[SPEAKER_01]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_01]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm best selling author Bianca Marie, and I'm joined by CC Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone, today's guest is the author of the change, a good morning America book club pick, Lulu deans little library of band books, and the groundbreaking YA series starring Kiki Strike.
[SPEAKER_01]: He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my pleasure to welcome back, Heston Miller.
[SPEAKER_01]: Heston, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love your books.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the rage.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to discuss all of that soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: For our listeners who are not watching on YouTube, you should actually be watching on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm holding up the cover of the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is absolutely glorious.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just got the hard cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're even prettier.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something so special about getting your hard covers for the first time, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: My daughter was like, oh, they're really pretty.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, can I actually ask before we actually even go on?
[SPEAKER_01]: So the book we're talking about is the woman of wild health.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you have a stay in the cover?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you get to pick because a lot of the times we don't?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd love to know if you had any stay in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did want so I've kind of made fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: My personal solo.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of my books starting with the paper back of the change, but three literally day and a now, the woman of violence held, they've all incorporated fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just I loved the idea of, you know, the whole book is about a family tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: and sort of the secrets and the gifts and the curses that are passed down from one generation to next.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's sort of a nice wichy bonfire that also symbolizes the Duncan family tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have had in the past more of a say of recovers than I think, you know, I haven't passed with my young adult books, but they got a
[SPEAKER_00]: really an artist to come and do this, you know, she knew that I wanted to have something that looked like a bonfire, she knew about the book, so this was what she came up with, and the person who really made the final decision was my daughter who saw it.
[SPEAKER_00]: and loved it, and she was good taste.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we went with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, at the beginning of the book, we have the Duncan Family Bloodline.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like how the bloodline could be like veins, but also could be like lava, which is the same as the Tava image.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be fire or it could look like the lava, which is stunning.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually mean, I mean that myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the bloodline?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I just, I love the idea of having it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because the first chapter is called blood, and it's all about the things that have passed down from mother to daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I don't know, it just occurred to me like wouldn't it be cool to have a family tree in the form of sort of a blood vessel?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and we're done, let's see.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I said, it could be love as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for those of you who are not looking at YouTube, go and look at YouTube.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm holding it up and it's absolutely gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you could see how that's followed through in terms of the cover.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I've gone a bit of attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me read the flat copies that everybody knows what we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we'll dive in.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are places on earth where nature's powers gather, girls raise their or the queen's strange gift.
[SPEAKER_01]: A few are given power so dark that they fear to use them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Such a place is wild hill on the tip of Long Island.
[SPEAKER_01]: For centuries the ghost of a witch murdered by the colonists claimed the beautiful and fertile wild hill until a young Scottish woman with her own strange gifts arrived.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lady Duncan was allowed to stay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Five generations of Sadie's defendants called Wild Hill Home, each generation more powerful than the last.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, in the aftermath of a terrible tragedy, the last of the Dunkins once prophesies to be the most powerful of their kind, abandon their ancestral home.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them, Bridget, moved to California, and turned her dark gift into fame and fortune.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because Sister Phoebe settled on a ranch in Texas,
[SPEAKER_01]: Phoebe's daughter, Sable, has become a famous chef, seemingly powerless, Sable has never been told of the Duncan bloodline.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now Bridget, Phoebe and Sable have been brought to White Hill to discover their family legacy.
[SPEAKER_01]: The old one, Furious, at the past, mankind has chosen these three powerful witches to turn the tide.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Duncan's willful for full their destinies, but only if they can set aside their grievances
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so we're going to get to that soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll discuss the book in more detail, but something I want to discuss first, Kirsten is how I write from a place of rage and it's clear, you let Fury fuel your own writing and there's lots to fuel it because you bring out a book every year to two years can you talk us through your process?
[SPEAKER_01]: From when that Fury sits in and you have an idea for a book until it gets submitted to your agent or to your editor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I mean, it was, it's the last three books have come out very quickly, and what's interesting is it seems like I broke them all very fast, but I actually only wrote Lula Deans that a library had been books really quickly, the other two took a couple of years, two or three years to write, but yeah, I mean, it's when you said rage fuels you're writing, yes, and that's what I always tell people, the other day somebody asked me what advice would I give to, you know, aspiring writers,
[SPEAKER_00]: And mine was, you know, you have to, you have to write something that you're passionate about, you know, you have to have something as subject of the data or whatever it is that is going to push you past, you know, all of the self doubt, all of the pain and suffering that goes into writing on a daily basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to have it has to be a powerful emotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, rage and revenge are the things that work best, that the change was 100% of that revenge, and Lula Dean was about...
[SPEAKER_00]: really sort of, you know, pushing people like women like me who are from the south to sort of get off our butts and do the right thing that we know needs to be done so it's just you have to find that powerful emotion that's going to give you that energy is going to be the fuel to get through the dull drones that happen in every writing process.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for me, it's rage and revenge for you, I guess it is, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it could also be passionate love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be all sorts of different things, but it has to be something powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, you know, it's just you're going to Peter out somewhere in the middle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good to have me before.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was speaking for an experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's interesting that you said Lulu Dino is the one that was fast and then the others were a bit slower.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know, some books feel like they're right fully formed and you just kind of there to actors of conduit to get the words down on the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other books that feels like man, you're having to dig and twirl and work your ass off to get anything on the page was the woman of our deal harder was a bit more of a struggle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was harder.
[SPEAKER_00]: It did not come out fully formed,
[SPEAKER_00]: The change, I really knew what I wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first draft of the change came out very, very quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I went back and made a lot of revisions to it and added a lot to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why it took a little bit longer than I thought it would originally.
[SPEAKER_00]: The women of wild hill was,
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, I've been saying it was more difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just wasn't fully formed in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was really discovering a lot as I was writing, which is a wonderful experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the idea of getting to know these characters as you're writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she would do this, and you go off onto a tangent and discover something new.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say that it was more of an exploration than Lula Dean, which was me really,
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of sort of spilling out thoughts that I've been thinking about for a very, very long time and just hadn't gotten around for writing about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's amazing how every book sort of teaches you how to write it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every book, you think the next one's going to be easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you know, some of them are easy and some of them are really difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's always different and each book is its own.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like having children, each one of your children is unique and different and wonderful and problematic in their own special ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, books are very much like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of have to treat them individually.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love that analogy.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll discuss the ensemble cast a little bit later.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the meantime, I would like to talk about the prologue because we're always saying on the podcast, you know, a prologue needs to add to the story, it needs to be put there very intentionally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Often writers will say that they started writing with other prologue and then it came afterwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you post read us the prologue please because it's incredibly powerful and then I'd like to discuss how it came about and the intentionality behind it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the prologue, it's called blood, and it's in the voice of which she was murdered by colonists.
