinating for a while. And then I literally found them unknowable. Couldn’t get through to them. They wouldn’t talk to me and they, they wouldn’t tell me how they were feeling.

And, but at first, I think there was a stage where I found that. Fascinating. It’s probably a thing to do with self-confidence and lack of when you’re quite young. ’cause I think as you get older you should be able to say, gosh, if you can’t tell me what you’re thinking and feeling, perhaps this isn’t for us.

Mm. But uh, uh, in 1989, I did not have that in my vocabulary.

Laura: You’ve sort of gone on, haven’t you? The unknowability of others seems to be something you write about a lot in your novels regarding sort of truth and fidelity that seems to come up. I do quite a lot. I think

Adele: there’s, I think all of these. Um, off cuts.

They’ve got something of that. Even that crazy, terrible dissertation, which can I say, I’ve got a two one in all my life. I’ve always been shocked at that two. One thinking I should have been a first. I’ve now listened to that dissertation. What can I say? I’ve noticed that dissertation. I was like, look, it wasn’t a third girl, uh, because it was shocking.

Uh, so all of this, this sort of recapping it. Very good for me. But yes, I think I am interested in fidelity and infidelity. I think it’s one of the few things that we have. That we select as a moral code for no other reason than we select to do it. There isn’t really anymore, there isn’t really a sort of evolutionary path that tells us that this is what we should do.

I can see where there would’ve been in the past, but I think most of us would still opt for it if we can.

Laura: Yes, of course we would

Adele: still opt to know and to be known and to remain faithful. And yet nearly all of my books are about people. The struggle with that.

Laura: Oh, I suppose that’s the interesting part of conflict, isn’t it, the Unknowability.

Mm-hmm. Of others, but that was the subject of a lot of your books, but your 17th novel, the Image of You where one woman tries to discover the truth about the man that her twin sister’s fallen in love with. Mm-hmm. That definitely seems to be on that subject. That particular novel has been made into a film.

Adele: Yes.

Laura: Yeah, tell me about that. You didn’t write the screenplay for this one, did you? But No, I

Adele: didn’t, but I worked on it. I worked with, um, Christopher, who was fantastic and we worked on it through, uh, lockdown, which was great to have a project. And I worked very hard on. On the exec producing. So getting it made, uh, exec producer can be anything, as I’m sure loads of your listeners know, it can be anything from, you know, you throw in money.

I didn’t do that. You throw in time. I absolutely did do that. Mm-hmm. Because the producer that had opted the book in the first place, I remember sort of talking to him through lockdown saying, oh, every. You know, nobody’s doing anything and everybody’s locked down and it’s gonna disappear. And he said to me, well the thing is, Adele, nobody will ever care about this as much as you, everybody’s got lots of projects on, you are the one that can make this happen or not.

And I found that really empowering.

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Adele: And it had never crossed my mind that I could be the one that could make that happen or not. Which is odd. ’cause actually, if you think about being a novelist, all you do is make something from nothing. Exactly.

Laura: Yeah.

Adele: Um. But I really enjoyed the process and, uh, and I’m proud of the film.

It’s a, it’s, uh, a fun popcorny version of a. Psychological thriller. It isn’t a dark, nasty, psychological thriller, although arguably really nasty things happen. But they happen in a relatively tongue in cheek way, which is, is the vibe of the book and trying to get that. So sort of

Laura: romcom as far as films are concerned, would you say?

Uh, well,

Adele: interestingly, you see, this is interesting because the image of you was. Uh, the crossover book from romcom to psychological thrillers in terms of the genre, when I was writing and I had written quite a dark ending, and at the time, my publisher at the time said, oh, we feel that’s a big jump from where you are at now.

Can you soften your ending? And I did. And then when it, the book was. Being turned into a film, I said, oh, don’t read the book. Here is the ending, and, and pitch the ending that I’d I’d originally wanted, which is much darker because you need to have a genre. If you’re going to go into film, you can’t say, oh, it’s a bit of a hybrid.

