[SPEAKER_07]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_07]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_07]: 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_07]: And everyone, today's guest is the New York Times bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post notable book, The Editor and NPR Best Book of the Year, the Gunkel, one of the Durber Prize for American Human and Goodreads Choice Awards Firmless for novel of the year.
[SPEAKER_07]: The Celebrence at today's show read with Jenna Book Club Pick, the Gunkel Abroad, a USA today bestseller and the Dogs of Venice.
[SPEAKER_07]: His fiction has been
[SPEAKER_07]: He resides in Palm Springs, California.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's my pleasure to welcome back Stephen Rowley.
[SPEAKER_07]: Stephen, welcome back to the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm thrilled to be back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's always wonderful having you.
[SPEAKER_07]: We are huge huge fans.
[SPEAKER_07]: So Stephen, will you show the cover of the book?
[SPEAKER_07]: Because I didn't get a galley or a hard cover.
[SPEAKER_07]: There we go.
[SPEAKER_07]: So for those of you who are watching on YouTube, look at that beautiful, beautiful cover.
[SPEAKER_07]: Absolutely stunning.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'll be getting my hard copy soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll make sure that happens.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes, I will just read the flat copy so everybody's on the same page before we dive in.
[SPEAKER_07]: So college professor Jesse Delruz has been abandoned.
[SPEAKER_07]: The two years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband Norman, get out of bed late one night, walk into the Joshua Cree backyard.
[SPEAKER_07]: step into a strange beam of light and disappear.
[SPEAKER_07]: How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together, where did he go, and most confoundingly will he ever return?
[SPEAKER_07]: Jesse knew that there were both feeling stuck, longing for something they couldn't quite name, but was there right so deep that Norman's only option was silly Jesse behind?
[SPEAKER_07]: As Jesse struggles trying to stand Norman's disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality.
[SPEAKER_07]: Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back?
[SPEAKER_07]: Or is this an opportunity for reinvention?
[SPEAKER_07]: He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life.
[SPEAKER_07]: She do return to the classroom, put in a pool, get a dog, call his estranged mother, what does it mean to be alone when you've always been one-half of a whole?
[SPEAKER_07]: When Norman Sister Lally lands at Jesse's doorstep with an urgent request, Norman's absence becomes even more profound.
[SPEAKER_07]: At Jesse's grief and confusion, a conspiracy theorist neighbor, a strange man following him,
[SPEAKER_07]: and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman's disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure.
[SPEAKER_07]: But these has been missing and the world closing in all eyes are in Jesse.
[SPEAKER_07]: Before he can understand how Norman could either all be heard, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.
[SPEAKER_07]: Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, so Lily and Optimus, which was considered a form of magical realism, speculative fiction for the blend of emotional realism, imaginative non-realistic plot points.
[SPEAKER_07]: I feel like this is your kind of return to that genre that obviously not in the same way.
[SPEAKER_07]: Can you speak about that a bit?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is my first sort of return to magical realism and it's interesting that it sort of lands almost exactly 10 years to the day after Lily came out and you know, so to be revisiting this, you know, a decade later with these other books under my belt and more writing experience I was sort of interested to see how I would tackle.
[SPEAKER_01]: some of those magical twists now with more experience and so it was a great joy to revisit something that felt a little bit familiar but also to be freed by, you know, not the constraints of having to write exactly what happens in the real world.
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't know about you, but I'm finding each book harder and harder and harder and I forgot how much freedom there was in writing a debut because you don't know what you don't know and so you're just diving and you're just full force and then but as you learn craft and as you learn to become a bit of writer like you start to overthink things does that happen to you as well or is each book you know subsequent the easier for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, definitely not easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a combination of several things, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is we've used up the tricks in our bag, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the bag doesn't refill as quickly as we need to do all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two, the concept pressure to come up with new ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three, we want to challenge ourselves as writers, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure you feel this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I do that I just don't want to do the same thing again and again and again and again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe I'd have a better career or more successful career if I did, you know, that we don't have to name names with their, there are writers who have very successful careers writing in just a slightly different version of the same trial for book again and again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I always want to try something new and I always want to grow as a writer and I want to push myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, as a reader, I'm an aspirational reader.
[SPEAKER_01]: I try to read books, I write it as more talented than I am so that I can reach for their level of skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it does become harder.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember somebody coming through a signing line with one of my first two books and saying, you know, you know how people love to pitch you ideas and you always try to cut them off.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not enough, but you know, maybe he said, maybe you could do this for your tenth book.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember my thought was like, I have to write 10 of these like,
[SPEAKER_01]: it just seems so impossible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems so impossible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, I do think it gets harder and harder.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why this is, you know, maybe a bit of a departure for me, the people who know me from the Gunkle books or from the celebrants are saying, but it is a return to the form, hopefully, you know, in the sort of magical realism that existed in my debut.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, and we specinate about the evolution of stories, because like my witches are mentioned men, it was meant to be a very serious examination of dysfunctional relationship and losing your identity, and then at winter of the rails, and it became fantasy and witches in the mansion.
[SPEAKER_07]: For you, was this always going to be this kind of story you knew it was going to have the magical realism elements or is the ever appointed which it was just a husband kind of leaving, walking out and then it developed from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I approached it, you know, it's based on the argument that my husband and I have, although it should say argument, conversation that we have, my husband Byron Lane who's also a novelist, but, you know, we love to put these sort of questions to each other, which, and, and one that was sort of recurring was, if a UFO showed up over our backyard and the beam of light shone down, and you had the opportunity to go, you couldn't pack, you couldn't say goodbye, you couldn't think about it, just go or say,
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was always, he would always go.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was without hesitation, he would go.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, well, wait a minute, what about me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Me, our life, our dogs, our hotly, you know, am I not enough to stay for?
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I love about that, as sort of a moral question, is that I think both answers are,
[SPEAKER_01]: defendable, morally defendable, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think the purpose of life is exploration.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so how can the lore of, you know, the answers to a noble question to the universe by potentially more advanced species?
[SPEAKER_01]: How could that not be something that you would be drawn to?
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, our job as writers is also exploration, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's, but our exploration is more internal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you could spend an entire lifetime with the person and not know everything,
[SPEAKER_01]: there is to know about them, you know, in some ways marriage is a very brave form of exploration too or certainly what we do is writers exploring the human condition will never understand it all entirely.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's endless amounts of exploration to be done here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just which are you kind of drawn to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I thought it would be fun to write a novel from that standpoint.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know it would be quite as literal when I began.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it would be more metaphor
[SPEAKER_01]: I write a lot at the intersection of grief and humor.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it is, you know, the humor in this is a bit absurd, the premise.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, you know, I thought it would be a metaphor for loss, for breakup, for divorce, for partners, you know, suicide, perhaps, or death.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you want to ask questions of your partner and they're no longer there to be able to answer them.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, I'm an examination of who you are without that person anymore because, you know, I think a friend pointed out to me, I don't know, 10 years ago that when they asked me how I was, I would just say, we are fine and they were like, you, you always put the couple, it's like, you know, it was like I'm asking how you are and it, I never realized that I did that.
[SPEAKER_07]: So after so many years, you, you've so integrated into each other that it is an interesting,
[SPEAKER_07]: thought to go, okay, well, if that person's not there, then who am I?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, first of all, what we're talking in decades here, how we're so young and vibrant, how are we talking in these great expenses of time, I don't understand it, but yeah, I do think that you can lose yourself a little bit in a relationship and in this book, this couple has been together for 30 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesse was quite young when they met Norman was a little bit older, but he was drawn to someone who is a little more experienced, a little more stable, but over those 30 years, he stepped into his own, and he no longer wants to be in Norman, Shadow, so he didn't really want Norman to leave, per se, but he is ready to stretch and really come into his own, and so it's an interesting procession for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very fascinating to me to explore this within the concept of a queer relationship, because marriage is something that is relatively new, certainly commitment is not, but marriage itself is.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, to explore that institutional bit and what it means is from someone who didn't grow up expecting to be married or expecting that this was the path that their life was to take.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: As well as the thought of aging for me as a gay man, I don't know
[SPEAKER_01]: that I would live to see this age and so what does it mean sort of middle age and late middle age for gay men when when the generation above hours is, you know, tragically and largely missing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: We robbed of so many beautiful examples of what aging, bracelet, as a gay man should be.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, yeah, I mean, this brings us to the next question because your work deals and this is across the board.
