Journey Through Fantasy: Julia Golding on Storytelling, Publishing, and The Oxford Centre for Fantasy

00:03 - Speaker 1 My name is Julia Golding and I'm striving to be a giant in the world of what I'd like to think of as joyful creativity, particularly any creativity inspired by the works of the Inklings, that's, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien inklings that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. 00:31 - Speaker 2 Hi, this is Brian Boyd and welcome to Conversations with Giants, where we talk to giants of industry. And today our guest is a good friend, julia Golding. Direct from Oxford area in the UK, she's a multi award-winning author more than 60 books 60 books for adults, young adults and children. She writes under Joss Sterling and Eve Edwards as well, and probably it's higher now, but she's sold over a million and a half copies worldwide, including hits you've probably heard of, like the diamond of Drury Lane, and I actually visited Drury Lane with you one time. Remember that visit. 01:08 - Speaker 1 We actually walked up Drury Lane. Nobody can come to London with me without being taken there. 01:13 - Speaker 2 There you go. She's also the director of Oxford Center for Fantasy and hosts their very successful podcast called Mythmakers, so check that out. She's a screenwriter and she hosts the Jane Austen inspired podcast what Would Jane Do? So please welcome with me Julia Golding. 01:34 - Speaker 1 Thank you, Brian. 01:37 - Speaker 2 Julia, this is a real treat for me. We've known each other for a long time and you are quite the giant in the world of writing and creating content, especially in the UK. Was that always a dream of yours growing up? Where did Julia come from? 02:00 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I imagine a lot of your guests will say to you that they don't consider themselves as a giant, so I will allow you, I'll give you a pass to say that. But my own version of my own stature is something much more on the Hobbit scale. Just want to put that out there. 02:15 - Speaker 2 I love it, that's good. 02:18 - Speaker 1 So did I always want to be a writer? Funnily enough, yes, I was one of those kids who didn't excel at you know the usual things at school where you want to excel at school. You know the sports and singing or instruments or anything like that. My achievements were more like academic. But alongside that I often say actually I often say I was basically Hermione Granger, if that could locate me within the Gryffindor common room but one of the things I did do alongside the sort of school academic work was I wrote, I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I wrote all kinds of things right from a young age and I remember going into the school library and looking at the books on the shelves and I rather assumed that authors were sort of dead. You know that the books were done and dusted and that was it. 03:16 And it took me a little while to realize that there were still people making a career of writing. I met a lady who published a memoir. She came to the school. It wasn't a big book, it was a local book about somebody with local memories, and I was probably only about 14 or 15 at the time. But she was the first time I'd met somebody who had done that thing where they sat down written a book and then produced a book and having the experience of seeing someone else doing it a kind of discipleship thing, follow that example was really important. And now I'm in the situation, of course, where I'm often that person to young people when I go into schools or talk at festivals. 04:09 - Speaker 2 What was your first job? So where did you grow up? First of all, when did you grow up? 04:15 - Speaker 1 Well, I grew up. I was born on the east edge of London. 04:20 - Speaker 2 Wow. 04:21 - Speaker 1 But I grew up mainly not far from there. These are all small distances by american terms, but I grew up in essex. Now essex in the uk, content, its context is something a bit like being a jersey girl. Is that the right idea that you can get common? Does that work? 04:38 - Speaker 2 yeah um. 04:39 - Speaker 1 So essex isn't known for its cultural heights and so and so that was one thing that influenced my upbringing, a sort of suburban London extension. Everybody commuted into London from there, so parents were commonly at working in London, but what it did have was a wonderful feeling of transition, because it's the edge of where it's possible to commute from, and it was in an area famous for a forest. There's a forest in that part called Epping Forest, which has a number of big historical events associated with it, including the famous rebel leader against the Romans, a woman called Bodicea or Boudica. She had a camp near there and you could walk to that and see the earth banks. So we're talking history of well over 2000 years ago. 05:37 - Speaker 2 Right. 