[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_04]: Hello everybody, you have Carly here today, and hope y'all can normally does our author interviews, but I get to do them every once in a while, especially with the lovely authors that I work with.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm very thrilled to be chatting with one of my authors today.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have mine win here with me today.
[SPEAKER_04]: My is a Vietnamese Canadian author whose debut novel, Sunshine Nails.
[SPEAKER_04]: was long-listed for Canada Reeds, was named when at the Best Books of 2023 by NPR and CBC.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her journalism has appeared in WIRE at the Washington Post in the Toronto Star, she was raised in Halifax, she now lives in Toronto with her husband, her daughter, and her French bulldog, and we are here today to talk about her new novel, Cleo Dang.
[SPEAKER_04]: would rather be dead.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I'm so glad to have you.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to do a quick kind of blurb about what the book is about itself.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I'm going to ask you to tell us a little bit about the origin story of the book, and I have questions for you, and I'm excited for you to be on this journey.
[SPEAKER_04]: So welcome to the show, mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so happy to be on Carly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to say this book would not have existed without you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't have been a book, so I'm so happy we could to chat and talk about how this book came to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so let's tell everybody.
[SPEAKER_04]: Cleo Dang would rather be dead.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the log line for the book is this.
[SPEAKER_04]: A darkly humorous, yet uplifting novel of a degree of mother who starts working out a funeral home and discovers that the best way to honor the dead is to live.
[SPEAKER_04]: All Cleo Dang is ever wanted to be, was a mother.
[SPEAKER_04]: The day she discovers she's pregnant is the happiest of her life, especially when she learns that her best friend, Huloma, is also expecting.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a wonderful surprise, and together they enjoy their pregnancies.
[SPEAKER_04]: But when they both go into the hospital in labor, something goes very, very wrong.
[SPEAKER_04]: Huloma comes home with a baby, Cleo does not.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, a grieving Cleo must navigate life after losing her baby.
[SPEAKER_04]: She alienates herself from the world, especially her best friend who is living the life she's so desperately wanted.
[SPEAKER_04]: Force to quit her demanding job as an actuary, Cleo manages to find a job at a funeral home where she meets a revolving door of
[SPEAKER_04]: Brief locals and discovers the power of confronting grief.
[SPEAKER_04]: And before we dive into a bit more about the book, I want everybody to know, I'm going to just put my agent mom like bragging hat on.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have multiple star reviews for this book.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, a curchist who is notoriously tough reviewer, a curchist said to know in his brilliant and her depiction of the agony of grief, as well as its absurdity, its surprising capacity for tender connection.
[SPEAKER_04]: And astonishing portrait of grief and owed to the beauty that manages to live in its
[SPEAKER_04]: Noin, who wrote Sunshine Nails, 23, writes with bra and flinching honesty about the agony of losing a child.
[SPEAKER_04]: Balancing ethos with dark humor, Cleospessi, non-linear yet ultimately helpful story for rebuilding proves that while some wounds may never heal, they can be transformed into something unexpectedly profound.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I think the book is great.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have multiple reviewers saying the book is great.
[SPEAKER_04]: I hope that you feel really excited about the book coming out into the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's been a journey to get here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is one of the first interviews that you're recording kind of talking about the book, the origin story.
[SPEAKER_04]: So for everybody listening, it might be an emotional ride today, but we're so glad that you're here to be here with us.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm gonna turn it over to you, my to tell us as much as little as you want about the origin stories of this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is so weird to be on the other side of the writing journey and have this book going to people's hands now because for so long this book lived inside my head and my heart and then eventually I opened it up to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were the first person to read my book.
[SPEAKER_00]: My husband never even read the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Friends, family, never even read the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, it was so personal and emotional for me to write that I really want to keep the initial audience really small.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, I, Clio Dang, it was, actually, I have to say the idea for it came during the promotion period of Sunshine Nails, my first book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually had a whole other second book in mind that was very similar to Sunshine Nails.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had this whole family drama, multiple narrative story that I wanted to write for my second novel.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then, unfortunately, in 2022, I had lost my daughter through a labor complications.
[SPEAKER_00]: that pregnancy had been going very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had gotten to my due date.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was actually five days past my due date.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then everything just sort of went downhill during delivery.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was something of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of the midwives or doctors had ever expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly not anything that I or my husband knew could happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: But essentially what happened was I had given birth to my daughter and then they realized something was very wrong.
[SPEAKER_05]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: next thing I knew, I was at Sick Kids Hospital at the NICU and my daughter was strapped with all of this cords and wires and they essentially said that she had suffered a severe brain injury during delivery and that she had been constricted of oxygen during delivery and it was
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing any of the baby books ever wore beneath could happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly nothing that my health care team wore me could happen because everything had been tracking so smoothly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember one doctor said my pregnancy was unremarkable, which is like the medical term they used to let you know everything is normal, everything is perfect, you don't have nothing to worry about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was just so blindsided by her death and that loss because
[SPEAKER_00]: at such a happy time in a person's life is giving birth, bringing home the baby and I never got to bring home my baby so it was just a really sad and dark time for me in what otherwise should have been a very happy time and I knew I could not go on with that second book that I had in mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just all of me needed to write a book about what I was going through.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I poured it into a fictional novel about a woman named Cleodang who basically just served as like a vessel for all the grief and agony and pain that I was going through.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hadn't really read very many books.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's times of novels with grieving characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I hadn't read one that covered a grieving mother who was newly grieving the loss of an infant.
[SPEAKER_00]: especially in the acute phases of grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I find a lot of media portrayals of grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: The grief is sort of pushed to the background while the A-plot serves as the main story driver or either the timeline gets fast forwarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: one year, two years ahead when the characters much happier and cheaper and up and about.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I hadn't really found any books where we stay with the character in the acute phase of grief, you know, the day after the death, the day of the funeral, the day after the funeral, like I really wanted to write a story about.
[SPEAKER_00]: the kind of joy or grief, I mean, there's probably a reason why there's not a lot of media portrayals about the acute faces of grief because it is very slow and sad and not much happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of bed rotting and I remember when we were talking about this book when we were working on the first edits.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was almost too much bedrotting and not enough forward momentum.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember we had conversations like, okay, we need to move the story forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only so much you can stay in bed for without losing the readers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, we are writing a story for people's entertainment and enjoyment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was it was definitely a way for me
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, oh my gosh, I have so many things to say, I mean, wow, it's such a tragic story for so many people who have tragic events that happened in their life and often they think about like I want to write through this to help me process it and this people write memoirs and people write novels and there's a lot of ways to kind of process that grief, but grief is really hard to write on the page.
[SPEAKER_04]: And CC and I say all the time on this show for anybody that listens to the books with hook segment where we will get pitch things about grief all the time and grief is such a bed running action right like there is so much bed running and actually with back through our notes are emails back and forth me and you to kind of track back is like you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: When did I first read this draft?
[SPEAKER_04]: And what notes did I give you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I have some questions about, you know, I want to talk about your copywriting and things like that as well because you write really great pitches to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I was looking back through one of the notes that I gave you was we have to move up the baby shower because it was like a lot of bed rotting.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like, okay, we just kind of bring up more events, more things to happen.
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, I never wanted you to shy away from the tough parts of this novel because I think that's what makes it so human and so real.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, you've done such a incredible job.
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to talk a little bit about how you balance out the funny, right, the dark humor because this is parts of this book are very funny.
[SPEAKER_04]: and your voice and your wit are extraordinary.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you do such an incredible job with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, did you find that it came naturally to be funny or you just had to kind of figure it away to, I don't know, work through the grief with the humor because sunshine nails is also really funny.
[SPEAKER_04]: So is it just your voice, like your right or leave voice, just happens to kind of be directly funny in that way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it definitely comes natural to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody who knows me knows I'm a delusional optimist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a really happy, go lucky person.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not like me to write a very sad book, but then again, this tragedy was just thrust onto me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of had no choice, but to embrace the darkness and embrace the sadness.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what came naturally to me was the humor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think that grief and humor go hand in hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't have one without the other just like you can't have darkness with lightness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did find the humor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would find I injected it in places where the writing became really hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: So say I'd write a scene where Clio is stuck
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just, I was like, this is a really sad scene where clay was really struggling.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I just put in a quick line like, they won't be allowed before her and it's portrays her too, you know, like just a little quick moment of levity to for one to help me not be so sad, but also to help the readers like just bring them out of the judge's room a little bit, because I think writing about grief and reading about grief can be really hard to process.
[SPEAKER_00]: but I think just inserting quick little moments of levity and humor and laughter can make that grief a bit more palatable.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of the things that this novel does so well is, you know, as an agent, I, you know, got this pitch from you and then I pitched it to the editor and then whenever I'm kind of talking about books I'm working on, I'm always kind of loosely pitching things, whether it's, you know, to our TV film agent at a set over at UTA is just as you know, right with whether you're an author, whether an agent, we're always kind of like lightly pitching books, you can talk about them anyway.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's all just to say,
[SPEAKER_04]: the other part of this book that's really important is the funeral home.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I think about this novel, I also think about this kind of as a workplace novel with like a workplace setting because our protagonist Cleo goes to work at a funeral home.
[SPEAKER_04]: So can you talk a little bit about like why you chose the funeral home device and
[SPEAKER_04]: some of the kind of like workplace banter that you were able to fit into this novel, because I think that balances it out really well too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love the funeral home aspect.
[SPEAKER_00]: For one thing, it was a tool to get our main character out of bed and out of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I needed her to do something other than staying bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought the funeral home would be the perfect place for her.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens is she actually works at a high powered insurance company, and she has a pretty high status role there.
[SPEAKER_00]: not very mentally well or physically well enough to go back to work, but she can't stand staying home.
