The Frock Shop #author Sophie Green

Author Sophie Green returns with a sparkling story about the beauty of the second-hand, the power of second chances, and becoming who you were always meant to be (with a little help from your friends).

On Sydney's lower north shore, in the harbourside suburb of Mosman, there is a charity frock shop. For decades, it has clothed the women of this suburb, through good times and bad, for richer, for poorer.

Local resident Daphne has always worked at the frock shop. And she knows better than most how clothes are used by women as talismans, as armour, as beauty. Clothes are essential parts of women's stories, and those stories are now part of Daphne's life.

Daphne has her own stories, too. Some involve her old friend Adelaide, who still bears the devastating secret that caused her to flee Australia in her youth. Some involve a new friend, Christina, who has been forced to leave her glamorous Los Angeles life to rebuild in her childhood city. Then there is Margot, living a life that is far from what she had dreamed it would be, and Lucy, desperate for escape and the promise of tomorrow.

Not only does the frock shop give them purpose, but the clothes will help them become the women they were destined to be, because it is never too late for a transformation.

To connect with Sophie .....
https://sophiegreenauthor.com/
https://www.instagram.com/sophiegreenbooks
https://linktr.ee/sophiegreenbooks 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good afternoon, Sophie Green. Welcome to Yellow Shelf. Thank you very much, Joanna. Great to meet you. Pleasure to have you here, Sophie. Your book, The Frock Shop, is out. Tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

So The Frog Shop is my eighth novel, and it's the first one I've set actually where I live, which is the suburb of Mossman in Sydney. Now I grew up here and I've long wanted to set something here. I've mentioned the suburb in previous novels, but this is the first time I thought it's a good location for the sort of ensemble cast stories I tell. And uh the novel itself was was inspired. Well, I had an older storyline that I remembered at a certain point from years ago when I was thinking about writing a story about a dress shop in Sydney CBD. But then this this inspiration for this story came from a charity shop near where I live. And there was a woman who was working in there and had was telling me that she had been in the fashion industry for years, and when I just the brief amount of time I was in the charity shop, she was styling people who were trying things on. I thought, what a character. And I met I wonder what she's seen over the years and what it would have been like to work at a dress shop or charity shop all that time. And so that sparked what became the frock shop. So the frock shop is about a charity shop in Mossman that used to be a boutique. And we meet Daphne, who's one of the five main characters in the first chapter, and then we take it from there with her other main characters. And I've also woven in what I'm calling frock stories, which are short pieces about items of clothing that happened to be in the frock shop and the stories behind them, like who owned them and why they ended up being donated.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

And you know, when I was reading the book, that was something I was thinking about. Like I I float in uh charity shops these days. My kids are into charity shops, and which is wonderful. But you know, I often think about the item in the shop and and the history and the memories and whose was it and where it's come from and what it's seen. It's just there's such a um an interesting space, aren't they? Charity shops.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yeah, and and of course, if people are really um bargain-minded, or if they're people who are like eBay resellers and they can go in looking for finds, and they there is treasure there for sure. The other day I was in a Vinnie's near where I live, and um I was I was looking at one particular thing, and behind the counter there was this beautiful pink tie. Now, I don't normally wear ties, but the colour was amazing. I thought, oh, surely I can do something with that, and asked to look at it, and it was an Ermes tie just sitting there behind the counter. And I thought, I will I will take that and I will figure out what to do with it later. So, you know, and I found like a $25 Louis Vuitton scarf that hadn't been worn in a in an op shop um in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. So there's definitely gold in them bar hills if people are looking for it.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah. And look back onto the book. Um, you mentioned you're you're a seasoned author here. So tell us about um writing the frock shop. You know, for anyone who's not familiar, might be listening who's not familiar with your previous work, tell us about your writing process as an author. Do you kind of lock yourself down? Do you free free spirit? Like what's the what's the journey like as an author?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Sure. So I have a full-time job. And so I don't write full-time. I write around the work. And uh normally I write quite a chunk of each novel on public transport. So I am lucky enough to catch the ferry to work, and it's 20 minutes each way. So I will do 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon. Uh lockdown really messed with that. Uh so I also discovered that I'm really good writing late at night, which because I'm an owl, not a lark. And so um I'm much I'm much better concentrating late at night. So I also will write at that time. The reason I can dip in and out is because I do a lot of planning. So I will uh once I identify where the story's going to be set, what year, and what the linking device is. So in this case, the frock shop, I will then sort of sit quietly and um see who shows up to have their story told, and I'll start to make character notes. There's a particular framework I use that from the American author Francesca Leah Bloch's book, The Thorn Necklace. And it's a 12 question, it's called the 12 questions, 12 question framework for each character. So I'll work up a character profile for every character, then I'll start making some other notes around that. So just like what's that character's background? What who are their parents, where did she grow up, uh, all those sorts of things. I'll make some other planning documents and then I have a master document that I call the grid, very imaginative, which is a color-coded table in Microsoft Word. And each character gets a color, and I will then plot like 10 to 15 chapters ahead, but no more, and then keep refining that. So as the story starts to change, because it always does, once I start writing, I will go back and tweak that and then start planning ahead and go back and tweak until I reach the end.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah. And Sophie, do you mind sharing with us you you know what's what's your day job? Like tell us a bit about you on the other side of being an author.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Sure. I am actually a book publisher by day. So uh so I I work for Ashette, which is also the publisher the company that publishes me, and I have mainly published nonfiction, and I'm now publishing a bit of romance fiction as well. I used to be a literary agent, um, I've also been a bookseller and I'm I'm still edit. I was an editor only for a while, and I still edit quite a bit of what I work on as the as a structural editor. Uh, but I've been a publisher for uh since 2014. So I like I like making things, shall we say?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Oh, you do that so well. Sophie, if we're watching anywhere in the world and we're really curious about you, because now surely everybody's curious about you, um, and about the book or even about your back catalogue, do you want to point us in the direction of your socials? I'll put some links in the show notes, but we'd love to be able to support you, Sophie.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Thank you. So everything on the social is at Sophie Green Books, and that's Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. I actually have been doing quite a lot of writing tips and publishing tips, which started on TikTok because that's the place for it, but I now put them uh in most places and I have playlists on YouTube. So if anyone's writing and looking for some tips from my industry side of things in particular, then I've I've have them as a playlist on YouTube. You can find them pretty much all over the profiles.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Oh, wonderful. Well, Sophie, I'm gonna put the the links in the show notes. You are a very curious author and human. I feel like I could talk to you a lot more. But Sophie, I'm hoping you'll continue to write and I might get you back again.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Well, I'm I'm already uh well, I'm deep into next year's book, shall we say? So there you go.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Oh, that's so good to hear. Well, Sophie, enjoy the frock shop. It it was really fun to read. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for having me. Cheers.