Zibby chats with author Caro Carver about BAD TOURISTS, a propulsive and deliciously dark novel about three tight-knit friends who embark on an extravagant post-divorce trip to the Maldives… only to realize the resort of their dreams is harboring a killer. Caro describes her own trip to the Maldives, her use of a new pseudonym and genre (she uses CJ Cooke for her gothic thrillers!), and her love of writing stories that resonate with women. She also shares details of her difficult childhood in a violent household and the challenge of raising children while processing past trauma.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Caro. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Bad Tourists, a novel. Congratulations. 

Caro: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and chat about it with you.

Zibby: Oh, yay. Amazing. I love the whole premise of a post divorce trip with your girlfriends. So fun. I feel like that should definitely be a thing. Like it should have its own name, right? Why not? 

Caro: Yeah, absolutely. I, when I, I, I think I heard about someone doing that on Instagram and I was like, yeah, that, that, that should be a thing, you know, it's a new chapter and it's a new start.

So yeah, we should celebrate that. 

Zibby: I love that. And this is also kind of a new chapter, new start for you with your new pseudonym for this book and new genre and all of that. So it's very fitting, you know, you should have taken a trip for this. Perhaps you did. 

Caro: I did. 

Zibby: You did. Amazing. Where'd you go? 

Caro: I went to the Maldives.

Zibby: Oh, well, there you go. 

Caro: Yeah, it was after, yeah, right, it was after COVID. So it was like, you know, we'd cancelled quite a few little trips or, or like multiple times because things kept getting shut down. So I was like, right, we're going away, we're going to the Maldives. So yeah. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. And so is that where you wrote, did you write it then?

Now I'm getting the timing. So when did you do what? How did this happen? 

Caro: This was two summers ago, just almost two years ago. I guess it was sort of, yeah, no, it was this time two years ago. We went, I'd had the idea. I'd had ideas for sort of two sections of the book, if you like. The, the scene in the guest house, which is at the beginning of the book, um, that came to me years ago, actually, and I, I didn't really know what to do with that, but it was, it kept coming back every time I went to stay in that particular guest house in Glasgow, it came back as a story.

And then I had the idea for the divorce trip, and we went to the Maldives, I think, like May 2022 and I think when I was there and I had just a chance to unwind for the first time in so long, cause Scotland, we had really tough Covid rules, and so my children were off school for months, and I was having to work full time still, from home, while homeschooling four kids, it was just awful.

Disaster and I was really at the end of my tether so that the trip the week in the Maldives was the first time that I just stopped and so ideas came for books and for this novel and by the time I came home it was all there and I spent the summer writing it a first draft of it and it was all the characters were just fully formed just told me what was what and it was a joy to write honestly it was it was just a pleasure to be in the company of these characters i know i sound bonkers when i say that. 

Zibby: You don't if there's ever a place for you not to sound bonkers, it is this podcast where many people have said the exact same thing before you.

So, it's totally fine. 

Caro: Oh, I, I just loved it. I had so much fun writing these women. They were just the best. And I was just, yeah, I thought, I want to do this again. I want to write more of these sort of books that are just fun and they, they examine female rage in a way that I hadn't done before. 

Zibby: So interesting. 

Caro: I was excited by that. 

Zibby: So you got your start very early. I love the little clip of you at age five, winning whatever prize you did or, right? I'm assuming you were holding up some sort of prize. Maybe you weren't five. 

Caro: But anyway. I was, I was five in that photo, actually. Yeah. It's in my office here.

So I know. 

Zibby: Aww. It's so cute. 

Caro: I was, I was just so little. 

Zibby: Give me the story of how you got your start and how you were motivated by violence and now you're writing about rage and I feel like there's a theme coursing throughout. So, uh, tell me, tell me your story. 

Caro: I grew up in East Belfast during the sort of tail end of the Troubles.

And my home life wasn't great. My father was abusive and really violent. My mom, obviously, was subjected to that, as was I. She was, my mom was 17 when she had me, so she was vulnerable. And we lived in a really rough part of Belfast as well, and we were really poor. And yeah, so there was just this, this very unsettling atmosphere at home all the time, constantly.

