Inspiring and Empowering Women Through Fiction with Monica McGurk, outgoing Global Chief Growth Officer Kellogg Company and Author
About this episode:
Award-winning author Monica McGurk joins us on the podcast. Her work weaves together complex, multi-layered stories that bring contemporary issues and strong female characters to life through different genres of popular fiction. Her previous work includes three volumes of paranormal YA romance The Archangel Prophecies: Dark Hope, Dark Rising, and Dark Before Dawn, along with numerous works of fanfiction under the name Consultant by Day.
Topics Discussed:
How her early career inspired her to portray strong female characters in her books
What Monica enjoys most about the writing and publishing process
How her writing addresses and untangles complex issues while inspiring and empowering women
Why she “cannot turn away” when it comes to human trafficking and what she does to support this cause
About Monica:
Award-winning author Monica McGurk likes nothing better than weaving complex, multi-layered stories that bring contemporary issues and strong female characters to life through different genres of popular fiction. Her previous work includes three volumes of paranormal YA romance The Archangel Prophecies: Dark Hope, Dark Rising, and Dark Before Dawn, along with numerous works of fanfiction under the name Consultant by Day.
A corporate executive, she now lives in Chicagoland with her husband, Tom, her youngest son, John, and their two dogs, Jack and Ellie.
Read a raw, unedited transcript of this episode:
Thank you so much for joining us today, Monica. In your books, you weave complex, multilayered stories to life with strong female characters. Share with us what you like the most about being an author and why you're so passionate about bringing strong female characters to life.
One of the things that I love the most about being an officer. It's like a puzzle. I'm a problem solver by nature. I'm very research driven and very analytic, and I like to untangle complex issues. Being able to tell a story requires you to be really expert, even if it's temporarily becoming an expert in something location. The problem? The mindset of a character. And know where you get the lands sometimes over multiple books, because I tend to write in series and then figure out how to put the puzzle pieces together to tell that story in a way that resonates with readers. And when it is multi-layered, it can get complex, and so the art of it is how do you tell the story in a simple way? Make it so that like in the case of the agency, people could read it at one level as just a thriller, a mystery with a really great group of characters in the young adult genre. Are they can unpack it and think more about underlying themes of identity and loss or the current events that are portrayed there, like human trafficking and some international conflicts that provide the backdrop for some of the drama. (UM) So that's my favorite part about it and the fact that it gives me an excuse to go out and meet people who are expert in these different things and travel to learn about the locations. I set the books and it's just a bonus for me. To your other question about why presenting strong female characters continues to motivate me. and I started my career, it was sometimes it's lonely to be often the only woman in the room. One of my clients, because I was a consultant at the beginning of my career, one of my clients told me after we had worked together for over a year that the first time I showed up for a meeting, they all thought I was the assistant to the partner because I'd never met a female consultant from the firm that I worked with, even though they worked with the firm for quite some time. So it has always been in the atmosphere of my professional career and as an avid reader and someone who read a lot with my children, including my daughter, I was often frustrated by books that portrayed women in stereotypical ways or portrayed young women and particularly in the genre as needing rescuing. And that being their own agent, being buffeted by what was happening to them and you could get caught up in the story because it's romantic. It's this, it's that. But then you would step away from it in your higher level cognition recognition and be like, And so when I set out to write, wanted to write books that would be inspiring and empowering to my daughter, who was, at the time 13 or something. She's she is still an avid reader, but I was right with that in mind and you representing the diversity and richness of the world around us.
I love that. And now more than ever, coming out of COVID with the women that have stepped back from the workforce, I think that is needed now more than ever.
And I agree with you.
Yeah. And my previous career was working in sports. I worked for Major League Baseball, for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and it was very male. So I can imagine. So, you're in a boardroom of 25 people and there's two, maybe three women in the room. So definitely understand that and love your passion behind building up the strong female characters. It's so great. Your most recent book, The Agency. How did you come up with the idea? Tell us about it. And how did it come to life?
