Author Bella Ellwood-Clayton discusses Mean Girls, Mean Moms, and Social Media -92

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Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:01

Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know your new favorite author in a new light. I'm Shawna Rodrigues, one of your hosts, a fellow author, host of The Grit Show and Authenticity Amplified Podcast, and the founder of of Authentic Connections Podcast Network, which makes this podcast possible. Let me tell you a little about today's guest. Doctor Bella Elwood Clayton is an author and editor. She is a PhD from the University of Melbourne in sexual anthropology.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:48

Her novel, Weekend Friends, explores intensity of female friendships and the challenges of parenting in perilous times. Bestselling author, Nicola Moriarty called it unputdownable. Isn't that a great word? It was published in the US Post Hill Press and distributed by Simon and Schuster. Her nonfiction book Sex Drive in Pursuit of Female Desire was published by Ellen and Unwin in 2012. So you might want to also check that out. Bella has published short stories, poetry, and written for publications such as Huffington Post and Daily Life. She frequently appears on TV and gives talks including a TEDx talk that you're also gonna wanna check out. Thank you so much for being here to chat with us today, Bella.

Bella [: 00:01:31

Thank you. I'm really looking forward to it.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:01:33

I wanna learn more about your book and also a little bit about you. So we're going to start with what is the most interesting thing about where you are from?

Bella [: 00:01:41

Okay. So I was raised in Vancouver, Canada, and some people know that it's also referred to as Hollywood North. And my very first novel that I ever wrote was about the extra industry. And, yes, my I had my main character who is an extra. You know, she fell in love with the hot actor, and I really got to dig into, first, writing a book, the romance plot beats, and got to also celebrate Vancouver, which is such a beautiful city.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:02:08

Oh, that is so funny. I've never heard it referred to specifically as that, but I've always known that that is where a lot of recording happens. So it makes perfect sense that that's what it's called.

Bella [: 00:02:18

And growing up, like, by the end of high school, you know, quarter of my friends were makeup artists there or after high school, they're doing construction or, you know, acting in the shows or body doubles. So it was really part of our culture. And you could see everywhere you go, you see, you know, people shooting films.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:02:33

That is too funny. Do you have, like, one specific movie or show that was filmed when you were growing up that, like, was most iconic that you remember from in that time?

Bella [: 00:02:42

Well, at that time, X Files was everything, and I found David Duchovny so hot, still do. He was at the Naarm restaurant, which is a, you know, Vancouver institution, and we were sitting next to him. And I was really stoked and excited about that. And, also, I was waitressing at a pub up in Dunbar or a restaurant kind of pub in Dunbar in Vancouver, and Scully was filming, and I saw her walk past. So pretty good X File experiences.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:03:07

Oh, that's wonderful. That is so fun to have that as part of growing up to be around that as well. How fun.

Bella [: 00:03:13

Yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:03:14

That is great. So to get to know you a little bit, why don't you tell us a story about what is one of the last things that made you laugh really hard?

Bella [: 00:03:22

Oh, okay. So, I have a one for from this week. My daughter is 13, and she really hates math. And that's very mother like daughter. And she was, you know, trying to get out of school a couple days ago, just doing her best. And I, you know, I had to force her to go. She had this big math test, and she kept stalking me on the phone all day. Like, mom, mom, pick me up.

Bella [: 00:03:45

I can't do it. Pick me up. I don't feel well. I'm sick. I'm sick. And I was just ignoring the text, basically, because I knew she was fine. And then she took a picture of the office, and she was, like, showing me she was about to go to the office and say she was sick. And I thought, you little brat.

Bella [: 00:04:01

I'm done. I was like, go go to class. I'm not coming to get you. And then the next message I got from her, she's like, I told them I was sick. They put me in the sick room, and the boy next to me just vomited all over the floor and it got on my shoes. And I laughed way ahead of. I thought that serves you right. It's hilarious.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:04:22

Oh, that does serve her right. That is so funny. So the lesson is do not pretend you're sick. Otherwise, you might get sick or get somebody else's sick all over you.

Bella [: 00:04:30

Exactly. Like, literally on your feet.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:04:32

Oh my gosh. That's too funny. Did you had to go pick her up?

Bella [: 00:04:36

She just left after that point. I said just fine. Just take a tram over. We're in Melbourne at the minute. That's where we're based. You know, like, just take a tram home. So she did get out of the math test, but it's today. So she was also pretty nervous to go in today.

Bella [: 00:04:49

And I was like, you just have to face these things. You just have to face them and maybe, you know, change try to change your study habits and stop being on screen so much. Now I sound like a mean mom, but I think all moms are struggling with our kids on screens.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:01

That's not a mean mom. That is a mom trying to balance, being supportive of her daughter and

Bella [: 00:05:06

Yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:07

Teaching them the best you can. Right? That balance of being a friend, but need to be a parent first.

Bella [: 00:05:12

Yes. Yes.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:13

Very important. So I'm excited to learn more about your book that we're talking about today. And you how many books do you have out?