[SPEAKER_00]: She says every morning when I was a weak girl, women would come knocking at our cottage door.
[SPEAKER_00]: They came to see my mother who was known
[SPEAKER_00]: In the iron cauldron over our fire, she would cook whatever was needed, a remedy for a persistent fever, a cell for bothersome rash.
[SPEAKER_00]: If she deemed her guest trustworthy, she might fashion a filter to entice a reluctant suitor, a draft that could empty the womb, or poison to read the woman's house of a troublesome pest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even as a child, I knew what could happen to women like my mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her very own sister was put to death by order of the king.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it came time to begin my training.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother told me what made us different.
[SPEAKER_00]: A powerful elixir flowed through our veins.
[SPEAKER_00]: By then, I knew blood was essential for life to flourish, spill too much and death would follow.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother picked a finger and showed me the drop inside the thousands of years of our family history, she told me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It held our treasures and secrets in fatal flaws.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of it was passed from mother to infant in an exchange so perilous that often proved fatal.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if the child lived, it would inherit a unique set of gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it was a girl, she would learn our ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted nothing more than to follow in my mother's footsteps, but she knew from the moment I was born that I was meant for something different.
[SPEAKER_00]: My gifts would carry me far away to a land we hardly knew existed to a place called Wild Hill.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was to watch over six generations of the Duncan family and wait for their bloodline to produce the most powerful of our kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it came after it was it was not the first thing I wrote.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't it was in the last thing I wrote either, but I wanted to begin with that because this is that whole idea of blood in this idea of sort of these treasures and and curses being passed down through a family line.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, at the heart of the book, it's the idea that ties everything that you read going forward together.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was just a wonderful way to kind of make sense of everything that you read after that and introduce us to this character who ends up being incredibly important to the
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you know, it's so interesting to begin a story with a character who isn't one of the protagonists, but who is so essential, because generally readers become attached to one of the first characters they see, and in an ensemble cast, who generally say, begin with one of the most important characters, and then you flip that on its head, but it gives such brilliant context, especially in terms of a book about witches, because so much about
[SPEAKER_01]: the whole witch law is that this magic is passed down through the maternal line.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mother, you don't want it to grain or turn, so it goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that just sets it up so perfectly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, you know, in that, I mean, it's only in page long, but it foreshadows a lot of what happens in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of the dangers that these women face from the outside world, the punishment that society will often deliver to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get a sense of a lot of what's going to happen just in that one very short passage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's amazing how this gift gets handed down, but to get punished so much for having this gift, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a double-age sword.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the other sort of things that kind of recovers throughout the book, is this idea that blessings always come with sacrifice, that the concept that most people would understand is this sort of Yin and Yang, there's the dark and the light.
[SPEAKER_00]: everything is in balance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this idea of gifts being sort of given to these, you know, to these women who've been chosen as special, they've also learned, you know, throughout their childhood, those blessings come with sacrifices as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also speaks to so much about what it is to be a woman, because women are raised to be
[SPEAKER_01]: you know self-sacrificing in the name of motherhood in the name of so many things whereas men are allowed to pursue something because they wanted for themselves and they will get the benefit of it but women are taught to constantly sacrifice themselves for the great to good and for everyone else's happiness and so I love how that ties together with so much of the
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah there's there's actually passage in the book at one point where it's the witch besey which by the way I named her besey because that is I mean she's a she's Scottish and she she comes from the time when women in witches were persecuted in Scotland by the king yeah now there's a there's a part of the book where she talks about how men's sacrifices are sung about you know their monuments built
[SPEAKER_00]: goes to give birth to stands right on that threshold of life and death and a lot of women don't make it even today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, these are the sacrifices that we make to keep the world to keep them humankind going.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something that we do quietly without the statues and
[SPEAKER_00]: the glorious ethics, but it's every bit as courageous as anything else that's ever been done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we do it all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, okay, you break the novel up into parts, like weird sisters, the three, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_01]: How does that
[SPEAKER_01]: help the structure of the story was that something that was there upfront was that as you wrote, you decided to split it up in terms of that kind of structure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I'm thinking about the intentionality in terms of how that helped you frame the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the upfront section is where you meet the three modern protagonists, you know, the final two generations of this family are meant to do
[SPEAKER_00]: that the final three were going to turn the tide.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you meet them and you get a sense of who they are and what has happened to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a break, there's a terrible tragedy that ends up tearing this family in these final three of parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in the second part, you go back into the family's history and you meet the other generations of the Duncan's.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really, it's funny because somebody
[SPEAKER_00]: finding out how the gifts that they are going to use to do what needs to be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our handed down from generation to generation and you see it pass from line to line and you see what their mission is going to be becomes clearer and clearer as you meet each of these women who's come before.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then by the time you're out of that period where you're sort of learning about the previous four or five generations,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what it is that they're supposed to do and then the part part is them taking action finally.
[SPEAKER_00]: coming together and doing what needs to be done?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love how you jumped back and forth in time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's definitely not back stories, like multiple timelines.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like a braided narrative and if weaves together and we have some chapters in the first person from the old ones perspective that are intersposed throughout, it's like this connective tissues throughout,
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you write it the way we see it now or did you write it in a more linear way and then decide to move things around in terms of maintaining tension in the story in terms of what the reader knows and what the reader doesn't know?
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew that I wanted it to sort of.
[SPEAKER_00]: to work the way that it does.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's just, you know, you never get it right the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're constantly moving things around, and especially with these interstitial chapters, which are the which Bessie talking, but she is basically explaining how this world works.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's explaining sort of why things are the way they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she's giving this very, very powerful information about how this sort of world of powerful women works,
[SPEAKER_00]: and her role in it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I knew that that was how I wanted it to work, but especially when you're writing something that has as many moving parts, you end up rearranging things throughout the course of writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never ever just sit down and get it perfect for time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just about the story, either it's about maintaining the momentum and making sure that any laws and the action are kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: filled in so that you get the sense of the pace, but also, you know, you know, you don't forget any of the main characters so you're constantly sort of moving forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a tricky thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does require sort of making sure that everything's exactly where you need it to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like a tuning fork.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of calibration that needs to happen because, you know, you want to lock happening in the present daytime line and every time you move back, you want to make sure that that is not slowing down the pacing that it's revealing things that help the narrative move forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I can imagine it's a lot of moving cuts and I want to read just one section here, that's called the old one.