You can do that in reading and writing because. People give you their time, their undivided, 15 hours, 20 hours, however long it might take them to read a book. They’re giving you the undivided time. But in a film, you’ve got, you know, an hour and a half. So you need to be able to say to the producers, it’s in this genre.

So I, I shoved it quite firmly into psychological thriller, but with a bit of fun. Twists and tongue and cheek and, and I think, I think it’s successful. I like it.

Laura: Why was that novel, the one that you chose? ’cause you’d written 17 up to that point. So what was the particular draw of turning that one into a film?

I

Adele: think it was a relatively commercial decision, actually, that I knew psychological thrillers were being bought up by producers. And at that time that was me going into psychological thrillers. I had a couple that were very new, still one read, written one that. Just come out the week I was approached. So this one had a little bit more of the sales behind it, and I was able to say, look, it’s sold x amount of books already.

Um, it, it’s, it’s this idea. Off we go. And actually, it’s a really strong idea, isn’t it? I think everybody loves the idea of our identical twins and we’re fascinated by them because, you know, they can. You know, spoiler boat, not spoiler. Uh, they can play each other and they can, uh, they have things in common.

They have differences that are, you know, this whole going back to the knowability and not knowability of a person. And if you, if your twin doesn’t know you, who does, you know? So I thought there’s a lot of mileage in it. And actually it took. Three years from, from being sold as an option to getting it made.

So, you know, there’s always that. By then I was three years done. Maybe I would’ve chosen something different by then. ’cause I had other books out with other sales records. But at the time it was just a sensible choice.

Laura: Okay. Right. We’ve come to your final off cut. Tell us about this one please.

Adele: This is an off cut from my 25th and most recent novel, our Beautiful Mess, which is published in 2025.

Actor 4: At first he’d been scared of it. Yes. Actually fucking scared of the money because they called it a reward. They said it was a thank you for not calling the police. That was bad enough. He didn’t spend it, at least not at first, but the second time they found him, they said it was a loan. He tried to hand it back then it was still in the envelope.

They laughed and said there was interest on the loan. But I never borrowed anything off you. You have our money. You’ve had it a month, now you’ve given it back. What do you call that if not a loan? I never asked for it. They just shrugged. You owe 800 pounds. What? That’s stupid. Where am I gonna get 800 pounds?

What’s the interest rate you are charging? But the question was idiotic. He knew that they said he could clear things if he delivered something for them. Started talking about interest rates. If only he’d done that in the first place. Taken out a credit card to think. He used to think 24% was too much interest to pay.

They said he owed them more than 10 times the original sum. Now it kept going up. No matter what he did, he had no idea how they calculated the interest. He doubted there was an exact rate, a hundred percent fucked 30 times over. Wasn’t a processable mathematical formula. He wasn’t a fucking idiot. He knew that he wasn’t going to be delivering pizza for the sort of money they’d loaned him.

But the first job was a message, something that can’t be sent in a text. The second job was a document. Papers. He decided not to open the envelope even though it wasn’t sealed. He thought it was a test. Could he be trusted also, he didn’t wanna look. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Right. He’d assumed it might be dodgy accounts or something.

The next package he was instructed to pick up was different. No instructions as to where it should be delivered. Were texted. The package had the words open me, scratched on with a blue biro, all in capitals, uneven letters that looked like they were scratched out by someone uncomfortable holding a pen at school, but happy to carve their name on the desktop with a pen knife.

He didn’t open the envelope, not straight away. He dipped into a coffee chain, went into the Scuzzy Lu that was supposed to be for customer’s use only when the door was securely locked behind him. He looked inside the packet. The notes were dirty, used. He counted them 2000 pounds, A lot of money. His instructions were to take this and bring another package back.

If he did, as he was told he was buying drugs, he was a dealer.

