After ten years of the #amwriting podcast, KJ, Jess, and Sarina are marking a milestone—and a transition. In this episode, the longtime hosts reflect on what the writing world looked like when the show began and share their best advice for writers trying to do meaningful work. They also pass the microphone to Jennie, who will carry the podcast into its next chapter.

Moving forward, Jennie will keep the show focused on helping writers do their best work and make smart decisions about their writing lives. Expect familiar features and new conversations, including Write Big solo episodes, Book Lab breakdowns of listener submissions, coaching sessions with writers across genres, and Margin Notes exploring the thinking behind creative choices.

The mission remains the same: helping writers play big in their writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most.

#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Transcript

Jennie: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Jennie Nash and you’re listening to the hashtag am Writing podcast. The place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most.

KJ: Hey everyone. I’m kj and you are listening to the hashtag am Writing podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most.

So today is a big day. We’re we’re

Jess: big day.

KJ: Yeah. We’re celebrating the 10th year of the hashtag am writing podcast, which I have to say is officially the longest I’ve been able to sustain any job-like thing. Um, and we’re announcing that we’re going in a new direction. So this is really cool. After a decade of talking to y’all, um, Jess and I and then [00:01:00] Sarina, who is at minus a decade. I don’t wanna, um, have decided to step back and hand over the reins to Jennie.

Jess: Yeah

Jennie: It is, it is such a big milestone and such a big deal. And before we. Actually say goodbye to the three of you. I mean, it’s not forever. You’re coming back as guests, all of you, all the time, hopefully.

KJ: Oh, heck yes. Absolutely. You, you, you and I have already planned all the things, so don’t get too excited and, and weepy here folks, but things are just, things are gonna be. New and fresh and more interesting and, uh, more craft filled and more inspirational. When I need inspiration to write, I look for one of our episodes.

That’s Jennie. So I think this is gonna be, this is gonna be great.

Jennie: I think it’s gonna be great too. But before we actually say goodbye, I mean, 10. Is a long time and I thought it would be fun to ask you all what it was like 10 [00:02:00] years ago when you started, and Sarina 10 minus whatever the time is, but what was the writing landscape like as a whole maybe for you, and then all this wisdom, all these years that you’ve shared.

What’s, what’s the thing that sticks in your head the most is what you would want to leave with, with the listeners, what is the your best piece of writing advice from all of this time? So. Jess, why don’t you start? You’re the og.

Jess: Well, I, I definitely wanted to start. For those people who have not been around since the very beginning, you have to understand that it’s really horrifying when people say they go back and like start from the beginning because, um, and we’ll be posting pictures in the show notes.

I have a ton of pictures throughout the years, but we originally, um, we, we would go into this little, I had a tiny, tiny house and we would go into the eve space off of my daughter’s room. And it was raw insulation with a light bulb, and we sat on the floor and it was [00:03:00] like. Maybe at the tallest point, maybe four feet high, so you had to kind of crawl in.

And I have a picture of us, um, podcasting from inside there. And it was, and it was very hot in the summer. It would get very, very hot. My house did not have air conditioning and um. But it was delightful and it was this thing that we had talked about doing for such a long time, and I was so proud of us.

And mainly it was kj. KJ was the one who said, we’re not gonna talk about this anymore, we’re just gonna do it. So she got us into gear and just brought her stuff over to my house in her basket and said, let’s go. Let’s do it. And we bought microphones and everything and it was. It was a big new adventure.

And if you had said, then, how long do you think this is gonna last? I don’t know that I would’ve said 10 years. But there’s, you know, then Sarina came in and, and Sarina has, has been a part of this as a guest since the very beginning too. And a couple of things that I wanted to share were that one time Sarina and KJ and I, uh, were doing a [00:04:00] double, a double header episode and I forgot to hit record for both of them.

And so. We did this incredibly fun, very long episode, broken into two pieces that, um, it went off into the ether and. I did learn from that. And then at the same time, by the time we were sort of on our game enough to be able to really interview people, we went up to Maine to interview Richard Russo and we went to record at his daughter’s wonderful bookstore in Portland, Maine.

And um, I had three modes of recording. I had, um. Two microphones and I had a handheld digital thing that I had on the table between us and, um, mode one failed and mode two failed. And so the only thing we had was, you know, our little digital handheld on the table in between us. So. There’s a lot of stuff like that.

There was the moment I got to text KJ and tell her that we were getting David [00:05:00] Sedaris, there was the day she emailed me to tell me that we were getting Anna Quinlan. You know, and I just so many cool things that, um. It makes me so happy that we’ve produced something good out of all of that. And one last thing.

The, the, the thing that I think I’ve learned the most is there is no one right way to do this. That every single time I hear about, like whether it’s the, you have to write, writer write every day, you have to write every day, or you have to write in a certain way, or you have to write in a certain place, or you have to write with the door closed, or you have to write with the door open, all of those things.

Um, none of those are rules. None of them are rules. They’re things that people do and I’m really glad that I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about all the different ways they do it.

Jennie: That’s amazing. Um, kj, do you remember this, uh, light bulb and no insulation time?

KJ: Oh yeah. I don’t remember the time you didn’t record particularly just ‘cause it happened more than once. And [00:06:00] the other thing I would throw in is that the more famous, the guest, the. Less interesting. They were, it was almost

KJ: always true.

Jess: It wasn them. It was, yeah. I think we got all jacked up about like, I don’t know. It just,

Jess: I don’t know.

Wasn David Sari’s advice to young writers was the worst.

KJ: Yeah. It advice really was

Jess: anyone has ever given, it

KJ: was,

Jess: yeah, a writer. He said, don’t submit your work. Don’t ask. Don’t try to get you, wait for people to read it. Wait for people to ask you if they can read it.

KJ: Yeah,

Jess: that’s which this, this is,

KJ: this worked for him. He is an NF one and it will not work for you.

Jess: Right. Yeah, I think that

KJ: my favorite, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna lay it out there. I’m not even gonna put any caveats on that. That won’t work.

Jess It won’t work.

KJ: No. I think it’s always been the most fun when we get in deep into the craft and anytime someone is too practiced with their answers or it’s the same answer they’ve given a million times.

You’re [00:07:00] right. It was cold and it was, um, it just wasn’t good.

Sarina: Yeah. So the more fun people were always the people who were really in it with us.

KJ: Yeah. Yeah.

Jennie: So, Sarina, do you know when you came in, do you know what the, the n minus number is?

Sarina: No, because I was a guest star even before we got out of the, the, um, kgs closet.

It’s true. It’s true.

KJ: One of those not recorded episodes was recorded in the eve space. That’s true. We had, we roped during fairly early.

Jennie: Yeah. In that 10 years, you’ve probably written more. More than, well, how many books have you written in that time? Sarina, I mean,

Sarina: um, 50. At 50 50 ish.

Jennie: That’s crazy. That’s crazy. So what do you know now that you didn’t know then?

Sarina: Oh, so much, so much that, like giving advice, you know, I, I [00:08:00] now feel like less qualified to give advice than I did then, you know how that goes. Like, the job gets harder, not easier. I have a, a good working vocabulary for why, but it doesn’t make me feel like anybody’s, you know, special savior.

Jennie: Yeah. Yeah. What do you remember about starting in and the, the, um, all these episodes? What sticks in your mind as

Sarina: you know? Um, I loved the opportunity to talk to people who I think are fantastic. I also learned that I am not a fantastic interviewer and that, and that, um. That isn’t a skill of mine that I, it’s, there’s so many things, like I’m so busy, I write so many books.

I can’t learn to be the interviewer that you deserve. So I only. Did interviews selectively and sometimes they were just so fun. Like, [00:09:00] um, the, the person who broke broke the mold about the interview being interesting, the more famous they are was Emily Henry. ‘cause she was Oh yeah. She was fun to talk to.

She was just right there with us and, and ready to have a good time and, and so wise and also so, so nice. And that, that’s really great when you can talk to somebody who’s killing it in your own genre and you know, they’re just so wonderful about it. Um, and then, you know, then we had the odd, very sweaty interview where nothing seems to go according to plan.

And I won’t name the author because I do admire this person very much, but they were not. Willing to take any expertise onto themselves. So KJ and I just sweated all the way through this interview trying to get this person to, to tell us

KJ: Say something. Say anything.

Sarina: Yeah. Tell us how you feel, you know?

KJ: Yeah.

Sarina: And it could not be done.

KJ: Nope.

Sarina: So, you know, that one, I, [00:10:00] I will never re-listened to that one, but, um, but I really, what I got out of it, honestly, was spending time with all of you guys, and you teach me things every single day. And another thing about this job is that I find that I have to relearn the best lessons over and over again.

And when you are compelled to speak lucidly about your job, you know, a couple of times a month, um, it forces a certain reckoning with your own skill and expertise. Like I might say that I, you know, don’t want to be anybody’s, um, masterclass, but I really do know a lot at this point and, um, every time I talk to you guys and we’d, and we gathered together like this, I always learn something.

Jess: I love, I think Sarina is the most amazing explainer and teacher. And so getting to learn, um, especially, you know, in these [00:11:00] recent, uh, nerd Corner Publishing Nerd Corner episodes, it’s been so cool to just learn from her. It’s really, really fun. And, you know, if, if we take it all the way back, like the first, your first romance novels, you know.

We’re just coming out when we just, when we started this thing. It’s just been such an incredible journey from there to where we are now. The other thing that’s been really cool is that this podcast has made me really accountable to my goals and to, you know, not that. You guys also do that for me. But saying things out loud in front of other people has always been my, the thing that has saved me, whether that’s about my recovery or, um, you know, whatever it is.

Um, people talk to me all the time and say, you know, was it hard to come out publicly about, you know, being an alcoholic? I’m like, absolutely not. It’s what’s kept me sober. And I feel the same way about the writing, that when I talk to, um, the listeners that I, I feel like. Someone may [00:12:00] come along someday and ask how that, uh, that goal of mine is going. And, and I like that.

Jennie: Yeah. That’s so good. Kj, what, what are your best memories and, um, best, best advice that you’ve gotten or, or given?

KJ Well, you know, spend 10 years, so it is a long time ago, but I do remember the time Jess was riding her dinosaur to my house to record and got hit by a snowplow. Mm-hmm. Um, that was, that was good times.

Jess: Yep.

KJ: We have Snow Fred Dinosaurs up here. Yep. In New Hampshire. Um, the Sedaris thing that was, that was just funny and also really cool ‘cause I have such deep admiration for, for him, and I’m quite certain that if somehow he ever heard. I, he would not care. We think that was terrible advice.

Jess: What’s also really was really funny about that one is this is an only David Sedera sort of situation where, oh Lord, he, he has said very specifically that he, during COVID, he refused.

To get Zoom, any [00:13:00] kind of zoom sort of situation. So we had to, we went all the way to Concord to,

KJ: this wasn’t Coco COVID, this was before that. No, no, no. I, I know, but I’m saying like, he has, this is not new information. He has said very publicly that he doesn’t do like

Jess: Oh, yeah. So he wouldn’t even, even let us have somebody bring him a laptop to his apartment.Right. And set it up for us, which we were like, happy to do, but

KJ: Yeah. Yeah. We had to go there.

Jess: So he called and yeah, we went to NHPR in Concord and, uh, our, and our wonderful producer Andrew was. Able to get everything connected for us. Um, but it was one of those moments where, you know, we are constantly talking about how to like bend over backwards to get marketing and get people to listen to what we have to say.

And yet, even though he puts obstacles in the path of people who want to hear what he has to say, they will gladly jump through those hoops, uh, for him.

Jess: Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. I mean, you know, so kind of him to do it.

KJ: Yes. Anyway, I mean, that was super funny

Jess: and, and I am looking at my wall that [00:14:00] has the postcard, the thank you postcard that he sent us.

So when he says he sends thank you notes to everyone, he sends thank you notes to everyone because we got one. And from what I understand, he sends them to every bookseller, every person who drives them everywhere. He sends thank you notes to everyone.

Jennie: Wow. That’s what I think of when I think of you, Jess.mThat’s a thing you do too. You’re so good at that. Well, I, I have to say that I have been a listener for this whole time, and the thing that you all brought was. This authenticity, this sense of what it’s really like to do this work. And you all are writing such different things and so accomplished at those things, and your willingness to kind of just open, open it up and share what that looks like with no, you know, varnish over it or, or you know, polished.

Just like, this is what it’s really like and this is who we are and this is how it happens, and [00:15:00] that the work gets done in such. Messy circumstances and, um, that lesson and, and that generosity of showing people that that’s true. Which kind of goes to what you were saying, Jess, like there is no way, but, but also just doing the work is the way and.

That’s what you have all modeled and continue to model, and obviously,

KJ well, that’s what I want people to take away from this. Mm-hmm. Is listen. Okay. We’re joking that 10 years is a long time and 10 years is a long time. It’s a long time to do anything. But also 10 years ago I had one book to my name. And you’ve never heard of it.

It was called Reading with Babies, toddlers, and Twos, and it got me all my other jobs. Jess had no books to her name. Mm-hmm. 10 years ago, Sarina Couple not, you know, just, just, just barely getting started. Jennie actually had a ton of books to her name, but that’s, you know, that’s a different story. So here we were.

10 years ago sat down and said, [00:16:00] we are gonna do these things. And we did not all, I mean, it wasn’t, nobody came and asked us for it. All of David Saris. Um, nobody had, none of us had instant success. You know, no one called up and said, Hey, can I do this? And like immediately got articles in the New Yorker or whatever.

Uh, publishers were not banging down our doors. We. We were banging down theirs and we were all very determined to, um, to make this a professional endeavor. The, the podcast and the writing and the books and all of it. And so I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know where you are listener, but wherever you wanna be in 10 years.

Uh, you know, maybe you won’t get exactly there. I wouldn’t say any of us has gotten exactly there ‘cause we’re not done. But still, we came a long way in 10 years and I would like to see other people, [00:17:00] um, sit down and actually do the thing so you can go to the place.

Jess: That’s been one of the big joys, I think, also of this podcast is seeing other people’s work happen.

Like hearing from listeners that, oh my gosh, I hadn’t started my book. I was trying to get motivated to start my book, and then I created this proposal and now the book is coming out, and that’s, I, I, I just, I can’t, I can hardly wrap my brain around that. Um, it’s been a really amazing progression and the, the group of people that have sort of coalesced around listening to this podcast and getting in, in touch, some of them have become friends and that’s been really amazing too.

Sarina: I hope what some people will take away from this, um, is that very few people who do what we do are truly trained for it. You know, I don’t have an MFAI don’t KJ and just don’t have journalism degrees. They have law degrees instead. But, um, you can, you can [00:18:00] do this on the job training. That’s what we did.

That’s what you listened to us do. And I’m reminded of that, um, quote by El Doctoral. You know, writing a book is like driving at night with the headlights on. You can. You can’t see the whole distance, um, but you can still get to your destination. And there was this Time when KJ and I were debating this quote on this podcast and KJ said, yeah, but the last time we went driving at night, we almost hit a bunny.

And it was true. And I think that what might be the, one of the times I laughed the hardest on this podcast.

Jess: You know, it’s also interesting, I was thinking that, um, you know how I said that there isn’t one way to do things, and even the way that we do things has evolved over time and like Sarina has learned how to, has become a coffee shop writer and has learned how to write in other places.

And I’ve learned how to write in other places and I never used to be able to do that. Um, [00:19:00] so how we get the work done really has. Uh, evolved with the needs of what’s going on around us and what our career needs from us, and, and that’s been really pleasant. Pleasant to watch too.

Jennie: Well, it’s been an honor to listen to you all and to be, uh, working alongside you.

And I am, I’m thrilled to be carrying the show forward. I have lots of big ideas to bring to these episodes To continue to center the writer and the writing and getting the work done in authentic conversations about what it takes, both from a craft perspective and a mindset perspective. So I’ll be reaching out soon for submissions to book Lab because that’s gonna continue with a twist and I will be letting you know about what’s coming. Um, for sure. New episodes with our producer Andrew, who’s stepped out from behind the mic, um, as you heard last week. And I’ll be continuing to coach him forward, which will be really [00:20:00] fun. So lots of good stuff coming and I appreciate your ongoing support and I appreciate.

Getting you to stand on the shoulders of these three incredible writers and entrepreneurs and thinkers and friends, and, um, thank you all.

KJ Thank you. I’m just so glad. Thank you guys to see this, uh, keep going and to become a little bit more of a passenger. I have very much been the driver for the past few years.

Um, Jess had her turn in the, in the driving seat and Sarina said from day one, no, no,

I am buddy, humble guest. So, um, I’m so thrilled that you’re taking over and I am excited to listen when I am not part of it, and to also continue to be part of it. Yay. Thank you guys.

Jennie: Thank you all so, so much.

Hey, why don’t you, uh, why don’t you take us out?

KJ No, no. Jess has to take us out. It’s cool. That’s the tradition.

Jess: Alright. And actually coming up with our, this little bit of the show happened in the eve space, so [00:21:00] it’s a very. Yeah, that’s a sentimental phrase for me too. So until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Jess: The hashtag am writing podcast. Is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

The book is The Fountain—debut speculative fiction from Casey Scieszka—and you’ll want to read it, but even more, you’ll want to hear us talk about what it took to pull this big, beautiful novel from her Tuck-Everlasting-loving soul.

And here’s the question her agent asked her that is now stuck on a post-it on my computer and may be my next tattoo:

How can you reveal these things in action?

Casey is reading:

Open Throat by Henry Hoke (“It’s funny and deeply tender and unlike anything I’ve ever read.”

Follow Casey on Instagram and Substack: Spruceton Inn.

Transcript Below!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell’Antonia

This is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. I am KJ Dell’Antonia, and today we’re talking with Casey Scieszka. And I meant to ask Casey how to pronounce her last name before we started. How’d I do?

Casey Scieszka

I think you did great. Especially over in Poland, we say “SHESH-kah” over here, but I’ve been corrected many times. I think it’s supposed to be more like what you said. So… bravo!

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay… SHESH-skah… SHESH-kah… all right, off we go. Y’all, you’re going to want to know how to spell it, because you’re going to want to order Casey’s debut novel, The Fountain, and it is spelled S-C-I-E-S-Z-K-A. But to carry on with my introduction, Casey is a ridiculously well-traveled innkeeper in upstate New York, and we are just going to let that fantasy sit there for a minute without talking about the amount of snow she’s going to be shoveling tomorrow, because we’re recording this in January and are talking about the fact that I can see her and she is wearing a full-on puffer. So… romance, Hallmark, innkeeper, debut novel—all the things—and also a puffer and snow shovels and pipes and, yeah. You will hear this episode just as Casey’s first book, The Fountain,, comes out, and that is what we’re here to talk about, because I happened to have gotten an advanced copy of it, and I happen to actually have read it—which does not always happen—and even more relevantly, loved it. Therefore, here we are. And Casey, welcome to Hashtag AmWriting.

Casey Scieszka

Thank you so much. I am so thrilled. I’m like really just beyond that you enjoyed it so much.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Ah, I’m so—I’m, I really did. I will be encouraging everyone to pick it up. It’s mind-boggling that it’s not… and it is your debut. So I’m going to go ahead and—is it, is it really? Like, I mean, I know it’s your debut, but like, is it the first book you’ve written? Oh no, you’ve, you’ve got a kind of a memoirs situation out, right?

Casey Scieszka

I wrote like a young adult travelogue with my now husband that he illustrated about when we lived like in China and West Africa and wound up literally out in Timbuktu. So I had some experience that way, but that was nonfiction and for a totally different audience. All that said, this novel is my first published one, but you better believe I have a bin in the drawer.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s what I meant.

Casey Scieszka

Drawer. (laughing)

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah. Yeah. So, The Fountain, is—just as briefly as possible—it’s the story of an immortal woman who really would like to die, for excellent reasons, because immortality is a weight that is really, really heavy, and you convey that beautifully and wonderfully in this book. And so I want to just start right off—I maybe should let you describe the book—and then I’ll just warn you that my next question is going to be, “Man, how did you have the guts to swing for the fences like this?”

Casey Scieszka

Well, I think it probably began when I read Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting as a fifth grader in English class, which is about a family that—or a little girl who comes across a magical spring that an immortal family is guarding, and then she has to decide, ultimately, throughout the book, what she’s going to do with this information and this knowledge while other people are hunting it down as well. And those questions just haunted and delighted me for decades, and I kept returning to them, and at some point I was working on a novel, had a whole manuscript going, was deeply frustrated, and I started a little something on the side where I was like, this will just be a short story. We’ll see where this goes. This is nothing, and I think, because… I don’t know, maybe you’ve experienced this before too, where if you’re not looking it directly in the eye, sometimes it can just take off, and it all of a sudden had a life of its own. Essentially, this grown-up version of Tuck Everlasting, where it’s about a woman who has come back to her small hometown in the Catskill Mountains, where she was born in the 1800s, 214 years later, to figure out what did this to her so she can reverse it and finally be released.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Wow, you really have the… the short pitch. What’s your book about? Down! Congratulations! That’s a tough one. Yeah, you, you nailed it. That is what it is about. And I will say that it took—one of the things that I loved about it, and that I like in a book—is that not only was I not sure at some points what the protagonist wanted for herself, I was not sure what I wanted for her. All I knew was that I wanted “something” for her. And that makes for a really interesting reading experience. Because normally, you know, you find yourself sitting there going, well, just, you know, just tell the person, or just, you know, kiss them or accept your reality, or you’d normally—you know what you want—like, take the ring, Frodo, or whatever. Or don’t take the ring, Frodo. And now there’s no book. But, and in this one, we didn’t. How hard was—was that for you to write—sort of, I don’t know… did you know what you wanted the protagonist—or what you wanted the reader to want for her? Or…?

Casey Scieszka

Yes and no.

KJ Dell’Antonia

How did you feel about that?

Casey Scieszka

Right. Yes and no, and yes and no. I think when you’re writing, ultimately, later on in draft, you have to be very clear about what your character wants. But in the early process, I had no idea. The whole thing, like I said, began as a short story, and that’s really just the first chapter or two, and then I was essentially hunting with her. When I was writing that first draft, I was like, what are we looking for? What has happened in the past 200 years in your life that would make you feel one way or another? And then every time I had a different little angel or devil on my shoulder, whatever you will, who was the—well, what about this point of view? What if? Wouldn’t this type of—wouldn’t someone say, well, living forever would be amazing, because you could share that type of science with other people, and you could, you know, have these wonderful medical advances or, you know, things like that? I could then have other characters essentially embody those, those other points of view as well. Although, I’m really glad that you say that in your reading experience, you still weren’t quite sure what she wanted, because I definitely didn’t want, you know—I mean, no, no author wants characters to just be symbols for points of view.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh yeah, no, absolutely not. And I should say that I know that she wants to reverse this. That’s never in question. But this sort of—there—you’re always aware of the question of what does she really want? Because that’s kind of only part of it to want…

Casey Scieszka

Right.

KJ Dell’Antonia

An end to this pain, but, but why and what other alternatives there are. And then, of course, I just—I did not know how you were going to end it. I could not imagine how you were going to land that plane. It must have been a tough one. Did you always know where you were going? We will not in any way spoil this.

Casey Scieszka

Right. No spoilers.

KJ Dell’Antonia

No, no spoilers.