[SPEAKER_00]: She can't stand the silence being alone, so as she takes up a job as a funeral home assistant at the very funeral home where she had the funeral for her infant daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I liked the oddness of that, the odd choice in that, but I have always been fascinated with the death industry ever since my daughter died.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when we had her funeral, I was just so enamored by the warmth of the attendance that worked at the funeral home.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were just so warm and friendly and just so very steady in the face of death.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just, so I think I was just so fascinated by one, why do they work here?
[SPEAKER_00]: And two, how do they do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do they face death on a daily basis as their main job?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought that would be a fascinating challenge for our character to be thrust in the world of death and grieving while she herself is
[SPEAKER_00]: experiencing her own personal loss.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I loved adding like all the quirky characters that work in the funeral home.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I had a very incorrect idea of who worked at funeral homes, but I think I've come to learn after doing lots of research, is that they're actually more human than any of us all because they've
[SPEAKER_00]: come face to face with death and they treat the dead with such reverendence and tenderness in ways that we never actually ever get to interact with.
[SPEAKER_00]: For most of us, death is hidden behind a veneer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we don't actually get to see the nitty-gritty of what it takes to get a dead body into a casket, into the crematorium or into the grave.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just thought it would be a fascinating
[SPEAKER_00]: be thrust into this world and see what she learns about the grading process.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what helped me at least in my healing journey, in my grieving process was knowing that other people were going through the grieving process, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's one of the sad things about grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that it makes you feel like you're the only person going through it, and it's such a lonely journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is there's so many other people that have lost loved ones, that are grieving something, that are grieving probably also an infant as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wanted Cleo to know that she was not alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: in her grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think throwing her in a funeral almost a way for her to feel alive again and to be in love with being alive because she's in a really dark spot right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, that's so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so while said, through exploring all these feelings through the book, did you come to any kind of conclusions?
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe about why you think our culture is so bad at dealing with death?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, did you come to any realizations you can enlighten us with?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we are bad at dealing with death because it's just hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we all know we're gonna die, but
[SPEAKER_00]: we don't want to confront the reality that we're all mortal and that our day will come and why think about it when you don't have to right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we tend to not see it and now we have a whole industry that caters to our comfort levels of death.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know like once our level passes away there is a whole industry of people that will ship that body to the mortuary fridge that will
[SPEAKER_00]: it looks that the body looks as close to our loved ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we have a whole industry set up to make death a bit more comforting for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess, yeah, I think we were just uncomfortable around it, because it's just a hard thing to talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so emotional to talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of people avoided for their whole lives until it happens to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know for sure, like before my daughter died, I know nothing about death or grief or funeral homes or
[SPEAKER_00]: cremations or burials like it I just never thought about it because like I said I'm a happy-go-lucky person like death was the last thing on my mind but then that tragedy happened to me and I was forced to think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think a lot of us avoid it until we have to think about it because it's easier to live that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Totally yeah, and it makes me think about the whole like longevity industry and how we're always anti-aging and it's like anything we could do to put the brakes on that at all possible is kind of what we like to do as a club.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, I want to switch gears to kind of talking about the difference between the debut novel and the sophomore novel.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, Sunshine Nails, such an incredible book and, you know, I loved it so much and it's had such a great runway and now this is your next novel.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, how did you feel about that?
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, there's the saying that says you have your whole life to write your first book in 18 months to write your second.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, did it feel like that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, you know, there's no eyeballs on you when you're writing the first book and then in the second book like I've a contract and I have this and I have that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you talk a little bit about the headspace you were in moving from book one to book two?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know from a lot of authors I speak to that the second book is much harder.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the reason why there's that term sophomore slump.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you have all of this, at least with a debut, no one has any expectations of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can reach for the stars or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here everyone is like, okay, you put out this book and we expect you to create something of equal or higher caliber.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is more of, to pressure there for the second book.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't find that pressure this time around it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, found the second book was easier to write than the first book, even though the topic
[SPEAKER_00]: emotionally and emotionally harder and more gut-wrenching.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually found the second book much easier because for one I had a deadline.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am such a deadline driven person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I work way better when someone is expecting something for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas with sunshine nails, then have a deadline.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a written that I could have worked in that book for 10 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know and then like it was so nice for you to have pitched the book and then we got a deal from each year and each year it was like this is due on this day and I was like perfect I have nine months to write this this book and I it just got my button two gear and I had it was such a easier time for me to write the second book this time around.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also the other thing was
[SPEAKER_00]: And oh my god, it's such a world of difference writing one POV versus five POVs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of wish I had written it the other way around because first person was just it was such a linear way of writing and the stream of consciousness was a lot easier to follow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have to come up with five different personalities and try to meld their plot points together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just had to write through one person's point of view and that was just such an easier task for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if there's any new authors up there that are trying to write, first person I found was just like writing on easy level to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why I found my second book was just much easier to tackle than my first book.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you, I always feel like you've always been a pro.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, you know, from when you first pitched me to when you worked on the book, you know, was I was sold some dry nails and then you pitched me this one.
[SPEAKER_04]: And some of it just comes from like, I'm an utter awe of you from, you know, so many reasons.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think you're an incredible writer, you know, incredible mom, you know, you're so detailed oriented and you're just, I don't know, you're just like, one of those people that very much impresses me with your professionalism and your abilities.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's so sweet.
[SPEAKER_04]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_04]: External validation.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we author's need.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what the podcast is for today.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm certainly validating everybody.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, I think you're just absolutely such a pro.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so can we talk a little bit about your copywriting background, how that may be informed?
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of you are understanding of how you write and who writing is for and how you tailor things.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I kind of alluded to earlier, you write me such good pitches.
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually went back and I've looked at the Cleodang copy that you wrote for me, as I mentioned, my clients pitched me to be like, this is what we're looking at because about.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the copy that you wrote me, I then kind of took and wrote the pitch for the editor, and then a lot of that is still in the jacket copy.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if you looked at that, but like the jacket copy is a lot of what you actually wrote, and I will also note that both of your titles never change.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sunshine Nails and Cleodang would rather be dead, which anybody listening who's an author knows how rare that is for the book to be pitched as something from the author.
[SPEAKER_04]: to the agent, agent, to the editor, and for that title to be the title that is ended up on the printed book, that's actually incredibly rare, and that's one of your books.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why I think if you was such a professional, I just feel like your head is on straight in a way that you're always meant to be a writer.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so my actual question was the copywriting.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you feel like that base of that part of your career did help you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I feel like it did.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I actually had no idea that it's rare for your post book titles to stay that way through the whole process of editing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I just got lucky.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I actually thought you guys would change Cleo dang would rather be dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: because I really had a really long notes app with, it's gonna be like 100 titles over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I had the destruction of Cleodang, Cleodang, won't stop crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the downfall of Cleodang, like I had so many different versions of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just like whatever else I was on deadline.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I had to send something to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was like whatever other send them Cleodang would rather be dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll probably change it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think at one point I doubted my titles.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like I saw it new another one and I was like Can we actually change it to milk and tears and you were like no, let's keep it as is for now And like the first one and let's see if it sticks in it and the conversation never came up to change the title So I was like
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I guess we're really going with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of long and morbid, but you guys stuck with it and I'm really glad you did because I've always looked really long titles, especially titles that have the character names on it and any time you can put the word dead or death in there, I think that's always nice marketing tip there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think in my background, actually not so much in copywriting, but prior to copywriting, I was a freelance journalist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had to do a lot of pitching to a lot of media publications and send story ideas to them and the hopes that they'll want to take my story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had actually a lot of a background in writing short
[SPEAKER_00]: pictures, and where I have to get my idea down to a couple sentences, because editors, especially editors of like newspapers and magazines, they're just inundated with so many pictures.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like agents, they you only have like maybe like a minute of their time to grab their attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had a lot of experience in.
[SPEAKER_00]: getting story ideas down to a short amount of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think maybe that's where you're seeing some of my pitching skills come through when I was pitching you my book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't notice that they kept all the jacket copy to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that I wrote to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, is anybody going to change anything I'm writing?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, you did such a good job.
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, the log line that I read at the top of the show, I looked back and that was in the original pitch that you sent me, that was the bottom line of what you wrote to me and now that's the top log line of the jacket copy and anybody watching us on YouTube over my shoulder, Mike, can you give them a point there there it is right there it's such a great cover and obviously the Cleodang would rather be dead and on the cover we have her just like leg down and there's you know and
[SPEAKER_04]: on the grass, with some daisies, and anyway, it's just such a great cover.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think sometimes when we think about cover, we also think about package.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that cover just led to such a great package as well, which was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, like, I love that cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had when they sent you the cover PDFs, they're like, do you want to make any changes?
[SPEAKER_00]: Downs the time?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really had no notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's Sunshine is ahead of.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you'll hear notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But with Cleo Dang, I had no notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is perfect down to the, you know, the ankle sauce, you know, and the little daisy's covering the face.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I just loved everything about it, and I love pink and green, so it was yeah, another color's worked.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, it just really, really worked as a unit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so I don't want to kind of spoil the whole book for everybody, but is there a scene or a moment in the book that you were most proud of?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a scene where you're like, that's my favorite scene in the book?
