Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke, HOW TO SAVE A LIFE

Zibby Owens: Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke have been best friends for over thirty years. They are the coauthors of seven novels including the Amazon Charts best seller, The Good Widow. Their most recent book, How to Save a Life, is a dark, heart-pounding love story with a Groundhog Day twist. Liz and Lisa host the popular podcast "We Fight So You Don’t Have To" and are monthly on-air contributors on their local news with Liz & Lisa’s Book Club. In their former lives, Liz worked in the pharmaceutical industry and Lisa was a talk show producer. They both reside with their families and several rescue dogs in Southern California.

Welcome, Lisa and Liz, to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for coming on.

Lisa Steinke: Thanks for having us.

Liz Fenton: Thank you.

Zibby: Maybe just announce who you are. I can see because I'm watching you. Whose voice is whose?

Liz: This is Liz.

Lisa: This is Lisa. Thanks for having us. Excited to be here.

Zibby: How to Save a Life is your latest novel. Can you tell listeners, please, what it's about?

Liz: It's a dark, heart-pounding love story. It's about Dom and Mia. Ten years ago, Dom and Mia were engaged and they broke up. Fast-forward a decade. Dom runs into Mia at a coffee shop. He's never really gotten over her. He always regretted breaking up with her. He hasn’t really moved on. He asks her out on a date. It's Tuesday. He asks her out for Thursday. They go out Thursday night to the San Diego County Fair, and she dies on a ride. Obviously, he's devastated. He wakes up the next day. It's still Thursday. He has another opportunity. He's not quite sure what's going on. They have their date, but obviously he plans something else. He doesn't take her to the carnival. He's like, maybe we shouldn't go. She dies again. What happens after that is he's stuck in a time loop trying to save her life, trying to save what they had together. Then there's also different pieces of his life in that day that he's trying to figure out almost like a puzzle he's trying to put back together.

Zibby: How did you come up with this? It's Sliding Doors-ish. It's the same bad news over and over again and wanting to have a different outcome. Isn't that what they say the definition of craziness is? I feel like my therapist might have told me this at one point, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Lisa: Expecting a different outcome, yeah. Our last book, The Two Lila Bennetts, was a Sliding Doors concept. We had already tried that. We were on vacation. We were in the pool. We were drinking cocktails. We were trying to figure out what to do. We first were going to do a Groundhog Day twist but with more of a suspense angle like our previous books. Then Liz got to talking about The 7½ Lives of...

Liz: Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, one of my favorite books. I had brought it on vacation. I had just finished it.

Lisa: That book is a man who wakes up every day in a different person's body at a party. We were talking about that and just tossing it around. We eventually came to this just as a brainstorm goes. We wanted it to be lighter and more of a love story that we could play out in it as well.

Zibby: I was sort of struck, I feel like it's been a long time since I read a novel by two women from the point of view of a man. When it started about the bulge in his pants, I was like, wait a minute. [laughter] Who's telling this story? What's going on?

Lisa: That was Liz's line. She's notorious for the opening line in a book, I have to say.

Liz: Thank you, Lisa. Our debut novel, the opening line is "My mouth tastes like ass." You'll have to read to find out why. That was actually from a rewrite. That wasn't the original first line. Then when it went to edits with our publisher, we ended up restructuring the first one-third of the way we were telling the story. We had to jump off from their engagement. You know as a reader and also an author, the first page is so important to pull people in.

Lisa: We're hoping that pulls people in. It was also fun to write from a male point of view for the first time. I don't know if we were just shying away from it because we're not men and it's not as comfortable, but we just wanted to get out of our comfort zone and give it try. Then we both kind of ended up falling in love with him a little bit.

Liz: I have a major crush on him. It was fun. We get bored. I think it's why our first three books were magical realism. Then we went to suspense. Now we're back. We pivot a lot, for good or bad of our career. We pivot. With us, you never really know what you're going to get in a book because we always want to write what we love. We've just found when we don't do that, there's problems. We just write what we want to read and what we love in that moment. We hope our audience will come along for the ride.

Zibby: I feel like it's so easy to tell when somebody's not passionate about what they're writing about. You can feel the lack of fire behind it, really, even though it's sort of intangible. How did the two of you originally get together? What's your whole story? How did you decide to start becoming coauthors?

Lisa: We've known each other a very long time, thirty-four years or something. We're losing track at this point. Went to high school together and college together and roommates afterward and through the course of all that, just talked about it, but not really thinking it was ever going to actually happen. Just one of those things because we've always been voracious readers since we were very young. These authors inspired us. We never thought it was going to happen. Then one day out of the blue like fifteen years into our friendship, I brought it up again. I had written something. I sent it to her. The rest is history. We did not expect it, but we're so happy it actually ended up taking off.

Zibby: That's amazing. Talk about all of your external support for the book community at large and how you're on the San Diego show and all the rest of it, the original influencers essentially.

Liz: As Lisa mentioned, we're huge readers. We're huge fangirls of authors. We were championing books before we got our first book deal. Now we continue that. We're lucky enough to have, on our local news, we have a monthly book club segment every month where we get to talk about books. We have a podcast, "We Fight So You Don't Have To," which is about us, but we also talk about books. We bicker. We're like sisters. We're hoping people can learn from our mistakes. We're also partnering with Warwick’s bookstore in La Jolla who's our local independent bookstore for Couch Surfing Book Tour. We connected with them right when COVID happened. We're like, "How can we help? What can we do?" Twice a week, we have authors on and talk about their books. That's been really rewarding and really fun. It's fun to help the authors who have their books coming out. They're disappointed. It's been great to partner with Warwick's who we adore and hopefully drive some book sales for them, right Lis? It's been really rewarding in this dark time.

Lisa: It's kind of nice to be in the other seat sometimes because there's so many bookstagramers and people like you that are just so supportive of us. We're always thinking about what we can do to give back so it's a reciprocal situation because we wouldn't be where we are without the Instagram, bookstagram community, for sure. It is nice to give back a little bit too.

Zibby: Tell me about your fighting. [laughter] Let me hear some of these fights. Give me a few examples. How down and dirty are these fights? What are we talking here?

Liz: We've gotten a lot better. This is evolution. I think we've been writing together at this point about ten years. We've been friends for thirty-four. We're really like family. Lisa, I'll let you speak to this, but I think transitioning from a friendship to running a business together is a really interesting thing, especially with something creative like writing. Lis, you always do a good job.

Lisa: Thank you, Liz. That's a perfect example of how far we've come. There's been some door slamming. There's been a lot of emotions that we can't control over the years. It was never really in regard to what we were going to write about or anything like that. It was just other stuff. It's kind of like a marriage when you're fighting about the toilet paper, but it's not really about the toilet paper. It took us many, many years to figure out that this wasn't just a friendship. It was a business relationship too. We'd never sat down and had a conversation about how different we are and how that was going to play into our writing process. A few years ago, everything kind of came to a head. We talked about maybe not continuing because we couldn't figure out what the problem was. There had been so much tension. We'd had a really rough edit. Some other things had happened in our personal lives at the same time. It just all came together. We had to step back and just start talking about our business and our roles in that. Once we ironed all that out, we've gotten to a much better place. I'm not saying we don't ever have an argument, but we definitely have avoided many as a result.

Liz: I think too, if I could add Lisa, I think one thing --

Lisa: -- You can.

Liz: Thank you. I think one thing we've gotten better at is -- I think it's like a seesaw and we lose the balance. Sometimes we're just all business all the time, and we kind of forget that we're best friends who like having a good time together. I think we've gotten better at balancing those things. It just became all business. We're still friends that need each other and need that support and need to talk about our teenagers being idiots or whatever. Sorry, teenagers, if you're listening.

Lisa: They're not listening. They do not care what we're doing.

Liz: They're not listening. They are idiots, at least mine are. [laughter] I think the best thing we've done -- honestly, probably just in the last six months I think we've gotten better. That's how we're always evolving, is getting better at that balance of friendship versus business. I think we're both a lot more fulfilled with each other. We sound like we're married and we're in therapy right now, Lisa.

Lisa: I know we do, or in couple's counseling or something.

Zibby: Tell me more about that. No, I'm kidding.

Lisa: Let's move on. Let's talk more about the fights.

Zibby: I had the lovely ladies who wrote the book called Work Wife on my show, Claire and Erica. You should maybe just pick that book up because it's all about this. It's about how to navigate the complexity of female friendship at the same time as running a business together.

Liz: I'm going to.

Lisa: That's going to be helpful because we're always learning.

Zibby: I also feel that creating, being creative together, is different. It's not like you guys are producing sweaters or something. It's stuff that usually lives in somebody's head. To make that a joint production, that's tricky. I'm in such awe of all coauthors. Who writes what? How do you do it? How do you actually do it? Do you use Google Docs? Do you get together in person? Do you split chapters? How did you do How to Save a Life?

Lisa: We do not get together in person. The Nanny Diaries girls told us once that they sit at a computer together and write every line together. Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen are on a call all the time doing their lines together. We're very different than that. We separately will write. I'll write a chapter. This is what we came up with years ago. It's just never changed. I open a Word document. I write a chapter. I send it to Liz. She'll edit it and send it back. We do keep passing it back and forth until we feel like it's in a good place. Then Liz will write a chapter. We'll just do the whole book that way. As far as what we're going to put in each chapter, we do sit and map out maybe five or six chapters at a time, but it's still very loose. It's up to the person writing the chapter. There's a goal to accomplish within it, but it's up to them how to get to that goal. It just works for us. I know there's fancy writing tools online and things like that, but we're old-school Word doc girls, until the very end and then we do move over to Google Docs.

Liz: I do use Dropbox.

Lisa: That's new, yes. That's new. Then we do Google Doc at the end because during edits -- we used to edit separately and send it back and forth. Then one day someone was like, there's something called Google Docs. We're like, oh, my god, that's great. I think it was one of our kids.

Zibby: The other day, I accidentally deleted my whole team's Google Doc with the entire schedule of every podcast and every everything because I had deleted someone who left our business. I didn't know that it was attached. Mental note, if you ever change your email address or something, save that document. You can get it back after the mistake for a little bit. Just heads up on the Google Docs. In terms of when you generate new ideas, I know you said this one, you were hanging in the pool and it just came to, is it always like that? It seems like you guys have an easy rapport that things just bubble up. Do you ever get stuck on one of you wants to write something really badly and the other is like, no, I don't want to write that book?

Lisa: The cruise ship idea, you could tell her about the dueling piano people. Anyway, I'll let you.

Liz: Typically, we'll throw out a lot of ideas. I think at this point she knows if I'm into an idea and I know she's -- she's mentioning the cruise ship. We went on a trip to Europe two years ago with our family. We were on a cruise ship. There was these dueling piano people. The guy and the girl, clearly there was something going on. I was really into it. Maybe I was just drunk every night when we were there. I could tell she wasn't into it, so I dropped it. She wanted to do this weird Blake Crouch rip-off book because I was in the pharmaceutical industry for twenty years. She knew I wasn't into it. We don't argue. We kind of just move on because when the right idea -- I'm getting goosebumps as I say this. When the right idea comes, we both know. It's something that intangible. I don't even know how to explain it, but we both know. It's like, yes, we're writing that. Let's go. Lisa mentioned earlier, the creative is not what we fight about. We fight about someone sending an eyeball emoji in a text. You're like, what are you trying to say? The eyeball emoji? We're dumb. We fight about stupid stuff when we're cranky or frustrated with our kids or something. We take it out on each other.

Zibby: I love how in this book your character Dom is always wondering what people are thinking, analyzing the relationships between everybody else. I'm always doing that myself. If I'm on vacation, you're like, ooh, is that the nanny? Who could that be?

Liz: We do that all the time.

Lisa: I was just on vacation. I had that exact "Is that the nanny?" situation. My husband and I, it was five days and we still don't know. Was it the nanny or was it the mom? We do not know.

Zibby: Sometimes I even do that to myself. What must people think? I wonder if other people are wondering if this is my nanny or if this is my sister and if they would ever be able to guess that it's actually my sister-in-law or whatever it is. It's so great to give a trait like that to the character as a journalistic tool for how he sees the world and everything, just very relatable.

Lisa: Thanks for noticing that. That was a fun little thing to put in for him.

Zibby: I know this is a bigger fate-based question, but do you believe that things are meant to happen, like, Mia's going to die every day no matter what happens and that's just fate, or that we are actually in control of what's going on on a fundamental level?

Lisa: I feel like this is more your wheelhouse, Liz.

Liz: Yeah, I knew. I was watching your eyes. I knew you were going to pass this one to me. I think it's both. I think that sometimes things are meant to be. I also think our energy and our attitude determines what we're attracting to ourselves. I tell my kids this all the time. If you say, I'm going to fail, or I'm going to do this, you're sending all that energy to there. I think it's a little bit of both. I think sometimes things are fated, but I do think we have control over attracting positive energy for positive results in our own life. It's something that we try to do a lot. You should see, we have a whole manifestation board. I'm pointing here because mine's right here. Really try to attract that positive energy and bring it to other people and situations because who knows, right? You might as well just be positive because we don't really know.

Zibby: Very true. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Lisa: I would say write what you want to write, first and foremost. Do not try to chase the market. Do not try to write what the latest hit book was. That was a mistake we made very early on. That's why it took us three manuscripts to eventually get there. That would be my advice. I'll throw it to Liz now.

Liz: I would say just keep writing. As Lisa mentioned, we got our book deal with Simon & Schuster on our third manuscript. It had been five years. We both were pretty successful in our own careers, Lisa in TV and I mentioned myself in pharma. I was done. Lisa really pushed that she wanted to write one more book. Had we not done that, we wouldn't be here. I was like, hey, I'm really good at this. This is a great job. I have two kids. I don't know if I need to do this. I think you have to push through that. I'm mentoring someone right now who's in their third manuscript. I'm really pushing her because she's talented. It just reminds me so much of us. I think people forget too that even as published authors, we're dealing with rejection all the time. I think they think once they get on this path of being a published writer they never get rejected again and it's amazing. No, no, no. You're going to still get rejected all the time in all these little ways. That's just part of life and part of this business. I think that aspiring writers need to remember that. You're always being rejected. It's just you've got to push through it.

Zibby: Very true. I've actually decided that I think I'm going to start taking a survey because it seems like everybody who sells a novel has had two rejected first. It just seems that way.

Lisa: Or a bunch of rejections before they ultimately finally got there, but it was fifty, sixty like a JK Rowling or whatever. It's true. You just have to keep pushing forward. I'm sure there's a lot of us who have manuscripts sitting in the drawer.

Zibby: What's your next project? What are you working on next? What's it about?

Lisa: We can't talk about it too much because we're just finishing it up and we're not sure what's going to happen with it. It is in the same vein as How to Save a Life. We don't even have a set title. It's in the same vein. We write a lot about regret and fate. Actually, to your question that you asked, it kind of asks that question. That's really the narrative question of the book. I hadn’t thought about it that way, so thank you. It's really, is something fated or can you control it? That’s the premise of the entire book.

Zibby: Ooh, I can't wait to read that one.

Lisa: We're excited for you to read it.

Zibby: Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for all the stuff you also do for authors. I am so glad to be joined by people who enjoy interviewing other authors as much as I do. I think it's super fun.

Lisa: Thank you for all that you do.

Liz: Thank you.

Lisa: It's amazing. We're so appreciative. Thank you for having us today.

Zibby: My pleasure. Take care. Thanks, ladies. Bye.

Liz: Bye.

Lisa: Bye.

Jane Rosen, ELIZA STARTS A RUMOR

Zibby Owens: Jane L. Rosen is the author of Eliza Starts a Rumor. She's also the author of Nine Women, One Dress. She is a screenwriter and a Huffington Post contributor. She lives in New York City and Fire Island with her husband and three daughters.

Welcome, Jane. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Jane L. Rosen: Thank you for having me. I'm a big fan. I think you know that because you must see my name at two o'clock every day. It's the governor at eleven and Zibby at two. [laughter]

Zibby: So funny. Eliza Starts A Rumor, let's talk about your book. It's coming out. I'm not sure when I'm releasing this exact transcript, but it's coming out next week when we're talking, which is so exciting. You have a big event coming up with Katie Couric. First of all, how did that happen? That's exciting, at McNally Jackson.

Jane: It's exciting. She's a friend of mine, in all fairness. She's just a very supportive friend. She loves my books and my writing. She writes a lot too. We pass it back and forth. I was just so happy that she agreed to interview me. Very, very cool.

Zibby: Aw, that's awesome. If she wants to be on my podcast too, you just send her my way. [laughs]

Jane: I will. She's writing a biography, so you'll have her soon.

Zibby: Well, there you go. Back to you, Eliza Starts a Rumor, can you please tell listeners what this book is about?

Jane: The book is really about female friendship and about women supporting women. At the basis of it, it's a woman who's an empty nester and runs a bulletin board kind of like the Upper East Side bulletin board or mamas' groups and all these different things that are all over the country. She's feeling a little irrelevant. She has agoraphobia, which is a funny thing. The timing of it is kind of funny with this because we've all been staying home so much. I can almost relate to her even more than I ever did. Anyway, she starts a rumor to liven things up on this bulletin board and basically tumbles into many different people's lives. It's, at turns, funny, and at turns, difficult because it explores all the very common problems that different women have. It's different age groups. One of the women is forty-eight. One is thirty-eight. One is twenty-eight. It's a whole intergenerational female exploration.

Zibby: I don't know anyone who's ever started a rumor, so I don't know, I don't think anybody would be able to relate to this book at all. [laughs] It's funny because gossip as a topic doesn't get discussed that much even though it sort of is a currency among women, if you will.

Jane: It is.

Zibby: You almost trade on that information to become closer. I see my little kindergartener daughter starting to do it. It's an interesting way to enter into different friend groups. I know it's on a site, a bulletin board. Still, the idea of it, of what does gossip do for us? What does it do for women? It's sort of an interesting topic.

Jane: It's a little bit of a thrill. Sometimes you don't want to admit it, but gossiping, it's interesting somehow even though you know you shouldn't be doing it. How many times have you said to someone, "You can't tell anyone this"? You kind of have, right? Then you think they probably do. [laughs] You could see how something spins out of control so quickly.

Zibby: I know. I feel like my memory is not what it used to be. Now I'm like, I can't say anything because I don't remember what are secrets and what are not secrets.

Jane: I told someone something personal the other day. Then I said, "Don't tell anyone." It was about one of my kids. It wasn't even my thing to tell. Her husband walked in three minutes later and she just told him. [laughter] I was like, "Oh, my god, I just told you not to tell anyone." It's definitely a bad idea. This is more of a random kind of thing. She starts a rumor that she doesn't think is true just on the bulletin board to liven things up. It's not talking about someone she knows. It's fun, though. It has its moment of laughter and fun.

Zibby: How did you get the idea for this book?

Jane: You know, it's funny. I was at my last book talk for Nine Women, One Dress. When you do talks like this -- this is the first one for me for this book. When you do these talks, it gets a little boring for yourself if you repeat the same talk over and over again. It was the last talk. I decided to just wing it and change things up a bit. I even gave out some little juicy tidbits about the book, like that something really maybe was kind of true in it. As a joke I said, "It's like these moms' bulletin boards where you can say anything you want and people act like it's not on the internet and no one's going to repeat it." Have you noticed that?

Zibby: It's so true.

Jane: It's hysterical. They’ll just say anything. Anything goes. But of course, everyone else is reading it. Anyway, I started talking about it. All the women -- it was in New Jersey. They were like, "We belong to this one. We belong to that one. They say this. They say that." All of a sudden, I'm like, that's my next book, while I was up on the podium speaking. I wrote notes the whole way home.

Zibby: Are you in any message groups yourself?

Jane: Now I am, of course, because --

Zibby: -- You had to research, right?

Jane: Yes. I tried so hard never to steal even one line from any of them because I just didn't want to be pillaging. I'm in the Upper East Side one. I live downtown, but I brought my kids up on the Upper East Side. I'm in What Would Virginia Woolf Do? which is really how I started getting into this. Have you ever seen that one?

Zibby: No.

Jane: It's kind of neat. It's like thirty thousand women. They just took it offline and made it into something else that you belong to. I'm in a few of them mostly because of this. The LA Mommies are mentioned in the book. They're doing a book club with me over the summer, which is fun, and some other places like Moms Behaving Badly. People are just into it.

Zibby: The first time I joined a message group was when I was pregnant with twins. Now this is over thirteen years ago. The amount of information and the pace at which people are sharing, it's really unbelievable. It's like some people are just sitting there all day doing it. It's pretty astounding.

Jane: Also, you can ask something even in the middle of the night. If you have something wrong, your son had a rash, I feel like you could say, "What is this rash?" and then sixteen women say, "It's impetigo. It's this. It's that." People are insomniacs. You can just get any answer to anything.

Zibby: It's true. It's like a twenty-four-hour community-supported help line.

Jane: Yes, but there was a big controversy on the Upper East Side one recently.

Zibby: I heard that. I haven't taken the time to dig deep into what exactly happened.

Jane: It was about a moderator being -- they wanted to add a black moderator and make things more equal. It was a whole argument with the current -- I don't know. I really don't pay that much attention to it now because I'm onto my next book. [laughs] It's an interesting concept. It really is.

Zibby: You obviously did research by going into different message groups. What else was part of the process of writing Eliza Starts A Rumor?

Jane: There are some serious things touched upon in the book, and I had to really research that. The main character, Eliza -- this is not really giving anything away because right at the beginning you find out she's agoraphobic. The reason why she is agoraphobic comes out as the book goes along, so I don't want [indiscernible]. I did a lot of research, just women going through different things and then how they reacted and how it carries with them. There's a whole Me Too section, Me Too moment of the book. How would it feel if your husband was accused of Me Too kind of thing? That took a lot of research. There's a whole cheating thing also. I researched that, which is funny because when you research something like cheating, every time you turn on your computer, it's like, do you want to spy on your spouse? Ten times that he's cheating. If anyone was to look at my computer, they'd be like, this poor woman's husband's awful. My husband's wonderful. The internet thinks he's awful.

Zibby: [laughs] How long did it take to write? Where did you go to write it? Did you write at home? Do you like to go out to write? How did it differ from your last book? How did you approach that one versus this one?

Jane: My last book was really complicated because it had like seventeen different narrators. It was about this dress. Let's say over a four-month period, I literally had to put where the dress was on a calendar because it was too confusing. I kept on, where's the dress now? I kept on losing it. This was a lot easier for me to write. It wasn't all these different voices. It kind of just came right out of me, the first draft, only like four months, really. I write mostly at home in the mornings very early. Writing first thing in the morning, to me, is the best. My brain is clear. I'm not yet thinking about the to-do list and all of that. I try and do that for as long as I can. Then basically, I'll go out, do whatever it is I have to do, do errands. Then in the afternoon, maybe I'll walk into -- I live in New York City, so I'll go into a different coffee shop just to get out a little. If not, I hate to say it, I could stay in my bed and write for three straight days. [laughs] That's not a healthy situation.

Zibby: There's no lack of material just going out the door in the city.

Jane: Yeah. You pay attention on the subway, the subway's a plethora of material.

Zibby: I read an interview you did a while back where it seemed like the title of the book was actually going to be The Hudson Valley Women's Community Board. I hope I got that right.

Jane: Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board.

Zibby: Bulletin board, sorry. Tell me about changing the title and how that all came about.

Jane: I have a new publisher from last time, a new editor, a new agent, new everything. They called me one day. I was at lunch with my friends from college. Maybe it was my agent that called me. She's like, "They want to change the title to Eliza Starts A Rumor." I always take a little while to get used to things. At first, I was like, what? I couldn't believe it. Of course, it's up to you. I used to be a screenwriter. When you're a screenwriter, nothing is up to you. They could change the title to Four Women Go to Mars, and I'd have to be like, okay. [laughter] You could say no, but I thought, they're so much smarter than me about this. If they think that this is the right idea, I'm just going to go with what they think. I did. Then within a week or two, I was like, you know what, this title's much better. It's not limited, really. It's interesting. It focuses on Eliza who really is the main character even though there are three other women and one man that are pretty much -- you follow their stories as well. They changed the name, and I was fine with it, and the cover. Everything changed.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Tell me about your screenwriting and how you got started in that.

Jane: I had an idea for a script. This is a really good story because it means anybody could do this. Anyone could find time to read. You could also find time to write. I had an idea. My kids were younger. I signed up for this Gotham Writers Workshop, screenwriting. I think it was Eight Weeks to Being a Screenwriter or something. I went one night a week, no big deal. I wrote this script. It was called Confessions of a Dog Owner. I write the script. Fast-forward a couple of months and a lot back and forth and stress -- I don't want to say the name. I'll say it. Miramax bought the script. It was crazy to write your first script and sell it to you-know-who. I don't want to say his name.

Zibby: You can say his name. It's okay.

Jane: Harvey Weinstein. [laughs] It was pretty exciting. There was a lot of rewrites and all of that. As with many scripts, it never got made. I was writing screenwriting for a long time. I loved it. I love the visualization of everything. I love writing that way. I wanted my stories to be heard, so I wrote Nine Women, One Dress kind of thinking I'll write the book and maybe it'll be made into a movie. Hallmark has optioned it, so we'll see.

Zibby: That’s great.

Jane: Even now, I write very visually like a screenwriter somewhat.

Zibby: That always helps in propelling the narrative forward when you can see it all in your head. That's great. And with dialogue, of course.

Jane: Yes, the dialogue. They're just very different crafts, though. Everyone in screenwriting, they would say something to me like, "Could you have them meet when they're young?" the two main characters. I'll go, okay, and I'll rewrite the whole thing with them meeting while they were young. Come back with the next draft however many weeks later. They read the whole thing. They come back to me. There's like six people working on a movie. They're like, "Could you have them not meet when they're young?" I'm like, okay, and then redo it. [laughs] It's a crazy thing. With the editing in the book world, it's just been -- I love it. I love editing. I loved my last editor and this editor. It's just a great collaboration.

Zibby: Did you always love to write? Is this something that you've loved to do your entire life? Is it something that's come more recently?

Jane: When I was a little kid, like sixth grade, that age, I loved to write. I got a lot of attention for it. In elementary school and stuff, they would bring my work around. Then I don't know what happened. I just kind of lost my way with it. I guess I was more interested in finding a job that I could support myself and live on my own in New York City and the whole thing. I didn't major in that. I didn't pursue it. I went into the [indiscernible] center, which was very helpful with Nine Women, One Dress. Then when I had kids and I was home with them, I started writing again. I wrote children's books. Then I broke into the screenwriting thing. There was definitely a big gap. I wish I went to college and studied English and writing and all of that, but you don't know, right?

Zibby: No. You can't do it again. This is the way it happened.

Jane: No one tells you. I look at my kids and say, "You're good at this. You're good at that." It doesn't mean they're going to end up doing it. I feel like my mother was just like -- she didn't pay any attention to my school or anything. She was just like, "Great, you're graduating. Great, you got into college." It's just different now.

Zibby: That's funny. Are you working on anything new?

Jane: Yes, I am. It doesn't have a title yet. I want to wait. I don't want to --

Zibby: -- You don't want to jinx it?

Jane: No. [laughter] It'll come out, not next summer, but the summer after. It's with Berkeley. It's all set. It's happening.

Zibby: Oh, you already sold it and everything. That's great. Congratulations.

Jane: It's fun. It's more of a romance. There's romance in Eliza Starts A Rumor, but just a small part of it.

Zibby: Interesting. Having had the success that you've had, what advice do you have to aspiring authors?

Jane: I would say just keep writing. I didn't publish my book until I was fifty. If I would've given up -- sometimes I felt like, this is ridiculous. It's almost embarrassing. You're writing and writing, and nothing's really happening. I sold things. I wrote a bunch of scripts. Just don't give up. I think that's the main thing. Just keep writing and don't give up. Eventually, something's going to stick. When the first thing gets turned down, write something else. Put it down. Start with something else. Go in different directions. That's my advice. Congratulations to you too. Don't you have a children's book that's out?

Zibby: I did, yeah.

Jane: That's so exciting.

Zibby: It feels kind of silly because I've been trying to write a novel for two and a half years. Then my children's book sells. Life is weird. [laughs]

Jane: I don't think it's that silly. I wrote children's books first years ago. Now we're sending them around. I sent them to everybody back then. So mine was the opposite. It doesn't matter.

Zibby: No, I'm thrilled, though. I am thrilled. It'll be great. I'm excited for that to happen. It feels very far away. Awesome. Thank you, Jane. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for telling us more about Eliza Starts A Rumor. Now I will think of you and hold my tongue for gossiping, a little more I think. [laughs] No, I'm kidding. There's hardly anything that happens.

Jane: If you don't publish it on the internet, you would probably be okay. That was where she really went wrong.

Zibby: I feel like the gossip also, there's nothing even to talk about. What happens? It's not like there's even a group anymore. We're all so spread out.

Jane: There's nothing to gossip about now. What are you going to say?

Zibby: Exactly. There's nothing.

Jane: My milk expired. [laughs] There's nothing to say. It's like Groundhog Day now.

Zibby: I know. It's so true. Anyway, this was really fun. I'm glad we finally got to talk.

Jane: Me too. Thank you so much.

Zibby: I'm excited for you and your book. It's really cool.

Jane: Thank you.

Zibby: Thanks, Jane.

Jane: See you at two o'clock. [laughter]

Zibby: Okay. Bye.

Jane: Bye.

Natascha Biebow, THE CRAYON MAN

Zibby Owens: Natascha Biebow was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she went to an American school. She studied developmental psychology at Smith College and completed a degree in early childhood education and an International Diploma in Montessori Pedagogy in 2013. She wrote, as an editor, Is this My Nose?, illustrated by Georgie Birkett, which won the Booktrust Best Book for Babes. She's also written many other books including the recent story The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons, which is really fantastic. I've now read it like fifty times to my kids. You should too.

Hi.

Natascha Biebow: Hello.

Zibby: How are you?

Natascha: I'm good. Thanks. It's so fun to see you live.

Zibby: Thanks. I'm really excited to talk to you. I've read The Crayon Man now like five times to my kids in the last week or so. They love it. I'm really excited to talk to you.

Natascha: How old are your kids?

Zibby: I have four kids, but I read it to my five-and-a-half-year-old and almost-seven-year-old. I have twins that are about to be thirteen. They are kind of past this, but I love reading children's books. What inspired you to write this story? Tell me more about The Crayon Man.

Natascha: I was looking for a topic to write for a nonfiction picture book course that I was taking. I needed a topic really fast and was watching an episode of Sesame Street with my son who was four then. We saw this great video about how the Crayola crayons are made in the factory. I remembered how much I liked them from my childhood. I hadn’t really thought about Crayola crayons in a little while. I saw the collating machine that has all the colors stacked up. When you see them, they're this amazing rainbow of colors. It's just such a vivid picture. Then I started thinking, maybe that would make a good topic. The more I started looking into it, the more a really cool story emerged. I discovered that no one had told this story quite the way I wanted to tell it, which was about Edwin Binney the man as opposed to just the historical, very old-fashioned, dry nonfiction approaches that were out there about just Crayola and a very liner history, shall we say, of how the crayons had been made and invented which talked about Edwin Binney and his company. I just got digging. The more I dug, the more interesting things that I found.

Zibby: What brought you to take that class in the first place?

Natascha: I've been writing picture books for a really long time. I'm also a picture book and young fiction editor. When I needed to make some money, I was focusing more on my editing, and when my son came along, on parenting and so on. Then I just got to a point where I thought, I need a new direction. I need some deadlines. I need someone to get me unstuck from the balancing act that is trying to cram too many things in your life. I decided to take this class. It would be eight weeks. By the end of it, you'd have written a book. I just thought, that's what I need. I need to be accountable in some way. It worked.

Zibby: Was it an online or actual-person class?

Natascha: It was an online class with Kristin Fulton who unfortunately isn't offering the class anymore. It was really great. She talked us through the whole genre of nonfiction picture books and the different aspects of writing in that particular area. It was an area that I'd explored a little bit but hadn’t focused as much on. I started remembering how much I like true stories because sometimes the true stories are quirkier than stuff that you can imagine. I like that about it. Through the course, we had weekly meetings and assignments. Kristin talked us through different aspects of the craft and different parts of writing a nonfiction book. We got some feedback from her as well, which was really great, and also from our classmates.

Zibby: That's so neat. It's so funny how you can get something done in such a finite period of time when you have goals and regular accountability and all of that as opposed to having a goal that's just so vague and maybe you'll get it done, maybe you won't. I feel like I'm the type of person who needs that level of structure to get stuff done regularly, or at least a self-imposed structure, if not in class.

Natascha: Absolutely. Kristin was like, by this week, you need to have started your research. By this week, you need your ten key facts about whatever topic so that we can see if it's going to make a book or if you need to go and look into stuff. By this point, you've got to collect enough information, but stop. One of the things about researching is you could go on. You find interesting things. You go down a little rabbit hole here. You realize, oh, I'm way off topic. You have to know when you've got enough to write the book. Then once you write the first draft, you can go back and ask further questions and find further verification for certain things that are still not clear, but at least you've got something that's starting to look like a story with a beginning, middle, and an end kind of thing.

Zibby: My son was wondering, though, why they got so many different colors all over their faces and their clothing every time. [laughs]

Natascha: Someone asked me that in a recent school visit. I said if you imagine it's like you're making a cake and you are baking and the flour goes everywhere and you mix it with a lot of vigor. I think part of that is slightly artistic license from the illustrator's point of view to convey the point. I do imagine they were in this lab with all kinds of materials and it got messy.

Zibby: I answered something similar to that, but your answer was better. Tell me about some of your other books. What's the first picture book you worked on?

Natascha: My first picture book was called Eleonora or Elephants Never Forget. It was inspired by a trip to Africa with my parents. My parents lived in South Africa when I was very little. We went back a few times as I grew up. We were staying on a game reserve and talking about elephants. I learned that when an elephant dies, and often unfortunately through poaching, the other elephants from far and wide will come and pay their respects to the elephant that died. It just struck me as such a moving phenomenon. Elephants are almost like people in that respect. They seem to sense that somebody from their tribe had left. I wrote this book. It’s not a hundred percent nonfiction. It's more an inspired story based on the story the game people had told me. I just love elephants. I think they're such majestic creatures. I wrote that book. That was published quite a long time ago. In my work as an editor, I've done a lot of writing as well. I have written some nonfiction and fiction. The one that I really like a lot was called Is This My Nose? It's a baby board book, very simple text about different parts of your face. It's fun, illustrated by Georgie Birkett.

Zibby: Awesome. What's coming next? Are you working on another book? Do you always have a lot of projects at once? How do you work?

Natascha: Authors always have lots of books in their bottom drawer, I'd say, or on submission in various stages. I've written a chapter book in a chapter book series proposal that's out on submission. It's inspired by teachers because I'm always fascinated by the hugely important role that teachers play in our lives. I've also written some other nonfiction books, picture books like The Crayon Man, that are at various stages. A couple are out on submission. Others, I'm researching more. Partly, it's a question of having the right story at the right time because publishers' lists are very busy. They're always trying to find a balance between all the different topics they're publishing and the different voices they want to hear from and what's timely for kids right now. Part of it is also just having enough time to research everything and get the book written. Again, it comes back to the juggling of paid work versus trying to be a working author and live just off that.

Zibby: As an author and an editor, what do you think makes a great children's book?

Natascha: For me, it's got to be child centered. It's got to be a book that speaks to kids. I think a great picture book has to have wonderful art that's inspiring but also that isn't too lofty, shall we say. We don't want it to be the coffee table book that looks beautiful but is just too grown up for them to really access. I think the story has to be from the heart. It has to be a story that is relevant to children in their everyday lives. They’ve got to be able to find a way into the story that moves them or that speaks to them in terms of their experience and it sparks curiosity, perhaps. Also, I love a text that has a good rhythm to it. The parent has to read it hundreds of time. Maybe also some levels of jokes or humor to draw in the grown-ups. That always helps. It's such a multilayered piece of art. Picture books are full of different aspects that draw in different readers. Ideally, one that endures is one that has a real sense of wonder, perhaps, or it speaks to you emotionally in some way. I'm sure as a parent you read loads of picture books, don't you?

Zibby: I do. I do. I read picture books all the time. I really do love nonfiction picture books. I was going to say historical picture books. I think those are really great because then kids -- I'm such a visual person. It really helps me to see the factory and the brothers and all of the stuff. Now I understand. I can look at the Crayon box and I'll feel very differently from now on and have a different set of images going through my head. I love humor. I love when books use the book form in a different way. I love in the Elephant & Piggie books how sometimes they talk to the reader. We Are in a Book! by Mo Willems is probably my favorite picture book ever. We are in a book. The book ends? [laughs] It's so funny. It's so self-referential. It's so clever and brilliant. Picture books are great. They're great to read as parents and such a bonding thing to do with your children and fostering that love of reading early. Having great options is super important, so thank you for contributing to the great options.

Natascha: Thank you. I was also going to say the interesting thing about the nonfiction that we're seeing more recently is that there's lots of different kinds of nonfiction. It's drawing in those readers who really like facts but maybe haven't accessed story in the same way. Maybe because they're so drawn in by the facts, they're now going to be compelled by the story to read different things, we hope. Or the other way around, the kids who really like the narrative, maybe they’ll start looking at nonfiction differently. It's a nice genre that way too.

Zibby: Totally. Do you have final advice for aspiring picture book or children's book authors?