Casey Scieszka

I’d say that about halfway through my first draft, I just saw the ending. I was like, “Oh, this is…”

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s amazing.

Casey Scieszka

This is like that very last moment. I was like, this is where I need to get. And those handful of chapters before the penultimate one, whoa, boy, those were the ones that are like I wrote, like seven different books, you know?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh yeah.

Casey Scieszka

Completely different versions to actually get there.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So what was your… what’s your hope for the reader experience of this book? Besides, you know vast entertainment and pressing it into the hands of their friends.

Casey Scieszka

Right. Naturally.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah…

Casey Scieszka

Beyond that…

KJ Dell’Antonia

We love that.

Casey Scieszka

Um, I mean, I love books that essentially look at what it means to be human and what makes a life worth living. And those are the type of questions that I hope someone would then linger on in their own life after putting down the book. Even in between chapters, you know? That you would be able to reflect on the choices that each character is making and think, like, oh, I would do this. I wouldn’t do that. Or, you know, to kind of just bring that back into your own life that way. Because… I don’t know. Time is perspective, like ever—what is—what does it mean to live forever? What is a long life? Is it? You know, when you’re when you’re little, a summer lasts an eternity. I guess what I’m saying is like our perspective of time is always bendy, and that was an interesting challenge in trying to write a 214 year old woman, where it was very tempting to just turn her into a superhero, where I’d be like, “Oh, well, she’d know 10 language.”

KJ Dell’Antonia

She’d know things, yeah.

Casey Scieszka

And she’d be like, amazing at all these things. And I had to be like, Casey, you have a lot of time on your hands as well. Like, you’re, you know, you’re 40 years old. And do you know 10 languages? Do you know five languages? Like, what are, like what are we talking about here?

KJ Dell’Antonia

On that ratio you should at least know two. (laughing) Uh, maybe three. If we’re going to say 200 is 10… you know you got, yeah, you should have at least two.

Casey Scieszka

Exactly. So just kind of examining, like, why would I—why would I have expectation, different expectations for someone simply because they’ve lived longer, and, you know, those types of things?

KJ Dell’Antonia

So you mentioned that you had a bunch of books in a drawer. So what’s bigger about this project than maybe the thing that you put aside to focus on it? Is it bigger?

Casey Scieszka

I don’t know if it’s bigger. I think I just had, I had better tools in my toolbox at this point. Like I might return to that other one, but I didn’t have the full heart of the question I was getting at there. I think I had more of a premise, or something like that. Whereas this one, when I was writing, I felt like the problem was I had own—like in the writing was like I had too much meat, I had so many questions, I had so much I was wrestling with. And then it also really helped that, I mean, it’s, its set in a small town in the Catskills, and, spoiler alert, that’s the type of place that I now live.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Right.

Casey Scieszka

And knew. People always tell you like, write what you know. I am, I am not, secretly, 214 years old. I know you can’t see me on camera, guys.

Multiple Speakers

(both laughing)

Casey Scieszka

My skin’s not that great for a… you know? But, but I do know what small-town life is in the Catskills. I do—there are some characters who are opening up a business. I know what it’s like to open a business. Like, it was really fun for me. I felt like I had this endless well of inspiration to keep pulling from that way. And that was something I couldn’t have written 10 years before. You know?

KJ Dell’Antonia

You also handled the depth of the questions that you’re dealing with remarkably tightly. Did you have to clear away a lot of like… asking for a friend…(laughing). Did you have to clear away a lot of mulling over these questions by people or? I guess what I’m getting at is these are really deep and big questions, like you said, but I don’t feel—you did not Atlas Shrugged these. You know, there’s not like a 20-page dissertation by John Galt in the middle of it. How hard was it to keep that from happening? Or did it come a little more easily for you?

Casey Scieszka

I think, nothing, nothing, none of it comes easily. We know this.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Casey Scieszka

I mean, sometimes you reach the flow state, you know? And it is funny to even think back on these things, because I have a, like, a willful blindness, almost in the same way that, like, I have given birth to two children, and, like, I can’t believe I did it a second time, you know? But it’s by, you know, it’s by design, some—perhaps similar with writing. Once you know how the sausage is made, sometimes it can be hard to do again. But anyway, all of this is to go back and actually answer your question. I was very wary of doing the… this is how I feel about something info dump. And one of the things that my agent as an editor has been helpful with from early drafts was, how can you reveal these things in action? So anytime I was tempted to just start explaining things, I was like, Casey, is this happening in action? Like, is this a character actually finding something out? Like from another character in a natural way. So that…

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s a great question.Casey Scieszka

Right. That really, that really helped me. And then also sometimes with the writing I did, just let myself write a whole bunch, you know, because sometimes, especially if you know it’s the beginning of your writing day, maybe it’s, it’s that equivalent of the throat clearing—you’re just or the dog who’s doing circles before they sit down, like you’re, you’re getting around to the thing that you actually want to say. And then when you re read it, you’re like, “Oh, well, those first four paragraphs can go, and here’s where I actually start to say…”KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, here’s what i meant to say.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah. Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Take this. Put it up at the front— delayed all this. Yeah. No. I get it. So how long did this take you?

Casey Scieszka

Well, I started the short story in 2021 and then it comes out now. I will say we had, like; everything was in the can, if you will, at least, like a year and a half ago, just kind of waiting for this springtime pub date. But, yeah, it’s a journey. That’s a—I feel, you know, like another thing you don’t want to hear when you’re like, 25 and are like, I’m going to write a book, and you hear an interview with someone who’s like, it took me 10 years, and I was like, my god. And I’m like, well, girl.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I can do it faster than that.

Casey Scieszka

This one is five years. But…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, yeah, no, it takes, it takes a long time, and it’s hard, and it takes a lot of painful thinking, and yeah, all of those things are true. So now, now that you can look back at this project with hopefully a little bit of distance, and you’re about to be talking about it a lot, I suspect. What do you love most about it?

Casey Scieszka

Ooh. I love most that these characters feel so real to me still that I sometimes catch myself wondering, like, what they’re doing. You know?

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s amazing.

Casey Scieszka

Like I lived with them, and I just, I’m so excited that I actually, like made—was able to make that for, you know, not just myself, though, that I surely entertained myself in the process. But it is such a humbling dream that this story is now existing in other people’s brains, that these are characters who have felt real to other people as well.

KJ Dell’Antonia

What, as you look back, what would you say was the hardest part of the process?

Casey Scieszka

Aside from all of the waiting?!

KJ Dell’Antonia

All of it! Aside from all of it.

Casey Scieszka

Which felt like…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah I was going to say aside from…

Casey Scieszka

It felt eternal.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah. Yeah.

Multiple Speakers

(both laughing)

Casey Scieszka

I think the very hardest part is early on, when you don’t know—well, the earliest, earliest is delightful, because you’re in just your little creative cocoon, and you’re having these wonderful ideas, and you don’t have to solve any of the plot problems yet, or things like that. You know, you’re just like being your own little creative genius for yourself. But then it’s I feel like that, that first real revision phase when you don’t know fully if this is actually going to become a book where you’re—and time, you know, to talk about time again, is precious, like I, you know, I run this other hotel. It’s open half the year. But when I began it, it was open seven days a week, all year long; I had two children under the age of four at the time. Like, time was precious. I was writing during nap time, like things were being sacrificed in order for me to do this. And it is. It just feels audacious and possibly insane to be doing it when you’re in it, and when you’re on the other side, you’re like, oh, but the road was always pointing here, and you just, you just don’t know that when you’re in it.

KJ Dell’Antonia

No.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

You could easily have, really think, you know, you could easily still be sitting on this going, well, I’m going to finish this…

Casey Scieszka

Exactly. And, you know…

KJ Dell’Antonia

When the kids are… you know… or whatever.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah, exactly I have these other, you know, unfinished or manuscripts that haven’t seen the light of day. But, at this point, I tell myself, and I 99.9999% believe it that those were necessary to write in order to write this.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, I sure hope so.

Multiple Speakers

(both laughing)

Casey Scieszka

There’s just that other point 0.0001 that’s like—

KJ Dell’Antonia

What?!

Casey Scieszka

Yeah, it’s like, no, no, it really was necessary.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, no, you have to. You have to do it. Well, I hate to be, you know, not trying to raise the bar here, but, but what is next after, you know, a topic like this and a big book like, like this? Do you know yet? Are you, are you thinking about it? Where are you in your process?

Casey Scieszka

I have been working on something else which is fun. And I definitely have, like, you know, while as much as I know how, how wild it is with how the sausage is made and what I’m, you know, the many revisions and things I’m looking down the barrel at, I also have another level of excitement, because I know, like, wow, I have an agent this time who’s actually excited to read it, and I have a working relationship with an editor. Like, I’m trying to appreciate that…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, because it’s what you wanted before.

Casey Scieszka

And it can be so easy to just, you know, slip back into the like; you know, I don’t know, the chaos feelings. But, I will say, I’m not going to say much about the project, other than historically, for everything I’ve ever been drawn to, and including stuff I love to read. I always love when character, when there’s a character who knows like way too much or way too little, like in their situation.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s a very like tempting pitch without having anything you’d like to put your fingers in.

Casey Scieszka

Without…

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s good. That’s good, that’s clever.

Casey Scieszka

I told you nothing.

KJ Dell’Antonia

You told me nothing, and yet I’m like, ooh yeah, that does sound… that does sound interesting. Well, I as I’ve as I’ve said I wholeheartedly enjoyed this. It was twisty. You had me thinking things that were not what was so at many, many points of the book.

Casey Scieszka

I love to hear this. Love to hear.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah and when we are off, off recording, I’ll tell you some of them, because that is always kind of fun. I really feel like this book is such an achievement. For someone who’s just getting started, it’s great. I can’t wait to see what you do next. And I guess, on that note, what’s something you have read recently where you also felt like the writer was, was really big, really playing big. Is there anything that you would like to press on into people’s hands the way I want to press The Fountain, into their hands?

Casey Scieszka

I’ve loved this. Thank you again. One book I keep pressing into many people’s hands is Open Throat by Henry Hoke.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay.

Casey Scieszka

It’s very slim. You can read it in like a day, although I recommend taking a little bit longer, because you’ll want to enjoy it. It is told from the point of view of a mountain lion who lives under the Hollywood sign.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, I—I think I’ve heard the description, even if I don’t remember the—okay.

Casey Scieszka

It’s so funny and so deeply tender, like and just unlike anything I’ve read recently, and I just really felt like, like he was swinging for the fences with this, like it’s from the point of view of an animal, which should be ridiculous, but after…

KJ Dell’Antonia

And not just an animal, but an animal that lives under the Hollywood sign.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah, like that’s a mountain lion who’s—it open up or he’s overhearing like you know hikers discussing therapist, you know? It’s just, it’s so silly, but it’s also so deep and kind of truly experimental, but still so accessible and I just feel like it’s the type of thing that I don’t know. Maybe when he sat down to write it, he was like, this, someone’s going to tell me, I’m nuts, but I just connected with it so much.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I…yeah. Alright I love that then, and that is a great response to the question, because that really is somebody else swinging for the fences, and that’s what we’re just trying to talk about here for everyone. So where? Well, listeners can find you, obviously they can, they can buy The Fountain,, and they should. You’re inn is called?

Casey Scieszka

The Spruceton Inn, a Catskills Bed & Bar. We’re a little nine-room hotel.

KJ Dell’Antonia

(laughing) Bed and bar. That’s awesome.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah. I mean, I don’t, I don’t really mess with breakfast. I mean, you get very nice coffee and some pop tarts. I love a good highbrow, lowbrow, and we are five miles down a seven mile dead end road in the middle of the mountains.KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay, I love this for everyone. And is there any particular social media where you are fun and joyful?

Casey Scieszka

Yeah, you can find us on Instagram at sprucetoninn. That’s also like some writing stuff and same with Substack. Only other thing I’ll say about the inn is we also run an artist residency program, an annual one. So every August we open it up to folks, writers, 2D artists. Basically, if you can make it in a motel room without disturbing your neighbors, come on and make it with us, and you get, you get, like, a week-long stay. No cost, in the month of November.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That is so fun and so cool. And I bet you’re going to get a lot more applications than you can handle this time around. Alright, well, thank you so much for spending this time with me.

Casey Scieszka

Thank you so much for chatting.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And amazing best of luck with the book, which I loved. All right, kids, I’m signing this off with our new sign off. Until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled, Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Ep 416: The Art of Helping Writers Do Their Best Work, with AJ Harper

Write a Must-Read, AJ Harper

Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

Dear Sarina, I want to support you and your work, so which format of your books do you profit from most?

The fact that we live in a world where any reader is interested in the answer to this question soothes my troubled soul.

So let’s break it down: hardcover, paperback, audio, ebook? What about borrowing from the library? What about subscription services such as Kindle Unlimited?

Here are a few helpful links that expand on the topics we discuss in this episode:

The Top Five Reasons Pre-Orders Matter

Our Goals for 2026:

Jess is gonna finish a novel.

Sarina is going to figure out what she wants a long haul writer career to looks like.

KJ is going to write this book as hard as she can and for as long as it takes.

Jennie is going to claim her authority in the writing space.

Our Words of the Year are …

Meanwhile: Fan of Heated Rivalry? You’ll want to read these books by Sarina Bowen!

Ready to talk about your own goals and words? COME ON IN. We are here for that!

Hey - if you’ve been curious about becoming a book coach, Jennie’d like to invite you to a live training she’s doing on February 4th, at 5pm PST / 8pm EST. She’s going to be talking about how to become the kind of book coach writers love to pay. You can sign up at bookcoaches.com/live

WOTYs … in the episode! If you want to know what was so funny, you’ll have to listen.

Transcript Below!

If you love us enough that you got this far…

SPONSORSHIP MESSAGE

Hey, it’s Jennie Nash, and if you’ve been curious about becoming a book coach, I’d like to invite you to a live training I’m going to be doing on February 4th, at 5pm PST, which is 8pm EST, and I’m going to be talking about how to become the kind of book coach writers love to pay. You can sign up for that at bookcoaches.com/live. That’s bookcoaches.com/live. (bookcoaches.com/live) I’d love to see you there.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Jennie Nash

Hey everyone, it’s Jennie, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. All four of us are here today to talk about our Word of the Year for 2026 and our goals. This is one of our favorite episodes to do, and we’ve all been kicking our words around, and we’re ready to share them with you. So Sarina, do you want to go first?

Sarina Bowen

Okay!

Jennie Nash

I just know you are kind of ready.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Right off the diving board. No throat clearing, no chit chat. Yeah, we’re just alrighty.

Sarina Bowen

All right, so I’m Sarina, and I write novels, and pretty much that is all I write. So my goals tend to look kind of the same from year to year, but my, but how I feel about them, changes. So in 2026 I plan to write two to three books, and when I do, I will be rolling off of two contracts with two different publishers. So that means that the other part of my 2026 is really asking myself what I want to do next. Because, you know, finishing energy is a really hard thing, but I’ll be like extra super finishing energy here, because I’m finishing a commitment. And, you know, I used to have goals, like, I’m going to write more books. I’m going to write all the books. And I don’t anymore, because there were, there was a while there where I only wrote books, and then last year, I did a really nice job of meeting my goals that I would also go and have more fun and take more vacations. And it worked. I did that. It turns out that planning fun takes a lot of energy and time. Oh my goodness, it was I, you know, I so I was either off having a wild time, or I was like, you know, nailed to my desk, and, yeah, so I need to do a slightly better job of that this year. Although looking at the schedule, it’s a little hard to see how, because I’m spending a big chunk of March and part of April in Australia and Hong Kong, and then...

Jennie Nash

Wait you can’t just throw that in and not say why. [laughing]

Sarina Bowen

Oh, well, I’m, I’m visiting. I’m doing four reader events in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Jennie Nash

It’s so exciting, so exciting.

Sarina Bowen

And you know, time will tell if accepting this invitation was, in fact, a good idea. When I get home, I will be—it’ll be June, and I will be launching my second book of 2026, which is a romance and so, but, but then, you know, I will have turned in half of what I’m turning in this year, and I will be able to have big thoughts about what I do next. And that is the thing that is going to be hard about this year, not turning in files, but, you know, deciding what does it mean to me? And also a thing that I realized last year, while balancing my busy life is that in this job, there is no summit. It’s not like you climb that big hill and then you stand there and you hear an angel choir, and then you know that the only thing that greets you after writing a big novel is that you will pretty soon, eventually write another one. So you have to enjoy the hike itself. And I am really working on that.

Jess Lahey

I actually have just—I have just to address what you just mentioned Sarina, I have put in my calendar in June. Since we love to—I happen to love the mid-year check-ins on goals. I put a little note to self, to future Jess to revisit Sarina’s goals at mid-year so that we can talk about maybe what that second half of the year, what comes next, stuff is going to look like. So, expect that to come back around.

Sarina Bowen

Okay, I hope there’s some clarity by then, so I’ll get right on that.

Jess Lahey

Well, and I would also like to mention that you mentioned, you know, all the work you’re doing and doing fun and stuff like that. You also went back to skating this year, and you, I have loved watching you learn, relearn something fairly new, and gain skills and get determined to like, be able to do that. What’s it called, when you change the side of the blade you’re on? When you turn?

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, all that edge work...

Jess Lahey

It’s very exciting.

Sarina Bowen

And those three turns. Yeah. So that is part of my leave the house and have fun plan, and that has worked out really well. It—when you do something that’s so outside of your usual, like, we could just stipulate by now that I’m pretty good at writing a novel, because I have turned in a number of them and sold a number of them, but I am really not good at skating. So when you take yourself so far out of your element, and you do something that is so foreign to you, you learn, relearn all those weird little tricks about how you learned anything, and the fact that last year I could not do a three turn to save my life, which is where you turn around on one foot. And I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried to trick myself into it. And I’m like, okay, I’ll take off on two feet, but land on one. I just every single thing didn’t work. And then this year, now I can do it. And also, I woke up at four in the morning once and thought I could do a waltz jump tomorrow, and then the next day I did, in fact, just do a waltz jump. And I hadn’t even been thinking about it. It wasn’t even on my list of things I was going to try that week. So learning something really, really new is really just great for your brain and your attitude. And I don’t know what the next thing that I do like that will be, but, yeah, I’m a fan.

Jennie Nash

But I must reflect back to you that a few years ago, you were, I think the goals had to you were working so hard and just, you know, book to book to book to book and, like, look at you now .You’re going on all these trips, and you’re learning to ice skate, and I know you and KJ are learning Mahjong.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Mahjong, yes.

Jennie Nash

And you write in coffee shops like, you’ve kind of really changed that, that vibe. It’s cool.

Sarina Bowen

I have! I did it right? Like I said, I’m going to have more fun. I’m going to learn to write out of the house. Like I sat in a room and said to you that this was going to happen. And I did, right? But the, but then, but then, writing the actual books, it magically did not get easier. So I am having more fun, but it’s still hard, and that’s how I’m coming to this new realization that, like you know, I need to stop being surprised that the actual job is hard, but it’s just like a piece of the fun that I’m having, and if and I can only write books that I’m probably going to enjoy, because it’s still hard and it still takes a lot of hours.

Jennie Nash

That’s amazing. I feel compelled to ask you, what are you most enjoying about what you’re writing right now?

Sarina Bowen

Well we are at maximum finishing energy, because I am finishing a revision, which is scary, right? Because then you’re sending it off into the world of telling yourself that it’s done. And I have to say, I have not enjoyed it all that much. This has been one of the more one of the more stressful weeks. But, yeah, I—but there are moments as I look through this manuscript, because I’ve just reached that point where you hate every living word of it, right? Where I read a line and I laugh, and then that’s just a good sign.

Jennie Nash

Like I’m so clever, look at me.

Multiple Speakers

[all laughing]

Jess Lahey

I actually just, just for fun. I just dropped—I got to go—I traveled an hour and a half to go so that I could go sit in a coffee shop and work with these guys, because I miss them so much. And I took two pictures of Sarina while she was working there, and in one, she had this look on her face... I just dropped it in our group text just now, where she’s got this look on her face like this is the hardest, worst thing I’ve ever done. And then I also took one of her smiling and looking like her usual happy self. But it was—I love having those two pictures together on my phone, because it’s so representative of the slog. How there are these moments of really having fun and engaging with the book and loving it, and then there’s those moments of editing where you’re trying to just finish it and get all the words in the right order.

Sarina Bowen

Yep, it’s, it’s, you know that the push and pull and the trick to liking this job is that when you’re in that trench of I have to be finished with this. I have to love it, and I have to set it free. You have to remember that the other side is out there. That like the drafting happy, I haven’t made any big mistakes yet, I haven’t sealed off all the x’s yet, like that’s waiting for you on the other side of it. You know, if you get too deep in one place or the other, so that you can’t remember, the other one is out there for you. Then, then that’s a trap. It makes the job harder.

Jennie Nash

Well, thank you for that. Jess, do you want to go next?

Jess Lahey

Sure! Yeah, so last year, last year was weird. Last year, my, my, I’m going a little bit into what my word was last year; it was ‘amplified’ because it led, it sort of guided a lot of my goals last year, which had to do with just reaching more people, but during the year, during the course of the year, reaching and educating more people on the topics that I feel really strongly about, like mental health wellness, the specifically substance use prevention, as it relates to things like self-efficacy in kids and feelings of competence in kids. I realized sort of part way through the year how much more I was enjoying and feeling engaged when I was talking to the kids, and how much more impactful I felt when I was talking to the kids, and that shouldn’t be surprising. But, if you’re not a speaker, and if you don’t spend your time speaking to adults and kids and especially teens, you should know it takes, you know, maybe three to four times as much energy to talk to the kids as it does to the adults. In fact, yesterday, I was trying to explain to someone why a virtual event to a lot of kids, doesn’t work. I can’t project that much energy through a screen to captivate a big room of kids. It’s just it’s really hard to do. And anyway, so I realized about halfway through the year that I really wanted when I when I thought about the word amplify and expanding on the number of kids that I reach per year, and the depth to which I am able to reach some kids in particular, it comes it comes down to not just people, but just kids specifically. So I talked with my agents, and we’ve agreed that I’m going to try to incorporate more kids this year. That even if it’s more exhausting for me, it’s more fulfilling, and so that’s one of my big goals for this year, is to figure out how—yes, I still have to talk to adults, and I have to help them understand how to talk to their kids about substance use and mental health and how to see, know, love, support the kids you have, and not the kids you wish you had and all that stuff. But when it comes down to it, I have to figure out ways to get in the room with kids more and...

KJ Dell’Antonia

You’re a kid-travert!

Jess Lahey

[laughing] Apparently.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Which some people get their energy from being with people, and some people get, you know, it takes—that’s extroverts and introverts. So you’re a kid-travert, you get your energy from talking to kids. That’s delightful!

