Megan Harlan, MOBILE HOME

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

Megan Harlan: Hi, Zibby. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Zibby: Yay. Your work, Mobile Home, can you please tell listeners what this is about and what inspired you to write it?

Megan: Mobile Home is a memoir in essays about how I moved seventeen different times across four continents when I was growing up. It really explores how our homes and our places shape who we are. The types of homes that I lived in really spanned the gamut. At one point, I was living in a very posh flat in London, in Kensington. I also lived in several different really normal suburban houses in California and Texas, so your McMansions and your ranch houses, that sort of thing. I also lived in three trailers. One was located in Saudi Arabia. One was in a jungle in Columbia. The first one was in Alaska not too far from the Artic Circle. Moving all the time, it gave me a different relationship with place than probably most kids tend to have.

Zibby: I would say so. How could it not? That's a perspective that, child or adult, most people have not been able to have. That is a huge geographic and structural variety that you have there. Wow. There are so many things to tease out. One is the effect of frequent moving. One is the actual environment into which you moved. Break it down for me a little bit. When you were moving so much, what do you think that did to you as a personality and all the rest of it? Then we can go to what those places were like.

Megan: On the positive side, I think it gave me a sense of ease with cultures across the world, a real curiosity, and just a desire to learn more about the world. Socially as a kid, I think it was actually really difficult. It's funny, I didn't really see it until I became a mother myself. I had always sort of believed that my childhood was this great adventure. It was in a lot of ways. I don't think I ever really had the perspective of what a child who's growing up actually needs from their home, which is a sense of rootedness and, really, structure. If you've ever taken a child on vacation somewhere, if you're in Paris, you want to see the Eiffel Tower, and they want to get ice cream. Their perspective on a place is just completely different from what any adult would have.

Zibby: That is why I haven't taken my kids to Paris.

Megan: Exactly. It's a little bit wasted until they're at a certain point, maybe.

Zibby: Yes, wasted on the youth. [laughter]

Megan: Totally. That was something that, again, when I had my son, I started to see this huge difference. I would think about when I was in kindergarten and I was living a motel for a while. Then I was living in a hotel in London. Then I was living in Saudi Arabia. It was always about a year. Meanwhile, he was going to a very normal public school in our city and just had a completely different life than I did. The chasm between these two experiences really started to fascinate me. I started writing these essays. I would say he was about seven or eight. I started exploring the differences that we were having.

Zibby: How old is he now?

Megan: He's thirteen.

Zibby: I bet he's glad you're not up and moving all the time.

Megan: I think so. He loves his home. He does. It's worked out. We do travel as much as we can. I think being in one place, for our family at least, has really been the right thing.

Zibby: Do you feel itching to travel all the time? I know you discussed your nomadic childhood, but do you feel like a piece of that snuck into you? I think you said you did.

Megan: I do. Partially, I just think it's my family history. Everyone in my family is like this. I do think there's almost a genetic part, possibly, that some people like to keep moving and some people really want to stay in one place. If I hadn’t become a parent, I don't know that I would've settled down the way that I have. We'll never know at this point.

Zibby: Tell me about writing the essays. How did you decide how to structure each one? Then when did you decide that they would be great together as a complete work?

Megan: I love writing essays. I find the form to be incredibly freeing. When I start a piece, I usually have some kind of question in mind. As I'm writing, I'm really trying to find, not so much an answer, but maybe more interesting questions. For example, I wrote a piece about my arachnophobia. I still am afraid of spiders. I have kind of a superstition around them. I never kill them. As I was writing the piece, I started seeing there were actually some more interesting questions that were buried underneath the surface. I really come to each essay trying to look for more discoveries as much as I can find them. As far as the book itself, I don't know that when I first started writing the essays I conceived it as a collection. At a certain point, it was hard not to notice that there was a certain theme that kept coming up. Then I was able to write a few pieces to pull them together and give the whole thing a shape so that they would cohere, hopefully.

Zibby: What do you think the characteristics of being able to adapt like that -- what makes someone better or worse? Like you said, you feel it's genetic. I kind of like things the way they are. I would like to be more, today I'm in Saudi Arabia, tomorrow I'm in a posh flat in London. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather just stay in the posh flat in London if I was going to go anywhere. [laughter]

Megan: Were you always that way? I know you have kids. I do think when you have a family, it really does change.

Zibby: I like to travel, but I'm not like you. I like to travel recreationally a few times a year. I wish I had that wanderlust. I know people like you. I have someone in my life who loves to travel and is always off somewhere. You have to have a baseline adaptability, a baseline, you can drop me anywhere and I'm going to pick up. It's like my dog. We just inherited this dog from my mother-in-law. Anywhere we drop her, she's fine. She just figures out what's on that block. I don't know how to get that or how to give that to my kids, but you have it. I want it.

Megan: [laughs] I think there is a lot of nature and nurture. It's hard to suss that one out, I have to say. Are there places that intrigue you from afar that you've never been? I feel like there are cultures that I'm just like, I have to go there. I have to feel what it's like to be there. That, more than anything, is what drives me to keep exploring and keep things fresh. Honestly, it's a nature/nurture question. I'm not sure I can figure that one out.

Zibby: These days at least, travel is sort of on hold anyway. I can table this for my self-improvement next year. [laughs] I love your writing style. You have a really beautiful writing style that's different than others that I've read lately and that really was arresting from even the first page, the way you see the world and your vocabulary and the way you piece it all together. It's a really nice style.

Megan: Thank you. That's so kind.

Zibby: Tell me about your writing background and what classes you may have taken or when you decided that -- I know you realized that essays are your preferred medium, but when did that all happen? Take me back.

Megan: Such a good question. I studied poetry early. I got my MFA in poetry from NYU many years ago. Then I went into freelance journalism. I really made a living doing that. I did some travel writing. I did a lot of book reviewing, some arts journalism. I did author interviews, that kind of thing. I think that what happened for me is -- poetry, obviously, is so creative. Then the journalism I also really enjoyed, though, because I actually enjoyed the fact-checking. I liked just learning about a subject and almost having a humility when you come to it. You think you know something. Then you research. You discover new elements to it. For me, writing essays really smashes these two things together where I can be creative and bring kind of a lyrical voice sometimes to the subject, but then also keep everything tethered in reality to some degree. That's really my background. I have another book, which is a book of poems. This book, it really does bring together what I love to do in writing the most.

Zibby: Tell me a little about your publishing journey.

Megan: My publishing journey for this book, I submitted it to some creative writing contests, academic presses, that kind of thing. I sort of felt that because it was a book of essays that are very literary, I probably should go the university press route. I picked out some of the contests that looked really interesting to me and the presses that I know are class acts. I really focused on those. I was so fortunate with this. The contest I ended up winning that resulted in my book being published was the first one I submitted to. I didn't know it, of course, for many months, so I was still submitting to other contests. I was very fortunate. It's worked out beautifully.

Zibby: I love that. I had somebody else on the podcast recently who won a book prize in Connecticut that she had entered. It just makes me think people should be entering more contests. I don't know if people are doing that or what the hurdles are. I don't know about the cost or whatever. I don't know much about them. It just seems like a good way to at least motivate you to have something finished enough to send out to that as a start.

Megan: Absolutely. I know. There's nothing like a deadline. In fact, I actually finished the collection the day of the deadline of this contest, believe it or not. I was sending it that day. It was really my goal. I'm like, I'm going to get it in for this one. Having the deadline is key to finishing. I feel like I can pick at these things for years, as I sometimes have. It's really helpful for me to have a deadline at some point.

Zibby: Since the contest and then it sold and all the rest, what have you been working on? Are you someone who has five different essays going at once?

Megan: I do. I actually started a new project last year. It's another creative nonfiction type of thing. It's funny to me because there are themes that really overlap with what's happening this year. It's really changed the way I see the whole thing. I'm not sure quite what to do with it. I've got some new stuff in the works, not that I've been writing recently.

Zibby: That's all right. I was going to say I'm eager to see the output from this time, see how it's affected literature and what comes out.

Megan: I know. It's such an intense year. One thing with the pandemic and then the election and just so much to pay attention to with home schooling with my kid, it's just been a lot having everybody at home all the time when I'm not always used to that, to have my own writing time. I'm really impressed by the writers who have been getting work done because it's been a thin time for me.

Zibby: Do you have any go-to sanity-reclaiming measures in your day-to-day life to sort of regroup?

Megan: Yeah, I do. I do a lot of walking. I have to get out. I do yoga. The physical stuff is really what helps me the most, I'd say. We've had wildfires here in California. That's been another layer of pressure on the whole system. Right now, things have cleared up, so I'm able to get out again and do hikes and socially distance with friends and that kind of thing. It's really a lifesaver at this point.

Zibby: We inherited this dog recently. I didn't used to walk in Central Park that much. I'm in New York City. I'm just not somebody who takes a walk with no destination. I'm not like, I'm going to go for a walk. It's like, I'm going to go pick up my kid and I'm going to take the long way, maybe. Now that I have this dog, I'm constantly out and in the park. It's a totally different perspective on the city and city life and life in general, getting out into nature. I know this is the most obvious thing.

Megan: No, it's funny how we forget the obvious things all the time. I do, at least. It makes a huge difference. Are you enjoying it?

Zibby: Yes. Sometimes I'm so busy that I'm like, oh, my gosh, the dog hasn’t gone out in five hours. Yes, I enjoy it. The other day, it was pouring. I was like, oh, no, I'll just go in the rain. I have to go. Now I need it. That happened very quickly. It's only been three weeks, but now I'm very into it. All goes to show how quickly we develop habits and all the rest. I see a zillion books behind you. What kind of books do you like to read?

Megan: These days, mostly nonfiction. I read a lot of travel. I've been doing a lot of armchair travel just to remind myself that there is a world beyond my little town here. Actually, this is my fiction collection. These are all novels. I have a ton of books. Like I said, I used to review books for a living, and I just collect books. I adore them. I love the objects. I don't read a lot on Kindle. Although, I do when I travel. I'm very old-fashioned. I just love having it in my hand. I'm also a margin person. I write in the margins all the time, so I'm kind of hard on my books. I love having them around.

Zibby: Me too. I always like to turn the pages and [indiscernible/crosstalk] back and forth. Plus, I find the ones I read online, if I don't have them, I kind of forget them. Whereas if I'm always reacquainting myself with the spines, they stay in my consciousness.

Megan: It's true.

Zibby: What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Megan: For creative writers, I would say the best advice I wish I had had a long time ago is to write the pieces as if you're never going to show them to anyone. This is also one of those obvious pieces of advice that I feel like I did hear many years ago. Write for yourself. Write not even because you're afraid to spill the skeletons from the closet, but just because you want to write the piece. There's some subject you're fascinated with, you suspect maybe other people may not be, but go for it anyway. See what happens. I just think having that freedom is the key to really doing creative work.

Zibby: Very true. Amazing. Thank you, Megan. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss Mobile Home. Congratulations on winning the contest. Sorry for how many times we rescheduled to get here.

Megan: [laughs] That's okay.

Zibby: I feel great that we can finally say we did this.

Megan: Yay! Thank you for having me.

Zibby: Thanks for the conversation.

Megan: Excellent. Thank you so much, Zibby. Bye.

Zibby: Take care. Buh-bye.

Megan: You too. Bye.

Sydney Sadick, AIM HIGH

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

Sydney Sadick: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited, the queen of books.

Zibby: [laughs] The queen of fashion.

Sydney: Thank you.

Zibby: Aim High, your new book, please tell listeners what this book is about and what inspired you to write this book.

Sydney: I host a lot of fashion segments for shows like the Today Show, E!, Inside Edition. Once my segments ended, I would get hundreds of DMs on Instagram from women of all ages ranging from teenagers to women in their sixties saying that they needed more. They wanted more fashion advice. They wanted to know about confidence. They had all these questions that they couldn't get answered in my six-minute segment. That was where the idea came from. How can I expand on what people already know of me in a place that you can constantly go back to and learn more? Aim High is really that place. It's a go-to read for motivational advice on fashion tips, but also how to bring out your confidence from within. I always say that confidence is an accessory that never goes out of style. It's just as difficult of something to bring out as much as developing your own personal style. Those two things really come together. It's also to explain how the way that you dress can affect your mood. It helps you achieve the goals that you want out of life. I know for myself throughout quarantine, I was living in sweatpants at the beginning. I was very unmotivated. I was very depressed by everything going on in the world. Then I realized, wait a minute, if I want to shift my view and my mindset, I need to start dressing like the girl I used to be. Now I put on my makeup. I put on structured pants. I wear a fitted top. I am like the original me. This whole notion of aiming high is something I think that's even more relevant today because of the pandemic. We all need that positivity and that emphasis on self-care. That goes right down to what we wear.

Zibby: I am totally impressed that you're dressing up in your home every day. That's amazing. I love it. It's inspirational. I need to take a piece of that. I have these three sweatpants that, actually, I learned about from Real Simple magazine. They did an inventory of the best joggers. I was like, ooh, I'm kind of tired of my sweatpants, so I ordered those sweatpants. Every day, I'm like, light grey, dark grey, black, light grey. [laughs]

Sydney: They're comfortable. I get it. If you could see on the side of our Zoom screen right now, I have six pairs of sweatpants that are just sitting on the side. I say those are for after hours. That's what I can change into once I'm done with the work that needs to be done. That's just my own way.

Zibby: That's great. I do dress up sometimes because it does make me feel good. It's absolutely true. When you feel better, you even eat better. It's this whole ripple effect. Yes, I totally understand. I loved how in the book you gave a whole example at the beginning when you were trying to help a woman dress for three weddings in a week. You ended up finding this magic item I'd never heard of before that morphs into fifty-seven different things. You could see her confidence really coming out. She really owned that outfit and the accessories that you found. You are the best shopper ever. You don't spend that much money. You get a hundred different things. You make all these different outfits. Then the end result, of course, is this super confident person who can waltz into the wedding feeling really great. I thought that was such a great opening story that you included.

Sydney: Thank you. That was definitely one of the memorable moments of the last few years. It was my first real creative segment on Hoda & Jenna where I got to really create a concept and have someone, a viewer, be changing on live television as we went. We had a little mini-dressing room for her with a curtain. She ran back and forth. The dress, which was called the convertible wrap dress, was being wrapped around a million different ways. It was a whole situation. This woman, Eileen, was just so excited. That was the moment I realized, too, it doesn't matter where you live in the country. We live in New York, so we're surrounded by fashion constantly. This was a woman who lived in a very suburban town outside of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania where it just wasn't part of her life. She didn't even care. This is a moment where she realized, wait a minute, there is something to be said here. I actually do like fashion. It just took me a moment to figure it out. I think it happens for every woman at a different point in life.

Zibby: Tell me again the story, and you included it in your book, of your complete go-getter-ness from your Harvard summer program to launching a blog to becoming you, working all through college. This is insane. Just give us a little more color into all of that.

Sydney: I think a lot of moms will relate to this when you have a child who maybe is super shy, is maybe afraid of going to summer camp or doing the traditional things that all of the kids on the Upper East Side or even other states are doing. I was just never that girl to leave my family and go away even on a sleepover. I was just very attached to my mom and probably still am a little bit. My parents were like, "Sydney, if you want to go to a college that's outside of New York, how are they going to think that you're ready for that, these schools? They know that you haven't done anything that's outside of your box." I said, "You're right." My mom brought up the idea of Harvard summer school. My aunts had gone. This is years ago. We have a big age gap between us. She told me that she had this amazing experience. I was like, if she did it and she's a homebody, then maybe I could get into it. I applied and got in. When I went to go and select the courses that were available to me, the two that really sounded the most appealing, and for no other reason than the descriptions, were in journalism. I signed up for these two classes with all Harvard professors. I was the youngest person in my classes because for some reason it was more targeted towards grad students, but they let me in. I was just sixteen.

For the first assignment for one of the classes, they said, "You need to come back in the next day and start your own blog. Write about whatever you want." This is in 2010. Instagram in nonexistent. The word WordPress is this new term that people are just trying to figure out what that even means and what you can do with it. My dorm room was coincidentally the dorm room that Mark Zuckerberg was in, Lowell House, years ago. I create this blog. I'm like, you know what, if I'm going to write about something, it needs to be what I know. I had a very stylish mom. I had a very stylish grandmother. I can write about fashion. I come up with the name Style Solutions. I start posting my outfits like you see of traditional fashion bloggers today. It was becoming wildly read across this summer program for whatever reason. When I got back to New York, I was like, I don't want to give this up. I could totally see this becoming a brand. I said, but it needs to be different. I can't just be posting my outfits. It doesn't have enough depth for me. In addition to the digital skills I learned at this program, I said I wanted to really take the reporting skills that I learned in the other class that I was taking that summer, and I said I want to start interviewing celebrities. At sixteen years old, you don't really know how you're going to make that happen.

Conveniently, the New York Post has, always, these great little stories and advertisements. There was an ad for Rhianna who was going to be launching her debut book at Barnes & Noble, which is ironic. Life is so funny like that. It all comes around. I got my school to let me to leave class early. I changed in the middle of Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street out of my little uniform, put on whatever clothes I had. I wait in this line for three hours. I was the last person. I swore Rhianna was going to leave. I was just begging the team I saw around. I'm like, "Is she going to stay? Is she going to stay?" She stayed. I got up to her. I said, "Instead of just signing my book with your name, can you please write down your favorite fashion accessory?" I didn't know if she was going to do it. I couldn't see. There was so much room between me and her at the table. I have the book here. I look at it sometimes. She wrote it down. She said it was scarves. I was able to turn that quote into an article and say "Rhianna reveals her favorite fashion accessory" and recapped her best moments in scarves. The article blows up. It gets ten thousand unique people in that first hour.

Zibby: I thought it was hair accessories. I could've sworn you said something else. Wasn't it hair accessories? It had two words. There were definitely two words in it.

Sydney: It could've been changed to hair accessories because she used the scarves as turbans across her hair. It was a combination, but she really meant scarves, is what she meant. We wrote that in the book, but I think it was more leaning towards scarves because she always wore them across her head.

Zibby: Got it. Okay, sorry. [laughs]

Sydney: Good catch of detail. She wrote this down. The article blew up. That was the moment where I was like, if I can get Rhianna to talk about something, then I should be able to ask many more celebrities. From there, I got an internship at the Daily Front Row, went to GW for college in school of media and public affairs, freelanced for them throughout college, and interned for Rachel Zoe, Oprah Magazine, all of which kept my feet wet. I became an editor as soon as I graduated for the Daily until I left two years later to pursue being on air. It's been a ten-year journey. People are like, you're so young, you're so young. I feel old because it's been going on for so many years.

Zibby: Is that your dream, the on-air component of your life? Do you want to have your own show? It sounds like that's where this is going, that one day you're going to have your own fashion show on Bravo or something. Is that where you're headed?

Sydney: Definitely. You know what? Fashion has been my core. It's been the base of what I've done. Because of it and then what I've also been doing, other things throughout quarantine, it's opened the conversation to talk so much more about fashion. I love fashion as a way to get into someone and to just talk about fun things, but I'm really interested in expanding that and really having conversations beyond fashion too, but how to mold these different categories together.

Zibby: Very cool.

Sydney: But a show, yes.

Zibby: [laughs] Now it's so great, though, because you can just turn on your camera, and you have a show. It's so disintermediated, if that's even the right word.

Sydney: And that's all you.

Zibby: You don't even need the network. It's better because you get a bigger audience right away, but you can test it out.

Sydney: That's what I've been actually doing throughout quarantine. I started a daily Instagram Live show. We bring on different celebrities and designers every day. Sometimes I think the views are so crazy that it might be just as much as what people are watching on television. Media is changing so much. I think people really want that accessibility. You do your Instagram Lives too. Your fans and audience can ask questions as they go. They feel engaged and involved. I think we all want to feel less alone right now. That whole notion of community is so important.

Zibby: Totally. You're right. Of course, you have your Instagram Live show. I'm sorry, I should've thought to say that.

Sydney: No, that's okay.

Zibby: Let's go back to the fashion specifics for two seconds to the aforementioned moms who are in their sweatpants, perhaps me, most of the time. What changes are within our grasp that are not so hard to implement that can make us feel better?

Sydney: By the way, if you're good in your sweatpants, don't change out of it. If that's what makes you feel comfortable and good right now, leave the sweatpants as your base and go for it a little more in the other elements of your wardrobe. When you're doing all these Zoom talks, and I'm sure a lot of moms are doing school conferences or they will be soon, it's really about focusing on the upper portions of our bodies and how we can make a statement from the waist up. An easy way to do that is to throw on a statement pair of earrings like a hoop, a chain necklace, something that just adds a little bit of glamor and boldness without trying too hard. It doesn't take that much effort. Layering is also something that is really easy to do. You have a T-shirt. Then you could throw on a little blazer. I think blazers are a little stiff when we're at home. It's a little hard for me to even do that. A really crisp cardigan always works really well. Going for some color or even a pattern, just a way so when people are looking at you, it brightens things up a bit. That's also really easy. I think it's totally fine to stick with your comfortable silhouettes. It's just about going for them in a little bit more of a fashion-forward way.

Zibby: Mind you, I know this will be on YouTube and on the podcast. For the people who are not watching this on YouTube, to see our outfits right now, Sydney is wearing this little white T-shirt, very cute, with a gold -- oh, there's a little heart on it. Her gorgeous, long, looks-like-it-must-be-fake-because-it's-so-gorgeous hair is covering it with a chain gold necklace and giant hoop really thick earrings and full-on makeup and whatever. I am wearing a black T-shirt under a black long sleeve T-shirt with my kid's school lanyard around my neck and my hair in a ponytail. I actually put makeup on, so this is better than it could've been. I'm not in my pajamas, which is also great. I'm not even in sweatpants today. I'm in new leggings. [laughs]

Sydney: [Indiscernible] are different. I'm single. I don't have a family. I don't have the responsibility other than myself. Like I said before, it depends on where you are in life. Your priorities shift. I don't know what I'm going to be like, but this is me right now in my twenties who doesn't have anyone to worry about but me. That's the truth. It's different for you and for a lot of moms.

Zibby: Thank you for letting me off the hook in that gentle way. [laughs] What about your sourcing of inexpensive, really cute, make a big pop items that you seem to find for all the people on TV?

Sydney: For me, I do better in Zaras and Forever 21s than I would ever do in luxurious label brands like a Gucci or [indiscernible]. I don't really feel comfortable with those brands. It's fun to have a splurge handbag or a shoe. In terms of clothing, I don't think that's where women should be spending thousands and thousands of dollars. I just personally don't see the value. You can find great quality clothing in stores like Zara. One of my favorite websites is called the Verge Girl. It's kind of the new Nasty Gal.

Zibby: Wait, I'm writing this down. Say it again.

Sydney: Verge Girl. Some of it looks, I'm just warning you, a little juvenile when you go to the homepage, but the quality is so strong. You need to sift through it and find those pieces like their oversized sweaters. It's such good quality. Everything is around a hundred dollars. It works. I don't believe in spending a lot of money, also, on trends.

Zibby: A hundred dollars is a lot for a sweater. Keep taking me lower and lower. [laughs]

Sydney: You can go lower too, but in terms of a high-quality cashmere [indiscernible] sweater, between eighty and a hundred dollars. Compared to going to Bloomingdale's, they're never going to be under a hundred ever. Forever 21, sites like that, you can find pieces under fifty dollars that are amazing. I never put anything over fifty dollars on my segments ever. It's always under fifty. Places like Old Navy; I love the jeans and jeggings from American Eagle. I think they're so flattering. They fit on all women.

Zibby: Yes, my daughter just told me about American Eagle. We got her some clothes. They're amazing. I was like, I think I have to order from here. I was unexpectedly wowed by American Eagle. That read like an ad. It was not an ad. This actually happened.

Sydney: None of these are ads. They're just opinions. Lulus is another great site, tons of pieces under fifty dollars that are so fun.

Zibby: Lulus?

Sydney: Lulus is [indiscernible] only.

Zibby: To be honest, I do not like to spend money on clothes at all and don't very often. I like to spend money on books. I do also feel like it's important to look put together. I always hear my mother's voice in my head. Come on, pull yourself together. Wear a cute outfit.

Sydney: It really is not about spending money. That's what I try to explain to people. Style don't equal a price tag. It's just a mindset. The first place that I always suggest shopping first is your own closet. People always say to me on Instagram, you have so many clothes. Yes, brands send me clothes every single week. I'm very, very lucky. But half the time, I'm re-wearing the same pieces every week. You can't even tell because I'm just styling it in a way that tricks everyone from not realizing. They think it’s a new outfit, but it's not. It's just developing that craft and knowing what looks good on you and what you like and then mixing and matching. That way you don't feel like you have to go shopping. I never really feel like I have to shopping, nor do I really want to at this point. That's not what's as important to me right now.

Zibby: What do you think is going to happen to all the designers and everybody if nobody ever goes to events anymore? I opened my closet. I have a few really fancy dresses. I was like, oh, I wonder if I'll ever wear these again. Then I was thinking, what about all the people who make all these fancy dresses? Their whole business model, they must have been doing great. I sound like a moron. Obviously, I know that the economy has been hit in basically every possible sector, but I just happened to be thinking about high-end formal wear companies and what's going on with them.

Sydney: It's so true. I've been in the Hamptons since March. I've gone back to the city twice. When I went back most recently -- I had my rack of clothing which is where I would usually keep the clothes I would wear that week. I was going to tons of events, and I just had to stay organized. That rack is full of the clothes that I was supposed to wear the week that the city shut down. I saw this gorgeous periwinkle sequin blue gown I was supposed to wear to the [indiscernible] museum for their young adults' party that I was on the committee of. I'm like, am I ever wearing that again? A lot of designers have had to shift their focus. Jonathan Simkhai is now doing total ready-to-wear very cool just leggings and T-shirts, the most causal I've ever seen him. Michael Costello, when the pandemic first hit, he stopped making his gowns and just transitioned to making masks with his million-mask initiative to give masks to frontline workers in LA and in other cities. He was one of my first guests on my Lunchtime with Sydney show. He actually brought us into the back where we could see these masks being made, which was super cool. Christian Siriano, he's definitely doing a little bit more licensing deals, I can see, with different companies. I think they're all trying to just figure it out. I really hope that we will be able to go to events. I think it's just going to take time. Especially for my generation, millennials, they don't like that notion of waiting. I read like crazy, these articles. Time magazine just did an article comparing the pandemic to the Spanish flu. It literally did a side-by-side. To me, it says another year's going to be washed. When things do hopefully normalize in some capacity, we're all going to have to have a really big coming-out party. Everyone's going to have to just be decked out in their best outfits ever and make up for the last two years.

Zibby: Exactly. What's coming next for you? Do you have any idea? Where are things going? You're doing your own show, basically. You have this amazing book that just came out. Now what? What's in the next year? What's your planning?

Sydney: Planning is the one thing, as such a controlling person, that I can't really do right now. I think a lot of women, and men, are struggling with that. We're not really in control of our futures. I've kind of taken a step back and realized that I can't plan. My goal before the pandemic was to work for a specific network. I thought I was moving to LA and this was all happening. Then I was like, that can't even be my goal now because that's not the focus of viewers. Media and fashion, they're both changing so much right now that it has to be a very fluid situation. The one thing I can control is myself. This Lunchtime with Sydney show is something I fully have control of. I do everything. I host. I book. I produce. I'm loving that hands-on-ness that I'm able to have right now because it makes me fulfilled. I am continuing to build that out. I host Instagram Lives on Fridays for the Today Show's new millennial platform called Tomorrow by Today, which is a very similar concept to what I started on Lunchtime with Sydney. Continuing to focus on the book and just doing fun events and trying to do virtual things with my followers because I really want people to take COVID seriously and to stay home as much as they can and wear their masks. My generation is just so out of touch in a lot of ways with how to deal with this. I'm trying to set a good example. It's easier said than done, but I'm really trying. And hopefully more products. I launched an Aim High hoodie with my book. It was a collaboration with [indiscernible] brand, [indiscernible]. It sold out within twenty-four hours. I want to continue to release products to make people feel good and that's accessible to everyone.

Zibby: That's a great idea. Awesome. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors having just written a book?

Sydney: Listen, I've never given birth, but I feel like it must sort of be like the equivalent mentally of giving birth to a baby because you're putting something out into the world. I went to school for journalism, so I wrote. I've written my whole life. For me, that wasn't really hard. It's just about coming up with an idea and how it can be different. We're in such a world where there are so many people who are so good at the same kind of skills. It's about our perspectives that make us different. It's about finding that niche and what makes your voice a little different from the rest. I think it's just figuring that out, writing a lot of lists. You would give way better advice than I would. I'm sure you have a great method.

Zibby: You know what? Everybody I ask has something a little bit different to say. It's just so neat. It reflects their personality. I just like hearing. Make lots of lists, I don't anyone has said that before. There you go.

Sydney: Post-it notes everywhere. I tried to clean up for you today.

Zibby: [laughs] Thank you. Sydney, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Congratulations on your book. I can't wait to see where you end up going in life. You're like a little shooting star. We'll see what happens.

Sydney: Thank you so much. I so appreciate that.

Zibby: Have a great day.

Sydney: Bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Ann Shen, NEVERTHELESS, SHE WORE IT

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Ann, to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for talking about your book, Nevertheless, She Wore It: 50 Iconic Fashion Moments.

Ann Shen: Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. I'm so excited to be here.

Zibby: This book was so awesome. I couldn't even decide which I found most interesting, some of the current-day fashion trends or all the ones from back in the day, the invention of the bikini or when pants were a big deal and all of that stuff. How did you come up with all of these different fashion moments? What is the bigger story behind assembling them all together?

Ann: Oh, my gosh, that's such a good question. I love fashion and style. I love it as a way that we can express ourselves. I was thinking about all the ways that people who are very much in the public eye are aware of that, and especially women who historically have been a group that haven't always had a voice, are aware that people are always looking at what they're wearing. Then there have been people who use that as a way to deliver a message. That's kind of the theme that I started with. A lot of the time, the message was a way to give women more of a voice, a place, power, more liberation. I looked for examples in history that started evolving styles, but in ways that were for women to feel more empowered. Narrowing it down to fifty moments was really difficult because there's so many fun styles, interesting styles to talk about and the history behind everything. I really tried to either trace the lineage of styles, because they evolve through time, to, where did this come from? What did it mean at the time? And then moments that were very politically or news-groundbreaking that we still remember even now that are tied to a message like Lady Gaga's meat dress or Hillary Clinton's white suits.

Zibby: You mentioned in the beginning of the book how things really changed after the Industrial Revolution. What happened? What happened then?

Ann: Before then, all clothes are handmade, literally by hand. Most people didn't own a lot of clothes. The Industrial Revolution created factories that then were able to create garment mills and sewing factories and make clothing more accessible, meaning more affordable, to everyone besides the upper class. The only people who had real costumes or changes were people who were royalty or who were very, very famous or well-off. Once the Industrial Revolution happened and everybody was able to get clothing, they were able to have a bigger wardrobe to express themselves, to have more of a say in how they wanted to present in the world versus, here are the few dresses that my mom made and have handed down, or that I made. That made style a more accessible choice to everyone as a way of personal expression.

Zibby: It's funny because I don't really think about what I wear that much. I'm not very stylish. I'm not really into fashion so much. My clothes don't make a statement. If they fit, it’s a good day. I know what I like. My main criterion is, does this hide the places that need to be hidden right now? That's how I dress. I realize for all the women in here, everybody, not everybody, but most people were trying to say something or do something, or maybe inadvertently, like Michelle Obama with the sleeveless shift dress or Serena Williams with her tennis catsuit. Were they all trying to make such a message? Even Elizabeth Hurley, how you point out how she created an influencer at all, really. How intentional do you think most of these current-day moments were? Did they mean to create such a stir? Maybe it just varies.

Ann: That's such a good question. I want to go back to you not thinking you're a stylish person. The thing is, we all get dressed every day. We all make choices of how we want to dress. What you expressed was just, you dress to feel good about your body because you're emphasizing the things you like and directing the attention. [laughter] You're in control of the attention. That's part of the power of getting dressed. Even if you're not a celebrity on the red carpet or a politician, you're still making those choices of how you want to present in the world. That is your personal power you have every day. Every single person has that. Even little kids have that. They definitely want to express themselves through their clothes. Some of the choices in there, some of it incidentally turned out to be controversial, like Michelle Obama's sleeveless shift. It was just a shift dress from J.Crew.

Zibby: I'm pretty sure I had that dress.

Ann: Every woman owns a dress like that. It looks like a professional dress. It's a high collar. It's black. It's very simple and silhouette. People were so scandalized because she was the first First Lady to wear a dress without sleeves in her official portrait. Also, she had amazing arms. [laughs] That helped. It also was just so silly that that was something that became newsworthy, but at the same time speaks to how conservative and how different we view everyday women versus someone in political power, perhaps. Then there are also intentional ones. Even with the Liz Hurley dress, she wasn't famous at the time. She became famous overnight because of that dress. She was just Hugh Grant's girlfriend, was going to one of his premieres. He had connections to, I think it was Versace. They only had one dress available for her, which was the safety pin dress. She was confident enough to be like, yeah, I'm going to wear that dress. I didn't really think anything of it. It looks like a little black dress. Photographs of her at the premiere were all over the world. It was really interesting that a woman confident in her body making a choice that really wasn't a choice because that was the only dress she had been offered also became a statement.

Zibby: If that was the only dress I was offered, I would not go. You have to be able to pull that off.

Ann: She was also probably twenty-four.

Zibby: Okay, fine. Yes.

Ann: She's dating Hugh Grant who's super hot at the time. She was really feeling herself. Absolutely, I don't think I would either. The fact that a woman was feeling comfortable enough to wear that was already headline news, which is also kind of crazy.

Zibby: Even how you point out in the book, J Lo's famous Versace dress -- I think it was Versace.

Ann: Yeah.

Zibby: Two other people had already worn it. Nobody had really cared or noticed or taken note of it. It was just the fact that it was so right for her and brought out all of her glowing-ness, if you will.

Ann: Yeah, and at that moment. You know what's funny? Looking back at that dress when I was painting it, I was like, wow, it doesn't look that scandalous compared to what people wear now. I remember at that time we were all so scandalized, like, oh, my god.

Zibby: Now people are basically naked all the time. People don't even get dressed. What is that? Let's go back. How did you get here? How did you end up writing this book? How did you get your start with writing and illustrating and all the rest?

Ann: I went to college for a degree in writing. Then I worked for a few years in nonprofits. Then after that, I decided I wanted to go back to school and be a professional illustrator and designer. I did that. Then I was working for a few years in-house as a professional designer and then freelancing on the side and working on little passion projects. One of them was Bad Girls Throughout History, which ended up being my first book. It came out in 2016, but I started it in about probably 2010. It was a book about female trailblazers like the first woman to do X, Y, Z. I try to cover a lot of broad fields. At the time, I was finding myself struggling with finding any female role models who had broken the rules, who had been the first to do something that they were told not to do, which was something that I felt like I was running up against a lot as a young professional. Since I couldn't find it, I started collecting them and telling their stories. The more I did that, the more people would share with me, "Have you heard of so-and-so and so-and-so?" Before I knew it, I had a whole book. My agent had seen it. It was a little zine at the time. My agent had seen it. Posted it on a blog.

She reached out to me and asked me if I was interested in turning it into a book. I was like, only my hope and dream in life. I played it cool. I was like, "Yeah, that'd be cool." We made a proposal, pitched it. Chronicle Books gave us a great offer. They were a great fit for it. They’ve been a publisher of my books ever since because they really get what I'm doing, which is something kind of unusual. It's not a children's book, but it's not a usual adult book. It's a coffee table book. I want it to feel like learning history, but from your best friend where you're just like, have you heard of this cool person? That's the thread of all my books, which is all about feminine power, women in history which have been largely marginalized. My second book was about goddesses in all different cultures because I wanted to explore archetypes and the way women were treated or how females were thought of in cultures, the important roles they played prior to even pre-Christian colonialism, basically. My third book now, I wanted to explore a different angle of feminism and something that I felt like is kind of coming up again, especially with how much we pay attention to -- I think it came up a lot after the 2016 election where everybody was wearing a pink pussy hat to the Women's March. It was the first time that we had a collective style moment where we could feel together even though we were very despondent. That's something that people have done throughout history, like the Black Panthers with black berets, suffragettes with their tricolor stripe. That was really interesting to me.

Then we always get articles about -- there was a while, people were saying "Ask her more" for women on red carpets. They were saying women are just asked about who they're wearing. Then women kind of co-opted that for the Time's Up movement when they all wore black on the Golden Globes red carpet. That was really interesting. These women know that they're in visible positions and what they say has a lot of power because we all see them. Their images are all around the world within the hour. That visual representation is just as important as what you're saying. You could use that as a means of style. Then of course, we see it in politics all the time. We see it right now, especially with Kamala Harris wearing Chuck Taylors and boots. Everyone's writing about it. It sends a message about the kind of leader she is. It's a really interesting time since we are such a visual society with social media. We're getting news refreshed every second. We're so visual that we take those visuals even more as a means of power and expression. Anyway, that was my longwinded story of how I got here and how I ended up writing this book.

Zibby: I totally understood those Golden Globes. It was the Golden Globes, right? Or was it the Academy Awards when they all wore black? Selfishly, I was very disappointed not to have all that eye candy of dresses and necklaces and all the glittery things that we don't get in our normal life.

Ann: I know. I definitely had a moment where I was like, wait, are they doing this at every award show this year? [laughs]

Zibby: How long is this going on?

Ann: I totally support the visibility of it. I love the red carpet because it's such a way for people to appreciate artists too, like a lot of young American designers. Michelle Obama only chose to wear American designers. Their choices in celebrating these designers, it gives them a platform unlike anything else.

Zibby: What's your fashion motif? What do you like to wear?

Ann: Oh, my gosh. I always love a Peter Pan collar.

Zibby: Very cute.

Ann: It kind of reminds me Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of course. I feel professional but also feminine. It's our version of our white collar. I love a red lipstick. I definitely do feel more put together even if I'm just wearing red lipstick, which has been a thing even through quarantine. I'm like, if I just put on lipstick for this Zoom, I will feel like my life's together and everything is not falling apart around me.

Zibby: Lip gloss is my thing. I continue to put it on. I don't even have it. It stays on for like three seconds. In those three seconds, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm all put together. Now with the pandemic, I put it on, and then I put my mask on. It's so stupid. Why do I do this? But I know. I know it's under there. [laughs]

Ann: It makes you feel good. It makes you feel like, my life is together.

Zibby: So silly. The red lipstick, it's nice to have a signature thing like that. It makes it sort of easier to get out the door when you know that's what you do, the red lipstick, not the lip gloss.

Ann: The lip gloss too. What's your favorite lip gloss?

Zibby: No, only I can ever tell that it's on. Yours is a statement that I can see now. So are you working on a new project after this? What's coming next for you?

Ann: I'm actually working on a fourth book which I'm really excited about. We haven't announced it yet, but it's inspired by a lot of the events of this year.

Zibby: I will translate that in my head. [laughter] I happen to love both your illustration style and your writing style. Both, I find, it's a little bit of flirty fun and sense of humor mixed with actual great depiction of things. I didn't say that very well. Even the title, it's like you don't take yourself too seriously and yet you're also teaching, which is the best kind of teacher there is, really, versus, I am going to make you realize this about feminism or whatever. I unfortunately feel that some more feminist-leaning things -- now this is going to sound bad. I don't know. I just don't like anybody being too didactic in what they're trying to teach or to share. There's gentler ways to communicate. Anyway, I just love it. You should do commissions. Do you do that, like somebody commissioning for my mom's birthday or something, you would do [indiscernible/crosstalk]? I could send you her favorite coat and then frame it.

Ann: I get asked all the time for that, but I really don't have time since I'm always working on a new book.

Zibby: You're like, I'm way too famous and accomplished for a picture [indiscernible/laughter] mom. Thank you for the thought. On my last dime, maybe I'll call you.

Ann: [laughs] I am too busy hustling to make more things that are accessible to everyone. It's way easier to buy a twenty-dollar book than to afford a commission.

Zibby: I'll just say I really appreciate your work. The book is great. It's also a great giftable book. If you even do the necklace and black dress and this book, what a perfect gift is that.

Ann: That would be so sweet.

Zibby: Holidays are coming sort of soon. I'm going to have to remember this around the holiday time, to match it with any of these things, and especially with Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the cover given her recent loss and everything. Do you have any advice to aspiring author/illustrators such as yourself?

Ann: Just follow your curiosity. Those things are things that are unique to you, your voice, your point of view. Create the things that you wish existed in the world. That's what I continue to keep trying to do with my books. Like you said, I like to make cheeky, fun books. I had a hard time memorizing history or being really interested in history when I was in school. My approach to it now is, I rediscovered it as, these are all people just like we were, just human, messy, complicated, funny, accomplished. They could still do all these amazing things. When I talk about it like that and when I'm sharing it with a girlfriend, I'm like, this is fascinating, or when I'm hearing stories from a friend. I want it to be cheeky and fun and interesting and also make you feel smarter and more connected to the world and our collective ancestors. That's what I'm interested in. Think about the things that you're interested in and you're curious about and love and want to share with the world. Someone else will need the thing that you want to make.

Zibby: Hopefully. [laughs]

Ann: They will. There's so many people. You look on the internet, there are groups for everything. You will find your people. You'll find your tribe.

Zibby: That's true.

Ann: How big it'll be... Someone needs what you make.

Zibby: Someone will need it. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for Nevertheless, She Wore It. I just loved it. It's adorable and awesome. Thank you.

Ann: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Zibby: Take care. Buh-bye.

Ann: Bye.

Elizabeth Berg, I'LL BE SEEING YOU

Zibby Owens: Hi.

Elizabeth Berg: Hi. How are you?

Zibby: I'm good. How are you?

Elizabeth: I'm fine. Thank you. I want to tell you thank you for what you do. [Indiscernible] about you. Especially now, it's so important. It's so impressive. Thank you for including me.

Zibby: I'm delighted to include you. Thank you for thanking me. I love what I do. Every day is so amazing. I get to talk to women like you, but women from all over the world with so many interesting stories, novelists, nonfiction. It is so intellectually and emotionally engaging. I just love it. It's like a dream come true.

Elizabeth: You give back to so many others. It's such a good thing. Especially now, again, those good things mean a lot.

Zibby: Thank you for saying all that. I'll Be Seeing You is so beautiful, your memoir. I was crying at times. It made me so sentimental, the way you write about your parents. It was absolutely beautiful, as I'm sure you know. Maybe it doesn't hurt to hear again. It was just a sensational memoir about aging and caregiving and all the rest. Bravo. I loved it.

Elizabeth: I appreciate that on lots of levels, not least of which is the fact that writing something this honest is scary. You wonder if you're betraying people in presenting them this way. Of course, there's a section in the book about that. In the end, I thought it was probably worth it. From what I've been able to see so far, it really has helped people. I think there's something about making yourself vulnerable about a complex issue that opens up a lot of things for people. I'm very much gratified by that.