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you
[SPEAKER_00]: I do, but I think it would be a spoiler, not really spoiler, but the story, there is a side from Cleo grieving the loss of her baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a whole other storyline where Cleo is struggling to be friends with her best friend who has also given birth to a baby, a baby who did survive and who did get to go home.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so Cleo is just really struggling to
[SPEAKER_00]: be present with that friend because it's very hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one thing about grief that I was never prepared for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like no one really talks about is the envy side of grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the why me, part that just can make you spiral and wonder why did this happen to happen to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: why did they get to keep their baby wide does their life get to stay intact?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's clear, it's just really struggling to maintain that friendship when she has all this envy wrapped up in her grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of my favorite scenes that I wrote was one of the friends finally get together and have that honest conversation about how each other are feeling, which is a really hard conversation to have a between two best friends when one has lost their baby
[SPEAKER_00]: So that comes in the later end of the book, but I was really proud of that scene and really happy that I got that in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, one of my favorite scenes, and again, once Boyle, it was just about her and her relationship to her funeral home boss and how she kind of understands more about why he works there and, you know, his relationship to death and grieving.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's just so many wonderful parts of the book.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, it's a friendship novel.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a grieving novel.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a workplace novel.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, you know, it's so many things.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's also set in Toronto where you live and kind of encompasses that as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the book has been out for a couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_04]: We obviously record these things in advance, but is there anything for people who haven't read the book yet?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there anything that you really want them to know about the books?
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like we've talked about some of the things that we love about it in some of the grief, but it's such a funny human novel.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so is there anything else that you feel like we haven't kind of explained about the book or the heart of the book or the theme of the book that you want to make sure everybody knows about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I think what I've heard from early readers so far
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very important to take care of yourself while reading this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know we talked about how this book has a lot of humor in it, but I think we also have to stress it's also just a very sad book with issues that I think we as a society have always failed to address, which is
[SPEAKER_00]: the death of children.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a topic that is quite taboo and that we don't really talk about my vision and this book really gets into the heaviness of what it's like to be a parent that has lost a child.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know I have lived the rid, but then I've realized that people who have or haven't lived through it, it might actually be harder for them to take it in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I just want to warn readers that it can be a heavy book and so take care of yourselves while reading it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a question whether I should put like a content warning in the front of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know some authors go back and forth and whether they should do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, I decided not to do that because I think it's written all over the cover as well as I agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: This book deals with heavy subject patterns like infant loss, suicidal ideation, intense grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think readers can manage for themselves and know what they're getting into.
[SPEAKER_00]: the things that make life really hard to live are also some of the things that make for really great art.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I encourage people who feel like they're where it or scared to be this book to to take a chance and give it a step.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's one of those things where I find that it's the completion of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's reading at beginning to end, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it's like there is a healing in a catharsis in creating art that has it beginning in middle and in and like we go on a journey with her you as a human who is the person that wrote this book who is the author who experienced this.
[SPEAKER_04]: There isn't really an end to grief, but like there is like a cap that you can put on in the novel in a way that compartmentalizes it in a way and it can like live inside the novel as piece of art, which is beautiful and healing and I love this book.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know so many people who just like ball the riso, but it's one of those things where like a lot of books that move us like book club books, books you want to talk about, it's something that you do want to share with people to feel the full expression of all human feelings and grief is one of those feelings.
[SPEAKER_04]: My last question for you is you know we have a lot of writers who listen to the show of course so is there anything that you think in particular that could learn from reading your book from like a writerly perspective is there anything that you know when writers are reading this that you think like pay attention to the way I did this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're a writer and you want to read my book for a certain technique skills, one thing I did in my book is, so there is like a surprising plot twist in the end, which is something that I wanted to add just for the sake of the book and moving the plot forward and to get to that plot twist, I sort of had to write this character in a way that
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he has really quirky tendencies and he does things where you're assuming, okay, he's just a big weirdo.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just he's just some mysterious and there's lots of holes to his character.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you're first reading the book, you might think, okay, he's just like a bumbling weirdo idiot.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then the
[SPEAKER_00]: payoff, I think, is so satisfying in the end when you find out, oh, these quirks aren't just quirks for a reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: They actually tell a whole story of this person's history.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think I did that intentionally make him so mysterious and odd and not for the purposes of making him odd, but to reveal something at the end of the book that shows him as a more complex and nuanced character.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that something that writers can can take in and reach for themselves is that if you're going to add certain quirks to a character, maybe explain why those quirks are there just not just for the sake of being quirky, but maybe it tells a deeper story of who that character is.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a great answer and he is one of my very favorite characters.
[SPEAKER_04]: So.
[SPEAKER_04]: We won't spoil it anymore if everybody with the book is out.
[SPEAKER_04]: You guys can buy it now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Cleo Dang would rather be dead.
[SPEAKER_04]: I adore this book so much.
[SPEAKER_04]: I, as I have explained, I am so in awe of my from the writing to her personality, to just the author she's comments for proud of you as your agent.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm ready to go grab this one because I think it's going to be incredible.
[SPEAKER_04]: Pick it for a book club pick, you know, get into it because there's so much heart and life in it, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_04]: Congratulations.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much, Carly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi everybody, welcome back to the Shiton tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have a back-to-back, Carly author episode today, and we are going to be talking with my client Lindsay Wong.
[SPEAKER_04]: Lindsay, thanks for coming on the show.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm excited to be here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Alright, well, this is the part where I brag about you and talk about how wonderful you are.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm going to read everybody, your bio for anybody that has an met Lindsay at an event or read her books.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here we go.
[SPEAKER_04]: Lindsay Wong is the author of the critically acclaimed award-winning and bestselling memoir, The Wu, which was the finalist for Canterbury, it's 2019.
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of the Hubert Evans Prize, a nonfiction in 2019, was a finalist for the Hillary Weston Prize for nonfiction in 2018.
[SPEAKER_04]: and long-listed for the Steven Lee Cog Medal in 2019.
[SPEAKER_04]: She was written a YA novel entitled My Summer of Love in Miss Fortune.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her critically acclaimed short-soric collection tell me pleasant things about immortality.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was released in February 23 and was short-listed for the Jim Devaprised for writing that provokes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her literary horror novel, villain hitting for vicious little nobody's is out now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her reviews, short essays, columns and profiles have appeared in the Toronto Star Vice Magazine, Globe of Mail, Horizons Magazine, CBC Arts, and among others, including a notable mention in the best American essays of 2021.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's see hold at BFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in literary non-fiction from Columbia University.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can follow her on Instagram and she is now a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Winnipeg.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so today we are going to be talking about her new book.
[SPEAKER_04]: they're unhitting for vicious little nobody's.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it is a very complicated novel in all of the best ways because of so many dark twists and turns as your projects do.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to read the jacket copy but after that I would love for everybody to hear from you what the book is about.
[SPEAKER_04]: I also have to do some bragging because we had a star review and as everybody knows who listen to our show that's an author.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or, you know, works in publishing, knows how important the start reviews are.
[SPEAKER_04]: The start review said keenly, observant, and rightly funny, a vital utterly unexpected novel, bill-in-hitting for vicious limo buddies, has a fresh and riotous gift of fiction, and that was a start review from Pillonquire.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, so bill-in-hitting for vicious little nobody, say young women, the signs her life away in the ancient Chinese tradition of corpse marriage.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this will quickly hilarious novel about class ambition and the burden of being in a proverished model minority.
[SPEAKER_04]: Poor Vicious, Lucinda Loe is a nobody with a powerful witch for a grandmother in an undead corpse kid sister as her only friend.
[SPEAKER_04]: A broke MFA dropout living in Vancouver with six remains in zero drop prospects.
[SPEAKER_04]: She's buried so deep in depth.
[SPEAKER_04]: She might as well be six feet under her family's in danger of being buried along with her desperate to escape.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her financial woes and save her grandmother and sister, Lucinda signs a contract with an affairs company.
[SPEAKER_04]: Enjoyful coffin encode matchmaking services to be auctioned off as a corpse bride to the highest bidder.
[SPEAKER_04]: Next things she knows she being smuggled underground to the damp caves were her training coffin awaits.
[SPEAKER_04]: As the sender prepares for a rich, dying, dearly beloved to claim her as his bride to be in the afterlife, her past becomes twisted with that of her grandmother, Bouchai, a feared and revered villain hitter, or, which he cursed monger, Bouchai's legacy stretches from 1920s, China to the Battle of Hong Kong and the forties to New York City thereafter.
[SPEAKER_04]: across the generational divide.
[SPEAKER_04]: One thing that becomes achingly clear to both of them.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't outrun your ghosts.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is the wonderful story we're going to work going to talk about today.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have so many questions for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, that is the jacket copy of the novel.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a version of the novel when you're at a writer's event that you're like, this is how I pitch it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Or is that is the jacket copy?
[SPEAKER_04]: How you pitch it, too?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it summarizes it pretty well, but there's a lot going on in this book.
[SPEAKER_05]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was really impressed that they were able to distill the novel into, you know, three paragraphs and a jacket copy.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I met a writer's conference, I was just call it my Frankenstein monster book where there's a little bit of everything, there's a little bit of auto fiction, there's a little bit of horror, real life, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: history, and so I think it's one of those books where it just doesn't really fit into a genre category, but if I had to describe the novel, I call it a book about choice listists and intergenerational trauma.
[SPEAKER_02]: When, especially when Asian women have no choice, when you're sort of reduced to, you know, being not able to make a choice, and you kind of have to do whatever you can.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if Lucinda's story, she's sort of, she's an MFA dropout, but she's
[SPEAKER_02]: She has no prospects, so she adds up sort of selling her body as a corpse file.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a really common on late-stage capitalism.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then with Bachelor's story, she's a concupine.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's also someone who also has no choice.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she ends up also because sort of I'm trying to build and hitting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can talk more about building and hitting later.
[SPEAKER_02]: But building hitting is this sort of witchy curse-mongering where you take a shoe and you end up cursing someone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's usually really old woman who do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it happens in Hong Kong.
[SPEAKER_04]: Amazing, and so for everybody listening, this is a factual, true thing that happens.
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely, yeah, seriously.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them historical practices in this book.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the things that you always do so well is that you weave these kind of stories in worlds and ways where, even as your agent, I'm like, what part of this is real?
