[SPEAKER_02]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_02]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: 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_02]: Hi everyone, we have a really special guest today.
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody I've been trying to get on the podcast for the longest time, so I'm super excited.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is the number one New York Times bestselling author of 26 books, including Medwives, Hour of the Witch and the Flight attendant, which was an HBO Max TV series.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of his other books include the lioness, the sand castle girls, and the jackals mistress.
[SPEAKER_02]: His novels, Madwives, secrets of Eden, and past the bleachers were made into movies, and his work has been translated into more than 35 languages.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's also a playwright of the club and Madwives.
[SPEAKER_02]: He lives in Vermont at my pleasure to welcome Chris Bogellian.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chris, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bianca, what a pleasure it is to meet you virtually and I love, love, love, the name of your podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: You all heard it there from Chris, so you know it's a good name.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is.
[SPEAKER_02]: For those of you who are not watching on YouTube, I am holding up the book with discussing today the amateur.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to link to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you buy it,
[SPEAKER_02]: and the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, Chris, before we dive in, I'm going to read the flat copy so everybody knows what we're getting into and then we'll take it away from there.
[SPEAKER_02]: 1978, it is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are floating with 90 when Mira Winston, 18 years old, drives a golf ball from her tea towards the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy check.
[SPEAKER_02]: The golf ball weighing 1.6 ounces,
[SPEAKER_02]: Tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams with sickening force into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood.
[SPEAKER_02]: Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head then topples onto his side, his dead before the ambulance even arrives.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the wake of this terrible accident and everyone at first agrees that was an accident, Mira looks for the comfort in all the wrong places.
[SPEAKER_02]: In her lover, the accountant, a married man, three decades of a senior, in her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own, in the dead catty's little sisters, girls, bewildered by grief, but when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mirus history of recklessness, and when Kenny's father spies Mirra with her married lover, the affluent and manned community turns on this once promising young woman.
[SPEAKER_02]: A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun soaked greens of a Tony-Wistchester country club to the fluorescent list stand of a county courtroom.
[SPEAKER_02]: The amateur asks, what happens when one small moment a swing a ball a piece of string changes the course of an entire life?
[SPEAKER_02]: So as you can all get here just from that really gripping stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chris, I need to pick your brain about that opening chapter.
[SPEAKER_02]: it is absolute wizardry what you did there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know it must have been incredibly difficult to pull off.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you begin in a way that feels like an omniscient point of view.
[SPEAKER_02]: We feel very pulled out of the scene and you kind of draw us into it slowly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'm thinking, okay, we're in Kenny's third person point of view.
[SPEAKER_02]: At the end of that chapter, we establish that we own mirror's first person point of view.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can we speak about the intentionality of framing the chapter that way?
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted a bombshell right away, and when you start the novel, you are presuming exactly as you said.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a very traditional, third person omniscient novel about a tragic accident, but then you get to the end of the prologue in which Mirus says, I know, because I was the girl
[SPEAKER_00]: The amateur is presented as Miro Winston, now in novelist in her early 60s, recounting the one moment, and we all have them in our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one moment that was the before and after moment in her life prior to that swing at that golf club that afternoon, she assumed.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was going to go to Yale in a few weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she was going to go to the LPGA because she is a spectacular golfer.
[SPEAKER_00]: She crushes all of the grown men at her country club, but instead, she's killed a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: she's killed a classmate and even if it is a terrible accident that is a horrific thing to live with and suddenly instead of going to college she's going to punk rock clubs in 1978 doing way too many drugs and as the flap copy says
[SPEAKER_00]: trying to find comfort in all the wrong places, including the married golf buddy, her father plays golf with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there is so much to unpack there and for our listeners who are writing these kinds of characters and I never want to use the word unlikable female protagonist because I'm so sick of that word when it comes to female protagonist but someone who is damaged, someone who is very vulnerable, someone who makes bad decisions because of that that the reader sometimes wants to grab this character and shake them.
[SPEAKER_02]: this is a masterclass in how to get the reader so unbored with this character that you are rooting for her every step of the way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to come back short to Chris to grief and how that can be used to drive plot.
[SPEAKER_02]: For now I want to focus on specificity.
[SPEAKER_02]: So on the podcast we're always saying you need to focus in on specifics.
[SPEAKER_02]: and sometimes readers interpret that as meaning they need to write like, I don't know, three pages description of something which is not right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to read you a paragraph here that we're going to unpack two things here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it goes.
[SPEAKER_02]: My face was buried in my pillow, but my mother was sitting close enough to the headboard that she was rubbing my back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Through my shirt, in great gentle circles, the motioned honed from years of dusting the dining room table.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we have this part in parentheses.
[SPEAKER_02]: We had a housekeeper came once a week, a woman, my mother's age, named Felicia, who begged her sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving and brought us crispy golden fried ochrengelife.
[SPEAKER_02]: but that dynamic table had been in my mother's family since the 18th century, and she cared with it with the sort of gentleness and devotion more sane people reserved for elderly cats.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so just in terms of one sentence, the amount of specificity we get there, one about the mother's character, two about the dynamic between Mira and her mother, and then three,
[SPEAKER_02]: In the parentheses, we get this kind of backstory.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, Chris, can you speak about putting as much into a paragraph as you can by using as few words as you possibly can?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's nothing that drives me crazy or in a novel, then when I see an information dump.
[SPEAKER_00]: when either we need to have four paragraphs to explain in action, or 15 pages to explain why the killer was hiding in the garage drives me bonkers.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing about the dining room table is that it immediately conveys the reality that this is old money.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a mother who comes from Puritan stock and that she might be rather cold sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole idea that she is rubbing her daughter's back the same way she dusts a table, which is the only thing in the house that the housekeeper doesn't dust speaks volumes about both the mother and the mother daughter relationship.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Boo y'all, that's what we're talking about when we're saying this kind of specificity.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Chris could have said, the mother as wealthy came from this kind of money.
[SPEAKER_02]: Didn't need it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just knowing that this table was so old and that she treated it the way she did made us not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, she's wealthy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is something that she values very much.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we can see a degree of snobbery there, perhaps?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and, you know, there's a lot of privilege there that we can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Entitlement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you can see in the entitlement in Mirrors Mother, when they are at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central in New York City, you can see the way the Mother feels privileged in how she responds to the fact that Mirrors has killed a catty, and the fact that no, no, no, no, no, you isn't wise for you
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that that part was was shocking.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, but think about, you know, just think about the maid, the cleaning lady's feelings because she's a to clean the house and this woman won't trust her with her table.
[SPEAKER_00]: What will Sen's got on Bianca?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now jumping off from the parentheses, you do it through out to such brilliant effect Chris, because often in a novel, having things in brackets all the time can be distracting.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I love about this is that you use it to give context of how times were back then, because something I don't know about you that I get frustrated with when I get copyrighted.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will use a word that people would have used in the 1970s in South Africa, and I'll get told you can't use that word today.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're getting used, but I'm trying to build the world as it was then.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you struggle to find the balance.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you said a lot of things, and then in brackets, you would explain the context and remember this was back when.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can we speak a bit about that as well?
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it something that came after copy edits in which your copy editor was saying, oh, Chris, I don't know if you can say this or is it because you've written so many books.
[SPEAKER_02]: You knew this was gonna be an issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my 26th book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is also a book that I wrote in an alchemic frenzy of 90 days.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a book that is a wash in autobiography.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a caddy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a novelist of a certain age.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a lot of me in both the dead caddy, Kenny Foster, and a lot of me in Mira Winston, the novelist.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, the novelist is known best for books about functional alcoholic flight attendants and midwives on trial for manslaughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of easter egg is thereby designed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I am writing about the late 1970s or the late 1980s,
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like Mira, I am writing a first person recollections or I am writing scenes that I am made up that are deeply colored by my own first person experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there that is Grand Central in 1979 or Amherst or Smith College in 1981.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to Amherst, my wife went to Smith.
[SPEAKER_00]: the words that we were using when we were so very young men were very different from the words that we use now in 2026.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, I pulled no punches in the amateur.