[SPEAKER_01]: In my time, men believed witches worked for Satan.
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't think women could wreak mayhem with other men giving orders.
[SPEAKER_01]: They claimed we were doing the devil's bidding when we made the butcher's pecker stop working, or the farmers have her birth a two-headed calf.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now in face of misfortune, most men turn to science for an answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't burn women these days, which are written as progress, and often there is a rational explanation for their woes.
[SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes to be honest,
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been around for a very long time and I've stopped on many and learned men.
[SPEAKER_01]: The truth is women will always confuse them, which is or not, they're not sure how we work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Women are clearly in league with nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even our cycles follow those of the moon.
[SPEAKER_01]: We create life out of little and into it things that men don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: We terrify them because we possess powers they aren't able to plunder, because they'll never be able to do what we can.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my goodness, that doesn't just like sum up everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't do that, take it to ride.
[SPEAKER_01]: Please tell me that took you a while because I spoke you wrote that in like one sitting like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna have to hate you for all eternity.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'll tell you what it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was something that I worked on.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were a couple of of those chapters like that that I really
[SPEAKER_00]: and proud of because they, very much, I mean, they explained my view of which craft, which I think everybody's got their own definition.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't just sit down and write them.
[SPEAKER_00]: These were things that I had been thinking about for a very long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the whole idea of this book came from something that I wrote.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was asked to write for an art exhibition where the theme was female.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was asked to write the opening of this exhibit.
[SPEAKER_00]: on that theme.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wrote, I part of that came from that, and part of it is used elsewhere, but just this idea that we have these powers that men don't, and that the fear of those powers, and the sort of insecurity that comes from knowing that they aren't quite as powerful as we are,
[SPEAKER_00]: So it came from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was an idea that I had been thinking not for a long time and it actually was kind of the inspiration for the book itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like the bedrock for it, which was incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to read another one here as well, which again for our listeners, we constantly talk about curiosity seeds.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you need to make the reader actively curious about something so that when they get circulated, feels like a payoff and there's just this one paragraph, it's called the Trace Passer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Five years after the girls left, a young man slipped over the wall in the dead of night, likened to the K-takers house and walked through all the rooms.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't take anything, he didn't rifle through draws.
[SPEAKER_01]: I doubt he knew what he was after, then he found it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He stood on floor as grave with his hands shoved in his pockets and studied the name etched into the stone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't spoken to a man in almost 400 years as a rule I avoided them.
[SPEAKER_01]: That one should allow for exceptions to every rule and made an exception for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was just over there and then we moved on to the three and it just insights so much curiosity.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, okay, who is he, why did you make an exception, et cetera?
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, that's something that, did you have to calibrate where you were going to put that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the kind of thing that needs to be put at the perfect space.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if it's too late, it's not as effective if it's too early the reader might forget it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's one of those things it was not in my outline.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not something that I had originally had in the kind of the grand plan of the book, but it was just it felt so right at that moment because he does end up being a very important character and I wanted him to have the witches stamp of approval and it was just sort of it was one of those things that you discover in the course of exploring.
[SPEAKER_00]: this world that you're in, these people that you've met.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from everything that it happened, which you know, requires boilers, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to look at that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that I ended up writing that after I got to know who he was, what his personality was like, and it had really fleshed out the events that kind of led up to that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just made absolutely perfect sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: that he would break into this estate to try to figure things out and he would come across the entity that had sort of set the whole narrative in motion.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but it's also fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that, you know, half of writing is just keeping yourself entertained.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've always said that I know something's gone off when I'm bored.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think originally, like when I first started writing, if I'd get to a point in the book where I was just bored to tears, I would set it aside.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's kind of the natural inclinations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this is going nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to get rid of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you sit back and you think about it, and you say, okay, what would I want at this moment?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, maybe the energy has dipped a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of punch can I give at this moment that would, you know, excite me?
[SPEAKER_00]: if I were beating.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would make me want to move on to the next chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you sit back and you think about it, you will often come up with something like that, you know, the perfect moment for you're like, oh, what the hell is going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is this person?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going to happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love the thought of moving ahead then coming back because that's how I write as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as you get to know things, you're able to come back in plants, some curiosity seeds, refer to the person in a way that feels organic so that when we get to that person, we prepare for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've foreshadowed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The reader is like ready for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, okay, kiss me a pound for like one more question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to speak about the ensemble cost.
[SPEAKER_01]: People with different powers, differentiating them on the page,
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you speak a bit about that process?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're all named after goddesses and powerful women, which was intentional.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also my favorite names.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love a Phoebe and Bridgid symbol and Lilla.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think I had the names before I had the characters and each of the names really helped inform these characters were.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lilla is exactly what you would come to explain to Lilla at the TV.
[SPEAKER_00]: and Sadius is very carefree and wild and just sort of completely untamed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I thought about it, you know, I kept, I wanted to, I always had my own family in mind as I was writing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that sort of experience of discovering things that had been passed now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as I was creating these characters because they're all related, they're all in this bloodline.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I wanted to make sure that they were very different, but that you, but you kind of got a sense of where they were getting everything from, you know, it was very much a family.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just eight, I think it's eight and you know completely unique individuals who have absolutely nothing in common.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all informed by this family history.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all informed by the tragic events that have taken place in their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they all have these gifts that they've gotten from earlier generations.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as I was coming up with these characters, I was very, very careful to make sure that it felt like a family in the end more than anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so many of them, who they are is in response to who the other people are, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's so true in that, because we get forged by all the people who be coming to contact with and sometimes we'll become a certain way in response to somebody else's influence over us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was really a wonderful exploration of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's also about how you're not defined by I think we all grew up in families where we're given labels, you know, as little kids like you're the sweet one and you're the smart one and you're the
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you grow older, it's you, you find yourself still wearing these labels that no longer apply and that's what's kind of happened in this family and so it's about how family defines us but also how it gets us wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then how we correct that as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Kirsten, it was wonderful, wonderful chatting with you for our listeners.
[SPEAKER_01]: The woman of Wild Hill, we're linking to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you get the book, they use a port, the podcast, and an independent bookstore at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Get this book, it is one heck of a writer, absolutely loved it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we can't wait to have you back again, Kirsten.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: So much.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome everyone to a very special episode of our podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am very very happy to introduce to guests that I have been wanting to interview for the longest time.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will read her bio.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, Marjan Kamali is the New York Times best-selling author of The Lion Women of Tehran.