Bella [: 00:05:22

So I have 2. I have, like, that creative nonfiction one from, I don't know, 10 years ago or so. And then this is my first novel, and that was, like, my dream since I've been 12 is to get a novel published. Like, you know, I would die. I kept saying when I when I got the book deal, I'm like, oh, I can die now. You die happy. I got the I have the kids and the book, like, the novel and the There you go. There we go.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:44

You're done. You're good to go. You're good to go. So Weekend Friends, can you describe it in a sentence or 2 for us?

Bella [: 00:05:51

Sure. So, like, the genre, I would say, is twisty adult commercial fiction. And the tagline is, for girls, the tween years are like the hunger games. For their mothers, it's worse.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:06:05

So is this a book that you've started some time ago, or it's all very recently you've written it and planned this out? Tell us about your journey of writing this book.

Bella [: 00:06:14

As we know, coming up with a great high concept idea for our novel is the hardest thing or, you know, trying to take a really fresh take on something that's been done before. And my agent is really hands on with that. So I give her a lot of ideas, and she comes back. And it's quite a process to find something we're both really excited about. And in this case, I was looking at mother daughter relationships, how much anger mothers have towards their daughter's friends when their daughters get dumped, and we feel like our daughters are being treated cruelly, all the sort of intense emotions surrounding that. And I'd written a poem about it, but which had been accepted. We've written a short story called Playdate, which was published. And then I there was just a lot of feedback from readers and people in general as this this topic was on the pulse.

Bella [: 00:07:00

So that's how the idea came. And just seeing in my neighborhood, the girls that I've my daughter is friends with and on our mother's group, a lot of these girls are suffering. They're in pain from the what used to be just called girl drama. But now I think with social media on top of it and child suicide and issues like that, it's, you know, much more serious to do with mental health.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:07:21

It really is. It really is an intense topic. So it's very contemporary for you. You've been writing for some time and had this goal of writing a novel, but this subject really kind of hit close to home and came about because of where you're at.

Bella [: 00:07:35

Exactly. And there's a lot of scenes in the book. I know. My daughter's now 13. I think Amy in the book is 12 or maybe 11. I can't recall now because I'm on to my next book, so it's hard to remember exactly. But there's a lot of scenes that are completely true to my daughter and I. So there's a park that's a few blocks away.

Bella [: 00:07:53

And when I was there playing with you know, hanging out with her and her friend once, they crawled up into this wooden structure. And on the top, it wrote, trigger warning. But it's like, little girls suck big adult dicks or something like that. And so that scene took place in the book. And just I was really drawing from real life. You know, what how are these girls growing up? What's around them, in terms of social media, the friendships and politics at school, and then all the mother relationships and these pseudo when you're with women when you're caring for your daughters and her friends, you sort of become like a pseudo mom. So all that kind of interconnected, very intimate space.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:08:32

Well, it's complicated too because your relationship with your daughter changes as she gets older as well. So even trying to have those connections are changing as you're also trying to protect her, like how she sees you in that equation also gets more challenging.

Bella [: 00:08:46

Absolutely. Yes. And I do love writing about different generations in my book, so I often have some kind of care and then maybe not a a child, but someone that they're caring for, whether that's a niece. And then I also like the grandparents kind of in. So I'm interested in the family mess and intergenerational too.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:09:06

Yes. And interesting thing we haven't touched on is that we did touch on you growing up in Vancouver, Canada. But Yeah. Tell us where you live now because we haven't heard about that yet.

Bella [: 00:09:16

Right. Yeah. So I came out here. It was so cool. I was studying in Montreal and my doing my BA in anthropology, and my teacher was like, oh, you can just skip your masters in Australia. If you do really well, your undergraduate, you can just go and do a PhD there. And that's what I did, and I got a scholarship. They paid for the whole thing.

Bella [: 00:09:33

It was completely bizarre. I have Australian citizenship as well, so that made that a bit easier. But I was out here studying, and then, yes, met my now husband almost 18 years when I was out here studying.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:09:45

That's so wonderful. So you've had, like, this opportunity to grow up in Canada and then now raise your daughter in Australia, and there's probably actually a lot of similarities even though you're in completely different countries with those relationships and how those things work.

Bella [: 00:09:59

I should mention I have a son too. I just keep talking about her. I think he'd be like, hello. I exist. Am I not I'm I'm not part of the story. I'm not almost I'm a almost 16 year old, and he does most a lot of my social media and he's really, you know, my creative genius behind how in the world to, like, start a TikTok. So thank you. I'll shout out to my son, Colin.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:10:20

Shout yes. We gotta have the shout outs for the the the tech savvy individuals that help us with important things like that. That's wonderful.

Bella [: 00:10:27

Need this. The writers need this.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:10:29

Yes. Exactly. We need that support. We need those pieces. That's wonderful. So yeah. So having your kids, like, does it feel that things have changed a lot with technology, obviously, since you grew up? But the interactions between mothers and sons and mothers and daughters is probably still very similar.