Zibby: I'm grateful to your writing group who I know you discussed this with early to see what they thought about it. I'm glad they encouraged you to get over the line and actually put it out into the world because it's true, sometimes you need a guide from other people. We all are going through this for the first time. We don't know what to do. Having a guidebook like yours or just knowing someone else's experience is so encouraging. It's, of course, an issue for so many people, having aging parents. I was wondering, though, because you wrote it in a diary style -- of course, it started in 2010. Did you write it at that time and then just leave it and wait until now? What happened? Tell me about the writing of this.

Elizabeth: It was a mix. For me as a writer, the way that I process things, the way I come to understand them is by writing about it. I wasn't sure that I would publish it, but I wanted to remember. I wanted to just get it out. It can feel like an incredible emotional load that you're carrying around going through these things. It struck me oddly that it's a kind of parallel for what we're going through right now in that you're stuck in the middle. You don't know when it's going to end. You don't know how it's going to turn out. There are so many sad and fearful things about it. The pandemic's a little bigger than this, of course, because aging is a natural part of life. In the same way that what helped me go through this experience was to, as I say, get small and take it day by day, that kind of philosophy is also helping me get through what we're all enduring now.

Zibby: Are you writing about it? I know you have a big Facebook blog and everything. Are you writing every day to record how you feel in the moment now so you don't forget?

Elizabeth: No. With regard to the pandemic, no. I do post occasionally. Whoa, I've really been struck by how people need that too, not just from me of course, but from all kinds of sources where people are talking about it, getting it out there, expressing their fears, expressing their anxieties and their sorrows, but also expressing what is still joyful, the things that remain that can really nourish and sustain us and support us. People need that too. For example, the last post I did was about trying to formalize some of the things that I do that bring me joy like reading, like listening to music. I'm a person, like so many others, that says, I'm going to do that, and then I don't do it. It helps if I formalize it. I say every Tuesday, you're going to concert in your own house. I had on Benny Goodman the other day. I'm telling you, I am telling you, it is joyful music. I could just see those women standing at the big square microphone in their formals and swaying and singing these songs. It was a moment. It can be hard at a time of such crisis to take it in and have it. For me, it's a matter of compartmentalization and saying, look, it's okay if you have this moment of joy. You're not taking away anything from anyone else. In fact, you're building yourself up so that you can help yourself and others better, like a mom. If the mom doesn't care of herself, forget about it.

Zibby: Yes. I know that all too well. [laughs] Going back to what you were saying about music, you had such a beautiful scene in your book about going to the concert by yourself and sitting there and seeing an older couple in front of you, the man, I think his name was Walter, and the wife trying to help him down the aisle and how when everybody applauded for the beautiful symphony, you felt like you were taking that as applause for Walter and the wife and the little steps nudging up the aisle to get out and on their way. It was just such a precious moment. Of course, in your imagination, as you did throughout the book, you're wondering what it's like for them at home as you did for one of the nurses who gave a weary glance. Then you imagined her putting an afghan on her husband. I can just see your mind working. Tell me about that, first of all, music, and second of all, how your brain just seems to wonder. It seems like you're always wondering about what comes after what you've seen.

Elizabeth: That evening was one of those times when you never know where inspiration or comfort is going to come. I admired that couple so much. I don't know their ages exactly, of course, but I think they were approaching ninety. They were quite frail, but by god, they went out to the symphony. Not only did they go out to it, but they heard it. They felt it. It was so difficult for the husband especially. The wife was in a little bit better shape. He had his walker. He moved so slowly, but he came. To the second part of your question, I guess if you're a writer, if you're a novelist in particular, that is the way that your mind works. You're incredibly curious and always wondering things and making stuff up. I've done that since I was a child. It could be a ladybug. Well, where's she going home to? What's her little house look like? That's something that's been with me all my life. Honestly, I hope it always will be because it makes life very rich.

Zibby: I do that too. I wonder if I see a family, what has just happened. What must people think of my family? Do they have it right? Do they know that this is my sister-in-law? It keeps it interesting, I guess.

Elizabeth: The gears are always turning for certain kinds of people. It sounds like you're one of us. [laughter]

Zibby: I noticed on your website -- I could've read a book in the amount of time just to read the descriptions of all your books and motivation. You've written so many amazing books and so many best-sellers. They all seem to have a little piece of your own experience, even just a smidge, or the inspiration came from something inside you. I just wanted to hear a little more about that and how you embark on book projects.

Elizabeth: I think it's inevitable that pieces of writers show up in their work. I'll keep it to myself. I'll talk about me because I don't want to speak for other writers who might say, no, that's not true for me at all. For me, I have to draw on my own life predilections and experiences in order to enrich the material I'm writing. What becomes the fiction part is the overarching theme of what it is that I'm trying to get at in this particular book or in this particular case. I do think, though, that writers write about the same thing over and over in different ways. For me, it's love, loss, longing, and the search for home over and over and over again. Maybe everybody has those themes a little bit in their work. That's because of the way I am, the way I turned out to be. It's manifested in everything I write. Even though the stories are different, those themes are always there in all those books. Oh, my goodness, you had to do so much research. [laughs]

Zibby: I loved it because I haven't read most of your books. I've read some, of course. I was like, this one looks good. The one that looked really great that I was like, I have to order this right away, I think it's called The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted.

Elizabeth: That's a good one. That's a fun one. That will be a good antidote to a sad one. That's short stories. They all have to do in some way or another with food. It was so much fun writing them. I will tell you that there's a couple in there that are sad. I think there's two that are sad, but the others are pretty funny.

Zibby: I like reading about sad stuff too. I like all of that. Actually, I just started a new group and a new podcast called "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight."

Elizabeth: [laughs] Moms don't have time for that.

Zibby: I feel like maybe that we should have a book club for that podcast or something. That seems like a good place to start.

Elizabeth: Who doesn't like to talk about food?

Zibby: I know. I know. We could talk about it all day. When you think about your longing for home -- I know you grew up an army brat and all the rest. A lot of your writing in this book was about growing up and your dad and how your relationship with him changed over time. Tell me about how your constant relocation has affected that search for you and that need for belonging.

Elizabeth: It really does have an impact, particularly on sensitive children. I went to one high school reunion in my life. I went two years of high school in Germany and two years in St. Louis, Missouri. In Germany, it was a bunch of army kids all going to this actually quite good school there. It was they who wanted to have the reunion only because we're so small. They said, if you went to Ludwigsburg American High School between the years of this and this, come to a reunion. It wasn't the typical 1966 reunion. One of the things that happened at that reunion is that a large group of us got together and talked about that notion of what it feels like to be uprooted all the time. How does that impact your personality? We all agreed that, here's what it does. You become a fake. You seem gregarious. You seem like you're wide open and ready for friendship, but you're always holding back because you know you're going to have to leave. I think that that can bleed into relationships in general. You have that kind of reserve against -- you can't invest fully in everything around you because you're going to be pulled away from it. It's just too devastating, so you invest a little bit. I was really struck with how every single person in that rather large group agreed with that.

Zibby: That's very interesting. Is that why you mentioned in the book how you feel like you fail at your relationships, like with your partner now even and that he's very patient with you but that you failed in your first marriage? I was wondering because you didn't elaborate on that. I found myself thinking, what does she mean? How did she fail? How is she failing now? Can you give us a little more?

Elizabeth: Okay, we're just going to deliver the goods here. Because I'm always one step away from saying, fine, the end, we're done. It's very easy for me. I'm sorry to say. It's a real character flaw. It's very easy for me to get to that place of saying, forget it, we're done. I've been there so many times with a place. We're done with this place. We're leaving. Then the other part is it really is true that my parents had what my agent calls a Reagan marriage. They really laid the gauntlet down. I don't expect in my lifetime to see that kind of love and loyalty again. Boy, as you know having read the book, it was tough for a while. Holy moly, it was really tough for a while. I think the redeeming part of reading this book is to see how it got worked out, that it ended, and it ended as well as it could have.

Zibby: Wow. That was part of the power of it, watching the changes that go on with somebody else and how that love still manifests itself even in the smallest of gestures. That's one of those things that made my cry, the little lunches, just these little moments at the table.

Elizabeth: You know what got me the most out of all of those moments? The flyswatter. My dad who was this mighty army guy who scared the hell out of everybody mellowed in his older years. Then at the end when he went to what was essentially a daycare center, although we called it the VA center, he made a flyswatter decorated with a daisy. Now flyswatters have a whole other meaning, but never mind. We won't talk about that. Here she has this essentially useless flyswatter all decorated with flowers. Who would want to keep that? She said, "Your father made that for me." She set it aside. Oh, man, I had to stand really still for a moment after that one. There were lots of those.

Zibby: When he was trying to change the battery in the hearing aid and you and your sister, you were rooting for him to do it. It's not just these moments. It's somehow the way that you're writing about them, how you're so in the moment. The fact that you and your sister -- that moment from the outside might not have been so noticeable that he's in the kitchen and you guys are waiting, but there's actually all that unspoken stuff, is what you write about. You capture it. It's so powerful.

Elizabeth: We were both watching him so intently. Please let him have at least this. Let him be able to change his own hearing aid battery, but nope.

Zibby: Are you working on another book now? How can you follow that up with something? It's so personal.

Elizabeth: I think in part because of the situation in which we find ourselves, I'm uncharacteristically scattered. I wrote another Mason book. I wrote these books that take place in a fictional town. There are now three of them. The first one is The Story of Arthur Truluv. I wrote two more. I wrote another one of those. I'm very taken with nonfiction suddenly. After having written ten thousand novels, I'm very taken with nonfiction. I thought about doing a collection about old boyfriends. If there were a party and if there were a group of women talking about old boyfriends, I would so be there. I think that whenever we reveal things about the relationships we had with old boyfriends, there's a commonality, but there are also delicious differences. I've written three. I wanted to do, in essence, a life in boyfriends, how I was at the time, how they were at the time, how these relationships shaped me. In at least two instances, I went back after many, many years and had conversations with these guys. One was a musician. The other, the one who took my heart, ran over it with a tank, and then stepped on it, that guy -- we all have one of those. Many of us do anyway. Boy, that was an interesting conversation. [laughs] That's another thought. Then I have a lot of ideas that I haven't fleshed out. I guess I'm happy at this age that I still have ideas.

I am interested, too, in paying it forward in a way. I do writing workshops, not lately of course. What I want to do, my legacy in a way -- here's a big secret, not that secret, but kind of secret. What I would like to do is provide a writing retreat house where a group of women could come and know that all they were going to hear is support and all they were going to do is have time for themselves. Each woman gets a room. I want to put fresh flowers in there. I want to have books everywhere and a big dining room table that they can gather around and share the day's work with. I did share some of this. In large, to become not just a writing retreat, but a gathering place for women who could disconnect for a few days and come back to themselves and be offered cooking classes, painting classes, just a place to enrich themselves. I kind of want to do this. I like to rescue houses because you know, search for home, search for home. I find these wrecks and transform them into what they used to be. There's a little one I got that's, oh, my god. My partner, who's the guy who does construction, said, "Don't go in there. Do not go inside there." It's really bad, but it's a cute little house. I want to turn that into a cottage. I'm really taken with cottages. That's a place where I want to provide this. I guess it would be my legacy, this place for women. No men allowed, only women. [laughs]

Zibby: I think that's amazing. I would love to stay there in a peaceful room with fresh flowers and nothing but connection and dialogue and time for self. That's a dream. I don't think I could extricate myself from my life, but boy, that sounds heavenly. By the way, on your last book idea, there's a memoir called Five Men Who Broke My Heart by an author named Susan Shapiro who actually taught me a class at The New School was I was twenty-something. It's sort of the same way. She goes back and talks to her five loves of her life and sees what happened to them.

Elizabeth: Is this an older book or a newer?

Zibby: It's older.

Elizabeth: I'm so [indiscernible], Five Men Who Broke My Heart.

Zibby: I think I have it behind me. I can find it in a minute. You should check that out. It's good. Also then, Laura Munson is an author, I don't know if you know her, but she just had a book come out called Willa's Grove. In it, the women go to a retreat similar to what you're talking about, but it's fictionalized. She actually runs retreats. They're not in a cottage. They're in Montana, I think. It's the same kind of idea where she has women come and connect, but not only a couple. She has bigger groups, I think. Anyway, you might want to just, in your comp, research.

Elizabeth: That is so interesting. See, there's no new ideas. It's just the execution.

Zibby: That's not true. It's not true.

Elizabeth: In a way, it is. It's all in the execution. One of the most interesting things I ever did as a writer was to be given a sentence that someone else came up with. The sentence was, "It wasn't until she got outside that she realized her socks didn't match, but somehow that didn't surprise her." When I was given this sentence, I thought, I don't like that sentence. I don't want to write using that. Three different authors got that sentence and were told, write a story using that as the first sentence. They were so remarkably different, so remarkably different, all incredibly different directions that we went. In the same respect, for a woman to write about five men who broke my heart, if you wrote that book, if I wrote that book, she writes that book, they would all be so different.

Zibby: Very true. I would probably want to read all of them.

Elizabeth: Me too.

Zibby: What advice would you have to aspiring authors? You've done every genre. You've been a successful, prolific author for years. What is the secretly, truly? How do you do it? What advice can you give?

Elizabeth: In a way, I had an advantage in that I never took a writing class. I didn't do the literary journals, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, or any of that. I didn't know anything about that stuff. I read a lot. I read a lot. I had always written from the time I was a little kid. I entered into this whole publishing world with a great deal of naïveté which I think, in the end, helped me. As to your point about it, a succinct piece of advice -- this really is straight. It's absolute truth. Don't try to imitate anyone else. Your voice is so valuable. Your point of view has its merit. Your way of expressing that point of view should come from you. That's what's interesting, is to really know a person. I can't abide small talk because to me, it's a lot of noise. I don't want to engage in it. I don't want to hear it. The same thing in writing. I don't want to see somebody being manipulative or calculating. I want to see inside them, truly, even if they're talking about other characters.

I'm standing here at my desk. I have these little quotes around. One thing that I put on here is truth, love, and risk. Those elements are something I always want to be in whatever work I do. If you want to write and you're a little nervous about it, remember that nobody has to see it at first. It can be just for you. The truth is that when most of us write, we get to the point pretty early on when we think, oh, boy, this is great, I want to show everybody this. If you're afraid of that, don't worry about that. It's okay. You can be afraid. In fact, if you're nervous about it, it's probably a good sign. If you're taking a risk in whatever form that takes and you're a little nervous about it because you're thinking, I don't know if this is any good, it's kind of strange, it's probably pretty good. Be yourself first and foremost. Understand, too, that the Nobel committee is not going to come and knock at your door and say, have you finished your book yet? You have to get it out there if you want to be published. You have to take that chance of submitting and being rejected. If you're rejected, you have to remember that reading other people's work is subjective.

If you get rejected, it might have nothing to do with how good your work is. It might have to do with -- let's say you submitted a novel. It could be that they just bought a novel on this theme and yours is even better, but they can't buy it now because they just bought that. You have to keep it church and state. You have to concentrate on your writing and what it is that you're trying to do. When you're all done and if you want to be publishing, you want to submit, at that point, think about marketing and all that other stuff. Frankly, I think it's better to let other people think about that entirely. I can't tell you how many people have told me, "I have this great idea," and they're already thinking about marketing and how much money they're going to make and that they ride in the beautiful car to go to the signings, and they haven't written it yet. The joy is always in the writing. That's always the best part, is getting from what's in here out there. The other stuff, it's nice. It's wonderful to be on the best-seller list. Who wouldn't want to do that? But it doesn't top that feeling of having gotten something out that you needed to get out. Blah, blah, blah, that was a long answer.

Zibby: I loved it. I'm hanging on your every word. Thank you. That was great advice. I'm sure that there's somebody out there who just heard that who really needed to hear it today, so thank you.

Elizabeth: I'm glad. The other thing, of course, as you know, is read. Read, read, read.

Zibby: Yes, I do. [laughs]

Elizabeth: Not only do you read, do you know how many interviews are done -- can I just say this? -- how many interviews are done where the interviewer obviously has not read the book? You understand that right away as an interviewee. You glean that information pretty quickly. Then you know how you're going to have to structure everything. You actually read the book. Not only did you read the book, but you remember everything about it. I know you do that with all your books. That's an incredible talent.

Zibby: I try. I can't get through every book I have on the show. Sometimes I haven't read more than fifty pages. When I love a book, as I did yours, I love it. I can't remember anything about my life. College, forget it. If you want to ask me something about your book in five years, I'm going to remember it. It's the weird twist of memory. At least I can use it now. [laughs] Anyway, thank you. This has been so nice. Thank you again for your book. I'm going to give it to so many people and recommend it and whatever. Thanks for spending your time with me today.

Elizabeth: I truly appreciate it. Thank you. Again, thank you generally for all you're doing.

Zibby: Keep me posted on the cottage. Maybe by the time you have it rolled out into the world I'll have older kids and can get there.

Elizabeth: Vintage quilts in every room, I'm just saying.

Zibby: All right. [laughs] Thanks so much. Buh-bye.

Elizabeth: Bye.

Christie Tate, GROUP

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

Christie Tate: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.

Zibby: I am so excited to finally be talking to you. I got this book in the middle or towards the end of the summer. I opened it up. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover or anything, but I opened this book up this summer, and these are my favorite colors. This is my favorite design. This wins my favorite-cover-ever award just in case you were wondering. [laughs]

Christie: Thank you. I feel super lucky. That was one of the first designs. I thought, this has exceeded all expectation. I love that blue.

Zibby: Amazing, my favorite color. I know your subtitle is How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life, but could you explain a little more in-depth to listeners what Group is about?

Christie: The book opens, and I had just completed my first year of law school. I had gone to the Bursar's office. I got a little index card that told me my class rank was first. I didn't feel any joy. I felt really, really depressed. I started having suicidal thoughts because my life looked really great on paper and obviously my professional future was going to be fine, better than fine, but inside I just was so lonely. I didn't even have that word yet. I had to go to therapy to learn that word. I was isolated. I had no close friends. I'd watch people from college go on girls' trip. I'd be like, how do they do that? People would reach out to me. I didn't know how to reach back. I thought, this is great, I'm just going to die alone. A friend recommended her therapist. I was on a student budget, so I was like, "I can't do therapy." She was like, "It's group, and so it's cheap." I was like, "Okay." I could see something different in her eyes. The memoir is the story of how I went to group and my life was cracked open by the people I met there and the therapist who was the ringleader of all of it.

Zibby: Wow. I loved your descriptions of not only the other people in the group, but Dr. Rosen and how, actually, you had met him. You have been at twelve-step programs for eating disorders for quite some time. In one of your meetings, you had actually had him come, but he was Jonathan R in the group. What did that feel like?

Christie: It was terrifying. When you open the door, I was like, is that the same guy? Between the time I'd made the appointment and then sat in the waiting room and then he opened the door, I decided, this is it, this is the one thing that will save my life. I had my heart set on it. Then he opened the door and I'm like, I know him from twelve-step world. I thought that would be an automatic disqualification. I'm like, well, I won't tell him. Why would he recognize me? There's tons of women and people in these meetings. He didn't recognize me after the first session. Then I started to feel like someday it might trigger him. Then he'd have to kick me out. That would be so embarrassing. It became one of the first tests of, can I tell the truth? Can I risk rejection by saying what I know, which is, I know you from meetings? It seems like you're not supposed to know that about your therapist.

Zibby: I know. This goes back to Lori Gottlieb's book. Do you know that?

Christie: Yeah.

Zibby: She talked in the beginning of that book, as a therapist, of running into a patient at the Starbucks. She was a mess, and that forever altered her relationship with her patient. Now we go to your book where it's sort of similar. You have this view into your therapist that most people do not have, should not perhaps have. I don't know.

Christie: Obviously, I only know what transpired for me. The idea of the blank slate is not quite as blank in my case as it is, I suppose, traditionally.

Zibby: I could so relate to the times in your book where in therapy you were asked to do or say something and you were just so uncomfortable that I could feel you cringing off these pages. You were like, no, no, no, I'm not doing that. I actually can't even say it on this podcast, what they were suggesting that you do. You were like, I could never. Part of the work was opening you up to love and men and not just totally bad-for-you guys.

Christie: Part of what drove me in was I was bereft of all relationships, but it was particularly salient in my relationships with men. I tended to fall for guys who were alcoholic or had very serious depression and didn't have the ability to be in a relationship. Sidenote, I didn't either, but I could just focus on them and say, why don't you love me? I bought you pineapple.

Zibby: [laughs] The reliable pineapple love trick that we all rely on so much.

Christie: It's standard. It's very standard.

Zibby: Very standard. My question about group therapy -- by the way, I've never actually been in group therapy, but I have been in regular therapy. Do you ever get a diagnosis? I know you had three sessions at the beginning. Does everybody get a pull-aside, let's go in the corner, PS, you have OCD, or something like that?

Christie: That is such a great question. How I've seen this play out for me in my groups is people have brought in insurance forms, and you have to put in a code in order to get reimbursed. Everything that is negotiated happens in group. I saw many people come in and say, "I need your signature, Dr. Rosen, on my insurance form," but they want a code. They say to him, "What do I have? What am I?" We would have long discussions, anxiety and depression is a certain code or whatever. I remember I always paid out of pocket because I was -- this is terrible. This is not a part of the book. I'm very, very afraid of forms. I just felt like it was easier. I always knew I had to earn enough money to go to group because I'm so afraid of forms. I remember one time I said -- this was probably year two. I said, "What do I have? Do I have PTSD? Do I have anxiety or depression?" Dr. Rosen said, "Why do you want to know?" I was like, "Well, what's wrong with me? What's my thing? What's my label?" I knew I had an eating disorder, but that was before I even got there. He really discouraged me. I didn't press it super hard because as soon as he said, "Why do you want to know?" I realized my motives weren’t good for me. I wanted to know so then I could be in that box. Then I could go off and do a checklist in a magazine. I have not pressed it. I've not asked for my notes. I can imagine a scenario where if somebody needed to know or wanted to know, it would be discussed in group and they could get that information. It's hard to get information in group without a full discussion, which is something you have to weigh if you really want to go there.

Zibby: Wow. I just could not believe all the stuff that came out in your group and even your unexpected moments with individual members of the group. You were like, wow, I'm not alone anymore, like Marty. It was just so sweet and heartwarming in a way. That's probably mischaracterizing this book which is very emotional, but it's so funny too.

Christie: It's funny. Sessions themselves can be very brutal. That would be my lived experience. Someone confronting me on things I don't want to talk about or that are painful or I start to talk about it and then I misunderstood, that experience is so painful. That's some of the work of intimacy that I have just never done. I was really immature in that way. That's why I was so alone. When I look back, some of the quieter moments with individual group members, in group and outside, they were so filled with love and care. I had just been running from people for so long that I didn't know that people might just rub your back if you're crying or hand you the tissues or offer to come get you. I had kept myself so isolated that those acts of kindness couldn't even penetrate my defenses, essentially.

Zibby: When I met my current husband, by the way, we were walking down to the tennis court and I was upset about something that had happened with my daughter that day. I didn't know him that well. I wasn't looking for a relationship. He put his hand on my back and was like, "Are you okay?" I married him. [laughs]

Christie: Yes, Reader, I Married Him. [laughs]

Zibby: I get the power of those little connections when you feel like you haven't had them in so long and you so need them. He's probably like, what am I even doing here? This is all a big mistake. [laughs] The part of your book during the accident on the beach in Hawaii was, first of all, so well-written and just edge-of-my-seat type of reading, which is always wonderful as a reader, but I'm so sorry for what happened. Are you able to share now? Do you want to keep it quiet?

Christie: I think sharing is probably helpful. I was so young. It was right before my fourteenth birthday. I was from a very modest family in Texas. We weren’t going to be going to Hawaii. There was a friend of mine, and her family had been so welcoming and so loving to me. We went to Hawaii. While we were there, her father drowned in the water of the ocean. For years, I just didn't talk about it, but I thought about it. It's not like I thought about it all the time. Right around the anniversary time, I'd get really emotional and kind of a panicky feeling. I felt like I was never allowed to talk about it because it was a long time ago. I remember saying that was a long time, and it had been eight years. Each year, I had an excuse not to -- it wasn't my dad. I think I had the overriding feeling that I got to go home to my family in Texas. My dad and mom were alive. We were all well. It's almost like that didn't happen to me because it wasn't my father. That's some of the early work I had to do in group to see what the cost was of disavowing the trauma for me and how that might have impacted my ability to attach. I was so out there, like, I'm a recovering bulimic. I had stories I was willing to tell about myself. Then there were these quiet ones that I felt buttoned down about. I think they were, obviously, tripping me up in relationships.

Zibby: Before the accident on the beach, or the drowning, were you able to be more open with people? I know it's such an important age where things would have developed and then didn't. As a child, were you very withdrawn in terms of how you were talking to people? Did anyone notice a shift in you? Did your family or anybody?

Christie: That's a great question. I'm pretty outgoing and extraverted. I did always have friends. From a very young age, I had a lot of shame, shame about my body. I remember that by age five. I wasn't actively bulimic until right before Hawaii, actually. I think timing really matters. The woman that I went -- she was a girl at the time. The family that I went with, she and I tried out for cheerleader together. The winter before, we'd gone skiing. She's lively and hilarious. I was there. Even if I can't quite remember who I was, I know who she was. She wouldn't have picked some morose bump on a log. I remember us laughing. I have snapshot memories of us laughing. I was a good student, but I was also kind of a wisecracker, as you can imagine from the book. I had an irreverent sense of humor that seemed maybe a little more male than female at the time, the way that Texas is coded. I think that it was the beginning of adolescence and the trauma. Probably even without that, I was gearing up for just regular adolescence strife. You add in that, I think it bumped me off the road for quite a while.

Zibby: You say it wasn't your dad, but it's not like you were in the hotel and you found out he drowned. You were on the beach and saw him and had to pull him on the beach and get help. You yourself had almost drowned a second ago. That is hardcore. Everybody's had stuff in their life, but most people have not had to pull a drowning grown man out of the water. That's a lot to hold onto and not talk about. To not feel like you have permission to cope with it is a lot.

Christie: It's funny. I'm sure a lot of people have this experience. Now that I have a daughter who is -- she's not that old yet. As I imagine packing her off to go on a trip with another family and imagine getting the phone call that my parents got, I have much more compassion for myself and carrying that burden. I had the insane idea that I could've prevented it or I should have. That is a lot for a kid to carry. I can see that now that I have kids approaching that age. I'm like, wow, I'm glad I got the help I needed. Let's say that.

Zibby: By the way, do people still go on vacations with other families? Nobody I know does that anymore. Maybe families go together. The idea of sending my kid off on someone else's vacation -- it used to happen all the time. I brought kids all the time. I went on other...

Christie: That's a really funny question. The only instances where I know that in our community is we know some kids who were only children, and they so they may double up for obvious reasons. It's not nearly as prevalent as it was when I was growing up in the eighties.

Zibby: Me too. It was like, who's coming on vacation with us? Each of you take a friend.

Christie: Yeah, the bring-a-friend thing. I would take friends to the exotic location of Forreston, Texas, where my grandparents had a farm. It was super fun. I would take all kinds of friends there. Now it's funny, that's an interesting marker of change in generations.

Zibby: And the idea that I would just not spend my vacation with my child. I am fighting my ex-husband about, how days of the vacation could we each have? To be like, let's just send her with the Jones' over there, I don't know. [laughter]

Christie: I know. It's so funny.

Zibby: Not that there's anything bad. It used to happen all the time. Oh, well. So tell me about the act of writing this book. You sort of alternate between being private and not private. Some of these things, you held close to home. Some, you feel okay with. Now you've let it all out.

Christie: [laughs] When I started the book, I did a first draft. I started the book on November the 9th of 2015. I remember the date because I just did some research about it. I was like, how long have I been living with this book? First drafts are terrible. It was just anecdote. Then my therapist said this. Then I dated this guy. It didn't have any arc or some of the heart and no specificity. There was no scene of me binging on apples. I was very light about the Hawaii situation. It was pretty superficial. I got feedback that it was superficial and I needed to dig deeper. I didn't know how. I didn't know how to revise a novel. I mean, it's not a novel. I didn't know how to revise a whole book length. I ended up in a situation where -- the writer Lidia Yuknavitch, she does a class called Body of the Book. You can workshop in a small group, the first 130 pages of your work. I thought, I'll do that, and then they can tell me what's missing or what am I doing. It was incredibly transformative because they were able to, both Lidia and my workshop mates who were incredible, they would circle something. I vaguely made a comment, like, I binge on apples at night, and then I move on very quickly. Everybody circled it in red pen, like, show us. I was like, show you? Every apple? It felt to me like that would be tedious. Once I went in there, all the places where they said, give us a scene, I started building scenes. I think that's where a new energy came to life. Instead of telling, I was showing what I was like, what happened, and what I'm like now because of this process.

Zibby: In terms of the law career and where you are today -- now, of course, you're an author, which is amazing. What is your daily life like? Tell me about your daughter. I mean it. Now I feel so invested in you with the book.

Christie: I feel really lucky. The great thing about talking about the book now or having it out in the world is every day, I feel grateful. Every day I talk about the book, I touch back to that woman who was first in her class. I clung to that because it's all I had. Now it's so obnoxious to be like, I'm the valedictorian, but literally, it was the only tentpole I had. When I look back, I get to think about who's in my life today. I have two children. I have a husband. It's corona time, so we're all home doing our things in our little corners of the world. I still go to group. I still work full time, so that's that. I am really committed. I get up really early, in the fives. I do writing. I also do meditation just because I don't know how to survive things that are happening in the wider world without a little bit of meditation. Do the writing until the people wake up around me. I get them going. I do my day job. During lunch, I do more writing. That's when I would meet with a writing group.

Then twice a week, I Zoom into my therapy group. What readers will see is the memories of my group and I are very close, and so I'll go on a walk with someone from group or we'll meet for a socially distant coffee. It's a really full experience. The other day, I was complaining to one of the characters in the book, Max, this is a super obnoxious thing, "I'm so busy. I have so much going on." First thing he said was, "Everyone does, so get over yourself." Also, he'll say to me, whenever I complain, he'll say, "This is the life you wanted, remember?" I'm like, oh, yeah. Driving my son to the baseball field or getting my daughter to her outdoor dance class, this is exactly what I wanted. In my minivan and my family and all these people and phone calls to return to people who love me and who want to fill me in, that is exactly what I wanted. Like anybody who has a full life, it's kind of like, what plate am I going to drop today? But it's a privilege to have plates.

Zibby: It's a privilege to have plates. I love it. It's so true. In terms of advice to other people who might want to write a memoir, what would you say?

Christie: I would say read, read, read. Read the memoirs you love. Read them again. This is super advice I'm taking myself right now. I've reread my memoirs that I really love, particularly Claire Dederer's Love and Trouble and Kiese Laymon's Heavy. Every year, I read Lidia Yuknavitch's Chronology of Water. I love those books. They're artists. I want to get inside of what they're doing. I think that the idea that the only part of writing a book is sitting down and writing has not been my experience. I would say reading widely. Also, join a writing group. We're all long distance, my writing group. We've been together almost three or four years. We all live across the country. We're telephonic because this was before everything went Zoom. Now we've got on Zoom. It's free. You have to make the time for it. I learn so much from the women and the way that they push themselves. Some of them are novelists. Some of them are essayists. Some of them are memoirists. Having the community is invaluable, learning from them, getting that every-two-week feedback on my writing. We're going to talk about one of my pieces this afternoon. I still get nervous. Even though it's a first draft and it doesn't need to be great, but just the exercise of putting myself out there, I think that's really invaluable. For years, I wanted a writing group. I didn't know how to get one. What worked for me was I took a couple classes. Then I would ask people in the classes. It doesn't have to be giant. It could be one other person. I just think having company and feedback is really invaluable. I don't know how people do it without it.

Zibby: That's great advice. What are you working on now? What's your piece for today?

Christie: I was trying to a write a piece about -- one of the things that I'm interested in is what's happening to my body right now. There's middle age, of course. There's anxiety. There's upcoming elections and book publications. I've been having this totally random trapezius pain. I didn't even know what the trapezius was until I got the pain. I'm writing about the sensation and what the trapezius means. In woo-woo Eastern medicine, the trapezius, it's the heart of the back or whatever. I'm just exploring what that pain means. I think when it started was when I went to record the audiobook. I was sitting there and I was reading a scene. It was painful when it happened, painful when I wrote it. It was one of these groups that was very intense. I'm alone in the booth. There's this old engineer. I'm talking about my problematic sex life. I'm sweating. I'm alone with this man. I'm reading it into the world. My trapezius just instantly crimped. I've had enough therapy to know that those are all related. I'm interested in thinking about what part of me is still afraid to have my story out there, my truth, my experiences, to get bigger in the world. I think my body is registering my anxiety. It's right now showing up in my trapezius. We'll see if they got any of that in two thousand words I gave them.

Zibby: I think that's so interesting.

Christie: We'll see.

Zibby: I love it. I feel like new aches and pains come every day. I'm like, really? I'm only in my forties. I thought that was a sixties, seventies situation.

Christie: Totally. It's so humbling.

Zibby: Oh, well. [laughs] Thank you. Thanks, Christie. I loved this book. I'm so excited you came on the show. I can't wait to see it come out into the world. I'm just so rooting for you, in your corner, and all that.

Christie: Thank you so much. Thanks for all you do for writers and readers and listeners. It's incredible. It's such a bright light. You are a bright light. I am so happy to be here.

Zibby: Thank you so much. I want to read that essay, by the way. I'm serious. Send it over.

Christie: I definitely will.

Zibby: Okay. Workshop it, and then I want to see it.

Christie: Perfect. All right, see ya.

Zibby: Bye.

Alisson Wood, BEING LOLITA

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Alisson. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Alisson Wood: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you.

Zibby: I am just sorry this took us so long. Especially as soon as I started reading your book, I was like, what has the holdup been? I'm so sorry. Anyway, delighted to be talking to you. Being Lolita, can you please tell listeners what this is about?

Alisson: At its core, this is a book very much about power and sex and gender. In a much more simple plot way, it's about how when I was seventeen, I became ensnared in this incredibly abusive relationship with an English teacher in high school. He gave me the book Lolita. He told me it was a beautiful story about love. I was seventeen. I didn't know any better. The book follows the story of how I was groomed and how things escalated very quickly and became very abusive and how I was able to leave the relationship and then what my life has been like since and how this experience has impacted me both for good and bad.

Zibby: How would you say the experience has impacted you?

Alisson: On the not-so-good hand, trauma never goes away. This experience was incredibly bad. It was very traumatic. In a lot of ways, it set me up for a lot of bad relationships. This is why it's so important to talk to teenagers about healthy relationships and consent and boundaries and red flags of abuse. There's all this research that shows that your first relationship very much creates this mold for future relationships. My first relationship was a secret. It was incredibly abusive. It was full of manipulation and lying. That was what I thought love was. That was tough to figure out that that's not love. I'm thirty-six now. I spent a lot of time in therapy and just figuring things out and making a lot of mistakes. There is the other side. You can get through it. On the good side, though, I think that because of what happened to me I am incredibly, incredibly aware and supportive of my students. I teach now at NYU. I teach undergraduate students. I'm so aware and careful. I want to be a teacher that I wish that I had had as opposed to the teacher I had.

Zibby: It's so funny. I feel like so many of the authors I interview mention the influence of one teacher along the way as setting them on their path to becoming a published author. Someone has to notice your gift or your potential or whatever. That can just change everything. The power that you have as a teacher on all these aspiring authors -- you teach creative writing, right?

Alisson: Yeah.

Zibby: It's pretty, I would think, almost a daunting responsibility in a way.

Alisson: It is. A funny thing is that I got angry about what happened to me in a brand-new way once I started teaching. Undergraduates, they're eighteen, nineteen. I teach an intro class, so it's a lot of freshman. As I'm sure any parent knows, they're still kids. They’ve never rented an apartment on their own. They’ve probably never paid a bill. They’ve probably never worked full time. They might not even know how to cook. In so many ways, they're still kids. When we send them off to college, it's this wonderful opportunity for a safety net for them to figure out how to be an adult. There's a dorm, so they’ll never be homeless. There's a dining hall, so they’ll never go hungry. There's all these safety nets in place, which is wonderful. When I began teaching, the first time I went into a classroom with my own students I was just struck by how young they are. For someone to go into a classroom thinking anything except, how can I support and encourage and keep these students safe -- for someone to go into a classroom and be thinking about their own sexual or emotional or ego gratification is just monstrous. It made me angry about what happened to me in a whole new way because I think teaching is sacred. I think young people should be nothing but supported. To do anything else is just horrible.

Zibby: What do you think your teacher originally thought when he went into teaching? Do you think that this just happened? Do you think he went in with lofty goals? I know he was so young at the time as well.

Alisson: He was somewhere between twenty-six and twenty-eight. I don't remember. There's sort of two options for how that went. On one side, he really did misread Lolita. [laughter] He really did think this was this utterly romantic story. He really did think that he and I were in love and this was this thing that was fine. That means he was kind of stupid, to be frank. I'm sorry, really? I was seventeen. I was a high school student. How on earth could you do the backflips in your head to make that seem fine? The other option is that he was a predator from the start and he knew exactly what he was doing and he was doing it on purpose. That's also incredibly, incredibly difficult because I want to believe that people are good and that people aren't evil or anything. I don't know. I never will. Either he was stupid or he's a terrible person, and probably a little bit of both.

Zibby: These are the choices today. Not so great.

Alisson: No, not so great. One of the toughest things -- this is something I've had to face and acknowledge over time. This is what I lean to, I think he was predatory from the get-go. I think he knew what he was doing. I just don't understand how you can go into a high school and not think, huh, maybe I should not try to fuck my students, and how you can make that seem okay. That then means that I was a victim, clean-cut a victim. Something that's interesting about victim blaming, even especially when you do it yourself, which I did, of course, for a long time -- I was like, well, I flirted with him. I wanted this. I thought he was so cute. To start with, that's completely developmentally appropriate. It's completely okay for a teenager to have a crush on their teacher. No big deal. That's fine. It's part of what's going on when you're a teenager. Hormones are flying. It's so exciting. Then there's this teacher who maybe pays attention to you. That's totally fine. What's wrong is when the adult, the teacher, crosses that line. That's morally and ethically and, at times, legally wrong. My experience was normal and completely okay. The victim blaming part came in when I wanted to believe that I had some level of control over what had happened, so I blamed myself which is then blaming my choices, my actions. In actuality, I think I was just a victim. I don't think there was really any blame on my part. That's also really hard to face because that's really sad. You want to believe that you're a powerful, strong person who has some control. It's tough to face that that's not always the truth. It's been a process.

Zibby: Everyone's got their stuff. Do you think you became a teacher in a way to kind of right the wrongs of what happened?

Alisson: The funny thing is it was in no way conscious. I've always wanted to teach. I've always loved that. I've always loved writing. It felt very natural and organic. Then of course as I'm writing the book, I'm like, huh, interesting. I end up a teacher. It's one of those things where it's like, I don't know if it's quite that simple. Clearly, part of what I do is to try and right the wrong that happened to me and be the kind of teacher that I wish that I had had. That's really important to me.

Zibby: It's almost a way of making amends in a way.

Alisson: Definitely. Reparations, but I'm not the one who should be making the reparations.

Zibby: I know you're not. I know. I didn't say it made sense. I'm just saying from one of those weird subconscious things that we all do to cope with something.

Alisson: Isn't that such the work of women to do this kind of work for others? That's such a woman thing that we are trained to do. We're trained to care and fix things. That's a whole other conversation. [laughs]

Zibby: Yes. Let's save that for a cup of coffee or something.

Alisson: Maybe a glass of wine.

Zibby: A glass of wine, that would be great. I was so interested in how you came into this book and how you came into, not the book itself, but how you as a character came into the relationship of the book and your backstory and how you started it feeling so other than other people in your school and that you had gone through a lot yourself. There were all these rumors about your hospitalization. Had she tried to kill herself? Had she been doing this with other guys? All that swirling around you and your previous diagnoses and also the whole insomnia part which I thought was really fascinating. You got in so much trouble for that all the time, missing classes and everything. Even though it was documented, it put you on a totally different trajectory from an academic standpoint. Tell me a little more about all of that.

Alisson: Like so many teenagers, I struggled when I was a teenager. Starting probably when I was fourteen or fifteen, I began having really serious depression. There was no specific reason. It just happened like it does oftentimes with teenagers. When you start hormones and puberty, that can often be a time when depressive episodes or any sort of mental illness will sort of kick in. I just became incredibly depressed. At one point, I was cutting myself. I never tried to kill myself, but I was in a very dark place for a very long time. Like you mentioned, I became an insomniac. I switched my nights and days for a while. I was not a happy, stable camper. I was very, very depressed for a long time, and so I stopped going to school. If you're up all night and you're sleeping during the day, you're not making class. My depression was so serious that it was at the point where I had ECT. I had electroconvulsive therapy when I was in high school to try and snap me out of it. ECT is incredibly safe. We have this real stigma about it in our culture because of the way that it's portrayed in movies and in TV, but it's actually really safe. It's only a couple seconds. You're under anesthesia. You're not awake. They give you muscle relaxers. There's no shaking. It's an incredibly effective treatment for depression. This is very much an aside in my book, but it is something that I think is important that I wish we didn't stigmatize treatments for depression. I think we've gotten better about talking about mental illness and medication. We're better at that, but I think ECT is still something that's sort of, that's only if you're psychotic or something. It's really dangerous. It's really not. It's actually one of the safest treatments for pregnant women because anesthesia doesn't pass through the placenta, so there's no danger to the baby as there are in many medications. I'm sorry, this is an aside.

Zibby: No, I find it really interesting. I'm like, gosh, I could've used a little ECT when I was pregnant. [laughs]

Alisson: It saved my life. I really believe that. It's this dark corner of mental health that people don't talk about because there's this horrible stigma. When this was happening, this was the late nineties, early two thousands. This was almost twenty years ago or more than twenty years ago. There was a lot of stigma about mental illness at that point still. It's interesting thinking about that because part of the reason that medication has come so far in being normalized is because prescription companies were able to start advertising their drugs. I remember the first time I saw the ad for Prozac in a magazine. It was the stormy and then the sun. Prozac, it'll fix it. That's part of why. There's been all this money in advertising to make medication seem okay and thus to make people buy it, whereas there's no big ECT. There's big pharma. There's no big ECT. It's machines. There's no money to be made, so there's not this public service trying to break down the stigma.

Anyway, when I came back to school -- I had gone to a therapeutic day school my junior year. Also, that was a normal school, smaller population. The only real difference was that we had group therapy in the afternoons where it's just teenagers in a circle talking about what's bugging them. [laughs] I came back my senior year, and people thought I had died. People were like, she ended up at a hospital because she tried to kill herself. She's this slut, blah, blah, blah. Teenagers can be cruel. I think that hasn’t changed. I was very much an outsider when I first came back to school. I didn't really have any friends. I felt very alone, which also made me really easy prey. One of the first steps in an abusive relationship or in an abuser's plan of action is to isolate their victim. I was already pretty isolated. It just made it easier.

Zibby: Wow. To your point about stigma, by the way, I'm on the board of the Child Mind Institute. It's all about helping childhood mental illness up through teenagers, so it would include high school and all that. There's research and there's treatment, but a huge component is trying to get rid of the stigma of mental illness because that's a whole added layer of everything.