The idea for the agency is a funny one had finished the last trilogy I wrote and I was in the car with my children for an extended period of time and we were brainstorming it. For me, writing is a little bit of a family affair. My kids and my husband read my books in early drafts form. They engage. Give me lots of feedback on it. So, I was. In the mood and in the mode of generating ideas for my next book, and I always keep a list of ideas and something kind of pops in my head, I keep it down and have a little tracker for it, but I wasn't feeling that into some of the ideas that I have on my list, so we were just brainstorming on this drive. And I think it was my daughter at the time. She was kind of into the whole royal family thing, and she jokingly said, Hey, what if hat nanny school that provides the nanny to the royal families was a cover for a spy agency? And everybody laughed and I said. That's a great idea, and then they pay all the kids all backpedaled like, no, no, no, that's not a good idea. You shouldn't write that. It's like, now this is the idea, this is it. And it was funny why they thought it wasn't a good idea for a book because they thought it would be a better movie.
It can always be made into one.
Yeah, it's okay. Well, we'll sell the rights down the road. So, it just really gripped my imagination. One, because it was such a fun idea and I was really looking for something a little bit lighter because the previous books had a little bit of heaviness to them. So, I wanted something that I thought I could have more fun with. On the one hand, and then the other side of it, getting back to your question about women was, gosh, here is a stereotypical female profession. Where, sometimes these women are taken advantage of. They're maybe underappreciated. They have this role in the background. But when you bring a nanny into your home, you're creating in some sense vulnerability, right? You're opening yourself up to the risk and said the idea that you could be subverting a gender stereotype and using it to wield power and influence international affairs was really captivating to me. So I thought I could work a lot with it and in a way that was consistent with some of the things that are important to me as a writer.
I see how you could develop these rich characters from that idea, and I love how you bring your family into the process. I would think writing sometimes might be a little bit lonely because as you and the computer and you and your thoughts and ideas, but I love how you bring your family into it.
They sometimes might get a little annoyed with me, to be quite honest, But it’s probably really fun for you.
Yeah, but you know, it's great and everybody has their own strength that they bring to it. It makes it a bit more of a group activity less isolating.
That is so fun. And I'm a mom of twins. My twins are eight now, but when they were born, I started watching crime shows and I had never been into the crime mysteries before and I learned that I think it was because in forty five minutes, at least something in my life was solved for the day. And it didn't compel me to want to watch another one because they solved the crime and I could go to sleep. It's interesting when you think about looking at complex problems and mysteries, and you can get so involved in the characters and the stories. And it has to be, from your point of view to write from both angles. It's also so interesting to look at both sides of that scenario. Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer?
I was always a big reader. When my parents had me, they were among the first in their friends set to have kids, and I would tag along with them and we would go to somebody's house. They didn't have kids, they have kids books around and I would just like, read whatever was available. So I just kind of observed things like a sponge. Maybe that put the idea in my head a dabbled with it at different points in my life, but I didn't really get serious about trying until a little over a decade ago.
What do you like the most about the writing and publishing process? The creativity of coming up with the ideas and then mapping them out and all of the research itself, I really do enjoy that process. And for all the reasons I was talking about before. I am the kind of person who thrives on feedback I do in my full time job and this is the same for me. So when I was writing fan fiction, for example, I would just go crazy in a positive way. Every time I got a review. The things I loved about the fanfiction, that net platform, you would post a chapter or a snippet and then you would see all this live feedback and it was really valuable and it helped me get better as a writer. And so I loved the process of getting feedback and whether it's informal with my family, with I call them beta readers there as a small group of women primarily who provide me a little bit more formal feedback in the process when I think it's close to being publication ready. And again, they have different roles. One is my go to reader for medical staff. She'll read the whole thing, but she's a physician and a lot of my books have a lot of action adventure in them. And so there are injuries, and she checks all of that stuff for me. And then when I get to the process of working with an editor, it's actually wonderful. I was really worried about it initially, how I would feel giving my baby to someone and then having to rework things. But every single time it's made the work better. And I've been really lucky to work with editors to get as vested in the characters as me so they know what matters to me and how I depict them. They are super collaborative and said it's just a really fun process. The other part, once it's ready to go to publication that I love is being consulted on the design of the cover. And again, I'm lucky and have some writers don't get a lot of say and that, but my publisher is very consultative on it. And so I've been really pleased with the designs that have graced each of my books so far. Did you know that you would go into fiction writing and not necessarily nonfiction?