[SPEAKER_07]: Your work deals so much with the last deals with grief, there's joy in this or the celebration, also perfectly balanced.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I love the reference to Dolly Potter's line in steel McNuglies.
[SPEAKER_07]: Laughing through tears is my favorite emotion and that perfect getting captured later work.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think, you know, and we've met and we've hung out and you know me, I am hopefully a joyous and happy person.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think people who read my books are very vivid, maybe I lost like a whole bust load of people off a cliff in a fiery crash at some time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is certainly not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do, I may have mentioned this last time was, I don't know, do you think grief and grieving is one of the more universal human experiences that we have and we so often go through it in isolation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, particularly in a Western culture, we're so bad at
[SPEAKER_01]: reaching out we think we need we're burden if we're if we're grieving and and the irony being is something we all will have to deal with.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I like to approach it with humor and I like to explore different relationships, you know, we lionize romantic love.
[SPEAKER_01]: right.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many love stories and romances.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's strange that this is my sixth novel and it's my first time exploring romantic love.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did love between someone and they're in their animals.
[SPEAKER_01]: A mother-son story, you know, the Galco is extended family and the siblings story that the Celebrant's friendship love.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is my first time really tackling romantic love.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, but a lot of the authenticity of the romantic love.
[SPEAKER_07]: Because after 30 years, things do change.
[SPEAKER_07]: The passion isn't there.
[SPEAKER_07]: People, they, they're not who they will when they first got together.
[SPEAKER_07]: Maybe they don't feel as appreciated.
[SPEAKER_07]: I also like really enjoyed the representation of an open gay marriage.
[SPEAKER_07]: Because I think a lot of times, a lot of people when they write gay stories are more sort of,
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't know, it's like they don't want to freak out straight people.
[SPEAKER_07]: So they make it more like straight people relationships.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I love that this was it showed like a really realistic portrayal of two men who beat together for this look.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, but I think there's great romance in that too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think there's something really special about being together for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yes, some of the passion fades and some, you know, that when we're a sort of ignited with with passion for someone because they're kind of a stranger, what happens to that passion when they become and feel very familiar.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, sure, I'll freak straight people out, but it is one of the advantages of being in a same sex relationship as you can both sort of ogle the same person.
[SPEAKER_01]: it is is fun to know what's feelings necessarily have to get hurt and so yeah it was fun to look at romantic love 30 years in we were right you know there's so much about the meet cute when we talk about romance and there isn't meet cute in this because I did think it was very important to see this couple at the start so that we could see how different they were 30 years
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I don't know about you, but I never really know what my books are about until I've written them.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then Jimmy, other people will tell me what my books are about.
[SPEAKER_01]: I say the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I count on readers to tell me what the book is about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_07]: But it seems like you own perfect control with both hands on the wheel when it comes to knowing exactly which one you want to explore, whether it's themes, whether it's certain topics.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, does that come
[SPEAKER_01]: definitely the rewrite.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, well, I'm an interested spot right now because I am pitching a book, you know, a book, what I want to write next.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm thinking about when that book will come out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was, you know, fortunate to be have been contracted to a two book deal of which this is the first.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have a, I have a delivery day for a second book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a pub day for another book.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll be in the year 2028.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I approached the story, I think, for the first time
[SPEAKER_01]: in 2028, you know, which for better or worse America's going to be turning the page on a really dark chapter and hopefully there's something brighter ahead, but that's not guaranteed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I have been sort of approaching, it's not a contemporary story, but can I find a story that with some echoes of what I might imagine the world to be in 2028?
[SPEAKER_01]: With this, do you think, yeah, the theme sort of presented themselves within
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if I thought too heavily about the, I would trip over the plot, I would trip over the characters, you know, I'm a character centric writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a plot centric writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love to put people together in awkward situations and see how they relate to one another and how they react.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's usually where I start.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where the fascination is.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where the exploration is that we talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very human and it's very small.
[SPEAKER_01]: And something very big happens in this, but we are tightly focused around the people with effects of the most.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, I mean, yeah, you make it look flawless.
[SPEAKER_01]: So whatever, I've done my job, but I'm sweating for it.
[SPEAKER_07]: I needed to ask.
[SPEAKER_07]: So, okay, so you're a brilliant comedic writer.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's one award for writing comedy.
[SPEAKER_07]: And now you give us a character, JC.
[SPEAKER_07]: who teaches comedic writing, I put myself on the therapist's couch, but I know besides the psyche of the character, it read like a masterclass in writing comedy, like I was highlighting that's in game, I'm not going to never thought about that in terms of writing comedy before.
[SPEAKER_07]: It feels like you've taken everything you know from writing all of these books and you have Jesse teaching new students that's
[SPEAKER_01]: For the first time last year, I had the opportunity to teach humor writing and I'm not a teacher by trade.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many writers are, this was my first time teaching and it was really an eye-opening experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm going to share with you and your listeners, I think the most important lesson that I shared with my students last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is this.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you take nothing else from me, write this down.
[SPEAKER_01]: humor is nothing but a mode of engagement with the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a way of looking at something hopefully and finding the detail and finding something so specific about it that a reader can't help but recognize some sort of universal truth when they read it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So humor is a mode of engagement with the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just one of many tools that we have as writers to try to create something real and say something important.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, if you think about it in that, in that effect, then it doesn't have to be, so overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think people are like, I've got to set up jokes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got to set up, there needs to be set up set up punchline.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're not writing sitcoms.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in novel writing, humor can just be an interesting observation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be a strange setup.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is, it can be, you know, irony.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many different tools we have to work some humor
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's appreciated by a reader too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think without that humor my books would be too dark and daunting to pick up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm grateful for somehow I found a balance that seems to work for me and that also readers seem to appreciate.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I really like the exploration of tenderness in humour and how a lot of male comics feel like it needs to be inappropriate and you need to say shitty things about people and you know pull them down but comedy doesn't have to be that way.
[SPEAKER_07]: So it was a great take on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think that there is room to be rightistly funny and also kind, you know, I hope the Gunkwell books feel that way, which isn't to say that a character doesn't have a bad moment or that they don't lash out and feel bad about it afterwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have to write polyanas.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying that, but who humor is directed toward, you know, Patrick is never in the Gunkwell book making fun of the kids, you know, that would be punching down in a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: and there are so many people right now trying to seize power by standing on the next of the most vulnerable around us and those people don't need to be pointed out and laughed at those people need to hand look at that but it is our job to punch up it is our job to mercilessly mock those trying to seize power in that way and so it's just where humor is is directed I think but I do I do always
[SPEAKER_01]: in my humor, which, you know, there's an easy laugh to be had sometimes by making fun of somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's harder to surprise a reader with a different take that they may not have thought of themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think, you know, it just challenges us to work a little harder, but it hopefully makes to a more kind and empathetic world.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, true, but I didn't enjoy the punching up at Elon Musk.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm not going to lie.
[SPEAKER_07]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's gross.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's very game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's big game and the description of him was hilarious.
[SPEAKER_07]: I really enjoyed that.
[SPEAKER_07]: So if you trick here that I want to make a listener's aware of, when you have luck,
[SPEAKER_07]: a lot of people as you do in a classroom with Jesse.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, it's difficult for the readers to keep track of people's names, if their names are John and Lily and whatever.
[SPEAKER_07]: And what you do so brilliantly is that Jesse gives all these students nicknames in his head in the first day of class based on certain things, which is such a brilliant tool to help the reader figure out who all the different characters are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's because I have a hard time keeping track of people's games.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there you go, there's the universal truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wrote it into the in a very funny way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think I give people weird nicknames, like shoelaces are backpack or mountain dew or whatever their names are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I forget the off hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's them from a very true place.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get overwhelmed, you know, we meet a lot of people as writers, you know, in a signing line at a book, you know, at a conference or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't get everyone names straight.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: That stems from that, but hopefully it's also a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a very challenging, there's a dinner party scene in this sort of the books or culminates in, and I love these big, messy group scenes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love writing that, my love writing that, but they're a challenge.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: So what you do brilliantly and I realize that in a lot of your books is writing characters who spend a lot of time alone.
[SPEAKER_07]: And that's really tricky to do because if it was on screen it would be super boring because you don't access to the interior authority, their emotionality, their psyche, but on the page you tend to have the character alone but they're moving, they're driving, they're doing something.