Alisson: I really struggled with -- that was something that I wasn't sure if I should include. On one hand, I felt like it was really important context to who I was and how this happened. I was very lonely. I was very sad. I was depressed. I was very vulnerable. It was part of why I think I was such an easy target. I really believe that. At the same time, I was afraid that because of the stigma it'd be used against me.

Zibby: No.

Alisson: It has been.

Zibby: Really?

Alisson: Yes. One of the first critical reviews of the book, the opening line was, "Alisson Wood had shock therapy, was a cutter, was on twenty different medications, and then this happened." It set me up to be like, oh, she's this crazy unreliable narrator. Who's going to listen to this book? Honestly, that first review was sort of all of my fears. It was everything I was afraid of that would happen. I really felt like it was important to be honest and to be fully honest and fully vulnerable with my reader. I feel like that makes a good memoir. That's part of the point, to share.

Zibby: A hundred percent. It would've been a different story without that context. It's not like because you're depressed you deserved to be sexually abused. Who would think that? The behaviors come from the underlying stuff. I'm sorry that that happened to you. That's really beside the point and someone who just missed the plot of your book entirely.

Alisson: It's so common. It's so common for teenagers and for any age group, but I think it's especially common for teenagers because oftentimes that's when it'll first start popping up. I just think we're so bad at supporting teenagers with this. We're just so bad at it. I think we've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go. Especially queer teenagers or trans teenagers or women, it's tough.

Zibby: I know you worried about the beginning, but even just having the whole story out there when you decided to make this a memoir and publish it and then actually as you were writing it and it was coming out, did you have fears about that for all the personal stuff? The whole thing is very personal.

Alisson: The book is really personal.

Zibby: [laughs] I know. That's what I'm saying.

Alisson: It is a very personal book. You know, I actually am not and didn't worry that much about that. Really, what I worried about was the being honest about the depression part. I worried about how I would be judged for that. For some reason, I was like, this is what it is. I feel like when you write a memoir you make a contract with the reader. It's like, okay, the whole truth, nothing but the truth even when it's really ugly, when it's not flattering. It's funny. I didn't struggle with, someone's going to read this, people are going to know this about me. I struggled at times with the actual writing because it was going back to something really traumatic. It was going back to something really awful and painful and embarrassing and just like, oh, my god, I cannot believe I need to write this scene when this happened. I knew it was important. This bothered me to no end, early readers were like, oh, my god, the scene where he made you pee in front of him, that's the best scene. I'm like, that one? One of the most embarrassing things and shameful and awful things, sexual humiliation things, that ever happened, that's your favorite scene? Okay, great. [laughs] To me, that speaks to how universal in some ways, maybe not that exact situation, but I think for so many women we've been put in situations where we had to do things that we didn't want to. Abuse is so common. Also, the power imbalance abusive relationships like with the teacher, it's incredibly common. I hear from readers every single day still. I hear from readers, emails and DMs and things like that of women thanking me for writing the book, which is just so amazing, but then talking about how, I feel understood. I feel seen. I feel acknowledged because this happened to me or something very similar happened to me. That's honestly the best part about this book and has been the best part about publishing it.

Zibby: Having made it through the trauma of reliving the moment and going through the actual writing and being a creative writing teacher, I have to get your advice for aspiring authors. You must have hours' worth. What are some of the things that were most helpful to you and that you think are the most key in trying to write a memoir?

Alisson: I was really lucky in that I had an awful lot of primary source documents. I had a stack of journals from my senior year. I had all these photographs of me from that time. I had a whole bunch of letters and notes and hall passes and hotel receipts and all these things that were really helpful in creating the timeline because memory is faulty. Memory can make mistakes. An example of something I write about in the book is how I distinctly remembered this moment or this scene where the teacher, in the shop room, in his study hall, the teacher wanted to trade me my bra size for the size of his penis. I distinctly remembered that happening, but I thought it had happened in May. In May, I would've been eighteen. We would've been almost "together." That's still awful, but it sort of mitigated it a bit in my mind.

Then when I was going through my journals and trying to track things, I realized that it had happened on November 21st. That meant I was seventeen. He had only known me for, at most, two months. That also showed how quickly it escalated from after-school help because I was a really good writer to sexual coercion stuff. That today, of course, would've been over text message or a Snapchat or whatever, trying to coerce me to send him a topless photo for a dick pic. That was a moment when I really snapped through the victim blaming and was like, nope, there is no way, no how that anyone can make an excuse for this. There are no jumping jacks that you can do to say this was fine and this was my fault. Nope, nope, nope. That was really upsetting, again, to just face that. I think that was one of the hardest parts about the book. At some points, it felt like I was opening up this onion of trauma. The more I looked, the more I reread, the more I dove into it, the worse it was. Writing the book was really hard.

Zibby: I bet. Also, tell me two seconds about Pigeon Pages.

Alisson: Pigeon Pages is a writing community that I founded about four years ago. I founded it because I really wanted to create my own writing community. I wanted it to be full of women and queer people and non-binary folks and trans folks. Basically, I didn't want any straight white guys in it. [laughs] I wanted to create my own community. We hold monthly readings. We are a literary journal. We publish every week, poetry and prose. It's really wonderful. We're opening tomorrow, an essay contest with Morgan Jerkins, who's the wonderful author, as our judge. We're so excited.

Zibby: I just had her on my podcast.

Alisson: She's the best. She's so wonderful. She's judging our essay contest. It opens October 1st and runs through November 15th. You can find out all sorts of information at --

Zibby: -- Maybe I'll enter. [laughs]

Alisson: We're @PigeonPagesNYC on all the socials, and that's our website.

Zibby: I couldn't believe how many authors who I've had on my podcast have been contributors in some way to Pigeon Pages. I was going down and down and down. Oh, my gosh, so many. I'm all about it. I followed it. I'm very interested. It's awesome.

Alisson: We're a lovely nest.

Zibby: That's so nice.

Alisson: Also, a lot of bird puns.

Zibby: Yes. Why not?

Alisson: We believe writing is joy. Let's be a little silly. We can all get a little pretentious. Pigeon Pages is a place for, all right, let's knock that down a bit. Let's talk about writing, which is what it's supposed to be.

Zibby: I love it. Alisson, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on, for discussing Being Lolita, for going through the pain that you had to go through to get it on the page so that other people could benefit. I hope to continue our conversation offline sometime.

Alisson: Yes. Thank you so much. I'm so honored to be here. I truly appreciate it.

Zibby: It was my pleasure. Bye.

Alisson: Bye.

Rumaan Alam, LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Rumaan. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to talk about Leave the World Behind. I'm delighted to finally be talking to you.

Rumaan Alam: It's my great pleasure. I only wish that we were doing this in person because I can see into your home library, and it's absolutely beautiful. I would love to get in there and poke around on those shelves personally.

Zibby: You have an open invitation as soon as people are allowed to socialize again. I don't know when that will be. I miss having people here. I miss it. I loved having authors streaming in and out. You're welcome anytime.

Rumaan: Someday I'm going to take you up on that.

Zibby: Please do. As I mentioned, we were supposed to do this interview a while ago, but now you've had all sorts of great news that has come since the launch of the book, including today. It won't be when this airs, but today you found out you're now shortlisted for the National Book Award, which is really exciting. Congratulations.

Rumaan: Thank you.

Zibby: And also a Barnes & Noble pick and a Read with Jenna pick. What next for this book? [laughs]

Rumaan: The thing about writing a book, and I'm sure you've heard this from your guests in the past, is that it's just this very sustained leap of faith. You have absolutely no idea what will happen when the book exists. I'm also aware of the fact, as you know very well, there are so many great books every year that never really connect with the right readership. Sometimes it takes time for a book to find its way into the hands of the right readers. When that happens quickly, you know what a blessing it is. I know every step of the way, what a particularly thrill it is because the book isn't alive in any meaningful way until someone reads it. It just isn't. Those awards are wonderful. Being part of a television book club is wonderful, but the reason it's wonderful is in service of getting the book into the hands of the people who will bring it to life. That's what's exciting about it. The idea that more readers will come to it is a thrill, really a thrill.

Zibby: If you were to win an award and no one found out about it, let's say there's this secret Pulitzer Prize but you can't announce it, you wouldn't be excited?

Rumaan: I'd be excited because, of course, it's a statement about how those judges felt about the book. That's really just a statement about how those particular readers felt about the work.

Zibby: I'm just playing with you. It's fine.

Rumaan: Of course, it's gratifying to the ego. Every artist is possessed of an ego. Writing is just an act of ego, really. Of course, it's thrilling, but you have to think about what really is important in those moments. What thrills me, honestly, the most is when I see on Twitter or on Instagram -- I've seen this a bunch, and it's so lovely -- when readers get the book from the library, when the hold is released and they get the digital edition from the library. That's really thrilling to me. Look, the name of this podcast is moms don't have to time read. We live in a culture that doesn't make a lot of space for an experience of art. When people pay for your work, not in terms of their money but in terms of their attention, that's sacred, almost. It's really moving to me that people would spend the limited time that we all have, the hour before bedtime, with my work. It's really meaningful. I really love that.

Zibby: That's such a nice way to look at it. That's great. I love that. Will you please tell listeners who might not know what this is about a little about the plot and how you came up with the idea for it?

Rumaan: Leave the World Behind is a novel about a middle-class white family who live in Brooklyn. They're a professional couple. Amanda works in advertising. Her husband, Clay, works as a professor. They have two teenagers, Archie and Rose. The family, when we meet them, is heading out to Long Island for a holiday. They're not going to a super chic part of Long Island where you can go buy an expensive painting or have a thousand-dollar bottle of wine. They're going to a more quiet, understated part of Long Island. These parts do exist because, in fact, this is based very much on a place that my family and I went on vacation, beautiful, bucolic, rural farmland not far from the ocean, not far from the millionaires in East Hampton, but its own little quiet part of Long Island.

Zibby: Where is it? Can you say where it is?

Rumaan: Oh, it's my secret to keep. I will tell you later. The family goes on vacation. They have the experience that you want on vacation. They go and buy a bunch of fancy groceries. They make hamburgers. They lounge by the pool. They go to the beach. They stop at Starbucks on the way home from the beach. That's my dream vacation stuff. That's what I love to do. The second night they're in the house, there is a knock at the door. It’s late at night. They're in the middle of nowhere. No knows that they're there. It's not their primary residence. There's no reason someone should be knocking on the door. It's an older black couple named George and Ruth who tell Amanda and Clay that this is their house. They're the owners. They rented to them on Airbnb. They’ve come there because there's an emergency happening in New York City. From then, the book shifts from being a book about holiday and family to being a book about what you do in a moment of crisis. I feel like that's a good way of talking about what the book is without -- I don't really care about spoilers, but I'm mindful that some readers want to experience the shifts in this book for the first time themselves.

Zibby: We'll just leave it at that. Was the book inspired by your vacation?

Rumaan: Very much so. In 2017, we had had this beautiful vacation. At the end of that year, it was December and I was staying as a guest of the wonderful writer Laura Lipman at her home in New York City. It's on the Upper West Side. It was December. It was very cold. It was not far from the Hudson. When I left the apartment to run out and get a cup of coffee or something, it was just freezing cold, freezing cold. You know how in New York, you can have those patches of ice on the sidewalk? It never rained and it never snowed, so you don't actually know where this ice came from, but it's that kind of weather.

Zibby: I think they call it black ice.

Rumaan: It's just looming ice. You're like, what I want most right now is that feeling of summer vacation. I was remembering my own vacation. That particular moment, that stay, had really lodged in my head. I want to write a novel about vacation, but I wanted to push through it, push through the particulars of a family in a vacation home, which is a convention of books. There are many great books. I love that convention, but I wanted to find in that material, something with bigger implications, something that told us about not just family life, but cultural life, civic life, political life, the moment that we're all in right now. That was the attempt of the book.

Zibby: Looks like you hit the nail on the head.

Rumaan: I'll let readers decide, but thank you.

Zibby: Popular culture is saying you got it. Nice job. When you get an idea for a book, what comes next? Do you outline? Do you just sit and write it? Do you do any research? What's your process like?

Rumaan: That's a good question. Usually, what I do is I write into it for fifty pages, seventy pages or so. Then I make an outline. In those first fifty to seventy pages, what I'm looking for, really, is the sound of the book. To me, the sound of the book establishes everything, how I'm going to write about the people, what the people are going to be like. Somehow, the name of the person really defines how I write about them. It's just about nailing whatever the voice is. Once I've nailed the voice, I can sit down and say, what am I doing here? What is this story going to look like? I outline. Usually, what I try to do is confine an outline to a single piece of paper because it feels very doable. I can tape that piece of paper up onto the wall of my office. I can copy that piece of paper down in my notebook. I can carry it around with me. I can have this one little cheat sheet that says to me, this is what you're doing. This is the book. It is in twelve sections or four sections or whatever the structure is. When I say outline, I don't even mean the kind of outline that we made when we were in third grade and we were learning how to write a paper about the Declaration of Independence where it's the main idea and all this stuff.

Zibby: There are no Roman numerals?

Rumaan: No, no Roman numerals. Usually, what I do is I just put one, two, three, four, five. Here's the main idea of this section. Here are maybe how the characters will work. The outline is revised in tandem with the book. It's not a roadmap for a vacation destination. The math is changing as you're in progress. I adjust the outline. I change things around. I feel my way forward with some guide, but also a little bit by instinct.

Zibby: Interesting. Then once you do the writing, how long did it take for you to write this book?

Rumaan: I wrote this book very quickly. I wrote a draft of this book in about three weeks.

Zibby: Three weeks?

Rumaan: It fell out of me. Yes, I wrote a draft of the book very quickly, in about three weeks' time, but that doesn't reflect the amount of labor I had put in prior thinking about the book. I keep a notebook with me. I write sentences down. I write scenarios down. I write character names down. I write down ideas for scenes. I had a secret Twitter account where I was tweeting lines from the book. I tweet a lot, and I realized at some point that it's just a form of writing. I'm wasting that energy. I could channel that more productively if I tricked myself almost the way that you might trick yourself by getting off the subway two stops early, and then you're getting in your steps for the day. It almost feels like that, taking Twitter, a technology I use all the time, and forcing myself to engage in my fiction that way.

Zibby: What would you tweet?

Rumaan: What became the first chapter of this book was originally drafted as tweets.

Zibby: One line at a time?

Rumaan: Yeah, one sentence at a time, one thought at a time. I think that really helped me stay inside of the world of this book until I sat down and wrote it. I sat down and wrote it. The draft came out very quickly. It's very important for everyone to understand that that draft is very bad, very, very bad. It's the same relationship between a bowl of pancake batter and a finished pancake. The application of heat makes a pancake, and the application of time makes the book. It's revision, revision, revision, breaking it apart, breaking it into sections, looking at each section, seeing how each fits together, rewriting. Over time, you lost your sense of what material from that first draft exits in the final draft. It's really hard to say. For me, the work doesn't begin until I have those first three hundred pages. There's nothing to do. You're just talking theoretically. If you force yourself, as I usually do, to sit down and write, write, write almost like a marathon, don't look back. Don't correct. In a first draft -- the character's name is Amanda -- I could break that and call her Amy on some pages. It doesn't matter. I don't stop myself. I know I'm making mistakes. Revision is for addressing those mistakes. That period takes a very long time. It took a year, but that's what it's for. Good work takes time.

Zibby: Wow. I like that process. The secret Twitter account, did you ever unveil that it was you?

Rumaan: No, no, no, it's locked. No one can follow it. I'm the only one. I don't think my own account follows that account. It's totally locked. It's just an interface that I could switch my -- when you're inside Twitter, you can switch your identity to that other account, and then you can see all these sentences. It was just a fun way of staying engaged in exactly the same way that -- I'm sure you've seen this on the subway. You'll see somebody, an artist, sketching. If you don't have any artistic ability, that looks like an amazing thing to you. I think that what they're doing is just warming their hand. They're just indulging their eye. They're just sitting there. They have the time. They're commuting uptown or whatever. They’ll say, I'll just capitalize on this forty minutes that I have of sitting-down time to move my hand and use my eye. I think that that is so much of what being an artist is, is about keeping that muscle toned.

Zibby: Tell me a little more about your background and growing up and how you ended up here, how we got here, essentially. Where did you grow up? When did you fall in love with writing? Assuming you did.

Rumaan: That's an easy question to answer because I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be a writer, probably five. I was writing at that age. I think a lot of kids are inclined toward artistic expression, drawing. Kids can get really passionate about drawing. Both my boys have gone through periods where they're really passionate about making graphic novels. They're just reflecting what they take in as art. It's also because there's an impulse inside of you to communicate that way. Some people never grow out of that. I think I never grew of that. That was something I wanted to do deeply, and I knew that for a long time. I studied writing when I was an undergraduate. I studied at Oberlin College. I worked with a writer named Dan Chaon who's an extraordinary writer who blurbed this book, which is such a great honor for me. Then I moved to New York to work in magazines. As happens to so many people who have a particular feeling about art, reality intrudes. You've got to pay your rent. You have to join the labor force. You have to find a way forward. That can be difficult to do and also stay connected to the work that you care about. I tried to do it. I did do it. I worked in magazines. I had a lovely career in publishing. I also still wrote. I still exercised that muscle. In 2009, we had our first son. In 2012, we had our second son.

At some point in that period when my boys were little, little, little, I had a playdate with the writer Emma Straub who's also a novelist. She was my neighbor at the time. Emma and I went to college together. She said something that is so simple but so clarifying. Knowing my aspirations to write, knowing that I had been a writer all along in private, she said to me, "No one is ever going to ask you to write a book." That’s absolutely true. No one is. No one is ever going to ask you, unless you're Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama will be asked, but no one would ever ask me. The lesson being if there's something you want to do, you need to do it. I really do credit my children with this because having children, as I think it does for many people, clarified my own priorities. A lot of stuff falls away when you have kids because you just can't do it all. You realize that you care about your family life. You may realize you care more about your career than you had thought, and you want to commit yourself to that. You may realize that you care less about your career than you thought, and you want to be at home with your family while your children are young. This is what children can provide for so many people, mostly for women, to be honest, because this is not always the way that fathers have to reckon with this big question of, what is it you most want? In my household, there are two fathers, so it's a different dynamic.

What I learned in that moment when Emma said that to me was that I really wanted to try this. I didn't want to be fifty-one and not have given it a shot, not that fifty-one is so old. It's perfect valid to rebegin your career or your artistic life at that point, but I knew I wanted to do it. It was burning within me. My younger son came home in 2012. By 2014, I was working at New York magazine. I had an amazing job where I was editing the design issues, which was such great fun. Built into that job was a hiatus of, I think it was twelve weeks. It might have been fourteen. I had these fourteen weeks where I wasn't going to be working in an office. I wasn't going to be making any money, but I was going to be kind of free. My younger son was a baby. My older son was in school. He was in his Montessori school, his little preschool. Everything was kind of settled. I said to my husband, "I'm going to try something. I'm going to take these fourteen weeks, and I'm going to try something. You can't ask me any questions about it. You can't talk to me about what I'm doing. Every night at seven o'clock, if you're home --" He travels a lot for work -- "if you're home, you'll put the kids to bed. I'm going to sit down in the living room," which is where my desk was at the time, "and I'm going to work. In the morning, you're going to get up with the kids and let me sleep a little bit. I'm going to be focused on this."

Zibby: [laughs] Oh, my gosh, your saint of a husband.

Rumaan: I know. I know.

Zibby: I would be like, I don't like this plan at all. Absolutely not.

Rumaan: This is another big lesson from my career. For many people it is a spouse who provides this particular kind of stability, but it doesn't have to be. A lot of artists require an anchor in reality, somebody who cares as much about their work as they do. My husband provides that for me. He said, to his great credit, "Yes. You do what it is you need to try to do." For those fourteen weeks, Zibby, the boys went to bed at seven. I sat down at the desk from seven until one or two in the morning. I slept from two until six when everyone wakes up, of course. I would have breakfast with the kids. I would pack their lunch. I would take the little one to the daycare. I would come home. It would be eight thirty. I would have slept four hours. I would go back to bed. I would sleep until noon or eleven. I would get up. I would do the laundry, do the dishes, make sure dinner was ready, make sure everything was ready for seven PM so that when the kids went to bed I was back at my desk. The latest I think I ever stayed up was, I stayed up until four one morning, so I slept for two hours. I was younger then.

Also, I think you can kind of survive anything when you have a baby because the baby has so broken your relationship to time that it almost doesn't matter. When you have a small baby, you can be like, it's 1:50 and I have to be out of the house at two thirty, three. I'm going to sleep for eleven minutes. I'll feel better. I'll be fine. You do it because you don't have much of a choice. They showed me that I could do more than maybe I thought. In that period, I didn't do anything. I didn't watch any television. I barely had dinner with my husband. I barely spoke to him. I was really committed to that work. That's the period in which I wrote the first draft of my first novel. Work demands sacrifice. It demands sacrifice. What I had to sacrifice was that sleep, but it changed my career. It changed everything about my life because I sold that book. I found an agent based on that book at the end of that year in December. The book sold the following spring. It appeared the following summer. Completely changed my life.

Zibby: I hope your husband got a dedication in that book. He didn't, did he? You didn't even do it.

Rumaan: I think I dedicated it to the kids. [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, man, this poor guy. You need to go give him a hug after this conversation.

Rumaan: I can't stress how important it's been to my work. His faith in my commitment to it has been hugely important. This is demanding work. It's self-centered work. His acceptance of that and his belief in that and his confidence in my ability to do that have everything to do whatever success I've had. Very few artists, I think, feel confident at all times. You need to know that there's someone saying, no, no, no, you ought to be engaged in this. You're on the right path and it will pay off. I don't mean in terms of money. I just mean in terms of, you'll be happy. You'll have done the thing you want to do. When I said before about Emma challenging me or pointing out that no one would invite me to write a book, what I was thinking about was not, I want to have money or I want to have a career. It was that, I want to have done this. I cared about this. It was the thing I cared about since I was five.

I want to have been honest with myself and worked for that, and so I did. I'm really glad that I did. It makes it so much easier for me to be comfortable with the challenges of a life in which you're not always -- no matter what you do for a living, you care about it deeply, whatever, but there are other things to be done. Other reality intrudes. Family life intrudes. My responsibility as a parent is so much easier for me to bear because I know that I'm satisfied professionally and personally and artistically. I've catered to the monster inside of me. I've indulged myself, and so I can do the acts of parenting which have, as you know, nothing to do with the self, nothing. You're just a conduit. You're just a hand putting food into a mouth. That's what you are. That's the relationship. That's what you've committed to. That can be very difficult for people. That's a difficult relationship. It's also sacred and very meaningful. It's what I care about most.

Zibby: I feel like you just summarized what it means to be a mother, essentially, honestly, or a father. That's what the whole thing is. I would say a tiny percentage of, let me just say primary caregivers get that kind of filling of their bucket, so to speak, that enables them to then go back and do it. I've noticed the same way. I used to only work a little bit. Now I do this. I'm doing all these other things. Then I go out my door and I'm like, all right, pillow fight! [laughs]

Rumaan: I think it's true. It allows you to still be a person. It's a personal choice also. There are parents for whom that role is so fulfilling and it's all that they need. They can be really inside of that. It's not that I don't find it -- I find it deeply fulfilling. Words can't even really hold it, how fulfilling I find it. I think part of the reason I'm able to find fulfillment and joy in it is that I have this other thing. It's become important to me as a part of the practice of parenthood, because children are ego monsters, that they see firsthand the ways in which people have other things that they care about and that they can hold in their head the contradiction that you are the person who takes care of me and is always there for me, but sometimes you will not be there for me. Your not being there for me because you are a doctor working late, because you're a bus driver on your route, whatever it is, you are also doing as an act of care for me because you earn money and you take care of me. They can understand that over time. I think that's really a useful way to understand your place in the world. That's what I tell myself anyway. Who knows? No parent knows what they're doing, really.

Zibby: No, nobody knows what they're doing. I certainly didn't mean to say that I am not fulfilled by my children either.

Rumaan: Right. I know you are.

Zibby: I love being with my children. It is my greatest pride and joy. So are you working on anything new now? What are you up to?

Rumaan: When I described being at Laura Lippman's apartment in Manhattan, I was actually writing a different book. I've been trying to go back to that book. Leave the World Behind emerged and took over my life and my imagination. It was something that felt really urgent that I wanted to write. I'm glad that I did. I want to go back to this other book. At the moment, I'm teaching, actually. I'm teaching at Columbia and at Pace. I am, as so many parents are, kind of orchestrating my children's education as well in this particular period. I write as a freelance writer and critic. I'm encaged in a lot of stuff. To be honest, I don't feel wholly committed to the work of the fiction right now. In some ways, I think that that's natural. When I'm charged with talking about my third book, it's going to be difficult for me to be engaged in thinking about my fourth book in the same way that very few people are eager to run out and get pregnant again when they have a four-month-old at home because you're in that moment. You need a little time and a little space. I don't know, but I do intend to write another book. I hope that I get that clarity soon. I think when the semester ends and it's winter, and hopefully we'll have a new government in this country, I might feel a little less quotidian stress and be able to relax into a fiction again. That's my hope.

Zibby: Then in the meantime, this is going to be a movie or a limited series? What's the latest?

Rumaan: Yes, it's going to be a feature film that the writer and director Sam Esmail is writing. He's adapting the novel. He'll direct the film for Netflix. Sam is such a brilliant filmmaker, if you don't know his work. He made a show called Homecoming, I think it was for Amazon, with Julia Roberts. He made a show called Mr. Robot. Sam has a very particular sensibility that really, really suits this material. He understands how to find unease in what looks like elegant calm. Homecoming is such an extraordinary show. Julia Roberts, who is the star of Homecoming, will star in this adaptation of Leave the World Behind, which is insane. Every time I say it, saying it does not make it sound real. Denzel Washington will also star in the film. It's in such good hands. It's part of a larger charmed run I've had with this particular book to find collaborators like that who you can put the material into their hands. What a win.

Zibby: That's amazing. I'm so excited to see it. That's going to be great. What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Rumaan: I think that you have to actually do the labor. It's so hard to. One of the things that I always stress when I'm teaching is that there's more time than you might think there is.

Zibby: Especially if you stay up until four in the morning.

Rumaan: Look, not everyone is wired to do something that deranged. I totally understand that. The significant factor in that is not just my husband's help, but that was huge. It's that I wasn't working for that period of time. I could never have done that and had to go to a day job. Most people have to. That's a real luxury. When I say that there's always time, what I usually mean is that there are ways of tricking yourself, much as I tricked myself using Twitter. That's a great example. When I teach, I always say when I'm feeling really stuck and really desperate, I set myself a very arbitrary and accomplishable goal, usually with some sense of play, like, you have to write 333 words. You can't write more than that, but you cannot write less than that. It has to land at 333. You don't have to write the thing that you are thinking about writing. You can write anything, but it has to last that long. Or turn on an episode of Friends, turn off the sound, and sit there and write until that episode is over. The truth is that even on a really busy day, you would probably allow yourself the particular indulgence of sitting still and watching a sitcom for twenty-two minutes and saying, I'll do the laundry the second this is over. Let that TV run with a notebook on your lap or with the laptop on your lap, and write that whole time. Then when the show's over, turn it off. Go deal with the laundry. Get the dog walked. Take out the checkbook and deal with your bills, whatever it is that your life involves.

Twenty-two minutes is not a lot, but it's a step forward. It's just like going to gym. We've all had that experience when it's January and you're like, god damn, I've done nothing but eat since Thanksgiving. I've really got to go to the gym. You reactivate your gym membership. Then you're like, I can't go today because I have to take the kids to soccer. I can't go next week because, actually, they have this dentist appointment that I forgot about that I made eleven months ago. Why did I make it now? You find all these ways to tell yourself you can't do it. Then one day your resolve breaks. You're like, well, fuck, I guess I have to go to the gym. You go to the gym. You're like, I'll just go for thirty-eight minutes. I'll ease into it. You go, and what happens? You feel amazing. You're like, I went. I did it. I didn't go for an hour. I went for thirty-eight minutes, but you know what? I did it. Now I know I can do it. I'm going to do it next Tuesday too because I know the kids are in soccer. I can drop them and go and run for thirty-eight minutes and come back and pick them up. Everything is fine. The world will continue on. Making space for writing in your life, if that is something you prioritize, can function the same way. If you go to the gym for thirty-eight minutes a week, it might take you six months to feel like, yeah, I feel strong, I feel better, I feel good, but you will get there. If you write for twenty-two minutes a week and you're producing three hundred words, yeah, it's only three hundred words, but six months later -- I can't do math. I just realized I backed myself into a corner.

Zibby: I get the point. [laughs]

Rumaan: You're at like seven thousand words. That's not that much, but six months later, you're at fourteen thousand words. Then you're like, wow, I have one fifth of a book here. I did it. I put one foot in front of the other and did it. That's exactly the same way that everyone who does this does it. Every writer you admire who you think, oh, my god, I could never do what Jane Smiley does, I could never do what Louise Erdrich does, I could never do what Margaret Atwood does, yeah, they're all geniuses, there's no question, but Jane Smiley has to sit down, take out her pencil, and be like, all right, it's time. I got to show up and do it. Anyone can do that. As Emma said to me all those years ago, very few people will invite you to do that. If that's what you want to do, you have to find a way to do it.

Zibby: Wow. That was a pretty tempting pseudo-invitation. I feel like that was very inspiring.

Rumaan: Get to work. What can you do? It's just work. It is just work. If there's one thing we understand in this country, because we have such a warped relationship with work, it's that we can do more. You can squeeze time out. To be honest, I don't have much of a life beyond this, to be perfectly clear. At this moment, no one's doing any of these things, but I very rarely go to the movies. I very rarely go out to dinner. I very rarely have a night where I'm just out with friends doing nothing. I spend a lot of time here at this very desk where I'm talking to you, but it's a choice that I've made. I've published three books in the span of six years. There's a direct relationship between my productivity and the other choices I've made. There's a lot of privilege in play there. There's a lot of luck in play there. Fundamentally, it is accomplishable. If you want to write, if you care about it as I do, I think you'll find a way. You just have to allow yourself to find a way.

Zibby: Awesome. I will be sitting here mostly at this desk. You will be over there. I'll think about you on the invisible Zoom once you're off and imagine you writing and not having any fun. No, I'm kidding. It was lovely to meet you.

Rumaan: Likewise.

Zibby: One day, you'll come here. We won't have to be apart from a screen. This book was amazing. I'm honored to have talked to you. Best of luck with all the great successes that you deserve. Go get a bottle of wine for your husband.

Rumaan: [laughs] Thank you so much, Zibby. It was really lovely. Bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Ann Garvin on the secret to why losing weight is tough

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Ann. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight."

Ann Garvin: It's so nice to be here. That phrase, I could feel that in my heart.

Zibby: You have a such a unique background. There are so many reasons I wanted to talk to you on this show. Can you start by telling everybody both -- I want to know your personal journey and also your professional one because you're a professor and an expert and all the rest. Lots to discuss.

Ann: There's so much. I know. I'll try to keep it short and not start with my childhood.

Zibby: No, start with your childhood. Tell me when it all started and your own experience with your weight and body. Then we'll go into your professional life, if you don't mind. It's a little intrusive of me.

Ann: No, I don't mind at all. It's great. I was always a stick-thin kid growing up. Puberty took a really long time to hit me. My mother was very, very small and very tiny until she had babies. Then she changed. I experienced how much she disliked that change. When I was young, I got the message. God, I love my mom. She died in the last couple years. She was my best friend. Nobody does it exactly right, so I just have to explain all that.

Zibby: I'm sorry.

Ann: She did have an us-versus-them theory about her body. I got that message that it's not okay to have a soft belly and aging is not the greatest thing. I think I internalized that. It took me many years to come around from that. In college, I lived with a lot of girls who had, for sure, eating disorders that went undiagnosed. I probably had one too just in terms of not really being able to see my body in the way that it was actually and then also thinking that you can manipulate your body in a way that maybe you can't. I think we all go through things like that. Maybe all is a little bit of an umbrella term, but I think people do. For many years, I had a push/pull with this ideal of what the cultural idea of a body is and what a women's actual body is and what it's for and how it's really our best friend and if our bodies are the greatest that it can only be, then that's the only way we live the way we really want to live. Your body is really your best friend, but it took me a long time and a lot of thinking to come around to that idea. 

Probably if someone were to ask me what the key to weight and weight management is, it's really understanding that your body is on your side and that it only wants to do the best for you. I think of my body like I think of my dog. I love my dog so much. I would never push on my dog's soft belly and say, do some sit-ups. It's brutal. I would never do that. I always think, why would I do that to my body which I really love as much as or more than I love my dog? If my body falls out of whack, then I'm not able to do any of the things that I want to do. Anyway, took me a while to get there. After babies, your body changes. You have to understand that after menopause, your body changes. Through menopause, your body changes. Instead of really hating your body for that, I think we have to understand that those things are fantastic and they offer all kinds of benefits. I started working as a nurse right out of college. I didn't work with women. I mostly worked with men because I worked at the VA hospital. I got fascinated with how to get people moving in the hospital to make them feel better. I went and got a master's in exercise physiology and a PhD in exercise psychology. That's where my thinking came in terms of weight. I'm meshing my personal story and my professional story together, but I don't think I can keep that apart.

Zibby: No, this is great. Keep going.

Ann: Once I started studied health psychology, I had a focus primarily in weight and body and how it changes based on both exercise, but also mood and anxiety and depression. That was where all my research was. I started to understand that the way that we feel about our bodies and the understanding of our cultural influence on our bodies is the first step to understanding where we should be in terms of our body weight. Then I started talking to students about it. I found that the current-day students were really no different than I was thirty years ago in terms of my thinking about the body. Certainly, the culture is better about a wider range of body. We're getting there, but we're certainly not there now. Now people are feeling better if they do have a booty. Whereas in my day and age, it was stick thin, flat stomach, fourteen-year-old boy, no hips. We are just pushing women back and forth into this idea that their body is for external consumption and not for loving your kids, doing the things you want to do, reading books, writing books, traveling, experiencing the world. 

If we can tease out those two things, then we can start to think about, what we do that would care for our bodies in the best way? How do we love it? I think loving your body in this day and age is one of the hardest things to do because we've removed ourselves from our bodies. Our bodies are this annoying thing that doesn't pull its weight in terms of thinness. Then we have our bodies over here who are getting us to bring our kids to soccer and do all of the things that we enjoy. We haven't put those two things together. I have really strong ideas about how to do that. I certainly have talked about that in a major way. I do think that that's our first step. People are always saying to me, what do you think about weight loss? What's the first step for weight loss? I would say the first step for weight loss is the hardest step, which is trying to get around your thinking about your body and what it's for and what works the best. For me, here's the other thing. I don't compete with other women and their bodies. I look at other people's bodies, and I admire them. I wonder about their struggles. I think about them all the time. You know who I compete with? My younger self. 

That's the hardest competition of all because with every ticking moment, that self is farther away. That younger self didn't have babies and didn't have a million things to do and could exercise whenever I wanted, etc. That competition is particularly poisonous. However, I look at those pictures and I think, oh, my gosh, I was in such good shape. Then I look at myself now and I kind of bully myself about it. I have a softer belly. I look different. I had to understand a couple of things about bodies. One of the things I had to understand is, as a scientist, we know that everything falls on a normal curve. There are always going to be people with a percentage of body fat that's higher for their health. There's always people that have a percentage of body fat that are very low, and that's perfectly okay. Everybody else falls here. If we think everybody should be up here, very thin, I guess it's down here, very thin, then we are even falling in the face of science that says to us everybody's genetic determines what is the correct body fat percentage. 

That's another thing that we have to fight with, this idea that there's this ideal body shape and it's the shape that we see on the Oscars or it's the shape that we see in all the catalogues with women who have no breasts, no hips, and the clothes hang on them like a hanger. It's so hard for us to see those continuous images and then look at us and reconcile our own bodies. So here I am. I got my PhD in health psychology with a fundamental focus on nutrition. I taught nutrition for thirty years. Yet what I'm talking about is psychology before we even get into food stuff, carbohydrates, fat, whatever. It's also, even knowing all that, I want everyone to hear me say I struggle with the same thing, even with all of the good information, all of the right information. I live in the same poisonous culture that everyone else does about weight. I think what we have to understand, too, is that, how much are we willing to give up for the culture to pursue a certain kind of weight? That, I think, is a really big thing. I want to say a couple more things.

Zibby: Great. This is the best interview I've ever done. I can just relax and listen to you. This is great. Keep going.

Ann: [laughs] I talk too much. Always on my report card.

Zibby: No, it's perfect.

Ann: Now I lost my train of thought because I got embarrassed because I was talking too much. What I was going to say about that is that I think one of the things that we are very afraid of is to walk back on the culture and say, I'm going to be a little softer, and that’s probably okay. We're worried a little bit about how we're going to feel about ourselves and how people are looking at us and what it means. What it means is, when you get a little softer, what people see is a lack of control because a perfectly controlled self is one that can control all of your behaviors and all your passions and not feed them with your mouth. I just think that that's one of the most toxic kinds of things. Here's something else. We're supposed to love food. Food is our sustenance. It's not the enemy. If we don't get enough food, then that's the end of us. What happened all of a sudden in our culture that we became, food is sort of the enemy? which is the worst possible give and take because at that give and take we're saying food is the enemy, stay away from food, but also, food is the thing that keeps you alive and you should only eat good food. Then you have that tongue that tastes everything so acutely and is such a pleasure center, but we’re like, ignore that. You need to ignore that. That's really a tough thing to ask people to do on a regular basis. 

I remember what I was going to say. That is this. This is fascinating. We don't know how to healthfully -- when I say healthfully, I mean psychologically, bone health, heart health, everything. We do not know how to healthfully help women who are very close to their ideal weight lose weight. We don't know how to do it. You know why we don't know how to do it? It's unethical to study it. You are not allowed, as a scientist, to take a person who is at their ideal weight or close to it -- not cultural ideal; physiological ideal -- and study it because to reduce their weight would make them unhealthy. As scientists, we have the Nuremberg trials that show us that we are not allowed to hurt our subjects. Reducing their weight past what would be considered ideal is unethical and not allowed. That means all of the information you're reading about weight loss has been made for people, for men mostly, but also women or people that are extremely overweight, not in a normal range of overweight. When you try to do those things and it doesn't work, you think you're weak. In fact, they weren’t meant for you. We don't know how to help people lose weight who are close to their weight because it's not a healthy thing to do. We don't want you to look good in a swimsuit. We want your bones to be dense. We want you to be psychologically healthy and not thinking about food all the time and searching for food, which is exactly what happens when we reduce your calorie intake to the point where you become a person who's constantly thinking in the back of their head, so when are we going to eat again? 

We do know a little bit about behavioral. We know how to ask people not to eat snacks and that kind of thing. If you are in a calorie deficit and your body knows that you're in a calorie deficit, all your body knows -- it's like your dog -- is, I'm a little hungry. When you should be thinking about this book that you're reading or this podcast that you're doing or this other thing that you're working on, there is this niggling constant tap on your shoulder saying, you know what, you're kind of hungry. You're a little bit hungry. Eventually, when you stop doing whatever it is that's distracting you and you start to get tired, that's when the Doritos come out. You're like, I'm tired. I'm hungry. You don't know why you can't stop eating. That's the psychological drive. There's, in fact, a super great study that was done in the fifties that we couldn't even do anymore, on men, called the Minnesota Keys Study. 

They calorie restricted men. Then they watched their behavior. What they did, they became what we normally consider a woman's behavior or an eating disorder behavior, eating disorder. They searched for food. They ate too much food. They drank too much coffee. They drank too much water. They chewed too much gum. All because they were in a deficit. Then they became eating disordered in a true sense. They were psychologically healthy, very lean men, but they put them on a calorie restriction, which is what we do with women all the time. We're like, you have a tiny little body fat. Stop eating. Exercise more. Now we're in a deficit. Then we have this tap on our shoulder. You put that on top of being fatigued all the time -- what woman is not fatigued? If you go on Twitter or on Facebook, there is eight million coffee jokes about how we all need coffee. We need coffee. I need coffee. I just said to my daughter today, "Oh, my god, my best friend is coffee." 

Zibby: I'm holding a -- I'm trying not to drink as we talk. Yes, I know.

Ann: After saying all that about the psychology of eating, I would say the number-one tip I tell people, the number-one thing you have to do before you ever change any other thing in your life is you have to get enough sleep. Here's why you have to get enough sleep. If you're tired, you're not going to chop vegetables. You're not going to grocery shop. If you're tired, you're not going to sauté something. If you're tired and you're starving, which most of us are if we're in a diet situation and we're living an American life, you are absolutely not going to be searching things and making food prep and doing all these things that we're asking you to do because we're reducing your calories. You're too tired to do that. You're too tired to hold back any kind of normal, healthy, mammal behavior, which is to go look for food. The other thing is, if you're tired -- when I say tired, I kind of mean sleep deprived because most people are a little bit sleep deprived. What happens when you're sleep deprived is you became an abnormal carbohydrate metabolizer, which means you act a little bit like you're diabetic. You know that feeling because two things happen. You get a little lightheaded. That’s what ketosis is. Don't even get me started on ketosis and eating the high-fat diets and keto diets. If you become ketosis and you go into the hospital, they will fix that because it's an abnormal state. It is not a good state. There are so many problems with it. Having said that, you start to feel a little dizzy. That's one thing. 

You start to carve carbohydrates in a way that doesn't make sense to you. All of a sudden, you want sugar, honestly. It's the end of the day and you're like, god, I could really use some sugar. That is sleep deprivation. That also means that as an abnormal carbohydrate metabolizer, you're going to store fat faster. Even when you're sleeping, you're doing that. Because your body needs to be fully rested to metabolize in the way that it needs to metabolize food, sleep is the number-one health behavior. In fact, I'm like a sleep evangelist. I'm a sleepy person anyway. I sleep a lot. I think I was sort of forced into that. There is never a day that I don't get eight to nine hours of sleep, ever. That changed my life in the best of ways. That right there is enough for people to go, I'm not doing that. I can't do that. I'm going to drop my calories. I'm going to do keto. I'm going to do whatever it is I have to do, but I'm not getting enough sleep. I get that. What I would say is, absolutely without fail I became more productive when I got more sleep. Then with a fully slept mind, I can focus and do more work. For god's sake, I get a lot done in a day. The reason that happens is because I get enough sleep. And I nap. That's the other thing. I always nap every day no matter what. I nap every day. I'm not saying everybody needs my amount of sleep. Nine hours is average. Whatever it is, whatever you think it is -- oh, I can even tell you whether you need more or not. Do you want to hear this?

Zibby: Yes.