Laura: I thought we’d add some, uh, testosterone to the reading team there. Just, uh, excellent. There’s too much estrogen flowing through this particular episode, but this passage, was it just this passage that was cut out or the whole idea of this character becoming a drug dealer? What, what’s the story behind this offcut?

Adele: Well, this is an off cut that I did myself. I quite often, um, I mentioned I, I self-edit a lot. I think by the time I. Give my book a I’m, I’m pretty much hoping it’s, it’s done deal. So at the beginning I sort of overwrite and I might have ideas and I quite often get as far as sort of 50, 60, 70,000 words and then could reduce it by as much as a half, which does horrify some people.

But for me it’s just the way I get into it. So this is a character called Zach. Zach is still in my book. He is really important. And it’s funny though, you’re right, we are talking, um. From a female point of view a lot in this, uh, podcast, but in fact I actually often write from a male point of view, and I often have male characters, but he’s a, he’s quite a young one.

He’s only 20 and. He in the actual finished book Our Beautiful Mess. He is a character that has a secret that is life-threatening. Uh, he has got himself involved in something way above anything he can deal with, and it is to do with drugs, but it’s nothing to do with alone. I decided that was all too complicated and I just even hearing it then I was like, oh, thank God I cut this.

So, yeah, so, so it was just, there’s, there’s some nice bits in there. You know, I can’t remember the numbers, but he, he talks about the mathematical formula that he can’t do, which is how fucked he is. Yeah. And I think that’s a nice concept and that, that carries through with Zach. He is out of his depth and he’s struggling, but it isn’t a sort of small turn loan.

He. Gets in something much more vicious. And actually I can’t tell you what, but he gets into something much more vicious, much faster into the novel where this all seemed a bit slow burn. And I thought like, I don’t really care. If I don’t care, nobody else cares. Um, so yeah. So that’s the only reason that this was taken out.

Laura: Now this is a belated sequel. The book Our Beautiful Mess. ’cause if I’ve got this right, um, this is the sequel to the first book you ever wrote. Is that right?

Adele: It is in a way, I suppose. So the very first book I ever wrote was, um, about a woman called Connie. And at the time she was nearly 30. And all my audiences, as you can imagine, were women of about that age, or some men, but mostly women, and the book’s called Playing Away, and it’s about a woman who.

Uh, falls madly in love with somebody who shouldn’t. And it, um, it wrecks her, her marriage, a very, very new marriage. And it’s about her struggling back from that. And it was, it came out in the year 2000. It was a huge hit. It was the, uh, biggest selling debut of that year. Um, and Connie set me up without Connie.

I probably wouldn’t be sat here talking to you. You know, she was amazing for me. And in the book at the time, in playing Away, she had four best friends who were really good fun and they were in the background. They all had their own problems and they own their own backstories in one thing, in another.

And I always resented that really quietly, that it eventually got put in this sort of Chiclet banner. Mm-hmm. Because when it was published, it was originally published at Penguin and the the editor at the time, and I. I swear this is true. This is an absolute true story. He said to me, would you like this published as a commercial book or a literary book?

And I said, what’s the difference? She said, A literary book will probably sell about 8,000 copies, and a commercial book will probably sell about 80,000 copies. And I thought, I’ll have that then. But it’s um, but it’s interesting, isn’t it, because it was a matter of how they were going to publish it, not the content of the book, which by that time was signed, sealed, and delivered.

Laura: So how they package it and what the cover would look like and that sort of thing.

Adele: Yes. And who they would reach out to and you know, and all that sort of thing. Interesting. Wow. Isn’t it fascinating? So it could have

Laura: been either, you could, you could could’ve been a literary author or a bestselling novelist at

Adele: that time.

I don’t think that would happen now, because I think I would’ve been edited slightly differently to be distinctly one thing or another, Uhhuh. But at that time there was a little bit more flexibility in everybody’s world and, and we weren’t quite as. Welded to genres as we are now. Anyway, at the time I wrote that book and I had all these characters and.