Natascha: My advice is to persevere and bum on seat. You’ve got to have your butt in your chair. You got to put in the hours. You really have to be prepared for the journey that is being a writer. The many drafts, the whole process of getting published is not for the fainthearted. It requires a lot of perseverance. Also, just literally getting up and spending the time to write or illustrate and to further your craft and always be open to learning from other people, looking to inspiration, reading a lot of other books, and just to keep your mind open for new possibilities. You really need to be prepared to not give up because it's a tough genre to get published in. It's also a really wonderful community of people working in this area who are very supportive and open to sharing their advice and supporting you on your journey as a published or pre-published author or illustrator, as we like to call people on their journey.

Zibby: Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for entertaining my kids and me for lots of bedtimes.

Natascha: That's amazing. I'm so glad you liked The Crayon Man. It's been really fun to connect with you. Thanks, Zibby.

Zibby: You too. Thanks a lot. Buh-bye.

Natascha: Bye.

Stephen Shaskan, PIZZA AND TACO

Zibby Owens: Welcome to day two of the second week of the July Book Blast. This is the seventh day in all of my ten-day July Book Blast with episodes I recorded throughout the quarantine, some quarantine related, some not, all of which deserve to see the light of day before the summer comes to an end. Today is Young Readers Day. I have a collection of children's books and middle grade and all sorts of stuff that your kids might like. How interesting to hear from children's book writers, which is exciting to me because I actually sold two children's books to Penguin Random House that will be coming out in the next year or two. I have a personal affinity for children's book authors. Enjoy these episodes.

Stephen Shaskan is the author and illustrator of several picture books including Big Choo, spelled C-H-O-O, Toad on the Road, Max Speed, The Three Triceratops Tuff, A Dog Is a Dog, and the new graphic novel series which, by the way, my littlest guy is obsessed with called Pizza and Taco. He also illustrated the picture book Punk Skunks and the graphic novel series Q and Ray, both written by his wife, Trisha Speed Shaskan. Stephen and Trisha live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and love visiting schools and libraries, reading their stories, and inspiring young authors and illustrators.

Hi.

Stephen Shaskan: Hi. How's it going?

Zibby: Good. How about you?

Stephen: Going good.

Zibby: Awesome. Thanks for joining today.

Stephen: Thanks for having me. This is really great.

Zibby: Are these all your books in the back? You want to give me a little tour of some of these books?

Stephen: I have The Three Triceratops Tuff picture book that I wrote with Simon & Schuster. A Dog Is a Dog, the one right here in the middle, this one right here, that one's my first book that I ever wrote. That's with Chronicle Books back in 2011. Then Toad on the Road is with HarperCollins along with my books with my wife, Trisha Speed Shaskan, Punk Skunks, which is over here. What else? The Q and Ray series also, I wrote with Trisha. That's been a lot of fun too. Those are my books. I worked as an educational assistant and an after-school art teacher for about eight years in the public schools here in Minneapolis. From there, I went on to be working in preschools for about twelve years. I was a preschool teacher for twelve years. Then I slowly transitioned over here into making books for kids. I went to Rhode Island School of Design for illustration, but that was a long, long time ago. That's what my original intent was. I made a lot of my own comics when I was in my twenties, and poster designs for bands and other things like that, but just started focusing on working on creating books for kids the past ten years or so.

Zibby: Wow. That's exciting. Tell me the story of publishing your first picture book for kids.

Stephen: A Dog Is a Dog was a real fun one. It was while I was working as a preschool teacher. I was coming up with ideas for different books. I always put in a lot of fun things in books. This one's going to be backwards, obviously, because of the Instagram thing. Dog Is a Dog, a fun thing about this book is I always put a little bit of nonsense in my books. You can tell by Pizza and Taco being two characters that are just kids, that type of thing. It goes "A dog is a dog, whether it's naughty or nice, whether it suns on the beach or glides on the ice. A dog is a dog if it's skinny or fat. A dog is a dog unless it's a cat." This goes on having a lot of different animals coming out in costumes and so forth until it comes back to being a dog. I like putting humor in my books. I like doing that. This book came about, I did drawings for it and I sent it out. It took a year to have a response to it. I had nine rejections from different publishers. Then a year after I sent it out, Chronicle Books contacted me. They really liked it, but they didn't like the art, and so I had to work on the art more. I don't have an example. I should have an example of my original dummy, but it changed a lot. I really am happy with the end result. That's the story of my first book. Then from there, it was just trying to figure out what comes next. Then what came next was The Three Triceratops Tuff. I got that idea from three kids in my preschool who were pretending to play the Billy Goats Gruff as dinosaurs. I was like, wow, that's a really good idea. [laughs] Of course, it made absolutely no sense the way they were doing it. I had to make it make sense.

Zibby: When you were young, when you were a little kid, were you drawing all the time? Was that your thing? Did you always know you wanted to do that, and the kid thing came later, basically?

Stephen: Yes, that's all I did. I drew all the time. It was my favorite thing to do. I always wanted to be an artist. After going to art school, I realized that not everybody who likes to make art was supported by their parents, but my parents were always really big into it. My dad was a stockbroker. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, but she also did accounting for things and other stuff. They both really supported my art. My dad actually, even though he was a stockbroker, painted on the side. He did oil paintings, landscape paintings in the basement. He always had setups for his art. Right now, he sells his art at art fairs. He's retired. He's eighty-six now. He's down in Florida. He puts on art shows and art fairs and things. They’ve always been really super supportive of my art. That was a lot of fun growing up and always having supplies. That was something that they never had a problem with me doing. I always loved making art. I also loved comics growing up. Reading comics was my main thing to read. I was considered a reluctant reader. At the time, I probably read like three thousand comics. [laughs] I started thinking about how many comics. I would go to the comic store at least once a month with my dad and spend all my allowance on my comics. Back then, it was sixty cents a comic. My allowance wasn't that much. Still, over the course of a month I would save it all up and be able to get something.

With Pizza and Taco, what was really cool was when I was a kid, I just loved comics so much. I had a group of friends in elementary school. I grew up in Syracuse, New York. I had a group of friends there. We all made comics. We all drew comics and loved to make art and talk about comics and everything. It was just a really cool thing. I grew up on all the Richie Riches and Casper the Friendly Ghost and Underdog and all those kind of goofy ones. Also, then I got into superhero comics like the X-Men and the Teen Titans and those books and collected -- I still have quite a number of my collection, but not all my collection. Over time, things kind of whittled down. I think I went from collecting comics to collecting albums in high school. When I was working on this book, it was a lot of fun because I just delved back into reading comics. I had been making picture books for so long. Suddenly, I'm working in this medium that I just loved. I'm sitting there at my desk working and just laughing and having so much fun creating this. When Q and Ray first came out, there was this joy just because it was like, wow, I created a real comic. Like I said, in my twenties, I made a bunch of my own scrappy, Xerox-copied comics into independent adult comics. Still, this was like, wow, this is a real thing. I was really excited. That's what brought me to create Pizza and Taco.

Zibby: Tell everybody more about Pizza and Taco because it is so fantastic. It's sort of like an advanced Elephant & Piggie of sorts. It's these new characters blasting on the scene. Tell me how you came up with it and all the rest.

Stephen: This is the book right here. We do a lot of school visits. With Q and Ray especially, when we utilized school visits, we would create characters of kids, original characters, original comic characters, and show kids how they can create their own. One of the big rules is to keep it to simple shapes because you're drawing these characters over and over and over again hundreds of times in just one book. You're drawing each character. That was a really important thing to get across to kids, to just use simple shapes and that type of thing. Then we give some background to the characters before. Before you start writing a story, you want to have a little bit of a background and think about, who are these characters? What do they like to do? What are they afraid of? all these types of things. One of the things is, what's their favorite food? Every school that we went to it was either pizza or tacos, was their favorite food. It's funny because my favorite food is pizza. Trisha's favorite food is tacos. It kind of made sense. I was like, oh, there's that weird nonsense of, why don't I just make this into a -- why aren't pizza and taco best friends? We had characters like Pizza Man because every once in a while somebody would pick a triangle head.

Then I started thinking about, how simple could I draw a piece of a pizza and a taco? Pretty much a triangle and a half circle. You can see, it's just a half circle here and then the triangle shape, just trying to keep it as simple as possible so I can draw them over and over again. I was really also inspired by the Narwhal and Jelly series. I just loved that. Trisha and I also teach week-long comic classes at the Loft Literary Center here in Minneapolis. It was really cool to see. Kids would come in and they'd be drawing all the Narwhal and Jelly characters. Just seeing that, I wanted something that kids could draw easily themselves because I think that's really powerful for kids. I've been doing that with different things where I've had a couple school visits this past week online and showing kids how to draw Pizza and Taco, but also showing them how to draw other characters that might be food-related comic characters. The kids are immediately drawn to it and just drawing immediately and showing me their drawings. It's really cool to see that kind of thing. There was one kid who already had created -- because they knew that I was coming, they had created a whole book on Spaghetti and Meatball.

Zibby: Awesome. I love how Hamburger and Hot Dog have cameos in your book. Those are important best supporting actress and actor. Actually, I think they're both boys.

Stephen: They're not very nice to Hamburger and Hot Dog. Some people had pointed that out. One of the things about Pizza and Taco is that they're kids. They have flaws. They're not perfect. They're going to be jerks sometimes. Even in this book, they're kind of jerks to each other. That just happens. You can't have a best friend without having a best friend fight. You can't grow up without having kids around that you're not that friendly with. It just happens. You can't be friends with everyone. It's an unrealistic adult perception of childhood. If you think back to when you were in kindergarten and first grade, there are kids that you liked and there are kids that you didn't like. There are kids that you wanted to play with and kids that were like, god, do I have to play with that kid again? I'm not saying that that's good. I'm just saying that that's real. Flaws in characters are real. These characters have a lot of flaws. They're not perfect characters.

Zibby: How is it collaborating with your wife? What is that like? How has the coronavirus impacted your work together?

Stephen: I'm actually working on dummying out a picture book that she just wrote while I'm working on -- I just finished dummying out the third Pizza and Taco. The second Pizza and Taco comes out next year. It's Pizza and Taco: Best Party Ever. They throw a party. I just finished dummying out the third book, which is where they make a [distorted audio] that she just wrote. We work really well together, actually, which is really nice. She's written probably three or four picture books since working on something collaboratively last time. Most of them are things that I wouldn't work on. Now this last project, I was like, I really like this project. I think I could work on this project. When we work on projects together, it's typically something that we're both invested in. We're not forcing it. It's something that we both really like and want to do. That's really important. We're also really respectful of each other. We have fights, but when it comes to writing and creating books together, we try to make the best book we can. We're really working on doing that. It's funny because I think we rub each other a little bit more wrong when it's a book that we're not working on, when it's one of our own things, our own projects, and we're critiquing our art. I'll be critiquing something that she's working on that I'm not working on with her or she'll be critiquing something that I'm working on that she's not working on with me. We tend to be not as good friends. [laughs]

For me, one thing that was kind of crummy with all the coronavirus stuff is that we basically ended up canceling probably eight different events, school visits and so forth. For us, March 14th I think was when we started shutting down here in Minneapolis. We had three events the next week at different schools to go to and different things like that and ones that hadn’t been figured quite out for May and June. That was kind of tough. We work from home anyway. We both have a studio in our house. We both have places where we work. That really hasn’t affected. Luckily, I was on deadline, so I just focused on that. Then I'm on deadline again. For me, I really enjoy working at home and being isolated. This is how I focus. With all the school visits that we had, I don't think I would've been able to finish the second book and dummy out the third book all in this time as well.

Zibby: Do you have any parting advice for aspiring illustrators, artists, children's book writers?

Stephen: My advice is for kids more than for aspiring. If you like something, just keep doing it. I talked about how I had those friends in elementary school that I made comics with. Out of that group of kids, I think there were five of us, only two went on to be artists. That's me and another friend. He does fine art. I do comics and picture books. I was, out of those five friends, probably as talent goes, like fifth, but I just kept doing it. Nowadays, if those kids who are now adults would be drawing again, they wouldn't be as strong of an artist as I am because they just stopped doing it. They're having very happy lives doing what they're [indiscernible/laughter]. Still, just keep doing it. Don't let other kids get you down. If you see somebody else being a better artist than you, that's great, just keep working at it. You'll get better and better. If you like music, if you like science, if you like anything, just keep working at it. That's my advice for kids.

Zibby: I'm going to play this for my kids later. Thank you.

Stephen: Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the hours of entertainment you've given us during this quarantine with Pizza and Taco. I'm really grateful. Thank you.

Stephen: Thank you.

Zibby: Take care. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to Young Readers Tuesday, part of my July Book Blast. I hope you've enjoyed it.

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Chioma Momah, FIRST DAY AT THE BIG SCHOOL

Zibby Owens: Chioma Momah is the author of First Day at the Big School. She is based in Nigeria where she's a regulatory sector lawyer and a member of the Nigerian Bar and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. A children's book author, she started the L.E.A.R.N program in schools where she speaks on reading and writing skills. She's passionate about encouraging working mothers through her blog, www.chioma.net.

Hi.

Chioma Momah: Hi, Zibby.

Zibby: Welcome to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Chioma: How are you?

Zibby: Good. How are you?

Chioma: I'm fine. Thank you. Great to be here.

Zibby: Where in Nigeria are you?

Chioma: I'm in Abuja.

Zibby: Where is that in Nigeria? [laughs]

Chioma: Abuja is the capitol, so right in the middle. It's the north of Nigeria, actually, but it's kind of in the middle.

Zibby: Awesome. From around the world, here we go.

Chioma: Nice to be here.

Zibby: It's nice to be here with you. Tell me about The Big School, kids going to the big school. What made you want to write this book? Tell me the whole story of how you wrote a children's book and why about this topic and all the rest.

Chioma: First off, I always loved reading, voracious reader. The moment I started having children, I noticed that most of the books were, I didn't see enough Nigerian characters, people of color, people that they could relate to, which was the same thing I had when growing up. All the books were either Enid Blyton or -- what's his name? The guy that wrote about the giants. Just the same books I had read growing up. They were great books. Eric Carle. They were amazing books.

Zibby: Roald Dahl?

Chioma: Roald Dahl. I'm thinking of Roald Dahl. I love his books. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the same books I had read growing up. I wasn't seeing things with African characters or Nigerian characters. I was like, I would like to tell a story that had things that they recognized, Nigerian food, Nigerian names, Nigerian skin texture. That was it. I wrote it for my children, basically. I wanted my children to see a book where they had names and faces and events that they recognized. Then I thought of, my eldest childhood memory was when I left kindergarten and started grade school. For me, it was a big shock because I was leaving being a baby. In kindergarten and in earlier school, I had -- you're [indiscernible]. You're like a baby. Then when I got into grade one, it was a bit scary because I thought they wanted us to all be grown up all of a sudden. I just imagine that for other children, they would have the same issue, especially if they're changing to a new school, they were transitioning to a different school. They would be so uncertain.

For us in Nigeria, once you leave kindergarten to grade school, a lot of things change. You start wearing uniforms. You move to a different building. For me, I was like, I'm sure there are a lot of children who are wondering what it would be like to go to a different school and all the mix of emotions they would have, meeting new friends, having a new teacher, just dealing with so many new experiences all at once. Then there would be excitement as well. That was why I wrote that book. I wanted to be able to relate to children, for them to be able to see something they could relate with, children who are Nigerian children with Nigerian names and experience, which I think every child can relate with and even every adult because everyone has gone through that thing where you have to get a new job or go to a new school or move to a new city. You're faced with, what is it going to be like? Will I like it? Will it be scary? Will I make friends? That's really what that book was about, just all those mix of emotions that everybody goes through when they're dealing with a brand-new experience.

Zibby: It couldn’t have come at a better time. I have four kids. My littlest guy is starting kindergarten in the fall, which sounds more like the transition from K to first grade for you in that it will be a dress code and a new school and bigger building. Who knows if school will even start in the fall anymore, but all of those feelings, it's so great to have a book. Obviously, there are some other books that deal with back to school. Like you said, having new characters and having a new point of view and the fact that kids in Nigeria are going through the same things, people all over the world. You know when you say to yourself, I'm not the only one, people all over the world -- it's one thing to think that. Then to have an example of another child in a school in Nigeria, it makes it all just seem so relatable. Then you don't feel so weird that you're all nervous yourself.

Chioma: Exactly. We all have the same experiences. That's what I see. Everyone all over the world has their own example of that experience, but we all have similar experiences everywhere.

Zibby: It's true. Even though everyone knows that, I think everyone needs to see it to have it hit home. Just being able to think it is not enough. Did your kids appreciate when you wrote it?

Chioma: They did. I based the main character on my daughter. Her name is Olanna. I named her Lana after my daughter. They were really excited to see. They were super, super excited. Then the funniest thing happened. Other people were excited as well, but I didn't expect that. Like I said, I wrote it for my children. I said, my children will read it. Friends' children will read it. Just a few people in my community would read it. Then I had people who I didn't even know, people who I hadn’t spoken to in years were like, "Oh, my god, we loved it." It's on Amazon now, so people all over the world basically, people in Canada, people in South Africa, people in the US, people in England writing me to say, "I read your book. My child loves it." They could relate to it. They were transitioning to grade school or kindergarten or whatever, and they could relate to this story. It was just amazing for them. It went to places I would never have expected. I've gone to different cities in Nigeria where I've been told to come and read, do book reading to children transitioning just to prepare them for that next stage of school. My children loved it. A lot of other children loved it as well. It's done really well, thank goodness.

Zibby: That's great. What has it been like with your kids with the quarantine this spring? What is it like now?

Chioma: They are tired of online school. That's one thing I can say. They are tired of classes online. It's just a bit too much for them. They're happy that Mommy's home because I'm home 24/7 now. That's the best part. They have Mommy home with them all the time. I don't have to go to work. I think everyone is ready to be able to go back to school to learn. For them, the best part has just been having Mommy and Daddy here and baking a lot. I'm in the kitchen a lot. I'm playing games with them. We're doing hopscotch and playing football together. They're just happy to have me home. That's the best part for them.

Zibby: What's your day job?

Chioma: I'm a lawyer. I work for the government. I work for a government agency, a government office. I work in the legal department. It was a busy nine-to-five job. Basically, on a regular day, if I go home by six PM, they would be happy. Just seeing me here every day is like, oh, my goodness, they come and give me hugs every one hour, a new hug, "Oh, Mommy, I love you." It's going to be hard for them when I have to go back to work. We're just enjoying the moment. We're living in the moment. I told somebody, when you have family, you don't have that much to miss. You think of people who don't have families who have to be by themselves who have no siblings to play with or no family, no children or whatever. I guess they're all making the best of it in one way or the other. Thank god for technology so we can talk, do video calls, and stuff like that.

Zibby: For your book, how did you find an illustrator? You didn't illustrate it yourself?

Chioma: I did not. That was the hardest part. I was in England at that time. I was studying. I was in grad school, what you guys call grad school in the States. I was there with my two youngest children when I decided to write the book. I kept on looking for an illustrator. It was really tough. I didn't know where to start, to be honest. Luckily, I found somebody online. I think he lives in Vietnam. I discussed my ideas with him, sent him the characters' descriptions. A lot of the things I wrote about, he didn't understand the concepts, but he did really well. We've done a second book, which he did amazing. We're working on our third book together. I found him in Vietnam. He's really, really gifted. It was just amazing bringing this character to life with him. The whole concept of children with cornrows in their hair, he didn't understand any of that. I had to show him lots of pictures. I had lots of meetings with him. He did a great job.

Zibby: It's just so amazing to me that you thought of this idea in England. You wrote it in Nigeria. You collaborated with a man in Vietnam. Now you and I are on Skype. I'm here in New York. We're talking about your book that people read all over the world. It's just amazing. I always think about the power of books to bring people together. This is just such a great example. Look at this, and how your vision can make people feel better everywhere. It's the coolest. I just think it's the coolest.

Chioma: Technology's amazing. I tell kids, you can tell a story in front of your friends at home, but when you write a book, it could go anywhere, literally anywhere in the world. A lot of the books I read as a child were books like the classics, Little Women, Jane Eyre's books, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer. Those were books that were written somewhere in some corner maybe in the US or in the UK. People have read those books all over the world. Books are just amazing, really, how they bring people together.

Zibby: What are your next two books about?

Chioma: My second book is called A Fun Day in the Museum. It's a series. I'm still with Lana and her friends. They go to see a museum. In that book, I tried to talk about history. In Nigeria, children aren't taught history the way they should be. A lot of things are just glossed over. A lot of kids don't know about great people in our historical past who have done a lot for this country. I try to bring up our founding fathers in that book. I put their pictures there, spoke about our artifacts, spoke about stuff that has happened in Nigeria, the civil war we had. I tried to put all of that in the museum so as the children were going around, they were discovering stuff about their country. The third book, which is still far from finished, the children go to the village. Just to give you an example of what it is to go to the village, I live in Abuja, which is the city. It's an urban city, but everybody comes from some village or the other. My father was born in some village down east. A lot of Nigerians every year, either Christmastime or Eastertime or some time of the year, they go to visit their village. It's really rural. It's really rustic. It's really lots of fun. It's really different. Growing up, I did a lot of that. Every year, we went down to the village to spend time with my grandmother.

I want to bring those memories alive for those of us who had those experiences. Nowadays, it's not as common. Children don't go to the villages that often. For those of us that did, it was really, really a great experience for us, so I want to write about that so that children can see what village life was like. It was really fun, playing with goats, going to the stream. It was fun. It was really, really fun. That's what that book is about. Then just meeting up with your cousins who you haven't seen from all over the country and all over the world because it was like a big, great homecoming. Everyone would come home for Christmas. Then you would see people that you haven't seen in years. I'm really excited about that project. Then also, I'm writing a book for women as well, something different. Actually, two books. It started out as one book, but I've had to make it two books now. I'm writing about women in history who have done great things, women like Amelia Earhart, women like Mary Slessor who was a great missionary to Nigeria, women who have done amazing things over time and the lessons we can learn from them. I'm really excited about that project. That book should be out in another month or so. I'm really working hard on that to get it finished.

Zibby: Wow, good for you. This whole time of being at home has not affected your productivity in a negative way at all.

Chioma: At all. It's been a blessing in disguise for my writing. When I'm at work full time, I'm more engaged with work working as a lawyer. Now that I'm home, I don't get to do as much office work as I normally do, which I miss, but it's been a blessing in disguise, to be honest, because I've had time to catch up on all these projects, time to speak with you on Skype, and just do other things that I really enjoy, time to spend with the children and bond more with them, time to bake. It's been good. It's been a good time for me, to be honest.

Zibby: How do you come up with all the ideas for all of your different projects?

Chioma: Inspiration. I think for all of us, our inspiration is from our childhood. For many people that write, it's stuff that has happened to you. Like I said for my first book, it was my experience, the rude shock I got starting grade school, or primary school like we call it here. Now I was a big kid all of a sudden. I had to wear a uniform. Things just changed. Then also, my love for history inspired the second book. Then my love for just thinking back on village life inspired the third one. For me, I do a lot of speaking to women. I try to encourage women a lot because in our society, I think all over the world, women, once they start having children, they feel that that's it. I tell women there's so much more you can do. Yes, you can be a great parent. You can be a great mom. You can also do stuff that you love as well apart from parenting, apart from raising your children. I just try to encourage them to look. Whatever career path you want to do -- like you say, you don't have time to read, but you do have time to read. You can make time to do other things if you really want to. I just try to encourage women. With this latest book I'm working on for women, I've spoken about all these women who had so many things against them. There were gender issues. There was race discrimination that they had to deal with. There are so many issues. Yet they were able to do those things that they dreamt of doing, so just to encourage women to be like, go for your dreams. You can do it. That's where, especially, my writing comes from, is from things that I like to inspire ladies to do in real life. Go for your dreams. Don't let motherhood look like something negative. It's a beautiful thing. Being a mother should not make you be less of a human being or not accomplish any other thing that you need or you desire to accomplish.

Zibby: I think a lot of people need to hear that, so thank you for that. That's great. What do you like to read? What are you reading now? Any good books?

Chioma: The book I'm reading now, it's called Debra or Deborah. Like I said, I like being inspired by women as I inspire other women. I'm reading about Deborah who was a great judge in the Bible and just reading about all the amazing things she did, how she went to war with these mighty men and how she won, how basically if she hadn’t gone with them, they would not have won that war. I'm just reading stuff about inspiring people. Another book I just read recently, which was really amazing because I love history, was a book about sea women in Korea. That was really interesting just to see how women were so strong, how they made a living and still had to come back and be mothers. A lot of the books I'm reading are by inspiring women.

Zibby: Love it. What advice would you have to aspiring authors?

Chioma: Aspiring authors, your story is in you. You have your story right in you. You don't have to go searching for it. Think back. Think of your memories. Think of your experiences. Think of those things that really touched you when you were a child, or even adulthood. Think of those experiences that stand out to you, and you can tell a story from there. You don't have to copy someone's story. You can be original. We all have stories inside of us, hundreds of stories waiting to be told. Just think and think. What story would I like people to hear? What is that authentic story I have inside of me? That’s my number-one advice. Your story is in you. Think about it. Then don't be afraid to write. Your writing might not be perfect, but then we have editors. We have people who can help you. Just start. Start writing. Start today. Don't put it off until tomorrow. Start now.

Zibby: Love it. I'm going to go write right now. I'm going to just go now that you said that. No, I'm kidding. I don't have time for that today, but I would like to. Thank you so much. I'm so glad you came on my podcast. I'm so glad we could connect across the world about our kids and books and the power of not feeling alone.

Chioma: Thanks for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure, oh, my gosh.

Chioma: So how's New York? How are you guys doing?

Zibby: Okay. I'm not in the city right now. I haven't been to my home in the city now for three and half months or so. I miss it. I don't know. Slowly going back to normal, itsy-bitsy steps. I think the worst part is that --

Chioma: -- It's over.

Zibby: Yes, I think the worst part is over, but I think the lingering side effects are that everybody looks at each other as though they could be the enemy in a way. You don't know who has coronavirus.

Chioma: That's the saddest part. I agree.

Zibby: I like to hug people so much and have everybody over. It's created this distance when my whole thing is connection. It saddens me. That's the worst part. Other than that, my family is healthy, my close friends. People who have had it are better. How about you?

Chioma: I can totally relate. In my city, churches are open now, but I'm not going to church because like I told my husband, the whole issue going out to church, going out and meeting people, you want to hug them. You want to say, "How are you?" and give them a great big hug. Nobody's doing that right now. That just seems weird. It's a bit painful for me. I'd rather just stay home and wait it out a bit. Like you said, everybody suspicious. You see your friend and you're standing like, "Oh, hi. Hello." That's just not me. I'm big on physical connection. I'm very social as well. That, for me, is the saddest part as well. The other day I went out to get some groceries. I saw my very good friend and I just said hi. Normally, I would give her a big hug. I was sad I couldn't do that. I'm hoping that things will slowly get back to normal. It might take time. I'm just grateful. I'm thanking God for all the opportunities I've had during this period, thanking God that my family is well. Like you, I had a few people who were ill, and they're all fine. I have family all over the world, in the US, Seattle, Houston, [indiscernible]. Everybody's fine. That's something to be thankful for, that everybody's in good health. I can't wait for this to be over. I really can't.

Zibby: Me too. Maybe one day you and I can get together in real life and give each other a hug. That would be very nice.

Chioma: That would be awesome. That would be great. Thank you so much, Zibby.

Zibby: Now we have some long-term goals. [laughter] Thank you again. This has been so nice. Thanks for sending me your book and for helping my little guy through his transition in the fall to school. Thank you.

Chioma: Thank you. Such a pleasure. I'm glad he liked it. I'm glad you liked it. It was great to be able to talk to you. Thanks for all the great work you're doing with authors and just getting women to read more. It's pretty amazing. Thank you so much.

Zibby: Thank you. Thanks. Buh-bye.

Iva-Marie Palmer, GIMME EVERYTHING YOU GOT

Zibby Owens: Iva-Marie Palmer is the author of the middle-grade series Gabby Garcia's Ultimate Playbook and the young adult novels The End of the World As We Know It; Romeo, Juliet & Jim; The Summer; and Gimmie Everything You Got. She currently lives in Burbank, California, with her husband and two sons.

Welcome, Iva. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Iva-Marie Palmer: Thanks for having me.

Zibby: I'm sorry we didn't meet in person. I know we were supposed to be at the same event at some point. Because of the pandemic we have yet to meet face to face, so eventually.

Iva: I know. I think it was at Sarah Mlynowski's house. I was so excited to go, and as we know...

Zibby: Sarah Mlynowski is the one who suggested that I start a podcast. Without her, I would not even have this podcast.

Iva: How amazing is she? I have been reading her since she did her Red Dress Ink books, which I adored. When I got invited to an event at her home, it was like, [distorted audio].

Zibby: My kids had read Upside Down Magic not even knowing who she was. It's so cool. Anyway, your book, now that we've talked about other middle grade books, tell me about Gimmie Everything You Got.

Iva: Gimmie Everything You Got, it's my first young adult in a while. I had a middle-grade series. It's set in 1979 in a high school just outside Chicago in a Chicago suburb similar to where I grew up. It's post-Title IX and during the women's, the ERA and everything. Although, the ERA doesn't get mentioned in the book. It centers on a girl named Susan Klintock who is just full of lust and lusty daydreams and normal teen girl sexual fantasies, but she has no outlet for them until Bobby McMann comes to her school. He's going to be the coach of the first ever girls' soccer team. She focuses all of that energy on him because she's never seen a boy in real life that was worth her focus or her lusty thoughts. She decides to try out for the soccer team purely based on this crush, which it seems like everyone else who tries out for the soccer team is similarly inclined to do. She finds out she's good at it and she likes it. There's no horrific moment where he's into it or even really realizes what she's doing. I will do that spoiler. She tries to get his attention in a lot of ways. Ultimately, the story is about her finding out that even though she did something for the wrong reasons, the result is really empowering and amazing for her between the friendships and just figuring out that she's good at something. A lot of times in YA -- I wanted to write a character who didn't have a plan in place. There's often characters who are very achievement focused. In the late seventies, she's not sure what she's going to do after she graduates and stuff like that or even who she is or what she really wants. That's really what this is about, just figuring out what you really want.

Zibby: Awesome. I'm sorry at the beginning I said middle grade. This is one area I'm really bad at. I am constantly miscategorizing YA and middle grade.

Iva: I get it.

Zibby: The delineation seems sort of ambiguous for me sometimes. I don't know at what age you can go in. I have two kids who are going to be seventh graders. Are they supposed to be reading YA? Are they still middle grade? I don't know. What do you think about the category?

Iva: It's very weird. There's middle grade where it's firmly, this is definitely for eight to nine, ten, eleven-year-olds. Then as you get to age twelve or so, you have young YA. Those are harder to find in general. If you go to the young adult section, everything is about older characters. In my book, she's seventeen. My book is definitely, I think it's categorized as fourteen and up because of some of the content. I think it is hard. There's almost like a middle ground between tween and teen. It's like you're sort of a teenager, so you don't want to be reading maybe as much the stuff for littler kids. Even though it's great, you're kind of ready for something bigger, but you're not quite at the YA where it's dealing with kids who are about to graduate high school or are really exploring some near-adult topics. Part of why I thought the book might be good for moms and your audience is because it is on the upper end of the age group. I did hear from a number of my peers who were like, "God, this is a book I needed when I was in my teens." Hopefully, it will get to those teens too.

Zibby: When I was eleven, twelve, all I wanted to read about was teenagers and people graduating from college and adults. I didn't want to necessarily read about people my age.

Iva: Totally. I think that's one of the keys too. Big readers, they're always probably reading a little older than them. My son is nine. Since he was about seven, he's been reading about kids in middle school. I imagine when he's in middle school, he's not going to be as into still reading about kids in middle school. I think it all depends on where you are on the reading spectrum and when you started and how much you read and maybe what your interests are. I was the same way. I read everything. By the time I was entering high school or in junior high, I was scouring the library for people who were on their way to college because I just wanted to skip over everything to that.

Zibby: Right? Me too. I was the same way. I feel like that's why now I'm starting to read all these books about aging. [laughs] Now that the pandemic has made me confront how much gray is in my hair, I feel like, okay, I am certainly aging in some ways. Now I'm finding myself reading about eighty-year-olds or something like that. I'm always looking for a guide for what's coming next.

Iva: I know. Totally. I can't remember the last book I read, but it was similar to that where I was like, that sounds nice. Look at all this wisdom in the peaceful side. Not peaceful, the books still have conflict and stuff, but the characters seem more self-possessed in the way they approach them. That's what I guess I look forward to about aging. Yeah, the gray, pandemic gray [distorted audio].

Zibby: [laughs] That can be a new crayon color or something, pandemic gray. So how did you get into this? How did you start writing for whoever-age people? I won't even call it anything.

Iva: I did not write books or fiction so much. In college, I was very practical. I was like, I will get a journalism degree because you can get a job in journalism and have a career, which as we know is not the stable-est place to reside. I took some short story writing classes and stuff in college, but nothing that was like, oh, this is going to be my career, because I always talked myself out of it. I always tell this story at school visits. I loved books so much. Someone like Judy Blume, I assumed she had to be anointed somehow, and magical. Not everyone can do that. I'm from this Chicago suburb. People from here don't write books. It was bizarre how it was not even a consideration. Then as I was reporting, I actually did a story on a screenwriting class that was taking place. Then I really thought the class sounded cool. I took the class. I wrote a screenplay. I entered some contests and won a few prizes. Then I moved out to LA thinking -- for a variety of reasons, not off one prize. There were a variety of reasons.

As I was working on scripts and stuff, I realized I always really loved books. I loved movies, but why was I writing movies, or trying to? I didn't have to be out here, in other words. Why was I trying to write movies if books were my home, where I felt the most at home? Then I did a National Novel Writing Month. I think it was when I was working -- I was a web editor at Disney. A friend had worked with a book packing company. She knew I wrote. She hooked me up with people there. I did some ghostwriting of young adult fiction. The books I had written for Novel Writing Month were totally chick-lit. They're still not published and in a drawer and very weird. Maybe someday I'll take them out, but I think they were just there to get me started and probably really embarrassing if I read them now. I did the ghostwriting. Then I had a YA book come out in 2012 called The End of the World As We Know It. That's where we are right now. [laughter] I wrote another teen romance. Then I did jump over to middle grade. I met an editor when I was pitching a different book. That one didn't work out at the time. It's a YA that was comedic. That was when everything was Twilight and whatever. She liked my writing. She asked me if I would ever be interested in creating middle grade, so I did middle grade.

Then I found I really wanted to get back into YA and started hashing this idea out just kind of based on -- I was thinking about that scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High where Phoebe Cates comes out of the pool and Judge Reinhold is watching her, and that gaze, that sexual moment that he has, mine's not quite as explicit, but trying to picture the female version of that, so this idea of this coach walking through the cafeteria for the first time and Susan, who is underwhelmed by all of the boys she goes to school with, seeing this guy and just literally dropping her Yoo-hoo. [laughs] It was just so much fun to me. It started from there. YA is where I've been. I'm tinkering with adult stuff now too, but I'm really excited about this book. So far, everyone who's read it has really responded. A few people who are older are like, "I didn't know you could do that in YA." We talk about big things. It's just definitely for, it's for teenagers. I did recently hear from a teenager who wrote and said she loved it. I was so glad because I think the worry when you write something set in 1979 is, do any kids in 2020 want to read about the seventies? It was really gratifying. That was a long and crazy answer.

Zibby: No, that's fine. That was great. Why did you set it in 1979?

Iva: Because of Title IX.

Zibby: Oh, of course. Duh. Sorry, stupid question. Of course.

Iva: No, not at all. Also, they call it historical fiction now, but I think what I like about going into the past is that you're free a little bit from some of the stuff like phones and social media and stuff. It was nice to think kind of purely about someone who isn't dealing -- the story doesn't have to be as entwined with all of those things, which can sometimes make it harder for me to tell a story anyway. I'm a terrible texter. I'm like, what if these people don't text? That's not to say that I'll only write historical. I can definitely do text in books, and I have. It was really refreshing to do that time period and to literally think, what did this person do when she went home from school? There's twelve TV channels and listens to records and just waits for her mom to get home or whatever. There were fewer options for girls. I wanted to write something with that bit of empowerment message going on.

Zibby: Did you play sports growing up? Were you on the soccer team?

Iva: I was not. My school did not have a soccer team. That was one of the interesting things about telling this story set in a neighborhood like mine because soccer was sort of -- we were football. Even the boys on the soccer team, and I hope if they're listening they don't feel bad, but soccer was sort of like, you play soccer? It's European. It was a more working-class suburb. We had a soccer team and they were really good, but for boys. We did not have one for girls. Some of the schools in other areas did. I didn't play soccer. I did swim. I say I'm good at sports without equipment. Soccer, though, I chose because I wanted a team. I think for me, writing sports -- what's good about me having not played soccer is the sports scenes don't feel overwhelming to someone who's not a sports person. I try to not make it feel like a play-by-play where the language is like, I don't understand. For me, if I read a football book that's really, not that I'd ever probably read one, but that's really detailed with yard lines and stuff, I'd be like, I don't know what they're talking about. It's authentic. I definitely watched a lot of the Women's World Cup and learned a lot more about soccer, but I was leveraging my experiences with competition and being on a team. That's what I layered into the story here, and just that sense of what being competitive does for you as a person, or getting that chance to be competitive which I thought was a big deal for a girl who really hadn’t had a lot of goals to suddenly figure out that she felt good doing this, that she wanted something, that she actually wanted to win or be great, was fun. That was kind of me too because I was not coordinated as a younger kid. When I got to high school and suddenly I'm joining sports teams and actually pretty okay, it was great. It was actually kind of a [indiscernible]. What about you? Did you play sports in high school?