When I was a consultant and a partner atMcKinsey, I wrote a fair amount of business literature for the McKinsey quarterly. And that was when I started realizing how I like this process. And I would listen to colleagues complain about it being so hard. And I was thinking, like, oh, I love this, and I would sometimes take a long time to get my thoughts in order, and the writing of the books is the same way. But once I have the idea figured out. It was pretty easy. I'm a fast writer, and I do pretty good first drafts and so I could crank something out relatively quickly compared to a lot of people who would more likely dread it. I actually, enjoy that. So I didn't know it, but I knew I liked the process of it. And even when I was a kid in school, writing a paper didn't faze me. I loved writing my senior thesis in college. I thought it was fun.
The story is inspiring because She Built It’s mission is to empower you to experience a life and business that you crave, and we all crave something different. And we have to understand that pivots are OK. We might be in a role that we're good at, but then we might be craving to do something different. So, it's great that you followed your passion into writing.
Yes. And you can think about it like a portfolio your job might scratch. 80 percent of your itch, it’s the other 20 percent. And you can pick up something on the side, it could be a project, doesn't have to be a full side hustle like everybody talks about these days. But you can find ways to get what you're missing. So when I did start writing fiction, part of it was. The job that I had don't give me a lot of outlet for creativity. It was very analytically rigorous and fun and creative. But I wasn't working on branding campaigns and things like that, and I just needed an outlet for that creative impulse. And so I was lucky that I realized it and I was lucky at the time that I realized it. Online platforms were becoming available, so it was a little bit easier for me to get going through the fanfiction than you. But yeah,]you're going to shift over the course of your life and hopefully you're learning and getting exposed to new things and you'll change your mind about what is satisfying to you. And that's a good thing,
And it's so great you had the confidence to go towards your creative side.
Yeah, well, I kind of figured there was no downside. I mean, the worst thing that would happen is everybody hated it. And at least I have the experience of trying, you know? Right, right.
So true. On your website, you say “I cannot turn away”. You give a portion of all of your books to end human trafficking. Recently, I was with my daughter in an airport, and she looked at a sign and said, Mom, why is there a sign for traffic in the airport? And she's eight years old and I just had this aha moment of standing there, going, first of all, how do I explain this to her? Second of all, it's terrifying to think of this for any human being, something happening to her or any of her friends one day. And I just had this moment, and I started thinking about how can I give back to this topic? And then I was introduced to you. And as I was reading about you, I learned that you give a portion back to human trafficking. It's just these things happen. Sometimes, I think for a reason where you never universe the world nudges you in certain directions. But I thought, I feel really strongly about this and it hadn't really come up before, but I remember standing in the airport having this moment. Share with us how you give back to human trafficking, how the topic resonates with you and how it first started
Sure. Thank you for sharing your story. And it makes me really happy because 10 years ago. That kind of signage, that kind of awareness building, that it just wasn't happening. My story of how it got on my radar screen. I was working on my first book and I had decided that the opening prolog of the first chapter would center start with a child abduction. And there is a reason why that had come to mind that I won't get into, but. Like I mentioned, I'm very fact-based, so I was curious. How frequently does this happen? Is this a big deal? So I went to Dr. Google and started my searching and I was just blown away because. Outright objections did not come up, but all of this information about child trafficking in the United States did. And I have no idea. I had no idea it was happening in the community in which I lived. And the reality is in the United States, it happens in any major metro where you got a confluence of transportation, whether it's air, rail, bus, interstate highways. But I was shocked. I mean, my daughter was probably a little bit older than yours is now. And I just was horrified. It's like, how can I not know this and how can this not be a topic of not just discussion, but aggressive advocacy? So I decided yet this is going to work this into the books. And as I did research, I connected with a couple of non-profits working in the space, and they're there just a ton of groups working there, especially now after that time has passed. But the groups that I ended