Jess Lahey

It’s in the moment. In the moment, it’s much more exhausting. But there was a—I spoke at a school in Los Angeles. It was one of the best days I had in front of kids. And the number of emails I got afterwards explaining why it was meaningful to them. You know, I love when the kids, anytime a kid reaches out, it’s this huge honor, because, you know, I’m, who am I? I’m some adult that comes into their school because their teachers say that, and now their teachers say they have to listen to this bozo. They don’t know who this person is. But over time, I’ve figured out ways to help them trust me a little bit more, even before I get there. Like creating these videos where I introduce myself ahead of time. So I’m trying to figure out all the ways in to getting being a trusted adult, becoming a trusted adult to more and more kids, is something that’s incredibly important to me, because that’s where the great education stuff lies. So that amplify word changed for me over last year, and it’s reflected in this year’s goals as well, which is, get in front of more kids. I track those numbers really carefully. Last year, I was in front of just shy of 10,000 people generally, and a couple of 1000 kids. And I just want to change that ratio a little bit so that it’s have more heavily in the kid direction and less heavily in the adult direction. Just because it’s fun and really interesting and challenging. That’s the other thing is, when you’ve been doing something for a long time, there are some talks I can do in my sleep, because I’ve done them so many times, and I don’t want to do that, like, why would you want to come and spend time with someone who’s asleep in front of you? But you know, they look good and it sounds good, but they’re not totally invested. And I think everybody can feel that. So I’ve had to find ways to change things up, to reevaluate my content from other angles, so that I’m not getting sick of myself, and so that I can be fresh and new and useful to people. So, and then, like, I have small goals, you know, Sarina was just talking about her skating and looking, you know, trying to do something completely new that makes you a little nervous. You know, the beekeeping thing still makes me super nervous. And as I mentioned in another episode, I think Tim saw me emotionally preparing to do something I needed to do with the bees and he said I have never seen you so nervous and so doubting yourself about your ability to do something, and I realized how good that is for me. And so we will see at the end of this winter if my bees actually made it through the winter, and if they did, I’ll have a hive of bees to deal with, and if they don’t, I’ll have to get a new hive. But that’s been really, really good for me. Sarina, did you want to add something?

Sarina Bowen

I have a question.

Jess Lahey

Yes, ma’am.

Sarina Bowen

Do we have a writing goal for this year?

Jess Lahey

Yes, we do. And that’s actually at the bottom of my list, because it’s new. So I’ve been attending this weekly, really interesting virtual Blueprint for a Book Fast Track. What is it? Jumpstart you guys? With Jennie Nash, this really great book coach and founder of Author Accelerator, and KJ Dell’Antonia and I have been actually writing—working on this novel that I’ve been working on for ages and ages and ages and thinking about at a minimum once a week, and I’m going to finish it this year. 100% I’m going to finish it this year. And I’m really grateful to Jennie and KJ, because being in that, in—being in there, is forcing me to ask me all kinds of questions about, why am I even bothering to stick with this thing that has stymied me for over a decade? Like, why bother if it’s been that hard and I haven’t ever gotten it done, why am I even doing it? And I love asking myself those questions. It’s been really fun. Plus, there’s like 100 other people in that virtual session asking themselves the same questions and coming up with really cool answers for why they’re even writing something in the first place. And it gets at all these fundamental questions of why we do what we do. So yes, I will be, I’m researching a nonfiction thing still. I have a—I’m looking at a stack of books behind me, and but I’m going to finish this YA novel this year period, full stop, it’s going to happen.

.

Multiple Speakers

[Unintelligible] [several speaking at once]

Jennie Nash

Well what’s cool is, is, I mean, YA is not children, but it’s young people. So that’s kind of cool. It goes with your other thing.

KJ Dell’Antonia

There’s a trend there.

Jess Lahey

Yeah. And it was funny, because when you were asking the why the other night, and one of my things was, oh, because these characters speak to me, blah, blah, blah. And KJ mentioned, oh, I do know what Jess is talking about. And maybe it’s, you know, she wants to write a coming of age story, and that’s 100% it. I think I have, I have. I very much love that coming of age space and the struggles that middle school and high school kids go through in that coming of age space. And I think I have an interesting insight into it, and an ability to, an ability to make it come alive on the page. And I, for me, really want to do that. I really want to see it on the page, and I’m really excited about it.

Jennie Nash

You do have such a compassion for that age and what people are going through and how hard it is and it’s...

Jess Lahey

And I love these characters. And I said I love these characters, and I want to do right by them. And that’s true too. I do love these characters, and I can’t stop thinking about them.

Sarina Bowen

That is the best reason to finish any piece of fiction. You know?

Jess Lahey

Yeah, no, I really it’s like they’re stuck until I help them get to the other side. And I would hate to leave them there. I would it would make me feel really bad.

Jennie Nash

I love it. Well you know, committing to something that you’ve been working on for that long, that’s a that’s a big deal.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, it’s also one of those. I know it’s going to feel really, really good when I finish it. It’ll be like, oh my gosh, I’ve been harping on that for whatever it is now 12 or 13 years, and I finally finished it. So I know it’s going to be one of those. I’m going to be very, very glad I did it when it’s done. And is it super hard? Yes, I’ve, you know, bitched and moaned about this in the past, that fiction is really hard for me and dialog is so hard for me, but that’s what I’m writing right now.

Jennie Nash

That’s another, another learning edge, right?

Jess Lahey

Yep. Yep.

Jennie Nash

Awesome. KJ, what about you?

KJ Dell’Antonia

My only goal this year with respect to writing is to write this book as hard as I can for as long as it takes. That’s all I got. I got a couple other goals. I’d like to get my Christmas tree down at some point during the year. It seems like a plan. I was pretty excited about the Valentine’s Day concept a few years ago, but I don’t know, people have been really negging on it. Easter also, apparently not tree material. I mean, come on the fourth? I’m seeing it. No one else is. So there’s that. No, my and my big life goal is to leave more white space for myself in my day and in my calendar, to do things, to not do things, and for the unexpected things, both good and bad things. I have a real tendency to be like from 11:30 to one I’m doing this, and from 1:30 to 2:30 there’s this, and hey, at three there’s this. And that is, in fact, an excellent description of my day. And sometimes I like it, but I just do it to myself constantly, and I need to stop.

Multiple Speakers

[all laughing]

Jennie Nash

That’s all? Okay. Mic drop. I’m just thinking about that white space. What? What happens when you have white space?

Sarina Bowen

You know what happens to me when I have white space, because I’m actually pretty good at keeping it in my calendar, is that I get an email that’s like, and today, we will be choosing among these eight narrator auditions. And then you will decide who is the narrator for this book that you haven’t been thinking about for four months since you last did the copy edits, and then my whole day just explodes in a little puff of admin, like trying to get out of my own inbox is killing me. So, yeah, I don’t, I don’t. It’s not even that I planned it. Other people are making this my, my problem, and I wish I had a 2026, goal for how to fix it.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, there’s that. I mean, to some extent, I think that’s my point. Is that I would like to stop doing it to myself, because I mean it through exactly the thing it is was not my was not my idea, nor was the thing, the unexpected event at eight o’clock this this morning, or the one when I walked in from the expected thing from nine to 10. I need to do a little less of it for myself, to allow for the fact that the other things in my life, I think, and I did this to some extent last year too. My final kids have actually all left for college this year, which is great, but there’s still a lot of trouble. And also I have a lot of pets, and also just, there’s a lot going on. So I sort of thought, and I really made this mistake in the Fall pretty hard. I thought, oh, I should probably fill like I should put some things on the calendar because I might feel sad. A, I still felt sad, and that was okay. And B, I put way too much on the calendar, given the number, amount of time I had to spend on... I’m just yeah, and here I am thinking I didn’t do it in the spring, and I didn’t, but I sort of am doing it on a daily basis, like, oh, look. And some of that is just that this was, what am I wrong? Was this the longest holiday season ever in the history of holiday season? Like it was still Christmas on January 17, I swear to God. And so a lot of it, I think, is I’m feeling a little dejected, because my days are really packed, because I had the sense not to put everything in the week of January 6, but I put a lot of things this week and last week. So hopefully I’ll, but, but having done that, and now feeling it, I think, I hope, will inspire me to block off more time that, no doubt, will get filled with things. But that’s better than it getting filled with things and my having already filled it.

Jennie Nash

Yep.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s not going so great.

Jennie Nash

I get that. Okay, so, so for me, I made some really big moves in my business in 2025 and they worked, and that was great. And I made a decision toward the end of the year to make even bigger moves, and did some thinking about, I wouldn’t say, an exit strategy or a succession plan, but I’m 62 this year, and I’m working really, really, really hard in my business day to day, running, you know, pretty big small business, and I really want more time to create. To create curriculum, to, I just like making things. You know, to work on the podcast, to work on my own book, and I’ll talk about that in a minute. And so I made a training plan to teach my team to take over the things that they are fully capable of taking over, if I just get it out of my head and onto a page to teach them how to do it. So it’s a really big move for me, and kind of a terrifying move. It means trusting people. It means handing over some things. It means there’s some ego-y things involved in that, the idea that nobody can do it as well as I can. And so, yeah, that’s, that’s big. It’s big mindset. It’s big actual shifting of duties. It’s, it’s kind of the white space idea writ large. What, what would it look like for me to have more white space? And it is, it is not retiring, it’s not stopping. It’s just, can I do more of what I want to do and less of the—of the day to day of this business? I am constantly surprised by the thing I have made. Author Accelerator has more than 375 certified book coaches now, and it’s this huge community, and they’re having a huge impact. And a lot of my coaches are becoming huge their own selves and doing really well, and just we’re becoming known. And all of that takes time to manage, like the, I don’t know, I wouldn’t call it the brand, it’s, it’s the community. It just takes a lot of time to manage and the kinds of inquiries that we get and that sort of thing. And I, it’s a thing that needs care, and I’m the one to give it that care. So just meeting the moment, I guess, is what my goal is for the year, and as part of that, the Write Big Sessions that I’ve been doing here at the podcast are my stepping into that space of thought leadership and creation, content creation in a different way. And haven’t talked about this a lot, but I am writing a Write Big book, and I went out and found myself a brand new agent. I did my search from scratch. I did it cold. I tried to find the perfect agent for this book, rather than somebody that I knew, because I know a lot of agents, and I don’t want to, I don’t want to talk about a lot of specifics at the moment about who that person is, or what’s happening really, but I will say that it’s taken a little minute to get it together, because that’s how it happens sometimes. But the book is out on submission, even as we speak, and I was telling KJ, this agent does something that I’ve never heard of and never seen, and I love it so much, which is that she shares a spreadsheet of the submissions and puts the responses right in there so I can log in, you know, 10, 12, 25 times a day and...

Multiple Speakers

[all laughing]

KJ Dell’Antonia

Just normal, healthy behavior, right?

Jennie Nash

Which is so fantastic. Rather than, like, why isn’t she telling me, or how come we haven’t heard or whatever? But it’s very, very early days, and so all that’s coming in are the no’s, because that’s, that’s what happens. But the no’s are so great. I love them so much. They’re totally boosting me up. Because, like, people know me. They know my work. They like my work. Like I, I don’t know. I’m just so delighted by the nature and quality of the no’s, which is just a funny place to be, but that is, that is where I am so...

Sarina Bowen

Jennie, it’s a fantastic place to be. Like I have never heard another author say the no’s make me happy. Like that is not a sentence I have heard in my life. And I know a lot of authors, so the fact that you know that that’s, I just have good, good feelings and good thoughts about this project, and you are amazing.

Jennie Nash

Well, thank you. And that is not by accident. That’s what Writing Big means, right? It’s like I own this idea. I’m not waiting to be picked; I’m not waiting to be anointed. I’m not waiting for somebody to say, you know, good job. But, when they do, and you know, these no’s are just indications, like I self-published the Blueprint Books and I sort of think of them as this little thing that I made. I made them for my coaches to use in their coaching, and I made them to, it’s a model that I teach. I didn’t ever think of it as a thing, but I’ve sold more than 20,000 copies of the Blueprint Books my own self, and, but I just didn’t think like editors would know what they are. They would use them with their own authors. They would know my company. They would know my coaches, and that’s what all the no’s are showing me. And that I’m just, I’m just like, when do you get a mirror into your impact? It feels like the no’s a mirror into my impact, and I feel, I feel like there’s no doubt that something great is going to happen with this book. I have no doubt. So bring on the no’s and have them be awesome, because I know good things, great things are coming, and whether, who knows what path that is going to be, but that, that is where I am, and that sharing of the spreadsheet that this agent has done is just feeding right into, I mean, for other people, it might be the biggest disaster in the world, but for me, I’m like, this is so fun. I love it. My goal is for the year to lean into this bigger vision of what I can be.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s a good goal.

Jennie Nash

Thank you. Well, I’m going to share my word first, because it just goes so well with what I’ve just been saying, and it’s so obvious, and it’s so great. And my word of the year is ‘play big’. Play big.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s two words.

Jess Lahey

That’s two words.

Sarina Bowen

I get two words.

KJ Dell’Antonia

She’s allowed to have two words because she’s playing big.

Multiple Speakers

[all laughing]

Jennie Nash

All right, we have to go in reverse order then so KJ, what’s your, what’s your word?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, my word of the year is, is ‘alive’.

Jess Lahey

Oh, dear. Okay, that’s a... quite a goal you got there missy.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s a good word... laughing

Jennie Nash

Can you explain?!

Sarina Bowen

She can’t, because she’s laughing really hard right now.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Um, it was going to be enthusiast, because I wanted to be sort of a welcoming both the challenges and the excitements of my life. But I really just feel like, and then it was going to be relish, but, but that’s pickles, and I hate them. And then I’m just, I just feel really good about just letting it all come and, and being a part of it.

Jennie Nash

Okay, good word.

Jess Lahey

Oh, Sarina?

Sarina Bowen

I’ve used a lot of the words.

Jess Lahey

Oh, not yet. Sorry.

KJ Dell’Antonia

She said, reverse order.

Jennie Nash

I’m laughing so hard that I’m crying.

Jess Lahey

Oh, she said, reverse order. That’s right.

Sarina Bowen

We have done this so many times, and we have never laughed all the way through it. Okay, okay.

Jess Lahey

KJ is right though we have used all of the words, I actually considered reusing one of my words this year, but then I thought maybe that was a cop out. So I did come up with a new word.

Sarina Bowen

I considered it, and then I was too lazy to go look them up.

Jess Lahey

That’s quite a statement there, Bowen.

Sarina Bowen

I know!

Multiple Speakers

[all laughing uncontrollably]

KJ Dell’Antonia

I know I had savor before, that was kind of where I was going, but...

Jennie Nash

I can’t stop laughing.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I don’t know I feel very gritty about my... [unintelligible]

Jennie Nash

I’m like snort laughing over here at the idea of I’m never going to not hear relish and pickles. [laughing uncontrollably]

Jess Lahey

I know, I know, I like it so much. I love it.

Sarina Bowen

Well, she really doesn’t like pickles. KJ is that friend where if she is served a pickle with her lunch, you can take it.

Jess Lahey

Yeah. Absolutely.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And the bit of bread that it touched.

Sarina Bowen

Okay Jess? Jess, I don’t know how you’re going to follow this, but do you have a word?

Jess Lahey

I do have a word, and I’m really excited about this word, because years ago, when I did a really cool conference in Abu Dhabi, I met this woman that I was shocked I hadn’t met before. But her name is Elke Govertsen, Elke, and she has a Substack. Her Substack is just, it’s @ Elke, is her. She managed to snag @ Elke. She has a newsletter. She has something called Open Nesting. She’s got older kids. Anyway, I subscribed to her Substack. I love it. She’s one of those people that when she walked down on stage to give her talk, she just glowed from inside, like she was one of those people that you just, I felt really drawn to. So I started following her and her year, her word for this year I really liked, although I thought about it in a different way than she did. Her word for the year is ‘allow’—a, l, l, o, w—and so that is my word for the year, to allow myself to do some things. For example, finishing this book, and just realizing, allowing myself to be really bad at it and hoping that I can pull it off, allowing myself to look really dumb doing stuff like the beekeeping, allowing myself some grace about the fact that I’m probably killed my bees this winter because they’re not insulated enough, all of the things. But I just really liked her word allow. So that’s where I am. That’s my word. I was going to redo evaluate, because I really did like that one, because that the emphasis there was, like, figure out what’s valuable to you, but whatever, I’ve used that one before, so I’m going to give credit out to Elke and go with allow.

Jennie Nash

Okay, Sarina, what about you?

Sarina Bowen

Well, you know, I picked a word, and I usually really struggle with this, and I never feel quite comfortable with it, but I pick something, or it just picked me one day, and that word is ‘esteem’. And my little job, my little job is having a strange little moment of esteem, because there’s this show that’s at the tippy top of HBO right now called Heated Rivalry. And Heated Rivalry is a book that is a queer hockey romance, which is something that I have also written since 2014, and it has; strangely, some of my best performing books ever over the last decade fall into what I thought was a niche. So I write this niche thing, and people read it and they love it, but you know, it has always stayed in its corner until now. And Rachel Reid is the author of the book called Heated Rivalry, from which this TV show was made very faithfully. And Heated Rivalry is a fantastic novel, by the way. Fantastic conflict, and an interesting story structure. So it has been quite a revelation to watch her book and story reach an audience that I did not feel it was capable of. And there is something about that, that really spoke to all the parts about my, of my business, where, for example, sometimes I have to do research. And early on, I almost felt apologetic about asking an orthopedic surgeon to talk to me about something for a romance novel, because I just assumed that they would roll their eyes. I did it anyway. Thank you, Mark, Dr. Mark, for explaining knee surgery to me. But um, so esteem is a couple of different things. It is choosing projects that I esteem and that I care about, not because I think they’ll sell, but because I love them, and also just realizing that the esteem that comes to various things that we do is not always predictable or measurable or something to rely upon. So I have to esteem it all on my own before I commit the time to do that. And that is how I ended up picking this word that I that I really like. It’s kind of a quiet word. It doesn’t, it isn’t sexy, I guess is, is a word I would describe it, not really, but, um, but it is a, it’s like asks you to pause and measure how we feel about something before we commit. And that is how I ended up there.

Jess Lahey

I love that meaning to the word. I love it.

Jennie Nash

Something that also occurs to me is you spoke with such esteem about this other author and the work that that she’s done, and that’s something that you often do, and you lift up all the writers in lots of different ways. And that esteem you have for the process of writing and the publishing business and the hard work of it comes across as well. So I like that meaning too.

Sarina Bowen

Well thank you. I had an interesting conversation with my 22 year old son, who is quite a reader. Right now he’s trying to get to the end of Crime and Punishment before his semester really kicks in. And he asked me over drinks, on a trip to Boston that I was making time for, so go me, if I could write like anyone, like if I could suddenly have the skills of any author, dead or alive, who would I pick? And I instantly gave him a couple of names in contemporary fiction that he has never read and never will, because there are people who write books that are not for 22 year old nerds. And, um, and he, he sort of blanked and he’s like, no mama, like you could have, you could be Tolstoy, you know, like you could pick anything. And I’m like, no, I’m serious. I have esteem for the things these people are doing in contemporary fiction. And it’s like that, um, that George Michael quote, like, when are you going to make some serious music? And he says, you don’t understand, I’m very serious about pop music. And you know, it’s my right to esteem whatever I choose. And I really do choose this. It’s not; it’s not a runner up thing for me. This is my interest, and I’m going to value it.

Jess Lahey

Hell yeah,

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. Woohoo!

Jennie Nash

I feel like we should end on that.

Jess Lahey

Yeah. I think that’s a good place to stop.

Jennie Nash

That was some power, power language there. We would love our listeners to share in the chat your goals for the year, your words for the year, how you feel about pickles and their touching a bread. [laughing] We would love to hear all the things from you, and until next time, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled, Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for the

#AmReading

The Plot and The Sequel, Jean Hanff Korelitz

Last Seen, Christopher Castellani

You, Caroline Kepnes

Join Jenna on tour—she’s absolutely a joy to listen to on writing and probably any other topic! Dates HERE.

And do grab Murder Your Darlings—who doesn’t love a tell-all thriller set in this ridiculous industry we all love so much?

Hey—if you’re reading this in January 2026, it’s not too late to join our Blueprint Sprint and get in on a rapid-fire roadmap to writing the book you want to write this year (instead of writing 100K words in search of it… ask me how I know!)

First Blueprint post below—upgrade your subscription to get started.

Episode Transcript Below!

SPONSORSHIP MESSAGE

Hey, this is Jennie. Happy New Year! If you’re a subscriber to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, you can join us in our Blueprint Challenge, which is starting on January 12. We’re going to be working on new book ideas, books where we’re stuck, and books that we’re revising, and using the Blueprint framework to help us get unstuck, get clarity, get confidence, and move forward. KJ is leading the charge this time with some write-alongs, some Ask Me Anything sessions, and all kinds of good stuff to help you on your way. I’ll be jumping in as well, and I’ll be cheering you as you get your books into shape and get ready to write forward in 2026. Details are in the show notes, and we’d love to have you join us.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it’s recording—yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Hey, writers, KJ here. I just interviewed Jenna Blum, and any of you who have listened to her when she does the interviews on the A Mighty Blaze Podcast will not be one bit surprised to hear that we had a great time talking all things writing, but most specifically, writing big, which Jenna has absolutely done with her current book, Murder Your Darlings. Murder Your Darlings is a contemporary thriller and a real departure from Jenna’s very popular historical fiction, a departure that is totally in keeping with Jenna’s own enthusiastic, passionate personality. As her own agent said, Jenna’s earlier work was elegant and restrained, although absolutely still powerful, as you know if you’ve read it, but in this one, in Murder Your Darlings, Jenna lets herself loose. We had a wonderful time talking about it, and I think you’re going to have a really good time listening. Jenna, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us for the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast.

Jenna Blum

You’re so welcome. I am the one who’s honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I am really excited. So, listeners, as you probably heard in the intro, which I haven’t recorded yet, I asked Jenna to join us because she’s doing a big thing. She’s making a jump into a new genre for her, and I can totally relate, and I suspect many of you can too. Her new book, which is out approximately now, as you hear this, is kill your dollar, Kill your darlings. [intended title: Murder Your Darlings] And it is one of those, like, if somebody wrote a book just for me, it would be this kind of book, or this possibly exact book, which is such a thrill. It’s, you know, that combination of the thing that makes me my buy now list, which is, isn’t a thing like that thing where you’re like, if you tell me the book is about such and such, I’m like, yes, yeah, just, just take my money. So it’s that, plus that really great, commercial, friendly, accessible, like the voice I want to read. It’s not—I mean, I don’t know if any of those adjectives thrilled you—but easy reading is hard writing, and nobody knows that more than me, and you do that very well.

Jenna Blum

That is so kind of you, KJ. Thank you. So I’m going to rudely start out by issuing a small correction, but the...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh no.

Jenna Blum

Actually, no, no, it’s fine. It’s Murder Your Darlings. And they’re...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, okay, sorry.

Jenna Blum

Popular phrase. And one of the reasons I call the book Murder Your Darlings, as opposed to kill your darlings, which people tend to gravitate to, is that the book is really about writerly appropriation in the biggest way, about story thievery in the biggest possible go big or go home kind of way. And the phrase kill your darlings is itself an appropriation, which I didn’t know until I started writing this. But the original phrase is Murder Your Darlings. It was coined by a gentleman called Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1914, and he was giving a lecture on good writing, and he said, whenever you think you’ve done something exceptionally clever in your manuscript, by all means, put it in, and then go in and take it out: murder your darlings. And then William Faulkner ran with it, and Stephen King ran with it, and it became really popularized. And I thought, how cool to go back to the original in a book about appropriation. So it’s Murder Your Darlings.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s also—that’s better. I can’t believe I got it wrong, because it has this great cover with the quill and the blood. And I—it that’s, that’s better. It’s just it, I don’t know, kill your darlings has also become a very glib phrase. So to switch it to Murder Your Darlings kind of makes—kind of gives you that record scratch moment of like, oh, oh wait. Oh! Right? So I like it.