[SPEAKER_07]: so can you give us some tricks of the trade there in terms of making that interesting because often on the podcast we say don't begin with the character line alone or don't at the character be alone too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's, as a writer, I spend so much of my time alone, and I, you know, I married to another writer, we're very, we live a lot in our own heads, sadly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's sort of what I'm used to.
[SPEAKER_01]: In building the office, I wrote that in the first person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think I was afraid of, not, they're not being enough material for a book if I didn't have full access to the characters in theory already.
[SPEAKER_01]: I now write in the third person, and it's much harder, as you mentioned, that interiority is harder to access.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have to remember, am I doing an omnipotent narrator or a close sort of narrator, and what they know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's, you know, you're relying on the character to show you through action and through,
[SPEAKER_01]: where they're where they're stumbling and where they're succeeding and all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it does become a challenge.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I realized I was doing that purposefully, but it's interesting you're that pointed out.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I know.
[SPEAKER_07]: It took notice of all the times, Jesse was alone, or someone was alone, but it's still so riveting, you know, because we have access to the psyche, and I mean, at one point he's driving to see his mother, and so it's not like he's just, you know, sitting on the couch or whatever, you give motion and you give us interiority.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think I have time for like one or two more questions.
[SPEAKER_07]: We talk a lot about specificity on the podcast and using real life experiences can add that degree of authenticity.
[SPEAKER_07]: Please tell me that the Benora story is real.
[SPEAKER_07]: That has to come somewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not except that I have a friend who has a bannora or is given a bannora as a joke if so we're talking about a bannana Bannora for for Hanukkah that you would like your canvas.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did know that it would be like eight bannanashake candles that you would like or if it's one ceramic bannana that the candles go in and that's ultimately what it is But I will say I took some pictures at Hanukkah last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: We used the bannora.
[SPEAKER_01]: We lit the bannora and So I'll be posting some of those pictures pictures on my Instagram when the world comes up
[SPEAKER_07]: I knew that thing has to exist in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some things you just can't make up.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the banana, a time-honored symbol of comedy, or at least clowning, or, you know, pret falls or whatnot.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how could I resist?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, and it was wonderful.
[SPEAKER_07]: Again, it's a last question, giving the reader something that they can relate to.
[SPEAKER_07]: And you had a part with Lali, where she talks about how often as, you know, flight attendants, they have to deal with crying passengers.
[SPEAKER_07]: And that, like, took me back for the very first time,
[SPEAKER_07]: I cried on the plane, as well, I was reading Lillian octopus and my dexant had just passed away and this poor flight attendant had to come and check on me.
[SPEAKER_07]: And the last time was when my mom was second I was going to South Africa, but I feel like there are so many people who can just relate to that, to being in a public space, whether it's a plane wherever and just crying and you just can't stop and there's someone else.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't stop it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're trying so hard to control yourself
[SPEAKER_01]: And to hold on to some dignity and you can't stop it and I think flight attendants do deal with that A lot but what a full circle moment that it was literally in the course.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm probably I've heard from several read it on Plains and I hope I'm responsible for people getting some free drinks I think it's an apology for making you cry in public I think I did get a wine for it, so just do yes success
[SPEAKER_07]: Stephen, we run out of time.
[SPEAKER_07]: It is always such a joy to chat with you for our listeners.
[SPEAKER_07]: We are linking to take me with you on our bookshop.org affiliate page of you by the book.
[SPEAKER_07]: They support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_07]: Go ahead, get the book again.
[SPEAKER_07]: Masterclass in comedic writing and emotionality and so many other things.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thanks for joining us, Stephen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I recommend the podcast to everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I met CC and cool at the Coirewriters conference.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell Carly, I'm coming for her, but I love chatting with you always.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thanks, Stephen.
[SPEAKER_08]: Welcome everyone, I am here with bestselling and award-winning author, Megan Abbott, author of multiple novels, including of course her latest Eldorado Drive, which is now available in paperback.
[SPEAKER_08]: Described as an atmospheric novel, a friendship and betrayal, Eldorado Drive is one of those novels that does it all.
[SPEAKER_08]: It offers the reader a super unput downable story that's propulsive and fun, and it contains layers of social commentary on a topic that I am very passionate about, women and money.
[SPEAKER_08]: It explores power, vulnerability, the desire to regain control of one's life through the allure of wealth.
[SPEAKER_08]: So without further ado, welcome, Megan, we're so glad you're here.
[SPEAKER_08]: You give us your little elevator pitch for your book.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, well, you did the best job right there.
[SPEAKER_09]: That was a great description.
[SPEAKER_09]: But yeah, I really...
[SPEAKER_09]: Well, thought of it essentially as a story about women in money and their relationship to it, but it's about researchers who grew up in wealth and the wealth went away, and now they're at mid-life and dire straits when they get an enticing invitation.
[SPEAKER_09]: to join a new female investment club as it's called.
[SPEAKER_09]: And it's referred to as the wheel.
[SPEAKER_09]: And it sort of sucks them in and turns out to be.
[SPEAKER_09]: Now exactly what it sees.
[SPEAKER_08]: Not exactly as it seems as are the best thrillers, right?
[SPEAKER_08]: Like on the surface it's one thing.
[SPEAKER_08]: But then it's really in love with another.
[SPEAKER_08]: And I love how setting it's a huge part of the novel.
[SPEAKER_08]: The sisters, like you said, they grew up in privilege.
[SPEAKER_08]: But then after the
[SPEAKER_08]: auto industry declined and destroyed like their luck run out, right?
[SPEAKER_08]: Like so to speak.
[SPEAKER_08]: So how did you decide on the setting?
[SPEAKER_08]: It's my understanding that you grew up there, but I don't know if I'm right.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, no, that's correct.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I've never really done that.
[SPEAKER_09]: I've never set a book.
[SPEAKER_09]: Even anywhere near my hometown, which is Ghost Point just outside of Detroit, which is
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, it was famous for all the heads of the auto industry during its hey day, you know, in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, they all lived in Gross Point, which is outside of the city.
[SPEAKER_09]: And you know, when I was going up in the 80s and 90s, the auto industry was in the dramatic decline.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so, we never knew it during its heyday.
[SPEAKER_09]: And it's, you know, you never realized that the world and the place you grew up with this specific until later.
[SPEAKER_09]: And then you realized it is because this was all around me, the sense of people losing their, in many ways they're cast, you know, they were just used to a life of country clubs and come for, you know, in horses and
[SPEAKER_09]: boats and that's all sort of gone away.
[SPEAKER_09]: When I, you know, originally the story was sort of inspired by a real life case in Connecticut about a woman.
[SPEAKER_09]: I got involved in one of these investment clubs and when I was sort of reconceiving it as about these sisters and I thought, oh, I should set it and go as point because of this is a place where you
[SPEAKER_09]: Money was a constant source of discussion in my household, you know, it was the kind of place where, you know, no one owned a foreign car, and everybody's family was connected one way or another, except for mine with the honor of the street.
[SPEAKER_08]: Do you think sense of being an outsider gives you a vantage point because I would imagine.
[SPEAKER_08]: that growing around it, like growing up around it would give you a huge competitive advantage when talking about it, or not talking about it, but writing about it.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, no, I think that is true.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think most writers are most comfortable on the outside, you know, are a little bit of a warrior in us, mostly.
[SPEAKER_09]: We're observers, but in this case, he is truly on the outside because that aspiration.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, inside to be extent that
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, I had some of the, you know, good school, safe community, et cetera, but I felt very, there was no keeping up with the Joneses where I could, my dad was a teacher.
[SPEAKER_09]: And, you know, we, he did not have that life at all.
[SPEAKER_09]: We belonged to no country clubs, so I think that position.
[SPEAKER_09]: I could view it with a little bit of perspective, even then.
[SPEAKER_09]: And of course now, especially so over the years,
[SPEAKER_09]: In the way it's impact on me too.
[SPEAKER_09]: It was very, you know, it was really about what did you have the new polo sweater, how many colors did you have then when I was growing up and of course I never had any polo sweaters.
[SPEAKER_09]: So I think yeah, I would say it's that kind of in between space, you know, you're close enough to be in the inside of these houses and in these conversations, but you're on the outside and
[SPEAKER_08]: percent.
[SPEAKER_08]: That makes so much sense to me.
[SPEAKER_08]: I, you know, something that strikes me about your novel, like the protagonists, they're, they're very different.