Ann: Here's how you know, if you do it without caffeine. You have to do it without a stimulant. You can't take your Adderall. You can't take your caffeine for the day that you're going to check this out. Here's what happens. If you sleep a normal week period when you're normally in and out, and then on the day that you're not having caffeine or whatever, you sit and do something boring, usually driving -- if you're in the Midwest, it's driving. It could be something other that's really dull. I'm sorry, but I think church can be very dull. If I'm sitting in church or if I'm driving and the sun is hitting me and I fall asleep, then I'm sleep deprived. Here's why. Whenever the attention in the room goes down, your body that's sleep deprived goes, things are quieting down. This is a good time to take a nap. I don't need my full attention right now. I'm going to fall asleep. If, though, you don't fall asleep and you fidget and you haven't been on caffeine, then your body says, I'm kind of bored. I need a little stimulation. I don't need any sleep. I need stimulation. That's how you can tell. When the activity level goes down and you start to fall asleep, chances are you're sleep deprived.

Zibby: That makes sense.

Ann: It does, right? It does make sense, but I had to read the research on it to really understand it. I just thought that maybe I was oversleeping. I thought a lot of things. I thought, oh, just go have another cup of coffee or whatever.

Zibby: Ann, there was so much in there that I found totally interesting. I could have a hundred conversations with you now. The part I want to go back to is women who don't necessarily have to lose, say, a hundred pounds, but want to lose twenty pounds or ten pounds or five pounds. They still want to do that. It doesn't mean they're going to starve. Sometimes you could say it's weight you don't necessarily need to have on you. You might feel better. Your knees might feel better. There are reasons to get rid of that even though it's not a significant amount. Even though science hasn’t studied it, what do you do then to get rid of those pounds versus without the voice saying you're hungry all the time or having to rely on all those things? What should we do? How should we do it?

Ann: It's a perfect question. You asked the perfect question. How do you do it? There's a couple things that you can do. The first thing is sleep. You have to sleep because your body will hang onto that body weight if you're sleep deprived. It won't give you a hand. It will fight you the whole way because it needs to. That's the first thing. I know that's not a thing that people really like to hear, but that's the first thing. The next thing is, we have to start thinking about our bodies as our best friends and stop thinking about it like it's fighting us. We have to give it the nutrition that it needs without overnutrition. You know what? Putting on weight is just overnutrition. You don't need all of those things. The other thing is, drink enough the water. The reason you need to drink enough water is because often, we interpret hunger as thirst. It's a hard one because you're also having to go to the bathroom all the time, which is really a pain. I'm not going to say anything new to you about, how do you do it? Really, we know what we have to do. We have to sleep. We have to drink water. We have to move every day. We have to move more than we don't move. I'm not saying you have to do Pilates or yoga or run a triathlon. I would say, in fact, you probably don't need to do those things to the extent that you think you need to do those things. The exercise isn't going to save you unless you do so much that there isn't time for anything else, so that doesn't really make sense. Exercise is something that we do for our health but not necessarily for weight loss. Although, it does work because it is a calorie deficit, but it doesn't work like it can. I have stuff on my blog that specifically does the math on that. 

I would say that you have to be very careful about getting the right kind of nutrients. There is so much misinformation out there like keto diets and the coffee with butter and so many, so much misinformation. I know Weight Watchers is something that you talked about before. Weight Watchers is actually the best program. Without a doubt, it is the best program. The only issue that I have with it is that is requires you to be very diligent. Then when you're not so diligent, you put it back on. I think that that's really the only place where it can be a problem. With that diligence comes deprivation. With deprivation, we fall off the wagon all the time. When we're doing it, we have to be less diligent on the program so that it's easier to maintain as we move forward, which also means that ten pounds is going to take longer to lose. That's okay. You have an interesting life. Nobody can see it on you anyway. You just have to allow yourself the time it takes to do it. What you're doing is you're changing the course of the Titanic. You're changing your health behaviors as you move differently. I can tell you, when I've gained weight, I've moved the Titanic in the wrong direction. I've changed all my healthy behaviors. I've stopped doing those things. Now I have to move myself back to the way that I was before. It's so easy to slip moving the Titanic in that direction because we're inundated so much with misinformation about food and there's so much delicious food out there. Does that help?

Zibby: Yes, but -- I get it. I'm loving my body, blah, blah, blah. I'm pretending I'm having a good night's sleep, which of course I'm not, but let's just pretend. Now it comes time to eat. I'm not going to do a crazy -- personally, I don't eat a crazy diet. I'm trying really hard to eat regular whole food, anti-inflammatory, Mediterranean, whatever. I'm trying. Once you get in that and you get rid of the sugar all the time, I've found my cravings to be almost gone, whereas they were constant before. My mood is actually much more stable now that I'm not having huge sugar highs and lows all the time. But how do you just stay eating the right foods? What is overnutrition? Is it just eating too much? Is it too much salmon? Too many grapes? Can I really feel guilty about that? I don't think so.

Ann: No. Here's what you need to do. You need to figure out what your weakness is when you get weak. What is it?

Zibby: Sugar. Anything with sugar.

Ann: Me too. It's those lapses that are stopping you from moving forward. That's not to say you always need to get rid of it. This is what I do. This is my rule. I am not allowed to eat sugar until seven o'clock at night, period. I have adopted that rule for years. I actually don't break that rule because it's been that rule for so many years. I find that after seven o'clock, I don't usually want it. It's really close to my bedtime. [laughs] That may not be the rule that works for you. You have to figure out, when is it that you do the thing that’s hurting your diet the most? whatever that is. If you're mostly doing what you say you're doing, which I totally believe that's really most of us --

Zibby: -- It is now that I'm focusing on it, but I certainly wasn't doing it before. Yes, I am doing it now, but I won't do it forever, I'm sure. Anyway, sorry.

Ann: It's all the same. It doesn't matter whether it was before or after. You still probably had the same weakness before as you do now, right?

Zibby: Yes.

Ann: This is the best news ever. You don't have to problem solve your whole diet. You only have to problem solve that weakness because that's the thing that's putting you over the edge. I know I have to problem solve sugar like nobody's business because I love sugar more than I love anything in the world. It's so satisfying and so wonderful in so many ways that it can come to me. I have to think about it every single time and whether I'm going to do it or not. A lot of times when I'm weak about sugar, it's when I'm tired or it's when something's happening in my life that's hard. I use it for that. I have to see when I'm weak, what I'm eating, if it's worth it. I have to problem solve that and only that. I love that that's the thing because I would say that most of us kind of know what we're supposed to be doing. We are constantly like, should I eat this salmon? Should I have another bite of this salmon? Is the salmon the problem? The salmon is never the problem. The grapes are never the problem. Nobody got fat eating too much salmon and grapes. No one ever did. Our issues are whatever it is that we keep falling down on. If you look back at your behavior before you focused, what were those things? You're going to fall back into those. What you should do is make a list of those and then problem solve those and get super creative about them. 

I can give you some examples. I said that I don't sugar at seven o'clock night because seven o'clock at night is when I want them. What I find is that I fall asleep. Sugar makes me tired. It’s got this inherent reasoning why I do it that way. It's helpful that way. The benefits outweigh the negatives. Other things that I'll do is, if I say to myself, Ann, life is too short, you need to have some sugar sometimes, don't laugh, but I put it in the trunk of my car so that if I'm in bed and I want sugar, I have to go outside to the trunk of my car to get it. I almost never will. I know that sounds silly, but that's really a useful thing for me. Other things that I'll do is I won't go get it at all. If I'm having a really hard time, I will have no sugar in the house except for a bag of sugar, but I'm not really interested in a bag of sugar. I make it really hard on me to get it. If my kids want sugar or something like that, again, it goes out in the car or in the basement. What we've found is it doesn't matter -- this is really good research. If you have sugar on your table or in your cupboards in the kitchen, piece of cake, it's easy to get. If you just move it to the basement or down one floor from you, you can reduce your eating of that sugar by fifty percent. If you put it in a brown bag where you can't see the label, you will reduce it by another ten percent. It's amazing what you can do by not looking at it. All the sugar manufacturers know it. Everything's in a pink box. A chocolate kiss is wrapped in a silver container with a friendly little flag. We have to look at what marketers do to get us to eat, and eat too much of it, and do the opposite. We have to understand that.

Zibby: Ann, this is amazing. I feel like I've gotten so many specific actionable tips that everybody can use in different ways and the insight and science behind it all in a little half-hour package. Thank you. This was perfect. Thank you so much. It makes it feel like the work is not so massive. There's one thing, and you fix one part of it. That's not to say it’s not a challenge to give things up, but also, it's achievable. Thank you.

Ann: You're welcome. Anytime you want to talk about it, just call me up. We don't have to do it on a podcast either. We can do it on the phone. That'd be fine.

Zibby: Cool. All right, I might. [laughs] 

Ann: That'd be fine. So good to talk to you.

Zibby: So good to talk to you too. Thank you so much.

Ann: You're welcome. Buh-bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Jenna Bush Hager, EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL IN ITS TIME

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

Jenna Bush Hager: I love your podcast. Sometimes moms do have time to read. I'm so happy to be here.

Zibby: I feel like you and I are united in our desire to help other people read more. I love shouting out to good books. You pick all your books for all of America to enjoy, so I feel like we're on the same page.

Jenna: Definitely.

Zibby: Tell listeners more about Everything Beautiful in Its Time, which, by the way, I listened to on all my walks with the dogs back and forth across the park and was so great. I was crying in Central Park. It was just amazing. You've been coming with me on all my walks lately.

Jenna: First of all, I have to tell you, recording that audiobook, it was in the middle of the pandemic. The book is about the thirteen months I lost my three remaining grandparents, so it was a really difficult time for me. Recording the audiobook, Henry, my husband, was like -- I came home with just the puppy-est eyes. I said, "The poor recording technician who got this assignment had no idea he would be passing me Kleenexes." He kept saying, "Do you need a minute?" He was so kind and thoughtful. It was reliving these moments that were difficult. I wrote this book, I started writing, really, for myself. The night that my grandmother, Barbara, died, I was alone in my apartment in New York City. My husband was in Texas. My sister, who at the time lived in the city, was in Texas. I was watching the news. One of the things that's really hard and interesting that she taught us was that losing somebody publicly is difficult. I turned on the news. There were all these in memoriams and news reports about her. At first, I just couldn't stop watching. Then I was overcome by the fact that, obviously, they were just talking about her as Barbara Bush, the politician's wife. There was so much about our Ganny and that wouldn't be said that night. It just wouldn't. There was no reason for it to be except for that’s how I knew her. Nobody knew her as intimately as we did. I turned off the news, and I wrote her a letter. That was really the beginning of this book. I use a writing a lot in my own life as a way to heal, as a way to process. Then I just decided to publish it, but it started off for me.

Zibby: Amazing. That's how the best stuff comes out. It's truthful, from the heart, what you need. Turns out, other people need it too. Isn't it true that you weren’t there because you had strep throat which you caught from your daughter? which is such a typical mom thing to have had happen.

Jenna: Yes. I went to the doctor. My dad was like, "If you have strep throat, you can't go." Obviously, my grandmother was dying, but also, my grandpa was there. I just knew I had it. My daughter, Mila, had had it the week before. Of course, moms are so close with our kids. I remember when Mila got the stomach flu. I called my parents to tell her, when she was a brand-new baby, that Henry and I were up all night cleaning up her mess. My parents just laughed knowingly. They were like, "Now you will be getting things like the stomach bug that you just haven't had since you were in third grade yourself." I couldn't go to see her, but I did get to have a conversation with her before she passed away, which was profound and meaningful to me.

Zibby: What you said about it being a public occurrence at the same time, you had a scene in your book where you're pushing Mila and holding Poppy. You're walking down the street. You got like a hundred text messages all at the same time. You're like, oh, no, what happened? You had to backtrack and figure it out. I could so see you just like any other mom, but here it is, a huge public figure. How do you even reconcile something like that when you have it coming at you in every direction?

Jenna: I don't know. It's so funny. Probably just like any other mom. We live in a place where we're walking everywhere around, New York City. There's just been so many moments where -- I really do try to put my phone away and be -- especially when they were really little and they didn't get the fact why I was holding this thing and looking here instead of at them. That day, I put my phone away. I played with them at the park. I watched them play. I hadn’t been looking at anything. Then when we got up to leave, I checked the phone to see the time. I had so many text messages from, I was telling Hoda the other day, one from our old boss who was like, "Let me know if you need me." That was the first text. I was like, why would I need anybody? My parents had tried to call, but my phone was away. My grandmother had said she was going to seek comfort care. I had never really even heard those words. I didn't have context for them. I didn't know what that meant. The five blocks home was very distracted. I tried not to be that way, but I just was trying to figure out what was happening while I had one scooting child and one toddler in her stroller.

I feel like moms, dads, parents, but maybe particularly moms, we just have to make it work. I remember when I had little kids and I got sick for the first time. I was like, wait, what's going to happen? It's like, you're not going to be sick. A parent, no matter what, you have to parent through it all. It's sometimes an exhausting part of it all, when you're grieving, when you are hurting. I know so many people right now feel exhausted by everything. Also, kids can be the most beautiful distraction. The things that they say, my girls healed me, what they said. Now I have a baby boy, but I didn't have him at the time. What they said about their great-grandparents, all three of them, who they lost, who I lost, little things that they said which I wrote down in this book -- I'm so happy because otherwise, I would never remember. The little things they said and did brought me this beautiful peace. They're so wise, our children are. If you want to feel good, put your phone away. Try to not think about the news of the day. Listen to what your kids say. Write it down. They say the most hilarious, beautiful things. I knew they’ve been a major comfort to me. I hope I don't put that on them. I'm not like, how should I feel better? Just by listening to the funny, quirky, beautiful way they see the world, I feel like it can be a wonderful comfort.

Zibby: I completely agree. I went through a loss recently. I have four kids. They were so amazing. They can be supportive. They’ll come over and hug. Then they just say the crazy things that they say because they're kids. I wasn't smart enough to write all of them down.

Jenna: Write them down when we get off. Write them down when we're done today because you'll want to remember them I later.

Zibby: I know. It's so true. Grief is so unpredictable. You had so much so quickly, such a huge part of your family. It's nice to have had that outlet, at least. Of course, you're not using them for it, but you just have to. You don't have the choice to stay in bed and dwell in it. You can't as a parent. You just have to figure out how to make it all work at the same time. Even you, you wrote in the book about having a meeting at work and then almost missing the bus pickup for your daughter. I feel like I've been in that same situation so many times, like, [gasp], pickup! [laughs] It's so relatable.

Jenna: I know. Why is pickup the most stressful of all things? This particular day -- actually, it's so funny because the people that I was at this lunch meeting with -- I remember, I felt like I was on fire. It was the beginning of the year. I had a to-do list. I was wearing heels. I wear heels every day at work. Then I take them off and I put on, they're thrown right here on the ground, these clog mom boots. I can run in these things.

Zibby: Those are cute, though.

Jenna: Thank you. I can run in those. I cannot run in high-heel knee-high boots. It was the beginning of January. I was wearing them to prove to myself that this year was going to be new, was going to be a different year. Of course, I forgot Mila at the bus stop. The amount of times even in the short months -- weeks. It feels like months. It's been a couple weeks since my kids have been in school. The amount of times I've been racing to the bus stop, I can't even tell you, almost every day.

Zibby: I once ran through the Central Park transverse where the cars are to try to get to curriculum night on time all dressed up and all this stuff. It's just so funny when you think about the city and all these moms running, not just moms, but all the running to get to places on time and what we do to make it work here.

Jenna: I know. By the way, that was a moment where I really, and I have them often, but really loved New York City because I was running and the UPS guy was like, "You got it, girl!" Another mom was like, "I've been there." To feel supported by your community in a moment of complete panic and shame is [distorted audio].

Zibby: Yes, as opposed to driving like a maniac and all that risk. Another part of your book that I really responded to is when you were talking about your Aunt Dory and how she bought the dress for the funeral. Your grandmother was more of a spendthrift. She didn't want people to waste money on clothes. She bought this special dress and then went to the mirror. The mirror fell on the ground. She took it as a sign that her mom was upset, and she went and returned the dress. You had a beautiful message to her of what your interpretation of that was. Can you just share a little of that?

Jenna: Sure. My grandmother was a force. She took on things, private pain, things we didn't know. She took it on. She was an enforcer. We didn't necessarily know why she was the way she was. She was private and also very transparent at the same time. I'm not sure if that makes sense. Towards the end of her life, we were in Maine one summer. I came down the stairs early. I still picture her when I think about her in this screened-in porch. Early in the morning, she would write in her journal and write letters to her friends and do a little bit of work, read the newspaper. When I think of her now, that's where I imagine her. I came downstairs. It was early. It was before the sun came up. She was in a particularly sharing way, sharing mood. She told me a lot about her growing up. She grew up with a mother that would say things like, "Martha," who was her sister, "is the beauty. You are the funny one." Then her mother passed away in car accident. She had a stepmother that reinforced that. Luckily, she had a dad who thought she was brilliant and hilarious and told her she could do anything she ever wanted to. I do think -- and I don't know. This is just my opinion. When I heard these stories, I felt her pain. I just couldn't imagine, as a mother myself and as somebody that's been raised by a woman who was gracious and loving and loved Barbara and I unconditionally and equally even though we were so different -- we were never compared, thank goodness for me. I just couldn't imagine being that little girl that heard over and over, "Don't eat that, Barbara," and felt less than in her appearance.

My grandmother definitely had a way about her where she would sometimes make comments. I could tell afterwards she would feel like, why did I do that? She would comment on our clothes. Maybe after freshman year in college when everybody gains a little bit, there would be a comment about how we would look. What I understood about her in that moment sitting having that conversation about her childhood was that any of that part of who she was, was really a reflection of how she raised and that she was, in some ways, talking to that little girl. She was saying to herself, why do you look like that? She didn't mean it to us. When my Aunt Doro bought this dress and thought, god, Mom would think this is too expensive, I should take it back, and the mirror fell -- and that was Doro's interpretation. I said, "Maybe she was thinking, stop worrying about the way you look." The interesting thing about her is that she was a complicated woman. She didn't, in some ways, worry about the way she looked. She famously said talking about your hair is boring. She let her hair go gray probably before she was even my age, in her thirties. I do think deep down there was some pain that was never really resolved. I think she was telling my aunt, who is beautiful and incredible, don't waste your time on earth worrying about things like that, which is so hard because so many of us as women have that little voice in us that berates us for certain things. I think what she was saying is, don't waste your time looking in the mirror criticizing yourself.

Zibby: I love that. It's giving permission to stop self-flagellating in a way, being so self-critical. I recently started, in addition to this podcast, "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight" because I feel like so many moms, with COVID in particular, have been at home and gaining weight and in their closets all upset and all the rest. Then as I was focusing on that and listening to your book, I sat at my computer and then I saw that now you're doing Move with Jenna at eleven o'clock on the Today Show. I'm like, this is amazing.

Jenna: I'm doing Move with Jenna. I'm not the one that's actually working out, but yes, we are doing it. I always like to move for mental health. I like to go for long walks. Hoda and I have been doing outdoor classes here in the city right after work. Otherwise, it's hard to go. Once you get home and you're with the kids, and I have a new baby who's always home, forget it. Once I see his little face, it's hard to motivate to go away from him. I always think it's important to move. Granted, I will tell you that I did the show from home on Zoom for two months, three months. When you're at home on Zoom, you're wearing sweatpants on the bottom. You don't have to zip up a dress. All of a sudden, the world comes back and you're like, whoa, wow, that cacio e pepe I've been cooking from Joanna Gaines’ cookbook has really caught up with me. [laughter] You're right. It's best to not dwell. Just do things that make you feel good. If you do that, then hopefully the COVID fifteen, the COVID nineteen as I like to say, will come off.

Zibby: Yes. Tell me a little bit more about writing. When do you like to write? Where do you do it? Is it in your bed at night? Give me a visual here.

Jenna: I'm a morning writer, for sure. I work in morning television, so I'm already waking up early. I always write in a journal. One thing that my husband and I do which we brought back today -- although, he hasn’t texted me back. We didn't need to do it for a while because we were never away from each other, never apart. Now that I've started coming back to work, we text each other three really specific things that we're grateful for. I like waking up that way. I like having my mind focused on the really good instead of the bad. I also like sharing those little insights with him and having him share his with me. They're not about each other, necessarily. Although, sometimes they are. I always write in a journal in the morning. For this book, when I was "writing" writing, I would set the alarm for about four in the morning. I would write in our little office/guest room/playroom. It's the New York, where you have nowhere to write except for this one little den where I wouldn't wake up the kids and Henry. I did that at least three days a week. Then right after the show at eleven, I would go over to my office at 30 Rock and I would try to continue for an hour or two before my mind had nothing left to give. I read at night. I read for pleasure and for fun every night before I go to bed. I want it to be fun. I don't want it to be work. I cannot write at night. I can't really do much at night. I have this much left to give because my mornings are so big. Then by the time the kids go to bed, I just have an hour or two with Henry to try to decompress, and then that's it.

Zibby: I have so much respect when people are like, let's go meet up at this time. Why don't you do all your emails late at night? I'm like, I am fried. That's it.

Jenna: I agree. I also think even any sort of arguments, any sort of anything that's not great happens in those hours where your rope is done. It's shortened to just a tiny fuse.

Zibby: It's so true, oh, my gosh. Tell me about the reading for Read with Jenna. How do you pick your books?

Jenna: It's been such a really fun part of my job because I just love to read. I'm reading now for January and February. I read about six months in advance, which is so fun. I love that I get to get some of these books in galley forms and read them and be one of the first, maybe besides the editors and other people that have book clubs and obviously the indie bookstore owners, who get to read this work. It feels really like a privilege. We look for books that are debut authors in many cases. We want new voices, voices that may not always get the attention. We like diverse voices, voices from all over the world or country, people that look different and have different experiences, and then just books that move us, books that move me, books that I stay up late into the night reading, books that I know will inspire. I've been in a book club throughout my life in different iterations in different towns. I know what will inspire really cool, wonderful conversations. That's really what goes into it. It's just so much fun.

Zibby: You have to come to my book club. I started a virtual book club. I have like a thousand members. Anyway, you should come. It's really fun.

Jenna: I'm in. Why don't you choose -- I'm looking around my office. I don't know if you've read Leave the World Behind.

Zibby: Yes. I just had Rumaan on my podcast yesterday. I haven't released it yet.

Jenna: I love Rumaan. I hope you told him I said hi. You probably didn't. He is brilliant. He is so awesome. Did you read this with your book club?

Zibby: We haven't yet, but you know what? We should do it. We hardly have any male --

Jenna: -- Have you read it?

Zibby: I read it myself, but I haven't assigned it to my book club yet. I think that's a really great idea.

Jenna: It's so, so good, isn't it?

Zibby: Yeah. Maybe we will do that. That's a great idea.

Jenna: Okay, good. If you ever need help, call me up. I'm happy to be part of a book club one month. Let me know.

Zibby: Do it. Maybe the two of you can do it together or something. That'd be neat. I'm sure you've interviewed him. That would be awesome. So you have so much going on. What's coming next for you? You are churning out books and kids and TV shows.

Jenna: [laughs] Churning out books and kids. With each book, there's a new kid. No, nothing is next for me. I'm just going to slow down a little bit. Obviously, the show is on every single day, which is so much fun. It's been a really wonderful distraction in this world that we live in to sit next to somebody that I admire as much as Hoda and have conversations that feel light and, I hope, filled with goodness and positivity. That's so awesome. Before the pandemic, we were in a studio with lights and people and music and a DJ and Oprah. It was the pinnacle of where we wanted the show to go. Then all of a sudden, I was at home on a ring light with my phone and Hoda on FaceTime, and it didn't matter. I missed being close to her. I missed our team. I missed the audience and the studio. Regardless, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed our conversations. What this has shown me is that it stripped down to what's really important. Thanks goodness she and I really like each other and have fun talking to each other. Otherwise, it would've been really difficult. I think it's proven to all of us that it's stripped things down and only the most important things matter. I feel so lucky that even with the ring light and a phone and us separated by distance it was still such a pleasure to do the show every single day.

Zibby: So funny that you didn't even think you wanted this job to begin with. Wasn't it your grandfather who was like, "Maybe we should watch the show"? which is so funny.

Jenna: The most obvious. Also, it's a humiliation that that wasn't something that would've come into play, but I was teacher. He was like, "Do you ever see this thing they call the Today Show?" I was like, "Nope, I'm at school by seven in the morning." We watched it together. They gave me great advice. My grandmother was like, "You just always take the meeting." Even though I just want to be home, as we said, in my pajamas by 8:08 PM, I think that advice of always taking the meeting, being ready for whatever life's going to throw at you next is really good advice.

Zibby: So it's always take the meeting, but try to schedule it in the morning.

Jenna: [laughs] Exactly.

Zibby: What other advice might you have for aspiring authors?

Jenna: I just think, write. Write all the time. This was the advice of my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Cunningham, in Dallas, Texas. She said, "You are a good writer." Nobody had really told me -- I have a sister who is an academic who got into every Ivy League school she applied to. She missed one question on the SAT. She's brilliant. I struggled in math. My dad would sit around the kitchen table and be like, "Let's get to multiplication." To have somebody put that faith in me, like, this is where you're going to go, this is what you're interested in, and you have talent in this, I will never forget it. What she said to me, the advice is read, read, read. Good writers, brilliant writers -- it's so true. Now I get to and you get to, I'm sure, talk to all of these brilliant authors who I have crushes on.

Zibby: Me too. I'm the same way. Sometimes I even get nervous. I'm like, oh, my god, Nicholas Sparks!

Jenna: I know. By the way, a friend asked me, they were like, "Who has been the best?" I'm like, "Oh, this person. Kevin Wilson's so good. Ann Patchett's my good friend. I love Emma Straub." All of them are kind and generous of time and of talent, and brilliant. All of them share the same quality which is that they love books. They read incessantly. They read everything. That's my advice, is to read constantly. It makes sense. If you want to be a great artist, you study art. You study the great artists. If you want to be a great writer, you study the beautiful pieces of writing that we get to read. I just feel like I'm happiest in my bed with a book, possibly a sleeping child. The child needs to be asleep, though. Otherwise, as you know, moms don't have time to read. If there's a cat thrown in there, that's it. That's my very perfect day. If you believe in the afterlife, that's where I'll be, in a bed with a cat, a sleeping child, and a book.

Zibby: I might be there with a dog. Maybe with some chocolate on my bedside table.

Jenna: Yes. I was going to say a cheese plate. Add some cheese plate and a glass of wine. There we go.

Zibby: That pretty much is it. That's all we really need in life. [laughter] Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for all your great books and entertainment and all the great work you do and for highlighting all the authors, so many of whom I've had on my podcast and who I love. It's amazing.

Jenna: I loved talking with you. I love your podcast. I love that you're trying to get moms reading.

Zibby: I'm trying. Thank you.

Jenna: Thank you so much. It was so nice to meet you. Thank you.

Zibby: So nice to meet you too.

Jenna: Bye, everybody. See you.

Zibby: Bye.

Tami Charles, ALL BECAUSE YOU MATTER

Zibby Owens: Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books," the Instagram version and eventually the podcast. Would you mind holding up your book so everybody can see it? All Because You Matter, so beautiful. You had an amazing unboxing video with your son, which was just awesome. Would you mind telling everybody what your children's book is about?

Tami Charles: All Because You Matter, really, it's the book of my heart. I wrote this book for my son, essentially. His name is Christopher. He's ten years old. It's really a tribute to him and to all children, especially children from black and brown communities, marginalized communities, to really just remind them of all the ways that they matter to us and in the universe. All Because You Matter, this is my book baby.

Zibby: Beautiful. Would you mind opening one to three pages?

Tami: Absolutely, yes. I'm going to read the intro. "They say that matter is all things that make up the universe: energy, stars, space. If that's the case, then you, dear child, matter. Long before you took your place in this world, you were dreamed of like a knapsack full of wishes carried on the backs of your ancestors as they created empires, pyramids, legacies, building, inventing, working beneath red-hot suns and cold blue moons thinking of you years ahead because to them, you always mattered."

Zibby: You're a poet. It's like poetry. Did you start out writing poetry? How did we get here? Where did you come from? Where were you born? How did you start writing? Let's back up.

Tami: I was born in Newark, New Jersey. What state are you in, actually?

Zibby: I'm in New York.

Tami: New York, awesome, so you might have heard of Newark, New Jersey. I was born in Newark, New Jersey. I'm the daughter of a technician and a retired teacher, vice principal, and principal at my school. When I was growing up in my elementary school, my mom was very, very key in developing my love of reading. I loved books as a child. That filtered into my adult life. The one thing was, for as much as I loved books, I didn't really think that I could be an author growing up because it wasn't something that I saw. I didn't have access to books that featured positive depictions of kids of color, so I kind of thought I couldn't be an author. I did the next best thing. I became a teacher. I did that for fourteen years. It was wonderful, but I always had that hidden dream tucked in my back pocket that I really wanted to be an author. When I began my career teaching, I started to notice that there were a lot more diverse books for kids today than what I was used to growing up. My students and I, we would read these books. We would write stories together. They would say, "Miss Charles, you should do this. You could be an author." It's almost like my students gave me the green light to follow my childhood dream of becoming an author, so I did. I got rejected along the way in the beginning, but I kept pushing and I kept pushing. Eventually, I was able to become published. It's really been such an amazing journey for me. That's where we are now. I no longer teach because I write full time. It's great. I became published in 2018. I'm still a baby with this stuff, but I'm loving it.

Zibby: Tell me about your first book.

Tami: My very first book that published, it was called Like Vanessa. That's a middle-grade novel that I wrote about a thirteen-year-old girl from Newark who shyly enters her school's beauty pageant even though the kids at school, there's some kids who think that she doesn't stand a chance. That's called Like Vanessa.

Zibby: This picture book that you just wrote is not only lyrical and beautiful, but so important for the times that we're in right now. When did you write this? Not that it matters month to month, but when did you write it? Was this always in the works? Give me the timing.

Tami: The timing is this. First of all, I want to say this was the book that, as a mom, I didn't want to write. The second I became a mom of this little boy, I just wanted to keep him small forever. I wanted to keep him shielded from the cruelties of the world, some sad realities that have been going on in our communities, especially communities of color. I didn't want him to even know about the bad stuff. As time went on, I knew that my son would grow up and he would experience things. Maybe he himself would be put in situations where maybe he feels like he doesn't matter. I knew that I had to write this story to have a starting point for conversation for those tough questions that I knew would eventually come. They started coming once he entered school. He learned things. He met friends of all kinds. I remember one of the earliest questions was, "Mommy, if Dr. King was such a good person, why did they hurt him?" He was five or six when he asked that. I was like, okay, I can't avoid it anymore. I have to find a way to get real with him, let him form his own opinion about things that have happened in our history, but all the while reminding him of how much I love him. I kind of put that off for years. My son is ten years old. In 2018, by this point, he was eight.

I had a dream one night. I literally dreamt of this book. I dreamt of all the words. That never happens, by the way, at least for me. I dreamt of all the words. I saw the art. I knew who did the art in my dream. I woke up that morning and I wrote it really, really fast. I remember my husband was on a business trip. I called him and I read it to him over the phone. He goes, "You need to send that to your agent now." I'm like, "No, that's not how that works. I need time. I have to revise it. I have to workshop it." I sent it to her that day. It was a Friday. I remember getting in the car to drive to the Boston Book Fest. By the time I was in Hartford, Connecticut, I stopped for coffee, I got an email from my agent saying, "We're going out with this on Monday. Let's go." I think by either that same day or the next day, we already had an offer on the table. This was one of the fastest projects I've worked on. It never works like that.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Now it's coming out in this time, congratulations, tomorrow. So exciting. First of all, how are you celebrating this? Second of all, how do you feel compared to 2018 when you had a traditional release of a book to now?

Tami: This COVID is keeping us apart. I can't take it any longer. I miss humans. I miss traditional gatherings for book-ish events, but here we are. At least we have this. I'm very thankful for this. As far as tomorrow goes, my son -- that is him on the cover. When he was eight years old, we did the cover. My son told me, "Mom, this is my book. I'm in charge tomorrow of our day." He claims it's a surprise, but I think I know what we're doing. The book is in Target, which is a big deal because I've never had a book in Target. I believe we're going to Target tomorrow. I think we're also going to Barnes & Noble because the book is there. It was selected as one of the best books for October by Barnes & Noble. We'll be going to those two places. I'm hoping there's going to be some kind of food involved.

Zibby: I'm always hoping there's going to be some sort of food involved.

Tami: I think that's what we'll be doing, and then just coming home and having a quiet little celebration at home. He's in charge. It's his book. I'm just the [indiscernible].

Zibby: The video you sent me, he asked you if he was getting paid for this book. You're like, "Yeah, with [indiscernible], essentially." [laughs]

Tami: That kid's a hustler, I tell you. Yesterday for the book launch, I had a virtual launch with Books of Wonder. I didn't have to bribe him to do it because he was really happy to do it, but you better believe that he said, "So I don't have to do my chores today, right?" [laughter] No, he didn't have to do his chores yesterday.

Zibby: I loved the basic premise of the book, which is obviously, people of all kinds, shapes, sizes, colors, whatever, we all matter. The people who came before you have been working in the effort to make sure you have better lives, which is for all generations to come. This word matter is so of the moment with Black Lives Matter. Yet in the book, you don't reference that at all, unless I missed it. It wasn't the introduction. It wasn't in the author's note. It didn't speak to that particular movement. Was that on purpose? Did you choose the word on purpose, or it just happened to be that way like matter in the universe?

Tami: I think I did a bit of a word play. When you think of matter, you think of -- at least when I first heard the words in my mind, I thought of the universe and all the things in the universe, everything that makes up this universe, the sun and the stars and the moon and even grass. In thinking of that and positioning that with the fact that there's been such an increase of injustices against people of color, particularly black people -- my son, now that he's getting older, he was seeing that. He had questions about it. If you think about the universe and if you think about what has been going on in our country, I had to write it in a way where I let him know that there's been a place for you in this universe from the moment that it was created. Of course you matter. You matter because the people that came before you worked hard and they made it so that you could be here today and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Absolutely, this is an homage to the belief that black lives matter. Of course we do. If all lives matter, then we matter as well. I have to say that in order for all lives to matter, we have to really acknowledge the ones who feel that they don't.

I know that there have been times where my son would see certain things and he would have questions about it. I said, I have to let him know that he matters because that's my job as his mom, to pour love into him, to let him know that as you navigate this world you are literally carrying on your backpack, the hopes and dreams of your ancestors. Someone asked who illustrated the book. Bryan Collier is the artist of the book. He did it so lovingly. If you look throughout the art, he uses ancestral petals. Within those petals, you see different parts of faces. Those are the voices and the faces of our ancestors. They're whispering to our children, you matter. You mattered before you even got here. Don't forget it. Carry that with you as you navigate this world. I tried to do that in the most loving way. I didn't want to do it in a way didactic way because you may see something in the text or in the art that is totally different than what another person may see. I wanted to write it in a way that opens up interpretation and conversation. You hit the nail on the head. At the end of the book, there is a spread of all the people and all the people marching and really amplifying the belief that our children matter. It's in there. It's in the art. If you hear it out loud, you can hear it whispered in between the words.

Zibby: Even the way you talk is so beautiful. It's so visual.

Tami: It's in there. I want my son to know that. As I mentioned, I'm a former teacher. I remember this very look, that look. It's the same look of all children. It's a look of a student who looks at a teacher and says, "You say I matter. Okay, tell me more. Tell me more about that." It's that look of longing. It's a look of hope. I'm really hoping to convey that to anyone who reads it, but particularly for those who need to hear it the most.

Zibby: That's the magic of a successful book. It's giving people what they need that they didn't necessarily even know they needed it. Then there it is in your hands, and boom.

Tami: I'm telling you, when you tell a child that they matter, there's a power in that. Something about that will lift them and catapult them forward in their future. I've seen it. As a teacher, I've seen it. I have students right now who are -- oh, my gosh, I have students who are business owners now. They're married with children. They own this. They travel here and there. I'm just looking back like, wow. I've had students come to me and say, "Miss Charles, because you told me this, I knew that I could do this." Imagine the power that you have as an adult to just whisper those words in a child's ear. You matter.

Zibby: It's so important. It's great. Can I steal that and use it on my own kids? I know I'm not your target audience.

Tami: You know what I love that Scholastic has done? They're really billing this as an all-ages picture book. I love that. Someone just wrote, can she give us a look at the artwork? I'll hold up a picture. This is one of my favorite images. You can see it. That is a child taking their first steps to their mom. It's supposed to be my son. One of my favorite memories is when he took his first steps. That's a moment that matters. Children have all these little moments in their life that matter. What a gift it is for us to be there and witness that. It's been such a great journey with this book. I really do think that anyone of any age can read this book and pull something out of it. Listen, I'm forty years old. I still need to be told that I matter. [laughs]

Zibby: When you were saying that about how good it makes kids feel, I was like, that would make me feel good too.

Tami: Exactly. Even now as a grown adult, I have moments where I feel a little less than. That kind of message is something that, really, anyone of any age can benefit from. I know first and foremost our children need to hear that, for sure.

Zibby: Are you planning brand extensions? I could just see this as a pillow because your artwork is so gorgeous, or a framed thing or "You Matter" T-shirts.

Tami: All of it. I want to show another picture. If you lift up the cover, check this out. I didn't even know this until recently.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Wow.

Tami: Such a powerful image. That's my son with his eyes closed. Those lines, Bryan recently explained why he chose to put those lines across his face. Those lines are paths. They're roads and rivers. They almost represent interconnectedness, that connection, the ties that bind us together. I love that. I love what he did with the art. If you even look around his face, you see the word matter, just a little piece of it. Here are all the people surrounding this child whispering to him, marching for him, taking a stand for him, all because he matters. The art is spot on. I wish I could take credit for it. I can only credit for, that's my baby on the cover and in the book.

Zibby: You're the inspiration. You wrote it. You can take credit for as much as you want.

Tami: Yeah, there we go. [laughs]

Zibby: Are you working on anything else now?

Tami: I am. Let's see if I have it. I do. I write books of all kinds in all ages. I write young adult novels, middle grade, and picture books. I also write nonfiction. This book, All Because You Matter, publishes tomorrow with Scholastic. I'm really excited about that. I actually have some more projects forthcoming with Scholastic. My next book that's publishing with them is on the young adult side. This is a young adult novel. It's written in verse. It's called Muted. Little fun fact about myself, when I was a teenager/in my early twenties, I was in a singing group. This was in the late nineties when the music industry was saturated with girl R&B groups. We tried really hard to make it. It didn't happen, but we did have some good times. The music industry had and still has a bit of a Me Too moment. I noticed that it's been really increasing now. Full disclosure, my singing group, we came out unscathed. Even though we did not get the record deal and the Grammys and all of that, we came out on the other side okay, but there are people who don't. I wanted to explore that, the dark side of the music industry and what it takes to fight back and get your power back. Muted tells the story of a seventeen-year-old girl who does just that. That comes out February 2nd.

Zibby: I feel like if I spent a week in your house, I would leave feeling so great about myself. Everybody gets this boost of -- you just infuse confidence and power into [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Tami: Thank you.

Zibby: That's how I'm seeing it. [laughs]

Tami: I appreciate that. Thank you.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Tami: Yes, lots. First off, this is not easy. You got to go into that knowing it. I've had friends and family members along the way who probably thought it was, but after they’ve seen this, years and years of the journey, they're like, oh, this is harder than what I thought. It’s not easy, but it’s so worth it. It's so rewarding. If this is your dream, you just have to keep going. My biggest piece of advice is put your blinders on. Just focus on whatever those writing goals are for yourself. Focus on those because it can be very tempting to see how other people are doing, how other writers are doing and feel like, oh, man, I'm not writing fast enough or my writing isn't good enough. No. You have to put your blinders on. You can still clap for the other writers. There are so many writers that I admire and adore. Your process is your process. You have to celebrate every moment along your journey. Just don't give up.

Zibby: Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm so excited to have caught you right before your big pub day. Obviously, you have so much more in store. I look forward to following all of your releases. I think this book will be a smash hit. It has all the elements of a successful book. It really helps people.

Tami: I hope so.

Zibby: I think it's great. Thank you.

Tami: Thank you so much.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Tami: Bye.

Eva Chen, ROXY THE LAST UNISAURUS REX

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

Eva Chen: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I am super in awe of your rainbow stacks behind you.

Zibby: Thank you. Thank you. They're all over. This is my pride and joy. They go all the way up.

Eva: You have the dream-state of a library.

Zibby: Yes. On Instagram the other day, I posted, I was like, I don't buy shoes, I buy books. You're all about fashion. I am not. That's not my strong suit. Books is my addiction.

Eva: The only thing you need to make that library even more perfect is a ladder like in Beauty and the Beast when Belle swings with her arm. You know the scene I'm talking about?

Zibby: Actually, growing up and still in my mother's apartment, she has a library that's a maroon-y color, and she has a ladder. In fact, it actually does this weird thing where it folds up. It's an antique. I don't know if I could go there. [laughs]

Eva: I think you should just embrace the Beauty and the Beast life and get a library ladder. I truly dream of having a floor-to-ceiling library with a ladder. With two very young children, three and five, not good to have ladders just hanging out.

Zibby: I have four children. My youngest is five. He likes to climb up this chair and try to grab books all the way at the top when I'm on Zoom.

Eva: My son does that too. I'll turn around and he would literally somehow be at the top of the bookshelf, but there's no climbing surfaces. He literally, like Spiderman, scales the bookshelves. It's constantly stressful. I'm always like, where is he? What's going on? One of the characters in my first book series, Juno Valentine, is named Finn Valentine. He's always getting into trouble. He was a little bit inspired by my three-year-old son, Tao.

Zibby: There's no lack of material when you have little kids. I feel like every day, I'm like, this could be a book. That could be a book.

Eva: It's really like a zoo. It's a constantly circus, zoo, anything chaotic. It's 2020, chaos.

Zibby: Chaos squared or something. So you have had this whole fashion career. You were the editor-in-chief of Lucky, which is so cool. I loved that bag. In fact, I went to some event once a while ago, and they gave out these free Lucky totes. I used it all the time. It had pink letters on a white tote. This is ages ago.

Eva: It was probably the event Lucky Shops.

Zibby: I don't know what it was. You know how sometimes a tote just makes it into your rotation for whatever reason? It's the perfect length or weight or something. Anyway, that was my bag for a long time.

Eva: Wonderful. I was at Lucky for two years. I was a magazine called Teen Vogue before that, which is the woke little sister version of Vogue. I was there about seven years. I was at Elle magazine before that. Now I'm at Instagram working on the fashion team there. Really, it's this been weird path from -- I'm a first-generation American. My mom was always very fashionable. I never thought I would end up working in fashion. Now to work in the tech world, it's all been this crazy adventure that I never would've predicted. It's a very windy path to where I am now. Now I'm writing children's books, which is a dream in life. It's come to true.

Zibby: I saw on one of your Instagram posts that you said that's really what you wanted to do. People were surprised by that. All you really want to do is write children's books.