And I, I remember writing specifically to, to deal with that because I didn't know, I was too young to have a language to articulate. What was actually very normal to me was not normal at the same time because I was so scared all the time and I had places I went to that I wasn't scared and I wasn't unsettled but then I would come home and feel on edge and writing really gave a way to just manage that, I think, a way to cope.

And then as well as my home life, there was the, the stuff going on in Northern Ireland. So I've been writing for forever and it was just such a compulsion that, yeah, I, my stories were like containers for all these feelings and these things that were going on and, and I was able to control the uncontrollable, if you like.

I, I didn't really see, although I wrote stories when I was a child, I, I turned to poetry quite soon. So I, I was a poet actually, first, and it was only the birth of my son when I was, when I was pregnant with him when I was 29, and I had a pregnancy condition that was very painful for me to walk. So I read a lot of novels in the bath, which was the only time I could kind of relax and feel.

And I guess that brought the sort of novels to my mind again. So that's when I started writing novels again, and I've been writing ever since. So yeah, this is my 10th novel, I think. 

Zibby: Wow. What a story. Oh my gosh. Well, I'm so sorry that you were the, you know, an abuse victim, if you will, and how you've sort of shared it openly is so powerful.

You know, a lot of people can't, don't, don't do that. And it's, it's wonderful to see you. What you can do with that material to, you know, be like, I'm sort of taking back this narrative and watch out. What is your, what's your relationship with your parents like now? 

Caro: Well, my, my father, he was the victim of childhood abuse as well.

So this was, I mean, this was a continuation of violence, right? A cycle of violence and he committed suicide when I was, uh, 13. died. We, we got the news on Christmas morning, which was not wonderful. So yeah, so that, that he was only 35. And I suppose as I've got older, I've, you know, thought a lot about, I guess I have more sympathy for him because, you know, I can see how his childhood contributed to how he was.

He was just out of control and wanted to, I guess, regain some of the power that he had lost. But. You know, yeah. In my novels though, I, I think I'm really invested in writing women's stories, particularly because of what I grew up perceiving in, in Northern Ireland as well, that, you know, women, it was not a great place to be a woman at all.

And I would sort of hear these stories from my mom and from my grandmother and they would really, they've stayed with me because I. I just felt that these incredible, smart women, all their opportunities were taken from them. And this is not the middle ages, this is, you know, 19, my mom was born in 1961, you know, and Yeah, she, a lot of her opportunities were just cut because the fact that she was a woman.

And that's been something that I've wanted to write about in various ways. And I, I just love celebrating really, really smart, savvy women on the page and, and the way that they, um, manage sometimes the prejudices that are thrown at them because they don't take them lying down. Just like the women that I knew, they didn't take it, you know, easily.

They, they railed against a lot of the prejudice and it in some ways made them incredibly strong as human beings. But maybe not. in ways that, you know, they didn't have the career success, they didn't have the kind of outward markers of who they were to celebrate, but I saw it. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, in Bad Tourists, you also do have one, you know, the character Jade who is You know, not who's the same thing has befallen her.

I'm like, why do I, why am I struggling with these words? Who is also being abused? Oh my gosh, what is wrong with me? And you write about that, you know, in sort of harrowing detail as well. And that fear, which now I see, you know, 

Caro: Yeah. 

Zibby: You know, I feel like, like, we all have to like, make sense, make peace with our demons in some way.

Right? And sometimes you end up just like rewriting all the stuff that like, doesn't go away. Does that, do you feel like that happens? Like, Oh, I'm not going to write about this in this book. And then it seeps its way in. Yeah. 

Caro: Yeah. Always. There's always something that comes up. Cause Jade, I hadn't, I hadn't actually, I until I started writing she wasn't there, like the other women were there, but she wasn't.

And I started this new chapter and it was just a different person talking. So I felt, I feel like a medium, excuse my dog, I felt like a medium because there was suddenly this young voice and she was very scared and very vulnerable. And so I just went with it. And, and yeah, her story I just felt was something that was quite familiar to a lot of women that she was in the Maldives, newlywed, outwardly celebrating, deliriously happy, but not.

And yeah, so her, her, her story was just there of domestic violence and the kind of control that her new husband has over her. But it's such a, I think that's when I hear of, stories of women, you know, facing domestic violence and control in a relationship. You just think, really? Still? Is this still going on?