[SPEAKER_08]: The, the sisters, I should say they're very different.
[SPEAKER_08]: But one thing they have in common is they need money for various reasons.
[SPEAKER_08]: And I I remember one scene where they're like sharing their financial struggles.
[SPEAKER_08]: And it's almost like,
[SPEAKER_08]: They're trying to one up each other, and I think it was Harper who says, what is this bankruptcy poker?
[SPEAKER_08]: But I see your this and I raise you a this, you know?
[SPEAKER_08]: Which I think is something people can relate to.
[SPEAKER_08]: The struggle of commissarating women, women talk a lot, right?
[SPEAKER_08]: We typically have friendships, we typically come as regular with our friends.
[SPEAKER_08]: In the idea of like, I need money, I don't know where I'm going to find new money.
[SPEAKER_08]: It can be very scary.
[SPEAKER_08]: And of course that's where the novels plot comes in.
[SPEAKER_08]: the wheel, the wheel, which promise is financial freedom and you mentioned it's based on a real life idea.
[SPEAKER_08]: So can you walk us through like how the genesis of the story went from idea to full-fledged plot?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, yes, that's always the question too because I've had some of the ideas that don't become a book that you think might and you sort of do toy with them sometimes for a long
[SPEAKER_09]: There's a true crime that is the initial inspiration, and then I take it somewhere.
[SPEAKER_09]: In this case, the real story, there was this documentary on HBO called Murder at Middle Beach, which is about a woman who was involved and lived in this very nice kinetic community, but had a really bad divorce and was in,
[SPEAKER_09]: fire, financial space, and so she became involved in what this essentially did not to be a pyramid scheme.
[SPEAKER_09]: Dens up to be a much more complicated story about her family relationships or relationship to substance abuse and her children and all elements that kind of flow through the book in a different way, but I was really interested in how the women interacted with each other in this club and I really wanted to explore that and sort of having the three sisters that grew up in the same
[SPEAKER_09]: They had the share in the same childhood, but they said, know how money was treating their child, they affected them very differently, which is always the case.
[SPEAKER_08]: It is the blinks.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, totally.
[SPEAKER_09]: And for all women, money is never just about money.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's about safety, security, power, freedom.
[SPEAKER_09]: So I wanted to have these three sisters that could sort of exemplify all those different versions.
[SPEAKER_09]: and that became a way to do it.
[SPEAKER_09]: And you know, I almost always write about complicated relationships between an and my women and just endlessly fascinated by it.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I don't have any sisters.
[SPEAKER_09]: So I think that sisters are an ongoing preoccupation for me.
[SPEAKER_09]: For just the ones you said.
[SPEAKER_08]: You said sisters?
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, probably not.
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, I had really intense female friendships.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: It was often feel like that, but that's true.
[SPEAKER_09]: I do, you know, I wear clothes from my brother who's a year older than me.
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, your siblings in general.
[SPEAKER_09]: I do feel like you're kind of veterans from the same war.
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, you all had the war being your childhood.
[SPEAKER_09]: So you have all this stuff you went through.
[SPEAKER_09]: And you handle it differently.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think with different,
[SPEAKER_09]: different genders, you know, there's a little bit of nice buffer.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think it gets more complicated with women and doing this case how they, you know, how they choose to marry, if they choose to marry it all well, how much prestige and appearance is matter because, you know, for the main sister who we follow Harper, that stuff doesn't matter to her and but for the other sisters, it does.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so,
[SPEAKER_09]: sort of every hand you think you're always looking for anything to make it media and to make it your own and this sort of become this thing that has in life of its own beyond the promise you know because the initial idea is really just a promise and sometimes it just stays that so it has slowly slowly as it builds and you find their voices it becomes your own so interesting you remind me so much of my client Laura leftler who she's also the youngest I
[SPEAKER_08]: I actually have a theory that birth order affects authors so much.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like it affects each other.
[SPEAKER_08]: But like if you're the youngest, I think that you become more observant.
[SPEAKER_08]: Because you observe not only your parents, but you also observe your siblings.
[SPEAKER_08]: Even if it's just a year.
[SPEAKER_08]: And it's not to say that the eldest, I'm speaking as the eldest, doesn't observe people.
[SPEAKER_08]: But like, we're sometimes more I think in a world than I think that you have to be a good observer to be an author.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, there you go, guys.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's my theory.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think there's truth to that.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think, you know, I, because you, especially if there's many kids,
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, you're kind of not parenting in the same way.
[SPEAKER_09]: So you often are this warrior in your own home because no one's really paying attention to where the oldish child gets a lot of attention.
[SPEAKER_08]: They're four.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's just like different genders too.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: I think it's a good theory.
[SPEAKER_08]: I wanted to scream like scream when I was reading your book.
[SPEAKER_08]: I wanted to tell Harper get out of there.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm sure many readers wanted to scream get out of there.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like we're supposed to feel that way.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_08]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: More thriller.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't actually know the genre.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm going to talk about genre in a second.
[SPEAKER_08]: But at the same time, I understood the appeal of the wheel.
[SPEAKER_08]: I think I get it, depending on where you are in your life and how much you need money and what you're up against and how I guess painted into a corner you might feel.
[SPEAKER_08]: I understand, because you humanize the character so much.
[SPEAKER_08]: And then I guess my question is, when you're writing, do you live like, curiously through your characters?
[SPEAKER_08]: And do you have a favorite?
[SPEAKER_08]: Is it Harper, Pam, Deborah, like?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, they do always do.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I always like the least like of one of the ones that other people Mike consider the least like what I think is the least like of one.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I kind I mean, I love Pam, but she's a, you know, she's a complicated person, you know, and I love her ex husband dog who's definitely
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but she's, you know, she's the most contentious, I think, and the most divisive dab has her own problem.
[SPEAKER_09]: Of course, but you know, she, but I like larger than life women and I really like Doug because I always, you know, he's the antagonist, he's the ex husband who's making Pam's life miserable, but
[SPEAKER_09]: I never want any character to just be one thing, so the more I started giving him other qualities and other sympathies, then I started to like him more, you know, going back to what you were saying about the appeal of something like this, I read so much about women that become involved in these, like dozens of real life cases.
[SPEAKER_09]: And a lot of why they do is not just the money, though that's
[SPEAKER_09]: that's the impetus, initial impetus.
[SPEAKER_09]: But they like the community and the connection to other women.
[SPEAKER_09]: They like being a part of it.
[SPEAKER_09]: I thought that was, I found that kind of moving that after, you know, after your youth or sororities or even like BTA or someone says, oh, God, there's often not an occasion to be around other women and to talk about your stuff together.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so, a lot of them found that solidarity.
[SPEAKER_08]: Especially, I think, under, with the sense of protagonism, because women are, especially as we age, were taught to support our children, support our spouse, it's support, our family members.
[SPEAKER_08]: We're not supposed to crave the spotlight, and I feel that, you know, with the wheel, maybe in addition to the money, of course, like you said initially, because maybe it's also like, it gets to be about me.
[SPEAKER_08]: I get to have a sense of being a protagonist.
[SPEAKER_08]: And we're humans, we need that, you know?
[SPEAKER_08]: The most selfless, lovely woman still needs that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely and I don't want things in to, you know, not just be the person everyone counts on, which I think a lot of them have become and, you know, in their 40s, 50s and beyond.
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, this is why this book is resonating with readers so much.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, so speaking of books resonating with readers, I ask this with every author, I interview.
[SPEAKER_08]: I have seen your novels be referred to as thriller, suspense, and war.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like, how do you think of genre, how do you think of mood?
[SPEAKER_08]: Because I don't think the war between the English and the genre to me, it's more removed than any atmosphere.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, like when you're sitting down to write a novel, do you go, I know what genre it is, or do you like, I'm just writing a story and people position it however they want?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I'm always surprised at where I end up, you know, of the story, did that success, but I don't even know what that is, thriller, you know, noir, I think we would do, I think noir is more of a mood than genre, but, you know, I think of it as,
[SPEAKER_09]: There is a crime, but that's a good one.