[SPEAKER_00]: I loved the book and I love Mira Winston, the character, my double-ganger.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as Mira says at one point,
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine, very often I don't like myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, just to say, I loved how you said her up straight away as somebody who was a reliable narrator with a lot of self-awareness.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because in this kind of story, we're coming in expecting an unreliable narrator.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's just like, nope, laying all the shit there.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is, I'm telling you, all the bad stuff, even though I fear you don't like me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, and and and again, one of the other things Mira says in the book is, and this is for all of you in book groups and I'm grateful to all of you in book groups you read my books, but as you are sipping your wine, and you're debating whether I'm a reliable or unreliable narrator, let that go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am reliable as fuck.
[SPEAKER_02]: absolutely love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, it was carried through because sometimes a narrator sits in our self-up as reliable and in later they change their mind but Chris was reliable as fuck he promised us that and he delivered.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Chris something I want to discuss is mirraland as a device.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for our listeners the character is called mirra.
[SPEAKER_02]: When she's a young girl she looks
[SPEAKER_02]: and will interpret things through the reflections in the mirror, etc.
[SPEAKER_02]: And her family misunderstands that as being Mira, her name, land.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Chris uses his device throughout the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what point of the writing did that come in?
[SPEAKER_02]: Did it affect her name as a character?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear the evolution of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm honestly not sure whether the name Mira came first
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the issues that mirror my narrator has is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: magical thinking, unbelievable magical thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: She equates her killing even if it is accidental, her killing Kenny Foster as the price she has to pay for her own misbehavior and misadventures as a teenager, including sleeping with a married man.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is her
[SPEAKER_00]: punishment.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she was always the kind of kid as a little girl was capable of punishing herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, taking her favorite chair and placing it in the dining room in a corner and putting herself into time out for reasons that her own mom and dad have no explanation for.
[SPEAKER_00]: I almost call the book, Mirrorland, M.I.R.A.
[SPEAKER_00]: land.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was afraid it was going to be too easily misunderstood or misconstrued as mirror land or that they're just the tide would be confusing, which is why I went with
[SPEAKER_00]: the amateur because of course mirror never will make it to the L. P. J. after killing a cat and it's never going to happen for her because of her own guilt and self-loathing and as she said, you know, I'm not spoiling this for any readers because as she explains in chapter one or chapter two, I never played golf again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things that made me attached to her so quickly, Chris was this overdeveloped sense of guilt.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not Catholic, not religious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know where I got it from, but if something happens, I will blame myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we get somewhere late and there's an incident, I'm like, well, I should have made people leave earlier, etc.
[SPEAKER_02]: So to just see a character on the page
[SPEAKER_02]: hugely over-developed saints of guilt and even to know that it's magical thinking but just to connect with the character there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And these are the kind of vulnerabilities that we need to build into our characters so that readers see them because a book is essentially a mirror and you seeing yourself reflected back.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I were an English professor, I would give you an A plus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a magnificent interpretation of mirror and what I'm hoping the reader's reaction will be.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kinds of things in, and again, this isn't a spoiler, that mirror does in the book that I did in real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point, mirror is enraged.
[SPEAKER_00]: at one of her older brother at Princeton's friends who does something dismissive of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when she goes to his dorm room, covers the exterior door with rubbing alcohol, knocks on it, and then throws a match on it so that when the poor student opens the door, the
[SPEAKER_00]: in college.
[SPEAKER_00]: When all this figured out that this was the funniest prank in the world, because the rubbing alcohol on a fireproof door, which the doors were, would instantly burn out, but there would be that split second when somebody would open the door and was completely on fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, I really did do that, not proud, but Miro does it in the novel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And seems like that,
[SPEAKER_00]: is this your way of instead of telling your therapist your shit, you're dropping it on your readers.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it works in the narrative arc, so I kept it.
[SPEAKER_02]: 100% and I think there's nothing wrong with using writing as therapy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, a little, you know, a little goes a long way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a reason why I've got a therapist here and readers hear because those are two oceans that need a continent between them in all fairness to my readers.
[SPEAKER_02]: 100%.
[SPEAKER_02]: I found it very cathartic when she broke the guys windows with a golf club.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do think I need a rage room so that I was cheering her on there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean it wasn't a justified totally justified.
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like that's all she did and she didn't even say anything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh man, I would have had to leave taking that club to his cup.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so page 2627.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to read the excerpt about animal house.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and while I had explained with all the principles of distinction, I could mustered five that the creation was called mirror land, here to hurt me, and if I had named the word of the word of the myself,
[SPEAKER_02]: Afterwards, any time I did anything that my father might view as nonsensical and predictable or simply perplexing, he or my mother or Spencer would say I was often in mirror land.
[SPEAKER_02]: Later, when my friends heard my mother or Spencer used the expression, they glummed onto it too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dort as I said, he doesn't get people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Probably true, he agreed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then a glummer of incredulity in his Tony continued, I've never seen anyone die.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hadn't until today, awful.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, but the worst.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, not the worst.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just one of the many awful parts of the moment was that at first, I laughed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I did.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, oh my god, you laughed he asked and he was laughing himself at the notion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, but it was kind of like a loony tunes cartoon or maybe a Jerry Lewis movie.
[SPEAKER_02]: or animal house.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't seen a jet.
[SPEAKER_02]: You haven't seen animal house.
[SPEAKER_02]: It only opened last week.
[SPEAKER_02]: I reminded him defensively.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay at this point don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: A guy gets hit in their head with a golf ball.
[SPEAKER_02]: Does he die too?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, because he's wearing a helmet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why is he wearing a helmet on a golf course?
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not on a golf course.
[SPEAKER_02]: Two guys are just driving golf balls on the college campus.
[SPEAKER_02]: Really driving golf balls?
[SPEAKER_02]: and so it goes and then at the end of that chapter it says I would be 34 years old before I would finally have the courage to go to the local video store and rent animal house.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I got home and press the cassette into the machine, however, I couldn't bring myself to press play.
[SPEAKER_02]: It would be a decade later when I was 44 that I would finally watch the movie in its entirety.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then thank God I had years of therapy behind me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you speak a bit about choosing to use
[SPEAKER_00]: When I began the novel, I was 1978 in my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was thinking about, what is the world like in 1978?
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was looking back what were the big movies, animal house had just opened and I remembered that scene, where otter is driving golf balls with one of his fret bros at the college campus
[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe they hit, are you not even remember that they hit him in the helmet or they hit the horse?
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's on his horse and the ROTC kids horse bolts dragging the student along the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now because this is comedy, everyone's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one is badly hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ROTC kid wears a neck brace, but it's comic-relead.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a funny movie, but is it a funny movie to Mirra Winston?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've driven a golf ball through a net and accidentally killed someone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when her older brother Spencer says to her referencing animal house, have you seen it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course she is not seen it yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank God for Mirra.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will haunt her.
[SPEAKER_00]: animal house and it is kind of a running joke in the novel animal house appears in the amateur for times I believe people referencing it to her because for everyone else hitting someone in the head with a golf ball is just
[SPEAKER_00]: great Mel Brooksian comedic chops, straight out of National Ampune, John Belusian, but from era, it is the tragedy in the before and after a moment in her life that completely utterly irrevocably derailed it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, if you're going to use that kind of device, they must be a reason for it and keep bringing it back.
[SPEAKER_02]: I precise, wrap the novel and we see it at the end again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, before we move on, first, a message from our sponsors.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, Chris, I'd love to chat about emotionality and a story and leveraging it for plot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because something we do on the podcast is with critique query letters and opening pages.
[SPEAKER_02]: And often we say to emerging authors, there's not enough emotionality, there's not enough interiority.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's good to see what's happening on the outside, but how does the character feel on the
[SPEAKER_02]: writers tend to think of emotionality is just adding depth to the character, but so much of mirrored guilt stops fitment dominoes from tipping over story-wise and gets other dominoes tipping because her guilt informs so much of what she does.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can you speak a bit about that as well?
