Hello, this is Emma Ganon, and thank you for listening to this podcast. I just wanted to let you know that my new book, The Success Myth, Letting Go of Having It All, is out on May the 18th.

I think it's my best book yet, so I'm excited for it to come out. And the book unpicks the eight success myths from happiness, to money, to productivity, to celebrity, to the idea of finally arriving, and how chasing a version of success that doesn't align with your values can really take you off track.

And this book is about getting back to yourself, breaking free, finding a new way forward.

And it's available on May the 18th. If you love this podcast, you'll love the book, and it's available soon from all good bookshops.

So you can order yours now. I hope you like it.

Hello, and welcome back to Control Out Delete. This is a replay episode with the brilliant Sophie Hayward. I've followed Sophie for years. I've loved her columns. I've loved her celebrity interviews. She's written for the Guardian, Vice, Vogue. Her brilliant newsletter is called The Sofist.

If you type her name into Google, you will read so many brilliant interviews that she's done with some of the biggest names.

In this episode, we discussed her first book called The Hungover Games. A beautiful memoir about single motherhood. I love that in the blurb, she says what to expect when you weren't expecting to be expecting.

I read it in a day. I just gobbled it up. So if you enjoyed this conversation, please do go and grab a copy of the book and also leave a rating or review if you fancy it. Hope you enjoy.

I've been waiting to do this literally since that first bookseller announcement, and every time I see you, I'm like, when's it coming out? When's it coming out? I was probably very annoying.

No, you were very encouraging. It was lovely this idea that you were waiting to read my book, but I hadn't probably finished writing it.

The weirdest thing is you probably spent a long time writing it as anyone does writing a book, and then I literally read it in a day.

I've been hearing that feedback from a lot of people that your writing is so addictive, and I think Dolly Olderton described it recently as a salty snack that you can't put down.

I just want to tell you how wonderful it was to read, and I just raced through it. It's brilliant.

When you've hit the nail on something, I think quite interesting for me, which is that yes, this book I thought it would take me maybe six months to a year, and it was at least twice that really.

I mean, I was doing other things as well, obviously, but people have very kindly said to me, oh my god, I've read it so fast.

This is people who've got proof copies, and it is sort of bittersweet. You think, well, there's no greater compliment than somebody saying,

oh, I picked your book up, thinking I'd just read two chapters, and next thing you know, it's four in the morning, you know, when you've read the whole thing.

It's thrilling, but you do think, gosh, three years of life, one night of someone's life, but it's a bit like being pregnant, you spend almost a year being pregnant, and you know, giving birth is sort of one day.

It feels imbalanced somehow.

I feel like the book is written in such a way as well that it's not like it's loads of cliffhangers or anything, but the way that you've written it is like, okay, right on to the next chapter, I've got to go through this.

And I wondered is that something that you did learn through your years of journalism that when you write an article, especially with your celebrity profiles, you do need to keep a reader sort of hooked right till the end, don't you?

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