And of course it is. Um, and I, I think, well, I don't know. I, I write because I, one of the reasons I write my stories is because I want people to feel seen. And I, you know, the experiences we have can make us feel very alone. But if we encounter them in a book, we don't feel alone so much and so it was important for me to, to speak to that experience.

Zibby: Wow. And I hear it's also going to be a Paramount Plus production. Is that right? I read that. 

Caro: So I haven't, we haven't got a streamer yet, but the company, so it's, it's actually a UK and US kind of production and they haven't got a streamer on board yet, but they've the company in the uk I've worked with Paramount Plus before, so who knows.

Zibby: Oh, I see. Okay. 

Caro: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really exciting. I, because I, I saw this so vividly in my mind that the whole kind of story was just cinematically in my head. I am really excited to see it on the screen because I just think it'll be incredible. I, I think it's, it's just one of those. books that will really translate across really well into a TV series in particular.

So, and I, I did love White Lotus and the whole idea of a resort and all the different, you know, interweaving of people's lives and where they're at is, is just brilliant. So, yeah.

Zibby: It's like, it's like, White Lotus Meets Big Little Lies, right? You must have used that. Right? Because the women's friendship and all that.

Caro: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good way to capture it actually, the sort of vibe of this book is very much White Lotus Meets Big Little Lies, which is just, yeah, I want to write more of these sort of books because that's just the best description. So much fun, right? And especially, although Jade is a young character, you know, I've seen a lot of reviews so far that have mentioned the age of these women, that they're in their 40s, that they're perimenopausal.

And I think that was a conscious choice on my part. And I'm glad that people have picked up on it because I don't feel we see a lot of this chapter of women's lives represented in books, and yet it's a very interesting moment and when I was writing Jade, I was reflecting on my younger self when I was in a controlling, abusive relationship in my early 20s with a man very like my father.

And not as bad as Jade, but I, I still, I didn't have to do any research to, to write Jade and to understand what it's like to be sort of controlled like that and to be very in a position like, what do I do? But I was thinking about that and I was thinking, you know, I, I'm, I'm interested in writing about the way you grow as a woman and the way you change.

Like, the me in my mid forties is. just so much stronger. I don't have the, the figure of my 22 year old self, but I, you know, I, I, I feel the people that just messed with me and controlled me back then, you know, um, no, you wouldn't want to cross me now. And I, I'm not alone in saying that, like a lot of women I speak to and a lot of friends of mine aren't the same, that they are they're overcome a lot of, I guess, micro challenges as well as macro challenges.

They've built careers at the same time as looking after children and picking up the invisible load and it has made them titans and we need to celebrate that more. It absolutely blows my mind that women at this age are seen as invisible and like, not as beautiful and all of this crazy talk. We need to be celebrating these women.

Zibby: I, I agree. Let me jump on that bandwagon, please. As a 47 year old, you know, like, woman in very much in the throes of it all, so. Yeah, right. If we, I mean, I'm sure by the time this comes out, we just acquired, I run a publishing company too, and we just acquired a book called It's Getting Hot in Here about a very menopausal, menopausal woman who um, yeah, you know, menopausal rom coms, because like why not, you know, anyway.

Caro: Yeah, I love that. Sign me up. I will be reading that. So hard. 

Zibby: Your next trip to the Maldives, I'll send you a copy. Please. Although actually, I just read that, that the Maldives, not to get political, have banned all Israelis from even going there. Did you hear that? 

Caro: No, I didn't. Or maybe I did, actually. 

Zibby: Yeah.

Maybe I did, but I didn't. Yeah. Oh, well. Crazy times. Crazy times. Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. No, the Maldives has always been on my, my wish list. In fact, one time I tried to book a flight, uh, book a trip there, so I, I found the hotel and we can only go for like four days and I was like, oh, it can't be that far. 

Caro: Yeah.

Zibby: Yeah. Then I went and looked at flights and it was like, plus 24 hours. 

Caro: Yeah, yeah, it was definitely a long ways away to fly. So for the next book though, because I've just turned in the next book, As Cara Carver, I don't have a title yet, but it's set in Capri, which is like an island off the coast. The coast of Naples in Italy, that was amazing.