Jenna Blum

I appreciate that. Thank you. I mean, I myself was thinking, kill your darling, so I love to, sort of like, care what of that phrase, that Murder Your Darlings had a sort of a weightier sound to it. And despite, like, the joy that I had in writing about writing, and I hope all your listeners just like me, I’m—my must order now books are all about writers, about writers about writing, especially fiction about writing. I had so much joy in that, but the book also has some pretty weighty subjects at its heart as well. So I feel like that weightier murder is somehow indicative of...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Well, that brings us really well to the next question that I wanted to ask you, which is, what was your intention around this? This is definitely, you—now I think probably we step out with every book, but this is you stepping out and playing big, which is, you know, is a new theme that we’re talking about around here. So what was your intention for Murder Your Darlings? What did you want it to be?Jenna Blum

I love that you’re doing the go big or go home theme. I always think that way. I’m not a quiet writer, not probably, not a quiet person.KJ Dell’Antonia

You’re not really, no, not—that’s not what I would say. Oh, Jenna, she’s so shy and retiring...yeah. Yeah.Jenna Blum

So I had so much joy and so much fun writing Murder Your Darlings, because all I had to do was unpack my life. She’s such a wallflower. My sister saw a photo of me with a megaphone at a—as an activist at a rally, and she’s like, nobody here is surprised. This is what I’ve been living with for all the years. Anyway. So my intent with this was really just to have some fun, honestly. I have been working on historical fiction, and I’m known primarily for historical fiction, and I was working on historical fiction when the idea for Murder Your Darlings came to me, and I felt like I had two books trying to elbow their way through a doorway at the same time. And because I am more known for historical fiction, and my editor had already green lighted that idea, I was very dutifully working along on it—and it was a terrific idea, I have to say, like on paper. It was an idea on paper that should have been good, but it really wasn’t. There was no juice to it. So I kept writing, and then thinking, right, what was the motivation? What did the character actually want in that scene? And then I would realize I had no idea and didn’t care. And so I was thinking about Murder Your Darlings, which is about a female writer—mid career, female writer who falls in love with a stratospherically successful and very charming male writer and then finds out that he may or may not be killing female writers to take their stories, or is it one of the number of women who are stalking him, especially this very persistent stalker named the Rabbit. And so I had this idea kind of elbowing its way into my head, and I thought, I don’t, I don’t know if I’m qualified to write a thriller. I’ve written a thriller. Who am I to do this? And then I read Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot, which is so good, so contemporary, so fresh, so funny, so smart, so everything. And I stalked her. I called her, got her phone number, called her, and said, how was it for you making this pivot, going from quote, literary fiction end quote, to writing a thriller? And she said, I just write what I want to write and let other people market it. You should write what you write. And I thought, Babu, because I had always loved reading about writers. I’ve always wanted to write about writers, and she kind of gave me—well, she literally gave me permission to do it.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And like you said, it really has some bigger themes around that. Did they come with? Did they come with the idea? Did some of them come with the idea, and some of them had to get pulled in later? Like, how? How did that piece of it play out?

Jenna Blum

Yeah, great question. I am a writer who always knows what her theme is going to be. I would have a mission statement on the board in my study saying, like, here’s what this book is about, and then I hope it reaches the reader through osmosis, as opposed to me being preached. So the plot has to express that idea. But then I am so plot focused when I’m writing and just wanting to get all the blocking down and get this play down so the reader doesn’t get bored that I have to go back through often and shade in the theme and the emotional resonances I hope are there. And one of the very big themes for me in Murder Your Darlings is of codependency, and what makes a smart, successful woman with a stable life, a good community, who’s a teacher, who’s a writer, who has really built her life for herself, fall for somebody who she knows very well may be sketchy AF. It’s like, okay, I’m just going to keep my hand on the hot stove. You know? Why is that? And I feel like, if you know a woman like this, if you were a woman like this, you are a woman like this. I certainly have been this way my whole life, like falling for the sketchy dudes and feeling great shame about it. I thought, I really want to write this book for all of us, or women or men—I should say this is not gender specific.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Jenna Blum

Or that person who’s like, don’t open that door, and you open the door anyway.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Jenna Blum

Why?

KJ Dell’Antonia

And people are like, so many flags, and you’re like, I kind of like flags.

Jenna Blum

But he’s... but he’s so cute.

KJ Dell’Antonia

He looks so good in red.

Jenna Blum

Right? Exactly. And I have to say that the relationship at the center of the book between Sam, the female writer, and William, who’s the male writer, they do have some really rare commonalities too that are hard for Sam to overlook. And she comes from a trauma background, so she can’t trust her own instincts. And so I wanted to, as in all of my novels, work with people who have survived trauma: how they react in the atmosphere and the aftermath, and how their behavior gets kind of torqued or twisted, and sometimes makes it difficult for them to make the healthy decision, which makes...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Right!

Jenna Blum

Good fiction. Good fiction is about people making bad, bad, bad decisions, so...

KJ Dell’Antonia

And you make him real too. He’s not just bad for the hell of it. You know, it’s not—I— that’s one of the things that is a pet peeve of mine in books, is when you’re like, yeah, that person had really bad parents that really messed them up. But why? Like, yeah. I mean, you can’t have everyone and their parents mess them up. And I would totally do that instantly. That’s my beige flag. Would you like to know how their great, great grandparents screwed everyone up with epigenetics?

Jenna Blum

It’s like the poem, right? Is it the Larkin poem? They

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, yeah, “They screwed him up,” yeah, yeah. But I always know, like, who screwed them up? And hey, who screwed them up? And who screwed them up?

Jenna Blum

That’s a funny thing. Thank you for saying that. So William, and a third of the book is narrated from William’s point of view, and then Sam and the stalker the Rabbit get the other two thirds of the book, and Sam and the Rabbit go back and forth, and William has his own narration at the center of the book. I have to say, I loved writing William. I really did. He’s first person, like, in the guy’s skin. He is really arrogant, like, really narcissistic, and he was, and could never use a, you know, five cent word when a $30,000 word will do. But I really loved writing him, because, as you said, you’re right, like, he doesn’t, he doesn’t mean to be any of those things. And I mean, we all recognize a narcissist, which is such a hot word these days, and I mean, he is a legitimate narcissist, but he doesn’t need to be narcissistic. He just is that way, and he has his reasons that are very clear for being that way. And it wasn’t until—this is when you ask him, before, what did I put in afterwards?—it wasn’t until I was really done writing his first draft, and one of my writer friends said to me, but like, what were his parents like? And I thought, I don’t care. Like, I don’t care what his home life was like. I don’t care about any of that. But when I did go into that room, because I knew I had to, there were things in that room that were a chamber of horrors, that were like, truly grotesque. And I thought, this actually makes sense to help explain why he’s motivated the way he is.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And why she would be drawn to him. Like, you know, he’s not just—there’s there is more in there. I, you know, not to excuse, not to excuse William. Is he the first character you’ve written that was, that was like that, deeply narcissistic, and in the first person?

Jenna Blum

That is a great question. He’s not the first character I’ve written who is narcissistic. In my first novel, Those Who Save Us, there’s a Nazi officer who is deeply narcissistic and also totally unaware of his own qualities, which I guess actually defines a narcissist, like they have...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh yeah, yeah. I think if you know you’re a narcissist, you’re not a narcissist.

Jenna Blum

Right? Exactly, right, right. Nobody’s going to be like, I’m a narcissist. Who cares? I love being a narcissist. They’re more like the world serves to please me, and if it doesn’t, then the world is wrong. But this is the first I’ve written from the first person, and in fact, this is the first novel I’ve written anything in the first person. So the Rabbit in this book is first person—the stalker—and William is in the first person. Sam is third person. And I haven’t written in first person since graduate school, and when I did, I was kind of soundly spanked for it. And they’re like; there are graduate school scenes in this book as well. And in Murder Your Darlings, the workshop scenes that I love so much, because I pretty much just airlifted them from the [unintelligible].

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, which is the best. Absolutely.

Jenna Blum

And it’s so fun, so much fun to write, like grad school, boot camp, you know whatever... I’m here for all of that. Murders the people who it doesn’t make stronger, but, but yeah, I remember writing...

KJ Dell’Antonia

So what was that like to—what is it like to switch your normal writing perspective, so the POV to first person? And did you, did you do it from the right away? Or did you, you know, did you write it the wrong way and then switch it? How did—and did it bother you? Were you like, oh, no, I don’t know if I can do this?

Jenna Blum

No. I loved it very much. I loved it so much. And William was actually not even supposed to be in the book, so I can talk about that in a minute, but the first, first person character to come in was the Rabbit, and she wasn’t originally supposed to be there either. It was supposed to be Sam narrating, and the third limited, which is my lane, and I’ve been in that for years and years. And I do love it. I love Sam’s voice as well. But the Rabbit came to me on Christmas Day. I want to say 2023, and I was thinking about Sam’s relationship with William, and how Sam, which is still in Murder Your Darlings, gets very jealous, because she knows that William is really opaque about his relationships with other women, and he cannot resist the charms of the opposite gender, shall we say. So Sam is stalking him. She still stalks him a little bit in this book. And I thought, what if one of the other women were also stalking him alongside Sam? And what would that look like? And I was supposed to be at a friend’s house on Christmas Day. Our whole family got the flu. I was lying in my apartment in Boston feeling wretchedly sorry for myself. It was raining. It wasn’t even snowing. It was a sort of Dickensian awfulness. And I was lying around feeling bad for myself and thinking about this, as one does. And then all of a sudden, I jumped up and ran into my study and put my hands on the keyboard and wrote what would become the prologue of the novel. It is unchanged, in that.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Wow!

Jenna Blum

And she just came out of freaking nowhere. And I will tell you, it was like plugging my hands into a socket. Like, every time I sat down to write the Rabbit, I just felt electrified. Her voice is not my voice. She’s very colloquial. She’s the person who tells it like it is, speaks truth to power, sits down at the kitchen table and says, like, look, here’s what you got to do. You all just follow suit, we’re going to do, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she just really is very plain spoken and very funny and very sarcastic. I think she’s also not me in terms of, like, what she looks like, in terms of her background. She comes from a poverty background. She comes from an abuse background. She’s a bookseller, which actually I was. But it was astonishing that, like, every day, when I looked at my schedule and I knew I had to write the Rabbit, I was like, oh, thank God, because every time I put my hands on the keyboard, she was there. And I just got such a kick out of her—stalking William, stalking Sam. I think she’s amazing. And there’s a big surprise tied up to the Rabbit. So not to spoil anything, but those of you who love, you know, your twists in your fiction will, I think, be—hopefully—be gratified by, by the twist with the Rabbit. William came in about halfway through. I want to say maybe the first draft. I was going Sam, Rabbit, Sam, Rabbit, Sam, Rabbit, and I was going into the second section of the book, act two, and I was going to continue doing that. And I had this whole outline. Sam, Rabbit, Sam, Rabbit, Sam, Rabbit—rising action. I knew all my plot points all sketched out. And then one day, I was like, what if, instead of sort of reheating these leftovers and trying to make the action continue to step ladder up, what if William gets a section in all of his William glory and all of his narcissistic glory? And that kind of gives the reader a little bit more reason to be hopeful for Sam and also scared for her, because we know from his perspective what his life was really like, and he’s not being truthful with her about it. And I called my editor and said, I’m going to do this thing, maybe, with your permission. Like, do you mind if I write, you know, some sample William chapters? And I was so nervous about it. I had this whole defense about it. Here’s why this is going to be good. She was like; I think that’s a brilliant idea. Do the whole section from his point of view, if you want to, if you want to. I think that’s great. And again, sitting down to write, I felt like I plug my hands into this socket. But William grounds the whole book with this sort of dark electricity, I think, because he is...

KJ Dell’Antonia

So you already had it from the other points of view? Did you have it planned, or did you have it written?

Jenna Blum

I had it planned. I had a plan. I had bits of scenes. I had snippets of scenes and chapters. But I have scenes they dearly love that are not in the book at all because William usurped...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Because he can’t—yeah, he doesn’t—well, and he is not there.

Jenna Blum

Access, no. But, I mean, I kind of flipped them inside out in like a pocket, into, like, other parts of the book, so that, like, I know what Sam and the Rabbit are doing during William’s sections. And you see them, of course...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, yeah.

Jenna Blum

From his point of view instead. It was not a darling I had to murder. Like, again, like sitting down to write his point of view was a relief, in some ways, to get out of my own skin. Getting into somebody else’s skin, in the first person, is the farthest you can go from yourself if that character is not, in fact, you. And that’s why I love writing fiction. I get out of my own skin into somebody else’s skin; walk around in that virtual reality. I just freaking love it. It’s the best part—kind of insanity there is.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So with this project, what did you love most about the process? Sounds like there’s going to be—sounds like there’s a competition, because it really sounds like you had—I mean, I’m sure there were some hard moments. We’ll get to that. That’s my next question, actually. But what did you love most? What do you love most about how it turned out, and what did you love most about doing it?

Jenna Blum

I love all the things. I literally have goosebumps when you say this. I mean, it is a competition, because I love this book so much. And I know you’re not supposed to say it about your own books, but I do. I just love this book, and it might be my favorite book that I’ve written. My favorite. I love it so, so much. I hope readers feel the same way. I think one of the reasons I love it so much is I think it’s really funny. Like, there was never a single day where I sat down to work on this book that I didn’t snort laugh, like, in the middle of the scene, because William is so charming and yet so horrible and fatuous and whatever. So he really made me laugh, whether I’m viewing him from the outside or from inside. And the worse he gets the more funny I thought he was. The Rabbit, likewise, in her speaking truth to power kind of way. And then Sam sections allowed me to spill the tea about the weirdness and the wonderfulness of the writer life, much of which is just so peculiar, whether you’re on tour or you’re trying to, you know, zhuzh an idea into being and you can’t quite get it, or, you know, being in a relationship with another writer. I mean, all of those things are just—they’re just nuts. And so every day I sat down and laughed and laughed and laughed and, like, cackled in my apartment, scaring the dog. And I thought it was so much fun. And now looking at the book and, like, holding it in my hands, I can open it to any page and be like, yeah, oh my God, I totally remember that line that was so great. So I hope people have fun with it. The early reviews that have come in have been, thank God, you know, Inshallah, they were great. And that’s what people have been saying. It’s a delicious book. It’s a fun book. It’s a delightful book. Nobody’s ever said this about my books before.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s totally very different. It’s totally, really different than your other work, right?

Jenna Blum

Yes. Well, I mean, I think so. Like, when you’re not writing historical fiction, fiction requires—or at least it did for me—because I’m writing about big, serious things, you’re writing about World War Two, it’s probably not going to be all that funny. But I feel like the third person voice that I’ve been using most of my authorial career has been hopefully elegant and restrained, because I really, you know, working with my word choices—every author does—but I’m trying to maintain a very even narrative tone. This one is just so freaking off the chain, because I got to write in a contemporary way. I got to get into the first person, other people’s voices, other people’s experiences. It was interesting. My agent, who’s very, very smart, and she is French, and when I came to her and said, you know that historical fiction that you thought I was writing, it’s actually not that. It’s a thriller. That’s something different. She read it, and I was, again, sort of terrified of what she would say. And she called me, and she was like, [imitating her French accent] “Jenna, I think what you are doing is smart, but more than that, I think it is brave, because your whole life you have hide behind this voice you use for your historicals. And instead, this is like, really, you taking the gloves off. This is your voice. This is you.” And I just felt so validated and empowered by that observation.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That is exactly why we were—we are here. If this is—it’s so, so meet. We are meeting for the first time. Lots of times when I get somebody on the podcast, we’ve never encountered each other, and your vibe is so Murder Your Darlings. And really, you know, at this point in your life and in your career, this is really, you know, who you’re presenting as. And I, of course, don’t know how you presented, you know—maybe we should go back seven years to before a lot of things that have evolved in your life. I don’t know whether you were maybe a little more elegant and restrained yourself. I have no idea.

Jenna Blum

Uh uhh, never.

KJ Dell’Antonia

No?

Jenna Blum

Nope.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I mean, it must feel so great to have released that part of yourself into this much, you know, loved part of your world.

Jenna Blum

It just feels so much easier in a lot of ways. I remember—and I’m thinking about this while we’re talking—lying on the couch and watching the You series by Caroline Kepnes, like, based on a series of books that she’s written that are really tremendously good. And I remember I was looking for a binge at the time. I just finished something that was fantastic. And, like, you know, what am I going to watch? And I clicked into You, and I was so happy that I did because I thought, this woman writes the way people actually speak. Her dialogue is so smart. It’s so Cracker Jack. It’s so spot on. And I am now friends with Caroline. Caroline is amazing, and I remember saying that to her the first time I met her, just as a total fangirl. Like, how did you do that? She was like, this is just how I write, and I have not been giving myself permission for years and years to do that.

But in fact, again, my agent would say to me, you know, [imitating her French accent] “You write these, these book, and you go to your readings and people think they’re going to meet, like, Margaret Thatcher or something, because books are very serious and very heavy and very, you know, weighty about this big topic, and then you are a goofball.” And I am!

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love the French accent you are giving us here. As a student of French, I’m particularly enjoying it.

Jenna Blum

Oh, I’m so sorry then, because my agent hates when I do this. She hates it. She’s like; please don’t use the French accent. I’m like, I have to use it. And she’s in the book, and her name is Mireille, and I wrote her exactly as she speaks. And she—my editor, whose name is Sara Nelson—is in the book as Patricia, and I pulled no punches or even tried to disguise them whatsoever. And they like to bicker over who is more important in the book, Mireille or Patricia. So that’s super fun. But I mean, I do think there is something really liberating about entering a scene, entering a chapter, and thinking, I don’t have to fancify this language. I don’t have to smooth over its edges. If I want to say somebody is sketchy AF, I say they’re sketchy AF.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, I don’t have to figure out how someone would have said that in 1942, which is—I mean, I do—I don’t want to—your past work, which I haven’t read all of, but what I have read is very much infused with a humanity and a female power. It may be elegant and restrained, but it’s in there. It’s like, you know, coiled, but it’s in there. So I don’t want to propose that those books aren’t really you. But this is, you know, this is definitely more who you come out of the box as.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, there won’t be such a mismatch with this for readers who are coming to my work for the first time. If you do that and then you see me in person, you’ll be like, oh, this totally tracks, as opposed to... And I think one of the great things about writing fiction is you can be in that sort of disguise. And my previous fiction, the historical fiction—and I did have one contemporary novel in there as well—I think the topics were just not as funny to me. Like, writing life is very funny, and contemporary life is funny. But I think that writing historical fiction enables you to get in a time machine and go back and put on a different set of clothes, and that is reflected in the narration. And this, I think, shares some commonality with my other fiction, in that, like William, I am a friend of big vocabulary. Like, I love my vocabulary. I love to deploy. But it just feels more bouncy to me. Like, it just feels buoyant and super energized. And I love it. Like, I have three more thrillers lined up in my head on the runway that I would love to write.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s amazing.

Jenna Blum

So I’m really excited about—I hope this book does well. So everybody should buy it, please, so I can write more thrillers. Please.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Everyone do that. We’re going to put all the links for that in the show notes. So one more question before we turn to me asking you about other people’s books. What was the hardest thing about writing this? I have a guess for what you’re going to say, but I want to hear what you say first.

Jenna Blum

I don’t know if there was a hard thing about writing this book.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I was going to say; maybe it was giving yourself permission to do it in the first place.

Jenna Blum

Oh, interesting. No. I mean, that’s more about marketing, in some ways. I had to get permission. I didn’t want my agent to be like, no, this sucks. I mean, she would try to sell it no matter what, but I really...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, you’re such a disappointment.

Jenna Blum

Right? If we must write it. Nash, my editor as well—I’ve been with my agent for 24 years, and I had been with my editor for, like, almost 10 years now, which is pretty amazing.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, that’s the dream.

Jenna Blum

So glad to have one on one shoulder and one on the other shoulder. So I didn’t want them to both be like, oh gosh, she’s writing a thriller, everybody writing a thriller. What was the hard thing about writing this book? I think the fact that I’m no longer writing it, honestly. It’s one of those, like, tough act to follow books. You know, I think about other ideas and I’m like, but they’re not darlings, though. So, like, I really had so much fun with this book that when I was done, I was really bummed. I will say that there is a paragraph toward the end of the book that is, for me, the heart and the soul of the entire book. And I’m always curious about other writers, whether they have these paragraphs that are really the sort of nut graph of the whole piece, to use a journalistic term—like, the whole, the heart of it. And I cannot read that paragraph without crying. And I revised this book eleventy-two times, and I could never get through it without weeping. I read the whole thing aloud when I was in the copy edit stage, and I was like, you know. So, I mean, is that hard? I don’t know if that’s hard, but it was like a part that stabbed me, I think. And then the rest of it is just, like, a pure freaking joy. And I really hope people feel the same way, because, I mean, it’s just—why not bring joy?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Why not bring joy? That is the thing that has stuck with me most about stuff I’ve read most recently about writing. And unfortunately, I’ve already forgotten where I saw it, but someone was saying, if you’re read, why should people read your book? What are you—what are you giving them? They were like, if, if your whole point is, but I worked so hard, that is not how this works. But yeah, like, great. I mean yay. But also, I mean, what’s in it for me, man? I’m the reader, and what’s in it for me? And joy is the answer that I want. So I think it’s going to be the answer everyone else wants too.

Jenna Blum

And, like deliciousness and fun and hopefully—I mean, I write all of my books at the bottom line, at the common denominator, to help people feel less alone in their experiences. So if people read this book and they’re like, oh my God, I was totally—say I’m walking into this relationship—oh my God, oh my God, that’s me, oh my God. Like, I really hope that people see themselves in her.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, it’s the gift of getting yourself, getting out of your head and also seeing yourself more clearly.

Jenna Blum

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That, to me, is the hope with fiction.

Jenna Blum

Yep, totally agree. You get to escape. You get to have an adventure. You get to feel the work through somebody else’s experience. And then you also get to feel like, whatever your weirdo experience—all weirdos—like, you’re not alone in that experience. We are here.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love it. All right. Well, switching gears completely, tell me what you’ve read recently where, again, we’ve talked really hard about this—this book was a leap. It was a great leap for you. You’re playing big. What have you read recently where you could tell that the writer was also playing big, going, going to the outside of their abilities?

Jenna Blum

Yeah, I think—I mean, I know so many talented writers. I think they’re just trying out different keys the same way I am. And my answer really runs along my own track, because there are a lot of writers I know who are writing thriller or true crime disguised as fiction type of stuff, who have been primarily and previously known as quote literary fiction, end quote, and just, like, a term that that I don’t like. But when I say that, I really mean when the attention is paid so much to the language and the characters, and you can be a little more experimental in form, et cetera. But I think really, like Jean Hanff Korelitz, who I mentioned earlier.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yep, I loved The Plot and The Sequel. They’re both great.