Zibby: In high school, I played tennis and lacrosse. I did play in a little soccer league when I was growing up starting when I was six just in the summers. We used to have these games after dinner because we'd spend the summers out on Long Island. The head of the shoe store coached my team. It was very suburban-esque. I really liked lacrosse. I was super into that.

Iva: It's a similar thing with the team. I know different moves and playing, but being on a team and whatever, I think it's just great. Even that the games get a little rougher, you learn so much about yourself and what you can do when you play a sport. I think it's just great for everybody. I'm not telling readers that they must go out and play a sport.

Zibby: It's great. It's great to be part of a team. It's great to be part of a team in any way. Sports are one of the only ways to really be on a team at that age. Now you can do it through work or you can do it through some sort of community. I think sports teams are great. It's really neat to share goals with people and share victories and losses and all that bonding stuff. Going back to the crush aspect of this book -- that's so funny that the Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, they're blast from the past actors and actresses. What's the last time you had that feeling? Is there a time in your life that you hearken back to when you think about having such a mad crush like that?

Iva: Teacher-wise, I did not have one on a teacher. I'm sorry to disappoint. I didn't have one like that where there was a teacher in school that I desperately wanted to impress. That's not some moral high ground. Our teachers, we didn't really have anyone exceedingly cute. There was one guy I remember everyone thought was super cute. He was nice and cute, but not a teacher crush. I did have, in high school -- this is where Susan's feelings track, is where you're thinking about the person just all the time and kind of irrationally. I had a crush on a guy from a neighboring school. He sort of liked me for a week. That week, I spread out over the course of a year. We both worked at the same mall. Every so often, he'd drop in my store. You would create this whole mythology. Everything he said had so many more meanings. You were definitely going to wind up together even though he would give no indication of that and literally bring his girlfriend into the store. I remember one time my friend asked for a ride to the concert and said, "John is coming too." I thought, oh, we're going to the concert together. It's going to be the moment we get together.

Then I picked them up and he had -- I shouldn't say this because I want to save it for a book someday. He had brought his girlfriend with and she was holding balloons because it was their anniversary. They got into my little hatchback with all these balloons. I'm driving my crush to the concert with his girlfriend of three months. They're celebrating their anniversary. I was still kind of like, well, he likes me better. [laughter] It was this delusional -- you can't believe that you would've picked someone who isn't into it. I think for a while, Susan's cruising on those feelings, like, he's only three years older. I think he's five years older in the book. She's like, maybe not now, but there's definitely -- any time he complements her, it means something. At one point, he tells her, "You have amazing potential." She takes that to mean, he's going to ask me to marry him as soon as school is over.

I've been there. I think everyone gets there. Some people actually end up dating their crushes. That whole obsession where you're weaving stories -- maybe that's part of being a writer. You can weave this story about anyone. Maybe writer crushes are actually worse. If you have any imaginative talent, you could really waste a lot of time just puzzling over every little move they make. I think everyone does it. That was my big one, was that guy. I finally got a boyfriend and got over it. Even for a while after I got a boyfriend and we would be in the same place, I'd be like, he's so jealous. He wasn't paying any attention to me at all. It was like, he's ignoring me because he's jealous I have a boyfriend now.

Zibby: That's so funny.

Iva: I probably sound delusional.

Zibby: No, I love it. It's really funny. It's also so nice to -- everything feels very heavy. Everything's very heavy right now in the world, so to have a minute to laugh about our old crushes --

Iva: -- Do you have one?

Zibby: Oh, gosh. I had so many crushes. My first crush was in seventh grade. I was so obvious about it because I was so shy then. I would just stare at him at dances and things like this. I don't know if someone dared him or one of my friends who was more outgoing begged him to ask me to dance, but he asked me to dance at this one dance. I have, in my diary at the time, I slow danced with this guy Chris, it was the most amazing thing in my entire life. [laughs] After that, maybe a smile or two the rest of my life. I should really look him up at this point. Anyway, you obviously have kids. I can kind of hear them in the background sometimes, which is totally fine.

Iva: I have the door closed.

Zibby: No, I can just hear the happy hum of kids. When you find the time to write? When do you do your writing? Do you do it at home or do you leave?

Iva: I mostly do it at home. I've tried leaving. I have one who is in transitional kindergarten, so he gets home earlier. The other one was in fourth grade this year. Obviously, this year everything went a little haywire. I've been writing, but it's not to the same extent. I used to get up before work and write with my first books. Since I've had kids, I haven't been able to maintain that. I did have a full-time job up until about 2014. I still freelance. My day, I usually try to write when they're at school. Now that they're not at school, I tell myself and I tell other people this too if they say they want to write and they just can't find the time, I sometimes have to do things in fits and starts. I would love a perfectly calm routine where it's like, this is my writing time. I do get that sometimes. Especially if I'm in the heat of a project, I have to do that. When I'm just starting something or whatever and if it's just me with the kids -- it's much better, obviously, if they are at school or in an activity. I'm starting a new project now, so we're going to see how this works.

Fits and starts is kind of how I do it. I'll sit down and I'll work a little bit. If it's a hundred words there, I have to come back to it. The thing that stinks is it's always lingering in your brain. You haven't hit that target that you want. You do chip away at the work. Then you have something on the page even if you have to do a lot of revision. Definitely when I'm deep into either, I have to finish this draft or I have to get this revision done, that is when my dad helps with our kids a little. My husband is home now, so we take turns a little bit, like, I need two solid hours to do with some uninterrupted work. I leverage any time they have to watch a movie or do their screen time stuff. That's when I have to ignore that I want to deal with the mess in the house. I can't look at that stuff. I just have to sit down and force some words out. Certainly, I work at home for the time being. I do think after the pandemic, maybe I'm going to finally be a writer who goes to coffee shops because after being at home for a while, it sounds really desirable to mix it up. I wish I could pledge to a certain routine. My thing is mostly that I just try to look at whatever I'm working on every day for as much time as I can. I try to get a solid, at least, hour in there. I do have a really supportive husband. Before the pandemic, on weekends he would take the kids on a field trip so I could have a solid day or whatever, or he'd deal with all their activities and stuff so I could stay home and work. With this going on, it's sort of different. It's just like, I'll be in the other room with them while you do that.

Zibby: I know. It's so crazy.

Iva: It's a process of whatever I can do. It's all frenzied and always anxious. It's not perfect at all.

Zibby: Such is life.

Iva: It is what it is. It's getting written, so I'm just going with it for now. Maybe when they're older I'll have something more clear cut. That would be great.

Zibby: What is your parting advice to aspiring authors? What advice would you give?

Iva: That was one of the pieces. Don't wait for that perfect moment. I think I will go with that because we are in such an imperfect moment with the pandemic and the economic crisis and the protests, which are great and I support, but we all are kind of like, what is happening? What's going to go on? Where are we headed? What might come down the road next? Even though it can be really hard to write, if you have that idea that you're just dying to get out, I'd say to sit down and just try it. This is what I actually told kids in school presentations. Write down one line a day if you have to until you have something going. Tell yourself, I'm going to do this for fifteen minutes. Then maybe if it's flowing, you'll find out that fifteen minutes turns into a half hour, turns into an hour, or whatever. I think it's just about not waiting for that perfect, I'm going to go to a beach house and have a view of the ocean, and no interruptions, and I'm going to feel perfect before I sit down and set pen to paper. I think starting is so important. I get stuck in middles, so I don't have great advice for the middle. Starting is so important. From there, as you go, you can get more advice or figure things out. I also think outlines are really helpful if you feel like you do get stuck. As someone who gets stuck sometimes or has a bunch of things that I've started and stopped, to pause and say, what is my outline? I know it sort of de-romanticizes the writing life that you're just going to sit down and it's going to flow and be beautiful, but having a map even if you don't follow it perfectly, for me, it's really helpful. I would recommend that too. I'm sorry. I'm a rambler. I hope I didn't ramble too much.

Zibby: No, this was great. It was totally great. Thank you so much for coming on my show and talking about your book and making the time work and all the stuff. Thank you.

Iva: Thank you for making the time work. I am so sorry.

Zibby: No, it was great. It was totally great. Bye.

Iva: Thank you so much.

Zibby: Bye, thanks.

Erin Gardner, PROCRASTIBAKING

Zibby Owens: I interviewed Erin Gardner twice during quarantine. Once was on my Instagram Live show. Another time was for this podcast which you're going to listen to now. Erin's book, Procrastibaking: 100 Recipes for Getting Nothing Done in the Most Delicious Way Possible, is just fantastic. I thought it was a perfect quarantine read. I even included it in my Next Chapter Please bundle on Page 1 Books, which I think they might even still be selling. Go check out page1books.com. Erin is fantastic and personable and has been on cooking shows and was one of the leading cake bakers in the world when she owned Wild Orchid Baking Company. She wrote for The Cake Blog and wrote Erin Bakes Cakes in 2017. She is the consummate baker. Yet this book, as you'll hear, is when she learned to bake all these other things while procrastinating from making the cakes that she had been contracted to make. Even the most accomplished baker feels badly about how they're delaying the chores they need to do. I hope you enjoy our conversation and that you pick up her cookbook and make some of these delicious desserts.

Welcome, Erin. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Erin Gardner: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Zibby: As I was saying to you, I loved doing an Instagram Live with you in the midst of the quarantine, but had so many more questions and just didn't want to stop talking, so I thought we could do a whole podcast.

Erin: That's great. I really appreciated you having me on your IG Live. This is super fun too. It's so nice to have adult contact in any, way, shape, or form. This is great. [laughs]

Zibby: Before I did this, my two little kids and I were literally in the street waiting for the UPS person, not that we were expecting anything. After an hour, he came. That was the highlight of the day. Good times over here. [laughs]

Erin: Life is a lot simpler now.

Zibby: Your latest cookbook, Procrastibaking, you're the master baker. You've helped coin this term, procrastibaking. Now you have a whole cookbook about it. First, backtrack a little and talk about how you got started in the professional baking world to get to this point.

Erin: Wow, okay.

Zibby: Go back. Let's go way back.

Erin: I actually -- how far back? [laughs]

Zibby: You always loved baking as a kid?

Erin: I always loved baking as a kid, but I never, never saw it as a profession. Actually, my first major in college was aviation. That's how I met my husband. My husband's a pilot.

Zibby: Wow, no way.

Erin: I learned through doing that for about a year or so that I am not a pilot. That's a good thing to learn about yourself if you think you're a pilot. [laughter] I enjoyed it, but like my husband says, it's eight hours of boredom bookended by thirty seconds of terror.

Zibby: It's like parenting.

Erin: It really is. A lot of it is just sitting there.

Zibby: Aviation, so interesting. So you ruled that out.

Erin: Ruled that out. I wrapped up my degree in business management/marketing. I worked in advertising for a very brief period of time. I was selling ads to a restaurant. They were looking for a nighttime dessert plater. I said, I think I could do that. That seems awesome. I didn't even realize that these were jobs that I could do. It really piqued my interest. To the chagrin of all adults around me at the time, I quit my office job and I took a job plating desserts at night. Then the rest was history. I worked my way up through -- that was in Hartford, Connecticut. Moved to Boston. Worked through a bunch of restaurants in Boston and then into New Hampshire. Then I opened my bakery. I had a wedding cake shop for about seven years and made wedding cakes all over New England. That was the big moment in my career. Then while I was doing that, I was approached to start doing other things like teaching classes on a couple online platforms and doing some writing and creating tutorials. That sort of opened up the next phase of what I do now.

Zibby: Amazing. What was it like being at the top of your field and making wedding cakes and being a part of the most special night for so many people in their lives?

Erin: I loved it. I really did truly love it. I loved working with the couples. I loved learning about them and their story and seeing all the different styles, the things that really meant something to people, but it was terrifying. Like we said, the terrifying side of aviation, there's a terrifying side to cake decorating. That is that every wedding is the big night. It's never not the most important day of someone's life. There's no do-over. That side of it could be fun also because there was an excitement to it. Bringing a cake to a venue, of course you get to know all the other vendors like the florists and the wedding planners and the banquet hall staffs and things like that. Getting in at the time everyone's setting up and it's kind of this team and you're all dispersed and move to the next one, that part, it was exciting. Then also, I should name an ulcer [indiscernible/laughter]. I'm sure that they're in there.

Zibby: So then what made you close the bakery and move on to other things?

Erin: I had my first child, Max. He's my oldest, my son. He's nine now. He spent the first year of his life in a pack 'n play at the end of my worktable in the bakery. Then once he got mobile, we had to move on to daycare. Then when my second was born, and she's going to be five at the end of this month, I decided that it was time to put all of my efforts into those other things that had started popping up like writing opportunities and teaching opportunities and things along those lines so that I could really be there for my kids. With a husband who's a pilot, I go through stretches of time where I'm the only parent. Having the ultimate deadline of a wedding isn't always the best thing to have when you have two very small children. Max came on lots of wedding cake deliveries with me. He was strapped to me. I'd bring the cake in. I'm glad that I had enough energy to get through that point of my life. Once number two came along, I was like, I think it's time to move on to the next phase. I miss things about it, but I love the things I get to do now like sharing with people and being able to look back on my experiences and help people with technique and recipe and the things that they can do at home to enhance their own celebrations.

Zibby: We were looking at some of your recipes online, or I was with the kids before we talked. Your funfetti recipe is on our to-do list now tomorrow.

Erin: That's a great one. One bowl. You don't need a mixer, super easy.

Zibby: Thank you. That's the perfect -- [laughs].

Erin: They're the words you need to hear.

Zibby: Yes, exactly. One bowl, not too messy, very simple, full of sugar, check.

Erin: You throw a handful of sprinkles in there, and boom, everyone's happy.

Zibby: It's so easy. As long as you don't mind throwing sprinkles at your kids all day, they would just be thrilled.

Erin: Actually, funny story. My youngest one day -- I work from home now, so I have a lot of supplies in my kitchen. My oldest, he could care less about sweets. He'll walk past them. My youngest is a cookie monster, like a hardcore sugar addict. One morning, we woke up and Max was in my room. We're hanging out. I was like, "Where's your sister? I haven't heard from her. It's way too quiet." She was downstairs and had poured herself a bowl of sprinkles and was sitting at the kitchen table just spooning them into her mouth. [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, that's awesome. That's a dream breakfast. Did you take a picture, I hope?

Erin: I did take a picture. I think she was two and a half, three at the time. I was like, "What are you doing?" She was just like, "Ha, ha, ha."

Zibby: That's perfect.

Erin: She thought she had figured out the perfect thing.

Zibby: Tell me about how you ended up doing your first cookbook and how that led now to Procrastibaking, your next cookbook.

Erin: I had written -- I'm on number three now.

Zibby: I'm sorry.

Erin: Oh, no, because the first one was more like an author-for-hire kind of situation where I was writing to fulfill a need for a publisher. Then Erin Bakes Cake came from my experiences and heart and soul kind of deal and had the opportunity to that put that together. That book embodied where I've taken cake decorating from the high-end wedding cake world to home. I was using a lot of those classic techniques and ideas and recipes and flavors and then translating them to, still kind of over-the-top stuff, but stuff that you could accomplish at home and that you don't need special tools for. That's something I've prided myself on with the kinds of tutorials and recipes that I write for people now and the different publications and what not. I will never do anything that requires you to purchase anything that isn't already in your kitchen. I use toothpicks, foils, spoons, stuff like that. I have moved away from the traditional wedding cake elements like fondant and gum paste and that kind of stuff. I will only use now, like, chocolate cookies and candy to create decorative elements. That book was in the spirit of that.

Then this book, Procrastibaking, actually was born from that book. I had no idea that that was happening at the time. One of the things that I do, and now everyone knows, is when I have these big projects that I'm working on, I will bake something else, something not on the script to kind of warm up. If I'm not feeling whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing, I'll just make something fun. I did that one of the days that I was supposed to be writing for Erin Bakes Cake. I posted a picture of it on Instagram, #procrastibaking, the baking I'm doing when I'm supposed to be doing other baking. It wasn't even that big of a post. A couple of my baker friends were like, ha, ha, ha, I do this too. Literally, just life moved on. That was a very basic post. Then about a year and a half after that, around that, I get a message on Instagram, a DM from Julia Moskin from The New York Times saying that she's writing an article on procrastibaking, and would I want to be interviewed. Of course. [laughs] Spoke with her. I said some silly things because it's a silly topic. I ended up being in the article.

Then my literary agent, my wonderful, wonderful, literary agent, Alison Fargis, she called me. She was like, "Erin, this is a book." I said, "Yeah, it probably is. This could be really good." Then it was just really fortuitous. The publisher that I ended up with, Atria, the publisher who was on staff then was a procrastibaker himself. He felt a strong connection to the book. My editor Sarah was just so enthusiastic about the project. Books are hard because there's so much work that goes into them, but it was such an enjoyable process. It was so, I don't want to say easy because it's not easy, but it came so naturally because it was literally just, okay, wow, I have to just open up the floodgates. This is what I do when no one's looking. When my husband read the first draft of it, he was like, "Wow, this is the most you-thing that you've ever done." I was like, "Yeah, this is what this is."

Zibby: But that's so great. That's what all the advice is. Write what you know. Write what no one else can write. This is your thing that you do behind closed doors. It benefits everybody for you to tell us about it.

Erin: Writing in your voice, it's challenging. My career was never to be a writer. That's just kind of happened in a way. That part has been interesting for me, just practicing writing and practicing really saying what I want to say and not saying it in a way that you think people want to hear it kind of thing. It's been a learning process, but one that I'm grateful for. It's been really great.

Zibby: What are your biggest go-to procrastibaking recipes? If you have a huge deadline, what will we find you mostly likely in the kitchen baking furtively and feeling guilty about? [laughs]

Erin: Cookies. Because cake is my life, I turn cookies when I'm looking to get away. Cookies, scones, biscuits, things like that, they're easy. They're easily sharable. My butter crunch cookies are hands-down my favorite cookies in the whole world. They're just so yummy. That's why also in the book there's a hundred recipes and the chapters are primarily broken up into about ten recipes each except for cookies which is like twenty percent of the book. I think it's a common thread through all kinds of people who procrastibake that cookies are a go-to. No one will turn down a cookie. In the before time and going forward, at some point I'm sure, they're sharable. You can bring them into the office. You can bring them into school. It's just a real easy bake to blow off some steam.

Zibby: Do you have any secrets to making the best chocolate chip cookies? That's my favorite food I think in the planet, is a chocolate chip cookie. What are your secrets?

Erin: Chocolate chip cookies are very personal. It's probably one of the most personal baked goods, I think. You can agree on, that's a good eclair or that's a nice something. Chocolate chip cookie, some people like thin and crispy. Some people like chewy. Some people like cakey. With any style of chocolate chip cookies, I always to under-bake a little bit, like a hair. Obviously, you don't want something that's gross or unsafe. If a recipe calls for twelve minutes of bake time, maybe I'll set it for ten and then look at it and make the call. I think with chocolate chip cookies it's okay if they're a little glossy in the center, just a hair. Then you pull it out and you let them kind of finish baking on the baking sheet. Let that residual heat get everything to set. Then if you like a softer cookie, a little bit of cream cheese is actually a great -- the soft-batch style ones in the book, the cream cheese just makes it smoother and creamier. It kind of inhibits a little bit of the gluten production. It keeps the structure soft inside the cookie. That would be another good trick. Oh, and to use good chocolate, but good chocolate is just whatever chocolate you like. If you like dark chocolate, go for that. If you like milk chocolate, go for that. Don't feel chocolate pressure. Just use what you enjoy the most.

Zibby: I've recently discovered the larger size dark chocolate Toll House chips. That's not good. I've started hiding them in my office because I don't want the kids to eat them. [laughs] They're so good. So what's coming next for you? Are you going to do another cookbook? I know this is just coming out. What do you see happening in the next year or two?

Erin: I wish I knew. I think everyone wished they knew now, right?

Zibby: Assuming life was normal. Let's pretend.

Erin: If I had a crystal ball, that would be great. In the future going forward, I look forward to being able to do more in-person classes, things that I had scheduled that are going to be put off into the future now. I really, really love teaching people in person. It's so much fun for me to just have that energy. I teach a lot up at Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School here in York, Maine, right over the border. There's some other in-person teaching opportunities. Then I'll just keep sharing on my blog and on my social media channels. Now that I'm getting through this whole book process, I'm actually kind of looking forward to just posting some stuff for fun that has no one else looking over my shoulder with a theme or a deadline kind of thing. I've got some fun projects that I have in mind for Mother's Day and spring-y and summer kind of things coming up.

Zibby: That's awesome. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors, somebody out there who might want to do a cookbook or has some great idea? What do you think?

Erin: I think my best advice would be to write. For me personally, the more I write, the better I feel I am at it. Write anything. Write emails to people. Write what you did that day. It doesn't have to be a project. It's just getting your words onto paper. I always find that the more that I do that, the better. Sometimes if I have nothing to do, I will go on and just review things on Amazon. I'm like, what can I say about this that's funny? What can I say about this that's creative? It's a completely no-pressure outlet. No one's going to judge what you've written on your Swiffer review. [laughs] It's just a low-key way to do that. Then if someone's really serious about it, I would say to find a literary agent, to find an agent who works with authors in the field that you're in and that manages or works with people who have books that look like the kind of book that you want to write so that you know you're in the right company. I think that's such an important key. I know it's been a huge key to the wonderful things I've been able to work on.

Zibby: Awesome. Thank you, Erin. This has been so fun. Thanks for distracting your kids and not minding my kids walking in here. Thanks for taking the time today. Your book is obviously, not just for the fact that everybody is at home and happens to be baking at the moment, but in general is a great concept. It's just so awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Erin: Thanks. I appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun being able to chat with you here. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: You too. Bye.

Erin: Bye.

Zibby: Thanks so much. Buh-bye.

Rachel Friedman, AND THEN WE GREW UP

Zibby Owens: I'm including Rachel Friedman on Advice Monday because her advice is about creativity, but her book is also memoir as well. Anyway, that's where I put her. Rachel is the author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure, that was from 2011, and was a Target Breakout Book and selected by Goodreads’ readers as one of the best travel books of 2011. Now she's come out with her second book which is called And Then We Grew Up: On Creativity, Potential, and the Imperfect Art of Adulthood. It received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Her essays and articles have appeared in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, McSweeney’s Book of Politics and Musicals, The New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the creative nonfiction program at Rutgers-Newark with her MFA, she has taught literature, journalism, and writing at Columbia University, New York University, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her son.

How are you?

Rachel Friedman: Hi. Good. How are you?

Zibby: I'm good. I'm glad we're finally connecting.

Rachel: Me too. I can't believe I have to follow Marian Keyes, but I'm very glad [distorted audio].

Zibby: Perhaps I should've put her at the end, but whatever. No, I'm kidding. [laughs] Thank you. Your book was so interesting. I didn't have a big idea of what it would be about other than the cover when I started it. I did not realize you had been this virtuoso viola player and that you had to give away -- not give away, that you had to pivot so in early in life. When most people are just getting upwards on the trajectory, you had already reached a peak and had to regroup while everyone was at college bars or whatever. Tell me about this whole experience and how it informed your book.

Rachel: In many ways, I think I had to regroup because I wasn't a virtuoso. [laughs] I was very good from a young age. I played, first, guitar and then piano and then viola. Viola was the instrument that really hooked me. From a young age, I became quite obsessed with becoming a professional musician. I went to a very intense performing acts camp called Interlochen, which is the setting for the book because I reconnect with eight former campmates of mine. I was a small fish in a big pond growing up. I'm sure a lot of people have this experience, maybe not with music, but with debate or with a sport where they're very, very, very good to the point where you can start to think about professionalizing what you love. Then somewhere along the way, you hit a ceiling and you realize, okay, I was pretty good, but I'm actually either not good enough to make it doing what I want to do, or in order to make it doing what I want to do I'm going to have to give up everything else to such exclusion of the rest of my life that maybe I actually don't want the thing I thought I wanted. Both of those things happened to me. I hit a talent ceiling and I hit kind of an ambition ceiling with music.

Zibby: I feel like I saw that a lot in college with the athletes who had been training all their life. Then suddenly, that was not the be-all, end-all anymore and it was time to regroup.

Rachel: I think a lot of us have images of what our grown-up life is going to look like, even if it's not a specific thing we're pursuing. A lot of us, when we grow up, are facing this gap between the fantasy of our adult life and what it actually looks like. That's really what the book is about.

Zibby: Then after this transition, you regroup. Suddenly by age twenty-six, you've published a book and gotten married. You were on cloud nine. This is amazing. Then again, you have to realize that that was another peak and a valley was coming.

Rachel: Yes, that's a really lovely way of putting it. I had this precocious start to writing. Publishing my first book felt a little bit like a fluke in some ways. Although, I'm very proud of that book. I was young when I published it, for better and for worse. I thought, now I've published a book, now I'm writer. Now everything just goes uphill from here. I'm going to be able to make my full living as a writer. I'm going to have famous author friends. I'm going to get awards. It was the whole fantasy of the writers. I realized that with music I had developed this whole ideal of what it meant to be a writer and these very rigid definitions of success that weren’t really based on what I wanted or what was important to me, but what I had absorbed from external voices. With music, I was at this moment where I felt like if I didn't grapple with that artist mythology and what it meant to make an artistic life and what was important to me -- I didn't think I was going to give up writing because writing has already proved to be something that had endured, unlike music.

I thought, I'm going to be really bitter if I don't get a grip on this at some point, if I don't really take stock of what matters to me. What do I really need to feel content as a writer and to endure? I went to track down all these people from this camp. This was a time when everyone I knew at this camp had very specific ideas about who they wanted to be when they grew up. Interlochen, which is a camp in Michigan, is just full of so much incredible talent. It felt to me kind of like the last place when I had really been so sure of what I wanted to be and what that would look like. I was really curious to see if other people had grappled with this gap and what had become of them. This was pre-Facebook, so you didn't have updates on everyone in the same way. When I went to camp, it was pre-Facebook. Even if you do, you don't really have any idea what's going on with someone when you see their social media posts.

Zibby: I love how it all came back to you and you drowning your sorrows about taxes by going to a movie and seeing one of your fellow Interlochen friends having success like that. I think everyone can relate. Although, we don't all say it out loud. There's always something when you're happy for someone else, like, oh, my gosh, how did they do that? What have I done? It's just like, look at that.

Rachel: Yeah, this comparison issue, we all have. We went to camp with Ben Foster who's a very well-known actor. He's not in the book. Although, interestingly, as I was working on this book, at many points people encouraged me to try and interview him. I always felt like that's not the point of the book. I want to hear from people who are not famous, not at either end of the spectrum, haven't completely felt like they’ve failed at what they're doing, or maybe they have, or kind of middle of the road and they're trying to figure out how to endure. Ben Foster, you can read about it any magazine you pick up. That was the impetus behind the book. I was feeling very depressed about my financial situation as a freelance writer. I went to a movie, and there he was larger than life starring in it. That was quite a reckoning.

Zibby: I'm sorry. I've been there. Those are not fun feelings, oh, my gosh. What was your main takeaway? You went and you found all of these people. Then you end up actually dating somebody who's friends with Adam. All these fun things just start happening as you retrace your steps. Everybody has different things to share. What do you think were some of the main findings?

Rachel: It's a very interesting journey tracking down people who knew you when you were young. I do recommend it. It can be a winding journey full of many surprises. Everyone in the book really gave me another framework from which to view the issues that I was dealing with. The book breaks down the mythologies that I had about what it means to succeed, what it means to feel ordinary, what it means to compromise, what ambition looks like, what freedom looks like, all these very amorphous terms. We have this obsession with perseverance in this country, and I'm sure many other countries, where it's like, you only fail when you quit. That's really not true. If you have a quitting problem, that's one thing. Most of us work really hard. Then at some point often, at least some goal at some point we're pursuing, we do hit a ceiling and we have to refocus our energies. That's really good for us. I think the main takeaway of the book is that our lives, we have to design them. There's no expert out there. There's no internet article that is going to teach you what success is or tell you if you do X, Y, and Z, this will happen. We love formulas. We love this idea that you put in the work and then you reap the rewards. I think it's really important to dismantle the clichés and mythologies and really ask yourself the hard questions about what your fulfilling life would look like.

Zibby: That's awesome. By the way, you had probably my favorite expression I've ever heard, the art-nership. That is so perfect. Sometimes I feel like my husband and I, we're both very creative and whatever. That's such a nice way. I was like, oh, we have an art-nership. That's so great. Tell me about that.

Rachel: That's not my phrase.

Zibby: Oh. Well, I'm going to credit you anyway.

Rachel: The idea of the art-nership is your partner, the person that you end up making a life with, is also an artist. It's that romantic ideal of what that looks like. That too is a complicated reality, of course, but that's one of the many things I thought about my life. I need to end up with a person who does X because I do Y. That's the term of art-nership.

Zibby: I loved it. That was so great. Then your Washington Post article recently was great about teaching your son -- well, about evaluating the current theory that people should not allow their kids to quit anything, that we should teach all of them to persevere. You're not good at the piano? Just keep going. You said you also have to teach kids the flipside of that, which is not every extracurricular is for everybody. You have to be ready to cope when things don't work out, which I loved as such great parenting advice and also just life advice. Tell me a little more about that.

Rachel: I think we're really focused on resilience as it relates to perseverance, but there's also resilience in terms of being able to be disappointed that something didn't work out, not to wallow in that disappointment, but to understand that there are real setbacks. The experience of not getting what you want is such a common human experience, but we don't talk a lot about it, this idea of disappointment or longing or quitting, in a way that is not rebranding it as opportunity or turning it into some other narrative, but just, I wanted this thing, I tried really hard, it sucks. Again, it's not about wallowing in that disappointment, but I think giving it a little bit of space to say, I didn't turn out to be an astronaut, or whatever it is.

Zibby: I did notice in your book, and maybe I missed where you explained it or something, but I feel like you talked a lot about your dad. He was a retired film critic. He came up a lot and what he would think and what you would say to him. There wasn't a lot of mention of your mom. I was just wondering about that.

Rachel: My dad was probably just a stronger influence, to be totally honest, in terms of the way I thought about my grown-up life. My mom was very practical. My mom supports my writing and supported my music, but I think for her, she grew up poor and became a lawyer and really felt like her focus, understandably, was on financial security. Financial security is very important. I talk about in the book, kind of reckoning with that. My dad, who is a professor and has a different background, grew up in a more comfortable middle-class background, for me, the message was always, do what you love. You have to be passionate about what you do. There's no such thing as just as job. I think he's wrong about that ultimately, of course. Plenty of people have work-life balance where their job is not the thing that drives them and they derive their fulfilment in other ways. For me, he was just a very powerful influence. I saw his life too, this life of the professor, the life of the mind. He writes books. All of that really was influential for me as a kid.

Zibby: Interesting. I was wondering if you had advice for aspiring authors. Maybe you could weave in the fact that after you sold your first book, your second book didn't sell and you had to regroup and find the way back, which obviously you did because now we have this amazing book and we're sitting here talking.

Rachel: I think it's important to say you have that book nine years after the first one. That's a good amount of time. It took me a long time to write the second book. I did get pregnant in the middle of the writing process, which will slow things down a little bit. I couldn't figure out the right framing for that second book. It didn't get a contract. I was really disappointed, obviously. I think too, after a first book, you feel a lot of pressure to have this momentum. It's a very common experience for the second book not to work out. That's just one of the kinds of examples of enduring through disappointment that I think is useful and that we should talk about more. Marian Keyes had great advice for writers, which is essentially, you write. You sit down and you do it. Try to get out of your own way. I think a lot of times people who want to write, who aspire to write, they need permission. I'm not sure who we're looking for permission from, but we are the ones who need to give it to ourselves. You are entitled to write. You are entitled to self-expression. You are entitled to that space. To try to quiet those inner voices -- she was saying, we're all writing, as Anne Lamott would put it in Bird by Bird, which is a brilliant book if people are looking for inspiration on the writing life.

We all write shitty first drafts. Maybe some people don't, but we'll just consider them outliers. Most of us, the way you endure as a writer is through rewriting. You have to have a tolerance for repetition and for revision because what comes out first is messy and often incoherent and not very good. You can't edit, I think, out that part of it. You have to go through that part of it. There's a different part of your brain -- this the like the write drunk, edit sober expression which doesn't actually mean drunk-drunk, but I think means writing -- for some people, it does; not me -- writing without that inner critic telling you that something is no good. You just have to get it out. You have to take time to do it. Writing is a job like anything else. You put your hours in. I think sometimes people think, and Marian Keyes was saying this too, that it's sort of magical. Of course, there are magic moments, but I don't think that you have the space for those magic moments unless you're doing the disciplined work of carving out time regularly. I'm not even saying every day, but consistently to words on a page.

Zibby: Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for coming on. It was so nice to connect with you and hear your thoughts. I felt such pride for you when you were detailing your journey. Then knowing that because I was reading the book that you eventually got to success again, it was this wonderful thing that you could be holding the answer to what happens to the main character in your hands sort of like a meta -- anyway.

Rachel: Thank you so much. This was lovely [indiscernible].

Zibby: You too. Take care, Rachel.

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George Brescia, CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES, CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Zibby Owens: George Brescia is the author of Change Your Clothes, Change Your Life. He is a style expert and has appeared NBC's Today Show. His other television includes regular red-carpet commentary and fashion and trend reporting for CBS, ABC, NBC, and FOX. As Playbill.com’s “Best Dressed” columnist, he covered the Tony Awards and several seasons of Broadway openings and galas. His award-winning web series, Dress Up!, featured George working with Broadway’s top stars preparing them for their opening nights and premieres. He travels the country doing guest lecturing, special events, and regional television shows about current fashion trends and personal styling, and has also been featured on NPR’s Marketplace. George is currently the brand ambassador for LOGO by Lori Goldstein on the QVC Network. His background includes twenty-five years working closely with top fashion leaders Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Tommy Hilfiger, and with the fashion directors at Bloomingdales, Bergdorfs, and Lord & Taylor. He's also a top-tier New York City-based stylist and image consultant with tons of clients. Listen to all of his advice here. As he says, your clothing has the potential to enhance your personal brilliance.

Welcome, George. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

George Brescia: Oh, my god, Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.

Zibby: I was really nervous, to be honest. I know this is an audio recording, but you and I are over Skype right now. I was like, I wonder what I should wear to this Skype interview because you are the master. I just put on a coverup, so sorry. [laughs]

George: You look great. Listen, you know what, it's not even about that. It's never about feeling bad. That's the last thing we want. We want you feeling good. That's what my book is all about. It's all about you feeling good and feeling confident and just having the clothes in your closet that do that for you so that you don't really have to think about it. You look terrific.

Zibby: Well, thank you. Give listeners the broader picture of your book, which by the way has probably the best cover I've seen in my entire life. I want to frame your cover and put it on my wall. I'm obsessed with color. It is so awesome.

George: Thank you. I appreciate that. The book has a very colorful cover. That is no mistake because I'm all about color and what colors people wear and to have them in colors that make them look really good. Listen, this is the deal, you have to get dressed every day. No matter what your life is, no matter what's going on in the world, we cover our body with clothes no matter what. My goal is to have you put clothes on your body that, A, make you feel amazing; B, give you the response that you want from people in terms of the way that you want to be seen. It's not so much about a compliment. It's more about, how do you want the world to see you? They do see you whether you like it or not no matter what, whether it's on a Skype call, a Zoom call, in person. No matter what's happening in the world and what your life is, you are seen at some point. You want to make sure that you're being thought of in the way that you want to. Clothes do that. I really got that from dressing celebrities. I'm a stylist.

I have a whole background. I was at Ralph Lauren for ten-plus years. I was a vice president in Tommy Hilfiger. I've worked at Donna Karan. I've worked with Jay Z at Rocawear, and Beyoncé. I've dressed all kinds of Broadway actresses to all kinds of Oscar-winning actresses in Los Angeles, movie actresses. What I realized was dressing them for auditions -- they would say to me, "I'm going in for this role. What do you think I should wear that speaks to the role?" We realized that when the door opened and they walked in, immediately they were sort of cast or not cast in a role based on what they brought in the door with their presentation of themselves. I was like, you know, this happens in real life. I do it. You do it. Everyone does it. People don't talk about it, but they do it. You walk by someone on the street. You see someone maybe on one of your Zoom calls and you're like, huh, she's this, he's that, based on what you see them wearing. It's an instinctive human response. I just want you to win at that response and become more present to it. When you become more present to it, what ends up happening is you connect to yourself. It's a connection to yourself because you have to take the time to think about yourself, think about what you want to present to the world, think about the fact that you're putting something on that's going to make you feel good.