Over the years, I’ve sometimes gone back to pick out the best friends that were sort of the subplots and brought them forward and given them their front story. So there was a book called, uh, young Wives Tales, and that had two of the characters, Lucy and Rose in it. And then many years later, I think my 19th book, there was a book called Lies, lies, lies, which was a full on psychological thriller.

You know, prisons, murders a lot. Very, very different to my initial playing away, and yet it had those characters. I just moved them with me. I thought you can come. You are fantastic. You are complex, interesting humans, you can come with me And lives, lives, lives was actually my first number one. And so it was 19 years before I got my number one.

I was a 19 year overnight success, which I like to, you know, point out. Uh, so it was really, those characters have always been so exciting for me ’cause they were my debut and then they were my first number one. And going back to that story of. Originally, you know, she was in her thirties. I wanted to look at Connie.

Now, where is she in her midlife? Did she mature? Did she hang on to that relationship? Did they go off and you know, have a family. So I sort of wanted all of that, but I really wanted a psychological thriller. So I put. Lovely Connie’s poor family in huge jeopardy. This poor woman there, she was bouncing along in a romantic comedy.

Here she is like fighting for her life and fighting for the life of her family.

Laura: Right. And this is book number 25? Yes. Which is. Our beautiful mess. Yes. That is due out any minute now. If you happen to be listening to this podcast at the time of its initial broadcast. Yay. Well, we have come to the end of the show.

How was it for you?

Adele: I loved it. Lots of fun. I feel I haven’t really talked about my books. I just think everything I’ve told you about my like off cuts, there’s so random. Who talks about the 12-year-old writings? But it’s been so much fun to do that.

Laura: I’m very glad. I’m very glad you enjoyed. I’ve enjoyed it tremendously.

I suppose I should ask you one more question. Let’s think. Are there any offcuts that you’ve still got that you haven’t shared with us today that you think you might should have done? I actually

Adele: have a process when I write every single book I mentioned that I quite often can cut anything up to, well, my worst ever is cutting 80,000 words once.

Oh wow. But I can cut. Anything up to, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20,000 words. Uh, when I’m writing a book and what I do is I take them outta the manuscript that I’m writing and I stick them in a file that’s very creatively named bits. Um, and I just pop them in there thinking, oh gosh, if I really panic and I want them back, they’re just there.

And you know what? Over 25 years, I’ve never gone back. Pulled anything out of the bits file you never do. If it needs to be cut, it needs to be cut. Mm. So I suppose I have 25 bits files if ever you really want to dig through them. Um, but yeah, I can’t think there’s anything really great in there. So

Laura: it sounds like almost an idea that you should put them all together and see if you can make a book out of them.

Just see

Adele: what happens. You’re gonna be a really average book, wouldn’t it? Because there were all the things that didn’t make the grade. And I think it’s, I think it’s a really important thing in life. Admitting to yourself that you do things that are not up to scratch, and that’s okay. And I think that’s obviously the whole point of your podcast.

You know, there are things that, that we didn’t, that, that didn’t reach its full potential. And maybe that’s fine because we’re just learning from them and, and learning is all part of life. Everything can’t be up. Yeah.

Laura: It’s all part of the process. Yeah.

Adele: Everything can’t be perfect. Straight off. Yeah.

Laura: Yeah.

Well, it has been wonderful talking to you, Adele Parks. Thank you for sharing the contents of your Offcuts Drawer with us.

Adele: Thank you so much, Laura. I’ve loved every minute

Laura: the Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shaven with special thanks to this week’s guest, Adele Parks, MBE. The off cuts were performed by Emma Clarke, Beth Chalmers, Helen Goldwyn, and Chris Pavlo. And the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit Offcuts Drawer.com and please do subscribe, rate and review us.

Thanks for listening.