[SPEAKER_00]: But as Fitzgerald said, action is character.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I'm starting a book, one of the very first decisions I have to make, and this is true to all writers, is it a third person novels, a third person omniscient, a third person subjective, is it first person, I even have a one book that uses a lot of second person,
[SPEAKER_00]: I will only go with first person if I have a voice that feels idiosyncratic and unique because the thing about a first person novel
[SPEAKER_00]: is you're limited by what that narrator can know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unlike a third person, I'm mission novel where you can be anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I think is one of the choice I had writing that prologue, which is where we began.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are thinking it is a third person, I'm mission novel, and then you get to the end, I know, because I was the girl who hit the golf ball.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a surprise.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see a lot of mirrors interior feelings, not simply because she's saying, I felt this or I thought this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because of what she does when she's with some of the different older men in her life or when she is determined to see the bedroom of the kid she killed and so
[SPEAKER_00]: When she runs into Kenny Foster, the dead catty's kids sister and one of the kid sister's pals at a nice cream shop in the village, she asks to see the bedroom because she's never seen it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when you get a real sense of what Mira is feeling, not because Mira tells you, because Mira tells you what she does in that bedroom.
[SPEAKER_02]: Punishers of self are are really, really, really awful, but also in terms of her deciding never to play golf again and deciding that's that becomes really important later on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to give away any spoilers.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it feeds into so many different things that Chris has managed to use.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now let's talk
[SPEAKER_02]: about, you know, when you write a book from a first-person perspective that it's in their future and they're able to look back on their lives as opposed to writing it in a linear way at starts when she hits the golf ball into his head and we go through time with her.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of that allows for foreshadowing, which you use to great effect, because she's in the future she knows how things have worked out, but she's still telling the story as a story and this is what
[SPEAKER_02]: Just because something's memoir means it doesn't have to read like fiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a great book to read for memoirs to go, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: Imagine this was her real life and look at how she's positioning it as a memoir that reads like fiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: So is that the reason why you wanted to write it from that point in the future?
[SPEAKER_02]: Chris, as opposed to just beginning with when she hits the golf ball and moving forward linearly?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you use the term memoir, and this is a faux memoir.
[SPEAKER_00]: by design, but it is always also, and the wonderful thing about whether you're writing a novel in the first person past, or you're writing memoir, is you can have, as you said, foreshadowing, and it is really clear that dread is my jam.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see dread in all of my books, you can
[SPEAKER_00]: books.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, by choosing first person past, I could lay her in dread.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could lay her in foreshadowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, this is the first time I've ever written a novel with a table of contents.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you look at the table of contents and I don't have the book with, you know, with
[SPEAKER_00]: And beyond, if you want to read the three parts out loud, you can see foreshadowing in all its glory, or I can, it, which depends.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've found it's a table of contents.
[SPEAKER_02]: Prologue one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hot one.
[SPEAKER_02]: They won't be a trial.
[SPEAKER_02]: They will never be a trial.
[SPEAKER_02]: part two, the season of dipositions, part three, the trial, then epilogue.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it is pretty funny how upfront you've been with us, they're Chris.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I mean, you know, I mean, I'm telling the reader quite clearly in Act 1, everyone is telling Mira, oh don't worry, there will never be a trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in part two well, there's depositions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there will be a settlement.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then three, oh, you're screwed.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are going to trial for involuntary manslaughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, we talk about stakes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we talk about uping the stakes all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is a brilliant master class in maintaining that dread and tension, and then the stakes just getting up all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because every time she just thinks, okay, that's the worst of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then it's this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to end with the editors noted at the beginning of the book and I want us to discuss some of that Chris served.
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes dear reader, when you look back at your life, can you identify single moment that changed everything?
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it an hour or even a minute that permanently altered the whole course?
[SPEAKER_02]: For most of us, there might have been a few times that felt important, a game-winning shot, a job interview, a kiss, but it's hard to say that these things truly
[SPEAKER_02]: The same cannot be said for Mirra Winston, the young woman at the heart of Chris Bergerian's riveting new novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: For Mirra, her future, shining so brightly is destroyed by the smallest possible element.
[SPEAKER_02]: A 1.6-anse ball, a glance, a piece of string.
[SPEAKER_02]: When Mira interviewed Nikhil's boy at a golf club, what begins as a simple story of a freak accident develops into a layered twisting shocking tale of blame, money, infidelity and family.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a book about how precarious life can be about the way a little take can explain deeper damage.
[SPEAKER_02]: As any golfer will tell you when she hits the ball perfectly, she just feels it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And with the amateur, it's clear that Chris Bajellian knew he was writing a showstopper.
[SPEAKER_02]: The novel poured out of him.
[SPEAKER_02]: The fastest he's written in news, and as a reader, you can feel that velocity on every page.
[SPEAKER_02]: The book is effortless, emotional gripping, and the most propulsive thing I've read in ages.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now this is written by Jenny Jackson, who we've had on our deep dive before.
[SPEAKER_02]: So first Chris, can you tell us a bit about what it's like to work with Jenny?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then secondly, I'd love to hear how this book pulled out of you so quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Having Jenny Jackson is an editor is such a great professional gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's not merely a brilliant novelist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I loved Pineapple Street.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you've not read the shampoo effect this summer, you must dive in because it is an absolute gem.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the wonderful thing about having Jenny novelist
[SPEAKER_00]: as my editor is this great peer relationship we have, not merely editor and author, but novelist and novelist.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's also very, very funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first time she got notes from her editor on her first book Pineapple Street,
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember her laughing with me and saying, I cannot believe the torture I have inflicted on so many authors over the years.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's really not torture because she's so smart and she makes her authors books so much better, whether it's me or Kevin Kwan or Emily Mandel or this year, Caro Clare Burke and yesterday.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, she's just incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you said, as a writer, as an editor,
[SPEAKER_02]: The in terms of the idea for the book Chris, which you said came out of you like what first draft 90 days was it's something that you'd been thinking of all the time back in your mind while writing other books or did you finish the last book and this one just popped into your head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I finished the last book and this one popped into my head and yes, I did write it in an
[SPEAKER_00]: wasn't worried.
[SPEAKER_00]: She just assumed I was either relaxing or working on something, but we had literally just published the Princess of Las Vegas.
[SPEAKER_00]: My next book, The Jackals Mysterious was done.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think it crossed anyone's mind at double date when they didn't really hear from me about anything of consequence for 90 days.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't at all worried.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even tell my lovely bride what I was writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously she knew I was in this room every day and she's read every single one of the three point eight million words I've published before they were published.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at the end of 90 days when I was finished, it was a Monday, the last Monday and August of 2024.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tucked the manuscript into an email,
[SPEAKER_00]: our daughter, Jenny Jackson, my agents, and the subject line was simply how I spent my summer vacation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pressed send on that Monday morning at 9 a.m. and before the end of day Tuesday, every single person on that email had read it and were more than a little gobsmacked.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the closest thing I think Jenny had ever seen to a finished novel coming over the
[SPEAKER_02]: That's incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you normally, do you normally plot things, do you pants things and in comparison, how long do you, in average, or other books take to write?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a pantser.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never written an outline.
[SPEAKER_00]: I respect authors who use outlines, but the pleasure for me is having my characters take me by the hand and lead me through the dark of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was different the way
[SPEAKER_00]: is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will send her 90 pages, 100 pages.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll send my wife 90 pages, 100 pages.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll say, what do you think?
[SPEAKER_00]: Worth pursuing?
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes they will say, yes, go for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a couple of times they said, yeah, I don't think this is the one.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I put it aside and start something new.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was different because what Victoria, my lovely bride and Jenny and my amazing Grace experience, my wife's and my daughter saw was almost what you have in that galley you were reading from a minute ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will never have that experience again.
[SPEAKER_02]: favorite, favorite when you have it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It really is incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just thought you'd spend like weeks just on that opening chapter because it was just so amazing what you managed to to cram in and it just came out.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So one last question.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Chris has asked me to a lot
[SPEAKER_02]: sort of express frustration that we as women writers are expected to be on social media, we expected constantly to be engaging with our readers, and a lot of male authors don't, and this has been proved on our sub-steck.