05:38 - Speaker 1 And it was famous for its highwaymen. Dick Turpin and 16 String Jack and Dickens also wrote about it. So there were some elements of history around us that it wasn't a touch, it wasn't an urban setting, it was this mixture of suburbia merging into a more magical landscape. It's a bit like a wardrobe really. So the front of my house was a very boring, regular suburban street with you know the people who wash their cars on Sunday kind of street, and out the back there was a gate that went onto a golf course that went into the forest. 06:15 So it was like transitioning through a wardrobe into a well my own Narnia, because that was where a lot of my imaginative world happened, that's awesome, but no, was there a lamppost? Not there. There were several irate golfers who you had to hide from Sure the equivalent of the White Witch's wolves. 06:36 - Speaker 2 There you go. 06:36 - Speaker 1 Looking at it with the adult perspective, I can see why they didn't want children marauding over their golf course because of the danger. 06:45 - Speaker 2 But that wasn't how we looked on it as children. So growing up for me I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, but in high school I did go to a pizza parlor and make pizza, and I learned how to interact with people, make change, be creative. 07:05 - Speaker 1 What was your most interesting first job that you ever had? Okay, though, my sort of job. I worked in a sweet shop, and this is where you have to think of a really old-fashioned sweet shop, like you might see in a film, where you've got jars of sweets on the shelf and a customer would come in and say I want so many ounces of aniseed twist and so many ounces of mint humbugs all those kinds of sweets that Dumbledore talks about. And the job was you didn't have a digital cash register at the time. It taught me mental arithmetic because you had to add this up as you went along unless it was a big order, then you could, we were allowed to write it down. 07:47 So yeah, I worked in a sweet shop which is very evocative to this day. Whenever I the smell of certain sweets immediately take me back to that job. The funny thing is I don't know what it was like in the the pizza parlor, but I never ate any of the sweets surrounded by them I them. I had no desire to eat them Sure. They're much more tempting looking through the window at them than actually standing amongst them. 08:12 - Speaker 2 That's funny, Julia. We had a window too, where the kids could walk up and watch us make the pizzas. And no, by the end of my night I didn't want to see a pizza again. 08:23 So I'm with you 100%. Let's switch gears. A pizza again. So I'm with you a hundred percent. The switch gears a little bit. So you came up in in the world where you had to really, you know, hustle and probably create proposals and pitch your work to publishers, et cetera. Today, in 2025, just about anybody can be a creator. It seems like the way people are found is different. What's different in the way that new authors are found versus when you started your career? 09:03 - Speaker 1 It's been an absolutely fascinating time because after when I started writing, I was in my early 30s and I arrived through a very traditional route, in that I wrote a book, I sent it off to a publisher and it was accepted. So that was the, you know, that still happens today. Now you can self-publish at a high standard and avoid those gatekeepers and go direct to market. That has a number of problems, of course, one of which is the quality of the product, because my books that are written with the help of really good editors are much better, you know, than anything I could do on my own. So I really value that sort of team aspect and the expert guidance of a publisher. So there's a lot of self-published work out there that would be really good books if people had that opportunity to, but actually aren't quite hitting that level that you'd want them to hit. And then now there's this new phenomena of AI-assisted books, which are nothing more than slop. It's really devaluing the whole landscape. So that's another problem. 10:27 - Speaker 2 That's too bad. 10:29 - Speaker 1 But let's say you actually have managed to produce a good book and you have had it worked on. Perhaps you may even have got a development editor to help you with it. So it's a really, really good book, but you've not been able to get the breakthrough with a publisher. The next problem you have is how do you get it visible? Because it's oh wow. It's just like you lob this thing out there and who's going to read it? And when I've looked into the advertising route on something like Amazon, you are basically ripping up money and throwing it in a fire. 11:12 I don't think it works unless you have some sort of strategy behind you, some kind of social media profile and the heft, or you have that lucky strike where somebody somewhere picks up on it, somebody famous, somebody with their own following, some influencer picks up on it. It is really really hard, yeah, yeah, well it's. It's never been easy, right? I don't think it's. It's easier to get to market, but it's no easier to get bought than it ever has been so do you have an advantage from your background? 11:47 - Speaker 2 are you? Are you finding that your new, new titles are? Are you don't have to give us details, but are they selling better or the same, or do you feel like there's so much competition it's, it's difficult? 