[SPEAKER_04]: What part of this is made up?
[SPEAKER_04]: And what part of this is mythology?
[SPEAKER_04]: And what part of this is history?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's so fun and keeps everyone the readers on their toes.
[SPEAKER_04]: How do you decide what parts you're going?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like what parts you're going to pull from history?
[SPEAKER_04]: And what parts you're going to mythologize?
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, and where that creativity comes from?
[SPEAKER_04]: How does your brain
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes for me it's about thinking about like superstition, for example.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I took corps marriage, ming-hunter-range death marriage, and then I ended up in Hong Kong and I saw these woman hitting pictures with shoes and cursing people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, you know, this cares together perfectly because the themes of
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, women and not having any power and having all this anger because in, you know, Asian culture, you're not supposed to, you know, express that sort of rage and grief, it's supposed to be very stoic, right, you're kind of especially rural women and so I thought, you know, these are things that should be carried together.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then what else can I do in terms of showing that in modern society?
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, it's about taking mythology and how do we apply it to real life and thinking about being a millennial, being contemporary?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think for me, it's always about drawing the parallels.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think I always get really excited and I end up trying to do a lot in a book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for me, it's just about choosing like, well, where are the most compelling themes?
[SPEAKER_02]: And can I as a writer put it together?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I had it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I will get into all of that because I have a list of questions about, you know, status and class and late States capitalism.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we have so many things to get into today as a literary novel and you are such a pro.
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like you are saying so much about culture.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to start with class and status and wealth.
[SPEAKER_04]: To me, like the premise of the novel is that some people are better off than others, you know, by situation or by choice, but
[SPEAKER_04]: There is a way to climb out of debt and poverty, but we have to be willing to provide labor to climb out of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like there is nothing without sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so you embody this sacrifice as the corpse bride.
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you talk a little bit about how you decide in your novels, how you're going to encompass all of these themes and how you think about labor and sacrifice and what women do to survive?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think for me, a lot of it is physical labor, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of unseen labor and emotional labor.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when Little Cindy is in the case, she is performing that sort of physical labor not that she has to practice dying together with a stranger.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's in a very uncomfortable situation.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you're thinking about space and bodily autonomy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, it's also emotional labor.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, one of the color you're expected to kind of just take that in sometimes, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And be that source.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also in Chinese culture and also in Western culture, women are supposed to be secret keepers.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you go against that, you know, you're sort of pushing against that stereotype.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for me, I think it's really about, I want the reader to feel uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're reading, this comfort is really part of the whole experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's not a really a feel good read, but you're there with the characters and you're kind of embodying that consciousness.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, a lot of it is interiority.
[SPEAKER_02]: thinking about the sensory details.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to focus a lot on smell because I think that's something really important that we don't really write about in literature, especially being about the maggots, thinking about what is a dead body smell like.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that for me became sort of like this is that labor.
[SPEAKER_02]: Imagine you have a really, really good nose and you're stuck in this coffin with someone that's strange, you're like the body will to odors in this cave.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, there's so much kind of that like body horror in this book, but you, I'm just as you were talking I was thinking about the, all of the ways that you described the ways that bodies work and don't work and how they function at the best of the worst of times.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so you're so good at all of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Another thing that kind of comes with all of these themes is status, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: There is this like hierarchical nature of our culture.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's also differences in East versus in the West.
[SPEAKER_04]: How does this book kind of encompass the way
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a really good question.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, especially in Western culture, if you're an artist, if you're an editor, if you're doing something arts-related, there is really no- there is status in it, if you've made it and you've sort of gotten the reviews, but there's also no money associated with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember, and this is a true story, it's also why I wrote about it in the book, when I was living with six roommates in Vancouver, there was a theater director, and she was sleeping,
[SPEAKER_02]: And she said to me, like, we're successful.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've made it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kind of looked at her and for me, the success was not living with roommates, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: In this old dilapidated house.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for her, she thought, you know, this was what it was like to be an artist and have that Wikipedia page, and all those reviews.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I claim, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's very separate.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in Asian culture, if you're not, you know, a lawyer, accountant, a doctor.
[SPEAKER_02]: you are have not made it at all, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's all this sort of, you know, clashing expectations of what is a susus, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And what is, who has money and who doesn't?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's something I really wanted to explore, because, you know, I grew up in Vancouver and kind of grew up.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm Chinese diaspora.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am very traditional, conservative parents, but I'm also part of, you know, the literary class, whatever that is.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I think you encompass it so well.
[SPEAKER_04]: Another theme that I find, so this is your fourth book, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Fourth book.
[SPEAKER_04]: So over the years I've seen your work transformed from the memoir to the YA project, to the adult novel, you'll set your short story collection.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's really interesting to me to see what themes that you are starting to work with and what kind of comes back.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so one of the things I think a lot about with your themes is,
[SPEAKER_04]: In your stories, I find that the past never leaves us, not in memory or in our bodies.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that something that you think you carry or other themes that you feel like you're trying to explore across the whole body of your work?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a really good observation.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think a lot of diasporic literature, a lot of us are being haunted.
[SPEAKER_02]: The past is following us.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's family history.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of intergenerational trauma.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's something I also write about a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think in villain hitting for vicious little nobody's, the trauma is actually embodied in the ghost of a zombie, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: This person never lets the characters go.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for me, I think, you know, we can't really move forward as, you know, about Chinese culture, as, you know, people writing about the Chinese dish, well, yes, we're out without thinking about the past and how it's going to shape us, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of Chinese community literature is strictly about the past.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not really about millennials writing about contemporary day lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, so for me, it was sort of like a nod to the books that came before me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that kind of leads into my next question because I was thinking about so much of this book is about like transactions and trades and money and bartering and a lot of about bodies and what women owe others, especially, you know, in a forced subordinate situation.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was really curious about how you felt the role of women, I don't know how how that kind of shaped in your mind in the story because there's a lot of strength and weaknesses of
[SPEAKER_04]: just her being a female character.
[SPEAKER_04]: But also that society and obviously in this world, there's value that is placed on women that is less than from the male characters who, because the women are supposed to be the courts' pride and the men get to choose.
[SPEAKER_04]: So anyway, all this to say, your women are so haunting.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're haunting in the present, they're haunting in the past, and they're gonna haunt into the future.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's not really any escaping the women and their wrath.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think that everything from
[SPEAKER_04]: Like how women shape their role in this world to how they're kind of kind of building the future is really interesting to me And I wondered if you thought about how much haunting women need to accomplish to kind of I don't like is haunting the ultimate goal I guess like what do you think that the ultimate revenge for women is I guess because it feels like haunting is something that you kind of again come back to
[SPEAKER_02]: I think a haunting is a pretty terrible fate, but it's pretty powerful, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can never rest in peace, so it is a both a curse and a blessing, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it is really just that intergenerational curse, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: The past doesn't let us go, it just holds on and we're just going to be haunted by our mother's, you know, for the rest of our lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's really kind of fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's also like a form of longevity too, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because you're just like, you know, obviously in our lives we have this beginning middle and an end,
[SPEAKER_04]: But in your world, and especially if you like in your stories, there isn't really an end.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, you know, there's a curse, and there's a haunting, and there's a ghost, and there's a body, and there is a way for these stories to kind of live on outside of the bodies, and outside of the book, and a way that I find like very experiential in your work, which I love.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: In mortality, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm going away.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's also really interesting in our culture when we're just, you know, constantly, um, part of it with all of like, the aging and everything like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was talking about that on another interview recently where anything that I think explores mortality and mortality in this age feels like it's trying to create a lot of friction against, you know, what we're dealing with with women having to never age.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, I think it's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: And stay the same way forever.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like free.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yet, all of your characters are so angry.
[SPEAKER_04]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Another thing that comes up for me when I read your work is, and I was kind of talking about this a little bit earlier.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I feel like you do such a great job of like creating worlds within our worlds.
[SPEAKER_04]: Meaning, your books are generally contemporary.
[SPEAKER_04]: Obviously, sometimes we're moving into other settings.
[SPEAKER_04]: So generally contemporary, but you always create such an incredible world within the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: For example, the families, any time you write a family, it's so just like world driven within that family, having their own identity.
[SPEAKER_04]: like you write about in this book, caves, and there's this whole kind of setting of the caves, where it is contemporary, but it's also feels otherworldly.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's also the different social stradders of worlds within worlds.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, I just think there's so many layers to your book, even when it's contemporary.
[SPEAKER_04]: And even the settings that are contemporary feel very otherworldly to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: So all this to say, how do you know when a world feels right for a Lindsey Wong book?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, for me, it's really about that interesting card I am at, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always someone at the head of a world, whether, you know, it's a clique or a larger institution, and there's always other people that kind of follow this person.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's kind of like a galaxy, I'm always imagining, okay, what rotates around this person?
[SPEAKER_02]: And,
[SPEAKER_02]: and who controls what and who says a lot and who makes the rules.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always rules in my world which I think is really interesting and sometimes, you know, and then there's always someone who's going to break that rule.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where the friction lies, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always tension.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I always remember you telling me, I sculate the stakes, escalate the stakes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what happens when, you know, this sort of world building, usually I give it like 10 different types of rules, for example, and someone breaks the rules and they go against this.
[SPEAKER_02]: and all chaos, you know, is unleashed.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's really interesting for me, and whether I'm running a family unit or a friend group dynamic, that's the whole key, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, totally, yeah, it makes perfect sense to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just interesting as you write more books.
[SPEAKER_04]: And as I said, I'd say I get to work with you on them.
[SPEAKER_04]: I am really seeing all these themes emerge, which I absolutely love.
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's talk a lot a little bit about your role as a professor and as a teacher of creative writing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm really curious about what are the kind of two or three most common questions your students ask you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, what is it that your students or creative writing students in general?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, what do you think they're really trying to grapple with?