[SPEAKER_02]: So on our, we've also got the shit no until you're about writing sub-steck, and we profile a lot of male authors, and then when the
[SPEAKER_02]: that we're sharing the article, we cannot find them on social media because they are not there.
[SPEAKER_02]: You are the exact opposite of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You make yourself so available to your fans.
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, I'm giving a shout out now to Carmella Davito, who must be one of your biggest fans, she absolutely adores you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And besides the fact that you are open to speaking about your books, I love seeing you on threads,
[SPEAKER_02]: standing up for women writers, giving shoutouts to them, just being a good literary citizen.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can you just say something to encourage male authors to like, do the same, please?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, the reason why I'm on social media is because it's fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously, there's a lot of toxicity out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, I always, always tell younger writers, dear God, when your first book is published, never ever read your reviews on goodreads or Amazon, they're in lies the path to madness, but the reality is that so many book reviews are gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is so little book coverage compared to when I started, which is why we need to interact on places like threads, on sub-stack listening to podcasts like the shit nobody tells you.
[SPEAKER_00]: because that's our human connection, that's our book community.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, a lot of my posts are in about books, whether my books or other people's books, they're about my dog, my cats, my lovely bride, movies I've just seen for the fact that American democracy is in the midst of a dumpster fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of those are things I will talk about as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why I do it is,
[SPEAKER_00]: community.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we are big on community and we are also really big on literary citizenship.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so I'm holding up the book again, the amateur.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're linking to it on a bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get it there.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can support an independent bookstore, the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: This book is a masterclass in so many different things.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter what genre you're writing, what genre you prefer reading.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get it, read it, study it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chris, thank you so much for joining us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bianca, thank you for all you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a great time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your questions were fantastic and well, I bow before you and awesomeness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Chris.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, everybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to an author interview.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have Carly here with one of my clients.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love having them on so we can talk but all the behind the scenes and also give you a great author interview.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's Bailey Hannah, you know her.
[SPEAKER_03]: You love her.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's been on the show before, but we are back to talk about love Wells kept her latest novel.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm very emotional about this.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is our final novel in the Well's Ranch series.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, the first series that launched you, that you wrote, that has come into the world, is coming to an end.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you feel about the final book, Bailey?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so bitter sweet.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I've just been keeping busy, so I don't have to process that it's the last one.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm sure all of a sudden one day it's just going to hit me like a freight train.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the
[SPEAKER_04]: It's weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so weird to think back to writing the first book and having no idea if anybody was even going to read it, anything.
[SPEAKER_04]: I truly was just doing that just to check something off the bucket list because I've always wanted to publish a book and then
[SPEAKER_04]: And then now here we are, three years later, and my entire life is completely different.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's like, and it's all thanks to this book series.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's weird to say goodbye and move into something different.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, you've hit bestseller list.
[SPEAKER_03]: You've been translated into all these languages now.
[SPEAKER_03]: You've met so many fans.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so special.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when you started out with the series, I think I know the answer before our listeners.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you started out with the series,
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you plan the full five books?
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you know that Love Welles captain were going to get into what it's about very soon?
[SPEAKER_03]: But did you know Love Welles kept was going to be book five?
[SPEAKER_03]: Had you planned out the whole mastermind of the whole thing?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, which then came back to bite me a few times as I was working on it, of course, because I kind of wrote myself into certain things.
[SPEAKER_04]: But no, Alive and Welles are originally.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was like, this is just going to be a standalone, because again, I just wanted to say that I published something.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then as I could see it was getting traction when I was looking for some arch readers because of course I was like if I'm gonna self publish this I'm going to give it a fair go I'm gonna put my all into this and if I go's nowhere then whatever I can say I did it
[SPEAKER_04]: And so then I started thinking about books two and three, and then it was only ever going to be three books.
[SPEAKER_04]: But then Colt, one of the side characters, just wouldn't leave my brain.
[SPEAKER_04]: So then I'm like, well, now he needs a book.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Kate and Jackson, I went back and forth for a really long time about whether to give them a book, whether it should be a prequel or what,
[SPEAKER_04]: But then their story came to me and I was like, this feels so much more fitting because when I think about their original love story, I really think it was just simple.
[SPEAKER_04]: They met there wasn't any drama, there was no real conflict, so I don't think it would have necessarily made that interesting of the story.
[SPEAKER_04]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would say.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and you went really deep.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, for those of you that don't know our well's ranch series is about a bunch of ranch hands on well's ranch, you know, working through their life and their love and their families and all the kind of wonderful stuff that their ranch hand life has brought them and our current characters, you know, they were the ones that were just like steady steadfast couple.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they were there all along.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what ends up happening is our lead, he gets amyja, he's in a coma, and he forgets his family, he forgets his wife, and Lovewell's kept us all about how these two can find their way back to each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, you went for the, the gut punch in the last book here.
[SPEAKER_04]: it's an emotional one.
[SPEAKER_04]: I keep getting messages from readers and they're like, I'm crying and I'm only 10% in and every time I just say, I wish that I could tell you it gets better soon, but it really doesn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's rough and quite wild.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and there's something about also being the last one because we've encountered these characters throughout all the other books, right, books one through four.
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, we know them.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're a steadfast couple.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then to know all of that and then this be the last one, I think also is extra emotional because they were in love all the long.
[SPEAKER_03]: They never doubted it, but you really take it with the ringer.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, for our listeners, if you remember the movie, the vow, the chaining Tatum, Rachel Lake Adams movie.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is for you.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is kind of right up that alley.
[SPEAKER_03]: Our lovers need to find their way back to each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, this is obviously very serious traumatic head injury that takes Jackson down.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you have to do any kind of like research about this?
[SPEAKER_03]: What were you inspired by?
[SPEAKER_03]: How did you know like the head injury was the thing that was going to kind of take him down?
[SPEAKER_03]: And you wanted to rebuild this Indonesia trope?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I had read a couple of amnesia books long ago and when I decided that I didn't want them to have a prequel and that it was going to be a marriage in crisis.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then I was like,
[SPEAKER_04]: what's going to be this thing that forces them apart.
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, because they're that steady stable, so madly and love couple through the first four books, I was like, why can't just all of a sudden now be like, oh, and they drifted apart.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they already have kids, so it's probably not going to be an issue of whether or not to have children or infertility, like we see in a lot of those other marriage and trouble type books.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so then, I just started imagining what their worst case scenario could possibly look like and.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that, that's it for sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: So aside from killing off one of them, this was kind of the worst thing that I could imagine doing to them.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's how we landed here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was me, my next question, like, you know, the Welsh ranch is a place of like safety and hard work and this grittyness and a lot of big things happen in an external way in the other books.
[SPEAKER_03]: But this is a really kind of like internal crisis in such a kind of grounded steady world.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, why did you want to go so internal with this one as as opposed to like, yeah, blowing up the ranch or doing something like making dramatic.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it just fit.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the only way to really sort of drive these two apart and have to force them back together was when it was something like this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because if there was some big external conflict, I just imagine that bringing them closer together rather than driving them apart because they've already been through so much as a couple.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like when she first moves to the ranch, it's to be the nurse for his dying mother.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they've already been through all of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: They've
[SPEAKER_04]: been raising two kids together, they've seen so much change on the ranch over the last 16 years that it's like it was going to take something totally out of their control and something that's going to mess one of them up internally, mess one of their heads up basically.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, so that was kind of what I did.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I spent so much time reading firsthand accounts
[SPEAKER_04]: from people with TBI's and the way they feel about their family, even if they don't have them, it can change so much because the TBI affects everything about who you are as a person.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so there's just so many stories of people feeling really disconnected from their family or they lash out at their family because they can't control their temper anymore and like all of those things.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I just said this seems perfect.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's throw that into the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, one of the things you do so well in this series is you kind of really examine versions of masculinity and so many different ways, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when we think about our like rugged characters, all of them have a really big soft side, but I'm just kind of like nearing in on what you said there about, you know, him not knowing how to perform his idea of masculinity, you know, in this new version of his life as he recovers was just so well done and really interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, and he has to deal with that a lot, not even just his relationship, but like, before the accident, he's a horse trainer and now he obviously isn't capable of doing that anymore and so it's sort of figuring out where he fits with his brothers now and yeah, it was definitely the most challenging thing that I've written was writing from his point of view because obviously I do not have a TBI so trying to put myself in his shoes was really hard.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I just want to come back to another thing you said about, you know, being a marriage and crisis novel.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of also like a second chance romance as well because they're like coming back to themselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think when you write, do you think about the tropes that you're going to tackle, get a package you weigh or do you just kind of like, I don't know, I just see you referring to them.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I guess I'm curious about how you how you bring those quote unquote tropes in.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's usually like one that you obviously know amnesia, which I could also probably say marriage and crisis for this one, or like accidental pregnancy or something like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know that that's the big one because obviously that's what the whole plot.