Eva: I remember when I left, I think it was Teen Vogue that I left. That probably was about seven years ago. Amy Astley was the editor-in-chief then. She's now the editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest. It was Amy Astley I did an interview with, and Anna Wintour who was the editorial director of Teen Vogue, being the editor-in-chief of Vogue. I remember both of them were like, "Tell us about your experience. Where do you see yourself? What is your goal? What is the dream?" Most people say something like, I want to be a stylist or I want to be a designer or I really want to be an artist or whatever it is. I was like, "I just really want to write children's books. It's my dream." They were both like, "Oh, we have not heard that one before." I think it's because I grew up kind of feeling -- as a child of immigrants in this in-between state of, I'm living in America, I'm very proud to be an American, but I speak Chinese purely at home. English was not my first language and still is not my parent's primary language. There was this sense of feeling like, I don't know where I fit in. I don't know where I belong.

I think that I always turned to books as a place that -- they didn't know my background. I just could fit into these worlds. I read books, probably like a lot of young ladies and now gentlemen read. The Ramona books, Beverly Cleary, they really informed a lot of my personality. Now as a mother, I remember reading those books and thinking this is the perfect little girl. I see those traits in my daughter where I'm like, I love her spunkiness and quirkiness. I think back, it's like, oh, my gosh, I wished this. I wished for this. I wished for a girl like Ramona Quimby. I read books like The Babysitter's Club. I got a signed copy of Baby-Sitter's Club, Kristy's Great Idea, from Ann Martin around the time Netflix launched their series. I think they sent out first editions because that would be just way too much for me. My brain would explode. Then when I got it, I was like, oh, my god, I can't believe Ann Martin touched this. I've always been a book nerd. It's truly so exciting. It's truly a dream come true to be writing children's books. Sorry, Zibby, I literally talk in run-on sentences. I talk a lot.

Zibby: I love it. That's the whole point, is getting to know you. If you weren’t talking, this would be a very awkward conversation. I am interested in what you're saying, so don't worry about it. This is great. I just want to hear. So Roxy the Last Unisaurus -- is that what it's called? So amazing.

Eva: Yes, Roxy the Last Unisaurus Rex. It's my new baby. I'm very excited about Roxy.

Zibby: It's adorable. I love it. I love the message and the illustrations and the whole thing. It's just so cute. It does come, again, from this place of feeling alone a little bit, like an outsider of sorts. Do you feel like that came from what you were just referring to, your first generation-ness?

Eva: It was interesting. I wrote Roxy when my daughter who is now five, almost six -- she's always loved dinosaurs, always gravitated towards dinosaurs, would see dinosaurs on a onesie and would be happy, plays with t-rexes and stegosauruses, always running into my room asking me, "Have you seen the triceratops?" I'm like, "I just stepped on it." Those three horns, not so comfortable on the feet. I really wrote Roxy because she had an incident with a friend who was like, "Don't you know that girls don't like dinosaurs? Girls like princesses and unicorns." She was kind of crestfallen. It was a cool, older friend who was probably seven at the time. She was like, "Is it true? Am I not supposed to like dinosaurs? Am I only supposed to like unicorns?" She likes unicorns too, but not like the passion she has for dinosaurs. That's how the idea of Roxy really came about. You can like dinosaurs. You can like unicorns. You can like both. Why not make a dino-corn like a unisaurus rex? It's interesting because when I announced the book, it must have been in March that I announced it, a lot of people found different meanings that resonated with them.

I had some followers reach out. They were like, "Is this an allegory for being biracial?" I was like, could be. Then I had other followers say, "I'm the parent to a non-gendered child. Is Roxy about that?" I'm like, honestly, okay. That's the magic of children's books. People read children's books and they’ll find what they need from it. In Harry Potter, the Room of Requirement, where Harry and his friends can only find this room when they need it and it gives you what you need at the time, I think that's the thing with children's books. They should allow kids to see themselves in a myriad of ways. Roxy is trying to figure out where she fits in. She doesn't fit in with the regular triceratops. The stegosauruses and triceratops don't want to hang with her. The velociraptors just run away from her. It's about finding her place in the school. Yes, dinosaurs go to school. It's, I hope, a story that a lot of little kids will take some comfort from. It's also funny and weird. There are lots of pop culture references. Of course, there's a Mean Girls reference. Of course, there's a Royal Tenenbaums reference because you got to have those easter eggs for the parents so that they're not bored out of their minds reading the same book for the six thousandth time.

Zibby: Thank you for that on behalf of all parents. Tell me about the publication of your first children's book. How did the whole journey begin? I know you wanted to do it. When you sat down and did it the first time, tell me about that.

Eva: When I was at Teen Vogue, a mutual friend introduced me to my now book agent, Kate. I was a beauty editor at the time. I was focusing on skin care and beauty tips and self-esteem. I wrote a lot about health issues for younger women. She was like, "I really want you to write a book that's a biography and then also tips on style and advice." I was super behind on that. Every year, it's like she had a calendar invite to remind me to be like, where's that book? Then finally, one day I emailed her. "I have my book. I wrote it." She was like, "Oh, my god, thank you." I was like, "It's a children's book." She was like, "Not what I was expecting." That book was Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes. It's about a little girl who loses her favorite pair of shoes. Then she travels through time and space to find her shoes and encounters icons from Gloria Steinem, Anna Wintour, Yayoi Kusama. It's kind of a fashion feminist fairy tale in a way. We have Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes. The sequel to that is Juno Valentine and the Fantastic Fashion Adventure. Then I have two board books. One is called A is for Awesome. The new one is called 3 2 1 Awesome! It's coming out on the same day as Roxy, which is a little -- did not expect to have two books coming out on the same day. I love these books. The board books have become -- I've seen a lot of teachers add them to their classrooms. I feel like that's the highest compliment as an author.

The new book has Megan Rapinoe and Rhianna and Greta Thunberg on the cover. There's a lot of diversity in it from Twyla Tharp and Temple Grandin to Sonia Sotomayor, Zaha Hadid. Spoiler alert, Sonia Sotomayor is in it, and Ada Lovelace. We try to have different women and their accomplishments. A lot of people say it's a little girls' book. It's a great book to give little girls. People should buy it for their sons too. I'm not just saying that because I'm an author and I want you to buy my books. I went to an all-girls school, as did you. I do think there's this element of the earlier you're exposed to the accomplishments of women, the better. That shouldn't just be for girls and empowering girls. You want little boys to grow up knowing, hey, a woman can be an executive. A woman can be a supreme court justice. She can do many things. She can be an activist. She could be a pro soccer player. It's just about exposure. Kids learn through osmosis. They learn when you expose them to things. I have strong feelings about this.

Zibby: It's true. Kids should learn that anybody who accomplishes something really cool should be celebrated and used as a role model, man or woman. It's absolutely true, a hundred percent. It shouldn't have to be like, look, women can do it too. It should just be natural, like, yeah, look, look at what these awesome women did.

Eva: This year is obviously a really weird, stressful, dramatic, traumatizing, let's throw in all the alarming adjectives in there. It's been a really rough year. Normally around this time, I'd be setting off on a book tour. For each of my books, I've gone on ten to fifteen city book tours. I go to these events. Really, you feed off the energy of these readings and all these young children, and especially young girls, and seeing that they see themselves in a book. I'm not doing that this year for obvious reasons, COVID. I realize on these book tours, honestly, that not every child hears that message that you should dream big, you should go after what you want, you can achieve great things. That's a luxury. I've been doing a lot of fundraising for public school teachers recently. It's a cause that's really close to my heart. I do hope these books send that message to children even if they're not hearing it in their personal lives and in their own lives.

Zibby: Absolutely. By the way, I actually went to an event of yours for A is for Awesome at Bloomingdale's with Darcy Miller. I brought my girls to this event because I've known Darcy for a long time. In fact, she was also on this podcast. I tried to get your book, but the line was so long. People were around through all the different aisles of Bloomingdale's to sign up and get your book. I was like, who is that? What on earth? What's the line?

Eva: I'll send you a signed book. Come on. [laughter] I really love signing books and writing messages. I had a lot of books growing up. My parents always were very generous with books. I didn't really have any signed books growing up. I met the author of -- I don't know if you've read the Dory Fantasmagory series. It's a great early reader chapter book for kids. My daughter loves them. The author's name is Abby Hanlon. It was at this bookstore called Books of Wonder, which is my local bookstore. It's this gem of a bookstore in the Flatiron District.

Zibby: I've been there. It's great.

Eva: So great. It's been open for like forty-five years. It's only children's books. I spent a lot of time there when I was researching my books. Also, it's this magical meeting spot for authors. I bumped into the author of Dory Fantasmagory. I fangirled out so hard. It was so awkward. I was like, "Oh, my god. Wait, I have to come back. I have to bring my daughter." She was like, "Okay." I was like, "I love you. You're such a great writer." Anyway, she signed all the books. It was very special to have something that the author touched and that has a special message for the child. I think that's the best gift.

Zibby: Totally. I went to this Brooklyn Book Festival event, Children's Brooklyn Book Festival last year. All these authors were there. My son had just gone to boarding school. One of his favorite authors who -- now I'm blanking on who wrote New Kid who's super famous. I cannot believe I'm forgetting his name. Anyway, he was there. I was like, "Hey, could you sign a book? You're my son's favorite author right now. Maybe even, could I video a message where you're like, 'Don't be homesick. It's all good.'?" He did.

Eva: That's so sweet.

Zibby: It was amazing. Vashti Harrison came over and drew a little monkey for son.

Eva: So cool.

Zibby: I know. I love all this stuff. I'm so into it. I have the coolest gig going here, I have to say. If you have a fangirl author syndrome as I do as well, this is the greatest thing.

Eva: I remember going to BookCon or BookExpo. For the people listening, it's like Comic-Con, but for books. I met Jodi Picoult who has written, as you know, just reems of books. I remember being like, "Oh, my god. How do you do it?" She was so nice. Now we're Instagram DM friends. It's always weird because I've had these books in my homes, apartments, etc. When you meet the person behind it, it's almost mythical. I am more starstruck by authors than I am by actors and actresses and models. I'm so used to meeting -- this sounds very -- I don't even know what it sounds like, but I'm very used to fashion and models and designers. When I meet an author, I'm like, oh, my god, it's Roz Chast. I can't talk to her, no, no. People will be like, "Go talk to her." I'm like, "I can't talk to her." I'm awkward. I don't know what to say. I am often like that. I met the author of The Day the Crayons Quit, which has literally been on The New York Times since like 1882. It's been on the New York Times children's books list forever. Oliver Jeffers is his name. I was super like, oh, my god. He's this cool guy with tattoos and a beard. He's Irish. I was like, I did not know these things about you. It's fun to put a face to a name on a spine.

Zibby: I could not agree more. Actually, I'm interviewing him next week.

Eva: Great. We share a book birthday, which is, not going to lie, slightly daunting. My new book, Roxy, comes out the same day. I was like, "What day does your book come out?" He was like, "October 6th." I was like, okay, my book is coming out the same day as literally one of the most celebrated children's book authors of this generation. Not that it's a competition. Little Roxy has spirit. She has glitter coming out of her unicorn horn. She has a tutu. She has a lot of things going for her.

Zibby: I actually think it's a good thing because people, if they're going to go get his book somewhere, your book will be out on the table if people go to a bookstore right there. It will bring them to shopping for children's books at that moment maybe more than on a random day.

Eva: Listen, your mouth to [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Zibby: We'll see what happens.

Eva: We'll see what happens. It would be amazing. I'm excited about this book. She's very sassy. I think that little kids will really like her.

Zibby: Absolutely. I actually have a two-book deal with Penguin Random House for children's books also. I have two coming out.

Eva: Wow. So exciting. When?

Zibby: Not forever. Probably sometime 2021/'22. I've already written it. It's a series about a girl named Princess Charming.

Eva: I love that. Children's books, I did not realize when I was going into the process that it is long and slow. People are like, it's a thirty-two-page book, why does it take so long? You have no idea. Literally, I'm talking with my editor about 2022. It also depends if it's a picture book. Yours sounds like a chapter book, maybe.

Zibby: No, it's a picture book.

Eva: Picture book, okay. It takes longer than you expect. Then all the details -- do you have the illustrator already?

Zibby: Yes, but she's working on something else. It's a whole thing.

Eva: It can take a while. Right now, because I'm sure by the time your book publishes, but the COVID delays have been significant. I know for, not this book -- the predecessor to 3 2 1 Awesome! is A is for Awesome. A is for Awesome was, and this is everyone's dream problem, but it was sold out nationally, literally. Even Amazon was like, out of stock. I was like, how does this happen? It took a long time even to get more because of the delays and because of COVID and the factories and what not.

Zibby: Sometimes being sold out makes it just on the top of everyone's list.

Eva: It's like a hot handbag that you just want because you can't get it.

Zibby: Exactly. Black market for A is for Awesome is starting. [laughs] I know we're almost out of time, but two more things. One, I wanted to know if you had advice for aspiring authors. I also have to just hear a little bit about what it's like being head of fashion at Instagram and what that even means. That is such a cool job.

Eva: Advice for aspiring authors, number one, as I was saying earlier, it's longer and more complex than you think. For children's book authors, I would try from two point of views. The six-year-old or seven-year-old that's hearing it or reading it themselves, is the language complex enough that's it's not boring but also easy enough that they can read themselves? I remember with my first Juno book I had the word cornucopia in it. It was a cornucopia of shoes. My editor and I tussled over it. I was like, "I love the word cornucopia." I want Ren, my daughter, to be like, "What's a cornucopia?" It's just a funny word. We ended up keeping it in. I love doing the reading. Reading it from the parents' perspective too, what pages are they going to open and it's going to be a huge surprise? What moments will have the best emotions? As one should, one should read a book in voices. This spread in Roxy, it's like, can I tell you a secret? Get a little closer. Closer. Too close. I don't know if it's because I have two young kids, but I literally read the books out loud as I'm designing them.

I also approach the children's book space probably in a little bit of an unconventional way. I work very closely with the art director to design it because I came from a magazine background where I would say, move the caption three millimeters over. I'm not into this type that we have on this cover story. Can we do something that's a serif? I think that it was an unconventional experience for the good people at Macmillan Kids, at Feiwel & Friends, my publisher, because most authors are a little bit more hands-off. I just couldn't be. Even down to the color of the sparkle, I looked at glitter swatches because I wanted something that would reflect it a certain way. The number of little glitter stars, sparkles, coming out of Roxy's horn, I was kind of obsessed with. Aspiring authors, honestly, this is stolen advice. Stephen King has an amazing book called On Writing. I put a Post-it note on one of the pages where he said that the first draft you write for yourself and the second draft you write for the reader. I think that's true as well. Just get that first draft out. Then you go back and look at it from a different perspective of the editor or the reader.

Then the second question was, what's it like working at Instagram? It's great except right now we don't have an office. I've been work-from-home since February because I was in Milan at Fashion Week in closed spaces with people who, now confirmed, are to be COVID super-spreaders. Got to love that. I came back from Milan. I used to go to the shows twice a year to build on the relationships that I have with, whether it's an editor, whether it's a model, whether it's a stylist, a designer, or a creative director. My role is basically to help these people storytell on Instagram and figure out their strategy on Instagram. It's been five years there. Now a lot of my job is based around a strategy of, what is next for fashion on Instagram? I very much think it's shopping on Instagram. Actually, there are some authors who are doing, the way people drop the new pair of off-white sneakers or the hot new hoodie from the brand -- well, Supreme isn't doing this yet. The way people drop clothing and do these limited edition launches, people are doing that with books now on Instagram. I remember a few months ago when we rolled out Instagram Live shopping so that you could be live on Instagram and buying a book.

There's these authors called the Compton Cowboys. It's literally these guys in Compton who created this horseback riding movement. They just ride around on horseback in Compton. Check it out. They have an amazing Instagram. It's meant to build community. It builds self-confidence for the young people who are learning how to ride horses. It's awesome. They did this Instagram Live ride-along where they were horseback riding through Compton talking about their book. I was watching this. I was like, this is brilliant. As an author, imagine doing an Instagram Live and talking through the details of every book where I can say, for this spread, it's a reference to Mean Girls. In this book, there's a secret clue that's related to Juno Valentine. There's a picture of a shoe that we put in. That is a shoe that we have in Juno Valentine. Imagine being able to do that while someone can just tap a button on Instagram and buy the book at the same time. It will probably be fully rolled out by the time your book comes out.

Zibby: I was like, did I miss that that's a feature? I want to do that right away.

Eva: You're with Random House or HarperCollins?

Zibby: For the children's book, Penguin Random House. I do tons of Instagram Lives with authors. I had a whole Instagram Live series during the pandemic. I would love to have them on and then be able to have them sell their book or I'd link to where you can buy the book.

Eva: It's a work in progress. That's the team that I spend a lot of time on right now just dreaming up, how we will -- I don't know about you, but I am often on Instagram; I'm like, oh, my god, I love the tote bag that Zibby's carrying. Where's that tote bag from? The current experience is, you tap the tote bag. You're like, okay, she tagged the brand. It's the brand, let's say, there's a brand called Kule, K-U-L-E. I'm like, ooh, it's so cute. Then I'll tap it and then I'll go to their -- it's just very [indiscernible]. I think that what people really want is to see it, tap it, and just buy it. If I see the pillow that you posted on your Instagram in your library, to be like, I love it, and just pick it up and buy it. That's what we're working on.

Zibby: That's so cool.

Eva: That's a full-time job, obviously. Right now, I'm working from home. If I have a fifteen-minute break between video conferences, I run the two blocks to Books of Wonder. I grab a stack of books. I personalize there literally three times a week. Then I'll run home with a stack of books. I'm signing these books. Then I run back or I'll give them to my husband and be like, "Go! Go!" I spend nights doing the book stuff. As a mom, you learn to divide your time very carefully. I think that's how I've been able to write six books, working on a seventh, by now while having an extremely full-time job.

Zibby: Wow. It's like what you said before. Didn't you say this before? Give a busy person something to do? No? Somebody else said that. Whatever, it's an expression, but it's true. [laughs]

Eva: You know what? I actually would take that expression to another level and say if you need something done, give it to a mom. It's not even a busy person. Give it to a mom. Literally, the mom's going to be like, I don't have patience for this. Boom, get it done. Or the mom will be like, that's not important. We're not going to do that.

Zibby: I love that. It's so true.

Eva: Do I need to label every folder for my child's Zoom school? No.

Zibby: Are you kidding? No. [laughs]

Eva: Someone asked me on my Instagram. Someone was like, "What are your top tips for organization of the child's work-from-home space?" I'm like, dude, literally, box of crayons, some paper, and the laptop. They were like, "How do you color-code the folders for her different assignments?" I'm like, I'm not doing that. Sorry. As long as we can do the assignments, that's all we need.

Zibby: Yeah. Maybe one giant binder for everything if we're lucky and I can find a whole binder.

Eva: My kids are younger. We went to The Container Store. They had these big bins in neon colors. I was like, "You get to choose a bin." It was like two dollars. I was like, "You can choose some stickers." She was like, "[gasp]." I was like, yes, school's so exciting on the computer. It's so great on the computer. You got to drum up that excitement and hype them up. Stickers and a big pink tub will do that.

Zibby: It'll do it. It'll do the trick. Amazing. Thank you, Eva. This was so fun. I really hope to meet you. I know we're both in the city here. Maybe when things get back to normal or something.

Eva: One day we shall meet in person. Maybe we'll even be four feet apart not six feet apart. So shocking.

Zibby: Dare to dream.

Eva: Dare to dream, exactly. It was so nice to meet you again.

Zibby: You too. Congratulations again on Roxy. Best of luck with the launch. I hope this helps you.

Eva: Anything book-wise as you embark on your own book journey, let me know, I'm happy to help.

Zibby: Thank you. I really appreciate it. Have a great day.

Eva: Bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Eva: See you later.

Brooke Hecker, LETTERS FROM MY TOOTH FAIRY

Zibby Owens: Welcome. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Brooke Hecker: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Zibby: I think you're the first -- is this true? I think you're probably the first school mom friend I've ever had on the podcast, which is really exciting.

Brooke: Oh, wow. That's amazing.

Zibby: I can't even think of any other mom friends who have written books. Can I? I don't know. Of course, something will come to me, but it's pretty awesome.

Brooke: Oh, yeah. There's a lot. Thank you so much.

Zibby: I just literally finished reading out loud your whole book to my two little ones. They were like, "Read it again. Read it again," which is always the best sign.

Brooke: That's good. It's a long one. Apologies in advance.

Zibby: No, it was great. Explain how you came up with the idea for your book and how it became a book, please.

Brooke: First, I don't know if you need me to do this, but this is it. It's called Letters from My Tooth Fairy. It's from real life. When my older daughter lost her first tooth, she got it knocked out at school. It was this big drama. The whole school knew about it. It was very exciting. She went to bed that night. Right before bed, it had been a long day, it was nine o'clock at night, and she said, "I wonder if I'm going to get Priya's tooth fairy," a school friend who lived around the corner. I said, "Probably. She lives around the corner." She said, "That's great because Priya gets a poem for her teeth." I was like, "Oh, great. That's great." [laughs] I spoke to Priya's tooth fairy who told me that it's a form letter from the internet. She gave it to me. I thought I just could probably whip something up really quick. I started writing poems for each tooth. They rhymed. They were very cutesy. It had to do with every single story of the tooth. Every tooth seemed to have a story. It also reflected a specific part of her life. After a bunch of these -- they were really cute. They were a big hit. I'd share them with friends and family. It was like, maybe this would make a cute book idea. That's what the book is. It's a collection of letters from the tooth fairy for every single tooth. You're really following throughout this girl's life. I like that it gave you a snapshoot of her life and the different parts of childhood, but through this very narrow and specific lens of the tooth fairy. That was how it came about.

Zibby: It was great. By the end when she says goodbye and all the teeth had fallen out, it was so sad. [laughs]

Brooke: It is sad.

Zibby: It's emotional because you go along the journey. It is sad when your kid loses their last tooth. It's the end of an era.

Brooke: Mine has not lost her last tooth. A lot of this is just made up. Thinking of these scenarios when your child is still young, it was kind of sad to go through and think about it. My younger one still doesn't like to read the last one because she gets really upset. It's very cute.

Zibby: That's so sweet. Each note was so clever. I was wondering as I was reading, did you have to do dental research? I don't know the names of all the different teeth. Did you have to do any sort of googling or dental digging to know the name of all the different teeth?

Brooke: I did do research. My cousin's an oral surgeon. I asked him just timeline, when you would lose teeth, when you would get braces, all that sort of stuff. I definitely did a little bit of research. Then the illustrator, who is not me, went ahead and did little diagrams of each thing. She did her own research separately because we worked completely in silos. It was very interesting to see what she came up with. We definitely did research. I asked certain questions. One question that my daughter asked me -- a lot of this was made up because I talk about teeth that she's never lost. Some of it is real-life questions. One of them that I got was, "How are my teeth going to fit? They're huge. The first two teeth that you get in the top are so big. How are they going to fit?" What we learned was that they're full size when they come in and your mouth grows around them. When they're ready, that's when your other teeth come out. Things like that, I learned as a forty-year old.

Zibby: The drawing of the walrus. [laughs]

Brooke: It was very cute.

Zibby: [Indiscernible/crosstalk] walrus forever. It is such a funny thought that your teeth are the same size forever and you grow around them like [indiscernible/crosstalk] or something.

Brooke: Yes, it's quite fascinating.

Zibby: What you should really do now that this is out is a companion journal/keepsake thing which has all [indiscernible/crosstalk] teeth and [indiscernible/crosstalk] the same way. Then it'll become a whole thing that you have to write your tooth story in these books.

Brooke: That's a really good idea.

Zibby: [Indiscernible/crosstalk] scrapbook. You could put the note from the tooth fairy. You could write your own story or drawing or something.

Brooke: That's a really cute idea. There's a lot of things that you can do. It came out last month right when COVID really hit. It was kind of hard to do all the things that we planned to do around it. It's an underserved market too. There's not a ton on the tooth fairy. I think there's so many fun things that you can do.

Zibby: The only one that I feel like we read a lot, or we used to read a lot, is Purplicious. Was it Purplicious?

Brooke: It was one of the Pinkalicious books. Yes, we have read that quite a lot.

Zibby: Right?

Brooke: Yes. [laughs]

Zibby: As I'm saying this, I'm realizing we haven't read any of those books in ages. Now we're onto Dog Man and I don't even know. Yes, those books, there was one with little notes. Aside from that, not too many.

Brooke: The tooth fairy wrote her back, but also the easter bunny.

Zibby: Oh, that’s right. You know, you're absolutely right. You're right, yep. You could even put a little map. I'm talking about your keepsake journal that now I want you to do. Then you could [indiscernible/laughter] out a map. My daughter just lost her tooth in Montana. Her first tooth, she lost in Mexico. This is making us sound very spoiled. I'm sorry. She was with her dad in Mexico and lost her first tooth and wrote a letter to the tooth fairy saying, "I know I'm in Mexico, but could you please leave my money in dollars and not in pesos?"

Brooke: That's so funny.

Zibby: Which the tooth fairy did. Dollars, I mean. Then the next tooth she lost at my brother's house in Montana. She was determined to write a note for a toy. I was like, "You don't get toys from the tooth fairy." "So-and-so in my class gets toys from the tooth fairy." I was like, "No, no, no. Tooth fairy only leaves money." [laughs] Anyway, it would be neat to see, even in your book, at school and all these different places.

Brooke: That's exactly part of the book. You have a different tooth fairy when you sleep at your grandma's house. We've had the same thing too. Hannah had lost a tooth at an airport. At LAX, she knocked a tooth out. Both my kids have knocked teeth out. She had an airport tooth fairy that followed her on the plane. It's true. People lose teeth everywhere. It's a good idea. We should do one branded for this.

Zibby: You could do it. It's easy.

Brooke: There's so much to do. There's nothing out there.

Zibby: It'll be like the baby book equivalent. Then pretty soon everyone will use it.

Brooke: It's a really good idea because right now we hide everything in a vase on a bookshelf.

Zibby: You don't have to save the tooth. You can still maintain the illusion. I'm sorry to waste our time talking about this.

Brooke: No, it's true.

Zibby: It's like you're telling your own story. The kids are basically writing their own story. Then they’ll have it to look back on. Then I wonder if there are other rites of passage that you could somehow brand. It's perfect, the twenty teeth. Why did no one think of this before?

Brooke: They really haven't. There's not a lot out there. It's twenty teeth across a very profound part of your life.

Zibby: Where there's so much change. [Indiscernible/crosstalk] so well with all the moving and the baby sister and all of it. I can't think of even anything comparable.

Brooke: It's a really good idea. We should do it.

Zibby: I don't have to do it. You do it. [laughter] You and your team, you take it up. Take it and run with it. So do you have plans for other books aside from the one I just suggested?

Brooke: Yeah. This is my first book. This was a big swing for me. I didn't ever think to do this. It came at a time when I was working freelance for years and years at a television network and sort of stalled out because I was working part time. I was like, what do I have to lose? It's an advanced age to start something new. It's a slow process. This is a very slow industry. It's hard for someone that works in a very fast-paced industry to slow it down and realize we're talking two years ahead right now. I started working on more now that this has actually happened. It's opened up a whole new world. With everything that's going on now and being -- I'm doing remote with the kids. Being home all the time and not having any sort of alone time, it's stalled me out a little. I've been working on something. It's been a lot of fun.

Zibby: Sometimes, though, when you have so much time, then there's more material to pull from.

Brooke: I do a lot more reading now that we have found time. I feel like that always helps too. Just reading more lets you write more.

Zibby: Every time I'm doing something, especially, I don't know why, with my little guy the most, I'm always like, "Oh, we should write a story about this. Oh, wouldn't it be funny if we wrote a story? That would be a really great idea for a book." I'm like, you know, there's going to come a time where you're gone, I'm sitting at my desk trying to think of ideas for picture books. Now they're coming so fast and furious that I don't even stop to take the time to write them down. I'm like, oh, I'll remember it. Meanwhile, now I'm talking you, I can't remember any of them, and it was like two days ago.

Brooke: I keep a notebook. It's true. You're reading these books every night now. Soon, you won't. Our girls are already doing it on their own. It's getting less and less of me reading to them. Now is the time.

Zibby: We just reorganized my little guy's books. He was like, "These are the books from when I was little," the little board books. When you read the other books, do you approach them differently now that you're writing one yourself? Are you looking more for pacing or structure or anything more analytical?

Brooke: I know what styles I like more. I tend to like things that rhyme or flow. All the Julia Donaldson books, they're fun to read. I think that kind of book is fun to write too. I like humor. There's humor. That's getting to be more and more prominent in the marketplace too, which is really fun. We laugh so much with books nowadays. Some of my favorites are Grumpy Monkey. I don't know if you guys have that one.

Zibby: Yes, we have Grumpy Monkey.

Brooke: Every time, it cracks me up when the vulture suggests eating dead meat. I don't know why. I've definitely found the things that I like more to read. That's part of the journey too, just figuring out what you like.

Zibby: It's nice because for so long everything is centered around the kids. Will the kids like this book? Let me read the kids a story. Starting with Go the F to Sleep, I feel like that's when picture books were like, wait, what? We can do this?

Brooke: We can be funny too?

Zibby: Maybe there's another way to use these pages. Yes, I feel like the tired parents who are reading the picture books are often looking for something funny.

Brooke: Something funny and easy to read that flows off the tongue, those are all things I've come to appreciate. Sometimes your throat hurts at the end of the third story that you've read.

Zibby: Yes. Those five-minute stories together, it's like six hours. It feels like a hundred hours. Having successfully sold and had this book come out and everything, what advice could you give both on the writing process and the publishing process aside from warning that it's slow?

Brooke: My only advice could be for someone just starting out because this is me and I'm just starting out. There was two lessons that I probably learned the most. One was, rejection was not something that I'd ever had to experience because I worked in a corporate world. That's just not the way it worked. You did your work. You moved up. Everything was fine. We went out with this book first, and it rhymed. My letters had rhymed. The book rhymed. I absolutely loved it. My agent had told me, "Rhymes don't sell as well. Would you consider rewriting the whole thing in prose?" I was like, "Well, I love it. Can we try it first like this?" She tried it. It got rejected across the board, and not a very quick one, but very slow because everything is very slow in publishing. It was a very slow trickle in to get rejected. It was the first time in my life I had been told no. I just assumed, well, I tried. I guess it's just not going to happen. My agent was like, "No, no, no. Then you go out to the next batch of people," or whatever. I rewrote it. We went out with it again. When it sold, it was a very good lesson. I was ready to just walk away and be like, I tried something new and it didn't work.

That was the number-one thing for someone that's completely out of the industry to get used to because that's something that is just going to happen. It's very hard to get rejected and have that confidence in yourself with no basis, basically, to say that I'm going to keep trying and I believe in myself. That was a really good lesson. I think that was a good lesson for my kids to see happen. That was just very foreign to us in the work that my husband and I do anyway. It wasn't part of our everyday. The other thing is just the patience. It takes a long time. It's all self-discipline, which you know. We have a mutual friend. She writes. She churns out five, six books a year. That's because she sits in her office and has the time and dedicates it and gets it all done. Not a lot of people work that way. That's been a lesson too, of trying to get the self-discipline to do something where you're accountable for yourself. It's all about you. Those are the two things that I've learned, to really set aside the time and to believe in myself instead of what three editors might have said.

Zibby: You never know what is going on with those editors, what else they have in their -- they might even have liked it and thought it was funny, but they have other books or their quota's met or whatever. You don't know.

Brooke: Exactly. It was just such a foreign concept. My first instinct was like, she said no and she's an expert, so that means that I guess I tried. Especially for someone who's starting this in midlife, it's a whole new way to operate.

Zibby: When you said that earlier, I was like, I don't think it's late at all. I don't know how old you are, but I'm forty-four. I feel like most of the people I talk to are not -- I don't know. I feel like your forties are somehow the best time ever to write books, I swear.

Brooke: Really? Well, because you have more experience. You're right. You have more life experience.

Zibby: You have enough experience. You're in it in so many levels. There's so much emotion in your forties. You don't have to be parenting, but you're usually caretaking either your parents or friends or kids or something. You've had loss. You've had caretaking. You've had love. I'm picturing a mixing bowl in the kitchen. You've had enough ingredients thrown in that you can bake something that tastes a little better than maybe the really pretty cake from your twenties, but it didn't actually taste that good. You know what I mean?

Brooke: You're absolutely right. You are. I think it's just, I come from an industry where, I'm forty-two, when you're in your forties, you're kind of past the prime a little bit, unfortunately, or you're at a really successful level and why would you start something new? To try something new, of course you can. Of course, you can do something new and different, but it's a big step.

Zibby: Writing, it's like an outgrowth of you. I know it is something new, but it's not like you're trying to get into mortgage-backed securities or something. It's a creative expression of who you are in some way. The more you define who you are as a person, the clearer your output becomes.

Brooke: A hundred percent. It was a good thing to learn because obviously I was wrong.

Zibby: [laughs] I don't mean to say you're wrong. I'm saying this to try to be more encouraging than not. It's never too late.

Brooke: No, it's not.

Zibby: A memoir I'm about to read by someone who's seventy, and I can't wait to read it because I'm like, this is an interesting point of view. How neat is that? It's just never too late.

Brooke: You're right. It is never too late, but I had to learn that, definitely, for myself.

Zibby: This was so much fun. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for the great new book for the repertoire. [Indiscernible/crosstalk] enough not to feel babyish, but still a picture book. It's perfect. I hope to see you back at school.

Brooke: I know. I can't wait. I hope so too. Fingers crossed.

Zibby: Fingers crossed. Bye.

Brooke: Bye.

Alyssa Milano, PROJECT CLASS PRESIDENT

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

Alyssa Milano: I am so excited to be with you. I totally agree. We don't have time to read books.

Zibby: Right? It's impossible.

Alyssa: It really is. It makes me super sad because I love to read. Then again, something to look forward to once the kids are big and grown.

Zibby: Exactly. That's why I do this podcast, so we can get glimpses of different books and hear more about it. Then people will be so convinced that they have to run out and buy the book and find time.

Alyssa: I love it.

Zibby: Thanks. Speaking of books, your middle-grade novel about Hope running for president is so timely given the upcoming election and everything else. Your series is fantastic. Tell me about starting the series in general and then this particular book in it.

Alyssa: It's actually a pretty amazing story. I became friends with our illustrator first. His name is Eric Keyes. He's a brilliant illustrator. He's also the character designer for The Simpsons. I DMed him once because I was starting my Patriot Not Partisan website, which is a website filled with all essays from both sides of the political spectrum. I asked if he had any political art that he wanted to share. He had this character that he designed that was this little girl, she was more like toddler age, marching with a bullhorn and doing really incredible things. I said, "Oh, my god, who is that? What are you doing with her?" He said, "Nothing, really. You can do whatever." I said, "Can we try to sell a children's book using her?" He said, "Yes, let's do that." I created this whole character. He's like, "What would her name be?" I said, "Hope. Obviously, her name is Hope," and had this whole story idea in my head. We were able to sell the idea to Scholastic as a series. The one that just came out is book three of four. I just love this character so, so much. She was originally a toddler. I was like, "Are we going to do a picture book?"

I left it up to Scholastic to give me some kind of direction because there is no one better in the children's book genre and world as far as publishing. They said something which I found was really interesting which was that middle school is such a rough time and rough transition for kids. It's really this untapped market because not a lot of people are writing books specifically for that age range when there are such specific issues that that age range goes through. I thought it was a perfect idea to age her up a little bit because when you look at -- I have two kids. I have a nine-year-old and a six-year-old, a boy and a girl. The thing that's been so interesting in raising them is that they innately have this sense of empathy and compassion and wanting to help and wanting to do good. I was just always so curious about, when does that go away? Obviously, the teenage years, it becomes a lot more self-consumed. I think it goes away around middle school because their entire life changes. It is such a rough time for kids. They're usually in a new school. They have to make new friends. They're going through puberty. Their bodies are changing. They're becoming more self-conscious and self-aware. The thought was, how can I create this character that combines all the things that children go through in middle school personally but still cultivates what they naturally have inside of them as far as wanting to be helpful and to do good and to change the world?

That's how Hope was born. I found this amazing cowriter, her name is Debbie Rigaud, who's just been awesome and fearless and such an incredible partner to have. The way I describe her is she wants to change the world, but she has to go through middle school first. The first book was all about Hope finding her voice and using it. That can sometimes be super uncomfortable but a necessity. Then the second book, Hope: Project Animal Shelter, is about Hope becoming a community organizer in raising money to keep her local animal shelter open. It's really cute. The illustrations are amazing. This one's called Hope: Project Class President. Basically, we wanted to give kids a real sense of a civic class, almost, embedded in this fun story of Hope running for class president. Kids will learn terminology like town halls and debates and canvasing and things that we are hearing a lot about now when you turn on the news with the election coming up. It's been a really rewarding experience, one that I am super proud of. Just to have something that I'm able to give my kids and say, "This is for you and your friends," has been really, really great.

Zibby: That's amazing. I have to say, not all young kids are empathic.

Alyssa: They aren't?

Zibby: I don't think they all -- I've met some...

Alyssa: Really?

Zibby: Yeah. [laughs]

Alyssa: I don't know. My kids just came out very concerned and empathetic. When I think about what happens when one baby cries and then another baby cries, to me, that's empathy. That's feeling a shift in the environment that causes some kind of emotion. I think all kids sort of have that a little bit.

Zibby: Maybe I was just thinking of some of the meaner kids who we've crossed paths with.

Alyssa: I think those are the kids that never had their compassion nurtured at all and is probably lacking that in other areas of their lives, not just in taking care of other people, but how people treat them.

Zibby: I totally agree. You're absolutely right. I have four kids. My oldest kids are twins. They're thirteen. We are in the middle school years as we speak. I'm only a couple years ahead of you. I have to say that, at least in my case, I feel like the empathy doesn't totally go away. Nothing happens overnight, but it is so essential at this time to get books like yours and show leadership and kindness and how you can help and just get out of your own bubble of worries into the world, which, frankly, a lot of adults could use as well.

Alyssa: Yes. Isn't that the truth? Yes, for sure. I really wanted to nurture the beauty that I saw in my kids. It's so amazing that they always know how to reduce something that seems so complex to its most basic emotional place. That goes for political issues too. The way in which their minds think about the issues has nothing to do partisanship politics. It has to do with humanity and being a good person. I think that it's very interesting to watch them process what's happening right now. I think for a lot of parents it's very interesting to try to figure out how much to tell their children about what's happening and in what way to say it. It's very hard.

Zibby: It is a very loaded time to be a parent.

Alyssa: It really is. Then you have the pandemic. It's hard enough being a parent and knowing that you're making the right decisions with your kids. Then you add the pandemic part on top of it. It's like, I don't know, is this going to affect them for the rest of their lives? Are they going to want to wash down packages forever? Are they going to grow to be neurotic or more neurotic or have worse anxiety than they would've normally had? There's just so much to it. Is it bad that I'm keeping them home from school and homeschooling them even though there are kids in their class? Is it worse if they get sick? It just feels really big. It all felt big before.

Zibby: That is the similar reel I have playing in my head. The only thing I have turned to, and you're probably the same way, is you just have to listen deep down, what you feel is right. This isn't about, should my kid be on travel soccer? Things that seemed like big deals before, now it's like, all right, this is what my comfort level is, and I just have to go with it because I've got nothing else to go on.

Alyssa: Right. I did not have the easiest childhood being a working child at the age of seven. I always fall back on, I was okay, and the only reason why I'm okay now is because I have parents who loved me. It was so important for them to make me feel safe and loved. I feel like that's the biggest part of this. As long as we can continue to allow our children to feel safe and loved, they're going to be okay no matter what.

Zibby: Now that you have kids of your own, do you look back on that period of time any differently than when you were going through it? Do you think, how was I able to do it? How could I pull it off? Any regrets?

Alyssa: My son is nine. In one year from my son's age now was the age when I shot the Who's the Boss? pilot. I look at him and I'm like, what in the world? How did I ever -- it is really crazy that we expect kids to be able to perform for -- I was on that show for eight years. It was such a big part of my life, but it was hard. It was hard. I was working and going to school and trying to be a good daughter and friend and sibling. It was definitely a thing. My point is just that I think children are incredibly resilient as long as they feel loved and safe.

Zibby: Very true. I love how you even give role models in the current Hope book of how leadership can change institutions. Even something as simple as changing the entrance of a building and making people feel special with a VIP sixth-grade walkway and all these little things that she did, and even helping her friend and saying, "You know what, you be my campaign manager," and just all these she does to bring everybody together, it's great to see a girl doing that, honestly. It's just nice to have such a great role model in a middle-grade book. That's all.

Alyssa: Often, we teach our young girls about leadership through historic women or celebrity women. To be able to create a character who was a peer of young children who could show leadership qualities and not be those terms that we seem to use when girls show leadership qualities like bossy or snobby or self-centered, but to really give her this warm, beautiful strength and to lead from a place of service, which is the thing that I think women do incredibly well -- we lead from a very different place. I feel like men lead, often, from a place of wanting something like power or notoriety or fame or money. I think as women, when we're at our best and our strongest, we're leading from a place of service. What does that look like in middle school? Creating an entrance specially for the sixth graders. It's been really rewarding working on that project.

Zibby: Did you ever think you were going to write books for kids? Has that been a goal of yours, or it just happened this way?

Alyssa: Once I had my own kids and I saw what was out there -- there are some beautiful children's books, but there's also some really silly children's books. For me, wanting to contribute to that place was important, especially since I had -- when you have kids, all of a sudden you're like, I'll do an animated movie and play a squishy or whatever, because you just want your kids to like what you're doing. I'm really happy. Just the fact that I get to dedicate books to my children and my nieces and nephews is pretty cool.

Zibby: Tell me just a little about how all of your activism plays into this. You're doing so many different things. You're saving the world here from Time's Up to UNICEF to directing and acting and writing and your kids. I know we're all busy, but I think that seems like a particularly heavy load to bear.

Alyssa: I realized that this idea of women having it all is kind of something that we are made to feel like we need to do. Once I put the pressure off of me, that's when everything fell into place. I realized that there is no such thing as balance. It does not exist. The most important thing we can do as moms and women is do the things we love, the things that make us feel fulfilled, and be really present and in the moment when we do those things. When I'm with my children, I am concentrated on being the best mother I could possibly be. When I'm writing whatever, I'm concentrated in that moment in writing. When I'm being interviewed, I concentrate on that moment. I found that that is the best way to manage the chaos of it all. It's a lot of chaos. It really is. I think every mom feels it at some point where they just feel overwhelmed. It's six PM, they're like, I'm going to go lay down by myself. [laughter] We just need that decompression. I don't believe in balance. I don't think it exists. I think you just have to manage your time well and in a way where you are in the moment in every moment.

Zibby: That's great advice. I'm envying the moms who can take a nap at six o'clock. That's not happening in my house.

Alyssa: That wouldn't be a nap. That would be going to sleep at six o'clock.

Zibby: Oh, going to bed for the night. Okay, yes.

Alyssa: For the entire night. You're dealing with dinner, honey. I'm going to go do whatever I have to do, whether that means be on the treadmill and take a hot shower and get into bed early, whatever that means. I really try. I think it's so important that we all try to have those moments.

Zibby: I just started this new Instagram community and a second podcast called "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight" because I felt like so many people, especially with the pandemic, have just felt like things have gotten a little out of control.

Alyssa: Oh, yeah.