[SPEAKER_04]: What are the common questions they come to you with?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think a lot of them really want to know if they have talent or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's something, you know, a lot of writers, whether, you know, their newer older, we always even post or syndrome.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we want someone who is established to tell us, do I have talent?
[SPEAKER_02]: Can I make it, you know, do you see something special in me?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's something that they really want to know.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then a lot of them, I think, really just want to know how do you make it in this economy as a writer because it is really hard if you come from a middle class or an immigrant background.
[SPEAKER_02]: because no one sits down to give you the rules.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they don't say like, this is how you, there's no straight path to being a writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so a lot of them come to me and say like, can I do this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it possible?
[SPEAKER_02]: What if I were to be a teacher and write on the side or if I worked as a cocktail waitress, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's really important to prepare students for the realities of what it's like to leave institution.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is really, really hard to make a living as a writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think especially the gig economy as I write in the novel, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not an easy undertaking.
[SPEAKER_04]: It seems like the questions haven't changed.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe I thought maybe modern students were having more existential questions.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it seems like it is always the question.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do I have the talent to somebody who has quote unquote made it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Think that I have what it takes and also what does it take?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think those are everybody's questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was saying what's honestly about revision, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you sit down and who lasts and are you willing to make those changes?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of people can write a book, but a lot of people can't revise a book, and that's the difference I think.
[SPEAKER_04]: Between those, that's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: So my next question for you is, as you know, our audience is a lot of authors, a lot of writers, a lot of aspiring authors and also published authors.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if a writer was going to study villain hitting kind of as a project, what lessons would you want them to take from your work?
[SPEAKER_04]: What would you want them to pay attention to?
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you think that a writer would learn from reading your work?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think with this book, what was really interesting is the point of views.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I first read writing, I could only do first person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you knew this, Carly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I found it's so hard to write and third person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there were some stories I wrote, but it was a more of an awkward or it felt very clumsy to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so with this book, I ended up learning how to kind of just head hop, so I would go from first person and then slide to another character's point of view and and there's four different points of views in this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's you know, listen then the first person, there's a person ball chai, there's also like a spirit.
[SPEAKER_02]: period point of view, as well, which we added in to open the narrative.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's also a listen to his first person child like point of view.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then there was that switching of ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think if you were to look at the book from a rightly, rightly perspective, it would be helpful to kind of think about, you know, how, how does the author jump from points of view?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I think that was something that I was really proud of in terms of learning in terms of craft.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so my last question for you is after four books, so we have spanned memoir, YA, short stories, and adult fiction.
[SPEAKER_04]: What has gotten easier and what has gotten harder?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh gosh, so I always say that every time I sit down to write, it becomes harder because I think I forgot how to write.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm currently looking at the new book that I'm supposed to write for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just like, do I know how to write?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what am I doing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, so you don't want to do something that you've done before.
[SPEAKER_02]: right, you don't want to fall into the same sort of voice, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm very much in listen to the voice right now, especially because, you know, I've been doing book promotion I've been thinking about villain hitting, but I don't want to emulate it again.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now I have to think about a new voice and how do I carry that voice forward?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I mean, I think themes aside, you know, I think authors are going to carry some themes over, but you don't want the book to sound
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think anything has gotten easier over time in terms of writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, I think just being able to let go of a book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's what it means here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just to move on to the next project, I think writing is very much exercise and being compartmentalizing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm thinking about this book promoting this book, but I'm also running this book, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can't let myself get too involved into one process or something won't get done, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a very much, you know, there's Lindsay the writer and then there's Lindsay the person who's going to promote, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I'm writing, I'm not very sociable or pleasant.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't be taken out in public.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when I, you know, in that promotion mode, I have to be friendly to everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to be a human being, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to be a
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a very, I don't know, some other writers feel like this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'm just very strange.
[SPEAKER_04]: For now, I think that's a incredible answer.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, thank you so much for spending time with us.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm so excited for everybody to read your new one, I'm feeling heating for vicious little nobody's.
[SPEAKER_04]: Lindsay's body of work is incredible.
[SPEAKER_04]: She's a great teacher, a great writer, and I'm just so honored to use my client.
[SPEAKER_04]: So congratulations on the new book, Lindsay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much, Carly.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love working with you, and it's been like a credible journey since what 2013.
[SPEAKER_02]: You guys know John ran together.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what's left?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I feel like you're gonna come back as a ghost and haunt me.
[SPEAKER_02]: As you go for us, you're gonna be that Asian ghost, because you're never going to leave.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're just going to be like, where's your, you know, your book, you know, TikTok, TikTok.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's, that's you.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to be forever.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I'm immortal.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm the immortal literary agent.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, you're going to have to work forever.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you're blessing in your curse.
[SPEAKER_04]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll accept that as my curse.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, thanks for tuning in, everybody, and we'll see you next time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: everyone welcome to today's author interview, which is a beloved returning guest.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the New York Times bestselling award-winning author of the novels Family Family, The Atlas of Love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Goodbye for now.
[SPEAKER_01]: One, two, three.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Reese's book club pick.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Howard always is.
[SPEAKER_01]: She lives in Seattle with a husband, daughter and border colleague.
[SPEAKER_01]: She makes good soup.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love to be back.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so happy to be here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for doing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm thrilled to have you back.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for those of you who aren't watching on our YouTube channel, I am holding up the book cover.
[SPEAKER_01]: The book we're discussing today is enormous wings.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to read the flat copies so that you're all oriented in terms of what we're talking about and then we're going to dive in.
[SPEAKER_01]: At 77, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land.
[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't choose the Vesterview retirement community of Austin, Texas, that would be her three grown children.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when she gradually moves in, she not only makes new friends, she also falls in love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion starts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her children and grandchildren worry it's cancer, dementia, or a stroke.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a raft of test later, the news is even more shocking.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's pregnant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once word gets out, everyone wants a piece of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The press and the paparazzi activists in medical researchers, all descending on this to view, as pepper tries to determine her next move.
[SPEAKER_01]: Soon pepper has some hard decisions to make, and some she's not allowed to make.
[SPEAKER_01]: enormous wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about what happens when you don't get to choose, it's about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how these bedrocks, even so late in the day, can still change and then change everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, a hefty hefty book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So before we carry on, Laurie, I'm going to ask you to please read us first chapter.
[SPEAKER_01]: A short, I just want our listeners to hear what I say when I'm talking about a voicie narrator.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I'm going to read it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is very short.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is very beginning.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very first page of the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it doesn't need to set up, but I will say that it does require an accent, which I cannot do.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I do feel that this is probably going to be a pretty good demonstration of why they have a personal actor to read novels instead of letting the authors do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'll do my best.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I should say all of this, this is the first time I've ever read this aloud, though I've read it in my head.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe 500 times.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we'll hope for the best chapter one.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know how it ends.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone in the whole world knows how it ends.
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, that's true anyway for all of us, no matter what.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've runically, stories rarely start at the beginning, mostly because the beginning's so much harder to find.
[SPEAKER_03]: It didn't mean to, and it was just a tiny fender bender, and no one got hurt.
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, if you think about it, bending is the entire point with fenders.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's true that this fender had been shiny and flawless, like a mirror you would find in a mirror store, because then I ran into it and all it wants, it became crumpled and scratched and non-reflected.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a mirror you would find in hell.
[SPEAKER_03]: learned after 52 years in Texas, but it's the big white men and big white hats you have to watch out for.
[SPEAKER_03]: But under this hat I supplied a clerical collar.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not with Standy, I had just been concocting a metaphor featuring hell.
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought probably he'd go easy on me because yelling at an old woman isn't for new Christian.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm mind, either am I, but I was hoping it wouldn't come up.
[SPEAKER_03]: and weighed it while he picked his way along the shoulder, over two empty takeout containers and another that was spilling leftover pod tie onto the road.
[SPEAKER_03]: There were some geese in the median strip, honking at us for stopping, or maybe warning us away from their noodles.
[SPEAKER_03]: When the priest arrived by my side finally, what he said was, so is this special day or are you always out here driving around like some kind of asshole?
[SPEAKER_03]: I was so relieved.
[SPEAKER_03]: What?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm looking to, I laid a hand on my chest, flat bush, born in bread, how about you?
[SPEAKER_03]: He looked taken aback.
[SPEAKER_03]: Beverage, how'd you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: Recognize your accent, I said.
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, you're vocabulary.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then I added, please forgive me for damaging your bumper.
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought maybe if I emphasized that the only part of his truck that was harmed was the part put there for that purpose, he might be less upset.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what he said was, not Catholic.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just turned 77 the week before but my hearing was still fine.
[SPEAKER_03]: This just didn't make sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't let the dog collar fool you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm an Episcopal priest.
[SPEAKER_03]: I see, I said, but I did not.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, confession is a lesser sacrament.
[SPEAKER_03]: Plus, forgive me for damaging your bumper doesn't really count.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Jewish, I explained.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ah, he said, you shouldn't be driving.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just extend drivers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Many of them, not you, give me your license.
[SPEAKER_03]: While you're supposed to exchange insurance information, I protested, you're not a police officer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Higher authority.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then he took a knife out of his pocket, so I handed over my entire wallet.
[SPEAKER_03]: He deployed a sifter and cut my license into tiny pieces, then went them fall onto the side of the road.
[SPEAKER_03]: You shouldn't let her, I called as he picked his way back over the takeout containers.
[SPEAKER_03]: He made a hand gesture.
[SPEAKER_03]: I remembered well for my Brooklyn days.
[SPEAKER_03]: It didn't seem very Christian to me, but then I'm not an expert.
[SPEAKER_03]: My middle child Alice is a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I thought maybe we could sue.