[SPEAKER_04]: centers around but otherwise I never know and I will have a couple friends who beta read for me and I get them to go through when they're reading and point out all of these tropes or not so much marketing is micro tropes and so they'll go through and point all of those things out because I just write it all and then later on I'm like oh yeah how am I going to market this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and do you feel like boxed by those micro tropes, or do you feel like this is just another way to read readers when you see it kind of package in that way?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's just another way to read readers because I even sometimes I'll just be in the mood for, I'm like, okay, I want them to be neighbors who hate each other and then I want something to happen where they have to live together for a while or whatever and like
[SPEAKER_04]: that's how I'll just pick a book as a mood reader sometimes so I don't blame people for deciding oh I really love the last three books I had all had a one bed trope in it and that's what I want to read in the next book that I read too so yeah I'm a sucker for a one bed I've said this so many times on the show I'm like what it's just adorable it's so unrealistic but it's so fun
[SPEAKER_03]: It's adorable, and you know, this book is just kind of classic Bailey because there is so much heaviness, but there's all its funny, it's sexy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think one of the things you and I talked about when you were balancing this book is like People come to your book series knowing there's going to be a certain level of heat, but then there's like balancing the heat with these two kind of Again, not knowing who each other is and we discover each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: You talk a little bit about like from the authors perspective about how you're trying to honor the situation you put them in while still trying to honor the spiciness of the series
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think sometimes I'm honoring them in their situation almost too much and so then I need to go back later and add a few little more moments of sexual tension because it's like almost an afterthought until we get later, but initially I'm just thinking about a fiber in that situation and I'm not going to be trying to come on to my husband.
[SPEAKER_04]: Didn't that situation, you know, but then this is also a romance book.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we do need those little spark moments.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I kind of just let them take the lead and so some books.
[SPEAKER_04]: The characters get together earlier and some books like this one.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not until.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like about 70% of the way through before they actually have sex for the first time, and that's because I was thinking about the fact that he's healing from a traumatic brain injury.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was just in a coma, like he's not going to come home and they're immediately just going to get back to it even if they're both attracted to each other.
[SPEAKER_04]: So.
[SPEAKER_03]: And intimacy shows up in so many different ways, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think like in that way that they can find each other again, that there's the care taking, you know, like there's just so many different layers of intimacy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also want to touch on which I think is one of the most heartbreaking things.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I mentioned this when we were drafting it is his role as a father.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, gosh, so heartbreaking to be like, you know, even from the wife's point of view, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Of like, you know, the person that you had a child with doesn't even recognize or know,
[SPEAKER_03]: the child that you had, I mean, obviously the family unit is so central in the entire series, and it's obviously very central to their marriage.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why did, I mean, I guess they had already had this child, so you couldn't cook up a situation where, you know, he wasn't a father, but you know, you really had to handle that with such grace and care.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a nightmare of recognizing the child that you have.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and I also didn't want to set this book way further in the future from the rest of the series.
[SPEAKER_04]: So like their two kids are young.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like they have a three-year-old and a she turns eight during the book.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're so young to be handling it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, that was
[SPEAKER_04]: I, I sobbed so much through this book because I just kept putting myself into Kate's shoes and trying to imagine, like if I had to explain this situation to my six-year-old daughter, like, I don't even know where I would begin.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know how I would handle it, but yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know that was the part that got me to.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, oh my gosh, I can't even, I can't even imagine.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you know, we don't want to spoil the ending, but it is happily ever after ending.
[SPEAKER_03]: It takes us to very emotional places but always kind of brings us back that feeling of home.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so let's talk about Wells Ranch a little bit more as a concept.
[SPEAKER_03]: So your reputation is for writing these like rugged men who aren't afraid to love their women hard in the kind of the you know cowboy sub genre, you know you've
[SPEAKER_03]: certainly made a name for yourself, but you're also really great at keeping it feeling very like modern and fresh and emotionally intelligent.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's just a natural style of yours, but do you feel like you have to kind of work at that or is that just kind of like your natural viewpoint kind of coming through when you're creating these male characters?
[SPEAKER_04]: I definitely think that's just my natural viewpoint.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I can't, I've written a few little novellas like the Christmas novella and stuff that are definitely a lot lighter, but even still I just can't help myself.
[SPEAKER_04]: But add all of this traumatic backstory to the characters and and make them feel real.
[SPEAKER_04]: because they feel like real people to me when I'm writing it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't think that I really have to work at that.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just something that happens as I'm writing the book and I'm learning more and more about the characters and they become these fully fleshed out human beings to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: and we love them for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: So one of the things also writing a series is obviously you have these incredible fans who kind of follow you book to book but also trying to bring a new fans while you're trying to build out your career.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you think about in terms of love wells kept how much to kind of tell from the previous books and like how you're going to bring somebody new and because I feel like this stands alone.
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of your books stand alone at, you know, fans can kind of go back and if they're new fans they can go back and read the old books.
[SPEAKER_03]: But this one especially kind of feels like it can stand alone in its own way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you think about that when you were crafting it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, with all of them to some degree.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's always going to be certain things that it's...
[SPEAKER_04]: It's almost just a fun if you know, you know, and go read all the books in order, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: You're going to catch the little inside jokes that have been popping up throughout or whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think I've had some people ask if like how I knew when to stop the series or if I would add more books to it later on.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's were done because there's too many characters at this point.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if I want the books to continue to work as standalones, you have to reintroduce all of these people.
[SPEAKER_04]: You do have to give a little bit of their backstory, and it was just getting to be too much.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have too many, there's too many couples, there's too many children.
[SPEAKER_04]: So to, and to, yeah, make it work as a standalone.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was, it was getting to be a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because they all have little idiosyncrasiness cities, you know, between the couples and, you know, monks and kids.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I have to keep track of how old all the kids are because not because I'm on page saying, and Odessa is eight and, you know, but the way they act is different if they're eight or whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And because I didn't plan this series out ahead of time and I didn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: think to make myself a character Bible or anything like that with all of the information readily available.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've had to go back to the old books and try and figure out timeline so much of this sentence.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was going to say, I'm sure there's a fan that could create you a Bible or there's a fan Bible on Reddit or something like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: That you can come back to.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, just kind of speaking of the books as a whole, a lot of these individual books, and as well as the series, are kind of about rebuilding a life after something sudden that happens, epic shift in somebody's life.
[SPEAKER_03]: But we're still within the romance genre.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, why do you think that the romance genre is a really great vehicle to kind of work on healing from trauma?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think because of that guaranteed, happily ever after.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've even with levels kept already received a few messages or comments from people who have said that they don't know if they would even want to read the book if they weren't guaranteed that happily ever after.
[SPEAKER_04]: But because they know that it's all going to work out in the end, it's like, okay, I'm setting myself up for a whole lot of heartache in the beginning, but then in the end we're all going to be happy and so that payoff will make all that pain worth it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think without having that guarantee,
[SPEAKER_04]: It's scary going into a book where you don't know if the main characters are going to die or if they're going to go through all of this and then at the end they're going to decide you know what actually we're just going to go our separate ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it makes it like comforting like a safe container to hold all those feelings whether I mean I I definitely cried when I read it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean I just I really clung to that whole like family piece of
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well what happened if you actually like forgot your kids and how do you fight your way back to being a great partner?