Zibby: I feel like I hear all day now just how hard it is to even get in a walk or a workout or whatever just to stay --

Alyssa: -- I bought one of those little recumbent bikes that I can put under my desk. When I have five minutes, I'll just do that or kick the soccer ball around with the kids or jump in the trampoline, something that at least gets my heart rate up. I try once a day, but it's hard.

Zibby: It is hard. The trampoline is a hidden gem. That's the best.

Alyssa: I don't know what it is about the pandemic. I was sick. I had COVID in March and April. I have a lot of the long-hauler symptoms, just tired all the time. Even my friends that haven't had or didn't have COVID are just tired all the time. I think that's there something about -- it's almost like our bodies just go into protection/hibernation mode.

Zibby: Yes. When an entire planet is fearing for their lives, something happens.

Alyssa: Like a collective worry or a collective pain.

Zibby: I'm sorry about your experience. I know I read about that. Are you okay now?

Alyssa: I still have symptoms. I'll be totally fine some days. I don't have an autoimmune thing that I can compare this to, but it feels like -- you know how people who have Lupus or MS, they’ll talk about flare-ups? They’ll be okay some days. Then they’ll have flare-ups. That's what this is like. I'm totally fine, feel strong, have energy on some days. Then other days, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, joint aches and pains. I don't know one person who has recovered from this that has been totally fine. I have one friend who felt good. Then they found a blood clot in his leg. It seems like nobody just gets the acute sickness and then is out of this. The doctors don't know. I got this new symptom a little while ago, not burning palms, but kind of a bubbly under my skin feeling. I called my doctor. I was like, "This can't still be new --" He said, "Yeah, that's probably your small blood vessels leaking." I'm like, "Does that go away?" He said, "Well, we'll see." We'll see? That's it? That's all I get?

Zibby: My mother-in-law was very, very ill with COVID and ended up passing away. For six weeks we were --

Alyssa: -- I'm so sorry.

Zibby: I know. It was awful. I was on the phone with doctors all the time. We would say things like, "What comes next? What do you think?" When the doctors are even like, "We're not sure," what else can you do? We don't know. My whole life, you're brought up that the doctors know most of the answers. There are some things that are incurable, but for the most part, they’ve got it under control.

Alyssa: Or that there's at least some article somewhere that they could go back and refer to that will tell you how to deal with respiratory viral infection. This was so, so new and so raw. I'm so sorry that you were affected that closely. That is brutal.

Zibby: Thank you. I'm sorry you were, and so many other people. It's insane. It's everywhere you turn. Anyway, on to happier things. Back to Hope, are you expanding the series? Do you have other big projects in the works? Are you doing more TV/movie stuff? What's on the next six months for you?

Alyssa: The election is first and foremost. We just announced a Who's the Boss? sequel.

Zibby: Oh, that's right. Yes, I saw that.

Alyssa: Which I'll be doing with Tony, which will be really, really, really fun and exciting. We don't know anything about it yet except that he's probably going to come visit Sam for a weekend and never leave. Then the chaos will ensue of him taking care of my kids. Then the holidays will come up. Then I'm not sure, really. I'm in the process of writing a book of essays right now. I'm super excited about that. I'm hoping to take a little bit of a vacation and just rest for a little bit. My idea of resting is just not doing things back to back to back every day, but have a half a day where I get to paint or do something that I'm not trying to crank out. That's it. We're all just playing it by ear right now. There's people on sets. They're all masked up and with shields and these little dressing room pods. Not only does it not look fun to go back to work on a set right now, but also, it looks like it would totally make me anxious because there's a constant reminder that this thing is in the air just by the way in which you have to function for twelve hours a day. Being home, we could sort of isolate ourselves. We're so adaptable that we can, I feel like, at least shut off what's happening on the outside a little bit. If you're on a set for twelve hours and seeing how everybody has to sanitize and put on protective gear, I think that would really mess with my anxiety.

Zibby: Yeah, in your face.

Alyssa: There's no avoiding that.

Zibby: I feel like even just to go to a doctor's office -- I had to go to some building today. I'm in New York City. First, we walked in. Then I had to go to a computer. Then I had to get my temperature screened. Then we had to wash our hands. I kind of wasn't emotionally prepared for that. It's everything, everyday life. It's just a bit crazy. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors or just aspiring creative people? You're an artist in a lot of different ways from acting -- what advice would you have?

Alyssa: I think to nurture your creativity is important not only to keep it alive, but also to spark other ways in which you can be creative. It feeds off each other, I feel like. I just started, during the quarantine, doing watercolor painting. It's amazing how just sitting down for twenty minutes in the evening and really being mindful and doing something that is so fluid, so unforgiving can spark ideas about an essay I want to write. I really think creativity breeds more creativity. You don't have to do just that one thing that you're think you're creative at. You can start something new. It will still feed the thing that you think that you're good at. Just keep doing it. Keep forcing yourself to sit down and have that time to allow that part of your brain to work. At least for me, I know that different parts of my brain will supersede my creativity sometimes. I have to really slow it down and try to find that again. Sometimes that means listening to great music. Sometimes it means watching a movie that I love. Also, the idea that there's beauty in everything, that idea that there's this perfect system that's at work here, there's something about just that mindset that lends itself to more creative thinking, thinking outside of the box, thinking in new ways how to share a part of yourself. Ultimately, that's what art should be, sharing who you are. Hopefully, that resonates. It can resonate in different ways for different people.

Zibby: Very true. Thank you. Thanks for sharing this time with me and for using this limited focus time here.

Alyssa: Of course. Thank you for allowing me a chance to be on your podcast.

Zibby: Of course. I hope you feel better and that all the symptoms go away and that your kids keep loving your books. I think that's the coolest.

Alyssa: Thank you. Be well.

Zibby: You too. Buh-bye.

Alyssa: Bye.

Kwame Mbalia, TRISTAN STRONG DESTROYS THE WORLD

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

Kwame Mbalia: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Zibby: Your latest book, Tristan Strong, part two essentially, Tristan Strong Destroys the Universe, follows the award-winning first book, Tristan Strong Punches the Sky. Did I get that right? Yes? Tell me about this series. Tell me how you started it. Tell me about why this happens in the second book. Just give me the whole backstory of this phenomenal series.

Kwame: The Tristan Strong series, wow, it's something that I've always wanted to create and be a part of, this idea of bringing forward these characters and stories that I listened to and that I read growing up as a child, bringing them forward for a new generation of young readers, but also for older readers who might not have had a chance to be exposed to the same material that I did. I love this idea of contemporary fantasy, this idea of magic existing in the time right now because it's almost like an escape. We get to imagine. We get to enter this different world, this different realm through the eyes of a middle school student. We all know that the world expands for us when we're in middle school. What more perfect hero could we have than a middle school student who travels through this fantastic realm and learns of his own magical powers?

Zibby: Totally. I have two middle schoolers. My son in particular, this is right up his alley. He will be happy when I give him this whole series. I read, also, your Last Gate of the Emperor, which is coming out in May of 2021.

Kwame: That it is.

Zibby: I got a sneak peek. I loved how it was described as an Afrofuturist journey to a galaxy far away. This whole theme running through all your books is sort of taking -- maybe I should ask you. What do you think the theme is coursing through all your books? before I opine on it myself.

Kwame: I am fascinated and enthralled with this idea of exploring non-Western fantasy and science fiction, building magic system, and imagining scientific innovations for future worlds through the eyes of African and African Americans. It's a way for me to explore and learn more about my own culture while also sharing it with the greater world, while also just having fun and telling jokes and letting my immature sense of humor shine throughout the tales.

Zibby: I saw in an interview with you did with Rick Riordan Presents, who's your publisher, that your parents used to tell you these types of stories all the time, which is so nice. Tell me about more of the African folklore that you grew up with.

Kwame: They did a fantastic job in scouring this country, and when they traveled to Africa, scouring bookstores over there, looking for books that centered on the African and the African American character. I always tell this story. One of the reasons why I wanted to include and talk about Anansi, the spider, the trickster god, is that when we were growing up, me and my siblings -- there were four of us. We were sharing a bedroom. If you've ever had to put multiple children to bed at the same time, it can be chaos. One of the ways they got us to calm down is they would play cassettes of the Anansi tales. We would fall asleep listening to Anansi trick or be tricked in all of his different stories. It holds a special place in my heart and one reason why I wanted to make Anansi be such a central figure in the Tristan tales.

Zibby: Wow. Tell me about growing up more. That sounds interesting, four kids in one room. I have four kids in my house, and I can barely do it. What was it like being so close with your siblings like that, not having any personal space? Did that make you want to turn to books for an outlet that you could have yourself? What was it like?

Kwame: I don't think you really think too much about it when you're younger. When you're younger, it's just like, hey, I have playmates. They're here all the time. As you enter middle school and high school, yes, you definitely want your space. For me, one thing special that I can remember is -- I'm the second oldest of the four that we shared the room. The younger two, they would fall asleep. It would be me and my older brother. We were a little older. We're not ready for bed yet. We would play this game called Brothers. Basically, it's a storytelling game. We would tell the story, but at the beginning of the story you have to choose, what animal friends do you have? What kind of cars do you have? You're setting up the setting, the world building for this story. It got to the point, that's how we counted sheep. We never actually got to the point of telling a story. We would just talk to each other about, what is this story about? Who's in the story? What type of cool moves and stuff will we do? That is one of the most special memories that I have, is falling asleep to this idea of telling a story.

Zibby: Then were you a big reader growing up?

Kwame: Oh, my goodness, I was a voracious reader growing up. My parents heavily encouraged it. My mother, what she would do is every Friday, she would take us to the library. She said you could check out as many books as you want to read. You just have to carry them and be responsible for them. Of course, I'm walking out carrying bundles of books. No matter what, Sunday or Monday, all of the books would be read. I would be anxiously waiting for the next Friday to come around. What's hilarious is that my parents, they had this little thing that they would do for me and my older brother. I don't want to call it tricking us, but to encourage us. They would say, "It's quiet time. It's nap time. You can either take a nap or read a book, one of the two things." I'm seven, eight years old. I'm like, I'm going to read a book. I'm not going to take no nap. Now it's all I can do. I just want to read. I want to read. I want to read.

Zibby: I thought you were going to say all you want to do is take a nap.

Kwame: That too now. Now I miss those nap times. I really regret not taking advantage of them.

Zibby: Me too. How old are your kids?

Kwame: They are twelve, nine, five, and a four-month-old. Now I'm really regretting not taking advantage of that nap when I had the chance.

Zibby: Are you already reading to them all the time and trying to encourage this in them? How is that going?

Kwame: Absolutely. For us, books have been the one thing where it's like, it's not that we don't say no, but it's like, all right, you want a book, let's get you a book. We encourage reading and literacy from a young age. Even my five-year-old who's learning to read, going through the motions and the act of opening a picture book and telling her own stories as she interprets the pictures, that's an act of learning to read. That's an act of reading. It's something that we've always encouraged. My nine-year-old is reading my book, too, right now and telling me what her favorite parts are, which is cool. It's fun. Seeing her laugh at some of the things that I laughed at while I wrote the book, it's fun. It's rewarding in a way.

Zibby: Tell me about how you got into writing books to begin with. You loved to read as a kid. You found your place in the world in middle school realizing what was going on around you. Then what happened?

Kwame: I've always also been a writer. The difference is, I didn't write for others. I wrote for myself. Writing was, for me, an act of sharing and expressing my emotions that I may have not felt comfortable talking about. I would just put them in a little story with a little character who was definitely not me. I've always been a writer, but it's only, I would say, within the past fix, six, or seven years that I've thought or dreamed about becoming an author. That's because I received encouragement. I received feedback from people who said, "Hey, some of this stuff that you write is really good. Have you ever thought about becoming an author or publishing it and sending it out?" I hadn’t until that point. That's when I really began to think that maybe this could be a career for me. I never dreamed it would be my only career because I'm a scientist. I went to school for biology, chemistry. I worked in the sciences after I graduated. It was always like, this is a hobby. I can make a little money from it. Now it's a career which just goes to show you that you never know where you're going to end up in life and to never self-reject, never gatekeep yourself out of trying and doing something.

Zibby: I read you were a pharmaceutical metrologist. What does that even mean?

Kwame: Metrology is just the calibration of instruments. Basically, I would travel around to different people who manufacture drugs, Tylenol, Advil, inhalers, and stuff like that. One of my kids has asthma. I would travel around and I would make sure that the instruments that they use to manufacturer the medicine worked right. The box says you're taking five hundred milligrams of ibuprofen, and then you're only taking four hundred and you're wondering why the pain isn't going away. It's because maybe the instruments weren’t working right. That's what I did. I traveled around. I loved it. It was a great job. I was sad to leave it, but I'm happy to say that I've been able to incorporate a lot of the characters that I met along the way, a lot of the dialogue that I had, the conversation, and a lot of the settings into my own books and stories.

Zibby: Then how did you end up writing the first best-selling Tristan Strong? How did that happen? Then what was it like when you found out that it was such a success?

Kwame: We learned that Rick Riordan and Rick Riordan Presents, the imprint, were looking for African American stories, African American storytellers. It was over the winter break, for five to seven days, I sat down and I wrote the opening three chapters and then a synopsis of what would become Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky. They came back immediately. They said they loved it. I had written the now infamous Gum Baby scene where Gum Baby breaks in and tries to steal Tristan's journal. Gum Baby was a fan favorite. From the very onset, from the very beginning, there was truly something special about these two characters and the way they interacted throughout the story. Disney and Rick Riordan Presents, they loved it. They said, "We want you to be a part of the imprint." I said, yay!

Zibby: [laughs] That's amazing, oh, my gosh. What's your process like when you're working? Do you work right there where I'm seeing you? Where do you like to work? How long does each book take and all that good stuff?

Kwame: Just to let you know that I have a four-month-old, so I write in fits and spurts. My wife, she's gone to back to work. A lot of the times, we'll pass the baby back and forth. We'll take care of him. She's watching him right now. I'll watch it when she gets on her meetings. It's really about, right now, taking advantage of time when it becomes available. Sometimes that might mean writing one hundred to two hundred words. Sometimes it's one AM in the morning and I'm writing two to three chapters. You never know. There is no schedule right now. It's take advantage of what you have and try to create the final installment in that story and do the best job that I can with it.

Zibby: I feel like the combination of pandemic plus infant must just be -- I don't know how you get anything done.

Kwame: It's fine. I love it. It's a dream. That's sarcasm.

Zibby: Oh, okay. I'm like, we're no longer friends here. No, no, no. [laughs]

Kwame: It's difficult. There was a definitely a period of time there, a month or so, where I absolutely struggled. I maybe wrote all of a chapter throughout that whole month because it was so difficult. A lot of creative people were dealing with that at the time, quarantine, being restricted, having to adapt to new ways of handling life both professionally and personally. Thankfully, we're out of -- I shouldn't say we're out of it, but I've become accustomed to it, working around it. We're going to get this story done. We are going to get it finished one way or another.

Zibby: I heard that you are hard at work on the next book in the series. True? Finished?

Kwame: No, not finished. I'm so close. I'm so close. That last five percent is going to take the most time because you're wrapping up a series. You're putting a stamp and concluding a character's journey and their growth. You want to do it in a way that closes the door on that story arc, but it doesn't close the door on the world. You can still imagine them having adventures and going off. There's no finality. It's the end for now...

Zibby: Is this going to be a movie? You mentioned Disney earlier.

Kwame: Rick Riordan Presents is an imprint of the Disney Books Collection. I don't think there's any author out there who doesn't want their story to become a movie. I'm really, really, really hopeful that it will be. It's just, hey, we need more readers. We need more fans to shout about it and to draw attention to it. The more you read and share and the more people like you have me on to talk about it, the more the chance there will be that it'll be a movie.

Zibby: Good. I'm glad I could play a tiny piece in that. When it comes out, I will be like, that's all me. That was because of my interview right there. [laughs] What advice do you have to aspiring authors?

Kwame: I mentioned it a little bit in the beginning. What I would say is that as writers, you will meet so many different what we call gatekeepers, the people who will either allow your work through to the next level, to the next rung in publishing, or will reject it and send it back. You will meet so many of those gatekeepers who control access. The very first gatekeeper you will meet will be yourself. You cannot self-reject. You cannot gatekeep yourself. You cannot say, my story isn't good enough to go here or my writing isn't great enough to do this. You have to be your own biggest fan, promoter, publicist, and really energize yourself. Don't self-reject. Submit your work. Submit, submit, submit. You say yes even if you think everyone else will say no. You say yes.

Zibby: Okay, we're saying yes. Just out of curiosity, what ended up happening to your other three siblings? Are any of them authors? What did they end up doing? Are you guys still close?

Kwame: We're still close. My sister just recently finished -- she got her doctorate. She's Dr. Mbalia. She's the third Dr. Mbalia of the family after my parents. It's really cool. She's definitely an inspiration. My brother is off doing amazing things. I don't even know what he does. We look at pharmaceutical metrologist. He worked with the NOAA, the National Oceanography Association of Americas. He's just off doing wonderful things. Then my other brother is a teacher. Coming from a family of educators -- both my parents were professors. My wife started off as a kindergarten teacher. As someone who interacts with teachers on a daily basis as an author, teachers get so little credit for what they're doing both especially right now during this pandemic and just in general. My siblings are off being awesome. I am out here just writing them into books and making fun of them.

Zibby: That's amazing. You can write my son's teacher in, my five-year-old son. We had curriculum night last night. His teacher said that she has now gotten certified in both sky diving and scuba diving. You would never know from looking at her. I felt like that was a James Bond story in the making.

Kwame: So she just teaches -- to go from --

Zibby: -- I don't know if it's the same day, but she does them both now regularly.

Kwame: That's fantastic. I will live vicariously through your son's teacher.

Zibby: Thank goodness for summer break for the teachers. Although, not these days. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I'm so glad I could help this become a movie. [laughter] You will be entertaining my son at boarding school very shortly when I send him all this. Have a great day. Thanks so much for coming on.

Kwame: Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. I really appreciate it. This has been a blast.

Zibby: Good. Have a great day. Buh-bye.

Kwame: Bye.

Kathie Lee Gifford, HELLO LITTLE DREAMER

Kathie Lee Gifford: Thank you for having me today.

Zibby Owens: Thanks for coming on. I'm so excited to talk to you about your many exciting projects you have going on starting with Hello, Little Dreamer which I read out loud to my two littlest kids. They just loved it. Thank you for that entertainment for my family.

Kathie Lee: I am so happy to hear that. It's been a long time since I had little ones, but I'm still a little kid at heart. I'm grateful to hear that from you because that's the whole point. We wait too long with our children to instill extraordinarily important values, the most important things, the most important truths. We wait too long. Frank and I rarely fought over things. The one thing we disagreed on was how long we should wait for our little ones to learn how to say please and thank you and I love you and I'm sorry and all those things that you're going to need in life many times. He'd say, "Kathie, he's only two. Cody's two." I'd say, "Yeah, and pretty soon he'll be twelve and it'll be too late." [laughs]

Zibby: I know. That's the thing.

Kathie Lee: Now I have the most polite children. Cassidy was terrible because she just took it so to heart. I'd say to both of them, "You say please or you do not get it. You say thank you or I take it back. Then we start all over again." They believed me. Cass was better at it. Cody was really good. In the middle of the night when he would go potty, I didn't care if he hit the toilet or not. I just wanted him to say thank you after I got back with him. [laughter] He'd wake up and he'd go, "Mommy, potty peas. Potty peas." Potty please. I'd go, "Yes, I gotcha." Then I'd put him back to sleep. He'd go, "Thank you. Thank you." Frank came to believe that it was true, but Cassidy took it way further than that. We'd be a restaurant or something. She’d give her order. She’d go, "Thank you." The waitress wouldn't respond, or the waiter. Cassidy would go, "Thank you." She’d just be yelling it until finally the waiter or waitress, they'd go, "You're welcome, kid. Geesh." Or they'd walk away and Cassidy would look at me and go, "They didn't say you're welcome." She was insane about it. I guess I did go a little overboard.

Zibby: No, at least you did your job well. Check-plus on that.

Kathie Lee: I was raised that way. Little brats grow into bratty adults. They just do if nobody takes them aside and teaches them what's right. I'm not saying how to vote and how to believe in your whatever. I'm just talking about the basic decency courtesy things. Kids today just have not been taught them from what I see. Some have. It's so rare that I go, gee, somebody raised you right. It's been lost in our culture like so many other things.

Zibby: It takes a relentless focus on it. You can't just say, all right, say please and thank you. It's every single interaction. When they say it, you have to catch it and say, thanks for saying please, or whatever. Then you have to catch it when they don't. It's constant.

Kathie Lee: That's right. You've got to reinforce it. Reinforcement, I call it resent-less.

Zibby: I love that.

Kathie Lee: Because they're going to resent you, but you got to be relentless about it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, I'm coming to you for all my parenting advice from now on. When I'm feeling all my reinforcement is making no difference, I'll remember that it actually works over time. [laughs]

Kathie Lee: It totally will. It's a guarantee. The Bible says raise up your children in the way they should go. When they're older, they will not depart from it. I've seen that with my children. One of them's thirty. One's twenty-seven now. My son's getting married in two weeks. My daughter got married two months ago. It's a whole new world. If they don't teach their children these common courtesies, grandma will. Glam-ma, I want to be called. Glam-ma will teach them gladly. [laughter]

Zibby: That's exciting to have so many huge milestones happening in your life all at the same time. That's great. Congratulations.

Kathie Lee: Thank you. I think people tend to believe that because of the COVID the world has come to a standstill. That’s not true at all. Certain things have, of course. God's spirit has never stopped moving. The Holy Spirit's never stopped moving in our own lives. There's lots of good stuff to be seen and to be experienced if we have our spiritual antenna out for it. God is doing great and mighty things in spite of it all just as he has through all of time. He never changes. It's the world that changes and people that change, but never, never God himself.

Zibby: My mother-in-law right now -- I know this will air later when who knows what will have happened, but my mother-in-law is in the ICU with COVID and has been suffering for a while.

Kathie Lee: I'm sorry.

Zibby: Thank you. She's only sixty-three and all the rest.

Kathie Lee: That's too young.

Zibby: I have been asking so many people to pray and to reach out. It doesn't matter what religion and whatever. When I was reading Hello, Little Dreamer and on your Instagram and your whole faith and even in the book how your neighbor sold you the house because they just felt it from God, anyway, I was like, there's a reason why I'm talking to Kathie Lee Gifford today when I have so much God in my life at the moment.

Kathie Lee: I'm sitting on that same porch right now. I was talking to her yesterday because she's just now moving into the home that they recently built. They could've moved in April, but the COVID kept them at their lake place. A great friendship came from that. I'm literally five feet from the spot where she yelled out to me on my little balcony across the way. I didn't put this in the book because it was too much, but really what happened, as soon as I bought the house from them, I was walking home to my brownstone to call my real estate guy to say I've got to put mine on the market now when my dear friend Angie, whom you've read that book obviously, said, "Kathie, don't call your real estate agent." I said, "Why?" She says, "I think I have a buyer for yours." I went, "I just bought the other one five seconds ago." She goes, "No, no, no. Can they come buy this afternoon?" I went, "Yeah." These people came by and bought it immediately for a hundred thousand dollars more than I had bought it the six months before. God knows it's a miracle. Nobody would believe that. I don't want to make people feel bad like their prayers aren't answered or something. I thought it was enough of a miracle that these people sold me their home just because God said sell it, sell it to Kathie Lee. The blessing it has been since, it's just extraordinary.

When I'm tempted to have a pity party, which we all are in this world, I just look around and I go, really, Kathie Lee? You're going to have a pity party? Are you forgetting all of God's faithfulness to you through sixty-seven years of life, really, so you can have a pity party right now? No, Lord, I'm not going to do that. Look at the Israelites. They weren’t the Israelites then. They were the Hebrews. Then no sooner had the miracle of the parting the Red Sea -- then they get across. Pharaoh's chariots are deep in the water. They’ve been redeemed from slavery. They want to go back. They want the food they miss. I go, Lord, I'm no different from them. I want my husband back. I want my youth back. I want stuff back. I want all these things back. God goes, are you not going to finish this race with me? Are you not going to go forward Kathie? I don't go backwards. I go forward. You going with me or not? I feel so ashamed of myself at times, not condemned, but just reminded, no, I am the God of forward. He is with us presently. He's always leading us forward by his council. He leads us ultimately to the glory, the word says. I don't want to go back, really. It's just at times when we're weak. We never stop being weak at times. That never ever happens.

As we perish outwardly in our bodies and our world decays and everything else, we are being renewed on a daily basis for eternity's sake. It's just easy to forget that, especially when everybody's facing so many hard times today. They really are. That's the other thing the Lord reminds me of, Zibby, all the time, that, Kathie, some people are truly suffering. Let's remember them. Cry out for them. I see you. I see your needs. I know them without you speaking them. Trust me with those, as you have in the past, and really lift up those who are desperate for my help. I've got more friends right now, I don't know if it's because of my age, but more friends that are on life support or needing an operation or going into chemo. I think it's the most at one time. I've got the longest prayer list of people that truly need healing. There's always one or two in our lives that are facing those things, but it’s a much longer list now. A lot of it is because of COVID. Although, I have not lost a friend to it yet. I praise God for that. I know people who have been lost to it, but none of my dear friends have been lost to it. I'm grateful for that. I'm sorry for your -- it's your mother-in-law, you said? Is she going to be all right?

Zibby: I don't know. I hope so. I pray that she will, but we'll see. I'm sorry to have -- you're right. So many people are suffering. I'm sorry your list is so long on your prayer list right now. I know that there's so many people.

Kathie Lee: That's okay. God is there for them.

Zibby: One of the things I found with your book It's Never Too Late and even Hello, Little Dreamer is all of your emphasis on what's coming next. It's Never Too Late, it's perfect. You left the fourth hour of Today Show to pursue your dreams now. It's so inspiring. You want to go off in a whole different direction. Tell me a little bit about why it's never too late to dream and how much life is left, your whole theory on life. Tell me a little more about it.

Kathie Lee: Life is left until we run out of it. If I wake up in the morning and I have a pulse, that means I still have a purpose that God wants me to fulfil. I think a lot of people give up on life when they think that nobody needs them anymore. There is no reason to get up in the morning or they don't have the energy for it anymore. I was just praying to the Lord the other day. I said, Lord, if you're done with me, then take me home. I'm ready. I get very exhausted from things and discouraged and disappointed like everyone does. Even if somebody looks at my life and it looks like it's full and it's vibrant, and it often, often, is, I still have those moments where I just go, okay, I'm done, Lord. I'm done. Take me home. I'm ready. I have a beautiful home. I've been blessed with beautiful homes for a long, long time, but this is not my ultimate home. I'm a widow now. There's always that ever-present gnawing at your soul that you're alone and that I'm not alone. It's a constant, yes, you are; no, I'm not. Which little voice are you going to listen to? I could look around and say, my husband is not here with me. My children have moved on to their lives. But I'm not alone. I have the Holy Spirit present within me. I have his presence all around me in my friends and in my work.

I'm doing more important work now, I believe, than I've ever done in life with the encouragement I'm trying to be to others in terms of especially the word of God with the books that I'm writing, The Rock, Road, and Rabbi series. We're signed for two more of those. That is meeting a deep hunger in the world. Nobody's more surprised than I am. I thought there was complete, not complete, but almost complete total illiteracy about the scriptures and that people just weren’t interested in growing in their faith. That book has been a surprise super best seller much to my delight because it shows that people are hungry for the word of God. You can't fly to Israel anymore, but right before COVID it was the most-purchased and most-read book on all the planes going into Israel. People of every faith, they were reading it in anticipation of going to the Holy Land and studying, which just is such a blessing. My faith was lukewarm for many years because I wasn't being fed either in church or through the word of God. Why wasn't I? Because I wasn't reading the true word of God because I was reading bad translations and I was going to churches where they weren’t preaching the true word of God. It's just so simple. Go to the source. The source is what's going to refresh you. The source is what's going to empower you. The source is the Old Testament in the Hebrew and the New Testament in the Greek. If you're not learning that and not memorizing that and not quoting that and not building your life on that, you're building it on sinking sand your whole life. I need a solid rock under my feet because I will go astray without it. I will. I'm just like anybody else that's human. The fire that that lit in me when I started studying rabbinically was profound.

I wrote the first oratorio "The God Who Sees" with my friend, the beautiful and talented Nicole C. Mullen. That led to three more oratorios which I'm now about to start filming next week. I film the first new scenes from the new oratorios. We hope to have them done by the end of the year. That will be one and a half hours of symphonic oratorios, they're called "The Way," that we hope to give as a gift to the world next Easter. That’ll be two years, basically, after I left The Today Show. I've got two more books, I told you, that we're signing for, the two books coming out. My movie that I did with Craig Ferguson, Then Came You, is finally coming out in a month from now in theaters. If theaters are open, it'll be in theaters. If they aren't open, it'll be being streamed. That's been in my rearview mirror for too long. It's been two years since we wrapped it. Finding the right distributor, especially in the world of COVID, has been challenging. That's happening. I almost feel like I was singing "On the First Day of Christmas" because it's like, four duh-duh-duh, three duh-duh-duh, two duh-duh-duh, and a partridge in a pear tree. It's overwhelming. I woke up this morning. I said, okay, I know I have three interviews today. What are they for? What are they for, Lord? Remind me which project. [laughs] It's fun.

Zibby: It all just speaks to your whole point which is that there's so much more to come in life. I just wanted to read this one little passage from your book because it's so inspiring. You said, "If you're my age or getting close, it's probably been a long time since you last thought back to those days when you had dreams of what or who you wanted to be when you grew up. But it's time, friend. It's time to ask yourself, what would I do if I could? Toss out the phrases I can't and I don't know how, and start dreaming about the what-if that might get you off that couch and back into something you want to do. Maybe me sharing my story will give you some perspective and do that for you." Then you say, "Are you ready? It's never too late to dream." It's so awesome. I love it.

Kathie Lee: Thank you, but it's because it's true. When you study the scripture, you realize that dreams are an intricate part of your inner being. I believe that the scripture is flawless and God used people dreaming and their dreams all throughout history to impact culture and to impact lives, millions of lives. God has not stopped placing dreams in people's hearts. As we said before, he doesn't change. Women who are pregnant right now with their children, God is at work in that secret place the Bible talks about, in the darkness of the inner womb, which is a sacred place. I wish our culture and our world understand how sacred that is. God is, at the moment of conception, through -- there's a line in my new oratorio, "The God of the [Indiscernible]," when it says, oh Lord, you were there before the world began. You created everything, each woman, every man. You wrote their stories in their mother's wombs, and then you carried them from their cradles to their tombs. It's true. The God of creation, Jehovah Elohim, never stops creating. Every morning of every human being's life, whether they are just being born or they're dying, is an act of creation by Father God Jehovah Elohim, which in Hebrew means creator God.

If we can look at our lives with that perspective, it gives each moment purpose. Every moment has purpose because the great -- think about it. The greatest day of a believer's life is the day that God calls them home, the greatest day. It's not a tragedy. It's a triumph. That's why I could hold my dead husband in my arms and cry tears of joy and rejoicing, not because I was glad my husband was dead. I was thrilled to know where my husband was now and who he was with. You can't do anything but rejoice when you truly understand that scriptural truth. He will lead us on to glory. We either believe that or we don't. Grief is an important thing, but I don't allow myself to stay in grief. I allow myself to grieve appropriately. Then I make myself move on in the promise of the future. I have to because the evil one would keep us there. The evil one would love to keep us in grief because we're paralyzed. He comes to steal and kill and destroy. Jesus came that we might have life, and life abundantly. The word in the Greek for that word, abundantly, is the word zoe, Z-O-E, which means beyond. It cannot be contained. It overflows. It cannot be withheld. That's what I want for my life as long as I am alive, zoe. When it's not there, it's because I've moved away from God, not the other way around. My life is about God's faithfulness to me, not my faithfulness to God because I have failed him way too many times. I'll fail him today in one way or another, but I don't stay there. I stay there in the promise of, yes, but that's why you still need me, Kathie. You still need me. As Paul did, that in my weakness he is made strong. Even Paul was the greatest apostle ever. I think a close second would be Billy Graham in terms of the impact of one life on the world. There was Martin Luther. There are Billy Graham. There were those who truly changed the course of history. We could all change the course of somebody's history. We can do it right now. Today is the day of salvation.

Zibby: Come back to the book for two seconds here. Let me just ask about writing for you. I wanted to know what the writing process was like. You write children's books. You've written memoirs. You’ve done advice. You've done so many things. What's your process like when you write? Then what advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Kathie Lee: I think everybody's process is different. I wrote my first book when I was eighteen years old. I'd forgotten that I'd written it. It had been a best seller. That's how much I didn't think I was a writer. I'd remind myself. Oh, my gosh, that's right, my first book was called The Quiet Riot and it had three printings. I forgot. I was so busy being an actress and a singer and pursuing those dreams. I literally forgot about it. Now that's twenty books ago. Everybody's got a book in them because everyone has a story. Whether they write it down or journal it, whatever, everyone's story is precious to God. He wrote our stories in our mother's wombs. Then he carries us from our cradles to our tombs. He never stops writing our story. My process is letting the Holy Spirit move and not trying to control it. I often wake up at two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning and the Holy Spirit speaks to me and says, get up. Go down and let the process begin. Be a channel. Be a channel for my creative energy and my creative juices to flow through you. I can't do anything on my own, but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I sit down not knowing what the Lord has for me. Then I thrill to it.

Sometimes it's a Broadway show. Sometimes it's a lyric, just a lyric. I write a song or a half a song of the lyrics to thousands of songs. Or it's part of a book. It becomes a book. I've written jingles for commercials. I write constantly. My friend gave me a placard in my office that says eighty percent of the words in my brain are lyrics. [laughs] Life is a song. All of creation sings out to the creator. I'm just part of creation. I try to get out of God's way. I truly do. There are many, many times, I can't even count them, that I have written a lyric and I write it down and I can't get it out fast enough. I stop. I look up. I go, you are unbelievable. It's a perfect lyric. It's a perfect rhyme. It's a perfect lyric. It says perfectly what I need my character to say or I want to say in whatever I'm writing. I know a good song when I write one, but I know an anointed one when God writes one. More and more and more, I want the anointing. I want the anointing.

I'm writing with the finest writers in the world now down here in Nashville. It's a tremendous privilege that they’ve embraced me the way they have because I certainly have never been known as a songwriter, but I've been writing songs since I was twenty years old. I just never did it in a professional way until I started writing for theater. My Broadway show, even though it was certainly not a hit by far, not at all -- it was a disaster, basically, on Broadway. It was Tony nominated. I don't know how to write Broadway shows. I don't know how to write oratorios. I don't know how to write books, but God knows how. If I just put myself in his hands, he uses me to do those things. I left college. I left college before I graduated. I sat there for three weeks and wrote my first book waiting on God to see where he would lead me. He led me straight to Hollywood right after I finished that book thinking that nobody would ever read it except my daughter if I was blessed to have one one day. Look at what the Lord has done in the ensuing years. That was in 1975.

Zibby: What would you tell someone else who's just starting out? What would you tell an aspiring author?

Kathie Lee: I would say go back to your earliest memories and ask the Lord to show you what your dreams were if you've forgotten them. Show him. He'll restore those. He will redeem it all. He wants to. He is the redeemer of all things. He wants to make all things fresh and new. He says, look what I do. Behold, do you not see what I'm doing? Open your eyes, basically. I am making a garden from the wastelands, streams in the desert. All of those things are still inside you no matter what the world has thrown at you. He says, I have overcome the world, take courage. The word for courage, what he says -- let not your heart be troubled. Take courage. The word is [indiscernible], meaning Cana. That town of Cana is known as the place where Jesus performed his first miracle. He demonstrated his glory in a way that was profoundly human, to supply a human need for a glorious celebration of two people becoming one in God's sight. God still celebrates. I'm celebrating two weddings right now in my children's lives. We don't have as many people at them, but we're celebrating. We're serving my wine now, my family wine. I have a line of wine. I just think, how glorious of the Lord. The dreams that I as a mother -- as I was carrying these children to birth, God was doing a great and profound work of creation in my children's inner beings that will continue long after I am gone. I praise God for that. I don't worry about my children's future because God holds their futures in his hands long after my hands have gone on to embrace him. My God will be there for my children and their future generations. That's a promise straight from the word of God. I cling to his promises.

Zibby: Wow, this has been such an interesting conversation. I've loved hearing you talk about all your beliefs and passions and convictions and experiences. Thank you for sharing them with me and my listeners. I look forward to everything you have coming ahead. Thank you.

Kathie Lee: You're a dear. Thank you so much. Bless those sweet little ones of yours in Jesus' name.

Zibby: Thank you.

Kathie Lee: God bless, and your mother-in-law, sweetie, and your mother-in-law. Please, Lord, heal her.

Zibby: Thank you so much. Enjoy the weddings. Buh-bye.

Kathie Lee: Good talking with you. Buh-bye.

Oliver Jeffers, WHAT WE'LL BUILD

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

Oliver Jeffers: You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, this is like Christmas in my house. I don't even celebrate Christmas, but it would be like Christmas. It's the greatest thing to be interviewing you. My kids were freaking out. I have four kids. They are obsessed. My little guy loves How to Catch a Star and obviously the Crayons and everything else. Delighted to talk to you. Let's start with talking about your new book, which I only have on my iPad here. What We'll Build, beautiful illustrations, per usual, and thought-provoking text. Tell me a little bit about your latest book. What inspired this one? Why now?

Oliver: Why now and what inspired it are both the same things, which is we had a second child, a daughter. I joked that I better write her a book because I'd never hear the end of it if my son had a book and she didn't. Really, I was going through similar internal dialogues about the state of the world and what it's like to be raising a child, and especially this time around. It's not the first time we've had a child, but it's the first time we've had a daughter. She's actually the first female Jeffers in four generations. So quite some time just thinking about the timing and the feeling in the zeitgeist of this moment where so much change is possible, not guaranteed, but possible. The idea of raising a daughter in what will hopefully no longer be a man's world, it feels like a special time to be trying to do that. That was one aspect of it. Here We Are, if that book was about trying to understand the world as it is and break it down in its simplest terms, which covers the strangeness that comes with being a parent for the first time, then we had already experienced that. Our thoughts were able to turn more fully to the future when looking at this brand-new bundle of life in our arms. If Here We Are is about explaining the world as it is, then What We'll Build is about possibly changing it. In the quiet hours in the middle of the night as I was nursing her back to sleep, I would just be imagining these things and saying these [audio cuts outs]. I just started to write it down. Then it came quite organically and quite naturally.

Zibby: Wow. You just have to keep having kids. You'll have more and more original content. How old is your son?

Oliver: He's five. He turned five in the summer.

Zibby: I have a five-year-old also. He must eat up these books like crazy. How cool to have a dad who does this?

Oliver: He does, but I don't try to ram them down his throat either. I was never a big reader when I was a kid because it always felt like something that you had to do for homework. It was more like a chore. It wasn't until I discovered books on my own terms that I became an avid reader. That was later in life. I had this deep-seated fear that if I tried to make him do something, it would actually put him off. He does, he goes to books, but he actually likes reference books more, books that explain things. He's definitely more like his mother in that sense. She's an engineer. He likes things to be explained logically. He also likes dinosaurs and diggers. My daughter, on the other hand, I think is a lot more similar to me in terms of chaos and creativity. [laughs]

Zibby: What types of books got you reading?

Oliver: What types of books got me reading? There are books that I enjoyed whenever I was a kid, for sure. The first book that I read because I wanted to read it was a Roald Dahl book. I had read The BFG for school. It was the first book that didn't feel like homework. It felt like a treat. Then I just went and read his entire backlog. Honestly, it wasn't until much later in life that I became a read every single day type of person. I mostly read nonfiction, believe it or not. There's so many interesting things that have actually happened in the world. I want to find out about all those things and how everything affects everything else. I can't even remember what it was, but there was something that I didn't understand. I was like, let me read about that. Because it was on my terms and I wanted to find out about it, it was a very different experience.

Zibby: Interesting. I remember growing up my parents had these encyclopedias which were all really fancy and bound and everything. I remember being like, wow, I could just learn about anything I want. I'm just going to pull this thing out. Let's see what I find. The power in that.

Oliver: We moved to the US fifteen years ago. I realized that all the classic books that they teach in schools here -- in Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, they were Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, things like that. When I got the USA, I realized there was a whole different genre of classic books that were American classic books. I'd found a list of the one hundred classic American novels. I've been slowly working my way through them. I've discovered John Steinbeck that way, and [indiscernible]. That's been a real pleasure.

Zibby: Take me from what happened when you started reading Roald Dahl books to here. When did you know that you wanted to produce books? When did you start illustrating and writing? When did all that brew up inside you?

Oliver: From when I was a kid, I've always loved drawing and making things. A lot of the art, looking back on it now, has been very narrative driven. There is that old Picasso quote. All children are artists; the trick is just remembering how whenever you grow up. When people ask me, when did I start making art? I tend to ask them, when did you stop? We all made art at some point. Then all adults just sort of stopped and moved on to different things. I just never did. When did it occur to me to actually make a book? When I started thinking about real-life jobs and so on, once I learned that making art was a real-life job, I knew that that was going to be for me. I started to work my [indiscernible]. The university experience is very different in the UK and Ireland than it is in the USA. Here, you have to start specializing, really, from the age of fifteen. Then you pick your degree, your subject. Then you pick where you want to go. Whereas in the US, it's you pick your college and then you pick what you want to study. It's a much different system here. I think it suits fewer people here because who knows what they want to do when they're fifteen?

I'm one of the fortunate people that did know because I knew that I wanted to make art. I got into art college. It was only at the very, very end of my art college when I thought I was going to be a painter -- which is still something that I do. I have two completely separate careers. I had this concept for a series of canvases, but it occurred to me that maybe these canvases would be better served as a book. I made a book in my last year of college. Then I went about trying to get that book published. When I was showing that to publishers both in London and New York, the question was asked, "Do you have other ideas, or is this a one-off?" I was like, "I've got lots of idea." I didn't really. I was just like, I think that's the answer they want to hear. Ever since then, the switch was very easy for me. Books came very, very naturally. Just today, I realized that it's almost twenty years since I first made How to Catch a Star.

Zibby: Wow. It's so relevant and so beautiful. I go to bed reading it with my son. It's so crazy. Your ideas are in my house every night. It's just the magic of picture books. It's really unbelievable.

Oliver: I try not to break it down and take it apart to see how it works, ever, because I just fear that it won't ever be put together. It's such a strange thought that the work that I did alone in the studio then has a life of its own. It's easier just not to think about that than to really contemplate what that means.

Zibby: You keep, obviously, creating lots of stories. Do they just occur to you? How does something trigger you to decide, this is going to be my next book?

Oliver: I have lots of ideas for stories that never really fully materialize into stories because every good story, every good picture book, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some of these ideas that I had, they might have just been the middle. It was a gimmick or an interesting visual or didn't have one of those three things or couldn't really be fleshed out enough into a picture book. My sketch book was whittled with those ideas. Then at one point, I thought, these don't have all that it takes to be a full picture book, but maybe I could do a book of short picture books. That book became Once Upon an Alphabet. That really was me just plundering through my sketchbooks and lifting out the choices ideas and then attributing one to each letter. There was a few holes where I had to think up ones from scratch.