12:00 - Speaker 1 it is, we've gone. We've gone straight to the the rather sort of more distressed side of the business, uh than the actual fun of creativity, because I still absolutely adore the joyful creativity part of it of course, fun of creativity because I still absolutely adore the joyful creativity part of it, of course. 12:21 But what has happened to authors has happened to musicians, which is that you may be selling more or as much as you ever did, but the actual value of what you're being of a book or a digital download is now almost like giving it away. And so I'm published with HarperCollins. They're obviously a very big deal and so they've got a lot of heft in the market, but still they regard it as very good news when they get your book in a promotion where it's being sold for 99 cent and I'm thinking as an author. 13:00 I used to sell books. I don't mean it to sound like poor me, but books when I first started out before the. I actually started out before digital books was a thing. So I'm just about the last. You know, my cohort are the last to remember that world. A book would be sold at something like perhaps $6.99, you know that kind of thing as a relatively cheap book and we're now down to this 99 cents world where the author isn't getting 99 cents. The author is getting a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. 13:40 - Speaker 2 Of course. 13:41 - Speaker 1 So I would have to sell possibly 15 books before I can afford a cup of coffee. 13:53 - Speaker 2 Yeah. 13:55 - Speaker 1 So and that is across the board there are some authors, of course, who are able, so there's like in anything, there are tiers of authors, so there are those whose product is so valuable that they retain the premium. So if you're Stephen King, for example, you probably don't have to worry about things being given away because your next book is awaited. 14:21 - Speaker 2 Correct, that's a small group, it's a really small group. 14:25 - Speaker 1 A lot of what used to be called mid-list are now living in this world where Well, it swings around about, because what happens is everything is still available, so all your backlist is still available. 14:41 Correct, and that's good, because in the past that used to vanish, but now everything is being sold very cheaply, so you're probably I found that it's much harder to make money an income, I mean out of just pure selling books. You have to be much more nimble and think about other ways of well. You were talking about content creation. To me it's more thinking about well, what content can I create? How can I monetize it so that I've got an income? It's not that I want to be fabulously wealthy, it's just how can I have a wage to pay the bills? 15:19 um, good luck to those fabulously wealthy out of writing, but they are very few and it may also not be a long-term thing if you're a bit of a one book wonder person well, I think. 15:32 - Speaker 2 I think it's really fascinating. I I know a story I'm not going to say the but there's an influencer who has written a book and it's a woman and she has been promoting on her YouTube channel and quite a huge following between her and her husband Millions and millions of followers, maybe 20 million or something, 20 million or something and so they've been promoting this book and her first book and it came out and the reviews were horrible. People were hoping for the best and it just did not do well. So I don't think even 20 million followers will help you if you have not. If you don't have a good product, right, if you don't have good content, yeah. 16:15 - Speaker 1 I mean, that's the other thing. You have to be producing the right kind of book and find the right kind of reader to signpost it so the reader who will like your book can find it. I guess that's what I was trying to point to. So say, if you are somebody who has an expertise in, let's pick something niche. So your expertise is in crochet and you've written a wonderful book about the craft of crochet, the history of it, a historical novel about something like that which people who do crochet would love to read. 16:53 Or maybe crochet in the 1960s, where it was hip and cool. I can imagine all sorts of stories, but it would have a niche feel to it. If you are able to reach those people who are both A readers of novels and B, who love crochet and would love to read a book where there's a fascinating plot with a little bit about the whole world of crochet in it, then you've got a solid readership. So you can swap out crochet and put in whatever is your thing and think about marketing in a way that will appeal to that group of people. 17:28 So, for example, my next book coming out towards the end of the year is actually not a novel, it's a Lent reader. So a book, a religious book, a Christian book, written with Professor Simon Horobin, who holds the position held by CS Lewis at Magdalen College, and Malcolm Gite, who is a very wonderful singer, songwriter, poet, literary critic, hobbit, who looks like Gandalf. Anyway, wonderful man, we've written a book together. I won't try and publicize that to a sort of mass audience. I will try and publicize that to those who are interested in the inklings to Tolkien and Lewis and people in the world of Christianity. Unfortunately, both those groups of people massive crossover in the world of. 18:18 Christianity Sure. Unfortunately, both those groups of people massive crossover, and also lots of those people are readers who would love to have a book to read during Lent which is both religious and showcases their favorite writers. 