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you fight your way back to being the parent that you want to be while you're healing?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's it's really deep and existential yeah, yeah a lot of people I think have Nudge their spouse at 3 a.m. to be like hey if you forgot me and our entire life together do you think that we'd fall back in love because yeah
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a skier.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a major question.
[SPEAKER_03]: Totally and like you live your life alongside somebody and like that's the sole witness to your life.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like if that person loses their memory, it's like you've lose that mirror image of your life.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if that makes any sense, but like that would be so hard, you know, no matter what age you lose that person.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, I'm so excited for everybody to read this.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you haven't yet, it is available now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Love Wells kept and I usually like to end on any words of wisdom for aspiring authors that you might have.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know you've already been on the show and shared some of your words of wisdom already.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you have any new 2026 words of wisdom or any aspiring authors out there, yeah, let us know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, I might just be repeating when I said last time we'll find out, but just write the book, just write it because I put it off for so long and I spent
[SPEAKER_04]: decades of my life, honestly, starting books, writing an outline, dreaming up these stories, and then just never actually following through with it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't sat down and said, no, this is the year I'm finally going to make it happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, everybody's in in control of throwing dreams and making them come true.
[SPEAKER_03]: And
[SPEAKER_03]: this project brought you to me and brought this project to the world and you know where we're just so thrilled that everybody around the world can read it and enjoy it but it's available now so whatever your preferred method of reading we got the print book we got the ebook we have the audio book and if you hang on until the end of the show you will get an exclusive audio excerpt of Love Wales cap that you can listen to so keep on listening through the rest of the show and we really hope you enjoy it and thanks so much for coming on the show
[SPEAKER_01]: Some mornings make you wish you could stop the clock.
[SPEAKER_01]: This morning my daughter's all braids, freckles and energy, grindfully floating as she skips toward the barn, and knowing she won't be this small and excited forever I wish I could hit pause.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want your closely over the hitch of the truck, trying to burn this moment into my memory forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't go far, I call after her.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm almost ready to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, Daddy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Odessa beings at me over a shoulder, disappearing through the double doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: The barn's gilded in morning sun, blurred by dustmotes kicked up in Odessa's wake.
[SPEAKER_01]: I run a hand through my hair, racking my brain for anything I might have forgotten.
[SPEAKER_01]: This time tomorrow, Odessa and I will be on our way back home with the horse of her dreams.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then a scream slices through the crisp morning air.
[SPEAKER_01]: Odessa, I run before I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's pressed into the corner of a stall, trembling under the stair of a galving I've been working with for weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: His ribs are thin, his eyes wild from the abuse he came from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fear pulses off him and waves, coiled muscles ready to strike.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her name is Rip from my lips that shove the stall door open, all I have is one step, one second, and whatever comes next.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two hours earlier.
[SPEAKER_01]: No matter live, has ever been happier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Arm wrapped around my wife's waist, a tug of warm pressure for her back, tight to my chest.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first two-to-day break creates shadows and soft edges around the room.
[SPEAKER_01]: The house is still, crisp, mountaineer spilling into the slightly open window.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my favorite time of the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: A gentle nudge of my nose moves thick, brown locks away from her neck.
[SPEAKER_01]: My lips brush a kiss behind her ear, and I inhale the faint aroma of cast oil still lingering from last night.
[SPEAKER_01]: I vividly remember the first night she used some new skin care regimen with approximately one billion steps.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was right around her 25th birthday, following a small quarter-life crisis about getting older.
[SPEAKER_01]: She came to bed looking like a glazed donut, and I told her as much, which, she didn't appreciate.
[SPEAKER_01]: But without adorable scowl of hers, I couldn't help but pin her to the sheets and make sure to let her know she tasted like a glazed donut, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, a decade later, I can't get enough of that milder at the scent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing beats knowing I'm the only one who gets to experience Kate Wells slipping into bed at the end of the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: The stretched collar mild t-shirt is slipped off her shoulder, and I let go of my hold on her waist to trace the delicate plane of her bare collarbone.
[SPEAKER_01]: With a twist of my wrist, the backs of my rough and knuckles run the length of her arm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Slipping under the freight hammer, I stretch my hand across the front of her stomach and press a kiss to her shoulder.
[SPEAKER_01]: More than what the gravel of sleep still in her voice, her whisper matches mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, handsome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kate rolls on to her back, and I brush away the hair stuck to pillow creases in her cheek.
[SPEAKER_01]: She looks at me with hooded eyes and a thin smile.
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you feeling?
[SPEAKER_01]: I ask rubbing our joint hands and slow circles over our stomach.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her throat clenches with an audible swallow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So far so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Been awake for less than 10 seconds, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: A good point.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kiss her cheek.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jaw, neck.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I shuffled down the bed, casing a every sliver of skin I come across, the comfort it pulled with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I shift the thin tee shirt up to expose her midriff, so I can place the softest of cases just below or belly button, where the stretch marks from our first two babies are thin, white arcs across her skin.
[SPEAKER_01]: They look like glittering sunlight on water.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't wait for the subtle changes in these scars, and the addition of new ones in the coming months.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said in my wife, to the baby we found out about yesterday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you're essentially talking to my intestines right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: The baby's nowhere near that high up yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kate laughs under her breath.
[SPEAKER_01]: My thumbs hook under her gone for jam a pants, and I let my mouth trail lower, following the slow dip of her pants.
[SPEAKER_01]: Letting my bottom lip drag over the indent from her elastic waistband, I look up at her.
[SPEAKER_01]: This low enough, she gives me a coi shrug, lifting her hips off the mattress so I can tug those pesky bottoms off and settle myself between her thighs to make sure she has a really good start to her day.
[SPEAKER_01]: God knows she deserves it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We found out about Kate's pregnancy after she'd been sick all week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kate doesn't get sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly I think germs are too scared of my
[SPEAKER_01]: Blowing cool breath on her hot skin, I feel the vibration of anticipation run the length of her thighs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her back arches like the slow pull of a bowstring, begging me to be the one to let it snap.
[SPEAKER_01]: After 16 years, I know her every move, every sound, every one, better than I know my own.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kiss her about, a quarter of an inch from where she wants my mouth to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: How's that, kid?
[SPEAKER_01]: She palms the back of my skull, urging me into her at the same time her legs spread impossibly wide.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just as that first savory lick up her wet entrance floods my senses, her fingers not in my hair to sharply yank my gaze to meet hers.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a hiss in her tone when she quietly says my name.
[SPEAKER_01]: You okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: I ask with a disgruntled sigh, she hooks the thumb of her freehand or the bedroom door.
[SPEAKER_01]: I brought myself up on my elbows, training my ears.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure enough, there's an uneven thought of small feet hadn't done the stairs.
[SPEAKER_01]: On any other morning, I'd thrilled to have a moment with my wife and at least one of our kids snuggled up in our king-sized bed, before the chaos of a day on the ranch begins.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before I head out to do ranch work or train horses and Kate becomes so busy turning to the kids in the ranch hands there's barely time for a brief kiss when we cross paths.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this morning, the last people I won't walk into the room are our children.
[SPEAKER_01]: Love them, but God damn we need to lock on the door.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pressing a firm kiss to my wife's gorgeous pussy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I help her shimmy her pants back up and return to my still warm spot next to her.
[SPEAKER_01]: You tease, she cuffs my chin and kisses me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I shift the erection to my boxers, willing it to go away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just as the door swings open, and our three-year-old ret centers in.
[SPEAKER_01]: At least he's a little bit less hell on wheels than our seven-year-old daughter Odessa, which is a great thing during a moment like this when my brain's still hazy and sluggish.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ignoring Rat for a second, I lock eyes with Caden to say, I'll make it up to you tomorrow after Odessa and I get home from the auction.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll do bedtime and meet you right here afterward.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I pop a final kiss on her lips before sitting up and returning my focus to Rat.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a dream about, don't let's get far.
[SPEAKER_01]: He scrambles to pull himself onto the bed, clutching at the computer until Kate offers her hand as a lifeline.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, sounds like quite the dream.
[SPEAKER_01]: I plant my bare feet on the worn wooden floorboards, working up the energy to fully remove myself from the bed.