[SPEAKER_03]: But after I drove home, unlicensed and told her the story, she said, he's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: You shouldn't be driving.
[SPEAKER_03]: By September, my house was sold.
[SPEAKER_03]: My car was gone, along with my license, my independence, and a state of affairs in which I told my children what to do instead of the other way around.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I stood before the automatic sliding doors of the Vistavi retirement community contemplating my new home.
[SPEAKER_01]: Excellent.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what we always talking about and so difficult to define voicing us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you go, it needs to be voicing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people are like, what do you mean by voicing?
[SPEAKER_01]: But voicing, you know, when you're reading it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, boy, see, you know when you're reading it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's exactly what I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's also the, it's something that I find comes between draft like 150 and 200.
[SPEAKER_03]: It isn't there at the beginning, but you were, you had it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You revised and revised and revised and revised and, and I find eventually it, it comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was going to be my next question.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you hear the voice first, because a lot of authors I speak with say, they're characters speak to them, they hear the voice first.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of like, no, they see the character first.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you don't channel a voice at first.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get to know the character and from there, the voice in us comes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's exactly what I would say.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would say that the problem is that in early drafts, I haven't met this person yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know who they are or what they sound like or what they say or what they're going to do or any of those things.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I write them for a while and I get to know them and then yes, eventually it's exactly what it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think through them, talking to me loud and clear and not even necessarily talking to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: To me, it feels like it comes out of my fingers.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is almost as if I don't hear it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just...
[SPEAKER_03]: I just channel it or what it feels like to me as I read it on the screen, just like a reader.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's surprising to me or you know, or moving or funny or whatever it is because I, because to me you feel like the first time.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I don't get it at the beginning and it's, you know, it is something of a chicken egg problem, which is like you can't, you can't write the character until you meet the character, but character doesn't exist until you write them.
[SPEAKER_03]: until, you know, until I figure out who these people are and then we're sort of set and they can, you know, and they can do their thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm always fascinated about all this process, because for me, I call it circling the building in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have got to find my entry point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, sometimes it's a chimney, sometimes I'm digging up through the basement, but until I have the voice, I can't continue.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just rewrite chapters one to five, like 50 million times, and then once I had the voice, then I moved on from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that's exactly, that's exactly what I feel like it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in fact, I've been through that process of kind of come along the ending and realize, oh, everything I have written up until this isn't working, like, doesn't belong in this book, basically, isn't these people, isn't these characters and then I got to go back to the beginning and right through to the end and back to the beginning, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So at the end, I need, you know, you'd like to, I mean, I generally hear writers who say, oh, yes, I, you know, I go through it three or four times and I would say go through it three or four hundred.
[SPEAKER_03]: The floor I can before I'm finished circling building.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, no, that is miraculous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so a question that I want to ask you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this comes to flap copy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've asked a few authors about this, because when your publisher's pitched me your book, I did not read what the book was about, because I don't care, because it's Laurie Franco, and I'm going to read it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the book then arrived, and again, I did not read the flap copy, because again, I don't care, it's Laurie Franco.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I got to the spot in Randrad Page on a 50-60, when it turned out she's pregnant, that was a huge shock for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder why the publisher put that on the flap copy because you didn't start with their pregnant.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was something that you wrote in a way that was meant to be kind of shocking to the reader.
[SPEAKER_01]: So is that something that the publisher just decides boom, we're putting that on the flap copy?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or was it a case of there was no way to write the flap copy without saying that upfront?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, okay, for it's a while.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't move on without telling you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_03]: Those writers, those like first day by is no matter what they, they write, I will read it.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a really special thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are really special artists for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm honored and thrilled to.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was very kind of thing for you to say, Bianca.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then yes, we debated that question at every turn.
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, you know, I started debating with my agent when she was going to shop this book.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was something that and then, you know, and then we had this conversation in house and we had this question, you know, with marketing and publicity and what is the best way forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of it is just the reality of the fact that one of the things is I think it doesn't come late enough to be a twist.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things is there was just no way we were going to be able to keep it.
[SPEAKER_03]: why it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the kind of thing that people know.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that people are better about not sharing twists with their when they come later in the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is really, it's pretty early and it's entirely formative.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very difficult to talk about this book at all without knowing that.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to write flat copy at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to talk about this book at all with knowing that going in.
[SPEAKER_03]: That said,
[SPEAKER_03]: I am a reader like you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to know anything going in to a book.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't and for this reason I don't read the flap copy and I don't read reviews and I like to go into a book called and for people who do like to go into a book called I hope I hope they will be stunned and thrilled.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think if you don't know it's quite a twist and and I've thrilled for those people but for people who you know who are going to find this through other people talking through word of mouth through social media or whatever
[SPEAKER_03]: just seemed impractical.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we'll say that I think you're going through the motions of the beginning of this book.
[SPEAKER_03]: Many people are knowing what's going to happen and that drives it in a different in a different way.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is different way to those early scenes.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you know what's going to happen and it only gets better or worse, it's a very different reading experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think the short answer is really just a practical one.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was so, there wasn't enough to say without saying what it was, and there wasn't enough chance that we were going to be able to keep it quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was looking at it trying to see if I could rewrite it with that revealing it, but it became difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the thing is, books to grammars and reviews of friends are going to be like, this is about a 77-year-old woman who gets pregnant.
[SPEAKER_01]: So boom, it's out there anyway, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something I also want to ask you is, so on the podcast we give advice obviously to emerging authors and we say, trying not to do this because it's difficult to pull off, but a lot of really good authors can do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one is starting a scene with the character who isn't going to play a huge part in the novel.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the priest is in the novel, not a huge part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was a hilarious scene, I absolutely loved it, and when I got to the part where I hit the priest, I actually started laughing because I almost once hit Archbishop Desmond Tutu with my car in South Africa.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was like oh my god, I can relate, but now the priest like comes back in and out, but he isn't a main character So again the choice of that because I know you would do it like on purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what was the choice for that as a reader?
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess I like Being eased in so I don't want to be bored at the beginning.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to have to do a ton of back story I don't
[SPEAKER_03]: want to have to do like page after page about coming to understand the setting and the time period and this kind of thing doesn't really work for my brain that's not I cover, I definitely want to start with character and I want it to be interesting from the get go.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I also don't
[SPEAKER_03]: want to have to take in too much information or I mean it's not that I don't want to but I made uncomfortable by having to take in too much information before like I've got my seat under me in a novel in the first pages of which you're getting to know everything and so I definitely want you to get to know pepper she's the narrator she is in every way the heart and soul of the novel she's a protagonist no question
[SPEAKER_03]: but I didn't want to also introduce her family and her love interest and the people who are going to come to be really important to her until until we get into it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to give you a character who you don't need to you don't need to hold in your heart just yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I want to bring it back a few times.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to I don't want to go away forever.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to be able to bring it back.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also like that character
[SPEAKER_03]: He's it's true he's only in in a handful of scenes, but they're all important and so then when he comes back you it's like an old friend that you don't see that often, but you love every time you see them and you pick up right where you left off and that's that's what how I feel about characters like that as a reader is that.
[SPEAKER_03]: They show up again.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're like, you, I love you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so glad you're back.
[SPEAKER_03]: And with characters like that, I want you to meet them.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really as possible so that I can see them throughout.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they're only going to appear in four, five scenes.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if those scenes are all at the end, that's no good.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to be more or less, evenly spaced, throughout the money shows up again, you're kind of surprised, but also delighted, like, oh, you forgot about that guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: But not so much that you don't remember who he is, because that also drives me crazy as a reader.
[SPEAKER_03]: When minor characters disappear for 50 pages, and then they show up, and I'm supposed to remember who this is, and I don't, unless, so I want to give him to you really carefully, it's that you can track him through a while.
[SPEAKER_03]: always really interested in where stories start.
[SPEAKER_03]: And sometimes that's my call and in this particular case I really liked it to be Pepper's call because this really is a story about the many, many ways she is denied agency.
[SPEAKER_03]: Owing to being an old female human in the world and so for her to say this is where
[SPEAKER_03]: important way to begin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, it is the inciting incident.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you think about it, you know, some novels take a while to get to the inciting incident.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what leads to the dominoes tipping over.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: After that, so kids are like, you should not be driving you should be going into our home, etc.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, right exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is very much the inciting incident and and sometimes the inciting incident is not an incident as such, but this one it's, I mean, literally in a car accident, it incites everything and it also allowed me to introduce or heard really to introduce herself very, very quickly, as you say, voice we get into it.
[SPEAKER_03]: immediately and she decides to a lot of people in her life because she is children and that is what parents do.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the fact that she is an old lady and the fact that her children are grown does not mean that she is not having them at the center of her life and making a large percentage of her decisions around their comfort and well being and I want to do that until chapter two.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to get her in as herself first.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, loved it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have so much very, so much fun with character's names, Lori.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've pepper mills.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think her parents names were Basil and Rosemary.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got Martha.
[SPEAKER_01]: The names are so much fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: So is this also something that will change us a novel changes or do you know a friend what the names are going to be?
[SPEAKER_03]: both.
[SPEAKER_03]: To often changes the novel changes and also I often start by making lists of names and what I'm going to do with them and what they're going to buy me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, two things.
[SPEAKER_03]: One is what we were just saying that I don't, it's hard to keep track of characters, especially if they have similar names and it's not that they sound alike.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a theme kind of name.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know whether everyone's brain works like this, but mine definitely does.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're like, Matt, Josh, Doug, John, Mike, like that's all one name in my brain.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like short, normal boy's name.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when those characters go away and come back again,
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't remember who they are or I'm doing a lot of work to keep track of those who in my brain and so I try to very the names and it doesn't work if they're all weird or they're all weird in the same way and so they have to be they have to be varied and I have to give you something to hang on to tell you a little story about the name Susie you will remember it as a reader
[SPEAKER_03]: But the other thing about names is that it's free character development, not necessarily the character, but definitely of their parents.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes it's the character because they've chosen their own nickname.