Honestly, each book happens in a different way. Stuck is partially based on a true story. The Incredible Book Eating Boy, the whole story came from both an art project that I was doing with a scientist in quantum physics and just a simple drawing that I made. I connected the two things. Then The Fate of Fausto, I don't really know where that came from. I took a drive up the North Coast of Northern Ireland. I pulled the car over just on the cliffs in the absolute middle of rural nowhere. I took a nap as I was watching this storm come in. I woke up and that book was just on the tip of my tongue. I put pencil to paper. It came out pretty much as is. Who knows where that came from? Here We Are was originally written as a letter to my son. The same with What We'll Build. There's not a formula. Each one is slightly different. Sometimes they're quite tricky to pick the lock of. Stuck, that's based on really getting a kite stuck in a tree and really getting some other stuff caught in the tree, but I didn't know how it ended. I sat on it for six months, eight months, maybe a year before watching my nephews play and just forgetting about one game and moving on to the other. I realized, maybe it doesn't have to end. Maybe he just gets distracted and moves on. That proved to be the perfect ending. It's different for every case.

Zibby: Then my daughter wanted me to ask you how you came up with the design for the crayons.

Oliver: Well, they're crayons. [laughs]

Zibby: I know, like faces and making them so human, how you came up with it. I didn't say it was a great question, but that's her question, so I'm going with it.

Oliver: It was fun to come up with the design for the crayons box because I wanted it to be completely unique and not associated with any existing crayons brand. I think it was based on, I saw an ad in a magazine for a packet of candy with that color spectrum, an old-time magazine or something like that. I was like, oh, that's how that will do. Really, it's the simplicity of it. When I saw that story, I just knew that this book had to be done so simply. You couldn't overdo it because it would ruin the obviousness of the whole thing. The letters had to be written as if you got them in a stack. The crayons themselves had to be characters. That's gauche paint. It's the simplest way that I could have drawn them and made them look like physical objects. Then, of course, everything else in the book is a crayon drawing. It was like, what are the laws of logic that would apply to this if this really happened? Then I just went from there.

Zibby: Wow. Some books you illustrate only. Some books you write and illustrate. Are you still a for-hire illustrator? I can't imagine you are.

Oliver: No, I never have been. I always said I would never illustrate somebody else's book until I was tricked into looking at the Crayons manuscripts. The editor that I work with, then in New York, called me into office and then says, "I've got to leave to take a phone call. Don't look at anything on my desk." Of course, I went over and looked. That was sitting face up. I read it and was like, this is a really great concept. It's so obvious what should be done. I was like, I hope whoever does this does it the right way. Then my editor came back in. I said, "Who's illustrating this?" He's goes, "No one yet. Why? You interested?" I was like, "I knew exactly what you were doing." I couldn't not do it. Then the only other book I've illustrated that hasn’t been a Crayons book was with Eoin Colfer. We're friends. We just basically said, yeah, we should work together. Artists and authors that meet at literary festivals always say that sort of stuff, and it never happens. Then about two weeks later, Eoin says, "I've got this idea that I think might be perfect for you." I read it. I was like, "That is pretty good, actually. What about I do this way?" He's goes, "Perfect." Then it was just that simple. Then actually, there's another book, but it's unclear -- people said, who wrote it? Who illustrated it? Sam Winston and I both said, "We both did. We both wrote it. We both illustrated it." That was born out of just meeting this person, becoming friends, and realizing that all of our work, it overlapped so much. We said, "We should do a project." We started doing what we thought was an art project that then morphed into a picture book. It's been organic every single time.

Zibby: All the authors out there who would salivate for your help with illustrations can now just say, forget it, that's off the table.

Oliver: Totally. I still work in the fine art world. My schedule over the next couple years is mostly based in public sculptures and paintings. It's a strange mix. I've always laughed at authors who, they want to collaborate. It's like, yeah, that's fifteen minutes of work for you, and it's a year's work for me. It's not that straightforward.

Zibby: What is it like? Tell me where you do the drawings, what materials you use, the process of illustrating a book.

Oliver: Again, it's different book by book. My studio was in Brooklyn in New York. Although, I haven't been there in some time because we were traveling before this pandemic hit. Then we came back to Northern Ireland to be with family. What We'll Build is, that's all paint on paper. It's acrylic paint and a little bit of ink and some colored pencil on paper. Here We Are was some ink washes. That was then finished on Procreate on an iPad. The Incredible Book Eating Boy was all collage with acrylic paint. Lost and Found, How to Catch a Star, they were all watercolor. Then The Fate of Fausto, just because I wanted to make life exceptionally difficult for myself, I experimented with a completely different media, which is lithographic printing. There is no original piece of art for that, per se, because it was all made on stone and on metal plates layer by layer, color by color. Then those plates and stones were sort of destroyed in the process of making them. It was completely different. I really didn't know what was going to come out the other end of the printer.

Zibby: Have you figured out what it is about your style that is so appealing to others? Maybe that's too self-referential. Maybe that's more for me to say. Have you kind of analyzed it, like when you start a new project?

Oliver: I try not to, but I think there's a directness and a simplicity and an honesty to it where I'm just clearly enjoying myself. That's just the way that I write. That's just the way that I do a straight line. That's just the way that it will look if I do this. I'm not trying to be anybody else. I'm not trying to be something I'm not. There's maybe an integrity and a mild sophistication enough in it that I'm not trying to pander to anyone. I don't know. Eoin Colfer's son who was eighteen at the time asked me with all sincerity, he was like, "Why are your drawings so popular?" I thought about it for a second. I was like, I think that might be an insult. [laughs]

Zibby: No, that is not an insult.

Oliver: It sort of was like, they're so simple and so easy, why do people like them? I was like, I don't know.

Zibby: That's funny. Trust a child to say something like that. What advice would you have for an illustrator or an artist, a child who was like you as a child, just sketching and not wanting to stop? How do you have them not give up?

Oliver: Two things spring to mind. One, if you look at successful people, there are plenty of successful people that have all drive and little talent. There are almost no successful people who are all talent with no drive. The advice that I generally tend to give young and aspiring artists and illustrators is an Oscar Wilde quote, which is, be yourself, everybody else is already taken.

Zibby: That's a great quote. What's coming next? What are your next books that we have to look forward to?

Oliver: That's a question I don't know. I haven't been in my studio in well over a year. As I say, we were traveling from the start of last summer. We planned to take a year off to travel. It took us about five years to prepare for it. We set off end of last July. We were intending to return just at the end of the summer. Obviously, in about February or so, that all came crashing to a halt. We ended up moving somewhere that we don't normally live. I'm just trying to find a new rhythm and see what's going to happen next. I do have a book project in mind, but it's too early to say anything. If that doesn't work, frankly, I have no idea.

Zibby: Are there more Crayons books coming?

Oliver: No, the last one, The Crayons' Christmas, has come out. I think there was a Crayons' Book of Colors. There was a concept book like that. The art was made quite some time ago. I think that's already come out. That's that.

Zibby: That's it. End of the line for the Crayons. They really quit. [laughs] Thank you for coming on this show. Thanks for all the hours of great quality time that I've spent with my children because of you. Best of luck with the new book. Thank you.

Oliver: Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the kind words. Buh-bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Lauren Tarshis, I SURVIVED: THE CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

Zibby Owens: Hi.

Lauren Tarshis: Hello. It's so nice to see you.

Zibby: You too.

Lauren: Look at your beautiful -- it's like a monk's chamber of books.

Zibby: Yes, it is. Maybe I should shut that door before my son comes in. We're still doing gradual back to school.

Lauren: How old is he?

Zibby: He's five. I also have a seven-year-old and two thirteen-year-olds. He does every other day. Next week, he'll go back for good. What about you? You have four kids too, right?

Lauren: We do, but they're much older. Everyone but our oldest is home. We're sort like a WeWork meets The Waltons. That's the vibe I'm trying to create. My youngest is sixteen. She's able to manage her hybrid schooling pretty independently. I'm thinking of your seven-year-old particularly.

Zibby: They're in school, though. It's crazy. They're doing Zoom in the afternoons. The mornings, at least, they get to go. It's so nice. They get to run around.

Lauren: Where are you?

Zibby: We're in New York City. We just came back.

Lauren: I have to tell you, I love your podcast so much. My book club and I often listen to you. I was so thrilled and honored when Alex told me that I would be talking to you. It was very strangely serendipitous. It had been maybe a couple days after we had just gone wild over Disappearing Earth. We listened to you because we were just fascinated.

Zibby: That was great.

Lauren: In fact, I would love to change the topic of our podcast and just talk about that. I'm sure everyone wants to hear my opinion about Disappearing Earth. [laughter] I had never had the experience -- really, that last line of that book, it physically took my breath away.

Zibby: I get it. I actually listened to that book, which I don't always do. I feel like I was so immersed in it. There's something about listening to books. I can't explain it. Hopefully, you know what I'm talking about.

Lauren: I actually like to toggle between them. It's very decadent. I'll have the hardcover of that and then listen to it, especially for that one because I read on a low level. I need a lot of support. Just having her pronounce all the names and the places, the audio helped me in that way, then going back to the book.

Zibby: What do you mean you read at a low level?

Lauren: Meaning, I was a terrible reader. It's the first thing I tell the children when I go to a school. I didn't read a book until I was fourteen. Obviously, I read fine now, but I do have trouble synthesizing information. Especially when I'm doing research, if I'm reading a real tome with a lot of dates and places and people, the audio really helps. It's quite ironic, shocking that I find myself talking to you when I flash back to my childhood self.

Zibby: I actually tried to reach out to you two years ago when I first started my podcast because my daughter had been reading your Japanese tsunami I Survived book for school. I was reading it with her. We were reading that together. I was like, "This book is amazing." She's like, "Do you think you could interview the author?" I was like, "I don't know. I'll try." I was so new to it.

Lauren: Did you come to me directly, or did you go through Scholastic?

Zibby: I think I emailed you on your website or something.

Lauren: Whoa. There was a period of time -- my reader mail is a source -- I try to answer everyone. As I'm getting older, I'm trying to let go of shame and guilt. I'm haunted by it. I expend a large amount of energy. Then still I hear from people, you never wrote me. Anyway, I'm glad you forgave me.

Zibby: At the time, I was so new to it. I didn't know to go to publicists.

Lauren: I would've leapt at the chance had I been focused.

Zibby: All to say, it's so nice to be able to talk to you. I can't believe you were saying you're sort of a slower reader because the amount of research and information and the way you create environments makes everybody feel like they actually lived through all the stories for real. I'm feel like I'm traumatized after I finish reading. [laughs] I'm like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I just survived all this stuff. It's amazing. How do you do it? First of all, how do you pick which I Survived topics? I read somewhere that you had started it for your son, Dylan. On your website you said that. Tell me about starting the whole series and how you now pick which disasters to focus on.

Lauren: Definitely, you're right. The series was inspired by both my experience as a mom of four kids, my boys, who are the older three. The middle two particularly were not interested in reading at all. I was always in that situation that so many parents are of just constantly trying to find books that would light them up -- this will be it! -- and not succeeding. At the same time, for many years, for thirty years, which is a very staggering and now increasingly shocking number, I have worked at Scholastic in the magazine division. In that role, I spend an enormous amount of time with teachers and in classrooms and with kids trying to take topics that are either not engaging inherently or far removed from the lives of our kids, if it's a story about the Civil War or a story about Korea, anything, to try to make those engaging. I found that through the magazine work that anytime I had a real child or a fictional child and put them in the middle of the story, those were the stories that their teachers wrote to me about and kids wanted to know more about. I was actually really surprised that there wasn't already a book series for that age, for that third to fifth grade level, that did that. Of course, there are wonderful narrative nonfiction books written by incredible authors like Deborah Hopkinson and Tonya Bolden and all these amazing authors. There wasn't really anything in that between Magic Tree House and Lightning Thief. There was this gap for my sons. I think the hybrid experience, for me, of being the parent and the author/educator gave me that inspiration.

You're right. They are an enormous amount of research because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to, with a very fine brush stroke, create these vignettes for kids so they really know, what does it smell like inside a tornado, actually? What does it feel like to hold a cannonball? That's the fun part of the research. That does mean that it's not just a linear research path of learning about a topic. A lot of the research is ancillary. I'm going down tributaries hoping that that will unearth some incredible detail. For my California wildfires book, which is unfortunately way too timely at this moment, I was really wanting kids to understand what it was like for a firefighter in a wildfire. What are the sensory experiences that you would have if you had to deploy your fire shelter? You're interviewing people and reading very arcane firefighter blogs and trying to get as close to the sources as you can, which is easier, obviously, for contemporary topics than it would be writing about ancient Rome. That's definitely the most exciting part. Well, the most exciting part is being with kids and talking to you. [laughter] Other than that, being on that treasure hunt for the detail. There's always three or four facts in a book that I want the kids, even if it's not about the topic itself, maybe it's something -- for the California wildfires, I had this whole frame story that the characters, one of them, they run this reptile rescue, which is real thing. People give up their large pet reptiles because they can't take care of them. Then you or I would have a shelter for them, so details about having a large monitor lizard that you're taking care of. That breaks up the background information and all those facts that I really want them to absorb. It's alternating between the boring facts and these sparkling details that distract them from the fact that they're actually learning stuff.

Zibby: It's amazing. You should do this for grown-ups. It's actually just an exercise in empathy, is what you're doing. You're literally putting kids in other people's shoes. You're using it in historical context. It's really a gift. How can you imagine what life is like for someone else going through something hard? Yet you're also teaching them. I feel like the main gift is the empathy piece. It's almost like memoir for kids.

Lauren: You're inspiring me. I'm going to cling to your words. I'm going to put them in my heart and my brain. They will be there with me all day. Sometimes it feels like almost a ridiculous amount of work. Luckily, my editor and the people who I work with, they do understand. These books, looking at these little paperbacks, you'd think that they could be, especially now that I've written twenty, that they would just be so easy. They are quite torturous. When I'm about to get into that heavy deadline mode with my family, everyone's like, all right. I'll say to my husband, "I think this one's going to be easier." He's like, "Okay. You say that before every single one, but I think you're wrong. It's going to be horrible." [laughs]

Zibby: How long does it take? How long do you research? Then how long does the writing take and all of it?

Lauren: Because I have very kind and understanding, my editor, Katie, and the whole team, I have generally gotten away with writing all the way up to the very last second. They have wanted two a year up until now. That means six months for each one. It became too much for me. The minute I finished one, I would have a week. Then I would just have to completely shed Revolutionary War and plunge into World War II. Then the joy of it kind of started to go away for me, to be honest. I don't want to sound like one of those people, like, it's such a joy, all that. Look, the experience of being able to talk to you and hear you respond to this work that I've done in the way that you do, I just feel tickled by it constantly. I found myself around maybe book fifteen, sixteen, really feeling like I just couldn't keep this up. Fortunately, they had the very genius idea of creating a line of graphic novels based on I Survived. I'm a little bit involved. They were incredibly kind about, I approve things. There's this incredible author named Georgia Ball. She's a scriptwriter for graphic novels. She somehow interprets my stories in this really lyrical way. The team just does a beautiful job. I get to watch and then weigh in on the history and all of that.

That now has enabled us to create an annual schedule that leaves more breathing room. It's really six months. Researching, one of the problems now is, with COVID, I'm not able to travel. Except for Japan and the bottom of the North Atlantic to see the Titanic, I've gone everywhere for the books. I do feel like that's a super important thing. I like to take video there because I like to be able to show the kids what it would've been like for the characters and for them to walk in the character's shoes. Often, the stories then give birth to nonfiction articles that appear in the magazine Storyworks which is this beautiful labor of love that I create with a team at Scholastic. It's this ELA magazine. I'll send you Storyworks, the second-grade version which is so adorable, for your seven-year-old. The work I do on I Survived, actually, many different sprouts come from it that end up blooming in different places.

Zibby: I'm sure you have thought of this, but I bet there are a lot of people who would jump at the chance to help you do your research and speed along the process of these books. Do you feel like it's hard to outsource that?

Lauren: I would love it. The problem is, it goes back to what we talked about earlier. I've learn to create the character, for the most part, that's the first thing I do now. That's something I learned from my editor, Katie, who's only been doing the books the past three or four. She's really helped me understand that I used to discover the character during the writing and then have to go back and research to create additional experiences for my character to have these epiphanies or opportunities for growth. She was like, "That is not [indiscernible]. You have to figure out the character." It's like 101. I'm sure this is what your thirteen-year-old [indiscernible] writing the character's journey. That is something that now I do. I really try to figure that out beforehand after a little bit of research, just understanding basically the trajectory of the book. Then all of that great stuff, really, I discover it accidentally. Sometimes what I discover in research -- I spent several days just researching helicopters for the wildfire story. I learned that the ones that many of the firefighters have loved the most are these old Hueys from the Vietnam War. That's the kind of thing that a researcher -- that became the little chapter head spots, those helicopters. They led me into this whole incredible world of magazine articles and blog posts by helicopter pilots, the people who are now in Oregon. That helped me create these two characters. One particular in the book, one of the firefighters is this woman who is just very badass who's the best helicopter pilot in their Cal Fire district.

Zibby: I know the forest fires now are raging again. It's unthinkable that your book would be coming out and be this timely. I know you mentioned it. How are you, to say leveraging it sounds totally crude and commercial, but how are you getting the word out? People are really suffering right now and could probably use this experience. I feel like you should be airdropping books of them to California or something. I don't know.

Lauren: I don't know. It's a really good question. The story of that book, it had a very wonderful emotional component which is that one of the things that happens to me as the author of this series but also in my role at the magazines is that people do reach out to me directly in the aftermath of disasters. This lovely woman named Holly Fisher wrote to me four days after the town of Paradise burned down. She had grown up there. Her son, Lucas, reads my books. She just wrote me this beautiful email. "You might have heard about the fire that destroyed my town of Paradise. The fire is still burning. I think that you should come here. You'd have many people who would want to share their stories." We got in touch. There were other people who had written to me from those areas. A few months later, three of the four kids and my husband and I went to Paradise. We met Holly and her husband, Josh, who's a firefighter who helped save people in a parking lot, unbelievable. They took us around the ruins of the town. Then we went back in the summer to see how things were.

I wrote an article about it for the magazine. We created a video. I wasn't really intending to write an I Survived book about it, but a lot of the kids said to me, "Are you going to write about this?" Then I thought, I learned so much when I was there. I do think it's a very important climate story. It's a story, also, about our relationship with nature. Not all of it is climate. A huge part of it is, but it's also how we have this interesting -- I don't know if you remember the book The Big Burn. I think it was Tim Egan. He writes about, that was the biggest wildfire in American history. I think it was 1910 if I'm not mistaken. That fire in the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho and Montana, it gave rise to the whole fire suppression policy of we're going to put out every fire because it was so terrifying. It made sense, but people didn't understand how important regular fires were to forest health and preventing the overload of dead trees and brush that is fueling -- we could talk for a long time about this. I decided that it would be worthwhile to do.

I don't want to be tweeting about my wildfire book every day now that the wildfire is burning. I'm in touch with Holly every day because they're in Paradise. Their house did survive. Nothing else in their neighborhood did. She's very involved in trying to rebuild Paradise. It's tricky. I know that the people of Paradise and those towns want people to know what happened to them and to share and these people fighting the fires, all of that. I really want this to be about honoring them. I don't think it's appropriate, frankly, for someone -- even though the fire book has a very happy ending, of course, and it's a story of resilience like all of them, I keep thinking, if I was a parent in Oregon right now, would this be the book I'd want my kid reading? Maybe not. So later when they can really connect and for people elsewhere to empathize and to really want to engage and help people. In the back, there's stuff on what you can do. That is super important.

Zibby: Totally. I sat down, I tried to read it to my two little guys who, as I mentioned, are five and seven. I started reading it and they're like, "This is a fire. This is so scary." I was like, okay, I'm going to save this for my older kids. You're too young. Sorry. [laughs]

Lauren: It's true. My daughter did not read my books. She was too scared. These are books that are for certain kids who are not going to overidentify. I hear you. I don't recommend them for very young kids. I'm shocked, I'll get letters from parents like, "We just read the 9/11 book together to our kindergarten." I'm like, I don't know if...

Zibby: Have you ever thought about writing an adult version? It would have to repackaged. There are a lot of grown-ups who could benefit from learning about the wildfires right now or learning about all these scenes. A lot of grown-ups have such short attention spans now that almost -- not that reading your younger kids' books couldn't benefit them, but I just feel like parents might be reluctant to read them on their own. You have such great information and the sensibility behind them. Not that you need another project. You're overwhelmed as it is. I'm just saying it's a unique skill to be able to take something that happens in the world and make it so relatable immediately that I feel like the world could really use, even for grown-ups. That's all.

Lauren: That's definitely my favorite genre, the great narrative nonfiction writers. There's so many of them. Is it William Langewiesche? I can never pronounce his name. William Langewiesche, he writes for The Atlantic. He wrote The Looming Tower. Tim Egan, there are just so many amazing authors who are doing this. I read all of their books. I think, oh, my gosh, it would be a dream to be able to spend a couple of years. Even, there was this great book -- I'm showing my age. I have zero short-term memory anymore. It's quite a problem. Although, people seem to be fairly indulgent. There's a great book I recommend which is the kind of book I would love to write called This is Chance! Have you heard of this?

Zibby: No.

Lauren: About the Alaska earthquake. It just came out this past year. It's so wonderful. It's this 1962 earthquake that happened in Alaska right when Alaska was getting on solid ground as a state and Anchorage was growing. Just pulls in all these wonderful tangents about Alaska, about the time period, and about this woman, Genie Chance, who was the weatherwoman and brought people hope and calm in the aftermath of this completely devastating earthquake and tsunami in Alaska, so the idea of bringing to life a little-known event but also illuminating this large chapter of our history. Of course, there are all sorts of insights that are applicable to us today. Maybe I will.

Zibby: If you were going to write an I Survived about something really awful from your own life, what would that be about?

Lauren: Oh, boy. That's a great question. No one's ever asked me that. For my own life, I'm fortunate that I -- as I always tell the kids, they're always like, "Did you live through any of those disasters?" I always say, "I've seen a tornado from a distance. I've been through a bunch of hurricanes here on the East Coast. I've been in an earthquake. It was in California, but it wasn't a huge one." I've never felt that my life has been in danger because of an event like the way my characters are, but I have been through -- one of our sons had an illness that lasted a few years. He's great. Fortunately, it was not this dire thing like many people experience. The experience of your life shattering apart, which is what so many people are experiencing at this moment, whether it's because of COVID directly or because of the economic collapse or because of now these fires, that's something that I, fortunately, have not even been through. Of course, it's what we all know. I think that's what keeps me writing these stories in a lot of way. We think we have all this control.

That's what I've learned over and over, these two big lessons. We think we have a lot of control and that we can, by being really careful or planning in advance or disciplined or good, that we can forestall something, but we can't. The other piece, the flip side, which is why I keep doing it because if you only focus on that first part it gets very grim, is that I am really -- honestly, talking to Holly Fisher from Paradise, I hang up the phone with her and I just feel so stronger. People go through those shattering events and you see, whether it's looking at what happened during the Holocaust or what happened during the Chicago fire or in Paradise, people find the strength. They go through a grieving process. It's really hard. It's not quick. For some people, it's terrible and agonizing and lengthy. People, for the most part, do find the strength somehow to go on and feel joyful again.

I'm sitting here, I'm in this beautiful office of mine, it used to be my mother-in-law's apartment, which is connected to our house. She died at the age of ninety-seven a couple years ago. She lived with us for ten years. She was a survivor of World War I and a refuge. She just had a life that you cannot even -- that should be a book. My one regret is that I didn't write her story because I didn't think she wanted me to. It wasn't until the very end that it was clear that she would've liked that. She was going to write it herself. I would wake up sometimes. She was a real night owl. She would stay up until two in the morning. She lived for many years in the Jewish ghetto of Shanghai during World War II and lost people in the Holocaust and all that. I would get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water or if one of my kids needed me, and I'd hear this noise coming from here. It was her on the phone with her friend Hilda in Rome laughing, this joyful -- I would think, after all you've been through, there's still a lot of joy. I don't know how I got started on that, Zibby.

Zibby: That's a great story to share. That's what life is all about, I survived.

Lauren: What really gives me a lot of satisfaction, you can imagine, is when I hear from kids who are going through difficult things. They write to me or their parents write to me and they say that the books -- somehow, kids who've been through difficult events find they connect with my characters. It's not a trauma to read. It's not triggering them, but it's actually bolstering them in some way. I think of course, every person reacts differently. It's a constant lesson through all the research.

Zibby: That's an inspiring takeaway. It's just super inspiring, and especially now. It's what people need. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Lauren: Yes. I don't know what you think. Another time, we'll have to talk because I'm curious on your take after speaking to so many authors. I don't consider myself a Julia Phillips-like literary novelist, Alice Monroe, my heroes. I really think of myself as a storyteller who is constantly working on her craft. I do embroidery. Here's my latest embroidery sampler that I did. It's very analogous. You learn these different stiches. You practice them. You notice one. In Julia's book or in one of the Alice novels, I'll see this amazing -- look at this sentence. I'll write it down and study it. I think that writing is something that, it can be learned. People improve. Writing a few books that are bad and unpublishable is really part of that journey. That's the advice. You have to start writing your bad books and looking at those as part of the learning process.

Zibby: I have heard from so many people, and it seems to me that the magic number is three. You have to write three novels before -- the third one might sell, but the first two, you should just say -- even though you think these are going to be the great American novel, it's okay if they don't sell at the end. Most people have to write two full novels before they sell one. That's just my anecdotal [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Lauren: I think you're totally right. I also think the other piece of it is that -- maybe it's different now because the world of writing and writers has changed so much over the past twenty years. It's hard to make a living as a writer. I think the idea of taking it on and not being as obsessed with becoming a best seller, saying, this is something I want to do, this is something I'm going to do, that was sort of my -- I wrote a really terrible first novel that I sent out beautifully bound from Kinkos with a spiral and imagining the movie rights. Maybe they’ll ask me to do a cameo. It was terrible. My dad, who is a writer -- he was a freelance writer when I was growing up. He worked for magazines, very scrappy when you could make a sort of living as a freelance writer. My mom was a teacher, and that helped. My dad loved what he did. He did all nonfiction. I remember when I proudly told him I was writing this novel and that I was very stressed, I wanted to finish it -- my dad's the nicest guy in the whole world. He never says a mean word. He looked at me and he goes, "No one is waiting for your novel." [laughs] It was actually, no one cares if you finish it. So take your time and make it good. My two pieces of advice: feel great and excited about the books that you might consider bad; and then, it is an ongoing learning process. That's what makes it satisfying.

Zibby: Amazing. Lauren, our time is up because I try to keep my show to thirty minutes, but I feel like I could sit here and chat books with you all day. I hope that sometime we can get together or something.

Lauren: I would love it.

Zibby: I want to hear what your book club is reading and all the rest.

Lauren: Your work is so wonderful. I've loved listening to your podcast. I sort of feel like I know you. It's been a huge treat for me to be able to spend time with you. Yes, please stay in touch with me.

Zibby: Thank you, Lauren. I really appreciate it. Have a great day.

Lauren: You too.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Lou Diamond Phillips, THE TINDERBOX

Lou Diamond Phillips: For somebody who doesn't have time to read books, look at all of this.

Yvonne Phillips: Hey, that's the first time I have seen the hard copy.

Zibby Owens: Here it is. I just got it, actually. It just came yesterday. Beautiful.

Yvonne: Fantastic. I haven't seen it yet.

Lou: Cool!

Zibby: Want it closer?

Lou: That is nice.

Zibby: Do you want me to send it to you? I can FedEx it to you.

Lou: That's okay. I've got an employee discount. I'll be able to get it cheaper.

Zibby: Okay. I got it free, so I'll send it to you if you want. If you change your mind, put your address in the chat or something or have your publicist get in touch. [laughs] Welcome to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I'm delighted to have you here. Thanks for coming.

Lou: Thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Zibby: Your latest book is called The Tinderbox: Soldier of Indira. Indira, correct? Yes?

Lou: Indira like Gandhi, actually, like Indira Gandhi.

Zibby: Okay, perfect. That, I know. Can you please tell listeners what this book is about and the amazing story of how the whole thing transpired which you wrote in the author's note?

Lou: The original inspiration -- my inspiration, I'm going to start there. Then we'll back up to hers. My original inspiration were her drawings. When Yvonne and I first started dating and getting to know each other, you know how it goes, she started reading a lot of my work. She started sharing with me, a lot of her art, which is amazing. In that batch of original art was a series of drawings in manga style that was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Tinderbox." So looking at the drawings, I go back, I read "The Tinderbox," which is a three-page, five-page fable/fairy tale. It's very short, not one of his more famous ones. It just sparked this whole idea in my head. Her drawings, to me, were very evocative of a post-apocalyptic Mad Max kind of wasteland feeling. It went from there. I told her it was a great idea for a movie. She said, run with it. I did and basically ambushed and hijacked her idea.

Zibby: Perfect. [laughs]

Lou: Yeah, and kept going back to the source material because, as I've said in other interviews, I've always been a fan of art that begets art, West Side Story from Romeo and Juliet, a book called Grendel by John Gardner that was the bad guy's point of view of Beowulf, which is really hard to understand. [laughs] I understood Beowulf a lot more after I read Grendel. Just thought, let's create this fantasy sci-fi world. It's not that sci-fi jumped out at me. It's that originally, we thought it would be a good movie. Game of Thrones hadn’t happened yet when we first started this process. I said, if we're going to make a movie and we're going to set it in this other worldly fantasy thing, let's take a nod from Star Wars and do a --

Yvonne: -- Avatar was out at the time.

Lou: Exactly, in a galaxy far, far away where we could create our own rules and have kings and queens and princesses and soldiers and what not. That was where it all started. The story's very simple. It's a soldier on a foreign planet who falls in love with a princess. It's very Romeo and Juliet in that respect.

Zibby: Amazing. Yvonne, how did you feel about what happened to the drawings after the beginning?

Yvonne: My original concept was not sci-fi or whatever in the world this is. I basically started drawing it back in the nineties because I was really into the magna comic book style. This is before the internet was available, so you couldn't google images or just go to the store. It wasn't readily available like it is now.

Zibby: I remember that time of life. I understand.

Yvonne: You'd go to the comic shop and you'd order something from a catalog and wait six to eight weeks for them to order it. I decided I was going to create my own content. I'm not a writer. I'm very familiar with fairy tales. I'm from Germany. I grew up there, a lot of Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen and all those stories that I grew up with. I took one of the lesser knowns. We know The Little Mermaid. I went, I'm going to go a little bit lesser known. I started animating a story that was already out there in the magna style. He says it's kind of post-apocalyptic. It was, but it was definitely not outer space. It was earth bound. It was still witches and princesses and maybe more Games of Thrones, fantasy, earth bound, not outer space.

Zibby: I'm sensing a little discord here. [laughs]

Yvonne: When he took the idea and said, "I'm going to write a screenplay," I basically washed my hands of it. I'm not going to animate or draw or illustrate a screenplay. That was pretty much, do whatever you want with it. Take the story. It's a cool story. Expand on it. Do what you got to do. I thought I was finished with it.

Zibby: And now here we are.

Lou: That's just it. It took on a life of its own. It really evolved. It kind of took over. People have to understand that this has been a ten-year process. The father of the hero is King [indiscernible] the 47th. The reason he's King [indiscernible] the 47th is because I was 47 when I wrote the screenplay. We write the screenplay. It's fantastic. I'm very happy with it. She's very happy with it. Then we realize this is going to be really, really expensive. Nobody is going to let me direct it and us produce it. We'd probably make a little money by selling it, but that wasn't really what we wanted to do. This started out as a project for the two of us. There was always the thought to novelize it as part of the whole world, if you will. Then Game of Thrones happens. My manager, JB Roberts, says, "Write the novel. At the very least, you've got that. Then if you sell the rights or whatever, you've created the world." I kept bouncing ideas off of Yvonne and checking in with her on plot and just an overall feel for it and went about the process of actually writing the novel and creating the world in more detail so that even if it gets bought out from under us, this is what it looks like. We've established that.

Zibby: I love how your manager is like, just go ahead and write the novel, as if that's not a big deal. There are thousands and millions of people, that's all they want to do in their whole lives, is sell the one novel.

Lou: It's interesting because it is, it's easier said than done. It took me ten years because the day job kept working out. I kept acting and getting a job. Eventually, got to the point where I could do a film or a TV show and write at the same time. It wasn't as if I could devote eight hours a day to writing like novelists who do this for a living are. I think the reason that JB recommended that is because I've written a bunch of screenplays. I've written screenplays that haven't been produced. I've written screenplays that have been produced. Whenever I've decided to write something, it gets done eventually. He knew that I would do it, that it wasn't a frivolous suggestion. It just took a while. What's interesting is that, speaking of the collaboration, I really painted her into a corner. [laughter] I stole the idea. She washed her hands of it. Then I wrote a novel. It's like, okay, illustrate this, and there's all this stuff in there that wasn't her idea. It wasn't what she imagined she would be doing.

Zibby: This is how we learn the meaning of compromise in a marriage.

Lou: And communication.

Yvonne: I think it turned out that we did compromise because I ended up going back to really old-school vintage sci-fi, more Flash Gordon, Barbarella as opposed to the high-tech sci-fi that we see in Blade Runner and that of today. I still took my fantasy world and did a big mishmash of everything else and tried a few new things that I wasn't as comfortable with and pushed the boundaries here and there for myself. I think we got a good mix. It's not necessarily sci-fi, what is expected, but it's not exactly earth bound like it is today either.

Lou: People always tell you after the fact -- I didn't set out to write a sci-fi novel, really. I didn't set out to write in any category whatsoever. I wrote the story as it came to us. Now people go, it's sci-fi.

Yvonne: It's YA.

Lou: It's YA. Is it really? Okay, great. Wonderful. My heroes are teenagers. They're nineteen and seventeen, I think, or nineteen and eighteen. I guess that makes it YA because it is very much a Romeo and Juliet story, but that wasn't the point. I didn't set out to fit into any particular genre. I think ultimately what happened with Yvonne's artwork is also a hybrid, which I think is wonderful because it certainly has that feel like the original Hans Christian Andersen drawings, but also a bit of Charles Vess and a bit of the [indiscernible] drawings from Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. There are those touches of not only that really cool retro steampunk-y kind of sci-fi, but a graphic novel sensibility as well. She had to draw creatures that I made up. She goes, [indiscernible/laughter].

Zibby: I'm reading the original Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland to my daughter who's seven. I was reading it and I was like, I don't know if this came across my desk if I would even cover this. [laughs] It's weird. It's a funny story. Who thinks of these things? There's less rhyme or reason in that book than probably any other book in all the different ways that it goes off. Yet it's a classic. It's amazing. There's just no science to writing. Things just take off. They become successful. There's no formula, really.

Lou: The truth of the matter is that's one of the biggest criticisms. It's too formulaic.

Zibby: Right, yes. Exactly.

Lou: If you're going to be original and you're going to do something, then you kind of have to follow your heart. Obviously, there are certain ground rules and some fundamentals when it comes to writing. You apply those. You just can't compare writers. Franzen is very different than my friend Craig Johnson or my friend Chris Bohjalian. Both of those guys are different from one another. Their styles are different. Chris Bohjalian, his style will change depending on a subject matter, which I think is just amazing. His depth and breadth of research and the worlds that he creates is wonderful. By the way, both of those guys were instrumental in us getting to the finish line with this book. I was doing the series Longmire when I really started writing it in earnest as a novel and showed Craig and his wife, Judy, the first couple of chapters. I say, "Am I wasting my time? Is this really something that, this is not for you?" They really liked it and encouraged me. Then Bohjalian and the three of us are working on a project together. He took a look at the completed novel and literally pointed us toward an agent and gave us some advice and has been a steadfast mentor in this whole process as well. It's been a lovely journey. We've acquired some great friends along the way.

Zibby: That's amazing. I love Chris. It was so nice of him to put us in touch. I was like, "How did the two of you meet?" He's like, "We met through Twitter like everyone these days." I was like, what? I thought he was going to say, we go back decades or something like that.

Lou: It's one of those, it makes no sense. If you wrote it in a book, they go, no, no, no.

Yvonne: It's funny. I was reading The Flight Attendant, I think it was. We both do a lot of reading. We're big readers.

Lou: She'll read something and then recommend it to me. It goes onto my pile.

Zibby: That great.

Yvonne: When he started reading it, he's like, "Is this guy on Twitter? I should see if this guy's on Twitter."

Lou: Because once again, I'm reading The Flight Attendant, this would make a great movie. Little late to the party. It's already a miniseries now. I'm always looking for something to do or to direct or write. Sure enough, looked him up on Twitter, there he was. Not only was he a fan, but he's a friend of John Fusco who wrote both the Young Guns films. John and I have stayed in touch over the years. It was one of those two degrees of separation. We just happened to be going to New York within a couple of weeks of contacting him. He was here. We had lunch. One thing led to another. That's how we're working on a project. We're actually in the process of adapting one of his novels, once again, for a miniseries. He wanted to take a look at some of my writing. It was like, here, can we do this together? He's just wonderful.

Zibby: That's so great. Having a mentor is so important. It's so funny because you wouldn't think -- look how accomplished you are in your professional life. Yet you need a person or two just to be like, yeah, you're doing okay. [laughs]

Lou: It's when you're trying something new.

Zibby: It's true. It's a hundred percent true.

Lou: I don't think we can assume to be a champion at everything you try. My whole career has been defined by jack of all trades kind of thing. I write. I direct. I do theater, film, TV. I've said it many times, it's all different branches of the same artistic tree. I'm a storyteller. I'm a communicator. Whatever platform or format that takes, it’s just getting down the technicalities of it.

Zibby: Yeah, which medium to choose. It's like you have all these cards in your pocket. You can just deal them out wherever you want to spread your --

Lou: -- We'll see how successful this is. The reception has been incredible so far in some of the early reviews, which have been lovely.

Zibby: You're a beautiful writer. You're really good. You really are. You never know when you open a book, what you're going to get. You're a good writer, so that’s great, as you well know. [laughs]

Lou: A lot of people automatically saw that -- first of all, they thought it was a memoir, which ain't going to happen until in ninety. I promise you that. It's unexpected. I don't think people thought that I was going to write something not only fictional, but that was in this world. I always liken it to when I did The King and I on Broadway. So many people thought, the La Bamba guy thinks he can be on Broadway? I have a degree in theater. It's my background. Even though I'm not known as a writer, I've always written. I actually set out to be a narrative writer, a prose writer, in high school. Then the acting bug bit.

Zibby: This whole acting career has really just derailed what your main goals are. I can't believe how much it's gotten in the way. [laughs]

Lou: You know what's interesting? Yvonne has done so many things in her life. We met when she was a makeup artist.

Yvonne: I obviously didn't become a graphic artist or an illustrator. I went into hair and makeup and special effects makeup, all that.

Lou: Again, very artistic.

Zibby: Did you meet on a set? How did you meet?

Lou: She gave me a haircut, got all up in my grill. [laughter] Her art, it's a gift. It's a gift. She blows my mind to this day. I've always thought, you should be doing this. I've sold so many of her ideas. Believe me, our production company, which is Frabjous Day, from the "Jabberwocky" poem, so many of the projects that we have in various stages of development are her idea.

Zibby: Look at that.

Lou: I'm riding her coattails. I think at this point in life she's not yet having an opportunity to embrace some of the things that I think she is intended to do. She's just so gifted and so smart.

Zibby: How amazing to have a partnership where both of you can reach your full creative potential. That's amazing.

Yvonne: There's a lot of support.

Zibby: I feel like this never happens the first time. I'm on my second marriage. My husband, Kyle, and I have the same synergy where the more we talk, the more ideas go flying out in different forms. I feel like I never hear that about people with their first marriages. [laughs]

Lou: Her first.

Yvonne: You know what? It's my first.

Zibby: It's your first? Okay, sorry. Then I'm wrong.

Yvonne: It's blown out of the water. There you go.

Zibby: You changed the trend for me then. That's amazing. In the book, the character obviously is a soldier. I know you have a military background in your family. Did that play into the creation of this character at all?

Lou: Both of us have a military background. It's interesting. A couple things come to mind. First of all, Hans Christian Andersen's short story starts with the soldier coming back from an unnamed war, clip clop, clip clop. That is the imagery of the book, the first image. The fact that it's an unnamed war and the fact that he's a soldier automatically, in my mind, put him in a certain age range. A lot of great war stories are from people who have just experienced this or are still in the process of defining their own manhood, if you will. I did a movie called Courage Under Fire with Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, directed by the amazing Ed Zwick. This was after he had done Glory. I asked him one day, I said, "Why do you keep doing war stories?" He goes, "First of all, the bang-bang's exciting." There's the big explosions and the effects and the hardware and whatever else. He's a very well-read man, a very smart man. When you think about it, you go back to even Aristotle who set a lot of things against war. Shakespeare set a lot of things against war.

Yvonne: Conflict.

Lou: Exactly, because you have this conflict, but you also have a setting in which you can discuss the more grand aspects of human character, of courage, of nobility, of integrity, of bravery, of all of these things in what is truly a life-and-death scenario. Hans's story is fairy tale. It weaves a certain tale. There's some magic involved and some just outlandish, fantastical adventures. As a novel, to me, or even as a film, it had to be grounded in a real sense of humanity. Why are we doing this? What are we talking about? From all of that came the idea of creating this planet that's spilt in two. We have two different races of people who are fighting one another. It's sweet because Craig Johnson said it's rather prescient, which I didn't think at the time. Here we are still again discussing race, discussing peace, discussing where we're at in this incredibly unsettled world. Though it's not meant to be a message piece, there is still very much a morality tale at its spine. The Once and Future King in the King Arthur is really an anti-war statement. Having read my entire life, I thought, I can't set off on this journey and just do it for the little story. There's got to be something a little bit more to it.

Zibby: Is it going to be a movie after all that now that you've backed into it? Do you have any idea?

Yvonne: Don't know yet.

Lou: We don't know yet. It's for sale if anybody's got half a million dollars laying around. What's interesting is that in the time it's taken to write the novel, that world has changed. What used to be a one-off now could easily be a miniseries, a limited series of sorts. I don't know how many books Game of Thrones, total, was based upon, but it has created a world. Interestingly enough, a lot of the people who reviewed it early on said that they so loved this world that they would revisit it. She came up with the idea for the sequel, so I'm working on that.

Zibby: Nice. Are you writing a sequel?

Lou: Oh, yeah. Already working on it and literally bouncing it off of her daily.

Zibby: Yvonne, you're the mastermind of the whole thing.

Lou: She is the mastermind. We had a certain idea and was tooling around with that for almost a year. Then one day she came up with a different idea that was out of left field. I literally went, that's it. That's it because it's unexpected. Once again, it's about something. It's about something that's relevant. Working on that now and very excited. This time, trying not to back her into a corner with the drawings as much. [laughs]

Yvonne: But we're already there. We're there already.

Zibby: I would recommend approaching this a little differently, perhaps.