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, and it's sort of keeps it simple.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and I really only say that because I just can't conceive of myself writing a book without a crime and it though often the crime is not usually the crime is not really my interest, it's what the crime
[SPEAKER_09]: elicits in the characters.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, you know, that's really my interest when it brings out them.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, yeah, and that's thank you for saying that.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's not the heart of your novels, like it's so essential, yes, but like it's murder, but right, but it's sort of the engine, you know, it's a pot, you know, you know, you know, in your work that you're always looking for that pot engine to keep the story going and to, you know, and it might always tell people
[SPEAKER_09]: I said, the benefit of a crime novel is you have an engine, you don't have to figure out the plot follows itself by a large one, because if you do sort of things, certain things are going to happen, you know, so, but then you put your character situation and then you see how they're going to respond.
[SPEAKER_09]: I figured that out for the most part before I start really writing, interesting, but you know, there's still
[SPEAKER_09]: responses that the characters have that I can't anticipate because I don't know that really yet when I start the book.
[SPEAKER_09]: So I don't then their character to suit the plot.
[SPEAKER_09]: I worked out and then I start to bend the plot a little bit to suit the character.
[SPEAKER_08]: I love that notion of bending the plot to suit the character.
[SPEAKER_08]: I predict listeners will be like, hmm, should I add a crime in my novel?
[SPEAKER_08]: Maybe you should, listeners just saying, maybe you should, you've heard it from the one and only Megan Abbott.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, how long does it take you?
[SPEAKER_08]: Because you're describing your process that involves like research in terms of like what happens in real life.
[SPEAKER_08]: So you can draw inspiration.
[SPEAKER_08]: You're describing your process where you, you know, figure out the plot.
[SPEAKER_08]: You're describing your process where you make sure characters aren't one thing, which is something you said that I loved.
[SPEAKER_08]: I love that, you know, you're thinking about meeting contradictory characters, because human nature is filled with contradictions.
[SPEAKER_08]: How long does it take you to write a book?
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, like, how is it between?
[SPEAKER_08]: Do you have a secret twin working alongside you?
[SPEAKER_08]: Tell us, tell us the truth story.
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, I benefit from being a compulsive person.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's the right all the time.
[SPEAKER_09]: And need to have a book going in all times and have several working I do, and most writers, I know, in my genre, whenever that is crime genre, let's just say, are the same way, like it just, but it does take a long time.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so,
[SPEAKER_09]: often, you know, the projects I abandoned or put on pause are ones where I can't stay obsessed with this for a year and a half, two years, however, you know.
[SPEAKER_09]: First draft, generally going to take under a year, but then you're revising for yourself, then you're revising for your agent, then you're revising for your editor.
[SPEAKER_09]: See, you have to, it has to fascinate.
[SPEAKER_09]: It has to be so rich that it fascinates you, not that you fascinate yourself, but that you create a something.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, you fascinate yourself.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, let's own it, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't know, but, you know, you sort of, the world you created is field rich enough that you can dance in it for, you know,
[SPEAKER_09]: And now I have friends who write much faster, but I am a fiddler with sentences, and you know, I can get lost in the research and have digressions, but but also I have friends who takes them, you know, three, four, five years to write a novel, and I could not live with anything that long.
[SPEAKER_09]: So I guess that maybe one has their own time.
[SPEAKER_08]: They do.
[SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_08]: And your fans appreciate the care you put into it.
[SPEAKER_08]: I can say this as a family.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, so you mentioned you once talked creative writing.
[SPEAKER_08]: Would you have a guess again?
[SPEAKER_08]: I know people are going to kill me if I don't ask this question.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like would you ever teach it again?
[SPEAKER_08]: Please say yes.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, yes, I definitely would.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I, you know, I taught in the MFA program.
[SPEAKER_09]: I was a John Gushian writer and residents for one year.
[SPEAKER_09]: And it was, I don't know if I would teach an MFA program again because, well, it's changing now.
[SPEAKER_09]: But then, and for the long time, there was not a lot of attention to the genre of, I mean, all in the golf fiction, all in the fiction.
[SPEAKER_09]: But, you know, they're ending too.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, you see what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so it felt a little,
[SPEAKER_09]: I would want to teach, I would definitely teach crime fiction again, let's put it that way.
[SPEAKER_09]: When I would teach writing, I do, I love working with people that are developing manuscripts and I find that fascinating and helpful to me, I feel like I gain from every time I read someone else's work, so I wouldn't consider it, I, you know, and the right circumstances I would definitely do it.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I would love to do one where you read book together and then write and then you know something that would bounce the two because I think yeah, that's sort of a lost art right now is how that book books can actually inspire reading books adjacent to the thing you're working on can actually inspire you.
[SPEAKER_08]: People are going to think that I ask you to say all the things you're saying.
[SPEAKER_08]: Because I'm a big believer in obsession as a personality trait.
[SPEAKER_08]: The most important personality trait.
[SPEAKER_08]: I always talk about the fact that if you want to be a fantastic writer, you have to be a voracious reader because that's how you develop a pallet.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like you would never tell a chef who's cooking dishes and has to taste their own food.
[SPEAKER_08]: Don't worry about developing your pallet.
[SPEAKER_08]: No, they have to.
[SPEAKER_08]: They have to know what the food tastes like.
[SPEAKER_08]: So they're fascinated by their own food, right?
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: Guys, I promise I'd never asked Megan to say any of these things.
[SPEAKER_08]: Actually, actually you're just hearing from her.
[SPEAKER_08]: This was not plotted out.
[SPEAKER_08]: This was not You're still getting it.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, no, I can't believe the agree.
[SPEAKER_09]: You got to read all the time and you know You really do learn high learned from I'm always going back to the right the books that and writers that met the most to me And try to almost like work backwards to figure out how they achieved certain things, you know How does this book work go backwards like how did they decide it, you know?
[SPEAKER_09]: I guess something like secret history comes with heart.
[SPEAKER_09]: I've found that back to that book so many times.
[SPEAKER_09]: How does this work so well?
[SPEAKER_08]: To reverse engineering.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, exactly.
[SPEAKER_08]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you, everyone.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: Actually, now I'm thinking that we might have met in a game.
[SPEAKER_08]: No, I'm even thinking that again.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, okay, I love it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Do you have, do you have critique partners that you work with on your stuff?
[SPEAKER_08]: I know you mentioned sending it to your agent first, which I love as an agent with us.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: Do you first work with critique partners, beta readers, and then send it to your agent like what's your own process in terms of feedback?
[SPEAKER_09]: No, I never do that.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think that's the only person that I know who doesn't do that.
[SPEAKER_09]: But I feel, I guess, super vulnerable.
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't want, I know, anyone that I would share.
[SPEAKER_09]: completely great, but I feel like it's still in its tender stage and I hate it so much.
[SPEAKER_09]: my editor and I feel like the longer I keep it in that cone.
[SPEAKER_09]: I guess without too many outside voices.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's sort of always what I'm looking for.
[SPEAKER_09]: I really admire people that will trade manuscripts and be so comfortable with it.
[SPEAKER_09]: I've just never done that.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm always worried about being maybe discouraged or thrown so I think that's a big thing for me.
[SPEAKER_08]: it works for you.
[SPEAKER_08]: In listen, I don't know if you've ever read the creative act by Rick Ruben describes it as a beautiful book.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like it's a meditation.
[SPEAKER_09]: I know of it because I and I know it's a podcast where he talks about it.
[SPEAKER_08]: So you would love the book.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: I like he describes you know that one of the most important things you you have to do as an artist and then in creation that goes for writers I'm sure is knowing when you're in the
[SPEAKER_08]: cocoon face like it's not meant to be shared you know like you have so much in the tank because you've write all these great books and you've studied all these great books and you've lived a full life and you've done research and you've thought about your character like you have so much in the tank that you're like I'm living with my own world and then you know the time you know sharing it with you obviously and knowing the difference between the two is one of those like wisdom things that you really need as an author because if you do it too soon you're right like they're it could lead to
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I like that cocoon metaphor.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think that's perfect because I think that is sort of one of it dangerous And I often think that it will writing workshops could be especially because they can be very critical of rather right You're it's gonna be very critical of other writers, you know, and can damage you in that Nacent stage, you know when everything feels very tender because a lot of this stuff you will figure out yourself the longer
[SPEAKER_09]: work with the material and then once you have your first reader, whoever they are, but you know, I like a fit, I don't even send a partial, so I'm really, I'm a straight, but yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: Do you outline at all?
[SPEAKER_08]: You mentioned that you figure it out before going.
[SPEAKER_08]: Is it an outline?
[SPEAKER_08]: Is it like, what, like, how do you do it?