[SPEAKER_01]: A few minutes ago, I had the energy and virility apparently of a 20-year-old man, but now that I have to get up and do things
[SPEAKER_01]: With a stretch overhead, I'll look at rat in my periphery.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did they poop sprinkles?
[SPEAKER_01]: His small, freckled face twists to match the disheveled state of his hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: No!
[SPEAKER_01]: Kate Snickers, right, because that would be too weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: My palm scrubs my jaw, and I stand, setting a weary hand down on his head to taustel his short brown hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: And let's get out of mommy's hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd have fully wake up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Spreading my fingers, I grip the top of his head, and gently veering toward the open doorway.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seems like yesterday I could hold his entire body in one-out stretch stand.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't lose my hold on him until we're stepping into the kitchen, because Lord knows he'll head back to the bedroom to talk Kate's ear off about don't-out-farts if I don't keep him on track, and I'm hoping Kate takes a few minutes of alone time to finish what I started, but even if not, there's a good chance she'll be nauseous when she gets out of bed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Given we haven't told anyone about her pregnancy yet, it's better if the kids don't see her sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Slanted sunlight streams through the windows behind our kitchen table, silhouetteting and abandoned coffee cup left behind on the wooden table top, and pours across the island's white counter.
[SPEAKER_01]: The side's rats rustling through cereal boxes in the walk in pantry.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only sound as a sharp hiss as the coffee maker finishes its time to brew.
[SPEAKER_01]: Careful not to let the kitchen cabinets squeak too much, as they're apt to do, particularly when the house is quiet and everyone is sleeping.
[SPEAKER_01]: I grab a clean mug and pat across the cool floors to fill it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once Rhett and I have our morning necessities in hand, we settle in at the table.
[SPEAKER_01]: Covered in dents and stains and scuffs, this table has seen multiple generations of wells as Rhett and Odensate their first meals here, just like me and my father before me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Midship of strong black coffee, I look up to see our kitchen manager Barrel into the room.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dressed in dark wash jeans and a well's ranch t-shirt, she beams at me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Morning boys!
[SPEAKER_01]: Morning!
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, everybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to an author interview.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have Tara to wait with us today who is a long time friend of the pod because we adore her books so much.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm so lucky to call her a client and we're going to be talking about her new book, Lost and Found, which is out now and
[SPEAKER_03]: It is the culmination of your spoons series.
[SPEAKER_03]: So in some ways, you know, we have to say hello to these wonderful characters, but we also have to say, you know, goodbye temporarily to this wonderful town.
[SPEAKER_03]: So how does it feel to kind of be wrapping up your romance series?
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, first series that I've ever written.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it was my first time tackling, you know, writing a conclusion to something like that.
[SPEAKER_05]: It honestly feels good.
[SPEAKER_05]: It feels like it ended.
[SPEAKER_05]: how it needed to.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm really proud of the stories that got to be told things.
[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like they were very human down to earth stories, but also unique and, yeah, I'm just really proud of them.
[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like I leave the door cracked for myself, just so I can pay a visit if I ever want to, but yeah, I'm pretty satisfied with what I'll
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so for those of you that don't know, spoons is a wonderful town in Oregon where we have this family of characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: All of them are either of the bird family, the YRD, or Mary to somebody, or in the kind of orbit of the bird family.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we have these wonderful love stories between these characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: And do you want to run us through what specifically lost and found us about?
[SPEAKER_03]: And what this one is about?
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us this love story.
[SPEAKER_05]: and the skirt's attend, she is going through the loss of her best friends, and shortly after that loss, she found out that her friends will her the eggs that she froze for a few winter winter winter.
[SPEAKER_05]: So a year after she finds this out, sitting here or so into her grieving
[SPEAKER_05]: with her desire to bring a piece of her friends to get her world to see her mom because she has always wanted to be one and one.
[SPEAKER_05]: Part of that plan is getting as my naturely second as possible, which entails her renting out her house for a little bit and she needs a place to stay, which is when she has heard seven learns first his place, and from there we find out
[SPEAKER_05]: have a lot of complicated history between the two of them and that course proximity brings up that that history plus all the I'm resolved feelings along with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's so powerful on so many levels.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there's obviously the kind of grief in mourning that B goes through, there is our wonderful Silas character who's kind of works through his own thing, you know, being a firefighter.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there's just, there are wonderful little connection.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, one of the things that readers always say about you and reviewers always say about you is you're such a master of emotion.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember one of the first times we talked on the phone, I was like crying in the call because of like your caravise move.
[SPEAKER_03]: So much and I don't know why they feel so real, but you know, your books always start with this premise that feels so high stakes.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a very emotionally complex story, you know, to inherit your late best friends frozen eggs.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems kind of complicated, but the way you write it is just like so simple and so earnest.
[SPEAKER_03]: So do you want to tell us a little bit about like, you know, this big idea that it feels scary to write and how did you know that you did it right?
[SPEAKER_05]: explaining, which was like, the tongue's really science fictiony, and I was like, no, it couldn't, it really isn't for me.
[SPEAKER_05]: It really started from everything I was searching, like a placement
[SPEAKER_05]: really well lived and feel like joy.
[SPEAKER_05]: I joy that holds hands with pain and I think that's a really beautiful and thing that sort of mimics that can be motherhood and pursuit of motherhood.
[SPEAKER_05]: can be full of a lot of pain, but also a lot of moments of joy.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so for me, that's really what it all boils down to, is she carries a piece of her friend with her in her life, in her grief, in her grieving.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, grief is the could be drilled to the love we had for that person anyway.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so why would it be strange for her to actually bring a piece of her friend into the world
[SPEAKER_05]: completely somebody that would end up being complete with their own person, but just like we are a completely changed person through our great anyway.
[SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, I think it all always everything, I mean life is complicated.
[SPEAKER_05]: Everything we go through is complicated.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's where those are the stories that interest me.
[SPEAKER_05]: being nuances between things that seem simple enough, even be in silence, having feelings for each other.
[SPEAKER_05]: For a long time, there's a lot of nuance there because her friend, Mayor, it also had a crush on him.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's something to be said about, I mean, that's to be like, hokey with it, but how was the four
[SPEAKER_05]: That translates in and transfers in a lot of new ways when you have third-by-worth guilt.
[SPEAKER_05]: She had guilt when her friend was sick.
[SPEAKER_05]: So there's, I mean, there was just a lot to fix for there and that's the kind of always interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I think, you know, you're such a master of it because we've talked with some of the show before, but like grief could be such a passive emotion on the page because usually people are sometimes grieving in silence or grieving in private, but you gave.
[SPEAKER_03]: grief such activity with be because you gave her something to put her focus on, I don't know if you thought about that willingly or you just were like, this is the vehicle, you know, that I gave her, but how do you think about keeping grieving character fairly active instead of passive or do have any advice for listeners who maybe have a character they're writing that is grieving and how do you assign some sort of an activeness to it?
[SPEAKER_05]: I think for me, that sort of came from some personal experience and that it feels better to actively grieve and to like open yourself up to the memories when they happen.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you never know what silly little thing is going to trigger a memory.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so you know, I try to write like they can be looking at the stars and
[SPEAKER_05]: group of other teenagers and it'll bring back a memory of them being teenagers.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think that that brings a lot more genuine emotion and again, I think that that kind of pain can hold hands with joy because you have to stop that memory with them and with that in the first place.
[SPEAKER_05]: So even though it's painful now knowing that they're not here, you get to sort of live in between.
[SPEAKER_05]: So for me, that I think that's just kind of the next or small experience, like the most devastating moments I've had some things on you know, that's been the same.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's kind of where I like my books to live and sort of rhythm that minics reality, I guess.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and speaking of reality, I think one of the things I find really powerful about your books is how in the kind of complicated family dynamics or non traditional families or, you know, different type of parenting that they've had to do for each other, I don't just like the really messy reality of being such like a built family structure amongst all of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: To me, that is the most kind of human and honest way to portray people on the page, but also makes such great messy family dynamics.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you've been able to explore a lot of them, and you know, being the culmination of the series where we're going to kind of close the door on this, but you know, if you had to imagine any more drama that these guys were going to get up to, did they live on in your mind after?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or do you like close the door and I'm into like, okay, they're going to like live in the little box set someday?
