CILIP North East: “The only cure for a Fictional Hangover is another book”

Claire Eastaugh
Student at Northumbria University
CILIP NE committee member

Let’s begin how every episode does… In this episode of Fictional Hangover, I discuss first hearing about the podcast, what it is, who has appeared, who is to blame and confirm that we do sometimes dress up to record an audio podcast by Claire Eastaugh, CILIP NE Network Student Rep.

In 2019 author Gail Carriger tweeted that she had been interviewed on a podcast called Fictional Hangover talking about her Finishing School series. I love Miss Gail’s books and I enjoy a podcast so I listened in. It was fun, animated discussions with loads of spoilers so though I hadn’t read some of the books they covered I could follow the conversation. I would interact with the host Amanda on Fictional Hangover’s social media channels and would regularly post in their Would You Rather…? game.

Then 15th September 2019, while I was eating breakfast, I received a message… “Soooo... Amber has quit Fictional Hangover. You don't have any desire to guest host an episode or two or all of them with me from now on, do you?”

Needless to say, I was not expecting that with my morning coffee!

My first appearance, recording as a guest on Episode 33

I said yes, of course. I’d just made a huge change in my life leaving my job of 13 years and was waiting to begin my studies at Northumbria University for my MSc Information Science Library Management. This was perfect, the opportunity to work with someone who was passionate about books, sharing stories and encouraging reading. It felt like a quirk of fate that as I was venturing into this new chapter that this opportunity to do something that would connect me to it should come along.

Fictional Hangover is a weekly podcast about YA and new adult books though we’ve covered wider age categories on occasion. Every episode is guaranteed to give you spoilers, we summarise books in such detail they could be used as book reports (and one listener admitted they have!), we talk about the ups and downs, our favourite and least favourite moments and characters, often fancast and develop fanfic concepts as we go. We play Would You Rather…? too, a game of five questions which are inspired by the book they can be terrible, funny, ridiculous and gruesome – it all depends on the source.

Would You Rather…? opens the show up to so many people. Before I was co-host, I guested in Episode 33, A Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee and since I’ve joined, I’ve had the privilege to talk to other listeners as well as extraordinarily talented authors and audiobook narrators such people as Dawn Kurtagich, AS King, Jackson Ford, PC Cast, Kristen Cast, Bridget Tyler, Libba Bray, January LaVoy, Jesse Vilinksy, Kate Rudd, Sophie Amos, Caitlin Kelly, Caitlin Davies and the lady who Amanda and I blame entirely for my being on the show and our developed friendship, Gail Carriger… twice! When we have creative talents on the show, we produce a bonus episode which is part interview, part chat and mostly tempered down fangirling.

We don’t have sponsorship or any monetary assistance to produce the show, it truly is a labour of love. We try to use libraries as much as possible to obtain the books and we especially love audiobooks. I honestly don’t think we could consume so many without being able to plug my book in my ears – I’m listening to The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern as I type!

Before becoming a Podcaster, I didn’t understand the amount of time and work that goes into it. We try to share the responsibility of picking the books, writing the summary and reaching out to guests. Social media takes up a lot of time which I try to manage as Amanda is the editor, a very big and time consuming task and something I joke gives her too much power as “with great power there must also come -- great responsibility.” An episode doesn’t go by where we’re not shouting edit that out you, edit that out me, so much so that in August when celebrated the 100th episode in a live Facebook event we used that phrase as the tag. It really made me appreciate the awesome power of editing and the experience has not put us off doing more in the future for special occasions.

Celebrating Episode 100 Live!

Amanda and I have never met in person, she is based near Seattle, USA and I’m in North East England. Having an 8-hour time difference can be challenging, but we work around it and when something is so fun to produce no matter how much we have, or haven’t, enjoyed the book we are discussing it’s worth it in the end. One listener told us it’s like hearing two friends talking books and they are included in the conversation which is exactly what we want. We take pictures of our recording for the weekly blog posts, and we have even dressed up for them. Yes, it’s an audio podcast but we can still be fun. When we interviewed Libba Bray for our Beauty Queens episode we dressed as Miss Big Hair and Miss Deeds, for my bad book birthday episode, we wore party hats and purple noses as we were discussing Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend by Alan Cumyn and twice we have done the crescent moon markings from the House of Night series by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. Book Character Cosplay is one of big social media posts every Friday. This is another speciality for Amanda, but I’ve joined in the odd production, but I love spit balling ideas with her and every challenge I’ve thrown her way she nails.

Pictures taken during recording

Fictional Hangover continues to be amazing and astound me. When I first joined, I didn’t think we would have achieved so much. I’ve enjoyed building our social media following on Twitter and adding content to Instagram. I love the creativity of trying to come up with the episode pictures each week, I love the laughter and debate talking about books, I love talking to our special guests, people I never thought I would get to speak to. To me Fictional Hangover is more than a podcast, it’s given me friendships and purpose, opened my eyes to books I may not have considered reading before as well as a loads of new audiobook narrators who I adore listening to.

As we plan 2021, we have some amazing stuff planned, I can’t be anything but excited. I can also say with certainty, since joining I’ve never had a fictional hangover!