up connecting with. We're not working on. Rescuing people in that situation or rehabilitating them is providing them services after they're thankfully removed from it. This is a very important work. The two groups that I work with, St. Grace and USA, we're working on systemic solutions to help stop the problem. I working on both the demand and the supply side. So tackling issues like the awareness of people in airlines, trucking industries, hotel industries where it could be happening in front of them and they don't recognize that so that they can intervene or driving for a stricter sentencing guidelines for perpetrators and making sure people are put in that situation as victims are not criminalized when they're in that situation. I just found that that more perhaps long term, that holistic approach to the problem was going to be really valuable and that it appealed to my sense of systems thinking. I got very involved with one of them, St. Grace. I went through their training program. I became a public speaker for them and because I was working through the books, I focused most of my public speaking with youth groups like a Girl Scout troop. And the royal I see for my writing is to use pop culture. To present this in a non-salacious factual but accessible way to help people or educators be able to have the conversation at the right time, at the right age of kids who are targeted for this. So if any of that made even the slightest dent or attracted one person to want to get involved, then for me, it's mission accomplished, right?
And that's so great because I stood in the airport. I usually don't have to think twice about having a conversation with her or how do I explain this to her? It usually is just intuitive, and I just know, but I stood there for a minute. How do I start to explain this topic to her? So what you are doing with your book it's so great that you are bringing light to this topic and shedding awareness.
It's definitely a movement and I’m impressed with your daughter for being like that, attentive to notice that with all the hubbub of an airport or what have you. But yeah, it's it's really gratifying to see just how much the public awareness has changed in the decade that I've been involved, and hopefully we can see continued progress on this issue.
And nice to know that the airlines and the airports are making awareness of it too.
It has been really leading the charge on that again, countless groups. But it has really focused on the travel industry and they just done fantastic work. They're partnering with those companies. I ask this question at the end of every episode because I believe bringing joy into our daily life is so important. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. What is one tip you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy?
I would say just being present. And experiencing gratitude, I think especially in the last two years during COVID, that has really been driven home for me and having the appreciation that, hey, we might all be trapped at home. We're having dinner together as a family and we're not on the run. Just sitting down to savor those moments, I think can be really powerful. And it's in simple terms, the quiet moments that you can really find that joy. So yes, I mentioned to you, I was in D.C., I was with a family member and we took a detour down a residential street to look at the cherry blossoms. And I just made my heart happy to see something so beautiful in this five-minute detour and that made all the difference in the day.
Mm-Hmm. So true, it's that nature and it really is those small moments. My husband never cooked before COVID, and now he cooks. And I'm not complaining, but he enjoys it. It's a, you know, stress relief from his day. And you're so right. Sometimes something like that has to remind us that those small moments are so important. Yeah. You have built an incredible career, and thank you for sharing and shedding light to the topic of human trafficking and for sharing the story of your books and how you became an author and how you bring your passions to light. Can you please share with our listeners how and where they can find you?
Absolutely. And it's been such a pleasure to speak with you, Melanie. Go to my website, which is Monica McGurk dot com, and all of the links to my other social platforms are there. There are links to buy any books that might interest you if you want to bypass all of that. Most of the books are available on all of your normal online platforms like Amazon.com, Birds and Apple.com and the like. But if you did check out the website, you can also access more information about human trafficking. So, you’ll have a little bit of information on there for people who want to get involved, people who want to take advantage of some of the resources. For those nonprofits and some educators, we did classroom guides, for example, for how to teach the first trilogy, which is called the Archangel Prophecies, and there will be more information as the next books in the Norwood Nanny Chronicles come out as well following The Agency this year.