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I'm sure that they have their own drunk mind there.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, life is sometimes it feels like it's kind of to some people that are obsessed with.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I love this idea that, like, I mean, I think you're going to talk about it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to be happy all the time.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm okay with my character's not being happy all the time, because when they've been through pain,
[SPEAKER_05]: been able to take them through it on the page.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm confident that they get to go on and do it off the page.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I know that they're all present.
[SPEAKER_05]: But to me, the happily ever after feels real to me, because I know that happily ever after it's been an include painting.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's been a privilege.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's been a privilege, it's been a privilege.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, shit not going their way some time.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I know that
[SPEAKER_05]: They've gotten through it before, and I believe that they'll get through it in this engine too.
[SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, I don't know what kind of drama, well, I can't picture it, but if they are, I have basically, they're getting through it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and just to kind of continue on that thread, I think, you know, in today's day and age, like we're just so busy, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: We have our phone to load our apps and our screen, like right now, literally looking at like three different screens, but you know, with my different devices, but like the thing about small town romance is it does really kind of simplify some of our values and it really does remind us to slow down and even though these characters are so busy and they're so much going on, there is a reason why we're drawn to these books about, you
[SPEAKER_03]: about our love and our life and so there's also this kind of balance between the trend of romance for things.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's like a little bit steamier and a little bit spicier these days.
[SPEAKER_03]: How have you figured out how to balance out the sweet and the spice in your stories?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it really based on characters or market expectations or like how do you think about the balance?
[SPEAKER_05]: That's so funny.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think that's probably a little bit about for me a really as like how do they
[SPEAKER_05]: How would that translate?
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't subscribe to the idea that like this very soft soaking, you know, nerd, like, that's how I'd imagine the fun way best you know.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm in the bedroom, so I do think it's that to me comes out too.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm the intimacy in my books and the sex scenes and everything.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think sad people are having sex with people are having sex.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think like it's just very, it is.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's because it's why I'd like it.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's, yeah, everybody.
[SPEAKER_05]: And if it's embarrassing, so it's human sex, like in the real world, at all it's like you, I mean, so I just, I don't, I don't get to, I don't know, finicky about it.
[SPEAKER_05]: There are, there have been some books where I've written where it just didn't feel,
[SPEAKER_05]: like it fit the tone of the book for them to for and they were I think they were a little more subdued but I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I felt very much in the story in the chair next to them as we gone on in this in terms of the spoons book so I felt like it's been pretty close.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know coming on all of it even into the bedroom this time I guess.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, yes, well, it suits these characters very much because, you know, if you're passionate in life, you assume that that passion will carry you everywhere you go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, obviously when you're writing such heavy stuff, you know, you're catching very funny and there's obviously, you know, this lightness and humor as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, you're navigating a lot of like characters with PTSD and grief and going through these big shifts in their life.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you shake it off at the end of the day in terms of like closing the laptop at the end of the writing day?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have like creative self care?
[SPEAKER_03]: How are you able to kind of process all of those things and yeah, do they kind of live on or be able to set those boundaries for the characters in your mind?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm still feel like I'm still learning to do that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Kind of chase them off.
[SPEAKER_05]: I do think that there's always a personal element and something even if it's just been like, you know, I'm really interested in learning more about this.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so you can find a piece to to like relate to and sort of expand on it.
[SPEAKER_05]: closed my top and everything.
[SPEAKER_05]: I do try to read and I try to escape my own head and my own characters a little bit when just abandoning my head on top of this time, doing either of us any favors.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think when it comes to the heavier stuff.
[SPEAKER_05]: Honestly, I think I really let myself feel it and
[SPEAKER_05]: read something else.
[SPEAKER_05]: I love stand up.
[SPEAKER_05]: I like watching stand up specials and you know, looking for those types of things that sort of take me out of it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think I've got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm trying to get more balance with it as I go.
[SPEAKER_03]: That sounds very, very balanced to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Speaking of achieving balance, I'd like to ask every author about the relationship with social media because for some, it comes very naturally for some.
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't, and it's honestly the thing that aspiring authors ask me about the most.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you coming from an indie background into traditional publishing.
[SPEAKER_03]: You probably have a bit more of a unique relationship with social media as the marketing tool.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to talk about
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe how it's evolved, how you feel like your relationship with social media looks right now.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like everybody, I have a complicated relationship with it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think as I've gone along, like in the beginning, I definitely feel like I, I owed a little bit of something to it.
[SPEAKER_05]: It serves me as a still tool.
[SPEAKER_05]: But the thing that I've tried to really stick to now is it is a tool.
[SPEAKER_05]: It does not be tool.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm always focused on improving and not proving.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so I'm not going to focus on things like color, count, and engagement, and that sort of thing when I could focus on my credit writing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that, to me, is always going to be priority.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think when I wrote funny feelings, specifically, it was the first time I thought, right, a good enough book.
[SPEAKER_05]: Enough people will talk about it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that is very simplistic and takes a, like,
[SPEAKER_05]: the case for the publishing industry as a whole, obviously, or social media as a whole.
[SPEAKER_05]: But it is sort of a core principle that I make myself go to when I start to feel like I haven't posted anything a long time.
[SPEAKER_05]: I should be there.
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe I have I haven't posted anything, but I've written 10,000 words this week.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like that's always going to
[SPEAKER_05]: be the priority I think this is a place where we show highlights and where like it can be a very effective tool but it is not the sum of everything.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I try to do enough that people are intrigued with my books and yeah I mean I have kids that are in sports I've got a very busy life so I just simply
[SPEAKER_05]: let it be, you know, something I'd go to the time and have the energy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think you've cultivated such a wonderful fan base and audience, and I was lucky enough to be there in person.
[SPEAKER_03]: We went to the Pittsburgh Book Festival together.
[SPEAKER_03]: I kind of peed back on because I wanted to, first of all, meet you in person last year, which was great.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I also got to see firsthand, like how passionate your fans were.
[SPEAKER_03]: You.
[SPEAKER_03]: Had people wrapped around the entire building and I was just so proud and, you know, step pictures for everybody and anyway, I just love seeing authors with their fans because you write behind the scenes at home and then you get to kind of go out into the world and switch hats and try to put on your extrovert hat.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I love to hear about kind of like special moments between you and fans.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know there's some authors and we're like, I can't believe somebody tattooed their words on my arm.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you give us maybe, I don't know, a sweet story about a fan, I'd love to hear it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've had so many, and I've had quite a few people have had two things, and then floor that every single time.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have people give me things that they like embroidery things.
[SPEAKER_05]: My, like, one of the most pivotal things that happened for me that I think about all the time is I went to the first, like, big book convention I've ever been to was over in London, and I met a reader who had read funny feelings and told me
[SPEAKER_05]: her being outgoing and wanting to dance, everything, even though she obviously couldn't hear music, this, this, and this Rachel, she told me that Hazel's story made her want to play herself out there and she's a, she herself was, and so I'm an, I've birthed into tears just because she should just like I started a book's degree on because of that, so I'm talking, you know, interacting with people and, and the book's community and just kind of putting myself out there and that to me is
[SPEAKER_05]: And that's this is a side character, a story that I wrote, and I said, well, it's kind of the first real experience where I realized, like, writing something fictional, but I can have a real one on some of these things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's so powerful.
[SPEAKER_03]: I absolutely love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and normally at the end of every episode, I ask for words of wisdom and something in the newsletter is actually coming up from you to tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm not going to ask you about your words of wisdom because everybody who is a subscriber will look in their sub-stack tomorrow and see your words of wisdom.
[SPEAKER_03]: So make sure you get it as the free edition.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I know all of you are going to get it in your inbox and you can read your words of wisdom and you're such a genius.
[SPEAKER_03]: So emotionally intelligent, such a great writer, and, you know, we're just so proud of you from the podcast to celebrate last and found.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we hope you're having just the best possible launch month ever.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's it for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you'll join us for next week's show.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the meantime, keep at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember, it just takes one yes.