It's self-care, is what it really is. I think we're in a time right now in this country and the world where it really is about self-care. If we don't take care of ourselves, then we're not better for others in any way. When we take care of ourselves, we're a better mother. We're a better sister. We're a better wife. We're a better friend. We're a better husband. We're a better boyfriend. It's just self-care. It really is. This book really talks about how to do that and how to -- all the clothes that you have in your closet, I call it the window to your soul because it is. What are you holding onto? What won't you let go of? Why won't you bring new in? You want new in your life. Maybe you want the new love of your life. Maybe you want the new job. Maybe you want the new home. If you don't get rid of things that aren't serving you, how do you become an open vessel for all good? It's funny. I'm watching the expression on your face as I speak. I think people are surprised when I speak this way about this book because this isn't about, if you wear this skirt, it makes you have a smaller waist, or if you wear this color, you will look younger. It's not that kind of a book. There is that information in there, but it all comes from a very spiritual place because that's really what it is. It's how you connect to yourself and how to present yourself in the world. Your clothing is a tool that you have that can help you to do that.

Zibby: I didn't mean to suggest anything by my expression other than I was just listening intently. I read your book, so I know what's in there. I think it's great. It's almost like a clothing empowerment movement in a way, right? It's more like that.

George: Yes, exactly. I loved your expression. I love it because it makes me know that what is in the book can be powerful. That's what I'm seeing in your face. That's what I love. People will say to me, "George, what's one of your favorite things about what you do? What do you love?" I always answer with, I love the moment when I put something on someone and she looks in the mirror and she's like, oh, yeah, there I am. There's that person I want to be or I hope I am, or that's what I want to say. That moment of self-discovery, that is my favorite part of what I do. It always happens. When people hire me to dress them for, whether it's an opening of a Broadway show or a movie premiere -- sometimes I have women who just want to hire me because they want their closets filled with clothes that really can reflect who they are and who they want to be, but they don't know how to do it. We do that kind of work together. That's my favorite moment because that’s when they discover, I can do this. I can be this. I can have this.

I think that especially for women, it's so hard. I really feel for women. I do. All they do is take care of, take care of their kids, take care of their husband. They're just constantly give, give, give, giving. Then do they have any time for themselves? Do they have any moment where it can be just about them? When I usually come to someone, that is one of their moments that they get to have. I get to experience that with them. I love it. Then they’ll call me in a month or two weeks and they’ll say, "Oh, my god, I just feel so much better. Every time I walk out the door I don't have to think, do I look okay? Am I okay? Am I enough?" It's funny. With my book, when it first came out it was Change Your Clothes, Change Your Life: Because You Can't Go Naked. That was the subtitle because you really can't. That's why I did it. I wanted to be funny and fun. You are required to wear clothing by law. People always say, what about a nude beach? I'm like, okay, I'll give you that, but do you live your life on a nude beach? No, you don't. What we did was -- it's been some years since the book has come out. As you know, we're relaunching in paperback on August 25th. We rewrote the forward. It's all the things that I've learned since the book has come out.

I have been on the road traveling all over the country doing style events in all kinds of places: Fargo; Minnesota; Ponte Vedra, Florida; Minneapolis; Wisconsin; the heartland of the country; Springfield, Missouri. I've been everywhere. I have been dressing these women, doing style events and book signings and also doing some local television. I've learned so much from all of these women. It's been such an education for me, one that I have loved and treasured. It's been a wealth of knowledge of what women go through and also how it's a little different in different parts of the country, different kinds of challenges. Yes, we are America, but we do have different regions that have different little cultural things. The Midwest is different from the East Coast, from the West Coast, from the South, from New England. It's fascinating. I've tried to impart some of these things that I've learned in the forward. Then we have changed the subtitle. The reason that we changed the subtitle, I wanted to say Change Your Clothes, Change Your Life: Because You're Worth It because you are worth it. You're worth that moment every day of self-care and a little bit of self-reflection to say, what do I want to say today to the world? How do I want to feel? To take that moment to connect to yourself is very powerful.

Zibby: It's almost like you're doing your own branding exercise. I don't think that everybody necessarily pauses the way you're suggesting to think deeply about what they're wearing, their style versus who they are. It's a whole nother level. There's one thing, what looks good on my body? I feel like most women have kind of figured out through trial and error the kinds of things they can pull off and the kinds of things they can't. I'm not going to wear a skintight -- [laughs]. I know A-line is my thing. I'm just going to stick to that. However, to think more deeply about it the way you suggest, what does it say about me? Who do I want to be? What do I want to show when I go out the door like when I do this? It's a really interesting concept that I feel like people are not really talking about. That's why I think it's so interesting.

George: Thank you so much. They're not talking about it. That's what is so bizarre to me. When the stakes are high, we know how to do it. When you have to go to the PTA meeting and you know you're going to see all those other moms, you'll take time to give yourself a blowout, put on a little mascara, put on a little lip, make sure you're wearing the A-line dress that you feel really good in because you know you're going to see those other women. But why don't you do that all the time? Here's the thing. People will say to me, because I'm running around. Yeah, but here's the deal. This is what really defines it. How about when you don't do it, you throw on anything, you don't even know what you have on, you go to the grocery store because you're going to get groceries for dinner that night, and you bump into your husband's boss for some weird reason? He happens to be there, or his wife. You're like, oh, god, don't look at me, don't look at me. I just ran to the store because I needed to get some fennel for this delicious thing I'm making for the dinner tonight. Don't look at me. What do you mean don't look at me? We see you. You're not invisible. How the hell do you want us not to look at you? Of course we're looking at you. You don't have to have those experiences. How many times have you bumped into someone where you've been so mortified because you just feel so disheveled, you hate what you have on, and you feel horrible?

My thing is if you have clothes in your closet that always are the great colors for you -- in other words, if you have to buy a T-shirt because you like T-shirts in the summer, nice cotton lightweight T-shirts, and you're going to Target to get the three-dollar T-shirt, just get it in the color you look good in. What's the difference? You're buying one anyway. Then when you are at the grocery store and you have on a little T-shirt and you've got those pretty blue eyes and you're wearing it with a pair of just khaki shorts and just a flip-flop, but at least it's the blue T-shirt that highlights your eyes and your hair's in a ponytail. You still look great. You're not all dolled up. You're running around casual, and you look great. That's the other thing. I think that women have a very -- they all know how to get dressed up. They all know what to wear to clean the house or to do some yardwork or do some gardening or whatever, but they don't know how to run around and be causal, running around, errands, dropping the kids off the school, going to the grocery store, meeting a girlfriend for lunch, going to maybe some club that you're in, a meeting, or whatever it is. They don't know how to do that. Even the girls that work, which is so many, what if you're in a casual job? What do I wear to work? How do I look professional but still feel casual, but still feel relevant, but still feel modern?

It's overwhelming. When you know what colors you look good in, when you know what silhouettes look good on your body, what's flattering, what's camouflaging your challenges, accentuating your assets, and you know all of these things, it all becomes a very different experience because you have a much stronger point of view. You also know what you want to say. My look is, fill in the blank. My look is classic but casual. My look is modern and cool. My look is edgy and sophisticated, whatever it is. If you start to pay attention to it, it becomes a different thing. The other thing I love to tell is that I'll clean out someone's closet, we'll go through things, and she'll say to me, "I just wear that to walk the dog." I'm like, "Are you single?" "Yeah." "Did you want to say single? Did you want a Friday night date?" Girl, who's coming up to you in that? Put on the cute jeans that fit you great. If you're wearing a little sweatshirt, maybe it's the sweatshirt that makes your eyes look great or lights up your skin. When you start talking to someone on the street and you meet this guy or whatever, you're feeling good. You're presenting a different part of yourself. You're not apologizing for yourself. I have found that in spades across the country.

Women apologize for themselves so much subconsciously because they just threw on clothes. They feel horrible inside. They don't feel like they look good. They don't feel confident. Not just running around in their lives, but how about when they go to the cocktail party in the neighborhood and they see the girl walk in and they're like, why does she always look cute? She always looks cute. She always has the cute dress on. She always has a cute top on. I'm sitting over here like a big shlunk. I hate the way I look. That is horrible. That's not good to yourself. That's not being good to who you are. That's what I love about empowering women. People use that word so much. I hate to even use it myself because it's gotten so overused. When you hear it in this context, that's what it really means. Give yourself that moment of confidence and self-care and self-love. That's what empowerment is, so that you don't feel less than in a situation. The school pickup line, oh, my god, that is just the worst. They're feeling horrible. They’ve got the baseball hat on to cover their hair. They don't even know what they're wearing. I like to set people up for success. That's so much of what this book does.

Zibby: That's awesome. It's so true. I think you're talking about two different things, how you seem to other people and the shame when you're not as put together as you could be, but also how you feel when you present a certain way. Actually, I feel like I've been thinking about clothing more than usual because of the quarantine. When I left home, I brought two weeks of clothes. I was like, that's all. I'm going to be gone for two weeks. Let me just grab a few things. I don't usually sit around in my sweatpants or my pajamas all day, but like most people during quarantine, there has been a lot more of that than usual when I'm busy running around like everybody else. It's amazing to me how much even what you wear affects your mood. If you don't get dressed or you don't brush your hair, you don't get out of the jammies or whatever, I think over time it really wears away at your energy level, even.

George: That's so true. Yes, thank you for bringing it up. With the quarantine and the fact that this is happening, that's absolutely true. What happens there is the reason that you feel bad, and I've talked to so many women, is that you start to disconnect from yourself. The way that you know this is that when you do have that Zoom call, whether it's for work or it's a virtual birthday, which I've been to so many -- I've seen more people in the last three months on camera communicating than I have seen in the last three years. What happens, you hear women say, "I had a Zoom call. I did my hair. I did my makeup. I put on the cute top. I feel so much better." Why? Why is that? Ask yourself. You know why that is? Because you took the time to connect to yourself. It's not because you look prettier. There's no pretension in what I'm saying. That's where people get sometimes, when they first hear me talk, "I don't care what other people think." No, darling, it's not for the other people. It's for you. It's for you. There's no pretension. As a matter of fact, it's the dead opposite. It's the dead opposite of the fact that is for other people. It's for yourself. What do you want in your life? How do you want to be seen? How good do you want to feel? That's what this is about. This isn't about anyone else. Once they understand that, they're like, oh, yes, that makes so much sense.

With this quarantine, listen, wear the sweats, but wear the ones that make you feel good. If the ones that you have don't make you feel good, go online and find an inexpensive pair. There's tons of them. Now that we're into summer, it's all about the tank tops and the T-shirts and the shorts. There's so many places to go to shop for clothing that's inexpensive. Clothing does not have to be expensive at all. I am not a proponent of that. That's the other thing where I love talking because there's nothing pretentious about this. This is not about glamour. This is not a Pretty Woman situation, the movie. This is about you and self-care. You can get clothing at any price point. You can get it very inexpensively that makes you feel good and look good. It's up to you. When people work with me, I always say you're your own banker. I don't know what your situation is. You decide. I can take you anywhere and shop. As a matter of fact, when I referenced being all over the country doing these style events, I did them in these boutiques that were very inexpensive. Most of the items in the boutique were under a hundred dollars. A lot of them were under fifty. It wasn't like I was at these glamourous, very expensive boutiques all over the country dealing with women. No, no, no. I was dealing with women at every price point, and I do. Here's the other thing. I'm on QVC. I work for a brand called LOGO by Lori Goldstein. Her clothes are so inexpensive, but they're fantastic and wonderful fabrics and amazing comfort. She knows a woman's body. It's fabulous. I love working with these clothes because it's another tool that I can give people for their closet. I call it a closet full of tens. If it's not a ten, get rid of it.

Zibby: I loved that. That was actually one of the best lines in the book, I thought. I was like, yeah, why do I keep all these clothes around that they're like, eh? I don't know. Then I feel bad because I bought them.

George: Right. That's a whole thing. That's where I want to help. When you go shopping, when you kind of know what you look good in -- by the way, all of this comes from -- people are probably like, where does he get his information from? How does he know what looks good? It all comes from film and television, meaning that when you see someone in a movie or on any television show -- by the way, even the political debates, do you know the hours of conversation that go into the color of the tie, the color of the jacket, the dress color, what these people are wearing and what it says and what it's going to invoke? It's huge. This is what I realized. If you look at your favorite sitcom, really start to look at what people with your coloring are wearing. How are they going to pop the eyes on camera? How are they going to illuminate the skin? How are they going to bring out the hair color for everyone? That’s where I get all, we call them tricks of the trade or hacks, if you will. It comes from a structured place. I just think that it's so important for you to take the time to give yourself self-care. You are worth it. You really are worth it.

Zibby: Love it. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors now that you've survived the process of writing this book?

George: I think that you have to be passionate about what you say. I'm sure that that's the obvious. I don't think that you can be overwhelmed. I think if you concentrate on the fact of the how -- how am I going to get this book published? How am I going to write a book? How is it going to happen? -- you're focusing on the wrong thing. You have to focus on what you want to say, and say it. I know this might sound a little woo-woo, if you will, but the universe does take over. You don't have to worry about the how. You just have to be really clear about what you want to say and how you want to say it, and do that. Then you'll start to align yourself with the right people. You'll get to it. You'll get to a publisher. You'll get to an agent. You'll get to all of those things that you're supposed to go there. This is a time where we want to hear from you. One of my favorite books is, Brené Brown, Daring Greatly. I'm obsessed with her. The reason that I'm obsessed with her, she talks about how to be vulnerable and how that affects you in your life and how great it is. She talks to us in a way where it's like a best friend that sat down and had coffee with us. She's like, okay, here's the deal. I love that. I love people. I love making people feel good in any way that I can, whether it's dressing them and help them to discover who they are or what they want to be and how they want to be seen, or being on television and inspiring them, doing a wonderful podcast like this and being able to just let people know that they do matter. By the way, here's the other thing, you have to look in the mirror every day and just look at yourself and say, I'm enough. I am enough, because you are.

Zibby: I love it. You're like a wardrobe therapist. It's great.

George: It's funny. You said no one's really talking about this. I don't think people are. I really don't. One of my goals is -- I love Oprah Winfrey. I loved Super Soul Sunday. I love what she talks about. She's talked about every aspect of life and this kind of work. She talks about it with food. She talks about it with money. She talks about it with love. But she has never talked about this part of it with the clothing. I just want to get to her and say, I want to talk to you about this. I know from watching her with all of the interviews that she does and all of the work that she does, she subscribes to this. I know she does because I see it. I think it's easier for people when you do subscribe to it. It's something I'm so excited to have out there and to really help women and let them know you are enough, this is self-care, and then give them all the fun tricks of the trade. I will tell you one other story because I know we probably have to stop. You know me, I'll go on forever.

Zibby: After this. [laughs] I'm putting the hook or whatever that expression is, giving you the hook.

George: This is really funny. I got this woman. She came to me through a friend of a friend of a friend. She called me. I never met her. I went up to her house. We started doing her closet. She was in relationship. They were not engaged. She had been married. He had been married. She was in a job where she was having her own business, but it wasn't going the way she wanted and all of these things. We were going through her closet. We started pulling out things. It was Eddie Bauer, Eddie Bauer skirts, Eddie Bauer dresses, Eddie Bauer jackets. I was like, what is all this stuff? We were laughing. She said, "I know. It's Eddie Bauer." I said, "I didn't even know they made all this stuff. Why do you have all this in your closet?" She goes, "Because when I get off the subway at night from work, there's an Eddie Bauer store." I said, "Walk the other way. Don't go to that store." In our working together, she got married. I did her wedding dress. Her business totally became amazing, all of these changes because she just became such a different person once she had clothes that made her feel incredible and let her say what she wanted to say to the world. She was an entrepreneur. It was wonderful to watch.

Zibby: That's awesome. It's so great what you do. Your way of making people feel good about themselves, it's just super honorable, really. It's a service that you do. It's really amazing, what you do for making people feel good about themselves. That's one of the keys to happiness, really, that inner sense of confidence. Anyway, so it's really great what you do. I'm glad you shoved it all into the book so that we can all have a little piece of it to take along with us.

George: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Zibby: It was my pleasure. Thanks, George. Bye.

George: Bye-bye.

Claire Nicogossian, MAMA, YOU ARE ENOUGH

Zibby Owens: Hi. Happy Monday. Actually, I don't like when people say happy Monday. I don't know why I said that. Anyway, welcome back. I hope you guys had a great weekend. This is the second week of my July Book Blast. Get excited. The first day is Advice Monday. It's assorted advice all day for this Monday. I hope you enjoy it. Stay tuned. All week we're going to have kid's books and beach reads, self-help and more. We're kicking it off with Advice Monday. Stay tuned.

Dr. Claire Nicogossian is the author of Mama, You Are Enough: How to Create Calm, Joy, and Confidence Within the Chaos of Motherhood. As soon as I heard the title, I knew I had to pick up this book as soon as possible. Originally from Washington, DC, Dr. Claire Nicogossian completed her undergrad degree in psychology and early education, and her master’s degree in counseling from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. She then became a psychologist and got her doctorate in clinical psychology at the American School of Professional Psychology, also in Virginia. She completed an internship at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, and then had fraternal twin girls and moved to Rhode Island. Now she's there, returned to clinical work, and completing her post-doctoral fellowship at RICBT in North Kingstown. She has worked in a variety of clinical settings including the Psychiatric Institute of Washington, County Mental Health Center, and the Catholic University Counseling Center. She also works in private practice. Dr. Claire is passionate about well-being and self-care for individuals with a focus on parental well-being and writes about these topics at MomsWellBeing.com, Mothering.com, The Today Show Community Parenting Team, and at her self-help column, Ask Dr. Claire. You can also listen to her podcast, "In-Session with Dr. Claire."

Hi, Claire. I'm sorry I'm late. How are you?

Claire Nicogossian: I'm good. No apologies needed. Two minutes still feels like on time.

Zibby: I was actually taking the quiz on your website.

Claire: That's awesome.

Zibby: I was like, how much longer could this be? [laughs]

Claire: It is long. You know what? I appreciate that because I created that a couple years ago. Now I realize, who has time for all those questions?

Zibby: No, no, no. It was good. I had time. I just didn't have time right now. I should've done it an hour ago before I was in the middle of doing a podcast. I was like, oh, how fun is this? I'll never pass up a quiz.

Claire: I love it. It's fun. I love to do that because it's almost a baseline of what I would do when I'm working with clients. I feel like that information's so important and powerful for people if they can start with their physical health and they can go to a primary care physician or they can go to their counselor and have a nice foundation to start from.

Zibby: That awesome. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Can you tell me more about your book? which of course I left over behind me. I have it. [laughs] Tell listeners about your book and what it's about and what inspired you to write it.

Claire: Thank you so much for having me on. So generous what you're doing for authors, so thank you so much, and what you have done. I'm a mother of four daughters. I am also a clinical psychologist. When I became a mother with all this education, these advanced degrees, a master's and a doctorate, those first couple months, that first year of motherhood, I said, oh, my goodness, there's so many things I'm feeling. There's so many things I'm going through. I've done as much education you can in mental health. How come we're not talking about these things? I would go to moms' groups. At the time, I was in this twins group. I just wanted to talk about real emotions. I love my daughters, I love being a mom, but is anybody else bored? Is anybody else frustrated? Does anybody else feel so angry from your sleep deprivation or frustrated with your partner or husband because you can't get them on the same page? It was like this wall would go up. It was taboo to talk about. That became a lot of the inspiration for the book, is to talk about things that us moms are going through that I hear about in my profession. Moms would come in. I work with a lot of news mom, postpartum, second-time moms, or people who are going through parenting issues and just need some support.

Whenever they want to talk about motherhood or fatherhood, they always start with a little disclaimer. I love my children so much, but I need to tell you they're driving me crazy. I'm overwhelmed. I feel ineffective parenting them. How come it seemed so easy with child number one, but now child number two, I don't want to be around? I started hearing these narratives and experiences from moms and just giving them space to talk about it. When we do that, they can change. They can look at themselves and not go to this place of judgement. In a nutshell, that's what the book is about. It's about the emotions that all of us mothers experience. I call them the shadow emotions. I do so intentionally, inspired by Carl Yung who talks about going to those places within ourselves so we know where our pain is so we can have a greater understanding and awareness. That was the framework of what I wanted to do. I don't want to call emotions negative. When they're negative, we start judging ourselves. I shouldn't feel that. Well, we are feeling it. Either you're pushing it down, you're ignoring it, you're denying it, or it's coming out in another way. If I can give space to those emotions, anger, sadness, disgust, embarrassment, shame, fear, and worry, and let's call them shadow emotions, then we become curious about it.

Zibby: This is like in Inside Out, the movie. Have your kids seen that? We have the books. Each one of the books is shame, disgust, joy. Just throwing that out. [laughs]

Claire: It's true. I remember that movie coming out when this book was in process. I thought, we have to spell it out for ourselves too. It doesn't have to be so complicated.

Zibby: What tips can you give to moms who are feeling this way who can't maybe have a session with you? Although, I feel like I want to sign up for how you scaled your services. What are some encouraging things or tips that you can share?

Claire: The first thing that I think is important for moms is don't be afraid to allow yourself to feel. Feel without judging. Just be curious. I live in Rhode Island. The analogy I always use in therapy is when you're at the beach, you look at waves come in and out. You're not really judging them. You're just observing them. Oh, that's a heavy surf. That's a light wave. Wow, look, it's a rough surf today, or super calm. If we start looking at our inner world like that, then we get out of that shame and judgment. That's number one. Then number two, it's so important to physically take care of yourself. It was interesting. When I was writing the book, I went to a conference. I was talking to another parenting author. I said, "How did you make a break into having your book published?" The advice I was given was, "Wait until your kids are older to publish this book." I remember responding to myself -- I was tired. I was exhausted. I feel like I work all the time, but it brings me so much joy to write. You lose the essence if you're away from the moment of parenting to look back on it. I feel like that's the voice that I really bring, is that I'm in it right now. I'm doing the distant learning. I call it a COVID meltdown every afternoon. I had one right before I turned this on to meet with you.

Zibby: I'm sorry.

Claire: Oh, no, it's just life. Someone's always overwhelmed. The step is just to allow yourself to feel, to take care of your physical health, to get the sleep. As exhausted as you may be, try to know your amount of sleep you need. When you sleep and are rested, then you can access your coping skills. Your thoughts feel a little clearer. The third thing I think is so important, with everyone at home right now, and I'm sure listeners can relate and we're starting to reopen the world a little bit, but there's not a lot of alone time for parents. How do you get that self-care when you're with your kids now constantly in all these different roles? What I say to parents, and moms especially, is watch the voices in your head. How are you talking to yourself? Be kind just like you'd talk to a friend. Those are some of the quick tips that I always like to remind moms to do. Also, don't get into this mindset that you have to be productive all the time. I think that's the piece that can be really overwhelming. The way I've been framing this time in the world is that if you lost a loved one, you'd allow yourself to grieve. You would scale back and have to just see it day by day. I'm doing a lot of that in sessions with clients and reminding myself that we're all grieving in our own way in different intensities. Let go of that need to be productive. Maybe the most accomplished thing you can do is feed your family and get outside for a nice walk.

Zibby: It's actually easier for me to do six podcasts in a day than it is to go on a walk. [laughs] I know I should be going on walks. Everybody's going on walks. Why am I not going on walks?

Claire: It's hard. Yesterday, I was in between a bunch of sessions. Then I had to teach in the afternoon. It just felt so suffocating being in the house. I took my oldest girls, teenagers, they're fraternal twins, I said, "Let's just go for a quick walk." I came back, and I felt better. Sometimes I think it's fun to be in that mode of just recording or being productive, and then other times...

Zibby: How old are all your girls?

Claire: My oldest are fraternal twins. They're seventeen and a half. They're finishing their junior year. I have a soon-to-be seventh grader, she twelve, and then a soon-to-be fifth grader. She's ten.

Zibby: We have a similar spread. Actually, it's very similar because I have fraternal twins also who are about to be thirteen next week. Then I have an almost-seven-year-old and a five-and-a-half-year-old.

Claire: Very similar.

Zibby: I'll be where you are in a couple years.

Claire: It's amazing. It's a lot to juggle all those different developmental stages, but I think it's such a joy.

Zibby: When you were saying about the surf coming in and watching the weather, this is a big wave and now it's a storm, I'm like, yeah, but I feel like I'm watching -- and I'll include my husband. As adorable as he is, everybody has moods. I'll include my own moods. I have tons of moods. So that's all six of us with different tides. We're all crashing on the beach in different ways on different days. It's a lot harder to manage all of our emotions. If someone's having a bad day and they're having a big storm and you don't even know why and it makes no sense because the Hatchimal didn't open or whatever it is and the other person's upset because of something bigger like some friends such-and-such, then you have to manage all of it as the mom, or some dads too, I'm sure. How do you deal with all of it at once?

Claire: It's so true. That's the human part of it. We can have these ideals. Then what does that look like? as you just described. What we do in our family, and I think I've coached the girls pretty well, sometimes it's not effective, but I always say you have a right to every feeling, but you don't have a right to take it out on someone. That's a message I say. Oh, you seem pretty angry. You're not being kind with your words. Do you need a break? I'll model that. Girls, I am so tired. I am feeling really sad. I'm just a little quieter tonight. It's about labeling, identifying, and then making that conscious effort. How are we going to treat each other right now? And giving them permission to go take a break. I'm not being disrespectful. For example, one of the girls, you're yelling and you're not being nice to your sister. I'm wondering what we can do about that. What do you need? And giving her permission to go to her room and just take care of herself instead of, why are you feeling that way? Why are you being so mean to your sister? You're the older one. Okay, we need to pause and take a break. It's not kind right now. That's this message that I repeat. Some days it's more effective than others. Like I said, I had a meltdown right before we started, but that's life.

Zibby: I feel like with so much time with the kids now especially, as I know all of us are home with the kids, I keep trying different things emotionally and just seeing, okay, I'm going to try this. Today I'm in the mindset where I can try this tool that I've read about. Also, just not being able to hide my own emotions, as I'm sure with you, here we are. I can't say I'll be back in twenty minutes, not that I used to do that so often, but there's just no hiding it. If I'm crying, they're seeing me crying. I might as well say, you know, moms get sad too.

Claire: Exactly. I think that's a beautiful thing you do, is to normalize that feelings happen. When feelings are pushed away, repressed, ignored, judged, then you feel shame for feeling them. It's okay for parents, and especially moms right now -- moms are carrying the mental load of this pandemic. That's what we're seeing. Moms are so overwhelmed. That's not because they're ineffective. That's not because they're doing something wrong. It's because what we're living through. It's constant. It's okay to have those feelings. It's just, what are you going to do about that? The book, it was interesting, the way I organized it is looking over those five big emotions that we talked about earlier and then breaking them down kind of on a continuum. A mom can pick up the book and say, today I'm feeling irritable and I'm feeling frustrated. She can go to this section in the book and read about it. What does that look like in motherhood? What are some of those thoughts she may be saying to herself?

Then I give tools and instructions on -- number one, in this book you'll see that my writing is all about compassion, all about taking care of what's going on inside and healing, whatever that may be. The message is received going up from a partner, from society. She can see, okay, I can manage my thoughts. If I'm saying this, here's a healthy way to say that. Here's moving from the shadow into thriving. There's the cognitive piece. Then there's steps that she can do, whether it be reaching for support, journaling, talking to a counselor. I have a little meditation at the end called The Thriving Mama Reflection, just an encouraging way to be compassionate about yourself when you feel it. It's not a book that I intended for moms to read front to cover. It's almost like a resource. If I'm in a moment and I want to just get in the car and go but there's nowhere to go, can I just label the emotion I'm feeling and read about it? That was my goal.

Zibby: That's awesome. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors now that you have a book out in the world?

Claire: I appreciate that question so much. If you are an aspiring writer and writing, one, write as often as you can. Two, don't wait for someone to give you permission to write. Just write. Then take risks. Continue to have that grit. My book, it was interesting. What you'll see is this lovely cover and lovely message inside. What readers and listeners may not know is that it was rejected I think twenty-four times over the course of four years. I have a wonderful literary agent, Regina Brooks, at Serendipity Literary Agency. She believed in me. That really helped. I had her in my corner. The messages we always received was, the world's not ready for a book this honest. She held fast that hope for me, as did my husband and friends and children and parents. That gave me the courage because it felt worse to give up on writing than not to write. For me, I just kept on believing and regrouping. Those rejections were hard. There was one moment at the dinner table in 2018. We had come back from a trip to California visiting family. I'd gotten my last rejection. I sat at that table with my husband and the girls. I said, "I think it's time to give up writing." Then I sat with it. Then of course, how authors/writers write, then they get an idea. They're like, oh, my goodness, I want to ignore that idea and not write. I looked at my husband, I said, "You got to take the kids for four hours. I literally have to write something. I can't not write it." That was an excerpt that I submitted to Motherly that Diana Spalding said, "Claire, I love this so much. Can I put it in our Motherly Guide to Becoming Mama?" That felt like the universe was like, okay Claire, I know you wanted to give up, but you kept going. For me, it was just getting quiet and listening as a writer in spite of the rejections, if that makes sense.

Zibby: Of course it does. That's awesome. That's such an inspiring story. You hear it. It takes a lot to get it published. Hearing your story, rejection hurts. There's so many times when, for every book, think of all the authors who did give up and they're not out there, the books that weren’t.

Claire: The books that weren’t, that's the piece too, what I would say to any aspiring author is your voice is what makes you the writer. Don't try to be like anybody else's voice. Some of the feedback we received is, "Oh, my gosh. We'll buy Claire's book, but we think it's too heavy. We'd rather it be funnier." I remember having these conversations with my literary agent, Regina. She's like, "Claire, you got to be true to who you are. You can't be funnier. You can't be indignant. You are you, and this is your voice." That's the other piece. Be open to feedback, but don't give up who you are as a writer and your voice.

Zibby: That's great advice. Thank you so much. I'm glad we connected. I'm going to go back now and read all of the results of my quiz from your website, Dr. Claire Nicogossian. Thank you. Thank you for all your tips. Thanks for helping so many moms out there.

Claire: Thank you, Zibby. I appreciate talking to you today. This was a lot of fun.

Zibby: Thanks. I hope the COVID meltdown pre-our call has been resolved by the time you walk out of the room. [laughs]

Claire: Thank you. I'm optimistic. Have a great one.

Zibby: You too. Buh-bye.

Claire: Bye.

Zibby: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Advice Monday on the July Book Blast. I know that some of these were from the quarantine and some might seem old even though they’ve just come out. I had to get them out in one big sweep. I hope that you've gotten some useful life tips as you've listened today.

Ali Wenzke, THE ART OF HAPPY MOVING

Zibby Owens: I'm here today with Ali Wenzke who's the debut author of The Art of Happy Moving: How to Declutter, Pack, and Start Over While Maintaining Your Sanity and Finding Happiness. She moved ten times in eleven years and started a blog called The Art of Happy Moving. She currently lives in Chicago with her husband and three children.

Welcome, Ali. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Ali Wenzke: Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. I love your podcast. I'm so excited to get to chat with you. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. I was just about to tell you, I had so much fun going through your book. There is so much useful and fun information. It was like a home improvement magazine meets self-help life skills meets really hands-on, useful advice. It was great, and so pretty and so fun to look at. It was a treat. I felt like it was total escapist-type book.

Ali: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

Zibby: No problem. Why don't you tell listeners what The Art of Happy Moving is about?

Ali: The Art of Happy Moving is a guide to make moving a less stressful and a happier experience. It's divided up into two halves. The first half is really getting ready for the move, so deciding whether you should move at all and how to declutter, buying and selling a home, moving with pets, telling your kids about it, and how to go through that whole process. That's the first half. Then the second half of the book is once you're there and how to really live happily ever after, so how to create a home that you love, how to make connections with people when you move to a new city, how to create new habits when you move. That's one thing that I hope readers take away from this, is that it is a fresh start and this is a perfect time to start new habits and to have your life you [indiscernible] expected. I was thinking of it later that it's like a makeover book. You're starting off, and the beginning is like the before. The second half is the after. This is the new fabulous you after you move and the steps to get there.

Zibby: I also think -- we're recording this now in quarantine via Skype. This obviously has huge applications for when people are about and out and there's tons of moving. I know there is some moving now too. I feel like this book is so helpful, particularly now because people are at home and regrouping in such a big way and looking at their home and spending time in their home. Half of your book is all about that. It's so useful. People are talking about how they don't have time -- they're meeting their neighbors for the first time. It's almost like the entire world has decided to just move and live where they actually live. Do you know what I mean?

Ali: [laughs] Uh-huh. I grew up in Miami. We went through some hurricane situations where everything was shut down. It was very similar where you get to know your neighbors. You're living at home and just finding joy in where you are and the things that you love about your house, or deciding to make changes. I know a lot of people are decluttering right now. I keep seeing everyone posting on Instagram of things that they have decided to declutter all of their stuff. They're doing their closets. I think people want a sense of organization and structure amidst all the chaos. They're trying to find some place to have control. It's a good time. You're at home, so a good time to start doing your closets and everything. I do think it's helping to find ways to love your home right now because that's where we all are right now.

Zibby: You might as well.

Ali: You might as well, exactly.

Zibby: You might as well love it because that's what you got. You moved ten times in eleven years. Then you started a blog about it called The Art of Happy Moving. Why did you move so much? I want to know about each one, a sentence about each move.

Ali: I would love to say Dan and I are romantic nomads who go where the wind takes us, but no, we're very practical. We went for medical school for my husband, law school for me. We were following our education and our careers. We moved from Massachusetts to Maryland to Ohio to California to Illinois to Tennessee and then back to Illinois with a few local moves in there as well. It was really to follow our dreams and our life goals that took us crisscrossing around the country.

Zibby: Then some of that time you had children too in the mix.

Ali: Yes. We had three kids once we moved to -- when we were in Chicago. We were in Illinois. Then we moved to Tennessee with all of them. Then we moved back. My youngest daughter, by the time she was a little past two years old, she had moved into her fourth house. She was like, "I'm never moving again." She would just walk around the house and be like, "Never moving. Never moving." She had been through a lot.

Zibby: I actually liked, you were really open about how you moved one place and you just didn't like it. It wasn't what you expected. It was Knoxville, right?

Ali: Yes.

Zibby: It just wasn't the community you had in mind. The suburban lifestyle was a little too spread out for you. You had to reassess. That's a big deal, having to come to that conclusion based on feeling. Talk about that.

Ali: It was a tough experience because we had moved so often. I just figured we could live anywhere and we would be happy anywhere. Knoxville, Tennessee, is beautiful. It is a wonderful place. The people are really nice. We had made a pros and cons list when we were leaving Chicago. On the pros list was no state income tax, the beautiful weather. I'm from Miami, so weather is important. There was no state income tax. The weather was beautiful. We're by the mountains, a great place to raise the kids, all of these things which are true. Knoxville, Tennessee, is a beautiful place, really family friendly. Then on the other side were all the things that I didn't really look inward to me and think of what is important in my day-to-day life. Now, for me, I know I love being at the lake and going for runs around the lake. That's something that brings me a lot of joy. Going to comedy clubs in Chicago, the restaurants, having our kids walk to school, there were a lot of things that Knoxville didn't have. It's not Knoxville. It's just the things that are important to me. I do talk about a lot in the book, to really look inward of what's important to you. Florida is a fabulous place to live. I love Florida, but a lot of people hate living in Florida. It's not that it's the location. It's who you are and what's important to you. Connections was hard for me in Knoxville. It was a very tight-knit community. That was one of the big reasons I wrote this book, was because of social connections and wanting to help people when they moved to a city and they were displaced and they didn't know anyone. It was really hard for me. I have found that many people find themselves in that situation. That was really the inspiration for writing the book.

Zibby: Wow. When did the blog start?

Ali: Going a little bit backwards, one of the first things that I did was I created a company called Friend Matchup. This was, again, because I wanted to find a solution to people moving to a new place. Friend Matchup was just like match.com but for platonic friendships when you move to a new city. It was specifically for people moving to a new city. I didn't have the money to make it what I wanted to do with it. I shut it down, but I had written a lot for my website, Friend Matchup. I had all of this information and knowledge that I wanted to share. I thought, there's a need for this. I know because all these people from around the world had signed up Friend Matchup and said, I'm in Paris. I'm in Seattle. I just moved here and I'm really lonely. I figured, all this information, I need to get it out of me and create a book. I wrote a first draft of my book. Then I was very fortunate to get an agent. I realized I needed to flesh out my writing more. I had focused a lot on families and kids in the first draft. I started interviewing dozens and dozens of people about their moves and talking to movers and realtors and home stagers and getting the whole picture of moving. A blog seemed like the perfect place to do this, to have my different posts all the time about all the different aspects of moving. It was really fun getting direct feedback from readers and connecting with readers and just learning about the different issues that they were having and for me to be able to help them. I had my blog. Then I was very fortunate to get a publisher with William Morrow. That was how The Art of Happy Moving was born.

Zibby: You threw in there that law school was one of the reasons why you moved. I'm assuming you're also a trained lawyer, that you finished law school?

Ali: I did. Yes, I'm a lawyer by training, but I didn't practice law.

Zibby: What brought you to law school?

Ali: That's a great question. Originally, I thought I was going to be an international lawyer because I studied French, Spanish, and Italian in college. I wanted to help people through negotiations and what not. Then I got married. We were going to be domestic here in the US. I just wanted to have a background in something that could help me anything. With the law, the law comes up all the time, so any contract negotiation, real estate, but then also other things that pop up. I thought I would probably use it more in a business setting than in a legal setting at that point. Actually, I love school. [laughs] Going to law school was really fun.

Zibby: I love school too. Actually, what I'm doing now is more similar to school than anything I've done in the last twenty years because now I have routine deadlines and books to read and assignments. I feel like I've tried to structure my own little school.

Ali: That's fantastic. You're living the dream.