[SPEAKER_03]: for in Pepper's case it gives her an excuse both or gives me an excuse I guess both to introduce her parents and to tell you a little bit about them really really quickly these are people who named their child after a spice so you're not they're not in they're already passed they're not in the book but it tells you it gives you something to hang on to it tells you something
[SPEAKER_03]: And then she's very unhappy because she's married a man whose last name was Mills and this has made her name very silly and where she used to have this, you know, this very reasonable name her name was pepper, she married a man named Mills and now she's stuck with the silly name.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's not just a joke, because it also gives me an opportunity to talk about what, you know, what choices were available to women when she was young and it gives her, you know, it gives her time to reflect on well now she wouldn't have had to take his name, but it's the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: She did, and says that we learn what kind of a person she is.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's a person who any more wouldn't take her husband's name.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at least her an opportunity to have a tie rate about her ex-puspid, and how everything is since false.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so then I get to introduce all of those things, and it's all show don't tab.
[SPEAKER_03]: And all of that comes from naming and you get it for free, because you had to have to give them a name anyway.
[SPEAKER_03]: This was not taking any extra words or extra pages.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love shit like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because that will keep your novel from being like 900 pages long.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, I mean, like, Martha is short for Timothy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could call them Tim her boring.
[SPEAKER_01]: Martha was just, yeah, it was just incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm constantly learning from you in terms of naming characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is, this is a very funny book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I highlighted, I started highlighting the funny parts because I was just highlighting constantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is also,
[SPEAKER_01]: So much in it we are dealing with like women's health care rights.
[SPEAKER_01]: We dealing with abortion.
[SPEAKER_01]: We dealing with grief.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are dealing with this just we dealing with cancer and recovering from cancer and dying from cancer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of heavy stuff in here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always say I write from a place of rage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like whatever is pissing me off about the world, that's what I want to write about.
[SPEAKER_01]: So despite the fact that this is so funny, was there a part of you that was writing from a place of rage?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, almost all of me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would say exactly the same thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm always writing novels about what's pissing me off.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so many things are pissing me off.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I have a lot of things to write on.
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, yes, that is always true.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and that's exactly how I would put that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm, I'm always writing about what is pissing me off.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I also, I mean, you know, some of it is like, if I want people to read it and I do,
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want them to be unhappy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want them to be enraged.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not trying to talk anyone into anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: It isn't, it isn't a digactic, it's not a lecture.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want us to have fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want you to give me 10 hours of your time, so we can have a conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if I'm going to ask that from you, then I'm also going to make sure that it's fun and funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: And interesting that you're turning pages, that you're interested in these characters and their relationships, that it's an enjoyable read ahead,
[SPEAKER_03]: enjoyable.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I hope that it is, and there's an extent to which, I mean, they definitely believe that to the tips of my toes, and I am I'm certainly striving for it in one way, but I think it's also back to that thing that you're talking about about voice.
[SPEAKER_03]: These characters are funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: It feels like it has nothing to do with me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am interested in funny people.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that humor is how and I kind of find and enjoy and love where it is available.
[SPEAKER_03]: is the way any of us are getting through at the moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so then once I let them start talking, they're funny and who am I, I just stand in the way of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's great.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you know, so I, so I feel like it kind of happens by the buy almost.
[SPEAKER_03]: I set out to write about these things
[SPEAKER_03]: by a characters who are full of love and happy and amusement and then they kind of meet in the middle.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think when I'm lucky or eventually after I've, after I've ended it for a hundred times.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it was Phoebe Waller Bridges, the writer of Fleabag and I'm going to butcher her coming now, but she said something about disarm them with humour and then sort of suck a punch them with with the emotion, you know, yeah, I'm thinking this is so funny and then when you hit them with that really poignant moment where you just feel you're throat swelling up at so much more impactful.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, I think so and to that's what I want as a reader.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want I want to be happy while I'm breeding, but I also want to learn something.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to I want to laugh and you know, but also I want to you know, I learn and grow.
[SPEAKER_03]: It sounds very cheesy, but I you know, but I think yeah, that's I mean, in effect, I think that's probably what everybody wants from fiction is just the where you draw those lines, you know, very so much person to person.
[SPEAKER_01]: two pieces of fiction that played a part in the book was the short story, a very old man within Normus wings, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and then Hamlet as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So with these things that beforehand, when you were thinking about the story, you were wanting to weave in, I mean, the title is in Normus wings.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I know that that was impactful for you, but like how do you
[SPEAKER_01]: without becoming too entrenched in that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's such a good question, it's such a hard thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the case of the short story, I was sitting around talking to my husband about the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: When I was drafting it and explaining to him, what I was trying to do with this book, and you know, in fairly early days, and I was saying it's like the short story, a very old man with enormous wings, and he didn't know the short story so that didn't help us.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the more I was explaining it to him, it was one of those in pick as soon as it came out of my mouth.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the title.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the perfect title for this book.
[SPEAKER_03]: Titles are so hard and so often, I mean, I've written five books before I got to pick a title.
[SPEAKER_03]: And but even aside from that, you know, and I suppose in those brainstorms,
[SPEAKER_03]: titles that sort of work was this when I knew it immediately.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the title.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is going to buy me all of the things that I need to title the by me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I needed to figure out a way to explain the short story in case.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's widely and I apologize in lots of people we didn't high school, but first of all that doesn't mean they remembered and second of all,
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, can't count on that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So then I had to figure out how to get it in there in a way that wasn't wasn't boring, you know, and basically like I got three sentences, you know, it couldn't believe or that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that too, I think, is editing.
[SPEAKER_03]: It starts off, I've written a whole page about this thing, and then I need to whittle it down and down and down and down and down.
[SPEAKER_03]: Pamela, it's funny that you call that out because I think I'm trying to think whether I've ever written a novel that didn't have Pamela in it one way or the other way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Pamela, it comes up for me, you know, it's fairly canonical, you know, even if you haven't read it or you haven't seen it pretty likely that
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, something about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that makes it kind of, you know, useful as a cultural touch down or whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I often find that when I've written myself into a corner, the answer is Hamlet.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm always like, oh, yes, obviously, Hamlet.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, of course it is, because it's always Hamlet.
[UNKNOWN]: Um,
[SPEAKER_03]: And in that case, then I got it in there by putting it in dialogue and having it be in this very funny scene between Pepper and her granddaughter.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what you're talking about before.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I can have it, but I can't give you a lecture about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I can't assume that you were diligent student in high school.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's like God get it in there in a way that is funny and also doing character and also doing relationship and not just.
[SPEAKER_03]: other wise I have to get rid of it and I do all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Get rid of things where I feel like this would be really interesting if you're sitting in my classroom.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not interesting if you're sitting in this world I have made up.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's got to go unless I can make it do all of these other things too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is why it's so important that the character's occupation is chosen with care, because you would think she's retired, it doesn't matter what she used to do because she's now retired, but she was an English teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this leads towards her quoting from the stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's quite pedantic about grammar.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some hilarious scenes with a grand daughter.
[SPEAKER_01]: texting and she's trying to get her to write in full sentences and use proper punctuation and the grand author just sends emojis, which was hilarious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, yes, and this is exactly what it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's another really good example.
[SPEAKER_03]: At the beginning, I don't know what these people do for a living because I don't know what I'm going to need.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I really, I mean, sometimes,
[SPEAKER_03]: It's it's part of their character like it's very important for a character reasons that you know that a character is whatever they have or you know as an example like the priest that's he's a minor character which he does for a living is really.
[SPEAKER_03]: important for the character level.
[SPEAKER_03]: But with main characters almost always, it isn't a question of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a question of me.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a question.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do I need them to do?
[SPEAKER_03]: What am I going to need them to talk about?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like am I going to need this for technists to tell us a bunch of medical stuff?
[SPEAKER_03]: So I need to figure out a way not only to make them a doctor, but also to make me sound like I can pray to doctor when I am absolutely not a doctor.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or, you know, in this case, it wasn't clear to me at the beginning, but eventually I realized, okay, I, I am going to need her to be an English teacher, that's going to give me an excuse to bring in all of these things that I need some way of telling the reader in a way that feels natural and and that is.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the reasons why drafts want through 150 are really messy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's true for lots of wathers, and I think what they often mean, and I think what readers and in beginning writers often hear, is like, oh, the sentences are bad.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the writing is bad.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not that that's not true, too.
[SPEAKER_03]: But really it's just I'm flailing because I don't know what she does for a living I don't I don't know her back story because I don't know what I'm going to need until I get pretty far in and once that stuff starts to clarify then I can go back.
[SPEAKER_03]: and feeling all of these things that I've been really, really vague about, or flat out, wrong about, like for a while, I thought it would be interesting for her to be a therapist.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that was going to buy me some stuff and it did buy me some stuff and it didn't buy me enough stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, so then it had to go and it's I find it very difficult to know that stuff to be able to see it going in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I mean, she's an English teacher, but I mean, for the therapy part, she's very self-actualized.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so long as she's
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, yes, right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have, so problem with therapists is that they are often telling you things that I want that I want to be showing instead, because they're analyzing, because they're analyzing other characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that can sometimes work, and it's sometimes necessary.
[SPEAKER_03]: be interesting in in a retirement community.
[SPEAKER_03]: I imagine that the psychoanalysts who live in retirement communities are very interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have both shared here, addressing stories, but in this case it was that was the wrong path and so it's it's just something that I have to leave open patiently until I figure it out.