[SPEAKER_03]: an instant national bestseller, the stationary shop, a national and international bestseller, and together see a Massachusetts Book Award finalist.
[SPEAKER_03]: Marjan's novels are published in translation in more than 30 languages.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's a 22 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.
[SPEAKER_03]: Marjan holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from the
[SPEAKER_03]: a master's of business administration from Columbia University and a master's of fine arts in creative writing from New York University.
[SPEAKER_03]: Her essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal Literary Hub and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
[SPEAKER_03]: Born in Turkey to Iranian parents, Marjan spent her childhood in Turkey, Iran, Germany, Kenya and the US.
[SPEAKER_03]: She lives in the Boston
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much, CC.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am especially excited to have you, and we talked a little bit about this before we started recording, but because I feel like I have plenty of special connections to your book, but I'll share too.
[SPEAKER_03]: The first is that back in December, when my mother-in-law came to visit, she comes to visit usually around Christmas every year.
[SPEAKER_03]: She and I always read a book together, and the book we read last year was, of course, the Lion Woman of Tehran, and we kind of have
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's a great way to spend time together and, you know, get to read at the same time, but also get to connect through a book.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we did that through your novel, and it was really special, and it spurred some really interesting conversations.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know she's listening because she listens to every episode, so Anna, thank you for doing that with me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, of course, the second connection that I should highlight is that you are Wendy Sherman's client.
[SPEAKER_03]: So everyone knows that I've moved agencies.
[SPEAKER_03]: Marjan, I don't know if you're
[SPEAKER_03]: But yay, whether you are not yay, we're excited to have you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so excited to be here because I've been following you and seeing your tremendous energy and passion and I think sometimes you can just tell a person's spirit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I felt sort of in St.
[SPEAKER_02]: Patrick's, so I'm very excited to be here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love that you read the book with your mother-in-law.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is beautiful.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a great way to connect, I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we were just being more connection in our world.
[SPEAKER_03]: Would you agree?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would agree.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is the best way to connect through stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I feel when people can connect to characters in a book,
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a way of them feeling less alone and seeing just how universal so many emotions and experiences are and it's kind of the opposite of, I feel what's being driven today through social media, which is more dividing and more making people feel as though they're in the siloed community, so it's an antidote to that division.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Stories as an antidote to division.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a great point.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Lion women of Tehran is your latest novel, but it is not your first novel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us about your experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: Putting out your first novel versus your most recent one, what has stayed the same if anything, what is different?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, to take us to that journey, for context, our listeners are, we have publishing professionals who listen to us, we have accomplished authors who listen to us, but I feel like it's fair to say that most of our listeners are aspiring authors.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're writing, but they haven't published yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I know they would be really interested in hearing from someone who has your track record.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's different?
[SPEAKER_03]: Could you talk a little bit about that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, for me it's a world of difference because my first novel between when I wrote the first youth sentences in my spiral notebook at the back of a business school lecture hall on how you know to when it actually was being sold in bookshops at that time period was 13 years.
[SPEAKER_02]: six of those 13 years I took off, but I think the most different aspect between men and now is when you're first starting out and I'm speaking to your aspiring writers, your aspiring authors because deep in my heart, I'm always that, you know, no matter how established you become what level of success you achieve, you never forget that feeling, it's always with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're often told that life is short.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're often told that, you know, we need to hurry it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I would say to them, please remember that life is long.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you need to throw away the clock, stop putting pressure on yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to be published by 30.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to be published by 40.
[SPEAKER_02]: And none of that is true.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just have to tell the story you want it to tell in the best way you possibly can.
[SPEAKER_02]: If that takes 13 years, so be it.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I were to tell you today, CC, that my first novel together, T, came out in 2013 versus 2010 versus 2007, would you really care, and would you be like, oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, because what matters is that the book is good.
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the time, you know, those timelines really seem to matter to me, but I learned to let go of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: pressure.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like people are going to think that I asked you to say that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I did not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone, if you were listening, I did not ask.
[SPEAKER_03]: I had no idea she was about to say this.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just that, you know, my big thing on the podcast is always ambition over anxiety.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like for your ambition first, you know, it's your anxiety that's making you say or determine that you have to be published by 30, 40, 50, whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is all nonsense.
[SPEAKER_03]: You are so-
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that you degree that the reason why you are so successful is in part.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's always a combination of factors, but the fact that you did put your ambition or your anxiety, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Be ambition to tell the best possible story.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Lovely.
[SPEAKER_02]: It took some trials and it took some stops and starts and great advice from wonderful teachers for me to get there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to pretend that was my mindset in my 20s, but I learned, I learned
[SPEAKER_02]: that just the deep importance of patients.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like touched by this.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what would you say was the single best decision that you've ever made that contributed positively to your writing career other than honoring patients?
[SPEAKER_03]: It could be like an investment.
[SPEAKER_03]: It could be like getting an MFA.
[SPEAKER_03]: It could be joining a writing group.
[SPEAKER_03]: It could be, I don't know, reading books intentionally.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what it would be.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I also don't mean to
[SPEAKER_03]: kind of give you a multiple choice answer because I would be ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what would you say was like the very best decision you've ever made looking back you were like, Oh, that was really smart.
[SPEAKER_03]: Martin Martin.
[SPEAKER_02]: The best decision I made was to listen to my inner core above all else because for a long time, I kept waiting for other people to come on board with my desire to become a writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: I kept waiting for my mother to throw her arms around me and say, Ben, has stick?
[SPEAKER_02]: What a beautiful idea you have.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or I kept waiting for the other moms in the school at the pick-up line to be like, you know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really excited that you want to write a book and I can't wait to read it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those things may happen for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: They may not happen for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's completely irrelevant.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't need anybody's encouragement nor their permission nor their approval.
[SPEAKER_02]: All you need is to know inside yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what I want to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what I need to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is something I will give myself and as long as it takes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think once you realize that at the end of the day it's really not about the other people.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're wonderful.
[SPEAKER_02]: They can be incredible sources of support and encouragement.
[SPEAKER_02]: Perhaps, but that is really irrelevant.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to trust your inner core.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you have to listen to that and know that that's sort of your moral compass.
[SPEAKER_03]: So interesting and eventually, though, you started working with an agent and editors and a team, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, eventually, it wasn't, you and isolation, I suppose.