Lou: We've been butting heads a couple of times.

Zibby: Last question. Do you have any advice, I was going to say to aspiring authors, but really anyone trying to achieve things in this creative way and to be storytellers?

Yvonne: For me, it starts with creating your own content. You want to do something, do it. Whether you're trying to sell, do it for yourself first. Somehow, put it out there in the universe. Something will happen even if it's many, many years later.

Lou: That's the point. That would go toward what I have to say. I said this to young actors, and that's never quit. You will never get an opportunity if you quit.

Yvonne: Just keep doing it.

Lou: You never know what heights you're going to rise to. When I set out, I just wanted to be a working actor. I was actually a very good student in high school and what not. When I decided to major in theater, a lot of my teachers and my counselor said, "Oh, no. What are you going to fall back on?" My standard answer was, "My ass." First of all, you have to love it. You have to have a dream. Then the thing that so many people -- I hate to say this. So many people who have this sort of overnight success American Idol mentality, it takes work. Writing especially, you got to do it. Our twelve-year-old right now wants to be an author. We love that. It's like, well, are you writing? Are you doing it? Some of it is just brass tax. It literally is elbow grease. You have to put in the work. Even if you have a dream as an actor or an artist or a dancer, you have to put in the work. It's a craft. It's an art. You may be talented. God bless you if you are. If you don't have discipline and you don't have commitment, then nothing's ever going to come from it. There are certain people who get a break because they are talented or they're beautiful or they're whatever. If they have no staying power, if they have no commitment to the art, they tend to go away because, especially in today's world, the cycle is so fast that you're only flavor of the month for a month. That's how it works.

Zibby: A month is a long time these days.

Lou: A month is a long time these days in a twenty-four-hour news cycle. Just look at what happened this last week. The thing about it is that I've done this for so long as an actor. I've never given up the writing. It's because I love them both. It literally is just physically, actively going after your dream.

Zibby: I love it. Thank you both for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" and chatting. Tell me again if you want me to FedEx it. I'll run down to the store. [laughter]

Lou: You read it. You hold onto it. When we get to meet in person, we'll --

Yvonne: -- We have a few phone calls to make after this.

Zibby: All right, phew. Good. Have a great day.

Lou: You too.

Yvonne: Thank you.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Yvonne: Bye.

Heather Cabot on health vs. jean size

Zibby Owens: Hi, Heather. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight."

Heather Cabot: Hi, Zibby. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Thanks for coming on both my podcasts, I should say. This is great.

Heather: I'm very honored. It's so cool that I'm getting a chance to talk to you and interact with you, especially during this time. The fact that we even got to meet in person, that's actually really cool too.

Zibby: You are the only person I think I've met who I've interviewed because you were just in the neighborhood. I was like, come over. It worked out perfectly. I'm so glad for it. That was such a nice day.

Heather: Thank you. I thought so too. It was great.

Zibby: Heather, take me back and tell me about your journey in this world in your body and the biggest struggles and where you are today.

Heather: It's definitely been a lifelong struggle, for sure. I grew up in a very fitness-focused family. My dad was a college football player. My mom has always been very slim, some might say too slim at times. Honestly, it's defined my entire childhood, was really built around -- I don't want to completely blame my parents. I think they were socialized this way as well. They, through the years -- I'm fifty now. I think they’ve evolved a lot too. Although, they are still incredibly focused on health and fitness. They're in their seventies and still running. They actually just got a Peloton. Very much from a young age, being thin, being skinny was a real badge of honor in my family. I remember going to family gatherings and being tortured emotionally inside if someone didn't tell me that I looked thin. I remember having those feelings even at five or six. If grandma didn't say, oh, you look so thin, or you're getting so slim -- as you grow up, your body changes. I went through chubby stages. I went through other stages where maybe I was slimmer at times, like most kids. That's what happens as you grow. Your cheeks get chubby. Then you get slim. Then you grow a little bit. I was hypersensitive to a lot of that. As I said, I think a lot of my self-worth in many ways internally was really defined by that. 

I started going to Weight Watchers when I was in high school. My younger sister and I, we were sort of pushed to go. All of those kinds of things defined my early years and into adulthood as well. The way I talk about it with my own daughter is, I feel like an incredible amount of my mental energy and emotional energy has gone towards being thin and trying to be thin and trying to fit a certain mode. I cannot even imagine what it's like now in this world of social media. I'm just thinking about growing up in the eighties and the nineties and being inundated with fashion magazines. Imagine today. You really can't get away from it. I struggle with that. I worry about that for my daughter and her friends. I feel like there's so many other things that we could all be spending time on besides worrying about what size we are. That bothers me. At the same time, just talking about the present -- I read the stories in The New York Times about -- I saw the one this weekend about people who are slightly overweight being at risk for COVID. It really freaked me out to the point that I actually looked up my BMI. I was like, oh, my gosh, I need to revise my goal. My newest number that I want to get down to is really different than what I had originally thought. Now I'm thinking maybe the overall purpose really isn't fitting into a smaller size pair of jeans. Maybe I should really be focusing on the overall health, which I know intellectually we should be focusing on, but it's hard. Anyway, I don't know if that's too much information about how I grew up. 

It's something as a parent that I've really tried to be careful about. I remember taking my twins to one of their very, very first pediatrician appointments. I remember my pediatrician saying, "Do not ever talk about dieting in front of your kids. Do not talk about fat. Do not talk about weight loss. Talk about being healthy. Talk about being strong." I've really tried that. I have tried that. I really don't talk about -- probably only until recently when I've been trying to have more open conversations with my teens about healthy eating and those kinds of things, trying to open up to them about what I just said, about the amount of wasted mental energy I've spent on these superficial things that I think I've really taken away. I wish I could get that time back, to be honest with you. I'm glad you're doing this podcast. In terms of balance, I think it's important for people to also think about a bigger issue than just the vanity aspect of it. Believe me, I am vain, especially having worked in television. I want to look good too, but I think sometimes we need to step back from -- why are we really doing this? What's the real purpose? For me, I'm really trying to focus a lot on just being healthy, particularly in this environment today.

Zibby: I'm glad you brought up the New York Times article because I read that and I debated, should I post this to my group? Or will that scare them and make them feel desperate? Sometimes I feel like when you're under the gun it's harder. You might want to rebel. They might have the adverse reaction, but I think I might. It is a health issue. Being overweight, whatever that's defined as, is not that many pounds. [laughs] It's pretty easy to be overweight.

Heather: That’s the thing. This piece was talking about forty percent of Americans are overweight. If you go and look at your BMI -- I just did this. I work out. I work out a lot. I have always had a very healthy lifestyle. I haven't always been as thin as I would like to be, but I definitely have focused a lot on being healthy and eating healthy and, like I said, trying to model that for my kids. Even I, I was like, oh, my god, I'm at the top of the healthy. That’s not where I want to be because if I gain five pounds, I'm not going to be in the healthy BMI anymore. I want to be more towards the middle. I want to have the wiggle room. I don't want to be at the very top. Like I said, I kind of feel like, at least for me, what's motivating is the overall -- it maybe has to do with the fact that I just turned fifty and I'm thinking about the second half of my life and how I want my life to be. How I want my life to be is I want to be healthy. I want to be able to do things. I want to be able to be like my parents and still be out running and hiking and going to spin class and traveling the world. My parents just went to Antarctica last year and hiked. I want to be able to do all those things. I recognize that I have to make that investment now. If fixating on a BMI number is better than fixating on that pair of jeans or whatever, the dress I want to get into that I haven't been able to wear for five years, I'm just making that up, but I think maybe, for me, that might help me stay a little bit more disciplined, I hope. It's up and down in terms of my commitment. I know we've posted about that on Instagram.

Zibby: There's no easy answer to it. Whatever motivates you today may not be the thing that motivates you tomorrow. It's just how you get there and what frame of reference you need. We all need something a little bit different at different times. Then the worst part is feeling motivated or scared and not feeling like you necessarily have the tools or control to fix it. I think that's one thing in this whole eating struggle -- I hate all these words like battle and struggle, but it's true.

Heather: It's true.

Zibby: It can feel so out of control. I've had times where I'm like, I feel I'm in control of all of these different things. Why is this the one thing that I can't get under control and that is so visible to everybody else? I mean, not really, nobody cares but me. It's like you're a walking poster. I don't have this particular thing under control. It's embarrassing, I feel.

Heather: It's so funny that you say that because I remember when I -- I am also a mother of twins, like you. I remember right after I had the babies. I gained a lot of weight. We moved right after. We moved to Los Angeles. I was meeting all these new people. I remember saying to my husband that I felt like I had this sign on my -- I wanted to be able to explain to people why I looked the way I did because they didn't know that I just had twins. I'm meeting new people. It was the worst feeling. Let's be honest, I was also pregnant with twins when I was still on network television. How embarrassing is that? I did not think I looked beautiful at all. By the end of my pregnancy, the extra-larges didn't even fit me anymore. I literally had nothing to wear. [laughs] 

Zibby: Extra-large, I couldn't even fit into -- I was wearing, basically, a sheet. I was so giant.

Heather: I mean extra-large maternity. I don't mean regular. I mean extra-large maternity. How amazing, all the amazing things your body can do? You just had twins. I just remember that same feeling. I wish I could tell people, I just had twins. Give me a little time. I'll get back to what I used to look like. I hated that feeling. That's how I feel now too a little bit.

Zibby: Then you realize that nobody really cares but you. They met you. They probably thought you were absolutely beautiful, which you are, and accomplished, which you are. They probably didn't think twice about it. To you, you want to telegraph that. At times, I know I've wanted to be like, it's possible I could be thinner, but is that what's really important? People don't care about that.

Heather: That's a thing I'm struggling with with a teenage daughter. I know exactly what she's going through, and not just my daughter, my son. Teens in general, it's just the phase they're going through. They're hyper-focused on what they look like. I wish I could listen to my own advice I'm trying to give them sometimes. There are so many more important things. It really is about being healthy. Sometimes we just get wrapped up in -- I also have a problem with perfectionism. Back to being out of control, I would say for myself, I have really struggled with, I hit my blue dots, or whatever it is. I've done it for five years, and then the one day I eat the cupcake or whatever it is, I'm like, the whole day's gone to shit. I might as well just eat whatever. It's really bad. That's when I lose control because I'm like, I fell off the wagon. I'm really struggling with, if that happens, what do I do now? I'm trying to track it. I'm trying to, the next day, get up and say, every day's a new day. It's a fresh start. 

I'm trying to be the friend to myself that I wish that my kids were to themselves or their friends were to themselves when they mess up at different things, or just my own friends. I try to be that good friend to myself. I'm really working on that. I agree with you. It's hard. The other thing I was going to say as far as feeling out on control, I think we all have to recognize that, particularly with emotional eating, it really is something that is so deep-seated in our -- it's the way we dealt with emotions in our early years. It is self-soothing behavior. Different people have different vices. I think that it's hard to break. It's easy for people to say, have a cup of tea. When you're in that moment and you feel sad or guilty or angry, it's hard to mitigate those emotions at that exact moment. Then we all end up feeling guilty after, which is the part that I really hate. That's why I was saying try to be kind to yourself.

Zibby: I think that one of the things I've been realizing lately is that if you're already in that moment, it's almost too late. It's like you're on the edge of a cliff. Don't make yourself feel bad that you're now going to fall off. I think the point is not to get to the edge of the cliff. That's the only way to fix it because then you just beat yourself up for the fall, which is inevitable. You end up in the kitchen. You're exhausted. You've had a fight with somebody. Something's gone wrong. You're disappointed or you're angry or you're tired. You're all those things. Then there's something in front of you. You're going to just eat it. The only thing is to backtrack. How can I avoid being all those things, A, and how can I avoid having that thing on the counter?

Heather: For myself, I think the planning is really key to recognize that you are going to have those times. For me, it used to be, when we weren’t in this whole weird pandemic, but it used to be four or five o'clock after I'd gotten the kids home from school. We were sitting in the kitchen doing homework. I was supposed to be making dinner, but I was hungry because I probably didn't eat lunch. That was always a hard time for me, particularly if I was tired, if I didn't sleep well the night before. That's typically when, so planning ahead for those kinds of times when you know that your discipline is not going to be what you would hope it would be at those times, and also not making it worse. That falling off the cliff thing, a lot of times then we self-sabotage and make it even worse because we're like, I already messed up. That's hard. I think the planning is really good. I was never somebody that did the meal prep on Sundays. I have a lot of friends that are so good at that and shop for the week. I'm just not good at that. I'm trying to be better. We're also trying to be more plant based. I have been planning a little bit more and cooking different kinds of things and making sure I have some of those ingredients in the house, but I'm not really great at, Sunday, I'm going to make all these batches of things that we're going to eat all week. Plus, my family doesn't really like to eat like that either.

Zibby: That's okay. That doesn't work for me either. 

Heather: I admire people who have the discipline to do that.

Zibby: Some things I think are easy, like making a big thing of oatmeal and having it last all week. I still haven't motivated to make my oatmeal for the week. Now every morning, I'm like, eh. Now it's almost noon, and I haven't eaten anything because I can't decide what to eat that's healthy. At this point, I'll just wait until lunch. 

Heather: I did that today too, actually. It's funny. I made oatmeal for my husband. Then I left myself a little bit on the counter. Then I was like, why didn't I just make the whole thing for the rest of the week? We could've eaten it every day. Why did I just make enough for the two of us right now? It was kind of silly. I was also going to say, the other thing that I find really challenging -- I'm wondering if the community feels this way. I think we emailed about this a teeny bit. Because I've been focused on all of these things since I was a kid, I am so inundated and I am so often encouraged to try every fad. I've done Whole30. I've done Eat to Live. I'm back to doing Weight Watchers now because I do think that is the one thing that has really only ever truly worked for me. I think it's the accountability part of it. I like the app. I think it works well. I just was wondering if other people -- when we hit that four thirty or five o'clock in the afternoon time when I'm like, I'm starving or I'm tired or whatever, that's when all of these other diet trends start to really make me crazy. Well, I can't eat this because if I eat that, it's too many carbs, or it's this. I'm not supposed to be eating that. I don't know why, I almost feel like I get paralyzed.

Zibby: It's confusing. It's totally confusing. I feel like there should be one of those speed movie things of me throughout my life starting when I was ten looking at the label because every year or two, I'm looking at a different part of the label. A different part is really important. First it was calories. Then it was the fat. Then I'm doing Atkins. It's the alcohol sugar. Then it's the fiber for Weight Watchers. Then it's this. Now it's like, what are the ingredients? Now I'm not looking at it. I'm like, are they whole ingredients? Are they processed? It's just one thing after another. Our minds are just jutting from place to place to place. Where should I look? What is okay? What is not okay?

Heather: What's good? What's bad?

Zibby: What's good and what's bad? That implies there is a good and a bad and that everything is binary, black and white, which is of course not true. To have a well-rounded diet of things, we have to have a little of everything. The thing with Weight Watchers that I like -- this is by no means -- I'm doing my own whatever version of it based on my 2003 thing that was the last time anything worked for a long period of time, so my own points. When I have a list of foods that I'm like, these are the foods I want to eat, I mostly want to eat this anti-inflammatory food from the Mediterranean style because I like those foods. They're healthy. They're filling. I enjoy them. It's not like when I tried to do keto or some of these other things. I don't enjoy eating meat. Atkins isn't going to work. Then to have the points is only, for me at least, to take some of the emotion out. It's not bad. It's just like, okay, whoops, I spent six points on a big cookie. It's over. Moving on.

Heather: Then you can adjust later for what else you're eating later in the day. I think that's the tracking part of it that's -- whether you're writing it in a food journal or you're doing it on some type of app, whether it's Lose It! or Weight Watchers or any of these things. I do think the accountability piece, particularly for somebody like me who recognizes that I am a victim to stress-eating sometimes, that making myself accountable without driving myself crazy but just being mindful of what I'm eating -- even with my kids, it's funny, we talk about portion sizes. We do talk about that now. My kids will now look at the bag of popcorn or whatever, and we'll talk about what a serving size is as opposed to eating out of the bag, which I'm not saying I never do. I really try to pour myself a portion. Hopefully, they do that too so that you just have in the back of your mind what you're actually eating. It's so easy to just inhale whatever’s there when you're hungry, and even if it's the healthiest thing. I think that's problem. You can eat all the whole grains. You eat all the avocado, nuts. 

I think that oftentimes when we think of -- this goes into the binary good or bad. When we think about healthy foods, not all of them are low calorie. It is easy to overeat them and not even realize that you're doing it. For myself too, instead of having one handful of nuts, have three handfuls of nuts and not even be realizing that's what you're eating, that is something that definitely contributes to weight gain. I also think that there's an aging component here. I'm not sure the demographics of the community. I will say for myself, it has become much more difficult to -- as I said, I've always been very active, but I feel like I have to try so much harder now to keep my weight in check. It's so frustrating. We're talking about solutions. My OBGYN last year said to me, I really have to add strength training not only for my metabolism, but also for healthy bones. I really am trying to do that. It's really not my favorite thing. I really like cardio. That's how I manage my stress. I will say that when I have focused on that, and I am really trying hard -- the last three or four weeks, I've been strength training three or four times a week in my garage.

Zibby: Wow, that's a lot.

Heather: My little Peloton, I have the bike, but I also have -- I'm doing all the classes on the app.

Zibby: Wait, so how often are you working out, then?

Heather: I work out pretty much every day. I do. Remember, I was telling you how I grew up. Just to give you a sense, my parents are marathon runners. They would go out on a fifteen-mile run on Saturday mornings. That was their time together. I'm not a good athlete, but I grew up in a very athletic family with a lot of focus on exercise. Frankly, I'm really blessed. The fact that it was part of my lifestyle, as much as as a kid I felt pressure, now I'm very thankful because that's the one thing I don't have to struggle with personally. I don't sleep as well when I don't exercise. I definitely need it. I'm actually an overexerciser. I get injured a lot because I don't know how to modify. I have been using the strength training classes on the Peloton app because I'm not going to the gym right now. It's been great. There are lots of different fitness apps, by the way. It doesn't have to be Peloton. This morning, I did a twenty-minute upper body and a twenty-minute lower body and a five-minute core right before I came on to talk to you. I feel good. I bought a few more dumbbells so I have some heavier weights. Again, that's a focus on health. I worry about falling. I worry about all these things as you get older. I want to make sure that I'm really strong. I'm trying to use that as a focus more than, as I said, the smaller pair of jeans, not that I don't want to wear the smaller of jeans, not that I won't be excited for a shopping trip in a few months. I am trying to focus on things that make me feel good too.

Zibby: You are not alone in the slow down and things getting harder. I hear this over and over and over again. I experience this myself. I'm forty-four. I'm already like, wait, it used to be that if I worked out, it just used to all be much easier. It's almost like a cruel joke. Here we are at a stage in our lives where we're dealing with our kids who are growing up and maybe our parents. There's just so much stress coming at us and caretaking needed on all sides, caretaking 360. We're trying to take care of ourselves. Then all of a sudden, somebody out there made it so that our bodies make it harder at this particular moment. It's like, seriously? [laughs] 

Heather: It is really not fun. It is not. I'm a few years ahead of you. It is not fun.

Zibby: It's not hopeless.

Heather: No, it's not hopeless. I also was going to say, I think the other thing, too, is that I wish I had known earlier that this was going to happen. I never really knew because my mom is very tiny. Honestly, she's a size zero and has always been my entire life. I don't ever remember her being any other size. I could never share clothes with her. I should also say, I have two younger sisters who are also both size zeros. I'm the oldest of four. That was always really hard for me. I always had this impression of myself that I was a lot bigger than I am. I still do sometimes. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm not. I always felt like I was towering over everybody all the time, which is not a bad thing, but I just had that feeling. My point is that I never had this conversation with my mom about her suddenly needing to worry about her weight because she was always the opposite. I didn't really know. I wish I started thinking about strength training and some of these other things a little bit earlier. 

The other thing I was going to say about overexercising, which maybe some of your community deal with, is I've gotten injured a lot. One of the things I've been trying to do is listen to my body and try to recognize when I'm getting to that point. What happens is when I get injured, then I can't exercise. I can't do the things I want to do. I tore a rotator cuff a few years ago. I have horrible Achilles tendinitis. I ran through pain. I ran a number of marathons. I did a couple of triathlons a few years ago. I ran through pain in the training, which you're not supposed to do. Now I really can't run anymore. When I was younger, I wish someone had said, hey, take it easy. Focus a little bit more on the healthy eating and portion control and all of that and not putting so much focus on so much intense exercise. That's one of the things I'm trying to deal with right now. How do I still get my exercise fix in in a way that is not creating inflammation or setting myself up for injury? As we age, that's really important. The strength training is, I don't want to get injured again. I really don't. I want to be really mindful of what I'm doing to keep myself healthy.

Zibby: There were so many good takeaways from this conversation, at least for me.

Heather: I hope so. I got to make sure it sinks in for me.

Zibby: I'm going to highlight a few that I noticed. One is to stop being punitive and that sometimes falling off the cliff and that late-night binge or whatever it is you do that you regret, you were set up for failure to begin with. The key is in figuring it out sooner than later. When you're in a full rational, levelheaded, non-emotional state, making a plan, making a plan for four thirty when you don't know what to eat and what label to look at. You know because earlier that day when you've been at your desk and feeling confident and calm, you made a plan for yourself, and so not waiting until the emotional mood strikes to try to figure it out. It's impossible. You're already on the tightrope, so figuring it out ahead of time as best you can, making at least one or two things that can last you all week even if it's something as simple as oatmeal. It will help. It will remind you of what you're doing. Being kind to your body and not overdoing it, and that overexercising at any age won't lead to anything good. 

I think also being aware that you're born a certain way. You were born with a different body type than your sisters. I was born with a different body type even than my mother who's, by the way, also much tinier than I am. I can feel bad about that. I can try to get to a place that I want to be, but my body's not made that way. You know what? Maybe my body has other strengths. I'm really strong. Strength and muscle and all of that is important. People are built different ways, so not to beat yourself up and compare yourself to other people who are born with different body types. Trying to take the advice we give our kids. Trying to be kinder to ourselves. Trying to have more of a sense of peace. Also then to keep health above vanity to the extent that that's possible. Fueling our body. Eating to avoid pain. Eating for the long term. Fueling ourselves, not just feeding our feelings, essentially. Those are some of the things that I feel like I got out of it.

Heather: Good.

Zibby: Did you? Did you get those out of it? [laughs] I don't know.

Heather: Those are all the things that I'm really working on myself. Articulating them and actually saying them out loud versus just it being in my head, I think that's really helpful. Actually, recently -- I don't really do a lot of journaling even though I'm a writer. I don't do a lot of my own personal journaling, but I just bought a notebook yesterday. I do find that in my professional life, writing things down, making lists longhand really helps me. I was thinking yesterday, also because I'm thinking about some creative projects for the future too, but I thought it'd be really great to start writing things down for myself. I feel like that they would stick. Speaking them to other people, talking about them, in a way, I think it makes it real to actually put it out into the world, or you sit down and write it down. The last takeaway I would add to all of that that I know you've discussed in the community is that this is really a journey. It's so important to see it that way and recognize that there will ups and downs. It is very much like a marathon. There will be days when you feel invincible. There will be days when you feel like you can't take another step. You have to remind yourself that that's normal. That's how you do the work. I have to remind myself of that. I know that intellectually. I know that, but I feel that writing it down, talking about it, reminds me that I need to be honest with myself about that. This isn't going to be a quick fix. The extra weight that I want to take off, I put on over several years. It's going to take time to deal with that on many levels.

Zibby: Sometimes I'm like, what else do we have to do the next six months? We might as well have a long-term weight loss goal or fitness goal or whatever. Why not? Or we could not achieve anything.

Heather: I think you're right. Look, I think the mental anguish that so many people are feeling about just having to persevere, this situation that we're in and how we endure it and how we go on, separate from the pain and grief that people like you have felt who've had actual losses which in itself is, it's traumatizing. I think you have to be kind to yourself too with all of this. I was going to say, I feel like having a constructive goal, something to focus on, it at least helps me know that there will be an end to this.

Zibby: Agree.

Heather: It's the light at the end of the tunnel. Having some structure to my day and something positive that I feel like I can do in addition to everything else that I want to do, whether it's contributing to charity or voting, all the different things we can do to make us feel like we have some power in this time where we feel very powerless, I do think focusing on self-improvement, both internal and external, I think it's a good thing. It's a good way to spend this time. I totally agree with you. Hopefully, there'll be some healing that comes out of it.

Zibby: Totally. Let's do it. We got this.

Heather: We got this. What is the plan, that you're going to check in with the people like me over the next few months?

Zibby: Yes, we're just going to keep posting. You can use the community to help you. I was actually thinking of starting, one day a week we can all post a day of food. I could pair people up with accountability partners. I don't know. Just use it. Post in the comments. Hashtag in the stories. We'll share tips. We'll check in every Wednesday for the progress you're making. We're all going to do it together. We'll know we're doing it. The community's going to grow. We're all going to comment and contribute and encourage each other. Why not?

Heather: I think it's great. It's great on so many levels. Congratulations to you. If there's anything that I can help contribute to, let me know. I was thinking you should have at some point -- because I'm sure many people have teenage children or children in general. Something that I struggle with is when I'm trying to be very focused on my own weight loss goals or my own health goals, I don't want to influence my kids in a negative way like I was inadvertently. That's something that I would guess your community probably would want to talk about or know about. I'm sure there are people that specialize in child psychology and weight and all of that stuff, but I'd love some tips for, how do you do that so that you're making space for yourself to do what you need to do without making anybody feel under pressure, but at the same time modeling for them? Anyway, that's something I struggle with.

Zibby: That's a good idea. Maybe I'll do some interviews.

Heather: Later. You probably have enough people in the community that have interesting stories anyway.

Zibby: Yeah, but I can intersperse -- I think this should be for stories. Now I'm just rambling. Maybe in the posts, I can do quick tips from -- like a magazine article, almost.

Heather: Yeah. I don't know how you have time to do all this, but I'm excited for you to do it.

Zibby: I don't either. I don't know.

Heather: It's great. It's something for you to focus on that's positive. I'm so glad that you are doing it. I think it's great. It'll be really helpful to a lot of people. Thank you.

Zibby: Thank you. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming on the show. We'll keep in touch. Heather, we'll all be rooting for you in the community. Everybody, look for your comments in Instagram and everything. Know that you have a whole team of people rooting for you. You're not doing it alone.

Heather: Thank you. I'll be rooting for everybody else as well. Go team.

Zibby: Go team. [laughs] Bye.

Heather: Take care. Bye.

Sophie Blackall, IF YOU COME TO EARTH

Zibby Owens: Why don't we talk about your beautiful new book which is just amazing with your characteristic beautiful illustrations and all the rest, these positive world messages and everything. Tell me a little about, what made you write this book? Why now?

Sophie Blackall: I happen to have it right here.

Zibby: Amazing.

Sophie: I know. I prepared. It's called If You Come to Earth. I have been incredibly fortunate to work with UNICEF and Save the Children and had traveled with them to various countries over the years, to Bhutan and Rwanda and Congo and India. Meeting children in all of these countries was something I think about every day. It was just an incredible privilege. On some level, it was frustrating because I couldn't talk to them for the most part. Often, they would have very little English. I ranted some French, and that's about it. Shamefully, I couldn't communicate with them. I would leave these tiny village schools on the top of a mountain where there had been maybe five or ten kids. We'd spent the day together. We'd giggle and draw pictures because that is the way that I communicate with anyone if I can't talk to them. I would leave thinking, there's so many things I want to ask you. I want to ask you about your lives. I want to ask you what you dream about, what makes you laugh. I could do as much as I could do with the drawing, but I vowed to make a book that would be for all kids in the world about all of us and the planet we share and the things that are familiar to us so that kids might see something they recognize in a book, and also the things that we don't know about each other and the things that are surprising and unfamiliar. That was the goal. I had no idea it would take so long. Essentially, it is a book about everything in the world. [laughter] Every time you put something in, you're leaving something out. It was helpful to find a narrator so I could blame the child. Well, it's this child's view of the world. Everybody has their own view. The omissions are theirs and not mine. It did take seven years. It did take a village, as most books do, but especially this one.

Zibby: Which part of the village was most helpful to you?

Sophie: Somebody asked me recently, what was the best part about making this book? I said without hesitation it was the village. People are extraordinarily helpful when you ask them questions. I'd always been a little bit shy. I would kind of avoid talking to a stranger. With this book, I talked to so many strangers because I wanted to know the people I was putting in the book. Almost everybody in the book is somebody I met or saw with my own eyes or chatted to on the subway or in Central Park or on a ferry in Bhutan, a little tiny putt putt boat, or just along the way. All of these people have cameos in this book. To me, it was putting real people in there. Even if they look like a clichéd representation of somebody, that person was real. I saw them. I spoke to them. Those people's stories are intertwined on every page of this book. To me, when I open it, it's this rich tapestry of humanity. With every interaction, I felt more grateful that I'm alive and part of that. For all our differences, and especially now, almost everybody has a smile and a story to tell you if you're open. That was a big blessing for me.

Zibby: It's true. Now that you have sort of united everybody through this book, I feel that the world is so fractured right now. I feel like this is the most divisive time I've certainly lived through, not that I'm so ancient. In recent history, I feel like it just keeps getting worse. You've been this little soldier going around the world collecting little -- more like a mail lady or something. You're getting missives from everybody and mixing it all. With that unique point of view, what can we do? How can we highlight the fact that we're all just human and we're all going through the same stuff, love and loss and what we put in our mouths for breakfast and all the same stuff? How do we make that message rise to the fore?

Sophie: There are two ways that became clear to me with this book, for me at least. It's a macro and micro kind of thing. The one is to talk to people. I think when you actually hear somebody else's story -- again, the cliché is of walking in someone else's shoes, which you can't ever really do. To hear somebody else's story makes them real to you. I always think that with curiosity comes a certain empathy if you're curious enough to ask another person instead of to make assumptions. How are you feeling? What do you feel about that? I can imagine what your response might be, but I don't know, and so I should ask you. If you're willing to tell me, then that is a gift. Then I will learn something. That goes for people who have very different political views to me. They have signs in their backyard that I vehemently disagree with. Yet they all come and help me fix a flat tire. In Congo, I met some of the most wonderful, generous, warm people who felt that being gay was a terrible sin. Two of our four kids are gay.

There are so many things like that that I think we just see things so differently, and yet there's this warmth and generosity to you. I think maybe if you met my kids you might think differently. Maybe if I listened to your stories, I might be able to see more clearly what it's like to be a farmer and how difficult that has been. That's the micro. Then I think the macro is whenever there's something global -- a pandemic is one of those things, but also a comet or an eclipse -- when we, instead of looking down at our feet or inside our own heads, we actually look out and up and realize that we are this one tiny planet in a vast, vast universe. I think about the Pale Blue Dot and Carl Sagan, I'm a big Carl Sagan fan, and him saying in that picture that was taken from Voyager 1 four billion miles from Earth, this spec, that's us. That's here. That's everyone we know, everyone we love, everyone we've never met suspended on a moat of dust in the sunbeam. That's all we are. If we can't learn to live together on this planet, there's no hope for us. Just try with the daily conversations, I think.

Zibby: Wow. You should be a Mother Teresa-type world icon, I feel like. [laughter] I mean it. We need voices like yours to drown out the other voices, honestly. This just so speaks to my beliefs in my heart and what I think is important too. You say it in such a beautiful way and literally illustrate it. It's amazing. Have you always been this, holistic's the wrong word, but globally minded and a uniting type of force? Has this been in your DNA forever? Is it something that's grown out of you in adulthood?

Sophie: I don't know. I've always been really conflict-averse. I was one of those kids, oh, no, let's not fight, have it your way. [laughs] I really think having had the opportunity to work with UNICEF and Save the Children opened the world to me in a way that I'll be forever grateful for. To walk into a village in the jungle in Congo where children had never seen anyone they didn't know before, it was extraordinary. To spend this day with them and then to walk away and think, I will remember this for the rest of my life, I don't know what you all think, but I think about those kids all the time and wonder what they're up to. I hope they're well and surviving.

Zibby: Had you always been an illustrator? Did you love to draw from a young age? Tell me about the progression of that part of your life.

Sophie: I did. I was very fortunate that my mother was a single mother, but she really worked hard to make sure we always had art supplies. Even in my case, I would go -- I lived in a country town in Australia. After school, I was allowed to walk home because that was the seventies and that's what you did. I would walk home past the butcher shop and stop in and ask them for some of the big sheets of paper that they'd roll sausages up in. They knew me. They were very kind. They'd roll up paper and give me a couple slices of baloney into the bargain. It was a fantastic deal for me. I always, always drew. My brother and I lived most of our lives up trees with books. We had a rope strung between the trees, and a basket. We would send books back and forth to each other. He was older. Really, I just wanted to read anything he was reading, The Hardy Boys and all those kinds of adventure stories and Winnie the Pooh. We were very lucky to grow up with books. So many kids don't. It's this privilege that I completely took for granted as a kid. My father is a publisher in Australia. Not only did we have books in every room of the house, but he was making books as well. I got to see that, which was thrilling to turn a story and then put it into paper and ink and bind it into this beautiful physical object. I can't imagine not having books around me. We just downsized as empty nesters from a four-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn into a cozy one bedroom which we thought was just this delightful corner building filled with light, but it is the noisiest corner in Brooklyn, so you can probably hear. Soon you'll hear a fire engine and a garbage truck.

Zibby: I'm in Manhattan. Usually, there are sirens back and forth here too. I get it. No worries. Then how did you get your start illustrating professionally?

Sophie: It was what I always wanted to do. I was one of those kids who were, yep, that's what I'm going to do. I think it was Winnie the Pooh. I would look at E.H. Shepard's drawings and trace them onto this butcher paper and break it down. How did he make those lines? How did he put so much character into those tiny sketches? Then I just set about doggedly getting to do that. I remember being sent my first manuscript and just getting goosebumps. It was a book called Ruby's Wish written by Shirin Yim Bridges. It's the true story of her grandmother who grew up in China. She was one of the first girls to go university. It fed into all of my feminist, "girls can do anything" principles. It was this wonderful story. I had just spent time in China, and so everything kind of came together. It was just thrilling. Most days, it's almost too lovely to consider that this thing that I do is work. I actually get to do this and call it work. Traveling and books and drawing and books and children, all my favorite things, and they're all combined. I'm very lucky.

Zibby: I have four kids as well. My older daughter was so excited that I was talking to you because she's read all the Ivy and Beans. We have walls of Ivy and Bean. I'm just waiting for my next kids to get interested. Of course, we've read so many of your beautiful picture books and all the rest.

Sophie: That's lovely.

Zibby: It's really rewarding to be able to hear from you. Are you remarried now? Not to keep prying into [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Sophie: We were actually going to get married this summer, but we decided we couldn't have a wedding if we couldn't hug our friends and family. We're going to try and do it again next year. We are building a retreat for children's book writers and illustrators.

Zibby: Yes, I wanted to talk to you about that. What's it called again? Wait, I wrote it down. Milkwood Farm?

Sophie: It's called Milkwood, yes, from Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. This is this great big project that we're doing. We thought we would get married there at the same time. With COVID, everything has slowed down a little bit. It will happen. In the meantime, we're building this thing that I'm thinking of more and more as a kind of ark for people to come and to be together and to eat and drink and walk and talk and draw and write and think in lovely wildflower meadows in the Catskills. I think it's going to be, I hope, some kind of sanctuary where we can stop and be quiet and then be noisy and be all the things in the same place that we haven't been able to do. To gather together I think is something that people are yearning for. I know I am.

Zibby: How do I sign up? Where's the form? Save me a bed or whatever. How is it going to work, seriously?

Sophie: We'll probably sleep ten to twelve people, so they’ll be quite intimate things. There'll be a lot of different ways that it will work. There'll be long weekends for peers to get together. That's something that we don't get to do much in the industry. We meet for conferences. We gather in grim hotel bars and begin conversations that we can never finish. I share a studio in Brooklyn with three other picture book makers, which is an everyday joy where's there's family. We have this in-built community. We've been together for years. We work together. We're invested in each other's books. We throw our ideas around and are inspired by the way each other works. Most people don't have that, I've realized. Most writers and illustrators work in relative isolation. To be able to share this kind of thing, you could come for a long weekend and get a little taste of this and be fed really well and with a wonderful bar. All those things are very important for being creative, I've found. Cocktails are very good. [laughs] Then there will be longer week-long workshops for people who are thinking about getting into publishing or writing books for children or illustrating. Then hopefully there will be industry gathering, so agents and editors and librarians and educators and then things for community groups for school visits and all those sorts of things. It's a hugely far-ranging, ambitious, organic project. We'll start slowly and see what happens.

Zibby: I love that. I have a two-book deal with Penguin Random House for children's books myself.

Sophie: Congratulations.

Zibby: I wrote one of them. Lord knows when it's coming out. Then I still have to write the second one. That doesn't make me a peer, but maybe I can sneak in on one of your long weekends.

Sophie: Absolutely.

Zibby: If you need any help with that project or support or anything, let me know because that sounds so amazing.

Sophie: Thank you. Careful what you [indiscernible/laughter].

Zibby: I'm serious. I wouldn't say that if I didn't mean it. You're basically doing Yaddo for children's books, right?

Sophie: Yep, that's the idea.

Zibby: I love that. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors or aspiring children's book writers or illustrators or really anybody? I could just sit and listen to your advice, whatever you have to say.

Sophie: You're way too kind. I was talking to some people who have been wanting to get published for a long time. I think there's often this sense of there's this track and you have to stay on it. If you don't meet these goals by a certain time, then you're failing at that. I just don't think it should be like that at all. I think that -- I was talking -- I cannot stay on a single linear train of thought.

Zibby: That's okay. Take them all.

Sophie: I had a brain scan recently for these rotten migraines. I got a picture of the inside of my brain. It was so thrilling to see all of these wiggly lines because that's exactly how my thoughts work. I love maps. There's a map called a meander map. I don't know if you’ve ever seen these. It's the map of the course that a river takes over centuries. You can look at a meander map of the Mississippi, and it looks like the inside of a person's brain. I love that idea of the way that thoughts move and intertwine. I think that, in our daily lives, is how we get our ideas and how we should be inspired and how we should work. For me anyway, I work on twelve different things at once. While I'm working, there are different compartments of my brain that are dedicated to different things. The book that I'm close to finishing is right up front. That's almost just busywork at this point. Then the one that's waiting in the wings is a little bit behind. That's where I'm doing heavy research and going down dead ends and rabbit holes.

Then way at the back are all the books that are just bouncing around in this great cacophony of jumbled ideas and ricocheting. That's the most fun place back there because anything can happen. The advice would be just to encourage everybody to keep their ears and eyes open and to walk around thinking not, this is this one track I'm on, but I could go this way or I could go this way. There's something to be gained from all of these detours even if it's not readily evident. Down the track you will think, oh, my goodness, that note that I wrote four years ago has just suddenly crystalized into an idea, or the thing I bought at a flea market because I didn't quite know why but I couldn't walk past it that I stuck in a drawer suddenly has opened some key to something that was locked. I'm all about the scrapbooks of the brain and any excuse, really, to go to flea markets. I think that's really what I'm advocating, which is something we're not doing right now but hopefully will again.

Zibby: What are some of the twelve projects you might be working on right now? What's coming next? What can we expect?

Sophie: This was such a gargantuan thing, seven years, and really illustrating the world and thinking about -- I involved so many people in it. I'm going to show you a page now. There's a page in here of colors, how to paint all the colors in the world. It's this page. I asked the internet for color names. I had all of these paint tubes. I thought it would fun to give them names. I love going into paint stores and looking at the paint chip names. My partner, Ed, and I play a game where we pocket a bunch of the paint swatches and then we fold the names back and we have to make the other person guess which names go with which colors. It's good on car trips when you're coming back from the hardware store. The internet gave me, there were about 1,500 submissions. They were just so wonderful. One of them was "Don't get me started, Jen" for the color pink, which is brilliant, and "Vacuum bag dirt." They're so good. Right now, I'm writing to all the people two years later to thank them for their color names. This was another one, the page that's about birds. I asked people their favorite birds around the world. They all came in, and I formed a giant bird with all of them. This is front and center.

One of the other books I'm working on is a book for grown-ups. It's called Proust's Bedroom. This painting you might be able to see behind me, it's a little bit of a story. The book, Proust's Bedroom, is going to be about my favorite writers' houses which I am visiting around the world. It's been suspended for a minute. It's part memoir and part biography of these writers and little bits of travel going to all these places. It's Herman Melville and Dylan Thomas and Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen and Beatrix Potter and a bunch of writers. When I was eighteen, I was in Paris thinking I had discovered it, as all eighteen-year-olds do, I found myself at the Musée Carnavalet, the history of Paris museum. I'd been up all night. It was just so wonderful to wander Paris at dawn and then to arrive at this museum. I found Proust's bedroom. I had never read a word of Proust, but I thought it was just impossibly romantic. I took a snapshot which, when I got home to Australia much later, printed and put on my wall. All through college and when I moved to the States, I brought this photograph with me. It's always been on my studio wall. Then one day, I thought I'd make a painting of this bedroom because there was something monastic about this bedroom. I loved the cell-like room and then the decadent gold dragon scales sort of quilt. I made the painting.

Then a couple of years later we were in Paris around New Year's Eve with my partner Ed and our four kids. We found ourselves outside the museum. I said, "Kids, let's go and see Proust's bedroom." We went in there. My son ran ahead. We turned the corner. There it was. Except it wasn't Proust's bedroom. It was somebody else's bedroom. My eighteen-year-old self had seen the label on the wall and taken a photograph, but the label actually referred to the next bedroom which I didn't like the look of at all. It was quite dour. There was a lot of ugly furniture in it. I thought, that can't possibly be Proust's bedroom. It must be this one. I've been living under this painting and dining out on it for years. In fact, someone at the French consulate said, "I hear you did a painting of Proust's bedroom. Can we use it for the anniversary of Swann's Way?" Thankfully, I was out of the country. Otherwise, it would've been my everlasting humility and shame. They would've had to gently say, um, this is actually Paul [indiscernible]'s bedroom and not Proust's bedroom at all. That is the introduction to this book. I thought after that the least I could do would be to read Swann's Way. I've read Swann's Way now. I'm slowly working my through Remembrance of Things Past. It's an interesting sleepy read with beautiful -- have you ever read Proust?

Zibby: I did. I read Swann's Way in college.

Sophie: I think I have to read it about six times before it's maybe all in there. There are bits that made me laugh out loud. Then there were bits that I just read the same page five times and couldn't retain it at all.

Zibby: I should probably go back. That's a wonderful story. I love the yellow bedspread. Congratulations on your book release and getting it out, this book about the world out into the world. It's really exciting and I'm sure makes you feel so accomplished to have that sort of closure on such a giant project that's gone on for so long. Enjoy the success that follows. Let's stay in touch. You know, I'm not far away. I already started following the Milkwood Farm Instagram account. I'm very interested. I will be tracking the progress.

Sophie: Thank you. It's been lovely to talk to you.

Zibby: You too. Have a great day.

Sophie: Thank you. Bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.