Zibby: [laughs] Yeah, right. Oh, yeah, that's it, living the dream. You include a five-step roadmap to moving, which is change your mindset, set goals, simplify, prepare, and focus on community, I'm just summarizing there, which is really what we can do about basically any challenge in our lives, moving, anything we're going through now. How do you feel like this might apply to the fact that we're all at home? Changing your mindset, setting goals, simplifying, preparing, community, which of these is most relevant to you today?

Ali: I want to say all of them. I do. With changing the mindset, for me when we first started all these pandemic -- we've now been home, we're twenty-eight days that we've been at home. I felt a lot of panic. Panic was my mindset at the time. My husband's a doctor. Lots of his family is doctors. My college roommates are doctors. I was very worried about a lot of people that I care about. Then I started switching my mindset to gratitude where I started to feel thankful for any moment that we had together. Then thinking about food, I was very panicked in the beginning about food. Did I get enough food? Are we going to be okay? Then I switched to gratitude. We have the food that we have right now. I'm so thankful for what we have on the table. I'm so thankful for Instacart that came and brought more food. It was a very big day. I think changing your mindset is just critical at all points to really look at the positive and to try to find ways to see goodness in tough times. It's the same thing with the moving that I try to do. It's stressful, of course. People look at it as stressful and dread, but then at the end thinking of it as an opportunity and what can come of it. I think the same is true with the pandemic and what we're going through right now.

I also think the setting goals was another one of them. I realized that for me it's sort of like a coping mechanism, setting goals, because it gives you a purpose. About a week ago when we realized, okay, we're in this, we're going to be here for a while, being the self-help author mom that I am, I was like, all right kids, here's some worksheets and we're going to set goals. Each of the kids set their goals of what their academic goals are. What do they hope to accomplish in the next couple months? What their physical fitness goals are, if they're going to try out for teams next year. What do they need to do to get ready for that? What are their social goals? Who are the people that they want to make sure to keep in contact with? whether it's friends or family members, cousins. Even though we're all at home, we do have limited energy of expending and time, so to really make time for those relationships.

Then also hobby goals, what are fun things that we want to do in these next couple months? I think setting goals is important just to give you purpose through all of this. Again, control over chaos where you can just find ways to make things work. Preparedness is important, reducing stress and simplifying. I do think the most important is connection. Again, it's the reason I wrote the book. Also, if you look at all the happiness research, the number-one indication of happiness is your social connections. I think we all feel that right now. That's never more true than this moment that we realize we need each other. Finding ways to connect with our loved ones right now, whether it is over Skype -- we've been doing Houseparty. I don't know if you've used that app, but it's really fun because you can play games with people at the same time. I think all five steps are important, but connections, I think the connections is everything.

Zibby: I think you're right. I didn't mean to ask you to have to pick one. [laughter] I wanted to highlight all five too. They really are great. By the way, that's really good advice about what you're doing with your kids because we have not set any goals. I'm going to literally get off this podcast and go write up some charts for those.

Ali: I can send you mine if you want.

Zibby: Awesome. Great. Even better. How old are your kids?

Ali: Fourteen, twelve, and my daughter just turned eleven a couple weeks ago. We had a quarantine birthday party.

Zibby: Nice. We haven't had a birthday in quarantine yet, but I'm sure we'll get there. I love doing quizzes. I feel like I was trained by Seventeen and YM and all those magazines back in the day. Now of course, they have quiz magazines that are just quizzes. Did you know that?

Ali: No, I didn't know that.

Zibby: I have a tween daughter. I have tween twins. The quizzes in your book were great because it asks you how to pick out where you want to live, what type of environment. Do you want a Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle? Do you want to listen to chirping birds when you wake up? I took this quiz. I live -- not right now because I'm out of the city just while this is all going on, but I mostly live in New York City and have my entire life. I didn't pick any letter A, which would tell you to live in a city. I'm a little concerned now about my choice of where my main home base is. I got D, which was basically you just want to be around your family and your loved ones, and it almost doesn't matter where you live. Tell me about the categories. What do you do if you are not living in the right place or you're a D like me?

Ali: For D, you love the country. Is that true? That's kind of the way that the quiz is. If you're a D, you are a country person. Do you think you're a country person in the city?

Zibby: Maybe. Right now, I'm a country person in the country and I'm really happy. [laughs]

Ali: It's fun to do the quizzes. I also grew up on Seventeen and doing all those magazines. I wanted to put them in there so that there would be just something fun and lighthearted while you're moving, there's a lot going on when you're moving, but also to create it as a starting point for a discussion. If you're moving with other people, you could see what's important to you, what's important to them. Let's say you are in the city. My advice would be to focus on the things that you can change. If you are a country person or someone who just likes to be at home, then focus on making sure that your home is a place that you can entertain people, if that's the way that you like to be with family or, if possible, to get an apartment with a garden view or a little bit quieter. There's always tradeoffs, but to change the things that you can change or focus on the things you can change. Then also, having your vacations. Let's say you have to be in New York City for work or whatever. Then make sure that your vacation time is in the space where you feel recharged. Instead of going to San Francisco for vacation, then find a country house somewhere that you can spend a week there.

Throughout the book and doing all the quizzes, I just wanted it as a way that people could really be more in tune with themselves. What are the little things that make them happy? Then you can incorporate that. It was fun doing it with my kids. They were doing the quiz of where they liked to be. For me, I'm a nature person and more suburban nature. I realized I need to be outside. I need to, whenever I can, go for a walk. That will make me feel better. Then hearing my kids, it's just funny. It was a different quiz about the home and what's important to you in your house, whether you are a visual person, or the smells. My daughter was a listener. She loved the sounds. I never would've known that had we not done the quiz together and talked about it. Now she has a fountain in her room. She always has music going or a sound maker. Those are things that bring her joy.

Zibby: I love that. I was a feeling person, which I could've told you because everything, I have to touch and put up to my face. All your tips, I was like, that is what my dining room looks like. That is my bedroom carpet. Those were awesome. I loved those. What is coming next for you? What do you want to do next? By the way, are you done moving? Are you firmly set where you are now? Or do you feel there are more moves in your future?

Ali: The average American moves 11.7 times in their lifetime. I think statistically we probably have more moves left. I don't know. I wouldn't say never. We may be moving again. In terms of what's next, I love helping people with moving. I'm going to continue with my blogging. I do a lot of speaking engagements. Right now, I'm trying to help people through the pandemic of moving because a lot of people are having to move right now. They had houses for sale or they're buying places. They need to move. I'm trying to work with organizations to -- donations right now, you can't donate things because of the pandemic. That is one thing I'd love to tell listeners who are decluttering. Please hold onto your items right now while you're decluttering. I went for a run a couple days ago. There were bags and bags and bags outside of a donation bin of things that people has been discarding during the pandemic. It's been raining. They're all sopping wet. They're not getting picked up. All these items that will not be able to be used is really sad. Please hold onto your items. They will be needed more than ever when this pandemic is over.

I'm trying to find a solution. I'm working with a major moving and storage organization, and moving with movers, and trying to find a storage facility where potentially people who are moving could just leave their things in storage and leave them there in quarantine, basically, so that when this is all over all of these charities can come pick up the items. I'm hoping to get that put together. If I do, I will let everybody know. For now, I'm focused on this and trying to help people through the move. It's different people that are moving every year. I just want to help them as they're going through it. Eventually, I'll probably write another book. For now, I'm just really focused on getting the message out about happy moving and how to make it a less stressful experience and to get the joy out of it because it is an incredible opportunity. I love the fresh start of moving. I am someone who actually enjoys moving because there is this goodness at the other end of it. That's what I'm doing for now.

Zibby: I would hope you like moving after dedicating your whole life. If you were like, ugh, what a pain, then I would say maybe it's time to look into something else. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Ali: Yes. One of the main things I would say would be to get on social media. I'm not saying this in terms of selling books. I think you hear that, you should be on social media. For me, I was never on social media until I started my blog. It was really scary because I was private. I just wasn't on social media. Having a social media author presence where you can connect with other writers is so important because you will get to go through all the stages with them. Writing can be a rollercoaster of ups and downs as you're going through it. To have other people on the ride with you makes it so much fun. You will celebrate each other's victories. You will commiserate over the tough parts. It makes all the difference. I have been very fortunate throughout this whole journey to make friends all around the world through Instagram. Some people prefer Twitter, Facebook, whatever, but for me, through Instagram, just meeting all these amazing writers everywhere. I would say get on social media because writing can be a lonely profession. This way, you always have your friends with you. You will make all these great connections. Start there. You learn a lot from each other too. Any questions, you can just ask your writer friends on social media.

Zibby: I love that. That's awesome. Thank you also, by the way, for contributing an essay to wefoundtime.com, my new online magazine that will be coming out soon too.

Ali: Thank you so much. I love your new magazine. I was reading all the articles last night. It just made me feel better.

Zibby: Good. That was the point. Thank god. Okay, I helped one person. It was all worth it. [laughs]

Ali: It was totally worth it. It did. It made me smile. Thank you, Zibby.

Zibby: Thanks so much, Ali.

Ali: Thank you. Buh-bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Jennifer Steil, EXILE MUSIC

Zibby Owens: Jennifer Steil is the author of two previous books, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, a memoir of her experience as a journalist in Yemen, and The Ambassador’s Wife, a novel about a hostage crisis that was also inspired by her own experience. Her latest book is called Exile Music. She currently lives in London with her husband and daughter.

Zibby: Hi.

Jennifer Steil: Hi there. Wow, I was too big for a minute.

Zibby: No, you're great. How are you?

Jennifer: I'm good. Thank you. Are you okay?

Zibby: I'm okay. I'm sorry. I'm usually very together. It's just been one of those days.

Jennifer: No, I get it.

Zibby: Your book is so good. I can't believe you reached out to me directly. I hadn’t read it. You know what? It's written in such a vibrant, refreshing, new way. I feel like I've read a zillion books about this period of time and the Holocaust and everything else. This is a whole different thing. Anyway, I am loving it, just so you know.

Jennifer: Thank you. I really appreciate that. I'm sorry you've had such a short time to read it.

Zibby: No, it's okay. I did what I could. I will come back to it because the characters are embedded in my brain now and I'm really excited. Why don't you tell people watching and listening, because this will eventually be a podcast as well, what Exile Music is about and what inspired you to write it?

Jennifer: Exile Music is based an underexplored slice of World War II history. During World War II, there were between ten and twenty thousand Jewish refugees in Bolivia. A lot of these were artists and musicians. I lived in Bolivia for four years and met some of these refugees and their descendants. I got the idea for the book when my husband came dashing home from work one night full of energy and said, "I just had the most interesting conversation with the Austrian Consulate. Did you know that during the war there were more than ten thousand Jewish refugees here?" I hadn’t known that. We'd only just moved to La Paz when I found this out. Soon after that, I met the son of one of these refugees who was born in La Paz the year that his parents arrived from Poland. His mother is from a small town in Poland that I'm not going to try to pronounce. This town was pretty much wiped out by the Nazis. Almost no one survived. His mother suffered horrific things while she was there. She was hidden below a pharmacy. Her two-year-old went blind in captivity and then was murdered by the Nazis along with her parents. Her husband had been conscripted by the Russian army. He was away with the Russian army for all of the war. After the war, somehow miraculously, they were reunited in Poland. She gave testimony to someone who has archived it in a Holocaust museum in Israel. John, my friend from Bolivia, gave me his mother's testimony which I read in full. He has not read it himself. Unsurprisingly, it's too traumatic for him to read. That was where this story started. I began wondering what it must have been like for these very urban professional musicians and actors and artists and others coming from Vienna to suddenly find themselves in the middle of the Andes living at twelve thousand feet. I just thought, not only is there a difference in culture and language, but a completely different -- sorry, our doorbell is suddenly ringing.

Zibby: That's okay. [laughs]

Jennifer: I'm hoping that my ten-year-old will get it. Sorry about that. So it began with me imagining what it must have been like for these refugees to arrive in La Paz at this time. At the time, my daughter was around three or four. She was very busy creating this imaginary world that was quite complex. It had not only a queen, but it had a president who was a hermaphrodite so that this person could equally represent men and women. That was her solution to that problem. She was creating such a complicated world. She had maps of it and drawings. I thought, if I were a little girl growing up in Vienna while the Nazis were closing in on me and my family and I wasn't able to understand or cope emotionally with what was going on, I might be tempted to retreat into an imaginary world. I started with those two things, with my friend John's story and with my daughter's imaginary world, and started with this little girl in Vienna who I knew I wanted to arrive in Bolivia young enough so that she could still adapt more flexibly than her parents could.

Zibby: Now it all makes sense a little. In the book, it seemed impossible that you hadn’t been to some of these places. Your knowledge, I'm like, she couldn't just be making this up. You must have been there. What brought you and your family to Bolivia? What were you doing there?

Jennifer: At the time, my husband was working for the European Union. My husband is British. He worked for the British Diplomatic Service his whole life and then was on secondment to the European Union when we lived in La Paz and then after Brexit went back to working for the British Foreign Office which is what brought us to Uzbekistan.

Zibby: Wow. How did you begin writing to begin with? Tell me a little more about your memoir. Now I want to go back and read everything you've written before.

Jennifer: Thank you. I was working as a journalist in New York City. I got an email from my high school boyfriend saying, "How would you like to come train journalists in an impoverished Southern Arabian country?" was how he phrased it. I wrote back and said, "Could you just give me the name of the country and tell me a little bit more about this?" He ended up coming to New York. I said, "Look, I have a good job in New York. I can't just run off to Yemen, but I could come for my remaining vacation days." I had about three weeks left. He said, "That's great." He talked to the editor of the newspaper in Sanaa, Yemen, who said, "Yeah, bring her over." I said, "I'll do a training for three weeks. That's all I can spare." So I went over to Yemen having never been to the Middle East before, having taught myself a few words of Arabic in one of those books called Learn Arabic in Ten Minutes a Day kind of things. I went over Yemen and met the staff of this newspaper who amazed me. I had never felt more welcome anywhere in my entire life. I'd never met people who were so eager to learn and to work for me. They treated me as if I were visiting royalty. The Yemenis were the most hospitable, warm people I'd ever met.

The owner of the paper said, "I love what you're doing with my reporters. Would you be willing to come back as editor-in-chief of the newspaper and turn it into The New York Times?" I said, "Well, I've never worked for The New York Times. I'm not sure anyone in their right mind would want me to run a newspaper. I have no managerial experience. I've never run a newspaper." I'd been a journalist for more than a decade, but I hadn’t actually run a newsroom, let alone in Yemen. I went back to New York, thought about it, and realized that, actually, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in the same little gray cubicle, so I moved back to Yemen, took the job, which was the most exciting thing I've ever done. It was incredibly challenging but also incredibly rewarding. I made such close friends with my reporters. I'm still in touch with almost all of them today. That first year I spent working with them was so interesting to me. I learned so much from them. I wanted the world -- this was 2006. Like now, there's a lot of bias against Muslims and a lot of bias against Yemenis. Hardly anyone I met in the US could place Yemen on a map. I just thought, I want people to know my staff. I want them to know these Yemenis. I want them just to meet them and get to know them and realize that the media reports aren't always accurate. That's how I came to write my first book which was a memoir of that time I spent running that newspaper. Because I ended up meeting my husband in Yemen at the end of that first year, I then ended up living in Yemen for three more years. My daughter was actually born while we lived there.

Zibby: You were a journalist. You lived in Yemen for all this time. You wrote the memoir. Then you switched to fiction and wrote The Ambassador's Wife. How did that happen? When did you come up with that idea? Do you mind that I'm asking you your whole life story here? [laughs]

Jennifer: No, I'm happy to tell you. Once I met my husband, he was, at the time, the British Ambassador to Yemen. Once I moved in with him, I was suddenly plunged into a deeply surreal universe for me never having had any contact with diplomatic life. Suddenly, we had bodyguards. We had Scotland Yard sleeping in our guest rooms and ministers visiting from the UK. It was just such an interesting and crazy world that I was suddenly in touch with. I thought, I have to write about this, but I can't write a memoir because I don't want to destroy my marriage right away.

Zibby: Yeah, I want to make it die a slow and painful death. [laughs]

Jennifer: I don't want to make it die at all.

Zibby: No, I'm kidding. I know. I'm kidding. That wasn't even funny. Go on.

Jennifer: That's all right. That's why I started writing fiction. I thought, I want to place something in this world so I can write about it, but from a fictional point of view. I also was kidnapped while I was six months pregnant when I lived in Yemen. That was my third year. That experience inspired the opening scene of The Ambassador's Wife which starts with a kidnapping. That scene is pretty much how it happened to me. Then having been kidnapped, I then came to the UK to give birth but moved back to Yemen with my infant daughter, which some people thought was a bit crazy. Then my husband was attacked by a suicide bomber and we were evacuated.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh.

Jennifer: That’s the nutshell version.

Zibby: Wow. I'm glad I asked because that's not most people's nutshell version. Wait, back up for a second to the kidnapping. How do you get over something like that? I don't know how it ended or started or whatever, but I'm assuming it must have been traumatic for you in some way. How do you then pick up and go on? What was it like, the mini version of it?

Jennifer: In a way, I think that the fact that I was pregnant actually saved me. First of all, I was with four other women who were amazing. They were cool as can be. They were protective of me because I was pregnant. A lot of them had lived all over the world. They'd been held at gunpoint before. This was not their first experience like this. They were so calm and helped me. There was a moment at which I thought, we're all going to die. They're going to line us up and execute us. My husband's going to lose me, our daughter. In my panicky phase of the kidnapping, I started having cramps. I thought, I'm going to lose her. I don't want to. I don't want to miscarry in the middle of a country with questionable healthcare either. I said, all right, if I'm going to keep this baby in, I have to calm down. I just have to calm down. Thankfully, I had learned how to do yoga breathing. This is the one time it was really useful to me. I started doing that breathing and doing a little chant to her just saying, stay in. Just stay right where you are. You're cozy. It's not safe out here, so you just stay right where you are.

I think that saved me. I'm not sure I would've been as calm had I not been afraid that if I didn't just learn how to relax then I was going to lose the baby, and then being with these other women who were incredible. I had lost my phone in a scuffle with this sheik who was holding us hostage and borrowed a phone from someone. Fortunately, I'd remembered by husband's phone number. He quickly got the government involved with getting us back. When I called him, you'd think I called to tell him what was for dinner. He was like, "Okay. Do you have a sat phone with you? Is Mohammed there? Could I talk to him? Who's holding you? Where did you drive?" When I got back, I said to him, "Weren’t you worried?" He said, "Worried? I didn't have time to worry. I had to get you out." He just goes instantly -- I think this is his diplomatic training. When there's a crisis, which there are a lot of in diplomatic life, you just have to go straight into solving the problem. You don't have time to freak out. I've never seen my husband freak out in a situation of stress. I think that helped.

Also, these other women, I think just knowing that they were there with me helped a lot. I invited them all for dinner about a month after this happened. One of them hadn’t even told her husband that it had happened. I thought, how did you explain us being gone for an entire day? This was interesting insight into someone else's marriage. The other women were one of the things that kept me calm. The UK also, they had me write up my experiences. That's the other thing that helped. Right after it happened and I got home and had had a bath, I wrote down every detail of what happened, which is why I was able to come up with the first scene of the book. I already had it written down in first draft form because I had to turn that into the office so they were aware of exactly how it had unfolded.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Now Anne Hathaway is going to star as you?

Jennifer: I think actually, unfortunately, that option has expired. If anyone out there is interested in the option, it's now re-available. These sort of things, I suppose, happen all the time with film options.

Zibby: Yes. I hear this over and over and over again.

Jennifer: I know. I was pretty excited about that, so we're very sad.

Zibby: I'm sorry.

Jennifer: There are worse things that could happen, especially now.

Zibby: I just interviewed Wally Lamb on this same show last week.

Jennifer: Wow.

Zibby: Yeah, it was really awesome. His option lasted fifteen years for I Know This Much Is True. They tried to make it all these different ways. He kept getting disappointed. Then he finally took the option back and now has just made it into a limited series that just aired last Sunday. Oh gosh, I forgot to watch last night. Anyway, the Sunday before this Sunday. It all worked out. It took a while, but he's like, "I'm glad because this is the form that it should be taking." This form wasn't even available then. All to say, you never know.

Jennifer: You really don't ever know. It could happen. We'll see.

Zibby: You still travel all over the place. You're in London now. You lived in Uzbekistan.

Jennifer: I am in London at the moment, but we don't live here. We actually live in Uzbekistan. About two months ago, I think it is now, we were evacuated because of this pandemic. Even though there were no cases in Uzbekistan when we were evacuated and London was an epicenter of the pandemic, I think the foreign office thought if we do get sick, they wanted us to be near British healthcare. That was their thinking in sending me and my daughter back here, but we didn't have anywhere to live. In the middle of this, we suddenly had to find an apartment with two days' notice, which we did miraculously through another writer because writers are wonderful people. We have somewhere to stay now, but we don't know how long we're here for or when we can see my husband again because he's still in Uzbekistan and the airspace is closed.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh.

Jennifer: We're apart until Uzbek airspace opens. Also, he's quite busy at the moment.

Zibby: Your whole life sounds like a movie. I'm glad you keep writing. I can't wait for the next. You must be working on something else, right?

Jennifer: I am, actually. I'm on the second draft of the next novel, which is completely different from anything I've ever done and I'm really loving writing. It's mostly in dialogue, which is my favorite. Someday if I ever grow up, maybe I'll write plays. For now, I'm doing this. I'm doing a PhD at the moment. This is part of the dissertation for that.

Zibby: That's right. I read that you were doing a PhD. I was like, does that really say expected 2021? Could she really be getting her PhD now in the middle of all of this? How unbelievable.

Jennifer: This wasn't going on when I started. The University of Birmingham has a distance learning for this. I talk to my supervisor every month. He's just the most incredible man and writer. For me, it's a huge luxury to do a PhD because to have someone whose job it is to read what I write every month, that doesn't happen to most writers. Usually, you're just sitting alone in the dark, which is how I've wrote my first few books. Now I have someone to talk to along the way. It's just great.

Zibby: Wait, give me a little bit more about this dialogue-driven novel.

Jennifer: Basically, it's about a gay/queer underground in Bolivia, almost exclusively lesbian. It's about this community living underground. That again is based on something I heard about when I was in Bolivia. Even though homosexuality is official legal, it can still get you killed in Bolivia. A lot of people who come out are thrown out of their families and abused in all kinds of ways. Some of these people have sought refuge underneath the city, in tunnels underneath the city. I again was wondering, I wonder what that's like. I've just loved these women that have formed this underground community. The underground genre seems to be so male dominated. Books like Jack Kerouac's Subterraneans and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and all these other books about the underground seem to be these very male undergrounds. All these revolutionary undergrounds are often male. I thought, what if it were a female space? How would women try to create revolution without violence?

Zibby: Wow. I'm following you now forever. I can't wait to see what you write. I'm so excited. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Jennifer: I do. This is advice based on my own experience. I guess that's inevitable. For me, what helped me the most was moving somewhere that made me profoundly uncomfortable in a lot of ways and forced me to question a lot of the assumptions I had about how the world worked, how human beings worked, how culture worked. I've never been the same. Since I left for Yemen in 2006, I haven't lived in the US. Living outside of the US for that long, I've learned the ways in which the US shaped me and that other people are shaped in different ways. I feel, I hope, I am always gaining a broader perspective on thinking about people more globally than from purely an American lens. I think that's really a useful thing to do as a writer, is to have to flounder around in somewhere completely foreign and figure things out. You start to realize things about yourself you wouldn't realize if you didn't leave your comfortable space.

Zibby: Interesting. If we can all ever travel again, that sounds great.

Jennifer: Yeah, not so easy at the moment.

Zibby: That's okay. I feel like I'm floundering in my own home every day, so lots of material in this time. [laughs]

Jennifer: You are not alone.

Zibby: Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for coming on my podcast and this show and for Exile Music, which I can't wait to finish, and for introducing me to your really interesting, one-of-a-kind life. What a treat.

Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure.

Zibby: Take care. I hope you see your husband soon.

Jennifer: Thank you.

Zibby: Buh-bye

Jennifer: Bye.

Karma Brown, RECIPE FOR A PERFECT WIFE

Zibby Owens: Karma Brown is the best-selling author of four novels. Her debut novel, Come Away with Me, was a Globe & Mail Best 100 Books of 2015. A National Magazine Award-winning journalist, Karma has been published in a variety of publications including Self, Redbook, Today’s Parent, Best Health, Canadian Living, and Chatelaine. Her latest book is Recipe for a Perfect Wife: A Novel. Karma lives just outside Toronto, Canada, with her husband, daughter, and a labradoodle named Fred. When not crafting copy or mulling plot lines, she is typically working out, making a mess in the kitchen, and checking items off her bucket list with her family. Her nonfiction project out early '21 is called Time Change.

Welcome, Karma. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Karma Brown: Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: I'm sorry it took us so long.

Karma: You know what? It's been crazy.

Zibby: It's true. There have been some world events that got in the way, some changes and everything. Anyway, here we are. I'm delighted to be talking to you, finally.

Karma: Me too. Me too.

Zibby: Your most recent book, Recipe for a Perfect Wife, for listeners who might not know what it's about, would you mind giving a quick synopsis?

Karma: It is a dual narrative book. It takes place in the 1950s. The other character, you visit her in 2018. The book takes place in the same house. These two women live in this house, but sixty years apart. There is a cookbook that the modern-day woman discovers that had belonged to the 1950s housewife. Within those pages, she finds some secrets about the life that this 1950s housewife lived in this house that she's now living in somewhat reluctantly as she was dragged from Manhattan to the suburbs. Their lives intersect through this cookbook. It really is an exploration of women and marriage and being a wife and looking at how far we've come from the fifties, if we really have come that far. It was a really fun, interesting book for me to write.

Zibby: I had one of those cookbooks from my mother when was a little girl, the Betty Crocker old-fashioned one.

Karma: Yes, I have that one.

Zibby: I have it. It had my grandmother's notes in it and all the rest. I treasured that growing up. Every so often I would pull it out and look at the pages and all the pictures of what moms used to look like. [laughs]

Karma: I know. I still have those books. I actually have this thing for vintage cookbooks. That was one of the inspirations to write this book in the first place. I also loved all those notations. My mom puts notations in her cookbooks. My grandmother has done that. Some of these cookbooks I have that are not family cookbooks, also looking at the notations in those books and imagining what those women's lives were like way back when. It's sort of like you're panning for gold, information about these women and how they lived back in the fifties and sixties.

Zibby: It's so crazy when there's an object that passes through time. My engagement ring was a vintage piece I found in this shop in Charleston, South Carolina. I wear this ring. Actually, I copied it. At first, it was the actual ring until we found out it was cracked. Anyway, I had it and I was like, so who is this woman? Who was she? She wore the same exact ring. What was her life like? It all feels like a movie or something. Speaking of movies by the way, congratulations. I saw that your film and TV rights were acquired for this book. That's amazing. Congratulations.

Karma: Thank you. It's exciting to imagine them having a life outside of the pages. I'm often asked, who would you cast these characters as if you were casting the movie? Honestly, it's the worst question to ever ask me because for all of my books, I never know. I don't see them that way. I see them very clearly, but not as celebrities. I like to always ask, if anyone has an ideas, let me know because I am terrible at this game.

Zibby: I'm wondering maybe -- now I'm blanking on her name. Who's the one who's married to Ashton Kutcher?

Karma: See, this is why I'm terrible at it.

Zibby: I'm not good at it either.

Karma: I'm not a celebrity follower. What is her name?

Zibby: It'll come to me.

Karma: She was on the '70s Show with him, right?

Zibby: Yeah, somebody like that because the PR job ahead of time, I view her as being all put together and running around. Then wanting to shift gears and become a novelist, it has to be somebody cosmopolitan enough, worldly enough. That was my first instinct, but I am really bad at casting too.

Karma: We're both bad at this. We just won't play that game.

Zibby: Sorry, I'll stop the game right now.

Karma: It's not our job anyway, so it's okay.

Zibby: No, it's not our job. [laughs] I loved, by the way, there was such a perfect, relatable moment, at least for me, when the main character -- why do I always blank on the names of all the main characters? I can remember all the details.

Karma: Nellie and Alice.

Zibby: Alice. When Alice relocates to Greenville and leaves her job and her mom is like, "How's your vacation going?" and she's like, "No, I'm going to be a novelist," that is just so classic. It's a little passive-aggressive, what's up with you? I just loved that detail, by the way.

Karma: For Alice, she had this big career in Manhattan that was really important to her. Things fall apart for reasons that I won't talk about now because it gives away some stuff in the book. She ends up holding that secret about what's happened with her career. Everyone's thinking, then, that she's quite content to go and become this housewife in the suburbs and let her husband go to work. She's going to stay home and take care of this really old house that hasn’t changed much since the fifties and have babies and do her thing, that next part of her life. But really, she's hanging onto this huge ambition that she has. It doesn't go away. It doesn't just leave because she has this thing happen with her job and ends up moving. That's really part of the theme through the story too. What do women do with this ambition? How can you have that huge career ambition and also have a family? Can you make those two things work? I don't believe you can have them at the same time. That is my personal feeling. Sometimes something has to take the top position, and they just switch back and forth. For me, that's personally what has been true for me in my life. I think this idea of trying to have it all at once puts a lot of pressure. It's really hard to do. I'm sure there are people making that work. Good for them. I personally have found that a really tricky balance.

Zibby: Yes. I'm sure a zillion women will agree with that statement, the complexity of that. I think your book also, though, not only the role as a wife or a mother eventually or whatever, but I think it's also how these two women handle pain, physical and emotional, and how that shifts in terms of how much they share with their spouse, how much they take on themselves, and how that looks across generations too. Maybe talk a little more about that or if that was intentional.

Karma: I think that they are living very different lives. Really, Nellie, who's the 1950's character, is quite confined by her generation. For her, independence is something she desperately craves but is very difficult to get because of the nature of the way that things were within marriages back then. Her journey through the story is getting that independence and figuring out how to do that for herself in 1956 when nobody is really figuring that out, women anyway. For Alice in 2018, she's a very independent woman who is in a relationship with someone and has a marriage. How do you keep that part of yourself when you couple up with someone, when you merge your lives together? How do you keep that independence? In a lot of ways, I think that Nellie is sort of the talisman for Alice around that idea of figuring out how to maintain your sense of self and how to maintain that independence and cope with, as you said, both physical and mental pain through that, but as an individual. That was a big lesson for both of the women through the story.

Zibby: Let's now pivot to your personal life, if you don't mind. Now that we've had five minutes, I feel like I'm entitled to ask you your innermost secrets. [laughs]

Karma: Oh, you can ask me anything, anything at all. No secrets here.

Zibby: It's so funny. Well, it's not funny. I was reviewing all your different novels and all the different themes. I was like, why are all her books somehow about either car crashes or losing babies or intersecting lives? What is it? Something must have happened to her that this is the theme that she keeps coming back to over and over and over again. Then I went into your personal essays and I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm a moron. Here it is right here. It explains everything. Your essay for Self magazine about your being one month into a relationship with the man who became your husband and finding out that you had a rare form of Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cervical cancer and having to figure out how to cope with that and eventually what happened with your sister, oh, my gosh. I know you're working on some sort of nonfiction book. I'm really interested in hearing what that is. I was like, I want a whole book on this experience. I left that article being like, tell me more. Tell listeners about what happened to you, and then start writing that book.

Karma: [laughs] Okay. I have written elements of that book. In my second novel, The Choices We Make, it is about two best friends. One of them ends up carrying a baby for the other one. Before Recipe for a Perfect Wife, I wrote tearjerker books. It is a tearjerker book. Not everything goes according to plan. For me in my personal life, my sister was our surrogate. We had a much happier outcome in a sense that we had no major traumas as we were going through that. Just to back up a little bit about how that happened, when I was thirty, I had just met my husband. Well, he wasn't my husband then, obviously. I just met this new guy. He was very young. He was only twenty-six at the time, which I thought was far too young to be serious about. Then a month into our relationship, I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the cervix, which is a very rare place for them to find it. What that meant is that I wouldn't be able to have children naturally. We had to do a quickie IVF cycle. It was funny because I had been dating him for probably a month and a half at this point. I was at the fertility doctor. They were asking me all these questions and giving me my options about where to get the sperm from because you need sperm to make embryos. They said, "We have a book you can flip through and choose sperm, or you can get some from someone you know."

I was like, hey, I have this new boyfriend. [laughs] Maybe we can make this work. It wasn't casual. It was fast, but we were really quite in love already. They were asking me questions about him and his birthday and his middle name. I didn't know his middle name. I called him and I said, "This is the deal. I need to figure out what I'm going to do." He was like, "Okay, let's do it. Let's just do it and have faith that we stay together and this all works out. If we don't, I want you to have the opportunity to have, genetically, your own children." Anyway, it all worked out. I couldn't carry a baby, but my sister stepped in. One of those embryos which was frozen for five years was put in my sister's uterus. She became our oven for nine months. My daughter, when she was younger, she used to like to say that she was five years older. She would say, "I'm not eight. I'm thirteen," very all-knowing because she technically was conceived in 2003 but was born in 2008. We have our one little miracle baby. My sister was our surrogate. I have been cancer-free for a long time, since 2003, so seventeen years. It did all work out in the end.

Zibby: Wow. It was just so amazing how your sister, you said in one of the articles how immediately she was like, "I'll be the uterus for you. I'm stepping in." She already had two little kids of her own. She was just like, "I'm in." Then she did it.

Karma: She's quite bossy, actually. She was quite determined to do that. It's an amazing gift for someone to do that for you because I wouldn't be a mother. I mean, I might be a mother in a different way, but I wouldn't be a mother to this child. For me, it's a really special thing. As for the themes of my book, I had this life where I had all these plans. I was thirty. I was young. I had just finished journalism school. I was in a new relationship. I am a very motived, ambitious person. I was clear about what I wanted to do. Then I got cancer, and my whole life flipped upside down. My books are all really about women who are in situations that are challenging, perhaps the most challenging. We meet them on the most challenging day of their lives. Then they not only survive, but they thrive through that experience. That has been an ongoing theme for me through all my books. That's what I'm interested most in exploring in my novels anyway.

Zibby: Wow, that's just amazing. I thought it was so neat, you said something like how you used to be so much less anxious. Then you had such a great expression. You once dreamed of being a war correspondent, but now you're someone who sticks to the speed limit.

Karma: It's true.

Zibby: That's so interesting, just this idea that now you take on all the anxiety that the situation brought. Some people are born more anxious. Then they get through something like this and they're less anxious because they realize, okay, I've been worrying my whole life something bad's going to happen. It did. Now I'm okay. They become more fortified. You went into it already totally confident and rah-rah and then had this setback. Now you're more cautious. It's just sort of interesting how people deal with a trauma, essentially.

Karma: I think when you have a trauma like that, it never goes away. I'm cancer-free, but that experience lives me. It has shaped who I am from that time. It shapes all my decisions because life is precious. Everyone knows this. When you have been a through life-threatening experience, does it become more precious? I don't know. You suddenly realize the whole why-me thing. Everyone, I think, has a moment of thinking that, but then very quickly you're like, well, why not me? Why wouldn't it be me? Once you have that happen, the realization that it could happen again, bad things happen even when you do everything right. That is a very unsettling thing to live through and really understand deep in your core. I spend a lot of time now trying not to be anxious about things and to enjoy life. I had once gone to a therapist who was like, what do you think about this fact that you're going to worry about your precious life for the next ten years and worry about all these ways that it could be turned upside again? Then you're okay because the reality is you probably are going to be okay. You will have spent this decade worrying and marinating in this anxiety. Are you really enjoying your life when you're doing that? That did resonate with me. I try to remember that. The worry does fade. It does get easier. As you said, someone people are natural worriers. I just came to that place a little bit later in my life. [laughs] Maybe I'll flip back the other way and I'll be skydiving when I'm seventy. I doubt it, but you never know.

Zibby: These why-me moments and these traumas and the things that happen that make you aware of the fact, not just intellectually, but feel that life is short, they make you into different much more feeling-type people. You don't wish this upon anybody. I wouldn't wish a cancer diagnosis or anything like that. However, I think the aftermath of some of those experiences makes the rest of life so much richer. It sharpens the colors. That sounds so cheesy. I just feel like it changes the tune. It's like on a piano, the two different things start playing versus just one hand playing. I don't know.

Karma: I think it does do that. You're not naïve about things anymore. I think you can bury in your head in the sand a little bit, especially when you're young, and think that bad things don't happen, people don't get cancer. It allows me to also be more empathetic with other people and to understand what to say and what not to say and how to sit with someone in a tough time instead of trying to just brush it away or make it better somehow by not talking about it. I have learned how to be more empathetic towards what other people are going through. It doesn't have to be cancer. It can be anything. People have lots of different experiences that can be quite traumatic. I am not a silver linings person. I don't know that I ever have been. While there have been things that I have learned because of this, I would always have rather not had it happen. I don't say that my cancer was a good thing because I just don't see it like that. It would've been nice not to have to go through it. However, there are lessons and learning in that that I now have that I'm grateful for and appreciative of.

Zibby: I hope I didn't make it sound like it was a good thing that you had gone through that.

Karma: No, you didn't.

Zibby: Okay. I did not mean to suggest anybody actively look for bad experiences to happen them.