[SPEAKER_08]: It's not an outline.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I, like, I do a lot of screenwriting and I always outline the screenwriting, but I never outline it.
[SPEAKER_09]: But I do really know the three acts.
[SPEAKER_09]: So it's okay.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I know the ending, I just don't know.
[SPEAKER_09]: a lot of the in-between and then once I'm in towards the middle of the book you know the messy middle I do start to plot out beats you know I things I still need to do and then it becomes a little closer to an outline I think it's closer to what I what they would call in TV a beat sheet which is like these things need to happen I already to get to these things and that's really just to rescue you from that part in the middle of the book where I think a
[SPEAKER_09]: included feel a little lost in the sauce and pieces of it so I like that.
[SPEAKER_08]: I really like that.
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, even doing this for a long time.
[SPEAKER_08]: So obviously it works and you've had tremendous success.
[SPEAKER_08]: Is there something about being a writer that you feel has changed since you started?
[SPEAKER_08]: Remind me when your first book was published.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_09]: 2005.
[SPEAKER_09]: So it's been 20-20 years.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: As you know, but you're too young to know a lot of this, but the business changes like I think what the same Okay, so you know the business publishing changes every five years.
[SPEAKER_09]: There's no interesting ways Yes, you know this I haven't been agenting my whole life like for context.
[SPEAKER_08]: I used to be a lawyer
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay, so I'm gonna have to say new at this point, but I started with the pandemic, so okay, okay So and but and I'm sure you've heard how like different sort of things that were shook up the business or people thought would shook up The business and then acting when everyone thought that there would be no more physical books I mean that was really a thing and you know all these sort of and then you know book talk
[SPEAKER_09]: And the one thing I've learned is that, you know, I mean, I think there's larger concerns with corporate consolidation, etc.
[SPEAKER_09]: Things that are out of our pay grade, but as writers, but that are definitely ongoing challenges.
[SPEAKER_09]: But a lot of the other stuff, I think.
[SPEAKER_09]: They are trends and phases and you know, you have to think of the long haul and there's going to be ups and downs and it's, you know, you just kind of ride it out and believe in yourself, you know, that because it's, you know, there's never, it's always I feel like calling it a business isn't even quite right publishing because, you know, it's a little more, you know, and people are in it for a love of it, which is the best thing about it, but that you've got to kind of ride out those, you know, you know, it's a little more, you know, and people are in it for a love of it, which is the best thing about it, but that you've got to kind of ride out those, you know, you know, you know, it's a little more, you know, you know, you know, you're a little more, you know, you're a little more, you know, you're a little more, you know, you're a little more
[SPEAKER_09]: It's big waves and trust yourself and the people that you work with that you trust.
[SPEAKER_08]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_08]: So I had a call today with my mentor and boss Wendy Sherman from Wendy Sherman Associates, which is the last one.
[SPEAKER_08]: And I was like, Wendy, this is happening in publishing and this is happening in publishing.
[SPEAKER_08]: She was like, you know what, see, see, for every contraction, there's an expansion for everything that closes.
[SPEAKER_08]: There's another thing that opens and I have been in this business long enough to know that it all works out in the end.
[SPEAKER_08]: And she didn't say it in like a toxic optimism, why she said it in a very thoughtful, like earned optimistic sort of way.
[SPEAKER_08]: And I take, I love that, I love hearing about people who have been doing this for decades because I have not, and even though I came into publishing like older, like as a mature student when I went back to school and I was learning, and I wasn't a kid straight out of college, I think that,
[SPEAKER_08]: it's this weird disconnect between like so many of my friends are so young but at the same time I've lived many lives and when I hear from someone who's older like this is the reality but it works out it can feel very inspiring and encouraging yeah I think that's right no I think that's exactly right and you just sort of you get kind of shop guards about it when you've been through it a few times and you know it's it's
[SPEAKER_09]: it does work out and opportunities that you just as sort of you can't anticipate their opportunities and exciting things that you can't anticipate.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh my gosh, I love that.
[SPEAKER_08]: So what's your favorite thing about being an author and your least favorite thing?
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay, well, so all so I'll have the other the positive one second.
[SPEAKER_09]: So we get at least favorite.
[SPEAKER_09]: Oh gosh I guess pose I you know, I still carry I mean I can't believe this given I've written like like 12 books was like So much anxiety Publication I never stop being anxious for me and I really try to
[SPEAKER_09]: Shutter or my say, you know, I don't read reviews.
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't go on good reads.
[SPEAKER_09]: I do, you know, which is I'm sure the thing you always tell all your offers never going good reads Because you know, and I so I really try that just like lockdown and
[SPEAKER_09]: think about connecting to readers and on tour, which is always so great, you know, meant to not get lost in the stuff I can't control.
[SPEAKER_09]: But every time I have the, you know, every time I find it very fraught and nerve-wracking, you know, most writers are basically introverts, so I think that
[SPEAKER_09]: Really all our books are very personal, even if they don't see it, even if they don't reflect directly our lives.
[SPEAKER_08]: I haven't murdered anybody, but they're still personal.
[SPEAKER_09]: They still come from our hearts.
[SPEAKER_09]: So I think having them have a lot of social justice.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, it is.
[SPEAKER_08]: You're pushing someone who's real to you to the limit.
[SPEAKER_08]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_08]: That has to come from within.
[SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely, you know, and in the best part is really just talking to people about books all the time, you know, and I can, you know, least to my own, but I love just
[SPEAKER_09]: There's just always more, you know, I've been a couple of readers since I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I feel like I really haven't scratched the surface.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm always, you know, getting great new recommendations.
[SPEAKER_09]: There's always, like, I just finished a new Tomper Roda book that just came out, which I just loved and, you know, and that's the read something like that.
[SPEAKER_09]: And it's so perfect and you think, like, wow, this is, you know, this is a reminder of why books matter and you don't.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so, you know, we get to be surrounded by other people that love books all the time.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's the best.
[SPEAKER_08]: Honestly, like I'm an introvert as well and I remember my first London book fair being really stressed out when I saw my schedule because I had like back-to-back meetings from like 90 I'm to it.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know if you'd remember six and a half a month And I thought, oh, I'm going to die But then I didn't because it was book meetings It was me.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, it was tiring of course, but like talking about books with book people Like I had never done that before in my life like my formal job was so boring and I'm like
[SPEAKER_08]: I found my people, and it was so energizing, you know, the best thing to do, yes, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, so speaking of finding my people,
[SPEAKER_08]: As I said, my client, Laura left her huge fan.
[SPEAKER_08]: She compelled me to ask a question on her behalf.
[SPEAKER_08]: She's like, you have to ask her about this baby.
[SPEAKER_08]: She's loved a lot of drugs.
[SPEAKER_08]: She loved all your books as obsessed with all your books.
[SPEAKER_08]: So I'm gonna read a question that she sent in.
[SPEAKER_08]: On my first read, I almost thought I was reading an omniscient narrator because of the immersive way Megan writes.
[SPEAKER_08]: I had so much insight into the sister's characters, which makes it truly remarkable to me that she never switches out of Harper's POV.
[SPEAKER_08]: Is it how you see it?
[SPEAKER_08]: question.
[SPEAKER_08]: This is critical to the story.
[SPEAKER_08]: I won't say more because spoilers.
[SPEAKER_08]: I wonder if this is always the case or if there was ever a time that she wrote each sister's point of view just to understand them.
[SPEAKER_08]: I read a twice to see how she does it and I still don't know.
[SPEAKER_08]: So Laura is also trying to reverse engineer your book.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's, thank you so much Laura.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's so flattering because I, you know, I, I did want that to be the case.
[SPEAKER_09]: I never wanted
[SPEAKER_09]: depending on the book, but most of my books say I'm not really playing a game, I love reading those books, but I'm not really playing a game with the reader, but I really wanted to do the close stir just, I did not think I ever have gone into either of the other sisters had, but I really did want them to feel real and vivid and
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so that's one reason why it wasn't first person, for instance, because Clube's third gives you a little more wiggle room, you know, and you can almost sort of lose track of who's it's interesting because I'm developing it for a TV show now and so you're not in one point.