[SPEAKER_03]: How did you reconcile that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, did you ever get advice perhaps at a twig or girl direction, perhaps something else that you were like struggling with, that you disagreed with?
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you maintain that balance, I guess, is my question?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's sort of part and parcel of the same philosophy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, in order to get your books published and in order to have them reach an audience, you cannot do it alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: You do need a team, you need a good team.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's part and parcel of the same philosophy because you, hopefully, are in a position of privilege where you align yourself with people who share that same vision and who share your same sort of long-term goals.
[SPEAKER_02]: early on in my career CC, I got some terrible advice.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was told to do things to my first book very early days, you know, when I was still workshopping it, for example in classrooms, and I just, I remember sometimes you can just tell your instinct tells you no,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I remember in one of my workshops, somebody said, well, we don't need another Iranian-American story that's about a young woman who's supposed to get married and I thought, but actually we could have a hundred of those and that's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, every step of the way, more and more people join your team and that's a beautiful thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little like when Dorothy is going through her journey in the Wizard of Oz and
[SPEAKER_02]: for she meets the scarecrow, and then she meets the tin man, and all along you gain characters in your journey, but if they're aligned with who you are, that is, I think, a very important thing, and I'm so blessed right now to have an amazing team.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is a team.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do not get the line-women of chatron, for example.
[SPEAKER_02]: out into the world alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is an entire team of lying women who work so hard to make it happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: You loved it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Speaking of the book being out in the world, I feel like the average person, not our listeners, our listeners are very smart and no better, but the average human on the street.
[SPEAKER_03]: What think of writing as a solitary profession?
[SPEAKER_03]: As like, oh, this writer is sitting down, typing away in their laptop.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, maybe they have tea with them, maybe they have a glass of wine.
[SPEAKER_03]: But like, it's just writing.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just you and the muse.
[SPEAKER_03]: And everyone else does all the other stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the editor does the editing, the public says does the publicizing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we know that's not true.
[SPEAKER_03]: We live in a world where authors are expected to promote their book, to come on podcast, such as their own, to tour, to,
[SPEAKER_03]: Use their connections and really love-roach sales because the partner is expected to be a partner in all things, not just the partner who produces the material, the writing material.
[SPEAKER_03]: How has this changed throughout your career?
[SPEAKER_03]: And how do you, I guess, how do you see that part of being a writer?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because you're very good at it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've heard your videos, you know, like, I've seen you speak.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're very good at it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you struggle at all?
[SPEAKER_03]: You a secret introvert, how do you approach that part of it?
[SPEAKER_02]: It has changed since I first started out because
[SPEAKER_02]: When I first started out, for example, social media wasn't as huge as it is now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Podcasts were not at being the way they are now.
[SPEAKER_02]: The truth is that a lot of authors, when they're writing the book, there is a lot of solitary time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have to be comfortable with being by yourself a lot?
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're not really ever by yourself because if you're doing the writing, you're with your characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: and you are usually very interesting company.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, for example, for the line women of Tehran, for two and a half years, I was writing the first draft.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of it was during the pandemic, you know, the lockdown days.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't feel alone because I was with Ellie.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was with Homa.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then once the book comes out, it's as though you emerge from your little writing cave and you're out into the bright sunshine and into the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: and suddenly there's crowds and you're shaking hands and you're giving talks.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I'm lucky because I like all of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of my colleagues, a lot of my friends were authors.
[SPEAKER_02]: They love, for example, the writing part that they hate the promotional part.
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of like both, and I enjoy both when I'm sitting alone,
[SPEAKER_02]: and with the characters and sometimes it can be very rough because I am very much in this cave.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when I'm out there on book tour and meeting people, God, I adore that too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I cannot tell a lie.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it says, though, this magic trick has happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: People come up to me and they talk to me about the characters, and I keep thinking, how did you know about
[SPEAKER_02]: because I was making them up in my room.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, it's incredibly fulfilling to think that figments of your imagination have touched people and helped shape them and made them even sometimes have a good cry or heal have a catharsis.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I do enjoy all of it and to your aspiring offer listeners, I would say, why would you?
[SPEAKER_02]: just contain yourself to one aspect of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is hard to write for introverts that I get, but it's different when it's your book you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's somehow a little easier to go out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: For sure, no, for sure, it has to be easier because like you say, you're talking about a figment of your imagination that through the power of a collective shared consciousness and imagination, because...
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like you said.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's magic.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_03]: So all of the subjects since we're getting a little woo, woo, which I like.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm a little bit of a person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am evil eye.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah evil eye.
[SPEAKER_03]: The evil eye is a big thing in this book, guys.
[SPEAKER_03]: The evil eye is not read the lie in one of Tehran.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are you doing with your life?
[SPEAKER_03]: Go read it now.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not ruining anything and asking this question.
[SPEAKER_03]: But let's just say that the protagonist, Ellie has heard her whole life from her mother that the evil eye is real.
[SPEAKER_03]: and that she should watch out for the evil eye.
[SPEAKER_03]: My question is, evil eye, real or not?
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you've been raised with this concept of the evil eye, even if you can embrace its fallacy and acknowledge it's just a superstition, it's still at the back of your mind and there's a part of you that thinks it's real.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the Persian culture, the idea of the evil eyes very prevalent,
[SPEAKER_02]: And once it gets into your brain, it's very hard to remove it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've learned through meeting readers.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's prevalent in so many different cultures.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I was going to say that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's in so many cultures, but leave me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And do you know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that, I mean, obviously, Ellie's mom goes a little overboard and poor Ellie can't seem to shake that inner insecurity that it creates inside of her.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is partially real, I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you forgive me.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, oh my god.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's my no way, okay, okay, okay, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just think I, how could it be in so many cultures across this globe?
[SPEAKER_02]: The design?
[SPEAKER_03]: I, of course, it's real.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, if you were told me that it wasn't, it'd be like, oh, Marjan, what are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's real.
[SPEAKER_03]: And by the way, listeners, I, my grandma has a great recipe to ward off the evil eye.
[SPEAKER_03]: You take salt, salt, okay?
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll get through it over your left shoulder.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do this all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: All the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Salt, left shoulder and also try whenever you think of the person who you think is thinking of you uncharidably.
[SPEAKER_03]: Think of them with filled with happiness and love, think of them being imbued by the most, but the bluest of lights.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I believe that everything we put out comes back twice, you know, comes back doubled.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so if we are thinking beautiful thoughts about others, then beautiful thoughts come back to us.