That was, I was just there at the end of April and beginning of May and it was, it was so beautiful. It does make you question your life choices, like why do I not live there, right? Why am I in, I mean I love Scotland, but why am I not in Capri, so. Yeah. Amazing. 

Zibby: I know. Every place except for, I live in New York City, full time.

Like, what am I doing here? I also have four kids, by the way, so related very strongly with your homeschool work COVID situation. You know, like so many other people. How do you, how do you handle your, you know, experience with, with COVID? Unsavory gentlemen and raising kids and sharing the information and all of that, like, I always struggle with what to tell my kids about basically everything related to my past.

So, you know. 

Caro: Yeah, I think it's probably, you know, we're raising our generation. I think our raising kids. Like, we don't have our childhoods to draw on here because we didn't grow up with the internet. But I also think that, I don't know, I just think in some ways, you know, we romanticize our childhoods a wee bit because I spent all my childhood on the streets with, like, being gay.

Approached by unsavory men, like, very young. So it's, it's whether it's on the streets or in person or on screen, all of these things can, can happen. I, I think I'm just very four star with my kids, so I, I just say it as it is. Like, for example, I always struggled to tell my kids that Santa Claus was real.

So I would just say, my kids would say, is Santa Claus real? And I'd say no. And they would make a conscious decision to, uh, ignore me. So, my kids did believe in Santa Claus for years, but they just wouldn't talk to me about it, because I'm very forthright. I'm just, I just say it as it is. And so, I suppose we have a, a very honest relationship in our, in our household when it comes to talking about things that are not appropriate and protecting themselves.

And, um, maybe not surprisingly, I have raised a bunch of blazing feminists. So even my son. So yeah, I, and I like that. I, I like that, you know, we're in a moment where we can be open about things like mental health. Even when I was growing up, it was very taboo to talk about depression. I mean, yeah, astonishingly so actually.

And so it makes me I want to talk about things. I want to make sure that they are prepared for the world and that they know they don't have to follow any particular path. They don't have to have children. They don't have to get married. They don't have to follow gender roles. So I'm very, um, firm on that with them.

Zibby: Maybe you need, like, a companion parenting book, you know? 

Caro: Oh, God, no. 

Zibby: How to Raise a Feminist or something. I don't know. Could be good. There must be a book. Is there a book? I would Google it after this. If there's not a book, you should write it. You could even co write it with your kids or something. 

Caro: I did a, you know, I did a project years ago because one of the things that really struck me when I became a parent when I became a mother was. 

Zibby: Oh, I saw that, your anthology.

Caro: Yeah, I did a project called Writing Motherhood because I was just, well, I mean, many things struck me when I became a mother, as I think happened to all of us, but I think one of the things was that there was no literature at the time on motherhood. Like, there was plenty on sleep routines, the Gina Ford manuals, but there wasn't as much Dialogue, as there is now, on the institution of motherhood, and I find that really astonishing.

And similarly, as I began to approach my 40s, I remember reading a poem by Mary Ruffall, I was teaching it actually, a poem by Mary Ruffall, the American poet, and she was talking about keeping a cry log when she was in menopause for the number of times she cried each day that month. and she was talking about menopause and I remember being struck that this was the first I had heard that menopause might make you cry all the time.

And now there's a lot of material and literature on menopause, which is fantastic, but we seem to have had these times of just silence around women's issues and, and, yeah, it's always, enraged me a little bit that we don't, I think it's, it's important that we, we represent that we have this in literature and that we publish it because it's being written, it's just not being published in the past.

Zibby: So true. This friend of mine, I talked to earlier and was like, yeah, I'm just having this pain in my, And I was like, you know, it's probably just menopause. 

Caro: Yeah. 

Zibby: Menopause is everything. It is. It's like everything that could be going wrong with your emotions and your body. It's probably just that. 

Caro: For real.

For real though, because I had, I had these weird joint pains in my fingers. 

Zibby: Me too. 

Caro: I was like, yeah, I was like, what is this? Why do I, I, do I have pain? arthritis. What is it? So I googled it and it said could be perimenopause or menopause. I was like, I thought it was just hot flushes. That's what I've been told that you get hot and your period stop.