[SPEAKER_09]: Sister, you know, to fall into their POV and perhaps because of the, of just what Laura is saying that it felt like you understood them and that's always, that's always what you're hoping for, you know, figuring out the POV is the big thing that, oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: so much of the early part of the book is making sure I'm in the right one and I spent a lot of time changing it, rewrite, you know, it is, it isn't one of the unspew.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think they don't talk about that enough in writing classes, but that is like the big decision you make early on and it affects every time.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't think if I'm a realist that, but now that you're saying it, like so true, because it informs everything, like yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: if the crime is the engine, this is the sole, like a hundred percent because it's the eyes, eyes through what you see the world.
[SPEAKER_08]: You know, Lauren, I were talking about this because again, obsessed, I think that a huge part of it too is that they're sisters.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, like, I don't know that this might be, you could still do it, of course, it's you, but like the fact that Harper can know so much about her sisters in a way that like, it's hard still Harper.
[SPEAKER_08]: It works too because of their relationship.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like, if it had been a stranger, like I didn't feel that way when she was
[SPEAKER_09]: when we were in the scene with other people, you know, I felt that way with the sisters.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think that's really true.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think because they also talk so much about their childhood together, you know, you have a sense of their experiences of it, and you get them for that reason in Pam's, you know, daughter, and you have different perspectives on them that make make sure they're three-dimensional and you can feel an intimacy.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think that's that's very true.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's a good point.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, so are you able to tell us what you're working on next?
[SPEAKER_08]: Is it too early?
[SPEAKER_08]: I like the infrastructure to share, but you know, our listeners are huge fans like I am too.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, well, I just turned it in.
[SPEAKER_09]: So, um, yeah, yeah, so, yes, we coming out, I guess sometime next year and it's, it's a story, I don't know if we could elevate on this page for it yet, but loosely, it's good, our listeners will see the Megan at the right.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, it's good to see you on this page.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's the hardest part.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_09]: it's about a town where that feels that other people feel is cursed because there's just a series of calamities that before all the young people in the town and no one can figure out how to break the curse so it's
[SPEAKER_09]: It's it's inspired by real life story as well and it's it's different and yet the same would be like it's it's similar to my past books and that I'm dealing with teenage girls again in large part but it's a little different because I thought with something like that like this sort of larger
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, once you feel your curse, your curse, you know, it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecies.
[SPEAKER_08]: Because your belief is what powers the curse.
[SPEAKER_08]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_09]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_09]: So the whole town is sort of under the sway of this and try, like, how do we escape it?
[SPEAKER_08]: Where's the town?
[SPEAKER_08]: Can you share?
[SPEAKER_09]: It's an unnamed occasion, which, like, can you England, Midwest?
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, I really wanted the reader to be
[SPEAKER_09]: be able to plug in their town so I try to keep it as big as possible but it is a small town.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's a small town only you know, 20,000 people so dealing with that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Um, a real small town of the like twin peaks variety.
[SPEAKER_08]: Let's just say interesting.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: You didn't struggle at all with that.
[SPEAKER_08]: That was really good.
[SPEAKER_08]: I didn't just say in our listeners are not having the cathartic experience that I had promised them.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm sorry, I'm very sorry.
[SPEAKER_08]: This is a final question I asked everyone on the show.
[SPEAKER_08]: Can you recommend us a book?
[SPEAKER_08]: It can be a book you're excited to read, but haven't read yet.
[SPEAKER_08]: It can be a book you've just finished and you just want to tell everyone about it.
[SPEAKER_08]: It can be a book you're still reading.
[SPEAKER_08]: It can be a book you read a million years ago.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, I recommend the book that just came out last week, which is Patrick Renn, Keith's London Falling, which if you like to crime, he's the best there is.
[SPEAKER_09]: He wrote, say nothing, he's just a book about the sacklers that came the TV show and say nothing became a TV show too.
[SPEAKER_09]: He's a New Yorker writer, and the sacklers is the, it's the Purdue Farmer.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, that's right, that's right, that's right.
[SPEAKER_09]: he's brilliant in every way and this book is based on one of his articles about this young man in London who fell or was pushed off a balcony of his upper middle class, you know, upper middle class kid and
[SPEAKER_09]: I think it's, and you went up a leave how wild the story is and how moving it is because he talks to the family extensively as they try to figure out what happened to their son and to say any more would spoil it but if you're looking for a can't but can't put it down and you cannot put it down it reads like a thriller but with huge heart and meaning and political
[SPEAKER_08]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_09]: See, you did the job.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_08]: Megan, thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_08]: It is truly an honor to have had you on our show.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's a pleasure to talk about your next book.
[SPEAKER_08]: We are huge fans over here.
[SPEAKER_08]: And yes, please stay in touch because this was truly an honor.
[SPEAKER_08]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hello and a big welcome to Emily Summer from E-City Bookshop, who is joining us as per usual to give us our subtitles.
[SPEAKER_07]: Welcome, Emily.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, Bianca, hi, everybody.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, we've only got four today, so I feel like Emily has really trained you all pretty well.
[SPEAKER_07]: And just keep in mind, we're going to be taking a comp sprake for June, July, and August, and we'll be back again in September.
[SPEAKER_07]: So we expect a flood of comp requests by then.
[SPEAKER_07]: make me work for it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, more than four exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: For now, let's kick off the first one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here you go.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been an avid listener for a long time and love your comp segments.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks in advance for your help with finding comps for my YA 80s novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: My name is Andromeda, whose horse girl protagonist is dealing with the aftermath of her twin brothers drunk driving accident.
[SPEAKER_02]: 16 year old in drama that Andy Summers is marked as an outcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: The whispers that follow her in the school hallways are hard enough of it being the only Jewish girl in her tiny Indiana hometown and having her twin brother Leo charged with homicides to solidify her place's pariah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Her only solace is her beloved horse comet when she rides him.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's no longer changed her reputation.
[SPEAKER_02]: She imagines that she's soaring on the back of Pegasus.
[SPEAKER_02]: When the rodeo comes to town inspiration for the jackpot strikes, but after the space shuttle
[SPEAKER_02]: The book is a reimagining of the Andromeda myth, in which the hero and rescues herself told in a dual timeline with romantic elements.
[SPEAKER_02]: When Comp, I thought of his dear Medusa and another is a dream of space, but neither is quite right for my story.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again for your help.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Wendy.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I like the comps that you've suggested.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think dear Medusa is a good one because it's a serious book about real teen struggles and it's recent and it's not too big.
[SPEAKER_03]: connection I think makes sense and is intuitive and I like I dream of space too because of that 80s setting, the discussion of the challenger explosion, the household struggles, that's middle grade but I do think that there's some crossover appeal I'm never too bothered by crossover between middle grade and YA or YA and adult.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will add the book when the world tips over by Jandy Nelson
[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought about Jandy Nelson immediately because she writes the sort of heart tugging YA novels and she deals particularly well with siblings.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll give you this son is her most famous and it is my favorite of hers and it's about siblings but it's it's too old I think and it's been made into a movie so maybe too big but when the world tips over is her most recent it's 2024 I think it was recent and it also has
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not a mythological reimagining, but it does have some inventive and fantastical elements to it that might resonate a little.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think the two that you have, it makes sense to me, and I would add maybe look at Jandy Nelson.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I'll give you the sun is like one of my favorite of all times, so good, it's so good.
[SPEAKER_07]: So, so good.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay, here we go, here's our next one.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm seeking cops from my dystopian novel written in their personal limited.
[SPEAKER_04]: Able is the scientist in the nation of Nazareth, the theocratic government, headquartered on the shores of Lake Superior, controlling territory, dividing the states.
[SPEAKER_04]: In the nation waters woven into its worship and political power, but it is also toxic.
[SPEAKER_04]: When Able develops a breakthrough in water purification, that could say millions, the nation refuses to let the discovery or Able leave their borders.
[SPEAKER_04]: To bring his knowledge to the world, Able must escape.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's ever a soldier of the state that sent across Lake Superior to extract Abel, but when a storm destroys her team, she becomes the sole survivor's stranded inside enemy territory.
[SPEAKER_04]: Abel and Zephyr must work together to find another route to freedom before the nation's militia closes in, led by the father of Abel's life, a man determined that Abel never leave the nation alive.
[SPEAKER_04]: As if, the barriers between them break down forcing them to question the police that shape them, the enemy they were taught to hate and whether love can transcend both.
[SPEAKER_04]: My novel feels like a mix of the following cops, but I'm wondering if they're too big.
[SPEAKER_04]: They have a still TV series, thematically similar, and more fast-paced and high stakes than the novel.