Karma: No. I do think some of that silver lining stuff -- people say that to me all the time. You wouldn't have this, that, and the next thing if you didn't go through that. I'm like, yeah, but I might have other things that I lost because of that. Cancer takes a lot away. Any terminal, not terminal, but potentially life-threatening condition or experience, it takes stuff away. I don't think you said that at all. That's not how I heard what you were saying.

Zibby: Okay. Phew. [laughs]

Karma: I just like to do the, yeah, I'm not a silver linings person. Maybe, again, when I'm seventy. Maybe then when I'm sky diving, I'll be a silver linings person. We'll see.

Zibby: Maybe so. We'll wait. I'll look up and see what I can see. The one quote I just had to read, and this is from your Self article, you said, "I would not be a mother to this child who with her arrival took the hell of our experience leading up to her, crushing it into a tiny ball and dropped it down a deep, dark well where it can no longer break my heart." That is beautiful. That's just a beautiful sentiment, a beautiful sentence. I just had to read it.

Karma: It's true. I was quite sad not to be able to carry my own child. I think for people who want to have children, they would understand that, or who have children and have been able to have -- I know pregnancy is not amazing for a lot of women, but I always was sad that I couldn't do that. My mom had said to me, "Don't worry. Once the baby's here, you won't care how she got here. You won't miss that part because this is the best part." She was wrong, but I can tuck that away. I think that's what that quote is. I have her and all the amazing things of being a mother that I can now experience, but it doesn't mean there aren't still heartbreaks that have to be just put down that well and left there. They don't go away. They just maybe go to a dark place where you leave them buried.

Zibby: Or you take little sprinkles of that and put it in novel after novel after novel, which is another way of getting through and coping and making sense of experiences like that that don't really have a good place to go.

Karma: It's true. It's sort of like therapy to some degree. It's cathartic to be able to do that.

Zibby: Tell me about your writing process and how you come up with ideas for your books and then how long they each take. You've written five novels already?

Karma: Five, yep.

Zibby: Amazing. That's a lot. Tell me about your process a little more and how you maintain this level of output.

Karma: I maintain the level of output because my daughter didn't sleep. The truth is that she used to get up at three thirty, four in the morning for years and years. I finally got to the place where I could no longer watch Dora the Explorer at four o'clock in the morning. I thought, I need to do something with this time. She's okay. I don't need to really be with her for every moment of that morning time. I started writing in the early morning. It's a habit I still have now. She sleep trained me. Now I can't sleep in. She sleeps in, but I can't. I get up around five, between five and six every day, and I write. It's quiet and peaceful. No one needs anything from me. The rest of the world has not woken up yet. That's when I do the majority of my really creative writing. I save the emails and the other busywork that authors have to do for later in the day when she's at school even though she's not at school right now. COVID time is like, who knows what's happening and how I'm actually ever going to write another book. That's really been my process from the beginning.

I never wanted to be a writer. When I went to journalism school, I wanted to be a news broadcaster. That was what I was planning to do. Then I was diagnosed with cancer on my very last day of journalism school, and everything switched. At some point, I thought, maybe I can write. It's a career that I have and be home. I don't have to move to Northern Ontario and try to get a job in a small town and live up there away from my family. It just became a job that I thought I could do. I one day thought, maybe I'll try writing a novel. I wrote it. It was awful. Then I wrote another one. That one was not good either. My debut was actually my third book written. I guess I've actually written seven, no, wait, eight novels. Just two of them will never see the light of day.

Zibby: Seven, right?

Karma: Wait, seven? You're right.

Zibby: Two unpublished, five -- [laughs].

Karma: This is why I am not a mathematician or a scientist. I can't do math, even simple math. Yes, seven. It feels like twelve some days. As for where the stories come from, I read a lot. Because I'm a journalist also, I spend a lot of time scrolling through news stories and looking for interesting human stories that way. That's how I have found or had an idea perk up for my stories. Recipe for a Perfect Wife was different, though. It came out of those cookbooks. I just had this vision of, what was life like for these women? These cookbooks were really a legacy. They were often given to women at their wedding showers. Then those cookbooks would get passed down through the generations. At a time where women really didn't have much of a voice outside of their home, it felt like this really interesting legacy of what mattered to them and what they were doing and how they were really using their voice through their cooking and through these recipes. I just had this image of Nellie in the 1950s trying to choose a recipe. She's this quintessential housewife. On the surface, she looks very much like the housewife we would imagine from the fifties, but what did her life look like underneath that? That's where it started.

Zibby: I feel like there's an undercurrent of feminist message to the book as well. I know in the introduction, or maybe it was a dedication or something, you were saying to your daughter, you haven't finished doing the work for her yet. This is a step. Was that conscious? Tell me about that angle of it.

Karma: People have asked, wow, this book is really timely, why this book now? I'd been writing this book for five years before it was published. The realities of what women are going through now were true five years ago and ten years ago. We have come far from the fifties in a lot of ways, but we still have a long way to go. It was important for me in doing -- I could've written the whole book from 1950s perspective and from Nellie's perspective and just had that story be the story, but what I wanted to do is to look at the difference between those generations because we think we're so progressive now. In some ways we are, but in a lot of ways, we are not. I wanted to take Alice's character in particular -- it's much murkier than it is with Nellie's character. I've had a lot of hate mail about Alice, which I'm not surprised by. I knew that going in because, as I said, her story is murkier. She can come across as more selfish and self-centered. I feel like with her, she's going through this dilemma. She's young. She's making mistakes. She deserves to make mistakes. It takes two to tango, as they say. Her husband in the story, I get messages about how amazing her husband is and how she's so selfish. I want to say, no, he's not perfect. He's manipulating things as well and keeping secrets as well. I don't know why Alice is the one who always gets -- she's viewed as the enemy in the story versus him. I find that really interesting. Every time I get a message about that, I don't respond because that’s the rule, but I do want to say, why do you villainize her and not him for doing things that are quite similar?

I felt that while I was writing it. I do think that that is where we are in society still, where women don't get to make the same mistakes that men do. They don't get away with it the same way. I wanted to put that in the book. I'm a wife. I stay home. I work from home. I do more of the traditional, stereotypical things. I do most of the childcare, the doctors' appointments, the grocery shopping because logistically it's easier for me because I'm home. It's important for me with my daughter especially because she has commented before, "You're the dinner-maker. What's for dinner?" I always say, "Look, just because I'm female does not make me especially qualified to cook a meal." I need her to understand that being a wife and being a mother and being a woman, they are all really different things that all live within the same person. That's what I was trying to do with Alice and looking at Nellie. I get it. She's a little bit confronting for people. I have other people who love her. They really resonate with what she's going through. I find that the older generations, like the seventies-plus, and the younger ones, like the thirty-five and under, really resonate with Alice. It's that middle-age time where people are just like, her husband is so nice. Why is she being so mean to him? It's fascinating. It has been fascinating.

Zibby: Aside from not responding to hate mail, what is your advice to aspiring authors?

Karma: I read a lot. I think if you don't read and read a lot of different things like fiction, nonfiction, different genres that maybe are not totally your thing but you should give it a try, I think you have to read all the time, a lot, as an author. Write as much as you can. Be clear about why you're writing. There are some people who want to write because they really desperately want to be published on the shelves with a traditional publisher. There's other people who write to maybe work through a trauma or work through a part of their life, and perhaps publication is not the most important thing to them. It's to really understand why you're writing. To stay connected to your story, you need to write regularly. Also then, know when to give up and start something new. There are people who will say never give up, never give up on anything you're working on. I think sometimes you have to give up. That's why I have two books in a drawer that will never see the light of day. They weren’t the right story. They were practice books for me. They were helping me hone the craft and learn how to write a book that was going to get all the pieces I wanted in but also would be really great for the reader too, that reading experience. It's just, you've got to practice. It's like anything. You have to practice your craft and know why you're doing it.

Zibby: Love it. Thank you, Karma. I'm so glad we finally got together. I wish I could sit and talk to you for a lot longer.

Karma: I know. It went by so fast.

Zibby: I know. I looked. I was like, oh, no, it's been too long.

Karma: Thank you so much. Great questions. It was really nice chatting with you today.

Zibby: You too. I hope we can find a way to keep this up or meet in person or something.

Karma: Me too. Yes, one day let's meet in person. We'll have a nice drink somewhere and chat not through our screens. That sounds wonderful.

Zibby: I would love that. Yes, that would be nice.

Karma: Take care.

Zibby: Have a great day.

Karma: Thanks so much.

Zibby: Bye.

Beatriz Williams, HER LAST FLIGHT

Zibby Owens: Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally best-selling author of The Golden Hour, The Summer Wives, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Hundred Summers, and several other works of historical fiction including her latest book, Her Last Flight. She is the screenwriter for the television adaptation of The Summer Wives which is currently in development with John Wells Productions. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA in finance from Columbia University, Beatriz worked as a communications and corporate strategy consultant in New York and London before she turned her attention to writing novels that combine her passion for history with an obsessive devotion to voice and characterization. Beatriz’s books have won numerous awards, have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and appear regularly in best-seller lists around the world. Born in Seattle, Washington, Beatriz now lives near the Connecticut shore with her husband and four children, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.

Welcome, Beatriz. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Beatriz Williams: Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: You have such an interesting background for an author having gotten your MBA and all of that. I actually got an MBA too. I wanted to talk to you a little about that and how your traditional, more consultant, strategy-type brain morphed and now started writing all this fiction. Tell me about that.

Beatriz: It's actually the other way around.

Zibby: Oh, no way.

Beatriz: I was somebody who never wanted to do anything but write books. What was I doing in the business world, getting an MBA, finance, and all that? It does help -- my father's an engineer. I was never that kind of writer who is allergic to numbers and science. I always loved numbers and science. In fact, a couple of my books have dealt with science-y issues. In The Secret Life of Violet Grant, I was in the world of physics in pre-war Germany. Actually, my current book that's coming out, Her Last Flight, deals with early aviation. Of course, I'm not going into long, technical explanations, but that whole process fascinates me, the science of flight and the various things that pilots would have to do in the age before GPS and sophisticated instruments to figure out where they were on the face of the Earth. This is all very fascinating to me. My love has always been literature and writing. I always wanted to do that. I think I was just scared, partly because my father, he's British, and having grown up in a post-war rationing Britain, really wanted to have me do something practical with my life. I went to college. I actually majored in anthropology. He was very proud. It was more like trying to get a liberal arts education and wanting to square that circle.

How do I find a way to make a living and yet write? Writing, you do have to have a lot of guts or else just an enormous amount of unjustified self-confidence. You're putting yourself out into the world kind of naked. People will judge you. They will say things to you that your boss would never say to you in a normal job. You just have to take it. You're not even allowed to respond back to criticism. You do have to go in there with a certain amount of courage. As my father would say, many are called, few are chosen. What if this thing that was supposed to be my big talent all my life, what if I'm not actually good at it? I had all these fears. Also, going to a college where people were very success oriented, there was no point in doing anything unless you were going to be wildly successful, I went into the business world, Wall Street. Believe it or not, easier to succeed on Wall Street than to succeed in publishing. Then I got married, had kids. I was home with the kids and I thought, okay, this is the moment for me to actually do what I really want to do with my life, which was to write. I started taking classes and learning the more technical side of writing and storytelling in particular and eventually got to the point where I thought I had something other people might actually want to read.

Zibby: That's amazing. I love that story. Thank you.

Beatriz: [Indiscernible].

Zibby: It's true. I feel like it really informs the reading when you know where the author's coming from and how you had to keep coming back to that passion of yours. I think it's really always nice to hear.

Beatriz: I had this enormous burst of creativity when I first started writing. You see I have so many books. I even had a pen name I was writing under. There are additional books there. It was partly because it was just, I had so much inside me, all this pent-up decades of stories that I wanted to tell. Now that kind of has slowed down a bit for me. I'm a little more measured about my books and just the sentences and everything that goes into them. There's a complexity there. That initial freshness, that burst of huge creativity, it's definitely transitioning for me into something more nuanced and thoughtful. I think the books are getting more complicated and not quite the sense of an ending that's obvious and pat. If you're somebody who doesn't like ambiguous ending, I'm starting to kind of transition into that. That sense of ambiguity to me is so fascinating because it's just so much of what we encounter in real life.

Zibby: I read you said somewhere that even though you write a lot of historical fiction, it's really just the people in those moments, it's the history itself that draws you to the stories. Tell me a little more about that.

Beatriz: I'm obsessed with history from my childhood. We were out there in suburban Seattle. My parents, we would go to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, every year. That was our family vacation. Everyone else got to go to the beach. I was watching Shakespeare plays. We had season tickets to the Seattle Opera, which was actually quite, certainly at the time and I think even now, a very innovative opera house. They had a really dynamic company there. Opera is historical fiction. They were doing historical fiction. Shakespeare was doing historical fiction even in his own time. To me, the past has always been a window into the present. The best way to understand what is going on today is to understand what happened in the past. I go back to [indiscernible] again. It was [indiscernible] who said facts are not important, which is heresy right now if you're a historical fiction writer. Facts are obviously important. You want to create that verisimilitude.

What is more important, because can disagree about the facts and the interpretation of the facts, to me, what is important is understanding how people lived and breathed and talked and ate and encountered the world around them in a particular historical era. I will do everything I can to make sure that the facts are right. If I need to sort of bend a few dates and so on for the purposes of storytelling, I will try to make it very clear in my author's note. You can read facts in nonfiction. There are some amazing nonfiction writers who do it brilliantly. What you're coming to with fiction is the human story and what it is like to exist within a certain historical environment. What we learn is not just that, wow, these people are the same as us, but that also history is repeating itself. We are so often making the same choices or faced with the same impossible, sometimes, choices that we were in the past. How do we get through that? How do we square human nature with the sense of civilization? Learning to become better human beings, to me, that's kind of the core of my project as a historical fiction author.

Zibby: Tell me a little more about Her Last Flight.

Beatriz: Her Last Flight kind of goes back to -- I keep talking about my dad, but he really did have an enormous influence on me as a child. He actually was a pilot back in his college days until they figured out he's actually colorblind. He was flying with, they called it the University Air Squadron. In the UK, it's like the ROTC for pilots going into the RAF. I always had a background of aviation going on in the household, loved to fly, and had read some books that were set in that period. I'm fascinated by it, and particularly by the pilots. Your chances of dying were so high. I wanted to write a book about a female pilot. My initial prompt was the Amelia Earhart mystery, which of course is one of the most fascinating mysteries in recent human history, what happened to her. I sort of posed a what-if. Then I went off and did research and realized that she was not the only fascinating female pilot out there. She just had a really good publicist who happened to be her husband. That's one part of the story, a female pilot who has a really good publicist for a husband and is not quite sure that this is the life she wants to lead. She wants to fly. All this other stuff going on, to her, gets in the way of the purity, the beauty of flight.

The story's actually told through the eyes of another character, a photojournalist. War-weary, she has been taking photographs in the European battlefield in the second world war. She was there during the trials at Nuremberg. She's at a moment in her life when she really wants to find something worthwhile. She goes in search of, actually, the pilot that had been this -- Irene Foster, her flying partner, who also disappeared around the same time. She goes all the way to Hawaii. She follows clues and ends up in Hawaii and discovers a woman who's living there who she thinks is actually Irene Foster, the vanished pilot. That's actually the starting point of this story. We go back and forth between Irene's story, which is told as excerpts of a biography written by our photojournalist, Janey Everett, many years later. We hear Irene's story through Janey's eyes. Then we hear Janey's story as she slowly starts to unpeel the layers and we start to realize why she's been so obsessed with these pilots and their disappearance.

Zibby: Wow. That's the best sell.

Beatriz: I just realized in the middle that I haven't actually done the sell speech yet, so I was really making it up as I went along. I hope it wasn't too convoluted there.

Zibby: No, it's great. I'm sorry. I always put people on the spot. I like to hear what people come up with.

Beatriz: Discovering the mystery behind what happened to this person. It's not Amelia. I certainly borrow some biographical details from Amelia Earhart because she is a fascinating person. So much is woven in there. There are all these other pilots. To me, that sense of, god, the courage it took to get out there and fly back then. Whether you were a man or a woman, the odds were good you were going to crash and die. What kind of person does that? Why do they do it? What's driving them? Where are these people today, by the way? What are they doing now, this type of person? To me, the psychology that is so fascinating, particularly when you're telling it -- I use that device of the biography, excerpts from a biography, because I wanted to tell that story a little bit from the outside in trying to understand this person as a public figure, but also the private figure behind that public figure. I wrote that part first, the biography first. I kind of knew Janey before I started writing her actual story on the page. That was a really interesting process as well, how I created a voice for a character that we hadn’t actually met yet because of course the biography is inevitably in Janey's voice, not that of Irene. I'm always trying to challenge myself a bit in terms of storytelling technique. This was certainly a fascinating challenge for me to get into. I was trying to understand two different women at the same time. I think that adds a certain layer to the story. You find out why as we get towards the end and the mysteries start revealing themselves.

Zibby: What does this process look like? Do you use notecards? Is it spread out all over? Is it all in your head? Where do you do all this work? It's in your head?

Beatriz: I have a notebook. I scribble things down in the notebook. There's the classic debate between the plotters and the pantsers. The pantsers plot by the seat of their pants. They make it up as they go along. I do a little of both. I know where I want to go. This is one book where I kind of knew what the twist was going to be going in, which was good because it's essential to the story. I visualize it in my head almost as a three-dimensional piece of architecture. I can see the scaffolding, but I can't see all the layers and the cladding and everything that goes on top. Gradually, everything gets -- you have this bare bones. Then you just keep adding flesh onto it and flesh onto it until it becomes a real thing. I am linear. In fact, I'm so linear, that's why I write that piece that takes place in the past first. Then I layer the other piece, the mystery-hunting piece of it, on top, because I need to know what happens from beginning to end, the actual mystery taking place. I need to know the solution. I need to know how it happens. I need to know who these people are before I can send my sleuth on the hunt and picking it apart. I know a lot of writers who do the dual narrative write back and forth even as it's written. I'm so incredibly linear that I have to do it literally from one, beginning to end, and then start the other one beginning to end. Everyone's got a process. Everyone's astonished when I say that's how I do it. I just literally can't imagine writing it any other way.

Zibby: You're clearly super smart. In fact, as an aside, I think one of the smartest things you did was decide to coauthor books with two of your good friends so that you could travel together on press tours.

Beatriz: The best idea ever. It is breaking our hearts right now that we can't get together. We're usually together two or three times a year. It's so much fun. We need to plot out our next book. We're managing to do it by Zoom, but it's not the same. Yes, it did start out as very much wanting to spend more time with each other, but also really loving each other's talents and getting together. Creating stories together is just the most incredibly creative process ever because there's three of us. We like to say it's like three brains in one body. When we're really tired, we accidentally say that it's one brain in three bodies, but that's a completely different scenario. I think the challenge with plotting on your own is that you can't foresee the problems that lie ahead. Suddenly, you realize you've written yourself into a corner and you've got to go back and rework something. When it's three of you, you've got everybody picking apart all the ideas as we go along so that by the time we finish plotting something out, and in this case we do actually plot the whole thing out very carefully before we start writing, we're able to sort of troubleshoot and foresee all these problems before we get to them in the writing. I love doing it because it's just a much more efficient process than using one singular feeble brain that needs a considerable amount of caffeination in order to work properly.

Zibby: You've written so many books. As you mentioned, you also have written a ton of historical romance and mystery. How many books have you written in total?

Beatriz: You know what? I kind of stopped counting. I wrote some books as Juliana Gray. There were two romance trilogies. Then I moved into more historical mystery. There's two of those plus a novella that connects. I like to have my worlds all sort of be the same, so there's a novella that connects the romance to the historical mysteries. I guess that's six, seven, eight, plus a novella. I left some threads dangling in historical mystery number two, so I would like to get back to that at some point. Then of course, we have now written three books as Willig, White, and Williams. Then I think Her Last Flight is my twelfth book as Beatriz Williams.

Zibby: Amazing.

Beatriz: After a while, it's not that I don't want to count, it's just that it doesn't matter to me. It's not something I keep a tally board how many books I've written or how many words I've written. It's really the stories. Some of them connect. Some of them are a little more stand-alone. I have three books that literally were a sequence. They're not exactly a trilogy because they're three different women, but they're sisters. The stories flow a little bit into each other. That's the most connected books. Then I've got my Wicked City series as well, which is a definite series, Wicked City, Wicked Redhead. The next one is still in my head. I tend to see the books that way rather than, oh, I've written my twelfth book. I have to literally count them up when we do the biography for the book jacket and be like, okay, how many is that?

Zibby: What does writing do for you? What do you get out of it?

Beatriz: It's a little bit like what I hope my readers get out of it when they're reading, which is not so much escape as just immersion in a different world. I think that when I'm writing well, I'm writing fast, I'm writing in that flow state that we all try to get to when we're writing, which is just a total immersion in a story. That is what keeps me going through the harder bits when it's just not working and I need to figure out why it's not working and get these characters where I know them well enough that everything that happens to them just seems preordained. It is really that process, getting myself into that flow state and creating that world that is what motivates me, what gets me in front of my laptop every day. I don't want to make this sound magical, but to a certain extent maybe just the way some people are born mathematicians -- they have a knack for mathematics. They see something more in mathematics than we do. They see the story that is in mathematics. They see the truth that is inside the numbers. When you're laboriously graphing out what -- you're graphing an equation, and so these numbers actually mean something real and tangible. They translate into things. I think that you're somebody who instinctively feels that or not.

I think with storytelling, you're somebody who -- when I write a story, it's like the words on the page are maybe ten percent of the story that is in my head. All the details of a person's life and personality and so on, it's really distilling that. I think a part of that is just innate. I think our DNA kind of gives us certain jobs that we're good at because that's what I was -- here, here's the anthropology major speaking here. We need storytellers. We need mathematicians. We need inventors. We even need a couple of sociopaths to sort of make the tough moral choices that we don't want to make. That's why, whatever, five to ten percent of the population is technically psychopath. I think we kind of need them in some way. We just have to channel that evil energy into good. I think that's what my role is in the hunter-gatherer group. I'm the one who -- we're by the campfire. It's nighttime. We need to process and understand what's happened to us today or the past few weeks, and so you spin a story that helps people come to terms with what has happened and who they are and literally put that to bed.

Zibby: Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Beatriz: Read. Definitely, read. Read widely. I'm on deadline right now, but I do try to get some fiction in in the evening. I finally started Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Maybe it's just because my brain is so occupied during the day because I'm also, by the way, running a B&B for -- I've got four kids at home. Three of them are teenagers. One's almost twelve years old, plus my husband and all these pets and everything. I don't know these people who are like, lockdown is so boring. I'm like, are you kidding? I am on my feet all day long. Then I get these little pockets of time to write in. I was trying to read. I was like, you know what, I need to read something more fun right now. My lovely friend, Eloisa James, wrote her latest -- I haven't read a historical romance in actually quite a while. I was like, I'm just going to read something that is fun and engaging and romantic. She always delivers. I started that last night. I felt so much better. I actually learned a lot from romance authors. They're just good storytellers. They know instinctively what certain elements of human relationships are irresistible to us and also how to tell a story to keep the reader engaged on the page.

I would say read everything, romance, mystery, literature fiction, classics. I find reading novels that were written in the period that I'm writing about are just so much more useful than many other sources. You get the feeling and the rhythm of human interaction and storytelling. Read all you can. We spend so much time worrying about the words. I feel like the words come when the story is there. You need to think about, what is the story you're trying to tell? Why would be people be interested in this story, anyone other than you yourself? Those are my two pieces of advice. Read all you can and really think of yourself as a storyteller. Worry about the writing later. The writing obviously comes with the editing. Focus on the story. Think about why it is you're telling this story and why it's important and why people would care.

Zibby: That's great. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your life experience and your technique and all the rest of it.

Beatriz: Thank you so much. Like I said, I've been sitting in front of my laptop, so talking to somebody outside my family is just a really exciting moment for me right now. I appreciate it. [laughter]

Zibby: I agree. I'm glad we got this to work. By the way, like you, I have four kids. I loved how you said that you write while you're not doing laundry because I feel like I do laundry all day, every day. That's what I do.

Beatriz: I've got a load right up there. As soon as I'm done here, I have to go put that in the dryer and make sure the right stuff is hung up. I could hand it off to somebody, but I just don't trust anybody else with the laundry.

Zibby: No, me neither. Anyway, thank you. Hang in there.

Beatriz: You too.

Zibby: Send me any laundry tips.

Beatriz: We will get through this. I love the microphone, by the way. I need a microphone like that.

Zibby: Thank you. Blue Yeti. Have a great day. Thanks again.

Beatriz: Thanks so much.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Leah Franqui, MOTHER LAND

Zibby Owens: Leah Franqui is the author of Mother Land: A Novel. Leah is a graduate of Yale University and received an MFA at NYU-Tisch. Her first novel, America for Beginners, was an Indie Next pick. A Puerto Rican Jewish native of Philadelphia, Franqui now lives with her Kolkata-born husband in Mumbai.

Welcome, Leah. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Leah Franqui: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited.

Zibby: I'm so excited to talk to you about Mother Land, which was so well-written by the way. I loved how you did it, the immediacy of everything, how you're in her brain from the minute the novel opens. You're immediately relating. Anybody who's had a mother-in-law can relate, not to say anything ill about my mother-in-law. I've now had two mother-in-laws. They're both great. I love how you just threw the reader right in there and immediately related. I just love books that start like that.

Leah: Thanks so much.

Zibby: Will you please tell listeners what Mother Land is about and then what inspired you to write it?

Leah: Mother Land is about a young woman, Rachel, who moves to India with her Indian-born husband. She's hoping that the experience will give her life a new start and an adventure. She's lost in her life and hoping this big change to a country she's never been to will spark something for her. When she moves to India, she's pretty overwhelmed. She's even more overwhelmed when her mother-in-law decides to leave her father-in-law and her life in Kolkata and comes and moves in with Rachel and her husband in Mumbai. She's even more thrown when her husband has to go away for work and she's stuck with this woman she doesn't know very well in a city she doesn't know, in a country and a culture she doesn't know. The clash between them about how to live life in Mumbai and how to be in the world eventually turns into a friendship that benefits them both.

Zibby: I love how in the beginning, when the mother-in-law shows up on the stoop and she takes the suitcase inside for her mother-in-law and she thinks, maybe this was it. Maybe this was the moment. What if I hadn’t brough the suitcase inside? I feel like that's something that I always do in my head. What if that one thing had been different?

Leah: I know. The spirit of looking back and being like, that was the moment. I could've changed it all. I do that too. I think I put that in that character because I do that too.

Zibby: I figured. How did you come up with this story? What made you write this?

Leah: This story came out of a lot of life experience and a lot of imagination, so it's both in equal measure. I live in Mumbai. I moved to Mumbai with my Indian-born husband, who also happens to be from Kolkata, in 2015. Before that, my mother-in-law had come to stay with us for about a month right when we got married and moved in together. We did both at the same time. I'd never been to India before I moved to India. I didn't know a lot about India before I met my in-laws. The whole process was condensed by being an international family. I did have this incident where I had a moment of incredible anxiety, which is where a lot of my work comes from, where I was in my tiny Brooklyn apartment and my mother-in-law had this fight with my father-in-law over the phone. My husband, in Hindi, was talking to her. I didn't understand what they were saying. Then he turned to me and he was like, "Mom's going to stay another month." [laughter] I was like, um, what's that? It was sort of a joke. They were kind of trolling my father-in-law. I had this moment of, what if she just stays forever? What if my mother-in-law just moves in with me and lives with me forever and this is my life now?

Then I moved to Mumbai and got to know my in-laws better by visiting them in Kolkata and had this whole life experience of moving to Mumbai for similar-but-different reasons than my protagonist in this novel, but faced a lot of the dislocation and isolation and culture shock and trying to figure out how to navigate my needs, my identity, all the me in this new collective country filled with so many cultures, so many things that were so unfamiliar. I had so many anxieties about what this international move would do to my marriage, what it would do to me. I have had incredible experiences in India. I've had difficult experiences in India. It's challenging. It's been wonderful for me. It's been wonderful for my marriage. I do write a lot from the what-if. What if it hadn’t been? What if it hadn’t made my relationship stronger? What if had kind of defeated me in these other ways? What if my mother-in-law lived with me forever? Spinning out those anxieties into fantasies, into new characters and new people is kind of where the novel came from. This is not my life. This woman is not my mother-in-law. I'm not Rachel. There are elements of the real experience of living in Mumbai, integrating into an Indian family who have been nothing but incredibly wonderful and accepting of me, and also being challenging in terms of what I thought the world was living in one country versus the wonderful perspective-breaking thing living in another country does. It comes from all of that and more.

Zibby: In Mumbai, do you live in the area where you can smell the fish and have a view of the fish?

Leah: Actually, I do. I live in a neighborhood above the neighborhood I set it in. This whole area is along part of the coast. There's these fishermen who dry the fish out along that coastline. If you live anywhere near the coast, there's fishermen along it in Mumbai. You'll smell that at some point.

Zibby: I love how that becomes your character's alarm clock that it's five o'clock, basically, the smells.

Leah: That's real. I work from home a lot. I would lose track of time and then suddenly be like, oh, I guess it's five o'clock.

Zibby: There's this neighborhood ice cream truck where we are right now that comes by between five and five thirty every day. It's the same thing. I'm like, oh, my gosh. I have to get up. I have to get off of my desk chair. Time to go for a walk because it's going to be dark. I better move for the day. I love those external markers of time. You have a really interesting background. You're half Jewish and half Puerto Rican. How did your identity, combining those two pieces, combining your parents essentially, how did they inform your own sense of identity in the world?

Leah: My father, his parents migrated from Puerto Rico in '49, '50, which was part of this wave of migration from Puerto Rico. Then my mom's parents are a mix of first and third generation immigrants from what is now Russia. My grandmother was directly from Russia, but she grew up in [indiscernible]. I think that growing up, that didn't seem that crazy of a mix, I think because I grew up on the East Coast in a school, in an environment where a lot of people were some kind of mix. I think that I didn't know too many people who had a Jewish/Latino mix, but I have met them over the years. Mixture where I grew up in the United States seemed more normal than being of one thing. I do think that the negotiation of identity as I got older, as I got into high school and college, and the idea of what it meant to be enough of anything became a big part of how I got into writing, actually. I think that the idea of being Puerto Rican enough or what enough meant or being Latina and what that meant to me and also being Jewish and what that meant to me, deciding that I needed to start taking more responsibility for my own religious philosophy -- if I was going to perpetuate a belief in Judaism, it couldn't just be because I'd grown up going to synagogue, I'd grown up with my mother telling me to go to synagogue. It had to be something I started choosing or not choosing as an adult. I think that college was a time when I really decided that that was important for me to explore what either of these two things meant for me and how I was going to deal with them.

Writing became a great way to do that. I came into fiction as a dramatic writer. A lot of the work that I wrote before and during graduate school talked about a relationship to Puerto Rico, a relationship to being Latina, the way I understood my family, trying to come to terms with my large Puerto Rican family and the life I'd spent visiting them and connecting with them but being separate from them, and also coming to terms with my family history on all sides. I think that the interesting thing about moving to a third-party country that has no context for either of those things is that then your identity gets reimagined again by the people you meet. When I first met my in-laws, they had no context for Jewish, certainly. They had no context for Puerto Rican. I definitely live as white. I come from fairly European Puerto Rican stock. Although, of course there's a ton of mixing. I present as white. I am white. All of those things that had made up my identity in the States then became, not erased, but totally not as contextualized in India. Then I had a whole new identity being a white person in India, which has added a third layer of information about myself and how I operate in the world. It's been a journey. It continues to be a journey. [laughs] I guess it taught me that no matter how much you self-define, there's so much about how other people see you that you can't really control. You just have to recognize what you've come to terms with as yourself and do your best to be that.

Zibby: You have to have a really strong fundamental sense of who you are regardless of your background and your parents and the shade of your skin and all the rest. I am who I am whether I'm dropped down in the middle of a vegetable market in Mumbai or I'm on the subway in New York or whatever else. Otherwise, it's just so confusing.

Leah: Yeah, and you'll let the world tell you what to be. I think that's something that we think about a lot in the US, what I carry with me and what's important for me to bring everywhere I go. That's a great thing about immigrant countries. You have to personally decide what matters to you and what you want to carry with you rather than let your environment decide that for you. I've hosted a seder every year I've been in Mumbai for Passover because I realize, wow, that's really important to me. That’s an important thing for me to do, for me celebrate, even though there's no resources for that. There's no structure around that. It's just something that matters to me. You learn who you are.

Zibby: Is there a Jewish community in Mumbai?

Leah: There used to be larger Jewish communities in a lot of major Indian cities, including Mumbai. There's a couple really beautiful historic synagogues. It's really decreased since independence for many reasons. There are still a couple active synagogues. There is a Chabad house. I have been to services at one of the really beautiful historic synagogues in Mumbai. It was historically a Baghdadi Jewish population. That's really interesting, really interesting migration pattern, real interesting food. They speak Ladino not Yiddish. They're Sephardic. It's really tiny. I've met maybe one or two Indian Jews in Mumbai.

Zibby: It's so interesting. The seder is such a special moment because you're forced to always think about all the people around the world doing the exact same thing. Now when I have my next seder, I can think about you in India. It really is all over the place. It's very special in that way. Tell me a little more about the process of writing Mother Land. How long did it take you to write? Where? Were you over there? Tell me when and where you wrote it and all of that good stuff.

Leah: I'm a big drafter. I've realized that over time. I have come to terms with that. That's my process. I'm a fast writer who writes many drafts. So far, that's what's served me. I was already living in Mumbai when I started writing Mother Land. I started writing it about six months before my first novel, America for Beginners, was released. I worked on the first draft in Mumbai. Then I was really lucky. I got a writer's residency in Italy, which was an incredible experience. I worked on the second draft there, which was also very interesting to work on this novel that's very much set in and embedded in Mumbai in an idyllic vineyard in Italy. That was real cognitive dissonance there, but incredible. Then I worked subsequent drafts with the help of my incredible agent, Julia Kardon, who's always just so great at really seeing the things that I'm trying to do and failing at doing in my novels and helping me actually do them. Then eventually we sent this to my editor. Of course, she had incredible feedback, incredible edits, as Rachel always does. By the time it finally sold, it had been about a year that I'd been working on it. Then of course, there are subsequent drafts after my editor agreed to publish it with her. I think that it probably, all told, the first time I put fingers to computer versus final copy, probably around a year and nine, ten months, about two years.

Zibby: That's not bad.

Leah: No.

Zibby: That's fairly fast on the continuum.

Leah: This is a book that really came out of me fairly quickly. I knew these two characters really well. I had an idea of the story. It's really about these two people. The intricate plotting that you sometimes do was not as much of the labor as, how do I most authentically really layer these people such that they both feel complete and total and really true?

Zibby: Now that it's out in the world, are you already attacking a new project? Are you focused mostly on publicity and all the rest that comes with releasing a book into the world, especially during this time?

Leah: Boy, during this time is a whole other -- I think that all of us in the world are like, what are we doing during this time? I think that all of us creatively are, we're all having parallel experiences of, has this made us incredibly productive? Is this a creatively rich time? Is this a creatively draining time where that's just not possible? Those are both totally fair responses. There's no right way to be an artist. There's certainly no right way to be an artist or person right now. I'm always working on a lot of news things. My husband likes to joke -- I met my husband in graduate school for dramatic writing. One of the arts of dramatic writing is distillation. When I got into fiction, it was such an incredible release because you don't have to be as distilled in fiction. My husband jokes that of course I've become a novelist because I have so much to say. He's right in many ways. I do, I have so many stories I'm interested in. I have so many things that I love writing. Right now, I am working on a new novel. I'm working on several TV scripts. I finished the first draft of a new play I'd been working on for a long time. I think that I'm really motivated by having multiple stories happening at once. They lift the weight of wanting to say everything in one place on the other. Actually, for me, spreading it out frees the work up to be what it wants to be rather than me trying to cram everything I'm thinking into one place at one time. I'm always working on a lot of things.

Zibby: That's awesome. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Leah: Oh, boy, so much. Then also, who am I to give advice? I feel both things very strongly. [laughs]

Zibby: It's okay. You are completely in the right to give advice. I am holding your novel in my hand. That means that you can give advice.

Leah: One of the things I often credit pursuing training in dramatic writing doing for me as a novelist is that, whether you do a program for it or not, I think the act of pursuing dramatic writing pushes you very hard to be un-precious because you write a lot of things into the void. You are encouraged in that field to write a lot of things and then discard them and write something news. Often in a dramatic writer's portfolio, they might have anywhere from five to ten scripts that they’ve worked on. Say you're a TV writer. One of those might get you onto a writers' room, and none of them will ever actually be made. They're the samples you made that you hoped would go somewhere but they didn't. Then you move on and you move on. There's a lot of throwing things out and moving on, throwing and moving. I think that that's especially in more commercial programs. I would say NYU is both an artistic and a commercial program. That's the graduate school I went to. There is this push towards anti-preciousness. I think that there's a time in your process to fall in love with what you have to say. I do it every time. There's also a time to throw a lot out the door, especially if you're a writer like me. I think the best advice I have is, there's this impulse to write one thing and put so much weight and love into it that the idea of writing another thing feels like a horrible waste or incredible pain. What you might end up with is one very beautiful thing that nobody wants to publish or serves you at a certain point in time and doesn't serve you later.