Bella [: 00:10:47

Absolutely. It really does. And, one of the you know, so I'm taking it a bit darker and another trigger warning here. But just, you know, as I was so as I was researching this area of girl exclusion and inclusion and for boys as well and how social media was playing into people feeling like that they are missing out, their life wasn't as cool, they're not part of the group. Sure. These human things, especially during adolescence and even for us, I think, you know, we see our friends at a party online on Instagram that we weren't invited to. It doesn't feel great. But I started looking at the most extreme effects of that.

Bella [: 00:11:24

And, you know, like, according to the American justice department, one out of every 4 children is a victim of bullying, and at least 2 are bullied every 7 minutes. And in the US, there has been a sudden number of child suicides attributed to bullying even as young as 6 years old. And, usually, what we're seeing in all of these cases is social media has a huge part to play in the feeling of either being bullied or excluded or, you know, there's a whole life going on that parents aren't necessarily aware of. And that was one of the darker scenes and not necessarily darker, but the more hard hitting themes that I was exploring in weekend friends. It's kind of a light fun book in some ways. There's sexy racy scenes with the school principal, for instance, for the mom, But there's, you know, there's undercurrent of, exploring what kids are what teenagers are facing, and, yeah, and tweens and even kids now because they're so involved with social media and what their social reputation is.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:12:16

Yes. And that has changed immensely. Ever since we were growing up, we thought things were complicated. We talk all the time to my friends about how I'm so glad there wasn't cameras, and those things are part of that and that things were hard enough. I can't imagine if we had all these extra layers.

Bella [: 00:12:32

I know. And I just, like, cringe imagining everything I would have posted because I was a diary writer. I think a lot of writers are I imagine if I put all my poems up and my angsty things. I could just see all the ridiculous mistakes I would have made. I'm so glad. I'm so glad I could poems.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:12:49

You're just gonna just post poems. I'm so glad I couldn't post poems on social media. Oh, no. I don't wanna look at them again. Why don't you let us put them out on social media? Part of the process.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:13:01

Part of the process. Yes. Definitely. Yes. So where do you see yourself at in 5 years with your writing?

Bella [: 00:13:08

Oh, gosh. Well, I feel, like, on track. I feel like I've got my genre now really where I want it. It took a while to find that. I feel like my writing is getting tighter, and I'm being able to build pacey twisty plots and also add in, you know, the interesting characters that are voicey and the kind of current themes. So I just hope I keep going in this path of getting tighter. And, yes, I would love my book to get to more people, so just more readers. And I wouldn't mind HBO series after one of my books either.

Bella [: 00:13:41

Thank you. If, the Big Little Lies users are listening out there.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:13:45

Yes. Put that out there. You need to start putting that stuff out there because that's what happened. You gotta put it out there. So Yeah. I'm glad I can know about this now. So when it happens, I'm like, I knew that was gonna happen, and they're probably gonna film it in Vancouver, Canada.

Bella [: 00:13:57

Of course. Thank you. And I'll have to be doing some extra work just to go back in time.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:14:02

There you go. There you go. You'll you'll be more connected to it that way. I love it. I love it. So where is the best place for folks to find you?

Bella [: 00:14:10

So my website is www.drbella.com.au. And on there, you'll see my writing stuff, but also my editing work. I work at a literary agency, and I run Doctor Bella editorial. And on the website, there's a link that where I can, do a free chat with people about their projects or, do a sample edit. And on almost all social media, I'm at @bellaelwoodclayton, which is a mouthful, but you'll find me there on Instagram, TikTok, etcetera.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:14:41

Well, it's nice to have the consistency. Sometimes you had to have a mouthful so you have the consistency. Right? Right. Yes. Yes. So what book or story inspires you the most?

Bella [: 00:14:52

Well, I would say that Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty really inspired me. And I think a lot of her work, you know, mother drama, children drama, complex friendships, complex family dynamics are themes I love too. I liked how she really kind of created her own genre, which was a bit of a mix in my opinion of, like, old school chick lit, you know, with that humor and that sort of paciness, suspense, romance, or looking at marriages, and then these big blockbuster themes. You know, there's a reason HBO does series about her books. And I think of it, like, we look at 9 perfect strangers. She's critiquing the health and wellness resort and really giving some insight into microdosing. So she's got her finger on the pulse, and I admire the whole thing. You know, I admire all those things that she's doing.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:15:39

That's fabulous. I love hearing more about people's take on that and, yeah, her suspense is what I feel like her ability to, like, layer things, but there's so much more to it too with her characters. She's great.

Bella [: 00:15:50

Yes. Wonderful.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:15:51

Thank you so much for being here today, Bella. It was wonderful to learn more about you and about your book so people can we'll have the links in the show notes.

Bella [: 00:15:59

Brilliant. Thanks so much.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:16:04

Thank you for joining us. I hope you take a second to give a stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform. It really makes a difference in folks being able to find us. We'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram @authorexpresspodcast to see who's coming up next. And don't forget, keep it express to keep it interesting.