[SPEAKER_04]: While dark shore with themes of self-sacrifice, the impacts of environmental claps and the attraction between the adult characters and station 11, but only parts of not sure if relevant enough.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for any other comps.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I totally get where you're going here with the comps, because when I hear, you know, the handmaid's tale, wild dark shore in station 11, I feel like I know what I'm getting, and it sounds like what you describe.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think, totally all that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think you're probably right that the Handmaid's Tale in Station 11 are too big.
[SPEAKER_03]: While Dark Shore is heading that way too, it's gotten so much acclaim and attention deservedly so I worship Charlotte McConaughey.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think that one might be worth mentioning or mentioning Charlotte McConaughey in general because of the way she weaves in ecological disaster in all of her works.
[SPEAKER_03]: She does it so deftly and so well that I think when you're talking about something like water purification and ecological dystopian that it makes sense to think of her.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you think that the work resonates otherwise.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also thought of maybe red rising by pure spround.
[SPEAKER_03]: So red rising is older, but the series continues to do very, very well.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's sci-fi, but the themes and set up seem similar.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it has to be,
[SPEAKER_03]: Likewise, I would suggest silo by Hugh Hauy.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that one is not space.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's there in an underground bunker.
[SPEAKER_03]: But both of those fit that sort of dystopian action adventure.
[SPEAKER_03]: Our characters need a route to freedom.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that the pacing and the high stakes survival would really work.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'll suggest those.
[SPEAKER_03]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, here's number three.
[SPEAKER_05]: Hi Emily, hope you can help me find some comps for my women's fiction novel about a middle age woman who is exploring a kink that she's been hiding.
[SPEAKER_05]: And is now deciding to explore with someone she's actually paying unbeknownst to her husband.
[SPEAKER_05]: There is definitely titillating content and things keep pushing me to all fours or 50 shades, which 50 shades is to obvious and too big.
[SPEAKER_05]: All fours is not emotional at all and mine is.
[SPEAKER_05]: you know, leaving a long marriage, navigating empty nest, embracing who you are, overcoming shame.
[SPEAKER_05]: So while there's definitely some titillating content, it has a lot more heart and I'm just having a very hard time finding anything like that.
[SPEAKER_05]: So any tips you have would be much appreciated, thanks.
[SPEAKER_05]: And how many books a week do you read?
[SPEAKER_05]: Because you know so many titles.
[SPEAKER_05]: Love your
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, thank you so much for calling in.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that you are right on trend with this book about a middle-aged woman exploring some kind of king or sexual freedom.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fifty shades, no, I agree with you that that is not the way to go, particularly because of what you said about all fours.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I will say that I think that all fours is a great comp for all the things that you said your book does emotionally.
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought that all fours did that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it does have a lot of emotional heft, and I have described it in many of the same ways that you describe your book.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it's just the psilacious bits or the graphic bits.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, everybody who reads a book reads it differently.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also find Miranda July hilarious and I was telling, I've told people before like, oh, I thought, I think she's so funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought all fours was so funny and people looking like I'm crazy.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like, I didn't think it was funny at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: I told one of my best friends.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think all fours might be too out there for you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I think it might just be too weird.
[SPEAKER_03]: The set-ups too weird and then she read it and she was like, I didn't think it was weird at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I found all fours surprisingly emotional.
[SPEAKER_03]: Lots of emotional heft.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't know, consider it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is still maybe too big to work.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it definitely
[SPEAKER_03]: kicks off this sort of women expressing themselves sexually.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to talk about menopause.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to talk about midlife.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm seeing that elsewhere now too.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Miranda July was on to something.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think you are too.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will also mention same as it ever was by Clair Lombardo.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that one is not about an open marriage or a king or anything of that nature.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it is about a woman in midlife.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about a near-empty nester.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about what do we do in a long marriage when we're in the midst of a long marriage or we're maybe toward the latter days of a long marriage.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in that book, the main characters thinking back about a lost friendship and what it might have led to it, I don't want to give too much away.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think this sort of emotional inner workings of what the characters going through that you described,
[SPEAKER_03]: There might be something, in same as it ever was, that feels right, even without the sex part.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll also suggest a forthcoming novel called Skin Contact by Alyssa Faison.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have just dipped into it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It comes out this summer, I think, maybe it might be later in the year, coming out from Cardinal.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it features younger couples, but it's about open relationships.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it could have the same reader, the person who, you know, people want to read novels right now about non-monogamy and people finding sexual fulfillment in perhaps unexpected or under-discussed places.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think that could work.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I also mentioned a forthcoming memoir by Pamela Druckerman.
[SPEAKER_03]: She is best known for her parenting memoir, bringing up Bay Bay about being an American raising kids in France.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's written a new memoir coming out late summer early fall called the monogamy prize.
[SPEAKER_03]: And basically, I think this one is really right on the money, even though it's a memoir.
[SPEAKER_03]: The premise, as I understand it, is that she is married.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's got maybe teenage kids.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know exactly how all the kids are.
[SPEAKER_03]: And for her 50th birthday, she decides to give herself a present of just a little affair.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's gonna have a little affair.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I haven't read it yet, so I don't know where it goes, but that's the setup and I think that that could work.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I'll also say maybe the paper palace by Miranda Callie-Heller, one of my favorite books of the last five or six years.
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, it's not about King or necessarily sexual expiration, but it is about that midlife moment of deciding what you want, what you want in a marriage, and what you want in love and sex in general.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you asked how many books a week I read.
[SPEAKER_03]: I read usually two to three and I end up reading.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know somewhere between like 130 and 150 a year.
[SPEAKER_03]: I dip into more, but I just count the ones that I finished to completion.
[SPEAKER_03]: But lots of the books that I talk about on this comp segment I have not read.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do not claim to have read them all.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just know about them because I buy them for the store.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I'm also on about three to four books a week, Emily.
[SPEAKER_07]: So we're, that's it.
[SPEAKER_07]: You're beating me.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're beating me by a lot of us, that's out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, so what's the one more was that it?
[SPEAKER_03]: There's one more.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, one more.
[SPEAKER_06]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm looking for cops on my upmarket women's section novel in which a young woman escapes dystopian 271 by time traveling to a near-eutopian far future or no human is illegal.
[SPEAKER_06]: But her inherited time travel devices.
[SPEAKER_06]: and an intimate and certain love, as well as a career in which she is uniquely qualified to see injustice hiding in plain sight.
[SPEAKER_06]: What she doesn't see are the many secrets, those who care for her are keeping, and the existence of an ancient ancestor and a future daughter who act to protect her.
[SPEAKER_06]: Late reveals reframe everything like in the sixth sense.
[SPEAKER_06]: The novel is frequently playful and joyful, but key chambers could work for the hope punk found family sensibility.
[SPEAKER_06]: The movie about time.
[SPEAKER_06]: conveys the central love story and time travel element, but that's not a book.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm thinking it would be useful to find a comp that conveys the warmth of emotionally healthy characters to love and culminates in an uplifting ending, but any advice is much appreciated.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I think that you're absolutely right about Becky Chambers.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you're talking about the playful and joyful and enjoyable, like far future book, I think Becky Chambers is absolutely right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would say anytime I write someone like Becky Chambers, I also recommend Martha Wells.
[SPEAKER_03]: She writes the, oh wait, now I've lost the, the name.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the nice robot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, you know it's one that's I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: Martha Wells as well, and for a comp that conveys the warmth of emotionally healthy characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: and characters who love and that we're going to have an uplifting ending.
[SPEAKER_03]: TJ Kloon is absolutely the way to go.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's cozy fantasy.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not that far future like post-distopian, but it is absolutely that lovely found family, playful, joyful.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it would have that same reading experience and appeal to the same readers.
[SPEAKER_03]: So definitely take a look at TJ Kloon.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's it for our short comps month.
[SPEAKER_03]: Amazing, Emily.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thanks so much for joining us.
[SPEAKER_07]: We hope you have a lovely summer off.
[SPEAKER_07]: For the rest of you, get in all your comp requests over the summer and then we'll tackle them in September.
[SPEAKER_07]: Go to the should about writing, go to the ask question page and you can record your message today.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you again, Emily.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you in September.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have a great summer, everybody.
[SPEAKER_07]: And that's it for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_07]: I hope you'll join us for next week's show.
[SPEAKER_07]: In the meantime, keep at it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Remember, it just takes one yes.