Jenna Blum

I love The Plot and The Sequel. I did not have the pleasure of interviewing Jean for The Plot, although somebody on [unintelligible] did. But I did have the pleasure of interviewing her for The Sequel. And I was fascinated by, like, that is a go big thing, because everybody’s like, oh, The Sequel is not as good as the original. So even to write a sequel in the first place is going really big in my work.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And then to, to have it be what it was. I actually, in some ways, thought it was better. But, I mean, they were both great. I really enjoyed both of them, but The Sequel was just like, “ooohh, oooww,” in the way it just... Anyway. It was, it was very skillful.

Jenna Blum

I loved that it was really ingenious. And I loved talking to her about thrillers. I was like, how do you do this when you have a plot and you need to figure out, you know, at the end, how do you surprise the reader? And she said, it’s like going down a long hallway filled with doors, and you keep opening a door and closing the door. You know, that’s not the answer to the plot problem. That’s not the answer. That’s not the answer. That’s not the answer. And at the end, you have only one door left, and that is your thriller solution. Like, that’s the twist ending. And I was like, people plan that? I mean, I have to plan everything. I plan going to the market, you know. I’m like that person. And, you know, she didn’t. She doesn’t plan it. And I thought that was [unintelligible].

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, I too am a planner. And that boggles my mind. I don’t mind if the plan then changes, but without—I could not. I cannot operate without the plan.

Jenna Blum

I can’t write without the plan, even if I’m not writing a thriller. So to write a thriller that is still satisfying and not have that delicate calibration of, yes, this is the surprise that I’m going to plant in chapter 39—that’s astonishing. So she is one. And my friend Chris Castellani, who has the book coming out February 17—I want to say its called Last Seen. And Chris is a beautiful literary writer. He had a book called A Kiss from Maddalena that grew into a series of three books. His last book was called Leading Men, and he got a review in The New York Times that said his prose was—I memorized this, not because I’m jealous, don’t worry—was opaline, and likened him to F. Scott Fitzgerald. And I remember calling out that review, and I was like, sir, you should get that as a tramp stamp. I certainly would. And so he has this reputation as this fine, fine literary writer, and he decided to go into true crime slash thriller territory alongside me. And I’m so glad our books are out at almost the same time so we can kind of keep each other company in this venture. So Chris’s book, Last Seen, is about the victims of the smiley face killer, and they are all of these young men who are killed by the smiley face killer, narrating from within the frozen rivers in which they are trapped, dead. So they’re, like, sort of narrating from beyond.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Well, that’s still experimental. He did not fully leave his form.

Jenna Blum

He didn’t, and it’s...

KJ Dell’Antonia

He’s taking his form with him.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, he is, in a way that I don’t know if I have or not. And I would leave that for greater minds to determine. I mean, I hope that what I’m writing is still smart. And again, there’s the big vocabulary, but, but there does seem to be more of a jump in some ways. But Chris—it is a little sort of Virgin Suicides, I guess, but from the point of view of all of these lost boys. But you also get what their family members are saying, or the people who love them, the last time they saw them. And it’s this beautiful, sort of kaleidoscopic endeavor that also provides satisfying answers as to who did this. So he’s taking his craft and applying it to almost a whodunit in a way. And I think it’s really ingenious and really fascinating to watch this track change from the outside, where I feel like it’s almost like T. S. Eliot is writing a thriller—like that’s kind of how it reads—except with more sex and death. And Chris and I are going to speak together at Politics and Prose on March 5, I want to say, and we...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Now I can put that in the show notes, because this will be out. If anybody’s in the DC area, you could hit Politics and Prose.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, come on down.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That would be amazing.

Jenna Blum

We are calling our panel the sex and death panel, or the sex and death conversation, because both our books are so sexy and so deathly. And then my friend Alex George, who I love, said, well, you should invite an accountant to be on your panel, and then it could be sex, death, and tax.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yes.

Jenna Blum

Which we’re not going to do, but...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh well.

Jenna Blum

But that’s funny.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh well, they’ll, they’ll charge sales tax or something. It’ll—they’re still taxes. Taxes will always be with us.

Jenna Blum

Right. Exactly. Sex, death, and taxes. So come on out for sex, death, and taxes. And the book Last Seen. And it’s just—it’s really haunting. It’s a very haunting book.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love this. Well, I know that what’s next for you is a pretty big tour for this, which I will put all the links to in the show notes, not to raise the bar. But are you? Are you already working at—this is sort of, this is actually more like a craft question. Are you already working on something new? Are you noodling something new? How do you manage this process part of your writing?

Jenna Blum

I’m noodling something new. For all of the ventures into new territory, I haven’t been able to change my spots yet in terms of process, which, for somebody writing thrillers, is not great, because you can, you know, hopefully turn them out faster than fiction. To me, the historical fiction requires so much research that took me much longer to write. But I do have those ideas lined up. I think what I like to do with ideas is I kind of roll them around in my head like marbles to see if they are going to stick around, or if they’re going to roll down a hole and disappear somewhere, like a little rabbit hole. And then you know that they don’t have stick-to-itiveness. All three of the ideas that I’m thinking about are still there. The thing for me is I’m a very single-task person, and when I’m promoting, I’m really promoting. Like, my tour—amazingly bananas. Like, I am going to be in a different place every single day connecting with readers, like Sam in Murder Your Darlings, the heroine. I write to connect with readers. I don’t write for the joy of the writing, although I love this book and enjoyed writing it so much. Like, I write because I want it to meet you guys and be out there, like talking about my book, talking about other books. So when I’m on tour, I don’t actually write. And I was saying this to my friend the other day, Dawn Tripp, who’s also an amazing writer, who wrote Jackie, and has been on tour. She did something like 162—I’m making it up—but she...

KJ Dell’Antonia

I actually saw her at... outside Boston, the Newburyport Book Festival. Oh, I know, which is amazing, which I also will be at. Yeah. That’s a great festival.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, it’s so good. And I’m going to be in conversation with my editor, so if you have any...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, there? At the Newburyport festival? I’m sure—I usually go. So that sounds great.

Jenna Blum

Please come, please come. Because that’ll be really fun, because she can spill the tea on, on, like, how disorganized I might actually be. But Dawn—I was saying—she’s like, oh, I’m home now. I’m so happy I can write. I was like; I can’t imagine how you would have written on that tour. And she said, oh, no, I write every day, because if I don’t, I don’t feel great, you know, I don’t feel great in my own skin. And I was like, that’s just nuts, man. Like, I’m going—I’m done with this book. I’m going to Nordstrom Rack. I’m going to go shopping. I’m not touching another book for five years. But I do, I’m kind of looking forward to being back this summer. I have a couple of months that I think are slower, and I want to develop those ideas. So let’s see if I can, you know...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Let him audition a little more loudly.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, I love that audition. That’s so great. I’m going to steal that, but I’ll credit you.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, yeah. It’s all yours. All right. This was so great. Thank you so much. This was a super fun conversation, and I’m going to enjoy creating the intro and writing up the show notes for it. And, gosh, I hope everybody goes out and buys this too. It is a wholly enjoyable experience, a great way to cleanse your palate from your January, your December, whatever, whatever that may have been. And now in January, you know, come Murder Your Darlings with Jenna. You’ll—you won’t be sorry.

Jenna Blum

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This is a sheer, pure delight. Thank you.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Thank you. Okay, writers, until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

In this Bonus Episode, Jennie Nash talks with physician-writer Carolyn Roy Bornstein about how one Blueprint exercise brought clarity to a long-stalled book project. By identifying a single ideal reader, Carolyn was able to see exactly who she was writing for and shape A Prescription for Burnout with purpose and focus.

They discuss why audience clarity matters and how the Blueprint can unlock momentum at the right moment in the writing process.

Our guest, Carolyn Roy Bornstein, MD is a retired pediatrician, narrative medicine teacher, and author whose work explores the healing power of reflective writing. Her forthcoming book, A Prescription for Burnout: Restorative Writing for Healthcare Professionals, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Carolyn draws on her clinical experience, her own journey through trauma and recovery, and her work with healthcare trainees to help writers—and caregivers—find voice, purpose, and resilience through the written word.

Join Us for the Blueprint Challenge Starting January 12

Hi there supporters and subscribers! Many of you are joining the Winter Blueprint for a Book, and if that’s you, you must opt-in to receive posts, AMAs, write-alongs and podcasts. In 10 weeks, future you will be thanking current you for all the work you put in to figure out what you want this book to be—and how to best get it there, whether you’re starting fresh with a new draft or revising something that still hasn’t come together.

If you don’t opt in (how-to below), this will be the only Blueprint-related email that comes your way. (So no worries and no extra emails for those of us having a normal chaotic writing season!)

And for those of you who haven’t yet signed up—WHAT are you waiting for? This is a killer deal—put in an hour a week (okay, maybe more some weeks) and you could have a blueprint in hand by March—with a cohort, AMAs, write-alongs and plenty of help. Last chance—or at least, this is the last time we’ll prod you. If you decide to jump in next week, we’ll be here.

Want to learn more? We published a whole series about the joys and benefits of the Blueprint:

* What the Blueprint is and why Jennie made it

* Introducing the winter book coach hosts

* Overcoming Pantsing Pitfalls: How the Blueprint Method Can Save Your Story

* The Blueprint is the Solution for Time-Strapped Writers

* How to Use a Blueprint for Revision

* Befriending the Blueprint

* Using Mindfulness to Master the Blueprint

Not yet a paid subscriber? There’s still time—in fact, there’s still a special deal in place for those who want to jump in: 20% off an annual subscription until 1/15/25, and you can spend the next ten weeks figuring out what you want this book to be, instead of writing 250K words over the course of the year to achieve the same thing. Ask me how I know.

To join Blueprint for a Book, you must opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (orange).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Winter 2025 Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions. (It is MUCH easier to do this step on your phone.)

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book Winter 2025 in the top menu).

And then we answer the question: would we turn the page?

Kids, those first pages have to WORK. People download a book, or grab an audio sample, often without the benefit of your flap copy or the beautiful cover, and you need to sell them on sticking around from that first minute.

The two entries for this episode:

* The Burning Truth is a commercial thriller centered on a woman whose sister’s death is reopened when a teenage true-crime podcaster starts investigating a case that hits dangerously close to home.

* Camil and Bloom is contemporary literary fiction about a middle-aged woman at a bar grappling with being ghosted, using sharp observational detail to explore loneliness, aging, and stalled lives.

Our takeaway is that a first page must work with extreme efficiency: it needs to establish character, stakes, and story direction all at once. Vivid details and strong writing aren’t enough on their own; those details have to be focused and clearly tied to the protagonist’s emotional core so readers understand whose story this is and why it matters. A compelling hook helps, but clarity of perspective and purpose is what ultimately makes a reader turn the page.

#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We also invite you to join the upcoming Blueprint Sprint.

In this episode you’ll learn:

* Why a full-manuscript read is often the wrong first step in revision

* The mindset shift every writer needs before diving into revisions

* How to use the Blueprint to create a clear, confident revision plan before touching your pages

Join the Blueprint Sprint

Starting January 12 and rolling though February, KJ Dell’Antonia and Jennie Nash will lead you through the 14 foundational questions that every writer should ask of themselves and their book, whether you’re just getting started, are mid-draft or starting on on the whatever-number revision with weekly assignments, live events, workbooks and updated access to all the Blueprint resources. All you need to do is be a paid subscriber and stay tuned—we’ll let you know how to get signed up.

I NEED a January Blueprint!

APPLICATIONS CLOSED What if you want even MORE? Then you could be one of a very few #AmWriting subscribers who join our first ever Blueprint Sprint cohort. 6 weeks of working together and write-alongs, 5 group-only live sessions, which will be recorded for anyone who can’t attend and a members-only community dedicated to helping you create a Blueprint that leads you to the book you want to write, ending with direct feedback from me and from Jennie on your flap copy and 3 page Inside-Outline.

We’re keeping this small on purpose—we max out at 10 and we might drop that down—so applications to join this group open today and will be evaluated on a first-come, first serve basis. Once we have 10 people, we will close down the application, so get yours in early! Early-bird pricing is $1000 until December 22, after that the price goes up to $1200 (if there are spaces left by then).

What are we looking for? 10 writers who are prepared to commit to the process and to the cohort, who do what they set out to do when they set out to do it, who welcome constructive feedback and are willing to do what it takes to build a blueprint for the book they want to create. Writers who know that sometimes you must look a hard truth in the face and cut your losses, that what goes in the scrap heap is rarely resurrected but that the scrap heap is a necessary part of the work. Writers who won’t take no for an answer, but can hear “not this” and feel both disappointment and a burning determination that the next effort will be the one that gets there.

Also: no a******s.

What will you need to apply? We want to hear about your professional and publishing backgrounds, but no publishing experience is necessary. We want to know where you are with this current project, but “still noodling” is a fine answer. The primary requirements are first, a readiness to do the work and second and more ephemerally, our sense of what makes a cohesive cohort.

If that sounds like you, here you go—the time to apply is now.

Links & Resources

* Learn more about the Blueprint tools

* Substack about how each genre has a different primary goal in the Blueprint

* #amwriting Episode about the Blueprint origin story and why it’s such a powerful tool:

Transcript Below!

#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“Revision means stepping back, thinking big picture, and being brave enough to rebuild.”

SPONSORSHIP MESSAGE

Hi writers, the Winter Blueprint Challenge 2026 is on, and I can’t wait to do it, and I can’t wait to tell you about it. Okay, so this time around, we’re going to have two ways to play. First, we’ll run the Blueprint for supporters, 10 weeks of Blueprint assignments, live events, and encouragement starting January 12, 2026—or, and this is the big news, apply to join our very first Blueprint cohort—10 of you will become a small group that receives direct feedback from me and from Jennie on flap copy and the three page Inside-Outline, and joins five group only live sessions and becomes a part of a members-only community dedicated to helping you create a blueprint that leads you to the book you want to start and finish. Applications to join this group open December 15, 2025 and will be evaluated on a first come, first-serve basis. Once we have 10 people, we’re going to close down the application. So get yours in early. Early-bird pricing for the small cohort is $1,000 until December 22 after that, the price goes up to $1200 (if there are even spaces left by then). I am so excited about this. So get your application in early. The regular Blueprint will run for supporters at the usual supporter pricing, but this other cohort is going to be really special details on how and where to apply are in the show notes, or they’re going to be pretty prominently displayed at AmWriting podcast.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it’s recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.

Jennie Nash

Hey everyone, it’s Jennie Nash, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. Today, I want to talk about why most writers approach revision the wrong way, and how to use the Blueprint to do it right. Most people think revision starts with reading the whole manuscript, but the truth is I think that’s the last thing you should do. Before we dive into why I think that, and what I think you should do instead, I want to talk a little bit about what I call the “revision mindset.”

When you finish a manuscript, it’s really tempting to think, okay, I’ve got it, I did it, I’ll just polish it up a little and be done. But real revision requires openness—being open to seeing the strengths and the weaknesses and the changes that you need to make in the manuscript to take it from good to great. This can feel really vulnerable. I know for me, at this point, I worry that changing one thing is going to break everything else. You feel so close to the finish line that you don’t want to touch anything. But holding that tightly—that kind of clenching—is exactly what stops the revision process from working. It’s important to remember that revising is big-picture work. It’s not line editing. Revising is stepping back, seeing what’s really on the page, and being willing to reshape it. So a “revision mindset” is that openness and that willingness to look at it, to be real about what’s there and what you want it to be, and to be willing to do what it takes to get it there. So a good revision is going to start with that mindset. And if we start there, you can begin to see why doing a full manuscript read-through from page one, marching straight through all the way to the end, is going to lead to trouble. There are two particular things that happen if you approach revision in that way.

The first problem is when you go to read the book from page one chronologically all the way through—maybe you wrote it that way, maybe you didn’t—but in any case, if that’s how you approach revision, what tends to happen is that you fall into line editing instead of big-picture thinking. You begin to think, oh, this line is really great, or maybe I should fix that line, or maybe the flow here is a little off from this line to the other. You stay in the weeds, and you lose sight of structure and purpose and the big arc of your story or argument. The second problem with starting revision with a full manuscript read is when you ask somebody else to do that reading for you. Basically, what you’re doing is handing over your power to somebody else. You’re saying you look at this, tell me what you think, tell me how to fix it, tell me what’s wrong. And the problem with that is the tendency to get feedback and then just do everything they ask without thinking strategically through what you want to do or what you want your revision to accomplish. And a corollary of that problem is that usually when people are doing that full manuscript read for you, they’re just dumping all this stuff on you. They’re giving you this long litany of things that they see in the manuscript, or things that they think you should fix, and that list might include small things and big things and important things and not important things. It’s so easy to just get overwhelmed with the process.

As a book coach, that’s what I see all the time. People get into revision, they get overwhelmed, they freeze up, they don’t know what to do first. It’s so easy to feel defeated. And that’s the moment when so many writers stall out and shelve the project. They put it in a folder on their desktop—the proverbial drawer—and it’s just away, and they’re done, and they can’t face it. And then the idea of going back to that huge amount of work and trying to figure it out becomes too daunting, and they just don’t. So I don’t recommend starting your revision with the full manuscript read.

I have a different approach that I teach book coaches at Author Accelerator, and it’s called the “3D revision process.” It has three parts. The first is a process of inquiry. We use the Blueprint to ask key questions about the project. The second step is mapping everything out using the outline at the end of the Blueprint in a specific way. And the third step is strategizing. We look at that outline and we prioritize what changes need to be made using the stoplight strategy. I’m going to explain all these things in a minute, but the point is that this process gives you clarity, confidence, and a specific, actionable plan for approaching your revision—which is the dream.

Okay, so let’s walk through it. Step one is this process of inquiry, and using the Blueprint to walk us through that. In an earlier episode, which I’ll link to in the show notes, I talked about why I created the Blueprint and why I refer to it as a process of inquiry, rather than a story structure method. The process of inquiry allows the writer to look at the foundational aspects of what they’re writing and to look at the work from this big-picture angle that usually they skip. There are 14 questions no matter which genre you’re working on, but they all start with these really basic questions, like, why are you writing this book? What’s your point? Who’s your reader, and what do they want? And are you giving it to them?

Using the Blueprint to start a project, and answering these questions before you begin, is a really powerful way to think about what you want to do in the book, and a powerful way to get your vision clear. But when you have a finished manuscript and you go back to these questions, it’s a whole different ball game. It’s almost like a test. Can you answer these questions clearly and confidently based on what you know is there? Have you, in other words, put on the page the vision that you had in your head? So you go through the 14 questions honestly, answering them based on what you actually have, and it becomes this kind of assessment or challenge or test, like, did I do what I wanted to accomplish? And it’s really easy in those 14 questions to see if you didn’t. If you can’t confidently answer one of the questions, you know that that’s pointing toward a potential weakness in the book.

If I give the 14 Blueprint questions to somebody who has written a manuscript that they love and that is close to the vision that they had for it, they’re able to knock those questions out and answer them with such authority and power, and it’s just an amazing thing to see. And when they can’t, and they’re coming to the questions with that openness I talked about before, then it’s like, okay, look, we still don’t have this piece nailed down. We still have to figure out this part of the story or the argument that you’re making, so it becomes a first pass at what is really there and what strengths and weaknesses are on the page.

The second step in the “3D revision process” is to map out what you have, and we do this with the outline that is at the end of each of the Blueprints. If you’ve gone through the previous questions in the Blueprint, you’re looking at those foundational aspects, the structural elements of the story, all the things that hold up what you’ve written, and then the outline is, okay, here’s what I’ve actually written. If you’re at the start of a project, you want that outline to be no more than three pages. I’m very strict about this, and there’s a reason for that. It’s because we need to contain or constrain the creative process so that we can see what it is you’re wanting to make or to build. If someone goes on and on at that stage of the writing process, they’re not making good decisions and they’re not thinking about the big picture. But when you keep it to three pages, you’re forced to do that, and it’s a really awesome process.

With revision, I loosen those rules, and the reason is that for revision, I want this outline to be what I call an “as-is outline.” So this is not what you intend to write, or what you hope to write, or what you plan to write, which is what it is at the beginning of a project. Now it’s what is actually there. So the as-is outline is capturing what you actually wrote, not what you intended to write. So you use the manuscript, obviously, to get this information and to pin down an outline of what is actually there. And there’s still a constraint. I suggest that you keep this as-is outline to about 10 pages, and you absolutely need to follow the rules of the genre that I outline in the Blueprint. Each of the genres has a specific outline and a specific thing that we’re looking for in that outline, and I designed that to solve for the things that people most often get wrong in that genre.

I wrote a Substack post, which I’ll link to in the show notes, which explains what each of those things are, and I’ll link to that in the show notes. But you want to follow the rules of the outline, so that you make sure you’re not making the foundational problems of that genre. But then you have these 10 pages to capture what you’ve actually done on the page, and this as-is outline is where the big insights happen. When you step back and you look at this as-is outline, you can see where the momentum drops, where scenes or chapters repeat themselves, where your structure might be broken, where a subplot might take over, or, in nonfiction, where you veer off in some other direction. You can see where two memoir scenes are doing the same emotional work, or where a nonfiction chapter doesn’t drive towards the outcome that you’re leading your reader to. You can see so much in this outline, and that’s why this process is so powerful. The outline becomes a kind of X-ray of what you’ve actually written on the page.

And that leads us to step three of the “3D revision process” which is you’re going to analyze that outline. You’re going to bring some strategic thinking to what you have there. Each of the Blueprints has a checklist for their particular outline, and you want to go through those checklists and really ask yourself, have I done this? Have I done that? Have I done the other? The kinds of questions that checklist asks are things like, am I giving the reader what they want and expect? Does my outline include the essential elements of my genre or category? What’s missing, what’s out of order, what’s unclear, what’s unnecessary? So it’s strategic thinking about the material that you have created.

One of my favorite books about the creative process is Creativity, Inc., by Ed Catmull. It’s the story of the creation of Pixar, the company, and in that book, he talks about the Brain Trust, which is a very small group of writers who help each other to create the best possible stories. And they have this process in the Brain Trust that’s called giving good notes. And good notes are clear, they’re factual, they’re strategic, and that’s what you’re doing here for yourself. You’re giving yourself good notes. And if at this point you want to bring in a trusted partner to help you brainstorm and to help you look at your material and look at your notes and help you brainstorm solutions, this is a great time to bring in somebody to help you brainstorm and to look at your as-is outline and look at the notes that you’ve made for yourself, because instead of just handing the job over to somebody else, you’re saying, I have done this work of looking at my work in a strategic way. I know what I’ve done well, I know what my weaknesses are, and now I’m ready to solve those problems.

So a great critique partner or a trusted beta reader or a book coach…obviously, are great people to bring in at this stage of the process. And what’s awesome is you’re not asking them to sit down and spend 15 or 20 hours reading a whole manuscript and trying to figure out what you want or what you were trying to do, or how it all lands for them, and giving you this info dump of information. You’re asking them to look at your Blueprint, to look at your answers to the 14 questions, and your as-is outline, and your analysis of that outline. And what you’ll be doing, either on your own or in partnership, is prioritizing what needs to happen in the revision.