That's it. 

Zibby: So our kids are going to grow up knowing a whole lot more. They'll be far more ready. 

Caro: They hear it all. They hear it all. My son, my daughters are so vocal about like their periods. So he's a bit like, geez. 

Zibby: Yeah, I know. Sometimes I'm like, okay, simmer down, guys. 

Caro: Yes, we, we, we don't need all the information.

Zibby: Oversharing. 

Caro: Exactly. Exactly. But what a difference in, like, my, the way I grew up and now it's, it's a huge leap and I think a lot of it is really positive. 

Zibby: I agree. I totally agree. I'm curious what happens with the next generation, but I guess we'll hopefully see what their kids end up like. 

Caro: Oh, I know.

Zibby: Okay, so what is your next book gonna be? So this is the one that's set 

Caro: in Capri. 

Zibby: Oh, I'm so sorry. We just talked about that. I always like.. 

Caro: No! 

Zibby: Okay, I'm sorry. It's set in Capri. You just said that. 

Caro: I can give I can give little bits of information, like I, we haven't, I'm just waiting on my edits and it's going to be published again in the UK and the US.

It's a film reunion, so we have a link back to the late 90s, early 2000s. I like that. I, I, I just, I like looking back at the past, those times and this is what these characters do. I think it is White Lotus y again because the hotel that they stay in plays a really important part and actually when I went to Capri I, I wanted to find the hotel that was in my mind and I did.

It was, I did, it was so freaky and I was so excited, but like, it was just, it was perfect. It was right on the edge of this cliff, it had this view of the Bay of Naples, it's unreal, just the flat out ocean. You can see Mount Vesuvius, you can see Sorrento, all the little islands, and it was super pricey, but I, we stayed there one night, my husband came, and we, we stayed for one night, right, because I was like, I have to, it's not enough just to see it, I have to stay and, and kind of know this place, so, and they had this old wooden elevator, it was full on out of a Wes Anderson movie, just all perfectly Italian elegance and it was just exactly like the hotel I had pictured in my mind.

So I was, I just find that when I, When I go to a place that the book is set in, it enlivens it, and it's so important to me that that energy is there, the authenticity is there, and you pick up things that, you know, I didn't know that it's illegal to wear flip flops in Capri. 

Zibby: No way, I didn't know that.

Caro: They, they are very particular about their aesthetic, because they're so glamorous. And um, you're, you're, it's, you're also not allowed to walk around without a shirt on. Like, because you get a lot of these beautiful, you know, resorts that guys just take the shirt off and I suppose they don't want that aesthetic for their residents.

So but it was, it was wonderful. I just, I picked up so much and I just feel it made the book just lift up that bit more. So 

Zibby: I think you need to, maybe you need to leave some breadcrumbs about like where you're going to go after that. I feel like you're picking all these fabulous spots and I just want to go and follow along.

Like I'll be like sneaking, you know, like turn around, I'll be coming, like who's the creepy podcaster who's showing up at all my destinations, but they sound so fun. So thank you. 

Caro: You're welcome. 

Zibby: Um, okay. So what advice do you have for aspiring authors? 

Caro: Oh, keep going, keep going. A writing career will have so many moments of feeling like you're just not cut out for this, that you'll never produce something that you're happy with.

You know, I just think you got to keep going. I've had so many peaks and troughs in my writing career. And I, I did have some moments where I thought my career was over, very dramatic, but it wasn't. It was a really tough time, but you just keep writing and you do actually get better, uh, if you just persist.

I've written, quite a few books that will never see the light of day, but that's okay because it's not wasted. It's actually all just teaching you things. There's so much to this art that I never knew, and that's partly why I continue to teach at Glasgow University because everything that I've learned skill wise You know, it goes into that I teach MLIT students and PhD students.

So the, the, the thrust of what I'm saying is just keep going. If you've got the love for it, you just keep going with that project and be very patient and persistent and you will get there. 

Zibby: I love it. Very inspiring. Uh, Caro, thank you so much. Thank you for the book, the adventures, and all the advice and everything else.

So thank you. 

Caro: Well, more than welcome. 

Thank you. 

Zibby: Okay. All right. Best of luck. Take care.

Caro: Thank you.