I think that the best advice I have is just to write lots of things. Write lots of stories. Yes, of course treasure that big novel inside of you that takes ten years to write. One of the things that writers who spend a lot more time on a project than maybe I have right now is that they also had ten other things they were writing in that time. When we talk about a writer who's spent ten years on a book, they’ve often written and done so many other things that kept fueling that, kept fueling that one big thing. The myth of, I worked on a novel for fifteen years and then it was Swann's Way, I think it tricks people into feeling that all of their mental energy should be spent on this one thing, and then it'll be perfect. Maybe there are people who work like that, and that's incredible. For me, the most fruitful thing to keep myself writing, keep myself excited, because you want to fall in love, you want to be excited about the work, is to write multiple things at once and let yourself remember that you have more than one story in you.

Zibby: I love that. Leah, thank you so much. I love the fact that we can talk across the entire planet, basically, about your book and that words can unite so much. It's so great. It just feels so neat to be able to do this from where you are and have your words here in my home and you're so far away. It's very cool.

Leah: I love that. I love that about story. When I first met my husband, we were talking about this. He had this anxiety about the kind of stories he wanted to tell. Who's going to care? Who's going to care about this story set in Kolkata? We're in a grad school in New York. Who's going to care? I asked him, "What are some of the stories that you've loved the best? Do they all come from exactly your life perspective?" He was like, "No. I love the Blue, White, and Red trilogy. I love Oldboy. I love all of these things that come out of my context but helped me see something in my context." I think that's the incredible thing about story.

Zibby: That's awesome. Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show.

Leah: Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure.

Zibby: I can't wait to read what you have coming up. I never read America for Beginners. I'm going to go back and read that. Looking forward to your next batch.

Leah: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's been an incredible pleasure.

Zibby: Bye.

Lynn Steger Strong, WANT

Zibby Owens: This is day five, the last day of this week for my July Book Blast. Today is Fiction Friday. I'll be releasing a few episodes of novels that I think are pretty awesome and can't wait to introduce you to these authors. I'm doing the July Book Blast because I interviewed a lot of people during quarantine. The books came out during quarantine. I would love them to get the airtime they need now to get the word out. Also, a lot of these books are great beach reads. If you have any time this summer, I would love for you to hear more from these authors directly. Please enjoy Fiction Friday. Stay tuned. This whole week was Memoir Monday, Debut Tuesday, Beach Reads Wednesday, Thrilling Thursday, and now today, Fiction Friday. I hope you've had a chance to listen to a few this week. Enjoy this one. Bye.

Lynn Steger Strong is the author of Want: A Novel and also Hold Still. She was born and raised in South Florida and has an MFA from Columbia University and teaches writing.

Welcome, Lynn. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Lynn Steger Strong: Thanks so much for having me. Moms definitely don't have time to read books right now.

Zibby: Isn't it even harder now? Do you think it's even harder with everything going on? It must be.

Lynn: Oh, yeah. My husband is commuting to work. I'm by myself with my kids all day. I get up very early, but I haven't been reading very much. It's hard.

Zibby: Your book, I made time to read.

Lynn: Thank you. That's good.

Zibby: Your novel is called Want, coming out in July. Tell listeners what Want is about and what inspired you to write this book.

Lynn: It's about a woman, a mom. The short answer is she declares bankruptcy and she gets in touch with an old friend, but I think, I hope, it's about being a woman and motherhood and privilege and the particular fact of trying to want when you've been told you can have anything you want and then realizing that that's not true. I started at the start, which is to say I started with the opening scene, I started with this idea of a woman -- I was really interested in someone who's going through a lot and who, on paper, seems like she's struggling but also has an obscene amount of privilege. I started with a woman who walks out of her job and literally disappears and realizes no one notices. That idea of who has the power and privilege to disappear was a lot of what started the book for me.

Zibby: I feel like the book throws you right into this woman's, nonchalance is the wrong word, her ambivalence about everything, her lack of being able to feel it all. She's going through the motions. The way you described the scenes in the shower with her husband, everything is just so matter of fact. She gets it done. Then she moves on. She's catatonic, which I feel like is a state so many people can get to when they're not fully happy in their lives. You didn't even have to say it. You just illustrated it with your words. That was great.

Lynn: Thank you. That idea of ambivalence was one of the grinding factors. I was constantly like, if something seems one way, in the next scene I want it to almost seem the exact opposite. If a character seems sort of good or nice, in the next scene I want the reader to see how they're another thing. The idea of everything being not only but also was running through my head a lot.

Zibby: You had your main character obsessed with her childhood friend, Sasha. Am I getting that right?

Lynn: Yep.

Zibby: Why? What was that about? Did you have a friend that you would stalk on Facebook or something? How did you come up with that as a device? Was it from life or what?

Lynn: I think that we're all sort of obsessed. I at least have very intense female friendships. In a lot of ways, they’ve been formative to me in ways that both feel familiar in terms of a lot of my -- again, they're my friends, so whatever. A lot of women have those experiences. With regard to this idea of motherhood and womanhood, I think that our mothers are our models. I also think that the other women in our lives become our models in ways that we don't always realize. For me, Sasha especially was this way. I think when we're teenagers, we play at being grown-up. We don't realize that sometimes our actions have grown-up consequences before we're ready to know what our actions are. Sasha's there to sort of show how when the main character tries to love people, she doesn't have any other model besides her own mother. Her own mother is not a great model. Then when she tries to love Sasha, she accidentally does things that as a grown-up and as a mother to her own children she would never do and she regrets. The obsession was with another female character, but it was also this obsession with wanting to be good at taking care of people and not knowing how to do that well.

Zibby: Interesting. I love how you took it all the way back to when Sasha -- what is the narrator's name? I'm blanking on this.

Lynn: Elizabeth.

Zibby: Elizabeth. That's my name, actually. How could I forget this? When they contrast even how they grew up and how Elizabeth was saying her house was much bigger and it would seem like maybe that would make for a happier home when in fact, not at all. The exact opposite was home. Her parents would just stroll in and barely acknowledge her. Then in Sasha's house, which was much smaller and they didn't maybe have as much privilege, it was all about the love and what was missing. I feel like so much in female friendships, you look for what you're missing in yourself a little bit, try to fill that gap. Anyway, thought that was neat.

Lynn: Totally. Again, I think that privilege, it's such an elastic, slippery word. On paper, Elizabeth's family has more, but in reality, it feels like Sasha's family has more. Also, the other things are true too. Sasha has more student debt than Elizabeth.

Zibby: I read one of your articles on Catapult about writing about how you had dinner with your family and you wanted to write a story about them, but then you'd have to make them characters and maybe they wouldn't be perfect characters. I was just wondering how you ended up with fiction, if you ever did attempt to fictionalize your own family, if that has crept its way into your novels, and just how you ended up becoming a novelist, really.

Lynn: I think it all creeps in. I think people who say it doesn't are lying. I have tried to write nonfiction. I've actually written a bit of nonfiction. Ultimately, I always return to fiction because I think that scenes are the most, at least for me, they're the thing that I'm best at. I think they're the best sometimes at communicating ideas, not least because I don't really want to make any arguments. Like you said, I'm really interested in ambivalence. The best way, I think, to make readers sit inside of spaces of not knowing or this sort of everything is often more than one thing at the same time is to just depict scenes as carefully and precisely as I can. That's how I continually return to fiction. I'm trying to think of all of your questions.

Zibby: I know. Sorry. I loaded them all up at once. [laughs]

Lynn: No, it's okay. The particular way that I was loved and the particular way that I think that love is always flawed and that we always hurl that word at one another but fall short in different ways, obviously that came from personal experiences, which I think is also how I became a novelist. I became a writer in some ways because I felt like I was saying things and I was given language, but that language never matched up with the experience. It was just this long process of trying to find language that was effective enough that people heard what I was saying. I had this New Yorker cartoon when I was in college, maybe, or twenties that was this girl sitting in a window saying, "Dear Mom and Dad, you gave me a good childhood. As a result, I can never be a writer," which is silly and funny. My parents loved me very much. I feel like everybody who becomes a writer in some ways has experienced some, I feel like trauma's too strong a word, but I think specifically trauma around language. Words have been used against them in ways that makes them want to reappropriate that power in some way by saying, I know how powerful language can be. I want control of that. I'm going to enact that on other people.

Zibby: That's an interesting theory. I'm going to test that out. I like it. I fully agree that -- I have a girlfriend who came to this one book event I had. All these authors were talking about different books. She was like, "You know, I think I've just had too happy a life. Nothing really bad has happened to me. I feel kind of badly saying that. My parents are happily married. I'm very lucky. I have a nice marriage." I do think there's something to having had some sort of pain that can infuse your writing in some way. I think it generally helps. Something has to inspire you. Maybe not. Now I feel like writers are going to be like, nothing bad happened to me.

Lynn: I have plenty of friends with -- again, I put myself in this category in a lot of ways -- who had very idyllic childhoods. It's also just more a relationship to recognizing the ruptures in your life and other people's lives and then thinking about how those shift your experience. If you're paying a lot of attention, which I would argue is the one rule of being a writer, is to just pay a lot of attention, if you're paying a lot of attention, you see all the fissures and ruptures even if they're not necessarily happening to you.

Zibby: Love that. This is great. You teach writing too.

Lynn: I do.

Zibby: Tell me about some of the things that you tell your students. Sneak me some information that you share with them.

Lynn: I try to do a lot of generative writing in almost all of the classes that I teach, which is to say that I think that language is as much generative as communicative, which is another way of saying, so you have an idea and it's in your head and you think that you can just pop it in a word, but I don't believe that that's true. Language is a limited object. I might think I feel love, but my idea of that word love is very different from your idea of that word love. Already, there's a disconnect. Because language is separate, we can take language and we can see what language can teach us. That's a long-winded way of saying I think it's really important that sometimes you write and not think about what you're writing, but just keep going. I make my students do a lot of that, especially in the beginning of our different -- depending on the class I'm teaching. In that vein, the first assignment I always give them, which is stolen wholly from Amy Hempel, to write the thing that destabilizes your sense of yourself. That can be both you as a human but also you as a writer. I teach grad students and whatever. Also just depending on the mood you're in, some of us don't necessarily want to be sitting in a room with a bunch of strangers crying. [laughs] You can always write the thing that destabilizes your sense of yourself as a writer. You can also write the thing that destabilizes your sense of yourself as a human. I would argue they're connected.

I'll also say just for whatever it's worth, I don't ever make people share any of this. I think that's an important part of being a writer and writing and finding a way to saying something worthwhile. You have to inhabit spaces where you're like, I will never share this with anyone ever. What would I write if I gave myself that space? Then maybe seventeen drafts later, you might find yourself in a space where you would share it, but to make sure that you sometimes sit down and say, this is just a secret and I'm seeing what that secret feels like in language. That's the one other thing. Then I'll stop. That's the one other thing I tell students and the thing I hope my books feel like. We have so many forms of storytelling at this point. One of the thrills of reading that I want to give readers is the thrill of secret sharing. You can't get that energy of secret sharing if you're never sharing secrets or what feels like secrets.

Zibby: I feel like secrets are another motivating factor in writing. I feel like anyone who has held a secret, which is basically everybody in some form or another, but depending on the level of destruction that that secret has wrought in their lives, I feel like that informs so many stories and entire novels. There should really just be a whole thing on, write your secrets on the way to your novel or something like that. [laughs]

Lynn: That's another writing exercise I give students. Share a secret, but also share a secret with someone for who the secret is high stakes. Write that letter to the mom character in the book that if she got that letter, she would cry. That's also it. How do secrets function as sources of tension? They almost always do if you look at the right people.

Zibby: Then that's the trick of turning those into fiction. When you said that first prompt, something popped into my head that happened in college which I haven't thought of in forever. Then I was like, no, I couldn't write that because I could never share that. Then I was thinking, well, maybe that would be interesting in a novel. Then I would get on a call with somebody and they'd say, did that really happen to you? Then what would I say? Yes or no? [laughs]

Lynn: This is why fiction's so fun. You would turn it into something concrete that's separate from the secret. For example, and this is giving away a part of the book, but no one has ever offered my family money for my husband's sperm. That's a detail in the novel. What has happened in my life is that I've had a complicated relationship with my femininity and my husband's masculinity and my ability to make babies in my relationship. I've thought a lot about that. Again, no one's ever offered me money for her husband's sperm, but that idea, sitting at a dinner and having someone say, we think that your husband's ability to procreate, we think your husband's ability to make a home is more powerful than yours, is absolutely a thing that I have felt. Then in fiction, it becomes this very specific scene with a very specific action that has consequence that has other people to interact around it. But in my life, it's just a thought.

Zibby: Wow, that's really neat. This is great. I feel like I've just taken a little mini writing tutorial here. I'm so inspired. This is great.

Lynn: I'll send you some writing prompts when we're done. I love writing prompts.

Zibby: I actually subscribed, there was a -- I can't even remember what it was called. Somebody did, pay fifty cents a day for a writing prompt or something like that. Every day, she would send a writing prompt. I ended up deleting it. I'm like, I don't have time to write right now, so I'm not writing, but the whole idea of everything sparks all these stories and they're all tucked away. I don't know about you, as I get older, I feel like I'm probably much older than you, but if someone says, tell me a story from college, I'm like, I don't know. But if somebody reminds me of specific thing like somebody I went to college with, of course it comes back. You might not think of it until you have the red carpet that rolls out right to that moment.

Lynn: I had a grad school professor, Victor LaValle, who's a genius. You think about how you remember an experience as a feeling, but actually, feelings have logistics. He was talking about, he was writing about a depressed college kid. Depression inevitably feels really one-note. I think I'm playing with that in my book too. In my book, a ton happens. Also, his description was, but then I remembered I was a depressed kid who smoked a lot of weed which meant I had to interact with my dealer which meant that was sometimes funny. Actually, I ate a lot of food, which, A, food is super -- I'm sort of obsessed with food as a really useful space to think about families and relationships and etc. You think about the thing that you felt. As writers, we often want to talk about our feelings. Then you think about, there are usually logistics and rituals around those feelings, and those can provide scenes.

Zibby: It's so great.

Lynn: I hope. I don't know.

Zibby: Tell me about the process of writing Want and how it differed from your first book.

Lynn: Hold Still was my first book. It came out. I wrote it, and I was not very happy with the reception. I think most writers are sort of like, my dream came true and I'm still myself. It can be a jarring experience to still have to be yourself. I had this big, complicated novel that I spent a few years on that was nine point-of-view characters. Anyway, long story short, after a few rounds of submissions it did not sell. I was pretty devasted but also pretty much like, well, I tried. It didn't work, so now I'm just going to do whatever I want. I tend to get up pretty early. I started to get up around three or four instead of four or five and wrote a bunch. My kids were in camp for -- there was this very short period of time -- I usually have three or four jobs at a time. For that period of time, I had one or two jobs on and off, but many fewer jobs than usual and needed to do much less childcare than usual. I just was a little bit of a crazy person. I was probably very hard to live with. I was getting up at three or four. I would write until my kids woke up. I would take them to camp. I would write until it was time to pick them up. I would watch them/let them watch television. I would put them to bed. I would write more. It came out very, very quickly. It was sort of intense and unsustainable. Then I had a draft. Once I have a draft, and this is always true, once I have a draft, I can sort of calm down because I know what it is. I feel like it has the energy and the rhythm I want it to have. Now I can do the stuff that feels more like the actual work of figuring out how to put the pieces together. The process was very intense and, again, probably not super fun for my husband.

Zibby: What time would you go to sleep on the days you were waking up at three?

Lynn: Ten or eleven. I'd work again once my kids went to bed. I don't know if you feel this as a parent. I also just need some time when no one needs anything from me. Even if I don't sleep and to go real low and highbrow, like I'm watching Real Housewives, I just need some time when no one wants to talk to me. I also have to fit that in somewhere.

Zibby: Every so often when a kid wakes me up in the middle of the night -- I don't usually get out of bed ever before three. I try not to be in the threes, but sometimes they wake me up and my brain just starts going. I'm like, ooh, how nice. I could go into the kitchen and no one will walk over to the table and bother me. [laughs] I can do anything. I could read. I could write. I could prepare for all these podcasts. It doesn't matter. No one's going to talk to me. That alone is enough to get me out of bed in the middle of the night just to enjoy the silence.

Lynn: I feel like people look at me like I'm crazy, but it is a magic time. There's also this weird pressure to be productive and efficient which I feel very much just also as a person who has to survive in the world. I feel weirdly at four AM, I can give myself a break. This morning I looked at the pigeons. I was up at four. I went for a run. Then I came back and I watched the pigeons out our window. At five thirty, that feels unproductive and like I need to start doing something. At four, it's like, nah, it's fine.

Zibby: The other day, it was literally three thirty. I was like, look at these cool shadows on the books in my office. I start taking all these pictures. Then of course, I put my little card in my computer the other day. I was like, oh, my god, what was I doing that night? [laughter] Yes, it's very nice to escape the chaos, the nonstop, especially these days. Our little kids are similar ages. It's a lot. It's a lot of needs to meet. It's intense.

Lynn: It's a lot.

Zibby: Are you writing another novel now? What are you up to?

Lynn: I am, yeah. Like I said, I'm mostly looking at the pigeons these days. Like you say, I'm trying to do our very hobbling version of remote learning because my kids are still doing that for a couple more weeks. I have a book that is about -- it's interesting because I started it before everything that's happened. I was thinking a lot about the climate, as I think a lot of people are. It was about a kid who goes missing. It was about making art. It's very specific. It's over the period of a holiday weekend. A child goes missing. The families go out in search of her. It's also about trying to raise people well and make art when both of those things in different circumstances could feel like sort of absurd endeavors in our current context. I have had 167 pages of that book for a couple months now. It's a distracting, tricky time.

Zibby: That is true. Do you have advice to aspiring authors?

Lynn: Keep going. Keep going. You're going to write bad things. Also, the things you write that are good, people are going to tell you are bad, so keep going. Create language for and ideas around what you want to make because you might be the only one who knows when you've made it. You want to be able to stand up and say, no, you don't like it, or no, you don't want to publish it, but this is what I want to make. If this is not what you want, then I will find someone else. Just keep going. It's such a weird, slippery, hard path. The only people I know who have published books are the people who kept trying to write books.

Zibby: Very true. Thank you. Thanks for all your insights. Thank you for coming on the show. I will be thinking of you in the middle of the night. [laughter]

Lynn: Enjoy your shadows. To me, it's so exciting. Thank you so much for having me. Good luck with your children and all the things.

Zibby: Thanks, you too.

Thanks so much for listening to Fiction Friday, part of the July Book Blast of "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I hope that you found some really great reads this week. All five days I've launched tons of episodes so that I can entertain you and you can connect with stories and just feel a little better in the world knowing that these stories exist and that these authors are out there. I hope you enjoyed all of these Fiction Friday episodes and that you had a great day. I hope you have a really great weekend. Come back next week because I'm doing one more week, one more five days I should say, of another July Book Blast week. I'll have five new fun days then, and then back to normal. You can have a binge podcast fest or something. Anyway, have a great weekend.

Debra Jo Immergut, YOU AGAIN

Zibby Owens: Welcome to day four of my July Book Blast. Today, I am going to be calling this Thrilling Thursday. There are a bunch of thrillers and suspenseful reads that I thought you'd really enjoy and that would make great summer reads. A lot of these came out during the pandemic. They're really worth your time, so I wanted to get them out. I hope you enjoy them.

Debra Jo Immergut is the author of You Again. She's also the author of The Captives, a 2019 Edgar Award finalist for Best Debut Novel by an American Author, which was published in the US and in over a dozen other countries. She has also published a collection of short stories called Private Property. Her essays and stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Narrative, and The New York Times, among others. A recipient of Michener and MacDowell fellowships, she has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Western Massachusetts.

Zibby: Debra, You Again, first of all, tell listeners, please, what You Again is about. Then I want to hear about the impetus for writing this book and everything else.

Debra Jo Immergut: You Again is about a fortysomething-year-old working mom in New York City who is coming home late from work one night and looks out her taxi window and sees her younger self coming out of a nightclub that closed years ago. It is really about this woman who is literally haunted by this younger self and what these encounters mean, how they change her, how they throw her life into complete upheaval, and how she comes out the other end of it.

Zibby: I know this is not your first book, but tell me how this particular book came into your head. Were you in a cab by the Hudson tunnel? Is it not called the Hudson Tunnel? I'm losing my mind. Hudson Tunnel, right?

Debra: Holland Tunnel. [laughs]

Zibby: Holland Tunnel, oh, my gosh. I've been out of the city too long. Did you ever see yourself while you were in a cab or somebody who looked like you and then that sparked the novel? That's my theory, but probably is not true. Tell me.

Debra: Not exactly, but not far off. What happened was I was walking through my old neighborhood in Greenwich Village with a stroller holding my one-year-old son at that time. I just happened to be in this area where I had lived when I was in my twenties. By this time, I was in my late thirties or mid-thirties, about thirty-five. I walked by my old building. I just happened onto this block, hadn’t been there in a long time. I just had the strangest sensation that I was going to see my younger self coming out of the door. The block is one of those landmark blocks, so nothing had changed. The old tenement building was still there. I just felt like I could see her coming out. Then I thought, what would she say to me? Here I am pushing a stroller. She wanted to be a novelist. I have not yet managed to get that novel out there. What would our conversation be like? What would I tell her? What would she say to me? That moment stuck with me for a long time. At that period, I really wasn't writing. I think that was part of the reason that I felt this encounter might be somewhat difficult. As soon as I did get back to writing a few years later, that story, I thought, I need to just start writing it and see what the girl says.

Zibby: That's so cool. Now I'm thinking in my head, wow, at what times could I really have used the me now to go back and say something encouraging to the me then? That would be so nice if you had those kind of touchstones throughout life to get you through the harder times. Wait, but tell me -- so you started writing and then you took a break for like twenty years, essentially. Then you came back. Tell me what that journey was like.

Debra: I went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and got off to a pretty nice start, sold a story collection half-finished. It was really the first handful of stories I'd written in my life. That was probably not great. I was so green. I really did not have a clue about what I was doing as a writer, as a published author. I was unprepared. I was young. It kind of threw me for a loop. I thought, wow, this was a rocky journey and not what I expected. It was kind of a difficult publishing experience. As I know now, and since I know so many authors and friends who are writers, pretty much every publishing journey has a lot of bumps in the road. That's how green I was. I didn't know that. I needed to retreat from it a little bit. I did write a novel that got rejected. That even more sent me a signal, I need to step back from this. At the same time, I became a mom. I needed money. I got a job in the magazine business. I just thought, let me set it aside for a while. Then in those twenty years, it was not that I wasn't writing. I did go back to writing. Among other things, I was working on this concept of the older self/younger self novel. I was doing it slowly as a full-time working mom and kind of feeling like I love writing, but maybe I'm just not thinking about publishing at this point. That's where I was for a long time. Then I slowly made my way back to publishing when I knew I was ready. This time out has been really different.

Zibby: I bet. It seems like things are going well.

Debra: Things are going well. That novel that I was rejected all those years ago, I took out of the drawer. I put a lot more work into it and sent it out and got an agent. Then it was sold within two days of going out on the market. That was just so far beyond my expectations. That became my first novel, The Captives. Then the second one, I brought this other novel, what has become You Again.

Zibby: For The Captives, you taught writing to prisoners, men's prisons, and got to know them and channeled that into your first book, and then now switching gears to a New York-based harried mother for the characters here. [laughs]

Debra: Exactly. One of the things I was doing in all those years was teaching writing in incarceration settings of various kinds to both women and men and became very interested in those lives. The Captives is about a prison psychologist. He's about in his thirties. One day a new client comes in, and it's the girl he went to high school with who he had a huge crush on from afar the whole time. She's incarcerated. It's about what happened between the two of them. It's funny, both of these books have these intense duos who go back in time and who are now coming back into each other's lives. I seem to be really drawn to that dynamic.

Zibby: Is there a point in your life that you wish you could go back to and change? Aside from the being green and the publishing journey, is there more of a personal moment or something that you wish had gone differently or that you would love to go back and redo?

Debra: I would say about my publishing journey, now I feel like it could've have gone better than it has gone. We come to things, ideally, when we're ready. I was not ready that time. This time, I am. I'll also say as a writer at this point in my life, I have so much material to work with. When I was in my twenties, you're sort of scraping the barrel a little bit. I feel like I have this deep well. I really wouldn't change that piece of it. What I would do is go back to that ambitious young writer and really tell her, you know what, it's going to be okay. The disappointments that feel hard right now, it all smooths out with time. I always used to be skeptical about how you get better with age, but I really do feel like life does get better when you have a little bit more perspective for the ups and downs. I think I had very, very little perspective then. I would love to be able to share that with my younger self just to say, take a deep breath. You can't believe it now, but this is not that big a deal.

Zibby: That is good advice in general. The one scene in your book that I felt like I related to the most is when the main character is going to Dr. Singh with all these complainants like fainting, headaches, vomiting, dizziness, aching. He kind of dismisses her and says, "Are you under stress?" Then he says, "All the mommies are under lots of stress," and is like, "Go about your business." I feel like you hear things like this often. You present with some complainants, and everyone's like, no, it's stress, it's this. Then you find out that it ends up being all these other things. In your book, it was a very complicated unraveling of a lot of different factors that I won't go into so as not to reveal anything. I felt like that was such a classic moment that I'm sure other people have experienced as well.

Debra: He says to her, "All the mommies have so much stress." Then he tells her to go get a massage at the shiatsu place down the block. He thinks that might do the trick. Of course, it doesn't. She goes down the block, though. She takes his advice. Of course, what stressed-out working mom doesn't like the idea of having an excuse to treat yourself to a massage? She does go there. While she's in the waiting room waiting to go in, she sees her son outside -- she has a sixteen-year-old -- in a street protest. She never ends up getting that massage. She has to go out there and mix in a little bit. I won't say more than that. In some ways, that might alleviate her stress a little bit more, getting out into the street with the angry protestors for a moment there.

Zibby: By the way, I was reading it and I was like, wow, this is so timely. The antifa movement and everything that's going on in Seattle right now, I'm sure I'm just totally naïve and in my own little bubble, but I had not even heard of that particular movement before it's been plastered all over the news. Then it's all over your book. This is so of the moment, the protesting, all of it. It was like you had a little bit of ESP or something of what was to come.

Debra: I'm quite amazed by that too. I was aware of them, mostly because when I was in my twenties to early thirties -- my husband is a journalist. We lived in Berlin for a few years. The antifa had been there in Europe really since the 1920s in various forms. There have been lots of these, what we now see as antifa, these black-clad young people, very far left. That's been all over Berlin for many, many years. They always grabbed my attention and fascinated me. They were so wild and kind of intimidating looking. Also, often you'd see them, it looked like they were having fun. As a twentysomething of a very different variety, I was just like, well, look at those people. I just always noticed them and remembered them. Then around Trump's inauguration, that was really where I saw them here for the first time. I don't know if you remember. They turned up on inauguration day in Washington in a small way. I thought, oh, look, it's the American antifa. I always wondered if that would ever take hold there. As I was starting to work on You Again, I knew that my sixteen-year-old character was going to get into trouble of some kind of and pushing the boundaries and pushing the envelope. I thought, given everything that's going on in the country and the crazy atmosphere of the last few years, I just had a sense that that might be a coming thing and a bigger factor as time goes on. We are really polarized. The extremes are very activated at the moment. That's where my sixteen-year-old ends up. Actually, my fortysomething ends up delving into it, I'll say, really brought in by her son and trying to figure out what it is and what it means and how it even reflects on her own life, but without endorsing it in any way. I would say personally I'm fascinated by them, but in a neutral way. [laughs]

Zibby: Got it. You just mentioned your husband a little bit. I wanted to bring up your Modern Love piece from early May this year, which was fantastic, about needing the space to breathe in your marriage and how Burning Man became a piece of that. The last line of that, "It takes fresh air to feed a fire," just gave me goosebumps. It was so good. Tell me about selling that to Modern Love and also what it felt like to be needing that kind of recharging and how Burning Man fit into everything.

Debra: There's some common themes there in You Again and my Modern Love piece, which shows you how personal this book really is. It is kind of my statement of being a woman in a very long marriage and having really worked hard raising a kid, paying the bills, all of those things that we have to do. Yet somewhere in there is still that teenage girl yearning to break free. I think that's what Abigail goes through. That's because that's what I have experienced in the last few years too. Yet I am crazy about my husband. He is wonderful in every way. We have such a deep, long connection at this point that I knew that I didn't want to walk away from it if I could in any way help it. The Burning Man piece is really like, what can we do to get some of that freedom into our tight bond without breaking that bond? The Burning Man adventure was one way that we decided to try to do that, something that I was really reluctant to do. He was curious about it for years. When I came into this point of my life of feeling like I needed freedom, I thought, this is something I can do for him and it might help us. It did. It was amazing. I wouldn't say it was like, and then everything was completely different. As you well know, marriage and having a family is an ongoing project. It's always changing and moving and evolving. That was kind of a crisis moment that I wrote about that we got through by just having a great adventure together and something really out of our comfort zone. It was fun. It was really fun, I have to say. I don't know if we'll go back. We might. We're not hardcore Burning Man people. What we found out is doing something really out there is good for us.

Zibby: It's probably good for everyone. Now doing something out there would just mean leaving my house. [laughs] Burning Man could probably really shake things up.

Debra: That is true. Going to the grocery story these days feels like pushing the envelope. It's amazing how two years feels like an eon ago.

Zibby: I got my hair done for the first time in four months.

Debra: You got your hair cut?

Zibby: Yes. Going into a salon felt like, oh, my gosh, this is a whole new world, all these people and smells and sounds. [laughs]

Debra: You're making me a little jealous, I have to say.

Zibby: It was pretty awesome. It was pretty much the most awesome three hours I've spent for not too much of a change, but it's okay. It was just nice to get a little trim and all the rest. All to say that our standards and what constitutes really exciting things, out of the ordinary, can shift very quickly.

Debra: Absolutely. I would just add for all you long-married folk out there, Burning Man is not necessary, but maybe thinking about how to add fresh air, I think it's a really good question to address together. I guess maybe what really came out of that whole experience was the honesty of our conversations. I think that's really what changed. It was even just hard to address that this was an issue, that we had to really look and work at our relationship which really had been very easy for many years. Even that is a great step to take every so often.

Zibby: It's really great you shared it because I feel like marriage is one of those things that people only discuss on the surface sometimes. When you actually open up and talk about the real stuff, all it does is help other people through whatever they're going through. Thanks for doing that. Tell me a little more about your writing process. When you were writing You Again, how long did it take to write? Where do you like to write? Do you sit right where you are now? We're on Skype. I'm looking at you on this cozy little couch and beautiful light streaming in.

Debra: I actually sit on the other side of the room here right in the center of my house. One thing I've discovered about myself over the years is putting my writing space really sequestered somewhere in a corner of the house makes me not go there. I finally set up my office and my desk right in the center of the house. I have one child. He's been in college. Of course, now he's home. That's a fantastic bonus of what's been a really hard and awful time. I never thought we'd have him home for, I think it's been going on four months now. He's around. That's fantastic. I really do write in the midst of my family. I try to at least touch my work every day. I will say, I do believe in intermittent persistence, and especially for women who are trying to write and juggle many other things. I would say I've gotten two novels out there and a collection of short stories and a bunch of other essays and things writing persistently but with breaks. It's okay. I think sometimes there's a machismo in the writing world about, you must write every day. You must do so many words every day. When I'm able to do that and my life allows, I do that. There are other times when I have walked away when I need to. I go back, and it's still there. I just like to put that message out for women who are trying to write. I think intermittent persistence is a good strategy if you can't make it every day.

Zibby: I like that. It takes a little of the pressure off. Do you have other advice to aspiring authors?

Debra: I would just say you need to find your core stories. You Again, coming out of this moment in my life, it just felt like a very urgent question to answer, how to make it in a long marriage, how to grapple with unfulfilled ambitions or sidelined ambitions. I think you can't shy away from going there, to those hard, core, deep issues. That's the well. It doesn't mean you have to write openly and blatantly about them. I sometimes think of it as method acting, like when the director needs a child actor to cry and he goes up and whispers in his ear, remember when your dog died? That's what you want to be thinking about. The scene may concern something completely differently. I think you need to tap into those emotions. Then write a spy thriller if that's what you want to write, but try to locate it in your core. That works very well for me.

Zibby: That's so great. Just going back to structure for two seconds because so much in this book -- I loved, at one point, there was somebody who was like, let's go over all the facts right now. You outlined them all step by step. Here's what we know. There were so many different pieces. It was a kaleidoscope of what's true and what's not true and who believes what and which transcript and whatever. How did you assemble that? How did you do it? Tell me how you made that work. I'm very impressed.

Debra: When I began the book, I really just had that vision that I talked about before with me and the stroller and the girl coming out of my old apartment building. I had no idea what the explanation for this could be, how this woman could be seeing herself. I just wrote with a fair amount of fear and trepidation. How am I going to explain this? One thing I knew for sure was I didn't want it to be like, she woke up and it was all a dream. I really said to myself, if you're going to tackle a woman haunted by her younger self, you must have some plausible explanations for why it happens. Yet you must maintain mystery and depth, not overexplaining. That was scary as I got further and further in and was really committing to the story not knowing exactly how to do it. What I've found is -- I'm sure you've heard authors say this before. Your subconscious is smarter than you are.

Slowly, explanations started to emerge as I brought in other characters, as I brought in Abigail's history and the whole backstory and what's happening with her younger self. The explanations were sort of embedded in the facts of her life. We discover that the things that happen to the twentysomething lay the groundwork for this haunting. That's about as much as I can say without really giving too much away. It was embedded in there for me, but I had to get about two-thirds into the first draft before that started to take shape. Then all those other pieces that you're talking about, the mosaic of explanations and facts and twists, that comes in revision when you really see, okay, I need to account for that plot strand. Again, I would look at the groundwork I'd set with Abigail's story. There were things that I could draw out, possible explanations, possible factors, and weave them in. It's a mysterious process. You really do need to trust yourself when you're writing a novel. If you do that enough, I don't know, there's some magic to it. It comes together.

Zibby: That's really exciting.

Debra: I take a lot of notes too. I ask myself questions. I have a notebook for each novel, and ask myself questions, sleep on it. Again, I think it kind of comes out of the subconscious if you allow it.

Zibby: I can't wait to hear what comes out of your subconscious next. Are you working on another book? What are your plans after you celebrate the book review?

Debra: I am hard at work on novel three. One of the lessons I learned from my earlier publishing rough seas was that, just be working on new things and really going to that beautiful, magical, imaginary place. That's why we do it, to be able to spend time creating and living in our imagination and trying to make dreamworlds that will please our readers. That's the fun part. I really learned, publishing, the best antidote or counterbalance is writing. I've been writing a lot the last few months as I get ready for You Again to come out. It is set partly in Berlin drawing from those years in the nineties when I lived there, which was a really exciting time, and partly in this small college town, which is where I live now in Massachusetts. There's a mother and a daughter in it. It is sort of an older and a younger again, and a past story and a present story. I'm really starting to see my patterns. That's okay. William Faulkner wrote variations on very similar stories. He won the Noble Prize, so I guess that's okay.

Zibby: What's that expression? If it's not broken, don't fix it. Just keep at it. It seems to be working.

Debra: The subconscious, that must be what its shape is for me. Go with it.

Zibby: Go with it. Love it. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for your Modern Love inspirational piece and this beautiful dreamlike state of novel. Thank you.

Debra: Thank you, Zibby. I just want to say, huge thank you to you for all you're doing for writers and readers during this time, and before that also, but especially now. It's just fantastic. Thank you. I can say on behalf of everyone who's trying to write, we thank you.

Zibby: Aw, that's so nice of you. It's my pleasure. I love it. Thanks. Have a great day. Thanks. Bye, Debra.

Thanks for listening to this episode from Thriller Thursday, part of my July Book Blast to get great authors into your hands while the summer is still going on. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Stephanie Storey, RAPHAEL, PAINTER IN ROME

Zibby Owens: Stephanie Storey’s debut novel Oil and Marble was hailed as “tremendously entertaining” by The New York Times, has been translated into six languages, and is currently in development as a feature film by Pioneer Pictures. Storey is also the author of Raphael, Painter in Rome and has a degree in fine arts from Vanderbilt University and attended a PhD program in art history before leaving to get an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. She has studied art in Italy and been on a pilgrimage to see every Michelangelo on display in Europe. Stephanie has also been a national television producer for nearly twenty years in LA from shows including Alec Baldwin on ABC, Arsenio Hall for CBS, and Emmy-nominated The Writers' Room on the Sundance Channel. When not writing novels or producing television, Storey can usually be found with her husband, Mike Gandolfi, an actor and Emmy-winning comedy writer, traveling the world in search of their next stories.

Thanks, Stephanie. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" today.

Stephanie Storey: Thank you so much for having me even in the middle of all of the crazy world we have going on outside of our doors. I appreciate having any opportunity to talk about books and getting a little bit of an escape for a moment.

Zibby: Yes, I'm happy to provide the forum for that. You have such an interesting background. Your first book was Oil and Marble which took the world by storm and is now becoming a feature film. Is that right? Is that still happening?

Stephanie: It is still happening. Pioneer Pictures is making the movie. They're a great group of guys. I believe they have just finished up getting the screenplay solid. Now they're going out and attaching other elements and still hoping to plan on shooting in Italy once all of this closes down. There will be news forthcoming on that, but the moviemaking process is slow.