The tool that I teach coaches to do this is called the “stoplight strategy.” And what we’re doing is we’re trying to categorize the problems that we see in a manuscript by their severity. So red light problems are major structural issues, yellow light problems are medium-level issues, and green light problems are line-level edits. I designed the stoplight strategy because so many writers think that revision is about green light issues. So many of them start with line-level edits. And as I spoke about before, the tendency if you’re doing a full manuscript read is to fall into that rhythm of just seeing the green light things, or maybe a few yellow light things. But it’s very hard to see the red light things, which are the things that are going to bring your book down. They’re the fatal flaws, and most writers never find the time to actually look at those things.

So they might be things like, I’ve got to start this novel in a totally different place, or I have to chop off five chapters of my memoir, or I have to restructure my entire nonfiction argument in a different way to make it land. But if you’ve approached the process that I’m explaining with that openness, that revision mindset, and that curiosity about how can I make this better, and if you’ve gone through it in this systematic way, and you found some red light issues, they tend not to sting quite so much. They tend to feel manageable. Okay, I can fix this one big thing. And if I fix this one big thing, the next thing that I need to fix is probably going to be obvious, and then the next one is going to be obvious. So you’re leading yourself to a prioritization of what needs to happen in the revision, rather than looking at everything in the same way, meaning every little green light issue has the same weight as the yellow light issues and the same weight as the red light issues.

When we step out of doing the work chronologically, and we approach it in this more strategic way, we tend to focus on the red light issues. And again, they just tend not to feel quite so awful.

So the next step in the process is you take that as-is outline, and you turn it into a “what’s-next outline,” a map of what the book is going to become in revision. On that outline, you mark what gets cut, what gets moved, what needs to be added, what shifts are you going to make because of the big changes, and you actually make them in the outline, so that the outline reflects where you’re going with your revision.

And that’s how we close the gap between what you’ve written and what you want to write. That’s where you get closer to your vision of what you want this book to be. And that’s why this process is so powerful, because now you have a clear map of what you need to do in revision. You have a clear plan for how you’re going to go execute those things, so you’re not guessing and you’re not lost in overwhelm. You have this what’s-next outline that you’re going to go in and follow. And if you want to start at the beginning and make all the revisions in chronological order, you can. Or if you want to go in and fix the big red light issues first, you can. And you can use this what’s-next outline as a kind of external hard drive to hold all the changes that you want to make in your revision, so that you’re not holding them all in your head.

Doing the revision in this way might actually mean going in and working on, let’s say, chapter 10, 11, and 12, and not touching anything else. It might mean going in and working on chapters 13 and 27 and not touching anything else. It’s not necessarily a chronological process. You’re going to follow the what’s-next outline and do what needs to be done in the manuscript.

And once you do that, now is the time when a full manuscript read can make a lot of sense. Now you can go through from beginning to end knowing that you don’t have any big structural issues. There are no red light issues in this manuscript anymore. There are no yellow light issues. You don’t have to think about those or worry about those. You can go through and do the thing that most people do at the beginning of their revision process, which is polishing the prose and making everything sing and working on the line-by-line writing. You’ve already done the heavy lifting.

If you’re excited about using the Blueprint in your revision and you want to work through it with a community of other writers who are doing it too, we’d love to have you join our upcoming Blueprint Challenge. You’re going to go through the Blueprint step by step along with people who are revising their books or people who are starting from scratch. It’s the same 14 questions, and people will be working on fiction, they’ll be working on memoir, and they’ll be working on nonfiction. KJ is going to be leading the charge of this Blueprint, and she’s going to be doing some write-alongs and AMAs and different things to support people while you work through those Blueprint questions. And I’m going to be in there a few times as well.

This is the fourth time we’ve done the Blueprint Challenge at the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, and it gets better and better every time as more and more people do it. And you can find critique partners in there to help you with your Blueprint questions, maybe to look at your as-is outline, because they understand the process. They understand what’s going on. They understand what this is all about. And it’s just a really fun and powerful way to approach either a new book or the revision of a book that you want to work on.

You can check the show notes for details on how to sign up for the Blueprint Challenge. This challenge works if you have a new idea that you want to work through, or a new-ish idea. You can be a little bit into it, and the Blueprint process is still really effective. And it also, of course, works really well if you’re revising something, or maybe you’re stuck revising something, or overwhelmed by the revision process that you’re in.

You can start at the beginning of the Blueprint process and go through what I’ve just described here, and at the end of the challenge, be in a really great place to move forward with your project. We’d love to have you join us. So again, check the show notes for details.

We give everyone who joins the Blueprint Challenge a downloadable copy of the Blueprint book and a workbook to work through. But if you’re not able to do the challenge at this time and you want to go through this process yourself, you can just grab a copy of my Blueprint book at any bookstore and work through those 14 questions and your outline at the end. However you do it, we’re excited to support you on your way.

So until next time, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

The Blueprint is one of our most popular offerings—Our 10 step plan to help you define the book you want to write before you write 100k words in search of it—but this time we’re going in fast and we’re knocking this puppy out in just 6 weeks. Starting January 12 and rolling though February 20, Jennie Nash and I (this is KJ) will lead you through the 14 foundational questions that every writer should ask of themselves and their book, whether you’re just getting started, are mid-draft or starting on on the whatever-number revision.

We’ll have weekly assignments and live events (Mondays 6:30 PM EST/3:30 PM PST, recorded so no one missed anything). We’ll have updated access to all the Blueprint resources. There will be chat and solidarity and all the energy that comes from being a part of a community all working together to reach the same goal.

Plus, every time we’ve done a Blueprint, somebody ends up with a book deal (listen here: An #AmWriting Success Story! ). That could be you.

I LOVE Blueprint season.

As Jennie says in the episode, the Blueprint comes from her realization that over and over again in her book coaching career (which is long and storied) she was seeing people come to her with the same mistakes—300-350 page manuscripts that lacked an inner structure, or an internal point, that meandered, were all plot and no heart or tried to offer instruction without ever conveying why it was so badly needed and what it would change for the reader.

Her secret is that she developed the Blueprint for revision (more about that HERE) and then realized that using it from the get-go works, too.

Look, I’m the first to tell you that the Blueprint doesn’t solve everything. But it helps… a lot. So get ready to Blueprint, whether you’re starting a new project or revising the current one (that’s where I’ll be)—and if you’re not already a supporter of the podcast (the only way to access the Blueprint) you should be.

Oh I am so IN, counting the days.

APPLICATIONS CLOSED What if you want even MORE? Then you could be one of a very few #AmWriting subscribers who join our first ever Blueprint Sprint cohort. 6 weeks of working together and write-alongs, 5 group-only live sessions, which will be recorded for anyone who can’t attend and a members-only community dedicated to helping you create a Blueprint that leads you to the book you want to write, ending with direct feedback from me and from Jennie on your flap copy and 3 page Inside-Outline.

We’re keeping this small on purpose—we max out at 10 and we might drop that down—so applications to join this group open today and will be evaluated on a first-come, first serve basis. Once we have 10 people, we will close down the application, so get yours in early! Early-bird pricing is $1000 until December 22, after that the price goes up to $1200 (if there are spaces left by then).

What are we looking for? 10 writers who are prepared to commit to the process and to the cohort, who do what they set out to do when they set out to do it, who welcome constructive feedback and are willing to do what it takes to build a blueprint for the book they want to create. Writers who know that sometimes you must look a hard truth in the face and cut your losses, that what goes in the scrap heap is rarely resurrected but that the scrap heap is a necessary part of the work. Writers who won’t take no for an answer, but can hear “not this” and feel both disappointment and a burning determination that the next effort will be the one that gets there.

Also: no a******s.

What will you need to apply? We want to hear about your professional and publishing backgrounds, but no publishing experience is necessary. We want to know where you are with this current project, but “still noodling” is a fine answer. The primary requirements are first, a readiness to do the work and second and more ephemerally, our sense of what makes a cohesive cohort.

If that sounds like you, here you go—the time to apply is now.

We talked about vulnerability, the challenges of writing the book of your heart, and learning to play with what you fear. Rachael says, “I’m spoiled for any smaller kind of writing. I’m not sure I can go back.”

You’re gonna love it.

Links from the Pod:

The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

Ink in Your Veins podcast

Rachel’s website: https://rachaelherron.com

The Jennifer Lynn Barnes “take my money” list.

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield#AmReading:

Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams

This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Tabitha Carvan

Transcript below:

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it’s recording—yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Hey, listeners, this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. I am KJ Dell’Antonia, and today I am bringing to you an interview with Rachael Herron. I just finished talking to Rachael, and I really enjoyed this. We talked about vulnerability. We talked about the challenges of writing the book of your heart. We talked about what should show you where that book is, the idea that the fear is where you should play. It’s, it’s a really great interview, and I know that you are going to enjoy it.

Let me tell you a little bit about Rachael. She is the author of so many, so many books, thrillers and romances, and most recently, in the book that we are talking about, The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland. And I have to read you—Rachael’s going to describe this to you, but I got to read you the very short thing that basically made me say, take my money. And it went like this. A psychic tells Beatrix Holland that she’ll experience seven miracles and then she’ll die. No problem, though, Beatrix isn’t worried. She is above all things pragmatic. She vastly prefers a spreadsheet to a tall tale. Then the miracles start to happen.

It’s a really great book, and more importantly, it’s a big book. It is a book where Rachael is writing what comes from deep inside, and it is a book that only Rachael could write. And that is why I asked Rachael to join me today. I hope that you enjoy this interview, and before I release you to it, I just want to remind you that the place to go to talk more about writing big and playing big in your writing life is anywhere that we are: the AmWriting Podcast, Hashtag AmWriting, AmWritingPodcast.com. Find us on Substack. Find us by Googling. Grab those show notes—you should be getting them—and join us for all the different ways that we need to come together in a community to give each other the strength to do our very best and biggest work.

So I’m going to ask you to describe The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland to me. But also before I even do, I want to say how much I enjoyed it. And also so we have been spending most of our time on the AmWriting Podcast lately talking about writing—writing big and striving big and trying to do something different and bigger and better than what you have done before. We, I think as writers, we’re always trying to up our game, but there’s upping your game, and there’s reaching for the stars. And I felt like this book reached for the stars in a way that you maybe didn’t even set out to because to me, as someone who has read much of your work and followed your career and listened to a lot of the Ink in Your Veins Podcast and sort of just knows what’s going on with Rachael, this is the book that only you could write. So when I say this is your big book, I don’t mean, you know, that this is, is going to be a—I’m sorry—I don’t actually mean that 200 years from now, people will be passing this around.

Rachael Herron

Exactly.

KJ Dell’Antonia

What I mean is that this is you. This is and it’s you. All of your books are you, but this was really you in a way that felt downright magical to me. And it’s a magical book. So can you tell us a little bit about Beatrix Holland? And I will also say that even before I read it that you had me at the premise. So give us that.

Rachael Herron

Well, I don’t know how to talk about it now that you’ve talked me up so well. But thank you. Thank you for, you know, being honestly an ideal reader for this book. The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland is about a woman who is pragmatic and sensible and doesn’t believe in, you know, mumbo jumbo, not really worried about that kind of thing. But she is told by a psychic that she will experience seven miracles and then she will die and whatever, that’s not a big deal. It doesn’t bother her, because none of it is true. She doesn’t believe it. And then, me… miracles start to occur; things that even she cannot say are not miracles. And so therefore, maybe, what about that death thing that’s going to be preying on her mind?

KJ Dell’Antonia

So on top of that…

Rachael Herron

Who likes what the book is about…

KJ Dell’Antonia

We’re on an island, and there’s family secrets being revealed. And there are amazing family secrets that I think many of us would, I mean, they’re kind of awful, and I’ve talked to some people, and some people would be thrilled by them, and some wouldn’t, but yeah, just it just kind of keeps giving and giving and giving. And it’s funny because you say I’m the ideal reader, and actually, I don’t know that I necessarily would be…

Rachael Herron

Oh, that’s even better…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Except, if somebody else had written this, I would not be the ideal reader. And I don’t think that’s because I know you. I think it’s because of the way that you wrote that. And when what I when I say, I wouldn’t be the ideal reader, I am getting a little tired of books that are giving me certain specific elements that are very trendy right now and that people feel obliged to give me. And you know you have, certainly, you’ve got LGBTQ characters in this, but also you have LGBTQ characters in your life. You are yourself such a character.

Rachael Herron

As my wife is one of them over in the other room.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And this isn’t me saying I will only read books about queer people by queer authors. No, no, no. It’s that these are the thing, the elements of this book that sort of fall into that, that are just there, because that’s your life and what you see…

Rachael Herron

Right. Right.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And it just is perfectly natural. And of course, you have a lot of—and it’s in the sort of the same way that, of course, there’s a lot of witchiness and spirituality, because it’s part, it’s part of you and part of who you are. So it’s, it’s, it reads as authentic.

Rachael Herron

Oh, that’s such a, that’s such a—that’s such a huge compliment. I wrote this book to please myself.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s what… that’s my next question. Don’t make me. Don’t make me interrupt you. What? That was my question. What was your intention? What did you set out to do with this book?

Rachael Herron

I—so this is my sixth genre, and I’ve been writing for—I’ve been published for 15 years, and this is my 26 or 27th book. I’ve lost, I can’t remember, maybe more. I have a list somewhere. And I have always thought about, you know, the market and what people want to read and what people want to hear, as you know, as you know this, you’ve been, you’ve been doing the same thing a long time.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Rachael Herron

There’s nothing wrong with writing tree, market around market, exactly. But, but in this case, I wanted to write a book, and I wanted to have fun, and, and, and to be honest, I talk about this regularly is that I was going to self-publish it. I didn’t even want to deal with my agent coming back and saying, oh, you should edit it this way. Or, you know that this or that editor doesn’t want it, or they wanted to change in some way. I wanted to write a—I wanted to write a series of about found family, and I did, I did the Jennifer Lynn Barnes thing, the adored Taylor, where I just, I just made the list of everything I love the most. You know, I love witch stuff. I love practical magic. I love sisters. I love twins separated at birth. Why wouldn’t I? I love grumpy, grumpy, older women and fireflies and all of the things that I love the most. And I and I wrote that book, and it was one of the fastest books I’ve ever written, and not because I was rushing, just because it came easily. I was following my heart and following my gut, and I was also following my tarot cards. When I would get stuck, I would just pull a tarot card and see what it did with my subconscious and moved me forward, and I it was just play. And then I revised it quickly. I hired my favorite editor, edited it, got it copy edited, and then I decided, oh gosh, I don’t think I want to do a whole series, and I’m not sure if I want to self-publish, because that’s a lot of work, so I’ll just let my agent have it and to see if she could sell it. And she said, okay, I’ll take a look at it and see if I could sell it. And then it sold at auction because it was, I don’t… there’s no because there it was just no surprise. There’s no because there’s no because there’s never a because in publishing. You can also write the book of your heart.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, and then this—the rest of the story wouldn’t fall that way and it would never sell that way…

Rachael Herron

Exactly. So it happened to go this way. And of course, a lot of it is a lot of it is luck. Cozy, cozy, queer fantasy is, you know, on an upswing right now, but that wasn’t, you know, a couple years ago. It took a couple years for it to come out.

KJ Dell’Antonia

What do you love most? Yeah, what do you love most about this book and the experience?

Rachael Herron

The thing I love most about the whole experience is that it has spoiled me for any other kind of writing; I think now, which may be a good or a bad thing. Ask me in a few years. But I kind of refuse now to write a book that I don’t desperately want to write, that I can’t stop thinking of. Because I’ve written a lot of books that I love, but they were, you know, what they were, they were my job. They were the book I sold. And now I will write the book that I sold. Now I will do, do what the contract says. And I don’t want to do that anymore. I just want to write the books that grab me and fascinate me and keep me in their thrall and what that means is that I have to, you know, focus on other ways to bring in money and to support. And really, I’m now, I’m supporting this writing passion with things like teaching and with, you know, you know, old backlist books. But I’m not, I’m not sure if I can go back. I don’t want to, I don’t want to be a work a day writer, writing to a contract that I don’t maybe love as much as other contracts I’ve had, right?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Rachael Herron

So, yeah, it’s spoiled me a little bit that way.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So are there other ways that this book feels bigger than things that you have written before? And this is again; we’re not denigrating our old work. We’re not…

Rachael Herron

No, of course not. Of course not. I think that every—for me, it’s always been a goal that for every book that I write, it needs to be me playing bigger. It needs to be me playing truer, more, more free. And in this book, it’s only recently come up in my in my consciousness that I think that I needed to leave the United States and move around the world to New Zealand. And one of the reasons we left the states was because we were scared of the way LGBTQ rights are, are trending. There’s 867 pieces of legislation that are anti LGBTQ on the dockets right now in the United States, and that’s, that’s up by like 700% in the last four years, and it’s and it’s terrifying. But it I didn’t strike me until recently that this is my first novel that has a queer love story. It’s not a romance, but there’s a queer, queer love story inside it. And I finally, perhaps, felt safe enough to do that, you know, because it and when I came into the industry, I came in writing straight romances, because that’s what would sell. And when I would ask to write other things that was turned down by traditional publishing because they thought it wouldn’t sell. And then, you know, obviously self-publishers came along and said, oh, there is a market. Wow, look who wants to read these books. But, and so it was me kind of exposing myself in that way, and also me exposing myself in in the way that Beatrix does is that I always, I also just want to believe in magic. I want to believe I want to believe in things out there that I can’t explain, that are bigger than me, that I don’t actually need a name for or to understand. Because if I could understand something that is that big, something that is powering the universes, I can’t be expected to understand that. But can I, can I engage with it? Can I play with it in the in the exact same way that that Beatrix does? I think the answer is yes. And I did. When I would pull the tarot cards to help me write the next chapter if I got stuck, it was an actual process of engaging with a larger thing, saying, I don’t know how to write this book. Help me write this book. Asking for help in writing this book from, from whatever is out there. I don’t have, I don’t have big ideas about it, but yeah. So that was, that was, it was scary, and maybe that’s why I originally wanted to self-publish it, because then it, it felt like I could keep total control.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Sure.

Rachael Herron

If I did that,

KJ Dell’Antonia

Of course, you could keep anyone who wouldn’t like it from reading it then.

Multiple Speakers

[Both laughing]

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, okay, so maybe not so much. But no, I get it. It must have felt…

Rachael Herron

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Less vulnerable. So I was going to ask you next, what was hard about it. And I guess that’s, is that what was hard? But maybe something else was.

Rachael Herron

Let’s see, what was that? So that was hard, being that honest and vulnerable. And you know how when we write our novels, the thing that we want to do is be as truthful as possible, even though we’re just making up a pack of lies. It’s it feels more true often than even memoir can when we’re when we’re doing this. What else felt hard? Not much felt hard about this book. And I have had books that I have struggled with like I am wrestling muddy alligators for decades at a time. It feels like those that’s what those that’s what those books feel like. And there’s nothing wrong with those books. They were just; you know where I was at the moment. But this book, I it’s one of those gift books. It just, I must have struggled, and I do not remember. I honestly do not remember struggling.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Well… I wish for…

Rachael Herron

I just remember it being joy.

KJ Dell’Antonia

…all of us. I wish that. I wish that journey for all of us. Oh. Yeah, yeah…

Rachael Herron

As usual, I struggle whenever I get copy edits back. When I get copy edits back, I realize I don’t know how to write a sentence.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So if any of our listeners are sort of trying to find within themselves the freedom to write what they really want to write, and maybe can’t even figure out what the heck that would be, what would you say to them…asking for a friend?

Rachael Herron

I would encourage them to do one of those “ID lists”, to sit down and write a list of the thing that if you saw that something about it was on the box of the of the video cassette at the video rental store, because that’s how old I am, if you saw that listed on there, would you pick it up and rent the movie? Write down all of the things that you love the most and then actually use it as an exercise in creativity within constraints. How many of those things can you actually shove in there? Can you get them? Can you get them all in there? The other thing I like to ask myself when this question comes up is, if I am alone—well, it doesn’t actually matter if I’m alone or not—but if I, if I walk into the bookstore, any bookstore, and and I reject any “shoulds,” you know, should I look for that cookbook I was thinking about, or should I look for that new nonfiction I heard about on the podcast, if I’m if I’m released of all shoulds, where will I want to—and say somebody tells me you can only look at one section of the store today. What is the section of the store that I will go stand in front of and pull books off the shelf and look at? And perhaps that is a clue as to where you should be writing.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And how about freeing yourself up to actually do it. We can’t all move to New Zealand, Rachael.

Rachael Herron

[Laughing] Freeing yourself up do you mean to write the book, to write that book?

KJ Dell’Antonia

To write that book. I don’t. Yeah, most of my listeners—well, most of our listeners aren’t you know, we tend to be a podcast for professionals or people that are playing professional so, you know, these aren’t people who can’t put their butt in the chair, but to be vulnerable and admit that you want to go bigger and then do it. That’s a different question. Got any advice for that?

Rachael Herron

I do like to think of Steven Pressfield’s advice from his book The War of Art, where he talks about resistance with the capital R. And the place where you feel the most resistance, that’s your that’s your compass that is pointing north to what you what, what you are meant to do. And a lot of times when we think about these bigger stories that we may want to write someday, the someday, right when I get there, I’ll write it someday, that you’ve already got this compass pointing you there, and it is terrifying. And the fear of how can I do that now is maybe the thing that says that you do not need to put aside the fourth book in the series that you’re writing that you need to finish before you write this next series. You can do that. But maybe listening to that resistance, listening to that fear, and dedicating 15 minutes, three times a week, to playing with the idea of this book. If you were to start to write it anytime in the future, you can, you can at least be courting it and flirting with it, making it know that you are going to be available to write that, that book of your heart, because everybody, every we all need that. We all need that. We also need to pay the bills and do the professional writing and do all that too.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, yeah.

Rachael Herron

But…

KJ Dell’Antonia

We got to; we got to try to do the biggest things we can. All right. Well, that’s a great place to lead into my next question, which is, what have you read recently where you really thought the writer was playing big?

Rachael Herron

Can I give you two?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Of course!

Rachael Herron

Okay, the first one, and strangely, these are both nonfiction. So make of that what you will, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who is a QE. Have you heard of this one?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh yeah. This is the…

Rachael Herron

Oh yeah, the Facebook book.

KJ Dell’Antonia

The Facebook book. We moved fast, and we did indeed break things.

Rachael Herron

We did move fast. We broke things. And Sarah has a uniquely Kiwi sense when she’s looking at them, because she goes in and she’s really watching it all happen. And I don’t care about Facebook. I don’t actually engage with all of the stuff that said about it. And this book is written basically it felt like a thriller. It was—I couldn’t put it down. And she was fearless, the things that she said. No wonder Zuckerberg wanted to silence it. He looks like a moron. And she was absolutely fearless. And it was one of those schadenfreudy, why am I reading this? Why can’t I put this down? But I can’t put it down. And I think it was because of her bravery.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Rachael Herron

So I really enjoyed it for that. And then the other one I want to tell you about is kind of on the flip side. And you may not have heard about this one. It’s called This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch

KJ Dell’Antonia

Not only have I heard about this one, it’s entirely possible that I sent it to you.

Rachael Herron

Really?!

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love this book! All right, go on. Go on.