[SPEAKER_03]: And anyway, I have a lot of thoughts on the evil eye.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the tip about thinking of that person.
[SPEAKER_02]: with such goodwill.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is very good.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, I'm not trying to pretend like I'm not human and I don't have uncharitable thoughts because I do.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just force my brain.
[SPEAKER_03]: I go, okay, do it intentionally.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I picture the person and I picture them really happy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like really, really happy filled with love, filled with like happiness and joy, and to a love like elated, like be a tiffic, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think of them really happy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I imagine them being healthy and being filled with love, filled with love is very important.
[SPEAKER_03]: A person who was filled with love isn't casting the evil eye on anyone else, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because they're filled with love, you're too busy doing it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Very important.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, not to get off track because my, my, our listeners are very much used to my wool ways, but I want to ask about.
[SPEAKER_03]: something that's totally different.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to ask about something that's very practical, very pragmatic, very real.
[SPEAKER_03]: Success.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you measure success?
[SPEAKER_03]: When you first started reading and you were like picturing yourself as a successful author, I know you were because every writer does, did you think if this happens, I'll be successful?
[SPEAKER_03]: If this happens, I will have made it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if so, what was the thing or things?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my goodness, I thought if I get an agent,
[SPEAKER_02]: that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I thought, if I publish my first book, that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be happy for the rest of my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I thought, if my book wins in a war, that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or if, you know, the goalpost keep moving.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's human nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: So sometimes my husband makes fun of me because in my current state,
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll say something like, oh, I can't believe I was in the New York Times but I really only for this amount of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll say listen to your stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Listen to yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: You thought if you got an agent, that was, and it was great.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, it's human nature to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We always adjust, don't we?
[SPEAKER_02]: We adjust the work we have.
[SPEAKER_02]: But true success, quite frankly, and those spoilers,
[SPEAKER_02]: Alma, I won't say who she's writing to, though I suppose I just say the bit of a spell all the way, because some people may not know she's still there at the end of the book, but regardless, Alma says, I don't wish success for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't wish all these lofty things for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just wish for you the ability to be free.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's true success.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I think of the ability to be free, it doesn't mean I can go march in the streets, per se, freedom of speech, freedom of religion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are also important, but in our freedom, in our freedom, to be free from constantly worrying about what other people think, or to be free from always
[SPEAKER_02]: you know feeling like you have to strive or perform.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's true freedom.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's real success.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think see, we keep trying not to be wooing.
[SPEAKER_03]: I keep ruling us back into it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought, I'm getting emotional right now because I have never thought about it this way.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as soon as you said it, I knew it was true.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have never been able to put it in these words and God knows I talk a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I put a lot of things into words.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is so true.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I was going to say, well, the real success for our listeners.
[SPEAKER_03]: is the fact that you sell copies so steadily, like I feel like a lot of writers have these goals, New York Times bestseller list, USA today bestseller list, six figure deal, whatever, and these are all great goals, amazing goals, please continue to have all these goals people.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the thing, anyone in publishing, agent, editor, publicist, publisher, anyone wants
[SPEAKER_03]: Most of all is a book that keeps selling like a book where every week thousands of copies are being sold, and that's your book Your book sells thousands of copies every single week steadily, and that is amazing now.
[SPEAKER_03]: I had this whole She feel as you can see about this But no, you're so right never mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: Never mind the Constant selling people.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let us listen to inner freedom.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is beautiful.
[SPEAKER_03]: We can have both.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't have the truth.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know we don't have the truth We can both and dare I say dare I say if you focus
[SPEAKER_02]: on your inner freedom and sort of that truth.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it might reflect a bit more in your writing and speak to people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not unrelated, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't know, it's hard to say.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, this is the most emotional.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've ever gotten it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got to get it together.
[SPEAKER_03]: See, see, get it together.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to talk about specific writing techniques you rely on.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess I'll start by asking this is not a spoiler because it's in the very beginning of the book, but line of one of T-Ron starts with it's not called a prologue more John, but I'm just going to be honest with you.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a prologue.
[SPEAKER_03]: Chapter one is a prologue.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ellie is an adult in New York in the 80s, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then Chapter two, she's a seven-year-old child.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you can call it Chapter one.
[SPEAKER_03]: I call it a sneaky prologue, which I'm totally in favor of.
[SPEAKER_03]: We are pro sneaky prologue.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're so observant because for the longest time it was the prologue.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I did name it the prologue initially.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we did why did it change?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why did people make it chapter one?
[SPEAKER_02]: Then we just made it chapter one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, but in my mind, it was in my draft, always prologue.
[SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well then, my question is, has it always, because you could have just started the book with, with Ellie as a seven year old, where you start chapter two, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, have you always had this prologue with that something that you added?
[SPEAKER_03]: What we always say on the show is, the job of a prologue is to add mood and mystery.
[SPEAKER_03]: So one or the other, the best ones do both.
[SPEAKER_03]: your prologue definitely adds mood, like so much.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it also adds an overarching mystery to the story, which is why did Ellie and Homa, why are they no longer in speaking terms?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because in the prologue, Ellie is in New York, and she gets a letter from Homa.
[SPEAKER_03]: She hasn't heard from Homa in a long time, and her mom says, and I'm not reading from the book, but her mom says something like,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's good, it's good that she reached out because it's about time that you took it out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Something like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, indicating potential conflict are falling out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Her husband says that actually.
[SPEAKER_03]: Her husband says, okay, he's holding on to us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ellie's mom.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: He says it's time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's time for you guys to.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So with that simple prologue, what are we adding in terms of layers of relationship?
[SPEAKER_03]: We're adding that her husband knows what's going on, which is which shows the strength of their relationship.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's really important.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're adding there's an overarching mystery between Ellie and Homa.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when we see Ellie and Homa become friends when they're seven, we know something is going to go wrong at some point we don't know when.
[SPEAKER_03]: My question is, when you added that prologue, were you trying to add that mystery?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what was the goal?
[SPEAKER_03]: Has it always been there?
[SPEAKER_03]: How did the sea valve?
[SPEAKER_03]: I am fascinated by how the finished product, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And YouTube listeners can see me holding it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, like, what were the previous iterations of this finished product?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's really fascinating.