18:34 - Speaker 2 Right and global. 18:35 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so you don't try and market to everybody. You just think who are my readers, and in that case I know who they are. 18:42 - Speaker 2 So if you'd like to learn more about Julia, she has an amazing little website where you can go and find out about her. It's called Golding Gateway. That's golding with a G gatewaycom and you can find out all about her, and you can even reach out to her via the contact form on golden gatewaycom. So that's a good way to get a hold and learn more about Julia. Um, we, we. I think what we're going to do is talk a little more and then have a part two. 19:13 Julia, because we have way too much to talk about and you've got so much going on. You mentioned you've got a new book coming out this fall. I want to dive into this on our next conversation. But you also have another venture called the Oxford Center for Fantasy. Just give us a tease. What is the Oxford Center for Fantasy? And I think what we'll do is we'll talk about that more on our next conversation. What is the Oxford Center for Fantasy? And I think what we'll do is we'll talk about that more in our next conversation. What is the Oxford Centre for Fantasy? Where did that come from? 19:43 - Speaker 1 Well, that's how I know you, Brian, isn't it so? 19:46 - Speaker 2 what happened there? 19:46 - Speaker 1 It's true, yeah yeah, I had a sort of inspiration. It was during COVID, so we were all a bit crazy then, weren't we that the house where Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit came up for sale and I thought we'd try and crowdfund buying it. But I also knew that there was a chance of failure in that because the price tag was very high and I thought, well, if we can't raise the money to go for that, we need to have a charitable purpose that we can put to go for that. We need to have a charitable purpose that we can put. No, we can achieve. 20:25 So if we don't get that we'll put it into a centre to celebrate the life and the works of Lewis and Tolkien, because that doesn't exist in Oxford, strangely enough. It's an odd place from that point of view. So we raised enough money to set up a center in the same street as this house, so north moore road. We have a little house, uh, where we have two floors which are dedicated to people coming to oxford for uh, usually for an academic year. So we've got a whole new cohort moving in in September and they live together in community. 21:02 We call them the Inklings, and the idea is to share their sort of professional experience and learn from each other in the same way the Inklings did, so that's a sort of permanent practical thing happening. But the center also. We had a writing week there this year where people came and I took them around all the places that inspired CS Lewis and Tolkien and they were all people wanting to write, so it was a writing workshop as well. Myself and another tutor were taking them through that. You've mentioned the Mythmakers podcast, and then there's the online expression of this, where we have social media feeds, we do events online and we do run classes. Online is to not to explain the minutiae of Middle Earth. There are people out there doing that. 22:05 Ours is very much a sort of reader response side of it. If you love this, if you've read these works and it's inspired you to write, we are the people, hopefully, who you might want to come and do that with, because that's where our own creativity comes from and that's gives me a lot of joy to be able to share that with people. So we regard our usp really in the world of fantasy because those writers have set up the two major strands of modern fantasy. Really Not bad for a small group of friends. 22:43 - Speaker 2 So what we'll do is, on our part two of this podcast with Julia Golding, we'll dive into the Oxford Center for Fantasy, we'll wrap up a little more about her writing career, we'll find out what's next for Julia, and I think it'd be interesting to find out about the crowdfunding project and the pros and cons of crowdfunding. I think there's a lot of lessons learned and it might be interesting to share that with our listeners. So be sure and visit Julia Golding at goldinggatewaycom. And we will continue. Julia, you've got so much going on. You're amazing. 23:20 I really appreciate you being on today's part one of our interview with you. 23:25 - Speaker 1 Thank you. 23:29 - Speaker 2 This episode of Conversations with Giants is brought to you by CCB Marketing, a global marketing agency helping brands and organizations grow through smart strategy, bold, creative and powerful digital execution. Learn more at https://ccbmarketing.net. You.