Rachael Herron

…The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It, by Tabitha Carvan. Oh, my god, isn’t it brilliant? She writes about how, yes, she does love Benedict Cumberbatch, who I’d really never considered very much in my life

KJ Dell’Antonia

No, I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup of youthful-ish…

Rachael Herron

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

British-ish…

Rachael Herron

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Actor-ish,

Rachael Herron

And she loves him, loves him, loves him, no, no joke, loves him. And the whole book is about recovering from any shame around loving the thing that you were put on this earth to freaking love with your whole heart, no matter what anybody says. And I really think the Benedict Cumberbatch is a really great thing to tie this whole book in.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It had to be something like that, because if it was like knitting, I mean,

Rachael Herron

Right, exactly.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay, that’s fine, honey, you can love your knitting. And you know it also is…

Rachael Herron

Exactly,

KJ Dell’Antonia

You know, it also is…

Rachael Herron

This is not a book about yogurt. Who cares, you know. But Benedict Cumberbatch is funny to say. He’s actually kind of funny to look at when you do look at him, when you do look him up. And it’s so evocative, and it is, and it is something that people would snicker at.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Rachael Herron

Right? People would snicker.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Still even… yeah, it’s like, she snickers it herself. But also she’s like, okay, why? Why is that, you know? Why would it be? What if I were super obsessed with the stats of some obscure ball—baseball player, no one would mock that. If I wanted to watch every football game played by, you know…

Rachael Herron

That blew my mind when she said that, of course, of course. So, and she goes deep. She’s again, she’s so brave. She plays big. She goes into what it means. How does it like? How does it affect her husband? What does she think about how it affects her husband? Like she goes all of the places. I’m so, I bet you did tell me about it, and I’m so glad that you did.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love, I love. I keep extra copies to force people to read it. I tie people up in like, you know parts of my house and force them… no. I don’t really do that.

Rachael Herron

[Laughing] I love that. But, and what are those all have in common? I think that what are, the both those books have in common? Is these women who, who, at any point, anybody in the whole world could have told them that’s not really a good idea to write.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, no, that’s exactly right.

Rachael Herron

And it would’ve been true.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah. It would have been true. It would have been excellent advice.

Rachael Herron

Excellent advice not to write that book.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Really, you should not admit that you love Benedict. Or really, I mean, you’re never going to work in this town again, man.

Rachael Herron

You’re never going to work in this town again. And the whole, during the whole book of Careless People, she’s talking about being inside, she is inside the beast that is doing the damage. And that’s and that’s brave too. And I don’t think Seven Miracles is as brave as those books, but there was, but there was bravery and resistance around moving, moving toward, really putting yourself on display.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Run towards the fear.

Rachael Herron

And that’s what we writers do.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s our theme.

Rachael Herron

Yeah, run towards the fear. Even if you can only give it 15 minutes a day or so, three times a week, that’s enough. That’s good enough to tell your bravery. It should come back more.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yes.

Rachael Herron

Scooch, door bravery, little scooches.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Edge towards the fear. Tip toe.

Rachael Herron

Oh, that’s beautiful. I love that you’re doing this series.

KJ Dell’Antonia

We love it too. So, yeah, it’s going great. Well again, thank you. I was really excited to talk to you about this book. I was really excited to read this book. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and I think, listeners, that you would too. You should absolutely check it out as well as all the rest of Rachael’s work. Links of course, as always, in the show notes, and follow Rachael in all the places. Although, to me, the best thing to do is to go and listen to the Ink in Your Veins Podcast. Because obviously, people, you’re a podcast listener, you wouldn’t be here. Where do you most like to be followed, Rachael?

Rachael Herron

At Ink in Your Veins or on Rachaelherron.com/write, if you are a writer and want to get on the on the writing encouragement list. But I just want to thank you for doing this amazing show and for having me. I feel very, very honored to be here.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Well, thank—thank you. All right. And as we say in every episode, until next week, kids, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Are you staring down a holiday shopping list with a haunted look in your eyes? My great big guide to holiday under-the-radar book-giving perfection can help. Maybe you think not everyone in your life wants a book, but honestly, they are just wrong. I’ve got a book on my list for the therapy-speak-loving teen who’s glued to TikTok, a book for your mom whose book club just forced her to read Emily Henry and just wants a protagonist with a little seasoning. One for your dad, who thinks TV hasn’t been the same since The X-Files. And a few for your book-loving bestie, who’s read everything already, and all you have to do to get the list to drop right into your phone for your shopping pleasure is join my newsletter, Hashtag AmReading, at kjda.substack.com—link in the show notes and pretty much anywhere where you can find me, which is easy.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it’s recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Hey kids, it’s KJ, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters.

Jess Lahey

I’m Jess Lahey. I am the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The New York Times and The Washington Post and The Atlantic.

Sarina Bowen

And I’m Sarina Bowen. My newest novel is called Thrown for a Loop, and you can find it at bookstores everywhere.

Jennie Nash

And I’m Jennie Nash. I’m the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to lead the emerging book coaching industry. And I’m the author of the Blueprint books that help you get your book out of your head and onto your page. And today, the four of us have gathered to talk about gratitude. It’s the week of Thanksgiving, and we’ve been thinking about the things that we’re grateful for in our writing life, and how we want to celebrate that and amplify that. So we thought we’d share that all with you today. KJ, do you want to start by talking about what you’re grateful for?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, I actually managed to give this some thoughts. Since we did, we did talk about it. And I should say we kind of got the idea from Laura Vanderkam’s newsletter, which is really great, and you should subscribe. She was just talking about how, you know, it’s one thing to be grateful for things like, “Whoo, I’m grateful that I live in such a beautiful place,” but it’s another thing to say, “And because I’m grateful that I live in such a beautiful place, this week I will make a point of going for a walk, you know, tonight with my dog, in a place that I love,” or something along that. Her point was: come up with something and then actually do something to amplify that for yourself. So you’re not just sitting around, you know, writing a gratitude journal. You’re actually trying to do something about it. So having announced that I am totally prepared for this—I’m not really, but I kind of am. Okay. So one of the things that I am grateful for this year, a little weirdly, is AI, and it is not for the reasons anyone might think. I’m primarily grateful—I’m grateful that the spurt of AI in everything that I read, from Goodreads book reviews to things in my inbox to, I’m sorry, actual articles in actual newspapers… it’s become so recognizable. The stuff that is written, the pattern, the three examples, the particular words that are invariably used. Oh, somebody threw one out the other night—oh, in the real estate world, if it says something is “nestled between two things,” that’s AI. Anyway, that made me realize that the last thing I want is something else to do any of this for me. I just don’t. I just, you know, sometimes you sit around going, “Oh, somebody just write this book for me—” you know what? No. No. Because I don’t want my book to be nestled between a rock and a hard place or whatever. So, so no. So what I’m doing to sort of bring that home for myself is I’m actually trying to be more present, in particular within the AmWriting—the AmWriting universe. So I’ve been doing something that I’m calling Hashtag AmWriting ‘Almost’ Every Day. It’s really nowhere close to every day. Don’t worry about getting your inbox full. But I am—you know, that’s actually me. If I have time and something to say, or something to whine, or some write-alongs to share, or an idea, then I’m going to put that out there for y’all. And hopefully you’re going to comment back, and you probably won’t bother to use AI to do that, because that would be really silly. So that’s a thing I’m doing, and a thing that I’m grateful that I’ve suddenly come to the realization of.

Jess Lahey

What’s funny, KJ, is that I can absolutely tell when you’re really enjoying writing, because it—it just comes through, as it does with most people. But it’s been… your newsletters have been really fun, and you’re really in it. And I love reading them. I absolutely love reading them.

Jennie Nash

It gets a little sassy.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Thanks!

Jess Lahey

She does. She does get a little sassy.

Jennie Nash

I love it.

Jess Lahey

Yep, the Shirley Jackson comes out in her, and it’s really fun. I like that a lot.

Jennie Nash

Jess, do you want to go next?

Jess Lahey

Yeah. Sure. So newsletters have come to mean a lot to me. I have a lot of drafts sitting there, some of which I don’t think—I may never publish. But I’m really, really grateful that writing has, for my entire life, been the way that I process what I’m thinking about. I do it a lot by talking, but when I’m alone in the woods, like I am right now in Vermont, writing is how I figure things out, and I’m so grateful for that, because, you know, as I wrote about in my newsletter, I’m dealing with breast cancer, and I’m about to have surgery, and some of that stuff is really, really scary. And how I think about it, and how I manage it, is through writing about it. And I’m just—I’ve never been so grateful to have, even if it never goes out into the world, a place to write about that stuff. And, and, yeah, I’m so grateful for the words. Absolutely.

Jennie Nash

That’s so beautiful, that in the scariest, most difficult time, it’s the most natural thing that you turn to.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, I think there are some people who pour themselves out in watercolors, or some people—whatever. The words, man, they’re the best.

Jennie Nash

Very cool. Sarina, what about you?

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, well, as always, my gratitude runs toward the granular and the practical. I guess I can’t ever get away from that. So I am grateful to deadlines. Last month, I had a really difficult deadline. I had to scramble and set everything else aside and keep myself from panicking. And I did it. I actually—I turned it in, and then I immediately went on a book tour for a different book. So that was a difficult experience and a difficult month, and I’m not used to quite so much deadline pressure. But the wonderful thing is, is that I have these deadlines because of the work that I have placed with publishers, and I wouldn’t want to change a single thing about that. So even if I need to get a little better about my timing, I recognize that—even in the darkest day—that it’s a gift to have this problem. And then I’m also grateful for coffee shops, because that has been a place for me to work this year. And I never did this before. I was one of those people who had to be at home, in a room all by myself, in the quiet, writing. And suddenly that became really difficult for me. The quiet was too much quiet. There was too much doom scroll, there was too much self-reflection. And it really started the day after the election, actually. Like, I sort of ordered KJ to meet me out at a coffee shop because I needed to be where other people were. And it was really grounding—like, there we were, and the barista is a familiar face, and everything was fine inside that shop, you know, which was, in itself, a little bubble of privilege. But, but just being out in the world, seeing the rest of the world keep chugging, has really focused me. And I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of different coffee shop and library settings in the intervening couple of months—and, well, almost a year now—and it’s felt fantastic. So I am excited that there are places where I’m allowed to go pay way too much for a cup of coffee and then sit there for two hours, and I will continue to do it.

Jess Lahey

Can I add a layer to the Sarina—to the Sarina stuff? Because I got to go to, as some of the other people talking today did, got to go to one of Sarina’s events. And, you know, we love Sarina, and we just rave about Sarina, and I think she’s a genius, and I think her writing is wonderful. But I was in a room of people who knew her work. Like, at one point, someone asked about whether or not she was going to be writing more in, like, The Company Series, which is one of the series she started to write. And there are a couple books—in that one. And then when she’s like, “Oh, I don’t—I think the time for that is over,” and people were like, “Awww,” and they were sad, and they knew characters really well. There was a die-hard fan of one of her books—I think it was Stay. And I just—I’m so grateful to be able to go to those events and see that other people love Sarina as much and respect Sarina’s work as much as I do. And my whole family was there. So my kid, who’s been hearing about, you know, my friend who wrote—writes “kiss me” books, he was like, “Man, people are into her books.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I told you. I’ve been trying to tell you.” And it was great. It was really fun to see people that into it.

Sarina Bowen

Well, the thing is that romance readers really are special. I’m not saying there aren’t—there aren’t fandoms in other genres as well. But it’s something about a romance novel involves characters that aren’t afraid to say how they feel, and that is how romance readers are about the books. They are not afraid to say what they feel, and they are there for all the feelings in the first place. And it is really a great spot to be. So for every writer who ever looked down at the romance section of the bookstore, I got news for you. It’s really nice over there.

Jess Lahey

It’s great. The people were so great.

Jennie Nash

And we have gratitude for the romance—the romance readers too.

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Jennie Nash

I love all of your—your gratitude’s. Mine is—I guess I would say that I am grateful for having the identity of a writer as a thing that I take with me wherever I go. And what I mean by that is I have been traveling to see family, and there were airplane troubles, lots of different airplane troubles, actually, on this particular trip, and lots of delays, overnight delays, sitting in airports for long periods of time, all of that, and I am never sad about those things. I’m almost never at a total loss. Like, you tell me that I have to spend six hours at the San Francisco airport, and I’m fine, because I can fill the time—not just, not just fill it like, “Oh, I can get through this,” but I can actually have really productive, useful, awesome time for six hours in the San Francisco airport. And if I have to spend a night at a terrible airport hotel, and, you know, just all the things—and I was so grateful when I thought about it in that way, that here’s a thing that I can take with me wherever I go, that all I need is something to write on. Could be my phone. It could be a piece of airport hotel notepad and paper. It could even be a torn-out page of a magazine that I bought at the airport. And I—I can be somebody. I can be somebody doing something that I find interesting and good and useful. And I just am so grateful for that. What an amazing thing to be. And obviously holiday travel is a special kind of thing, but just the thought that—that that comes with me, no matter where I go or what I do or what happens in my life—I have that, and I’m very grateful for that. So I don’t know, KJ, in terms of how am I going to bring that forward or exercise it or do it? I guess—I guess I’ve got to hope for smoother travels.

KJ Dell’Antonia

You should just get stuck in more airports, but you don’t want to get stuck in more airports? I feel like that should be your goal now.

Jennie Nash

I guess if you take it to a very granular, practical level, like Sarina does—always have a notebook with you, man. That’s what I got to say, and a working writing implement. It saves the day.

Jess Lahey

And then you text the word “sticker” to the rest of us, and we know, “Oh, man, those travel stickers—those are worth double stickers.” We always say that travel stickers are double stickers.

Jennie Nash

It’s so true. It’s so true. Well, we just wanted to pop in here today to share this gratitude episode with you all and to give you some things to think about, about your writing life and your writing practice. And we hope that everyone is having a day filled with gratitude. KJ, do you want to say other things?

KJ Dell’Antonia

I wanted to say that I think we’re all grateful for the way this community is slowly but steadily growing. I’ve been doing Write-Alongs with a bunch of people lately. We’ve been seeing people in the actual Substack chat, which, if you…

Jess Lahey

The chat is fun.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Use Substack chat, that’s great. And you know—you know what it is, and if you don’t, that’s fine. You can totally hit the same results by talking to us in the comments, which is the same as comments on anything. I just—I just really like sort of seeing the same people and faces pop up over and over again, and feeling the same kind of “less alone” about this that I used to feel back in the early days of blogging. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have pretty much, you know—I’ll put a thing on Instagram, and then I’m out of there because, again, it’s—there’s, there’s so much slop now. I’m not really doing a lot of other things. But I am here, and there are other people here, and I think that’s so fun.

Jennie Nash

It’s really fun. And we will continue to be here with—with lots of offerings, from Nerd Corner episodes to Write Big episodes to KJ Writing Along episodes, and we’re in the chat to help and answer questions, and we have other things up our sleeves too. So keep tuning in.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah. All right.

Jess Lahey

All right, everyone until next time around, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Transcript Below!

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Is it recording? Now it’s recording—yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

Jess Lahey

Hey, welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Lahey, and this is the podcast about getting all the words done, writing all the things, writing, short things, long things, proposals, queries, poetry, all the things. But today, Jess and Sarina are bringing you the book nerdery stuff, the best stuff. This is The Publishing Nerd Corner. I love this new segment. I’m super excited about it, but first, my name is Jess Lahey. I am the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. You can find my journalism out there various places, including The New York Times. And you can find my newsletter at jesslahey.substack.com.

Sarina Bowen

And I’m Sarina Bowen, the author of many contemporary novels. My new one is called Thrown for a Loop, and it drops on November 4, and it also will be published that same day as an audio book.

Jess Lahey

Whoo so...

Sarina Bowen

And that is what...

Jess Lahey

Yeah, we’re going to talk about audiobooks today, because Sarina knows so much about this—because she has to, like, hire her own narrator sometimes and stuff like that. All I know is, I narrated my own audiobook, and it was super fun, and I loved it. But we want to talk about all the aspects of how audiobooks work—all of it. There’s lots of fun stuff to talk about. Where would you like to start, Sarina?

Sarina Bowen

That is a good question. So, most of the time, if you are selling your book to a big publisher, audio rights will be included in your contract, and your publisher is therefore responsible for making the audiobook. You might be consulted about the choice of narrators, and that audio will magically appear finished on your publication date. But if you are a self-published author, then the existence or not of your audiobook is completely under your control. Audio has been the shining star of publishing for the last decade in that it is the growth story. I’m not sure how that has worked the last couple of years, but audio was one of the only areas of traditional publishing that demonstrated double-digit growth for much of the last decade. A lot of that has to do with the popularity and availability of streaming as a way that people listen to these books. Obviously, the technology shift made a huge difference, but so did things like cellular networks that work well and buffer easily. So...

Jess Lahey

Can I add one little, tiny thing? There’s been another reason that I think that audio has done so well, and that’s the acceptance within the education world—thanks to researchers like, for example, Dan Willingham and other people who study the brain and how we process and learn—that audiobooks are reading. From a processing perspective, from a learning perspective, listening to audiobooks is reading, and anyone who is telling you otherwise is not looking at the science. And so, this has been an incredible way—when you look at kids, for example, neurodivergent kids, dyslexic kids, kids who need another way to take in the information. It used to be that audio was like, “Oh no, that’s cheating,” and it is absolutely not cheating. So, I think that acceptance within the education world has been so great. And, you know, yes, it is a small part of the growth, but I do want to put that plug in there.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. So, the way that, traditionally, audiobooks have been made is that a narrator goes into a booth and reads the book after having prepped it a bit in terms of maybe reading the whole book, maybe reading parts of the book, understanding what they’re going to bring to the table. If it’s fiction, then they’ll be looking to see what are the major voices, because audio narrators change their delivery to indicate voices. And one thing that’s interesting about the trend where we are in audio right now is that it’s very trendy for a nonfiction author to read their own work if they’re comfortable with it. That is widely done in nonfiction.

Jess Lahey

And it was one of my favorite parts of my process. And I have to say, nothing affected me more on an emotional level. I cried at the end of narrating both books. I had to pause at the very end—at the last couple, the last paragraph. It was such a moving experience for me to narrate my own book. And I have to say, it wasn’t a slam dunk that they were going to let me do that. I, you know, I worked really hard to be able to do that, because for some people, that’s just not their bag—it’s not something that comes naturally to them. But it was, for me anyway, my favorite part of the process.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, so if you had written a novel, though, we wouldn’t be—

Jess Lahey

No.Sarina Bowen—having that same conversation.Jess Lahey

I’m not an actor. I don’t have the chops for that.Sarina Bowen

Well, a lot of authors of novels don’t understand this. It’s not that they don’t understand how their own book should sound and be delivered—it’s that what they don’t understand is that the way that novel audio sounds in 2025 is a specific trend in the way that readers want their books delivered. The books are very much acted. It wasn’t always this way. There were times when audio really sounded more like somebody just reading—and that’s okay. Like, there’s lots of room for style in terms of the way that audio fiction works. But right now, the trend in audio fiction is very much a performance. And one way that you can see this—and it continues to expand as a trend—is the trend toward something called duet audio, which means, for example, in romance, if there’s a male hero and a female heroine—and the way that most of my books work is that if the chapter is in the POV of a man, then the male narrator reads it. But of course, when he comes to a line of dialogue delivered in the heroine’s voice, he softens his tone a bit to indicate that she’s speaking, but he reads the whole chapter.Jess Lahey

They’re always amazing—that’s amazing to me when readers can do that. I mean, Davina Porter is the one that comes to mind—like, in the Outlander books, when she switches whose voice she’s reading. She switches whose voice—it’s down to the accent—and you don’t for a second think, “Oh, that’s the same person reading all of this.” And some of the narrators you use, Sarina, in your books—the same thing. My brain absolutely believes that I’m hearing a female voice versus a male voice. It’s a really incredible talent.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. In fact, if this is of interest to you, there is a book called Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan.

Jess LaheyIt’s so good!

Sarina BowenWho is one of the few who’s been very successful as both an author and a narrator, and her book is a little bit of inside baseball about narrators. And it’s a delight.

Jess LaheyIt’s fun. It’s really fun.

Sarina BowenOkay, so what I was just describing, though—where he reads a chapter and then she reads a chapter—we refer to that as dual narration (D-U-A-L). But there’s a new trend called duet, whereby in the same book, he would read the chapter, but if there was a line of dialogue from a woman, the female narrator would read that line.

Jess LaheyWhich is more similar to me in terms of how it feels with, like, ensemble narration. Like, for example, Lincoln in the Bardo had a full cast of many characters, and every part was someone different, and those actors would chime in with their parts. So, same—similar idea.

Sarina BowenWell, sometimes, sometimes a “full cast” audiobook just means that there are lots of very short chapters or segments. But to have every single line of dialogue cut in is really different than just saying a book has a full cast.

Jess LaheyThat’s true. Actually, that’s true.

Sarina BowenSo the thing about duet specifically is that the engineering part of it—the post-production—is really expensive because the engineer has to cut together this script, and actually preparing the script is also a lot of work. So it’s a pretty big deal to make a duet book. It’s more expensive. The cost of making a one-POV narrator book or a dual book is between, let’s say, $300 and $600 per finished hour.

Jess LaheyWhat do you mean by that, Sarina?

Sarina BowenSo, if you look at Audible right now, you can see the lengths of all of my audiobooks down to the minute. So it might say eight hours and thirty minutes. That means the finished length of that book is eight hours and thirty minutes. And the cost of making that book will be 8.5 times some number between $300 and $600. But if I did that book as duet, then it might be $1,000.

Jess LaheyOkay, all right.

Sarina BowenSo, every audiobook I’ve ever made cost between, like, three grand and seven grand. And if I were doing duet, then I would be hitting numbers more like $10,000.

Jess LaheyAnd make no mistake—there are stars in the audiobook world who, like celebrities in films, can earn more per finished hour for their books. And that demand is really important because they have a vibe. There are fans of particular narrators who will listen to anything that narrator reads.

Sarina BowenYeah, like my kids and I used to listen to audio narrated by Meryl Streep, and I’m sure she broke the curve for how much that cost per finished hour. But you should also know that the finished hour is not the same as how long it takes the narrator to do the job. So, if I’m paying a narrator $350 a finished hour, he is spending more time on that book, and his actual pay per hour is lower—like 150 bucks or whatever. It depends on his ratio of how fast he can narrate a book. And also, narrators’ voices get tired. They can’t narrate forty hours a week—although, actually, some of them probably do—but, you know, it’s a hard job. So, if you’re thinking, “I’m not going to pay someone $350 an hour to narrate my book,” you should know that it doesn’t really work that way, and that really is the price for a reason.