[SPEAKER_02]: So many previous iterations.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such an evolving process.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's the thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've written three novels
[SPEAKER_02]: And in all three of these books, we start a little bit into the future.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we go back in time.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just my thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the prologue and you are correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the line movement of terror on the prologue.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chapter one is really the prologue.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's what I'm trying to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want the reader to be introduced to these characters, to understand
[SPEAKER_02]: We're in this current situation because of something that happened in the past and things are arrived.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a certain conflict, something unresolved, and then what I do is I go back in time and we see what let us hear, but then I never ever end the book back where we started in all three
[SPEAKER_02]: We get back to where we started.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here we are, back to where we were in the prologue.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we go further.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is my current structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not letting go of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Many times soon, maybe I will one day in the future.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it does for me everything I want.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want the reader to be invested.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want them to be invested right away.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want there to be a question right away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I think reading and echo writing,
[SPEAKER_02]: is all about questions, you raise a question, and that's in the reader's mind, and then they read in order to find out the answer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not as though they always get a cat answer, but people who read, people who choose to read rather than watch TV or play games on their phone or what have you, they want an interactive experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they wanted to veg out, they would sit in front of the TV and I've done that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're times I want to veg out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's passive, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: TV is passive.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, correct and non-do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes we need that and it does something different to your brain waves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when you read,
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes, you know, when you are reading a good book, you want to sink your teeth into something, and you want to have that satisfaction of discovery.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's why I want to take the reader along for the ride.
[SPEAKER_02]: What I try not to do is I try,
[SPEAKER_02]: to always write to my most intelligent reader and to not write to the lowest common denominator, because if I were to write to the lowest common denominator, my goodness, there would be a lot of explaining I would do, but I give my reader credit.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think to myself, the person who's picking up this book is curious and wanting to go on a journey with me,
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is my job to give them that satisfaction and to give them that experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not gonna rob them of any of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're by spoon feeding them too much.
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, listeners, I did not ask her to say any of this, I promise I am just as surprised as you are.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Marjan, for validating what we've been saying, but you're hearing it from a New York Times bestselling author, who sells so many copies.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is so right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, people are now, I will finally be able to say, don't listen to me, listen to Marjan.
[SPEAKER_03]: What I think is genius about the prologue.
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it in abuse the reader with both a dread and hope dread because I know they're going to fall Because there's still more like I know that I am going to see what happens after Ellie gets to let her so there's still hope It can't just be all right because if it's just right I mean I suppose it's a can but it wouldn't be this book like this book is still at the end of the day a book that gave me hope It dealt with very difficult themes for sure
[SPEAKER_03]: But it did make me feel very, actually it's not even hopeful.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's hopeful as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's more than hope.
[SPEAKER_03]: I felt empowered reading this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to be a lot of women too.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I was like, yes, do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I love yes, empowerment.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so, it's so precious to me as a reader.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, how did you make the POV selections in your novel?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, why did you start with Ellie?
[SPEAKER_03]: How did you take it from there?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, when I set out to write this novel, I always set a challenge for myself with each book.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my previous two books had been all closed third POVs.
[SPEAKER_02]: In together T, you have the mother and the daughter closed third.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the stationary shop, you have a few characters, you have the two lovers, you have the stationary shop owner,
[SPEAKER_02]: My challenge for myself, with this third novel, was to write first person, purely for a book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had done it for short stories, but never for a novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had written a fair amount of the first draft when I just knew in my soul something was missing, but I couldn't pinpoint what it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one day I went on a long walk, walks are for me very integral to the writing process.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't listen to anything when I walk just walk.
[SPEAKER_02]: and meditate.
[SPEAKER_02]: And on my walk, it like hit me like a ton of bricks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, I need to add homeless POV.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I had resisted it because alien homo are the same age.
[SPEAKER_02]: Alien homo are in the same city at the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was worried that sound alike.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once I admitted to myself, I need to do that, which I was resisting, which is to write homeless POV.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I forced myself to sit down
[SPEAKER_02]: guess what?
[SPEAKER_02]: She took over as of course she would and she was so easy to write because she took over of course she would.
[SPEAKER_02]: She is such a strong voice and they don't sound alike.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now writer to writer I can tell you and your listeners, there are certain things I did.
[SPEAKER_02]: For example, Ellie's POV first person is always in the past tense, almost POV first person is always in the
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, if I may say down the line, I even towards the end of the book added one more POV, just for one chapter, which was homeless, daughter.
[SPEAKER_02]: The heart.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's true, so we also have one chapter from her, it's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: However, hers isn't first person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hers is closer.
[SPEAKER_02]: POV is so much fun and you should just let yourself do whatever you want with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel writers constrain themselves there and I can't introduce his POV towards the end of the book yet you can.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can do whatever you like, they're no rules with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: As long as there's some structural consistency like you can't introduce a POV in it's scene or you know mid paragraph you can't switch around unless you're doing omniscient.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then of course you can do it all, yeah, but I think POV is one of the most delicious and fun ways playing with POV is one of the most delicious and fun ways to tell a story.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great advice, just be free.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that the struggle is that when you are writing a novel has more than one POV, usually the first protagonist you meet is the protagonist, the reader, most in Prince Swift.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in this case, Homa has a much stronger personality than Ellie's.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not that Ellie doesn't, Ellie does, too.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I don't like the word dominant, but I'm going to use it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Homa is a force, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you, she's the hero, you have to look at Homa.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're not looking at anyone else.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's very much a force.
[SPEAKER_03]: She is very unusual.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's very opinionated and the contrast between them is fantastic.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think also if you're writing more than one point of view to your point, you said this, they can't sound alike or else it's like, well, they're interchangeable and if they're interchangeable.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I don't have strong opinions.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and also like no spoilers, but there is a very bad thing that happens to Homa, which Ellie blames herself for kind of as she should.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love you Ellie, I do, but like as she should.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if we didn't have Homa's point of view, we wouldn't know what that experience was like, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we, it would have had to be Homa telling Ellie, and again, like even that telling would have been complicated because of their dynamics, but
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want spoilers because I'm a big, no spoiler-spirited, but yeah, we would need her point of view because we would need to go there with her.
[SPEAKER_03]: So interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and when the bad thing happens to Homa, we hear all of it from Ellie's point of view.
[SPEAKER_02]: Homa's POV doesn't come in until halfway through the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: But at that point, I feel the reader is devastated, hopefully.
[SPEAKER_02]: POV, like thinking, oh my gosh, girl, how are you?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then she comes in and she's like, okay, so let me tell you what happened to me, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: But see, it works because Ellie is the cause, right, in her mind anyway, like, yeah, if it was just Ellie, yeah, it works because then there's a tie between them.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we are nearing the end of her time, but I wanted to ask if,
[SPEAKER_03]: You can tell us anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you can't tell us officially, it will stop recording and you will tell only.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or a harass Wendy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wendy, I can also harass you if you're listening.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you tell us about your next book?