Zibby: Yes, I am acquainted with that a little bit. [laughter] How nice does filming in Italy sound? Even the idea of being able to travel. I know that's the least of these days, but just the ability to be in other parts of the world.

Stephanie: Just the ability to think about going back to Italy soothes me in some manner, to think about being able to head back to Rome or head back to Florence or just do something that feels a little bit more global than being sheltered in place in a house right now, which I understand is important. I'm all for it, but it is nice to be able to dream of going back to Italy at some point. Filming there would be amazing, oh, my gosh.

Zibby: I was looking at this picture. I have this photo of a pier with the Mediterranean Sea around it and all these people. There's this one woman who's walking down. I did this, I don't even know what it was, mindfulness -- I don't know what it was. I was like, I'm going to imagine that I'm her and I can hear the sounds and smell the water and pretend that I am there because instead, I am in my same place that I've been now for weeks and weeks and weeks. It helped. [laughs]

Stephanie: Then imagine yourself going and eating pizza or some pesto. Something like that would be really nice.

Zibby: I feel like you're going to get to Italy before me, so you are now required to send me some pictures or some footage of that trip because I am craving that experience. You have Oil and Marble. Now you have a new book, a new art historical thriller coming out. Tell me about that. I see it behind you.

Stephanie: It is. It is behind me, not that anybody else can see it, but it's right here.

Zibby: Not that you can see, sorry. We're on Skype.

Stephanie: It came out on April 7th. It just came out. Oil and Marble was about the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci when they were both living in Florence. At the end of that book -- this is not really a spoiler because it doesn't really give much away. At the end of that book a guy by the name of Raphael shows up on the scene. My newest book sort of in a way picks up where Oil and Marble left off. Although, it's very different. We follow Raphael down to Rome where he then engages in this high-stakes rivalry with Michelangelo. While Michelangelo was painting the Sistine ceiling, Raphael is just down the hall decorating the pope's private apartments. This newest novel is written in first person from Raphael's point of view. You only get this big rivalry between these two huge artists from the eyes of Raphael. You only see Michelangelo through the eyes of Raphael. He's sitting across a tavern table from you, the reader, telling you this story of how he engaged in this huge rivalry with Michelangelo, and the story, and how Michelangelo does create the Sistine ceiling during that and how Raphael deals with his rival doing such amazing things on a ceiling, and how he counters that.

Zibby: These days, someone's rival might get more likes on Instagram. Then they're painting the Sistine Chapel. [laughs] Things were so much more impressive.

Stephanie: Right? The Sistine Chapel. It's so funny because I've been talking to book clubs and people who have already read Raphael. They're like, "I went to the Vatican to go the Sistine, but I don't remember seeing Raphael's rooms, the pope's private apartments. I don't know if I went through them." I'm like, oh, no, you have to walk through them in order to get to the Sistine. The Vatican forces you walk through the Raphael rooms. They are gorgeous. They are little jewel boxes of rooms of these amazing masterpieces. People are so focused, I think, or at least Americans, are so focused on seeing the Sistine that they forget and they don't stop and pay attention to this other amazing art. I'm hoping that my book can do a little bit towards reviving Raphael. He was the most famous of the three, of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael during his lifetime. He was the most beloved. He was the one that everybody held up as this perfect painter. This year was the five hundredth anniversary of his death. There was supposed to be this huge global celebration going on of Raphael's life. This huge exhibit in Rome got shut down days after it opened. I was heartbroken for Raphael, not for me, for him. I was like, this was supposed to be your moment. I guess that's why I wrote it, because I get all flustered and weird when I talk about how we're missing out on Raphael's art and his brilliance and how we need to go back and reconnect to it. He was a nice guy, so he gets left out of the history too much. People go, he was so nice, so generous, so humble. He's not interesting. No, he's really interesting. Trust me.

Zibby: You have a PhD in art history. No, you don't? You don't.

Stephanie: I went to a PhD program. I attended one. I did not finish because academics do not like it when you make stuff up.

Zibby: [laughs] So then you switched to your MFA?

Stephanie: Then I went to go get my MFA.

Zibby: I was like, how did she do all of these things?

Stephanie: I'm old. I'm forty-five now. My first book came out when I was forty. I'd already had time to go to a PhD program, drop out, go get my MFA, move to Hollywood, produce a bunch of television, and then come out with a book. I don't know. It's an obsession. I'm obsessed.

Zibby: You can tell the passion in your voice. Now I all of a sudden care about Raphael. I was just going about my business not really -- I thought I had enough of an impression of what he was like before, but now I have to revisit the whole thing.

Stephanie: You have to. That's the point. He got left out. Now he's just a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. [laughter] Come on. He's so much more than that.

Zibby: Wait, back up a little bit. You were a TV producer also for a long time before this. How did you decide to quit your day job and pursue fiction writing?

Stephanie: I have written novels or books, fiction, since I was seven years old. I wrote my first, Hoardy the Hog Goes to School, when I was seven. I've written fiction every day since. Everybody told me that's not a real gig even though I had my MFA in creative writing. I moved down to Hollywood because I heard there was this business where people told stories and it was an actual industry where you can get a job and make money, so I did. However, Hollywood was my total plan B. I was like, I'm going to do this until I get a novel. I went there and I produced primarily news and talk television. Candice Bergen had a talk show. Carrie Fisher had a talk show, Governor Jesse Ventura, Tava Smiley, Arsenio Hall's relaunch to CBS. Alec Baldwin just had a talk show a couple years ago on ABC that I produced. I did that forever while in the mornings and at nights and on weekends I was writing screenplays for a while with my husband.

Then I had one of those moments in 2011 where you realize life is really short and it's not going to last forever, so you better do what you really want to do. I was terrified of writing a novel. I thought, oh, man, what if I'm not good enough? What if I'm only good enough to write a screenplay in television? I'm not good enough to write a novel. I really wanted to. I really wanted to tell the Oil and Marble story, the Michelangelo versus Leonardo story. I just bucked up and did it in 2011. I was thirty-six when I started, when I really said I'm not just going to write fiction for myself. I had seven novels or something in a filing cabinet by that point that were never going to see the light of day. This was the first time when I said, okay, I'm going to try to make one good enough to get it published and send it out into the world. Then I sold it. Then my husband and I sold our condo and went on book tour. I thought, that’ll take three months. We don't need to pay the mortgage at the Marriott too. Up until this pandemic, we were still traveling full time with gigs and writing events and speaking events. I don't know how it happened. I just looked up and went, I guess I have a noveling career now.

Zibby: Wow. That's really impressive. Essentially, you're homeless. You've just been bouncing from one place to another.

Stephanie: I am very lucky. My parents have property on a lake in Arkansas. They have a guest house. Whenever we need to stop down and do some laundry or have a home-cooked meal, we stop in at the guest house. Then we leave again for the Marriott. Although, we are sheltering in place by lake in Arkansas which has turned out to be great. We're away from humanity. I only go to the grocery store. It's a quiet place to write my next novel.

Zibby: What's your next novel about?

Stephanie: All I am saying about it at this point is it's still art historical fiction because I hope to be writing that until the day I die, like Michelangelo. Michelangelo was still carving the week before he died when he was eighty-eight years old. He was still carving marble. Come on. Raphael dies when he's thirty-seven, so he's still painting his greatest masterpiece two days before he dies. Anyway, I hope to be doing that. Art historical fiction, but the new one is leaving the Italian Renaissance for now, not that I won't be back. I have other eras of art history that fascinate me. I'm leaving both era and I'm leaving the country. I'm leaving Italy to go to a different country too. That's about all I'm saying about it, unless you follow my social media in which case you might be able to figure out what country I've been obsessed with lately. That's all I'll tell people.

Zibby: I'll go back and do some detective work. What happened in 2011? What happened that made you rethink your life and decide that now is the moment?

Stephanie: My husband had a stroke. He was forty-nine years old. We were in a hospital. He's the healthiest guy I know. He was a vegetarian. He doesn't drink. He doesn't smoke. He runs every day. He does yoga. He is literally the healthiest guy I know. I'm sitting there. At the time, I'm thirty-six. I'm going, this is crazy. How can the healthiest guy I know have had this big of an event? We didn't know at the time when I'm sitting in the hospital room. He's fully recovered now. Now you'd never know. At the time, you're like, this is bad. We're in for physical therapy. We're in for a long journey. I don't know how he's going to be. The beeping machine, I could still just -- in that moment, you go, well, this isn't going to last forever. If this can happen to my husband, it can happen to me. He's healthier than I am.

Zibby: How did the stroke present itself? How did you even know it was happening?

Stephanie: It turned out he'd already had a smaller one earlier in the year which we didn't identify. He just started walking like a drunk cartoon character. We were like, that's weird. The morning of I had already gone to work. I was producing television, so I was up really early in the morning. I got a phone call at my office phone from a neighbor saying, "Hey, I'm with your husband. He's asking you to come home." He gives the phone to my husband. My husband says, "Come home." Something's happened. I don't know what. I get home. I don't know what's happening. He woke up and his arm flew up in the air without him doing it. Then he couldn't dial the phone himself. He was sort of confused. We go to the hospital. It's a very long story. I'm going to make it very short. We go to the hospital. They run some tests. They do not run an MRI. They send us home telling him he's dehydrated. That was at nine o'clock in the morning. That night he kept getting worse, but they had sent us home. They told us he was okay. I just wanted to get him to bed. Went to a friend's house for dinner. He's not talking right. Something's not right. Then he woke up in the middle of the night. He was choking. I said, "What's wrong?" He said, "Agubhughughu." I went, "What?" He went, "Agubhughughu." What he thought he was saying was, "I just sneezed." I got up and raced him back to the hospital. By that point, it was obvious. His whole left side was flat. He couldn't move his arm. He couldn't walk. By that point, it was beyond anything I would've -- there was no doubt once you get back to hospital then. Then the hospital goes, oh, my gosh, we sent him home. I don't usually tell that story. You're very good.

Zibby: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry into your life. I'm sorry. I'm just so interested. I'm sorry.

Stephanie: You didn't. It's not something I keep that I don't share. I just don't usually talk about it, so it's interesting that I did in this scenario.

Zibby: Thank you for talking about it. I'm sorry you had to go through that. That's a lot. That's terrifying. Oh, my gosh. That's a lot to handle. I see why it made you pivot in the rest of your life. When someone you love goes through something like that, everything changes. That's it.

Stephanie: And you're so helpless. You can't do anything to help. All you can do is sit there and go, well, I can help him recover. Then I can reexamine my life and say, what's actually important to me? What's actually important to him? What's actually important to us as a married couple? How do we navigate forward to try to make the best of the life that we have? I guess for me that meant writing about five-hundred-year-old dead artists. [laughter]

Zibby: I might not pick the same sort of item in the toolbox, but to each his own.

Stephanie: I think it's a weird choice, but I guess that's what came up because that's what I've done.

Zibby: How great that there's a demand for it too. It's also so unique. I'm sure that's what drew publishers to it. Your passion for it, I know I already said this, but this is intense love of these artists and this time period. I took art history every semester of college. I like to think that I really do care about art and I'm interested and I like the backstory, but I am nothing. This is a whole new world.

Stephanie: I just care so much that they're real people. That's what bothers me. People walk into museums. They look at these artists as though they're just up on these pedestals and they're untouchable. They're not like you and me. They're these geniuses who fell from Earth to create these pieces of art that changed the world. That's BS. They are real people who faced real struggles and really fought hard for the work that they created. Those are the stories I've tried to tell, is that story of creativity and fighting for creativity. It's part of humanity. In addition to writing about art and humanity, I also throw in a lot of fires and floods and dramatic murders and all kinds of fun things because it's a book. This period of history is full of that stuff. It's full of popes poisoning other popes and dukes killing cardinals. It's just full of fires and floods and all kinds of exciting things. You might as well throw them in. That's the other thing. I try not make my art history like you had it in your art history class where you just look at a slide and you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the name and the date and the title and the artist's name, and then you move on. It's all the most important stuff in the world to me. That's embarrassing. [laughs]

Zibby: No, it's not embarrassing. It's awesome. I love it. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors? Particularly because you said in the beginning that you just have drawers and drawers of these manuscripts and you've written so many novels and that you decided to finally write one that was good enough, tell me about that journey and why you didn't give up. What's your advice on not giving up there?

Stephanie: My advice on not giving up, boy, I don't know. You have to really want to do it because it's a really, really hard job and really, really hard process. My best advice to aspiring writers is if you are going to try to go publish something, if you are going to go aspire to put it out into the world, make it as good as you can possibly make it before you send it to anybody. I see so many young or older-but-aspiring writers who write a draft. Maybe they edit it. Then they go, yeah, this is good. I'm like, no. Compare it to Goldfinch. Compare it to Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. Compare it to Dan Brown. Compare it to JK Rowling. Pick the biggest stuff you see on the shelves and honestly look at your work and compare it to the work that's out there. Force yourself to get it as close to that as you possibly can. I hate to tell you that means like a hundred drafts, not two.

Zibby: Good point.

Stephanie: That's the reality of it. Particularly when you get into the business, there are so many books out there. It's daunting. You might as well aim for the planets. There's a famous quote online. It's attributed to Michelangelo. I haven't found the actual primary source, but I'm going to give it to him anyway. The problem for most of us isn't aiming too high and missing our mark. It's aiming too low and hitting it. That's the truth. Aim high even if you miss it. I think you'll hit something more worth putting out into the world. We need new stories and new art out in the world right now because we need to all unify and find hope and move toward bending the world toward some sort of beauty instead of where we are right now.

Zibby: Preach. Love it.

Stephanie: I can't help it. [laughs]

Zibby: Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you for coming on my show. Thanks for opening up. I loved talking to you. Send me those pictures if you ever get to Italy.

Stephanie: I will. Thank you so much for having me, Zibby.

Zibby: It was my pleasure.

Stephanie: And for making me comfortable enough to tell you a story I don't usually tell. I appreciate it.

Zibby: No problem. Bye.

Stephanie: Bye.

Amy Jo Burns, SHINER

Zibby Owens: Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir Cinderland, and Shiner, a novel which just came out this summer. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, Gay Magazine, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and the anthology Not That Bad.

Welcome Amy Jo. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Amy Jo Burns: Thank you so much for having me. So happy to be here.

Zibby: You have written not only Shiner and a memoir and so much else, but your personal essays, we have to talk about because they are so good. I just kept reading one after another. I know that Shiner is your latest book, so let's talk about that first. Can you tell listeners, please, what Shiner is about?

Amy Jo: Shiner is the story of a fifteen-year-old girl. Her name is Wren. She lives secluded in the mountains of West Virginia with her parents. Her dad became this local legend when he got struck by lightning when he was young. He became a snake-handling preacher. One summer, Wren witnesses her father perform this really strange miracle that goes terribly wrong. As a result of that, all of her family secrets that she had no idea about start to unravel. The book is told from three different perspectives. One is hers, of course. Another is a lovelorn moonshiner. Then the last is a reclusive housewife. Those voices all work together to tell this story that is the true story behind this mountain legend.

Zibby: Wow. What inspired you to write it?

Amy Jo: A lot of different things. I think that this story has been growing inside of me for such a long time. I grew up in Northern Appalachia. The landscape has always been incredibly special to me and inspiring. I think the actual roots of the story started, and it really started to feel alive to me, was after I finished publishing my memoir which is called Cinderland. It's a story about what it's like to be a young woman who has to keep a secret. As a result of publishing it, I had so many people come forward and just share with me these stories that they had been keeping for decades. It was such a moving experience that I realized that I wanted to tell the second half of the story. I wanted to talk about what it's like to be a woman who has a story that has gone unheard. I also wanted to write about what a great act of compassion it is to bear witness to someone else's story. That's where the seeds of this story with all these different histories and winding trails came together for me, was how you can find the bravery within yourself to tell that secret that you thought you never could.

Zibby: Now that I've read all your personal essays, I know your secrets.

Amy Jo: You do. They're all in there. [laughs]

Zibby: Are you comfortable talking about some of this stuff from your past that may have informed this book and everything?

Amy Jo: Absolutely. Happy to.

Zibby: You wrote really honestly and beautifully about what happened when, not even so much in the moment of what happened with the abuse of your piano teacher, but then how you kept it a secret. When it came out that you had not been the only one -- maybe I shouldn't tell your story. When you were not the only one and then your parents confronted you about it, how you handled it and how that experience impacted your life, can you talk a little about that and even your decision to share what happened with you?

Amy Jo: What happened when I was ten was this really beloved piano teacher in my hometown was accused by, it started with one girl and then another and then another for assaulting them during their lessons. I like to use that word, assault, because I think it's something that only came into play within the past few years. I'm really grateful to be able to use it because I feel like it's an accurate description. Basically, a few girls started to come forward about what he'd done during their lessons. A lot of the people in the town chose to support the piano teacher instead of these young women. I was somebody who saw all this happening. These young girls, we were ten, eleven, twelve years old, they were vilified by the town, accused of conspiracy and a bunch of other ridiculous things, not by everybody, but by a lot of people. What ended up happening after that is that it was put in this vault and nobody talked about it. I grew up having this huge secret. I saw what had happened. I decided to lie about it to the police. I just held that secret.

I didn't really remember it, actually, until I'd left home and was in college. I was out in the woods one day and it just slammed me in the face. I thought, oh, my gosh. It was one of those moments you have where you just feel like everything changes in your life. I remembered. To tie it back to what I ended up writing about was I realized that it wasn't only the event itself that had caused a lot of harm. It was the silence around it and the weight of keeping a secret. I wanted to write about what it was like to hold it and the cost that came not only to me as a young woman, but to my whole hometown and also this generation of young women that felt like we couldn't talk about it. That was the basis of the book. I did not see Cinderland coming. I always had dreamed of myself as a novelist, but every time I sat down to write, everything I wrote, it was just not very good. Sure, that's normal. Everybody's got a learning curve and things like that.

I came to point personally where I realized if I didn't tell the truth about what had happened firstly to myself, that I was going to be writing around it for the rest of my life and that everything I wrote was just going to have a huge blind spot because there were a few things that I was really afraid to be honest about in my life. I thought it was going to cost me everything. That's what I had been taught when I was ten, was that if you tell the truth about this, you will lose everything that you have. What ended up happening is that I just started to try to tell one true thing after another true thing after another true thing. Then eventually, I had a book. I couldn't believe that my first book was going to be a memoir. Now that it's been out for about five years, I'm so grateful that it was my first book because I feel like it's such a foundation that reminds me of what's at stake when you sit down to write, whether it's a story you're imagining or if it's something that happened to you. There's real stakes about putting your story out there and inviting other people to kind of sit in it with you, you know?

Zibby: Totally. I have to go back now and read your memoir, seriously. I also am just so struck, I've talked to so many people who talk about the damage that keeping secrets really does to somebody, especially a child. There seems to be no worse thing than telling a child to not own up to something that's happened in any context, not just sexual abuse. I feel like there should be some sort of deep dive into the damage of keeping secrets. I'm sure it has been done.

Amy Jo: Absolutely. You know what one of the saddest things for me was? Was when I was an adult and I realized that keeping that secret made me feel like I was this guy's accomplice and not his victim. That was something that I really had to work through. Part of writing Cinderland was me saying, you know what, it is okay for this man to be held accountable for what he did. It's not wrong. It's not the "Christian thing" of me or the "female thing" of me to let it slide and to offer forgiveness. There's a real importance to say, no, he can be held accountable for what he did. That's a lot of what that book is about. It's also about a longing for home and all those things that I thought I had lost as a result of what had happened. Some of the things ended up coming back to me. A lot of friendships I thought I had lost actually returned to me after I published the book. That was a really wonderful thing too.

Zibby: When the pandemic ends and if this ever can work out, I would love to have a conversation between you and Adrienne Brodeur who wrote a book called Wild Game. She had to keep a secret from about the same age as you. Although, it was the fact that her mother was having an affair. She became an accomplice to that. I feel like you guys would have a really interesting chat about secrets.

Amy Jo: [Indiscernible] conversation. I would love to.

Zibby: Anyway, as an aside. Also, I wanted to talk about your love of ballet and how you called yourself a Rust Belt ballerina, which was so great and I feel like should be a children's book, by the way, Rust Belt Ballerina. You can start working on that. [laughs]

Amy Jo: I'll add it to my list.

Zibby: Okay, good. Tell me about that and how you found your love of ballet and what that did for you growing up.

Amy Jo: It's funny. My first ballet lesson, I think I was maybe six or seven. My mom took me. It was in an old community center. I didn't even have a pair of ballet slippers. I think I had an orange pair of Chuck Taylors. I went. We didn't even have a barre. It was just a row of folding chairs. We listening to a recording on an old boombox that was a recording of a recording of a recording to this piano music. It was very static-y and things like that. Yet even in all of that, I just found such a grace and beauty about the art form of ballet. What it became for me was, it was a way for me to express myself that I couldn't find through words. I couldn't find it through anything else. Now of course looking back, I can see this young girl and this young woman who was wrestling with all these things she couldn't articulate. Ballet became that weekly thing I did where it was like my body was just able to speak for itself. That was why I loved practicing ballet, but I never wanted to perform it. It didn't hold that draw. Typically, you hear about ballerinas loving the lights and the stage and all that. For me, I loved that solitary practice at the barre, up and down, the predictable rhythm of it. It became something that was a real anchor for me when I was young. Please know I'm five-foot-tall, never a professional ballerina. It was one of those things that, it was so lifegiving to me at such an important time.

When I think about it now, I see myself performing ballet in the middle of this town that was literally in the midst of a steel collapse. The building we had it in I think was next door to this empty steel mill. The only reason we were able to practice was because nobody could use the building anymore. When you're a kid, you don't pick up on all that stuff. Then when you're an adult, you think, oh, my gosh. There's a sadness to that, but there's a real beauty to it too. That is one of many things that I loved about growing up there even though the rest of the world looked at it and thought, this town is past its prime. To me, I thought it was beautiful. I still think it's beautiful. I think that also shows up in Shiner, this idea of what the rest of the world thinks is true about the mountains in West Virginia and if it's cautionary tale. The people who live there say, we refuse to be written off. We're living very complicated, very vibrant lives regardless of what the rest of the world thinks.

Zibby: You said somewhere that the expressions that people used to describe you, I can't remember exactly what they were, you had never even heard until you left home. They were somehow derogatory. You're like, what do you mean? Why are you describing me that way?

Amy Jo: Yeah. My name's Amy Jo, obviously. I never realized it, but when I went to college, people wanted me to explain my name, and that was how I realized having a middle name like Jo or going by a first and middle name at all signifies maybe that you're from a certain region of the country or that maybe you're a hillbilly or a redneck. That was some of the questions I got asked. I would be in class and they would talk about this area that's known as the Rust Belt or this area that's known as Appalachia. I'd be looking at a map. I was like, oh. [laughter] It just was such an interesting thing how people academically try to slot you in some category. If nothing else, it was fascinating to me, but then also like, oh, when you realize that doesn't really match what I felt or what I experienced. I think that, probably more than anything else, is a common thread throughout everything I write. You think you know the real story, but I don't think you do.

Zibby: Tell me a little about your process and how you tackled both the memoir and the novel, if you do outlines or how you organize yourself and how long it took to write those books.

Amy Jo: Lord, it is a mess. [Distorted audio] books that I have written, it just was such a mess. I had to learn to just be okay with that because anytime I tried to organize my mess, it would sort of circumvent the whole process and I would have to start again. I think that when I start writing something, whether it's an essay or the memoir or a novel or something like that, my subconscious is my best friend. It's trying to work something out on the page. If my inner editor comes in and tries to have an opinion about it too soon, then it just sort of goes off the rails. Logistically, my process for everything, whether it's something long, something short, true, not true, it's pretty much the same. I will have a notebook. I will write down a bunch of just -- they're not even sentences. It's just phrase, images, things. I will fill up an entire notebook that does not make any sense to anybody but me. I realize at this point that that's my first draft. It's sort of like getting a bunch of patchwork pieces all together. Then you step back and look at it. Then you can make a quilt from it. My second draft is usually trying to match up all the quilt pieces. Then I go from there. It takes me a long time. Cinderland, the difference with writing that, that probably took me two or three years. The big difference with that was that I did not have kids when I wrote that book. I was able to sit down and just work for five, six, seven hours straight. I felt like I had gone into that material so deep. I was so in it in a really interesting way. Then I had two kids. As you know, you don't even get an hour. [laughs]

Zibby: I know. You don't get a minute.

Amy Jo: No, you don't. Much of Shiner was me sitting down, I would get my laptop all set up, and my pen and my paper, then I would run and try to get my son in his crib and cross my fingers and then run downstairs and maybe get forty-five minutes where I would write something. I thought every day, I was like, I am never going to finish this. Then I would just let myself say it. Then I would write two hundred words. Then all of a sudden -- I say all of a sudden, but it was a lot of rewrites and things like that and having another baby. [laughs] But then it was done. It was done in these very forty-five minutes here, maybe an hour and a half there. That's how that book was done. I feel like that's so important to mention. I think it's scary for a lot of people to think, how do I make this creative life with kids? It does change. I won't lie and tell you I don't miss those deep dives into the material that I had before, but I'm so happy with how Shiner came out. I think there's something special about it that I probably wouldn't have been able to capture if I didn't have kids. I see a lot of evolution of myself as a person in Shiner that came about because I couldn't work the way I once did. I just had to roll with it and let my creative energy figure it out.

Zibby: That's amazing. Amy Jo, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing about Shiner. Thanks for sharing your deepest, darkest secrets with us and just glibly talking about them in the middle of the day.

Amy Jo: I'm so happy to do it because I think that it's really important to say it's not the secrets themselves that should cause us any kind of shame. It's something I'm always happy to dive into in the middle of day. Thank you for asking me and hearing me out.

Zibby: Of course. Great talking to you.

Amy Jo: You too.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Amy Jo: Bye.

Elizabeth Kay, SEVEN LIES

Zibby Owens: Elizabeth Kay is the author of Seven Lies which is a fantastic debut thriller. Seven Lies, when it made the submission rounds for the publishers, it became one of the most sought-after novels of the year and was immediately sold all over the world at the London Book Fair. Now there's already a TV deal in place. Publishing rights have been sold in twenty countries. It's gearing up to be a really exciting, much-anticipated summer read, so I had to get it out so you guys could hear about it. Elizabeth Kay works in the publishing industry under a different name. She currently lives in London and has a first-class degree in English literature.

Welcome, Elizabeth. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Elizabeth Kay: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: I love your accent. I always love doing podcasts with these beautiful British accents. It sounds so official and everything. [laughs] Seven Lies, your book took the world by storm at the London Book Fair. Now it's going to be a TV and movie. It's so good. First of all, tell listeners what it's about and then what inspired you to write it, which is a great story too.

Elizabeth: It's the story of seven lies that lead to a death. It starts with two best friends, Jane and Marnie, who've known each other since school. It is organized by the seven lies that Jane tells to Marnie throughout the novel. Along the way, we find out what this death is and how their friendship falls apart and the various strings that have been pulled and released as their relationship has evolved. For me, it was about how childhood friendships can evolve as we become adults and what that can look like and how female friendships can be intense and very overwhelming. That can be a brilliant thing, but it can also be a difficult and very complicated thing at the same time.

Zibby: It's so true.

Elizabeth: The inspiration for it, how I came to write it.

Zibby: Yes, please.

Elizabeth: On a practical, how-did-I-write-it note, I'd been writing something else for about three years. I felt like I'd been working at it for absolutely ages. I had rewritten it again and again and changed whole parts of the plot. I never really felt like it was particularly exciting or very strong. It took a long time for me to have the courage to say, actually, I'm going to stop trying. I'd always been told, keep persevering. Keep persevering. Don't give up. It felt like a bit of failure to put that one away. But as soon as I had kind of drawn a line under it, I was able to start thinking about something new. I knew I wanted to write about female friendship. I knew that I wanted it to be very dark and very sinister. The main character is Jane. It's all told from her perspective. Her voice came to me straight away. I so enjoyed being in her head. Once I had her and I felt like I knew her and I knew how she spoke and what she wanted to say, I felt like I was on to something that felt exciting to me.

Zibby: It's also so great how you have Jane talk directly to the reader. I always love when that happens in books.

Elizabeth: Me too.

Zibby: It's so neat because then you're just so in it. You feel complicit in whatever she's doing and thinking. It's an intimacy squared something. [laughs]

Elizabeth: I totally agree. That's something that I really enjoy. I really like a first-person narrate. As you say, that sense of being part of their story can be quite enjoyable.

Zibby: Yes. There was a passage, the way you write about female friendship -- as a woman, I adore my female friends. I've thought a lot about friendship over the years, as many people have. There's one passage. Hold on, let me just get to it. You wrote, "There is something so enchanting about a first best friend at twelve. It is intoxicating to be so needed, to crave someone so acutely, and to have that feeling of being so completely entwined. But these early bonds are unsustainable, and someday you will choose to extricate yourself from this friendship in the pursuit, instead, of lovers. You will extract yourself limb by limb, bone by bone, memory from memory until you can exist independently, until you are again one person where once you were two." So great. It's just so captivating. That is what happens. You're so enmeshed. My best friend passed away on September 11th.

Elizabeth: I'm so sorry.

Zibby: Thank you. At the time, we were so -- I try to explain now, and I explain to my husband, "You know how we're so close now? That's what it felt like then." In your early twenties, your best friends are your everything. They're who you talk to. You're just so entwined. When I read this passage, it just made me think of my friend Stacey. It doesn't have to be at twelve. It can be at any point in your life when you meet someone and you become totally hooked together in a way.

Elizabeth: You find you're talking to them all the time. There's nothing about your life that they don't know. They know more than your parents, your siblings. Everyone else feels kind of boring by comparison. You just want to be with that person. It is like falling in love, I suppose. I think particularly when you're in that teenage phase, I guess the hormones and everything else make it all that much more intense anyway.

Zibby: It's so true. So how did you come up with this structure, which I love also by the way, of the seven lies and each chapter is a lie? How did you come up with that? Was it just a natural development when you were writing it?

Elizabeth: I suppose it was a conscious decision. The book I had been writing before had felt really wooly and like I skipped all over the place. I never had enough structure or momentum. I knew I needed to be quite strict with myself this time and not allow myself the space to run away into various ideas without focusing on a central plot. Seven lies felt like an interesting way to hold myself to account. I could never travel too far away because I always had to get back to the next lie in the story. It started for me as quite a practical tool. I'm not really a planner instinctively. I sort of had a vague idea where the middle would be, a vague idea where the end would be. It served as a bit of a roadmap to stop me losing my place.

Zibby: That's awesome. I read somewhere that you were inspired by some sort of Broadway show to write this particular story. Did I make that up? [laughs]

Elizabeth: No, you didn't that make up. My husband, we were in New York for his birthday in 2018, I think. We went to see Waitress. There is a song in that, "Take it From an Old Man," which is one of characters -- I don't know if you know it -- saying to the other, life is short. Do what you want to do. Have a go. It doesn't matter if you fail. That was the point at which I was like, I have to put down the previous book. I have to draw that line underneath it and I have to try again. It was just one of those moments. The song kind of pushed me to take that leap and to trust my gut and to start afresh.

Zibby: Very interesting. Start to finish, how long did this book take?

Elizabeth: All in, I think it was about a year or fifteen months including editing, so not too bad given the other was three years and it didn't get very far.

Zibby: You work in publishing also.

Elizabeth: I do. I'm an editor for Transworld Publishers which is part of Penguin Random House in the UK. That is where I have that editor hat Monday to Friday, and then writer hat Saturday/Sunday.

Zibby: Wow. So when did you find time to do this? Was this a before work, after work...?

Elizabeth: It was only weekends, actually. I was always really knackered after work. I can never really think creatively or carve out the time for it. I sat down every Saturday and Sunday morning and wrote until I couldn't bear to write another word. Eventually, there were enough words on the page for me to start editing, which is what I prefer doing if I'm honest. Getting the words down felt like a bit of a slog. Then I started to enjoy it from there.

Zibby: Your whole life is now books. You're an editor.

Elizabeth: I had a baby four months ago, so that's kind of shaken the book bit to the side for the moment.

Zibby: Congratulations.

Elizabeth: Up until then, it was very much all books.

Zibby: Was it something that from a very young age you just knew you loved and wanted to do? How did you discover? I know you had a pivot earlier in your career when you weren’t working in the book world and your husband suggested that you do it, right?

Elizabeth: I wrote a lot as a child. I loved writing as a child. I think I stopped at some point in my teenage years. It just stopped being a priority. Then when I was studying, it was always other people's books and thinking about language and form and never writing creatively. It wasn't until after I left university and I started to think, what do I want to do? What sort of job do I want? I found myself in a job that I hated. My husband said, "Well, you like books." I thought, let's give that a go then. I was really fortunate, actually. I landed on my feet in many regards. I managed to get a couple of work experience placements. One of those companies was then hiring for a PA. I was able to apply for that job and then move up from there. It was once I was back in the book world when I was working in books and seeing people writing creatively and doing that as a career, and I suppose seeing how publishing works, I thought I wanted to try it from the other side as well.

Zibby: Now that you've done both, what do you think? What was the most useful thing from being on the publishing side that you took into your experience as a writer?

Elizabeth: The importance of being able to pitch a book really succinctly. When I'm trying to acquire a book as an editor, I'm always trying to pitch it in one or two lines at the most because I know that the publicists have to go out and talk to the media and be as picky as possible, and the sales team to retailers. It's so, so hard to stand out. That little focus for what that book is and how you can sum it up really briefly and make people feel excited by it, that was something I was aware would be great if I could manage to do that.

Zibby: Excellent. What sort of advice would you have, then, to aspiring authors aside from a short and exciting pitch?

Elizabeth: I would say based on my experience, don't be afraid to just put something down and start again. If it starts to feel boring, genuinely boring -- I think everything feels boring and hard work at times. That's not necessarily a reason to stop. If it's not exciting you anymore, start again. Try something different. Don't be afraid to do something else for a week or two weeks just to see if that feels like a better fit. I think if I had taken that advice earlier, I probably would've saved myself a lot of time trying to edit something that was never really going to be good enough.

Zibby: Tell me about the experience of the sale of this book and what that was like for you emotionally.

Elizabeth: It felt ridiculous at the time. It felt so surreal. I was really excited when I signed with my agent. I think she's brilliant. I'd been impressed with her and thought she was wonderful long before I had a relationship with her professionally. I knew that she had done brilliant things for other debut authors. I felt excited that she was going to be the one to send it out. Still, I think I was managing my expectations. When we started getting offers from various countries, it was so hard to make that feel real. I'm still not sure it does feel real, if I'm honest. It feels still very, very strange. It was such a thrill that other people liked it because for so long it's you and a keypad writing away at a laptop. Then to have an agent like it was amazing. Then editors coming on board too is so exciting.

Zibby: Tell me a little more about the film and TV news around the book.

Elizabeth: Again, that feels crazy. You never quite know if it will come to fruition. It's been optioned. There is a writer currently working on a pilot here in the UK for a potential TV series. Fingers crossed. Who knows? It might be on TV at some point.

Zibby: That's so exciting. It's such a perfect transition to a limited series with seven episodes.

Elizabeth: I hope so.

Zibby: If I were a TV producer, that's what I would do.

Elizabeth: I think that's what they’ve been talking about, trying to keep the structure and see what happens. It's one of those things. You hand it over to another creative team and say, do what you can with it. I hope it works for you and it feels exciting and you can do something fresh. I'm just hoping that it will happen. Fingers crossed, certainly.

Zibby: What has it been like now having a baby? Are you still trying to write? How has it changed your creative output?

Elizabeth: I'm trying. It's not as easy as it was to carve out big chunks of time. I think we're getting into a little bit more of a pattern, getting more sleep now certainly, which means a bit more mental space for thinking, if not actual time. We will see. It feels a very different way to be writing my second book than it did for Seven Lies.

Zibby: Can you share what your next book is about?

Elizabeth: It's very much in its infancy. I think it will be a similar dark story looking at women in particular. I think it will be focusing on women and anger. It's something that's interested me for quite a while and how we think quite negatively about women who are angry. It's seen as a weakness, perhaps, and kind of an ugly quality in many ways. I feel that there might be something there. We will see. If I can get the words on the page, we'll find out if there is something there after all.

Zibby: Fantastic. Thank you so much for chatting with me about your book. I can't wait to watch and see as your career progresses. I feel like you're so young. I don't know how old you are, but you seem young to me. This book is so good. Just the way you wrote it, you don't get lost in the sentences and yet they're still really interesting sentences. They're not too self-conscious. It's clear enough and yet it's still literary, but not in a way where you feel like you're ever out of the flow of it, which I really appreciate. Sometimes the sentences themselves can be a little distracting in their prettiness, almost. This is not like that. You're just so immersed. I'm very grateful for books that really capture my attention and draw me in and get me out of my own mind. Your book is a check plus. Truly, I can't wait to see all of your output. It's exciting.

Elizabeth: Thank you. That's so nice to hear. I always say that I can be a bit of a lazy reader sometimes. If I'm not into it really quickly, I find it quite hard to persevere. To know that this was a book that kept you going is lovely.

Zibby: Yes, amazing. I see why there's so much attention around it. Anyway, it's very exciting. I'm wishing you all the best.

Elizabeth: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Zibby: Making sure not to tell any lies because as you point out in the book, the first one, hard to stop. [laughs]

Elizabeth: Hard to stop. Thank you very much.

Zibby: Bye.