[SPEAKER_03]: And
[SPEAKER_03]: And it is the kind of thing that leads to big revisions, but there's a really gratified kind of revisions, because you know something and so many things fall into place.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so then you have the freedom to go back and make these scenes, do what you want at them to do all along, and they weren't doing it, and then you can make them do it, and you're like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's funny, like with a son when you ask who and she's like, it's whoom, whoom, and correcting the grand auto as well as hilarious.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something you do exception as well as well, Laurie is writing like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know whether to call it an ensemble cast because it's very clear who the main characters are, but you give these secondary and tertiary characters that are excellent.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, may see and dots.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the friends that she makes there and she eats with them and there's hilarious stuff, but there's also heartbreaking stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Each of her children is so, you know, different and their reactions to things are so different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I must be honest, I'm at the point
[SPEAKER_01]: who still live in South Africa where I'm trying really hard to get them into a retirement village and they are pushing back so hard and we log ahead and this really made me stop and reframe and go, okay, this is how they are feeling because I know how frustrated it is shit, I'm feeling, but this like made me go, okay, I am one of these daughters, I couldn't decide,
[SPEAKER_01]: Alice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh my god, I think my parents and Camelles.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was great to read, sort of really looking that and reframe that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you form these secondary characters without letting them take over the scenes?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because sometimes they're like, jazz hands, this is my moment to shine and you kind of have to elbow them off the page.
[SPEAKER_03]: are really, really, really funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I almost, I guess I didn't literally elbow them off the page, but I did definitely figuratively elbow them off the page.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they used to have point of view chapters, and they were doing exactly what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: They were taking over, they were taking over the scenes, and they were taking, they had too much pepper already has to give up too much agency to them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that wasn't fair to her and so eventually I had to get rid of their point of view chapters and then eventually eventually I had to let pepper narrate this thing was in the third person close third for really long time like years before I realized it wasn't fair to her it was important to let her
[SPEAKER_03]: speak for herself as much as possible so that absolutely everything could have basically a reaction shot that all of the exposition that that even the speech tags are an opportunity for pepper to claw back a little bit of agency and that there was no way around that and so that's not really what Shuffer kids up is that we sense I think
[SPEAKER_03]: as readers, they are living, they have opinions, they have frustrations, they're ones that, I mean, I too have ancient parents, and I think that those anxieties are going to be familiar to lots and lots of people, and the ways in which the decisions presented, there are no good options for anybody, everyone
[SPEAKER_03]: everyone is compromising and compromising for one another, which is on the one hand, very frustrating and on the other hand, very loving.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it was just an matter of not letting them talk too much, among other things, especially the daughters, are very mouthy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, I have a mouthy daughter myself, like they'll take over if you let them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it was really good.
[SPEAKER_03]: for pepper to be able to the narrate and roll her eyes with us a little bit to she bonds really she's very very close with her granddaughter and that too allows her to to have these relationships that go beyond just the relationships with with the children and the romance relationship.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it has relationships in lots of ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love minor characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: Protagonists, anti-examined, make the characters of all stripes are very wavy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you make decisions for them, and they make decisions for themselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you cannot make lately they changed the whole book everything hinges on it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Myer characters can come in and do their thing and then leave again And you can rewrite this since as many times as you want and change all of the details up as as a museum Is you and is useful in the moment and it's fine because they're not load bearing and and they you know And so I find it very freeing.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're much easier and much more fun to to write and to rewrite to screw with to say like
[SPEAKER_03]: What happens if I change all of the, if I do this scene that I need to get to the same place, but in a four different ways, let's see which one I like best and and if that's much harder to do with people who are carrying the load of the whole book and so I find minor characters to be a delight.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and yours, yours always are.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to ask you demo questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got way run out of time, but I need to ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it when we get given an antagonist or a villain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Dr. Blankman, oh my god, I want to kill this man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was so infuriated, I think it like made my blood pressure go up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So talking a bit again about because villains in their own story never think they're the villain.
[SPEAKER_01]: They think they're the hero and he very clearly in his own story.
[SPEAKER_01]: If he had his own book, he would see himself as the hero.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, you said him up that we just despise this man.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think you're exactly right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, in effect, I think this is a character who thinks he's the hero of everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you were a person, he would absolutely think he was the hero of his day-to-day life.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Pepper has a very, very supportive doctor who I absolutely needed as a character, because there's a lot of medical stuff that the reader needs to hear.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we needed it from a sympathetic character, couldn't have that from a doctor who we hated.
[SPEAKER_03]: It needed to be a medical professional and need to be her medical professional and it needed to be a sympathetic character.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's great.
[SPEAKER_03]: But not realistic.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that a lot, a lot of a lot of people have great difficulties these days, especially finding good supportive medical care.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like hearing that out of my mouth is a little snarkier than I intend.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not necessarily that doctors are enraging.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just that the medical establishment is enraging.
[SPEAKER_03]: The way that people get an access care is so extremely difficult and so many ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: Pepper has this extraordinary medical condition and extraordinary legislation surrounding that medical condition So to have her smooth sail through all of that was not was not going to be possible It is also true that the position that Dr. Blankman takes which is essentially you are not despite being 77
[SPEAKER_03]: You are not high risk enough in your pregnancy to qualify for a medical exception to an abortion.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that position is held by, I mean, it is officially held by 13 states and
[SPEAKER_03]: position.
[SPEAKER_03]: He, that character isn't, you know, sometimes you get villains and you're like, well, okay, this, this person is a psychopath or, you know, this person, this person is the serial killer or so like, okay, and that isn't the case here.
[SPEAKER_03]: This guy is in fact speaks for a significant number of people, a significant percentage of the legislative and medical establishment of
[SPEAKER_03]: not insignificant percentage of the dates in this country.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that seemed also really, really important to talk about and give voice to.
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things that is interesting to me is you hated him and peppers terrified of him and confused by him.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I wonder whether that character is hateful to, I mean, one of the things I have tried very hard to do in this book is
[SPEAKER_03]: is not, is to leave this debate open.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not trying to talk anybody into anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am not, it's not really a book about abortion.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to hold space for the, I'm not even holding space.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want there, like, I want there to be a wider, bigger conversation happening in this book.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so one of the things that I wonder is whether most people will react to him that way or whether people who agree with him are also going to find him to be really,
[SPEAKER_03]: compelling and appealing character.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I do not know the answer to that question.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm interested to talk about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be dependent on who's reading it and that comes to my last question because okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So two books ago I wrote a book about six witches who were in the 80s bringing down the patriarchy and quietly on there's a scene where one of the witches is masturbating.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's many years old.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know how many people gave my book one star reviews?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they said, that's the most disgusting thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have ever read in their lives and they were horrified.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, this is ages.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's ages and that's a prejudice just so by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have written such a lovely, I don't want to call it a sex scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, I mean, making love sounds ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you've written on such a tender,
[SPEAKER_01]: seen that like I thought you were going to gloss over it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You didn't gloss over it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, it's going to be interesting to see the response to that because people are so agents that's insane.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it is insane, and I'm totally with you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have no idea how people are going to react to that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But so one of the things that Pepper says about that scene is, I know no one wants to hear about this part, but I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because we talk about sex all the time, among all sorts of people in all sorts of ways, everywhere in ways which are ways in places
[SPEAKER_03]: and he had a girlfriend and no one bats an eye.
[SPEAKER_03]: But as soon as it's all people, everyone is like, that's not just, I'm offended.
[SPEAKER_03]: I offended my sensibilities, but that's disgusting.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's gross.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I am offended first of all by that reaction.
[SPEAKER_03]: But also, it seems silly, silly, silly.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna go silly.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, there are worse words that I could say.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I was, I was wed to that scene.
[SPEAKER_03]: I knew going in that we were gonna linger over it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, because you're right, you know, it's, as they do it on the on-debrac television where's like they're making out and then the camera goes over here in the music it's fuzzy and and we fade out and we just assume what may or may not have happened and first of all we can't assume what may or may not have happened because she's going to get pregnant so we know exactly what happened and it was very, very important to me that we see it and look at it and
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, like, revel in the jury aid in it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's not super graphic, it's not porn or graphic, I wouldn't say.
[SPEAKER_03]: But like, yeah, they're going to have sex.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it isn't going to look like, like, sex on TV or sex in the movies.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or...
[SPEAKER_03]: know sex on the pages of most most books and but what it is going to look like is sex that is happening a lot and so this this say that we see and this is the fight to be pretending which is that people of a certain age and the lord knows what that age is aren't having sex that's not a general old people are having lots and lots and lots of said not least because they're nearly like closed off
[SPEAKER_03]: all the strong communities together and of course they're having sex and any suggested that they're not is a suggestion of like well these people aren't really human.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's something different there's something subhuman something less than and that's wildly offensive in addition to laughably untrue so yeah I did not I did not want to fade to black on that one I definitely definitely wanted to narrate and indeed it will be
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very, very interesting to see how grossed out.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I also want to say it's very surprising to me that people are willing to say this is gross.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is just a thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that just kind of like, why didn't believe I didn't buy it, whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: The things that people say, what they mean is this is disgusting, but they know they should say that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they're absolutely full on saying it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just, I think is.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, what I think really what I want to say to them is like, well, we'll say how you feel when you turn 77 and see whether you're willing to give this up forever for no reason other than, you know, then you're age.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, so I mean, if I got to reply to these things, I would have gone, do you understand that you are being prejudicial against your future self?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the prejudices that it's your future self you being prejudiced against and yeah, it was interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll talk again after after you start getting a good read story and we'll see everybody said about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm holding up the book cover again in enormous wings.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're linking, there we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're linking to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you get it from there, you support the podcast and an independent bookstore at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for joining us, Lori.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Priya.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was amazing as always.
[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.