[SPEAKER_02]: I can tell you that I'm in the very early stages of discovering the story and writing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know if you know the CCP, I'm very old school in my creative process, the writing of the books.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love to write long hand, especially for parts of the first draft.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, ma'am.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we're at my desk.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for your,
[SPEAKER_02]: your audience members who are seeing this on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am now well and podcast members I'm holding up an ink well.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a bottle of ink.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_02]: And look, this is, this is a fountain pen.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what else do you?
[SPEAKER_02]: My process for each book is, at the very beginning, I go to CVS.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't go to a fancy shop in Florence Italy to buy a leather bound journal.
[SPEAKER_02]: I go to CVS and I buy Spiral Notebook.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is my notebook for the stationers shop.
[SPEAKER_03]: Look at all those tabs.
[SPEAKER_02]: Look at all those tabs.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the notebook for the stationers shop.
[SPEAKER_02]: And look, this is the notebook for the lineman maneuver.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, ta-ha.
[SPEAKER_02]: It even has stickers.
[SPEAKER_02]: You guys.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want that to have fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is really, we must find a way to get that notebook.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this, this notebook, I mean, if you only, all my processes in here, I, on the first stage, I write my themes, you can see, for the line women of terror on every girlhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: Friendship, betrayal, joy, loyalty, sacrifice, school, letting go, recipes, and so forth.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to make the process fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: This role, I was a kid who loved notebooks.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote a book called The Stationary Shop, you know I love stationery.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I did it for myself just to make it a little more fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so to answer your question, these are the proven facts.
[SPEAKER_02]: One, the untitled as of now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it does have some blank and some filled, and then there's also stuff on my laptop.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is the playing in the sandbox part of life.
[SPEAKER_02]: and just coming together with the themes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to think about the themes first and then go in that direction and sometimes what I think is what the book is about is not what it's about but
[SPEAKER_03]: But what you start with theme, then care, like, hot like, yeah, typically, I know it can change.
[SPEAKER_02]: I start with theme and it's usually themes plural.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in this next book, I will share with you CC, I don't know if I've said this publicly, but one of the themes is going to be grief and I have several other themes that I know up so far and then I start with the characters so I know I know
[SPEAKER_02]: I know my protagonist, I'm getting to know her.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know a few of the other characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a bunch of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Look at her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, knowing smile, she has a knowing smile, everyone, as she's speaking.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a Mona Lisa smile.
[SPEAKER_02]: Very long.
[SPEAKER_03]: Very eye-ness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Something you don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, because I don't want to say too much, because it's so early stages.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, you know, it's like discovery.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you've figured out by now that I don't outline ahead of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I sit down and I start to write whether it's with my pen or on my usually laptop, I just think to myself, I sit down, I'm like, what's going to happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go ahead.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then at the end of the writing session, I'm like, oh my goodness gracious.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the first draft.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please believe me when I tell you that in revision, it's like I'm a different person.
[SPEAKER_02]: In revision, I'm what my daughter would call a girl boss.
[SPEAKER_02]: In revision, I come in, I'm like, all right, we're gonna get this in order, we're gonna reassess the whole entire thing, get rid of anything that doesn't work out you go, and I'm gonna rearrange the order of events so that they have the maximum emotional impact on the reader, because that's my kind of writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, not everybody needs to do that, but for me, I'm gonna change the chronology,
[SPEAKER_02]: from maximal emotional impact.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I become vicious in revision.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not the different person walks into the room.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: The first draft is like, oh, oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you get to honor the Lucy Goosiness, I guess, the untethered, you know, open field, if you will, part of the creative process, but then you also become this,
[SPEAKER_02]: army general who's like let's put these ducks in a row like that's right that's right not that and then it becomes very intentional like putting together a puzzle or or I love to say weaving a rug like a Persian rug like me the strands are okay here's a piece of bread here's a piece of marble but then it creates a hole
[SPEAKER_03]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I'm obsessed.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm obsessed and I want every listener out there to think about reordering your scenes for maximum emotional impact.
[SPEAKER_03]: The lovely Marjanja said, you don't have to do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's my process.
[SPEAKER_03]: Guess you do.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm giving you homework.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone has to reorder their scenes now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am not as gracious as Marjanja.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just put it that way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just try.
[SPEAKER_03]: Try.
[SPEAKER_03]: Play with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then you can always go back to the old order of events if you don't like it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Marjana, I, as a final question, this is something I ask of everyone I interviewed, could you please recommend us a book?
[SPEAKER_03]: It could be a book that you have recently read and loved or a book that you, it's that maybe that's maybe on your TBR, you know, a big value of the podcast is promoting storyteller.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is your moment to log in a book that you are excited about.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I'm gonna plug a book that's out of my usual reading planet.
[SPEAKER_02]: I read a lot of adult contemporary
[SPEAKER_02]: While I recently read a middle grade, a full disclosure, the author is a distant cousin of mine, but it has stained with me because it's like a combination of Harry Potter, the old E-need buttonbooks, the secret garden, a little princess, all these childhood classes.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's called Green Wild.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is coming from a person who doesn't normally read this genre.
[SPEAKER_02]: but you know how some books stay with you and it's a series and I just think it's good to sometimes read outside of your normal, you know genre and to say I wonder what the fans of this kind of genre what is it they experienced so yeah I really love that book
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love books that make you just happy to be reading and just like don't interrupt me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm in my Yeah, like now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, because they demand all your attention because they're that good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I love
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Marjohn.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_03]: This was, thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want everyone.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to, again, if you're on YouTube, this is when you get to see me hold it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Marjohn's most recent novel, line-weapon of Tehran.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to know, as you're listening to this, please share in the comments which cover do you like better guys.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you guys prefer the paperback cover or the hard copy?
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I like both.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is hard.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I'm going to go with hard copy, but I like both because it's really hard.
[SPEAKER_03]: I like the fact that the
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like they both have very different vibes, but they both work really, really well in capturing the book, so yeah, I'm very lucky.
[SPEAKER_03]: you really are and we are lucky to have you and your reason for you to have you so thank you thank you so much and to all our listeners thank you for tuning in if you have any questions for more John make sure to share your questions on social media on our sub-stack i'm going to be monitoring your comments so thank you again until we see each other next time thank you see thank you
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's it for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you'll join us for next week's show.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the meantime, keep at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, it just takes one yes.