Jess LaheyAnd they’re fun—just for some fun inside baseball things. Like, for both of my books, narration hours when we worked—our starting time in the morning was pushed up a little bit because no one wants to get an audiobook narrator right after they woke up. Your voice is not primed. Your voice has gunk in it. So, we would start later. You really could only go—you know, with my first book, I think we went until, like, three in the afternoon or something. You have to take a break for lunch, and then after you eat lunch, you get all these weird secretions, and it takes time to get back into it. There’s just some weird stuff that I didn’t count on—like it was better for me to be hungry (except then my stomach would make noises, which the microphones would pick up) than to stop and eat and have to get back in the groove. Because when you’re in the groove, you kind of don’t want to stop. There was just so much more to it than I ever anticipated. It was a blast, but it took me almost a whole week. We had scheduled five days for The Gift of Failure—it’s like 78,000, 80,000 words, or something like that. We scheduled five full days; we ended up taking four. And I didn’t have pickups for that book, but I did have pickups for The Addiction Inoculation. There was a lot more scientific language in that book that we had to do some pickups for. So, yeah, it’s—

Sarina BowenPickups means edit.Jess Lahey

Yeah. So, there were a couple days where I came in—and so I actually did The Addiction Inoculation during COVID. I was at a studio here locally in Vermont with my director, the producer of the audio in one ear of my headphones, and my producer from Harper in my other ear, in New York or wherever she was. We were working in a sound booth in Vermont. And, you know, in the evening, that producer would go over the audio and make sure that all of the words were pronounced correctly and everything was good. And then the next day, we would do pickups along with the new work as well.

Sarina BowenRight. So, the editing that happens is really down to the word. Like, the engineer will sit there and, you know, go right into that space between the two words that you said and put the new thing in. And when a professional narrator is in the booth, they operate in a way that’s called punch and roll, which means that they will stop when they make an error, go back—looking at that visual sine wave of the audio on their screen—find the pause between the words, go right to that spot, and then roll forward by hitting record again and then speaking the word that they meant to say.

Jess LaheySome audiobook narrators use a clicker too. It’s a way of being able to see on the wave where you, you know, might need to go back and figure something out.

Sarina BowenYeah. So, um, there’s a lot that goes into this. Humans make a lot of noises that we’re trying not to hear. Like, some engineers will go in and dampen the breath sounds.

Jess LaheyYeah. Yep.

Sarina BowenYou know, they’ll go in and take out the “heeeeh.”

Jess LaheyActually, I had to change my clothes. My sweater was making too much noise. It turns out when I narrate, I use my arms a lot—so I actually had to learn how to narrate with my arms resting on the armrests but only using my lower arms. So, I look like the robot in Lost in Space with my little—my little—and also, my hair had to be up because my hair made noise too. And you can’t wear jewelry, you know, like bracelets and things like that also make noise.

Sarina BowenYep. And narrators all have stories like, “I can’t eat Indian food before I narrate,” or “When I go in the booth after lunch, I strap pillows around my midsection.” Like all this stuff to make sure that the sound quality works. So, that brings us to a difficult topic in how audiobooks are made, which is that a lot of books are flooding the market with AI voices. And everybody’s heard AI voices before—for example, if you’ve ever been on TikTok and you hear that weird, artificial female voice reading the—I don’t even know how to explain it—but that’s primarily why I never go on TikTok, because I cannot stand that artificial voice.

Jess LaheyI listened to—I listened to an article yesterday with The New York Times that was AI-generated that was better than those awful TikTok voices, but still, you know—still AI.

Sarina BowenYeah. So, I am not going to spend our time discussing whether those voices are good or not, but it has really gotten messy. At the beginning of AI narration, some platforms said, “No way, no how. We will never have one.” And then a lot of platforms suddenly allowed for it. So, there’s lots of AI narration in the world, and it’s causing real havoc, especially among people whose livelihoods are being affected by a drop in audio work. I really believe that the readers of my books care very much about the delivery, and it’s hard for me to think that an AI voice could carry the kind of emotion that romance readers are looking for in an audiobook. So, I hope—I hope that audio listeners continue to demand quality, because it’s a big deal.

Jess LaheyAt least right now, your listeners—you know, they love Teddy Hamilton. Or, you know, there are audiobook narrators who are very specifically—people get excited when they see a particular narrator’s voice attached to your work. And I think—and again, in Thank You for Listening, there’s that good—she goes into great detail on that whole inside baseball of narrator fans. And like, Teddy Hamilton has fans—has a fan base. And I hope that persists, because I think there’s real value in that. I hope there’s real value in that, and I hope people continue to value it.

Sarina BowenYeah, and I don’t think that’s going away anytime soon. People really aren’t clamoring to see AI Meryl Streep on the screen at the movies—and, you know, paying a movie ticket price for that. And I believe that in narration land, yeah, it’s the people coming up that will suffer the most—the newer narrators who don’t have a fan base yet and are struggling to get work. So, yeah—anyway, that is one thing. And we could talk about how to get your book done in AI production now, but I think we won’t, because...

Jess LaheyYeah.

Sarina BowenBecause that’s, you know, not—you can figure that out yourself if that’s interesting to you. But, um, I believe that humans are still the way to go here.

Jess LaheyThere was an interesting note. So, when I said that I worked really hard to get the chops to narrate my own audiobook—I mean, I went to go work for Vermont Public Radio. I recorded these commentaries. And these commentaries that my producer taught me how to record—there was a really interesting note she gave me, which is that these commentaries are really short, like just a couple of minutes—less than three minutes. And one of the things she taught me is that when I’m reading these commentaries, if at the end I look up at my producer and smile and make eye contact with my producer that it makes the narrator be even more connected to the listener. And she’s absolutely right. You could hear a difference in the commentary when I was making eye contact with my producer, and I find that fascinating and intangible and magic. There is a magic in that that I hope we do not lose with AI.

Sarina BowenYes, absolutely—and that is a fantastic place to close this episode.

Jess LaheyAbsolutely.

Sarina BowenLet’s not lose that magic.

Jess LaheyIf there are things you would like us to talk about when it comes to the nerdery of publishing—in the Publishing Nerd Corner—if you’re a huge fan of publishing nerdery, I also would love to recommend that you go over and follow Jane Friedman immediately, because she is such a great writer about the nerdery stuff in publishing. But we will continue to talk about it. If there are things you would like to know about, please let us know.

But until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

NarratorThe Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output—because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Sarina and I both love these episodes where we, two certified nerds, get to hang out with likeminded individuals and dish. This week, we are going to talk about one of Jess’ most niggling worries: what does it mean to a publisher and an author to “earn out” a book advance and what does it mean to both if that never happens?

Transcript available below, but making good ones isn’t free—help support the Podcast below!

Your subscription = good podcast karma.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Hey listeners. Did you know that we review first pages sent in by supporters every month on the pod? It’s just one more reason you should be supporting Hashtag AmWriting, which is always free for listeners—and ad free, too. Please note that we will never pitch you the latest in writer supplements or comfy clothes for lap-topping. The good news is we’re open for First Page submissions right now! If you’ve got a work-in-progress and you’d like to submit the First Page for consideration for a Booklab: First Pages episode, just hit the support button in the show note, and you’ll get an email telling you all the details. Want to hear a Booklab episode? Current ones are for supporters only but roll your pod player back to September 2024 and there they’ll be!

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it’s recording—yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

Jess Lahey

Hey—welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast! This is a podcast about writing all the things—this is the podcast about writing short things, long things, you know. And specifically, where we’re going to focus these days is on a little episode we’re calling The Publishing Nerd Corner with Jess and Sarina. I’m Jess Lahey. I’m the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The Atlantic, at The New York Times, at The Washington Post, and at jesslahey.substack.com.

Sarina Bowen

And I’m Sarina Bowen, the author of many contemporary novels. My new one is called Thrown for a Loop, and it drops on November 4th , and I am so excited. And today’s topic actually pertains to what happens when you have a book that’s publishing and everybody has all these big expectations. We’re going to cover one of them, which is earning out your advance—or not—and how to frame your thinking around this.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, first. I mean, the way this Nerd Corner works is because Sarina tends to have more of the business acumen and the nerd acumen. I let her do a lot of teaching me. But one thing I would like to state at the very beginning of this—and apologies, I didn’t look up the stats; Sarina might know them—the number of books that actually earn out their advance if it’s nonfiction. For example, my book that we’re going to talk about today is nonfiction, and so I got a big advance based on a—and we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk numbers. It makes authors really nervous, but I think it’s important. The number of authors that actually earn out is really, really low—like, much lower than you expect. . So “earning out” can mean a couple of different things, and we’re going to talk about that today. But to set the scene, we’re going to use my book The Gift of Failure as the example for earning out. as the example for earning out. So I’ve sold a lot of books—like, this book was a success by any measure. It was on The New York Times bestseller list. I had Kristen Bell go on Instagram and say, “Buy this book, it’s so great,” and it sold out across the country. I am not complaining here; I am just saying that it makes me extremely nervous that technically I have not earned out my advance on The Gift of Failure. Again, to set the scene, The Gift of Failure was based originally—it came out of an article that went viral at The Atlantic on why parents need to let their children fail. There was a big auction for this book that lasted three whole days. It was very exciting, and the number kept going up and up and up. And I was freaking out, because now you’ve got huge expectations. I mean, I’m thrilled, but the expectations keep getting bigger and bigger. So where we ended up was Harper Books came back with the highest bid, and it was also for the editor that I was most excited to work with, Gail Winston, and it came in at $400,000, so that was wonderful. That was great. It was based on—I got five payments over five, essentially, five years, and I have not earned back that advance for my publisher. So, Sarina, what would you say to me—a writer who is stressed out because that means, you know, when they’re looking at purchasing other books like The Addiction Inoculation, I was able to sell to them, even though it’s a tough niche, that little—it’s a tough corner, that addiction corner—and they knew that this book was not going to sell as well. But on the strength of my sales of the addiction…excuse me, of The Gift of Failure, I was able to sell that book, but I hadn’t earned out. So why are they going to pay me to write another book if I hadn’t earned out?

Sarina Bowen

It’s such a great question. So the thing—the punch line of this episode—is we just want you to know that if you don’t earn out, you’re not a failure. And we don’t mean it in a nice way, like everybody gets a ribbon. We mean, like, you might not be a financial failure for the publisher, even though on your statement it says you still haven’t earned back your advance. And that’s because the advance that you’re paid is part of a profit-and-loss estimate that the publisher makes before they offer on a book. And just in case anybody is squishy about this—like, an advance means those royalty amounts in your contract, you’re getting paid an upfront amount, and then you have to, like, earn it back with those royalty amounts in your contract.

Jess Lahey

And for those who actually are not familiar with this at all, I don’t have to pay back the money if I don’t earn out. That’s not a thing.

Sarina Bowen

Right. So the publisher said, “We like this book so much we are going to pay you $400,000, and we think that you will sell enough copies that we will be in the black on our P&L statement.” But they never show us the P&L statement. So let’s just say that they had a P&L statement that shows that they’re profitable on this book even if you only sell 70,000 copies—but you’ve sold over twice that amount. So when I worked on Wall Street, I was given a bonus every year, and the bonus made everybody feel like, “This is the amount of money that you’re worth.” But what it really was is “This is the amount of money we have to pay you so you won’t quit and go work for somebody else.” And an advance is exactly the same thing—it’s how much do we have to pay you to win, but also in a way that looks okay on our profit-and-loss estimate of what this book can do. And of course, you mentioned that we don’t have good data about how many books earn back their advances. And the truth is, even if you and I had done a deep dive prior to sitting down here today, we still wouldn’t know, because nobody publishes these numbers. And the only time that you get a glimpse of them is when some publishing executive is on the stand in a court case about, say, whether two Big Five publishers can merge.

Jess Lahey

Gotcha.

Sarina Bowen

And then, yeah. And then they tend to say various things—like, they’ll give a statistic, and then everybody in publishing will be, like, nailed to the transcript of this court case to see, like, how is everybody doing in there? Because, you know, nobody—nobody tells you. Nobody is obligated, even in a publicly traded company, to give these precise statistics about how often people earn out.

So earning out has some pros and cons. Like, so you said that writing this book—because you sold it on proposal, and then you had to write it, and you had this big amount of money that you had to recoup—and that is so intimidating. And I’ve been in this same situation. I sold The Five Year Lie to HarperCollins two years before that book was published, and I still had to write the book, because that book was actually also sold on proposal.

Jess Lahey

Which doesn’t happen very often, dear listener. Do—

Sarina Bowen

That’s right

Jess Lahey

—not think that you can sell your first fiction on proposal. That’s not how it works.

Sarina Bowen

Right—that will never happen. But, um, this was my, like, 50th novel, and then you can sell on proposal. But anyway, I also had to write something in a new genre with my own expectations built in, and that’s scary. But the reason we need this fear—the value of this fear—is that both of our publishers were invested in our success. If I had been offered a low advance and I had taken this deal, then, um, sure, I would be less stressed out about the success of the book—but so would my publisher. The more skin they have in the game, the better they’re going to see your project through.

Jess Lahey

Right.

Sarina Bowen

And that is valuable. So a little bit of our fear—or, okay, fine, a lot of it—is actually doing things for this calculation that we need, that we require.

Jess Lahey

And to decode that—what that can often mean is marketing budget. So The Gift of Failure had, you know, the amount that they’re willing to invest, including the number of hours my publicist at Harper is willing to invest in publicizing this book, comes down to how invested they are in the book. And given the number that I got, they’re pretty invested in this book. And, you know, I was pretty happy with some of the publicity stuff. And also, on top of that, you know, I requested bookmarks and postcards and all that sort of stuff, and I requested to have as many as they could afford in my marketing budget shipped to me. And honestly, for The Gift of Failure I’m just now finally running out of postcards, and I use a lot of those postcards still in my marketing. And they also have been in communication since then—been really appreciative of how much I invest in the publicity. But I will say, I knew—I knew when I was old news and that they were no longer really going to invest in my publicity—when the next big thing, the next big book that was coming out from Harper with this publicist, when I started accidentally getting that author’s emails about, you know—it was a total mistake, and it was very funny—but I’m like, oh, yeah, I see, I’m done now. This is—they’re on to the next book. Which was fine. But again—and we’ve said this a million times—no one can market you better than you can market you. So that was fine with me, and I also knew that that would be a big role for me with this book. But, yeah, the marketing budget is very much factored in when you look at how much they’re willing to spend on you.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. So we should say a couple more things about [unintelligible]. One is, everybody’s first statement from the publisher—whether that comes quarterly, semi-annually, or annually—is always a little bit rattling, because they’re hard to read. They just are. Like, I don’t know any publisher who has, you know, beautiful, easy-to-read statements. And so the befuddlement one can have on there is, you know, not to be underweighted. But also, if you—so, we have this double-edged sword. Like, we want a big advance because it reduces our risk, and it increases the publisher’s risk, so they’re going to invest in it. But, as you said before, then if you don’t perform—like, if you dramatically underperform your advance—and this happens in publishing all the time—it will be maybe a little bit harder for you to sell the next book, and maybe you have to switch publishers, because maybe idea number two is really fantastic and more saleable. Then you have to find somebody with a clean slate—like, that they see the value of your new idea. They’re not intimidated by the fact that your first book didn’t sell a kajillion copies. And, you know, that editor doesn’t have, like, a wound from having, you know, failed the first time. So these things happen.

Jess Lahey

Because—keeping in mind that that editor has to go, you know—any editor that wants to acquire your book has to go before, you know, their peers, their colleagues, and say, “I really want to buy this book, and here’s how much I think it’s worth, and there’s going to be an auction.” And then, you know, I could imagine that an editor might feel like a bit of a doofus if their book doesn’t perform the way they’ve predicted in front of that room of their colleagues.

Sarina Bowen

Because they would. You know, it’s just not fair for them to come back and say, “Yeah, we’ll give you the same schlubby advance on the second one.” So, so there’s emotions on either side of this. And one thing about earning out that can happen is that sometimes, if you have a two-book deal, you will have a clause in your contract that calls for joint accounting between those two books. And this is a clause that I always ask to be taken out, because that means if you didn’t earn out—if you earned out the first book but not the second one—then they’re going to hold on to your royalties until you’ve earned out enough money to cover both advances. And that’s obviously unfavorable to the author.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, you also reminded me that there were some things that happened with The Gift of Failure, where, for example, I narrated my audiobook. And I think—I think that my flat fee for narrating that audiobook went against my advance.

Sarina Bowen

Advance. Mmhmm.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, I didn’t get a check, like a flat-out check for that. It went against my advance. And I think the same for my Spanish edition. I think that because the Spanish edition was also part of Harper—it’s Harper Español—that that went against my advance as well, as opposed to, you know, “Here’s another chunk of money for the Spanish edition.”

Sarina Bowen

Well, that was actually a really unusual scenario for you, because you sold North American rights generally on this book, right?

Jess Lahey

Yeah. Mmhmm.

Sarina Bowen

In English. You sold English only? Or World English? That would mean that…

Jess Lahey

Actually, I didn’t sell World English. It was just North American, because there’s the different North American short books, and there’s—

Sarina Bowen

Right. Okay.

Jess Lahey

—the British version.

Sarina Bowen

So North American rights means that your advance really only covers those books that sell in the U.S. and Canada and territories of the U.S.—and sometimes the Philippines, for reasons that nobody has ever explained to me. But if you’d sold world rights instead, you would have the entire world to help you pay down that advance and then start earning royalties. And I did have a moment last year where I asked my agent, like, “Why didn’t we sell world rights on this book?” Because now we’re scrambling to place the book with a U.K. editor. And she said—and it made so much sense—she said, “Because if the U.K. branch of your publisher is not fired up about the book and is not motivated, then we won’t get the placement you want anyway.”

Jess Lahey

Got it!

Sarina Bowen

Like, it won’t work. And of course, that made lots of sense—like, they’re busy acquiring titles that they feel they can sell in the U.K. to their audience, and they know best about that. So I needed to be reminded why that is. But, yeah—so lots of things can go against our advances. And the point of today’s discussion was to make sure that you understand that there’s an emotional load for the way that we do these things. And your publisher might be very happy with you even if you didn’t earn out your advance.

Jess Lahey

I can tell you, though, where The Gift of Failure is concerned—I have earned out in one spot, and that is China. In China, I have earned—not only did I earn out, they decided to renew my contract early because they were so pleased with sales there. So that’s good. I do get small royalty checks for my Chinese version, so yay!

Sarina Bowen

(Laughing)

Jess Lahey

Giddy up.

Sarina Bowen

Giddy up.

Jess Lahey

All right, have we covered everything we want to cover on this topic?

Sarina Bowen

We have, and we hope that our listeners are out there getting the best advances they can and then not worrying about them too much.

Jess LaheyExcellent. I like that answer. And until next time, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

You kids I can’t even with Catherine Newman right now because I am a Wreck and a Sandwich myself at the moment but wow, she’s a good writer, so honest it’s like there’s no skull between her mind and the readers. We talk about what it means to use yourself and your world in your fiction and what it’s meant to Catherine to play as big as she possibly can and go bigger and deeper with every book.

We ALSO talk about Catherine’s totally granular technique for planning and tracking and keeping her eye on the ball in every chapter while still pulling in all the other things while making sure that if it’s Friday night a teacher character doesn’t get up and go to teach the next morning and the blackberries never ripen in April, and let me tell you that I just went back and listened to that now and I am about to implement it because it’s brilliant.

Ok, time to let you listen (although links to what Catherine and I are reading and loving are below). ALSO…

Truth? We wanted to tuck the transcript away behind a paywall, but it turns out we can’t do that and still give you the episode… so, here it is. But we have to pay someone to make a good one, that you can read. And we still have to pay ourselves and all our people. BUT LOOK YOU GET ALL OF US. We’re not just one writer, we’re a whole bunch—a Groupstack, and yes we coined the term, and you get a lot of bang for your subscription. So, if you could kick in, we’d cheer.

Please don’t make us try to sell you Quince clothing or gambling sites to support the pod.

#AmReading

Catherine: A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews

KJ:

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s fall, y’all, and there’s got to be a T-shirt that says that, right? So it’s, you know, fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, sharpened sense of ambition, excitement after the languid summer days, and, of course, the glory that is decorative gourd season. You can say that with all the swears that you like, but I’m not going to hear “falling leaves” and “Halloween,” which means it’s time for smoky, eerie, witchy reads, and I have just the thing for you—Playing the Witch Card. Expect a woman starting over again after her marriage collapses, hampered by her magic-obsessed daughter, her flaky mother, her enchanted ex, and a powerful witch who’s thrilled that she’s back in town—and not for a good reason. To keep her family together, Flair has to embrace the hereditary magic that’s done nothing but ruin her life in the past and make it her own. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of tarot cards, which play a huge role in this book—and tea leaves and palm reading, and honestly, every form of oracle. They’re here to help us see and understand our own stories, which is pretty much what Flair figures out. And as someone for whom stories are everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card everywhere, and I hope you will do exactly that—and love it too.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it’s recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Hey, kids, it’s KJ, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast—the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. Today on the pod, I’m talking with Catherine Newman. She is the author most recently of We All Want Impossible Things and Sandwich, and also, earlier in her career, Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness, as well as two fabulous “how to be a person in the world” books for kids that, honestly, I think we could all benefit from. I’m considering just, you know, sending out copies. They are How to Be a Person and What Can I Say?—that one’s really useful. Okay, so now, just out, she has Wreck—which kind of comes after Sandwich, but you could read them separately. They’re both small, intense books. Wreck, like all of Catherine’s work, is inevitably about exactly what I just said—it’s how to be a person in the world. Which—I didn’t actually ask Catherine this; I’m recording my intro for y’all after talking to her—but she would not tell you she knows how to be a person in the world. But she is so fantastic about the part where we’re all figuring it out, and being aware that we’re all figuring it out. And that’s what all of her books are about. In the interview, which you’re going to love, she calls herself the queen of the slight plot element, which made me laugh really hard and also made me realize that I think Catherine Newman is the modern Anne Tyler. So tell me what you think in the comments on the show notes—which you’d better be getting. They are at...there’s no hashtag in our name—AmWritingPodcast.com—or search anywhere they will have the books that Catherine mentions, and also all of your chances to do all of the things, like have your First Page appear in a Booklab episode. Talk to us. Get in there. Tell us what you’re thinking about writing. Write along with us. Really just—just all the community stuff that we all so desperately want. Okay, here comes my interview with Catherine. I know—gosh, it was so fun to talk to you. You guys are going to love it. Catherine Newman, welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, where you’ve been at least once, maybe twice—I need to go and look. It’s so fun to have you back. I remember us walking in the woods before you had finished We All Want Impossible Things in 2021.

Catherine Newman

I remember it too.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Which, actually, for three books, is not that long ago.

Catherine Newman

Hey, that’s true. I know... I remember your dog.

KJ Dell’Antonia

He’s here somewhere.

Catherine Newman

You had a young dog with you. It was the best. And you—you said so many things that I’ve thought about so much on that walk. But I don’t want to derail the thing you want to talk about.

KJ Dell’Antonia

But, but same—it was a great walk. We must do it again. All right, meanwhile—okay, so I already described in the introduction all the things you’ve ever written in the past and raved about you, so don’t—don’t worry about that. You’ve been—sorry you don’t get to hear the petting. But the question is, tell us—tell us a little bit about Wreck.

Catherine Newman

Yeah, so Wreck...

KJ Dell’Antonia

I know, I know, it’s painful. Elevator pitch or whatever you want to say, because seriously, I did just tell everyone about them in the intro.

Catherine Newman

I really need an elevator pitch. I feel like We All Want Impossible Things was like a woman whose best friend was dying while she, like, slept with everybody.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, it was joyful.

Catherine Newman

That was easy.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Also sad.

Catherine Newman

Sandwich was like Cape Cod for a week, reproductive mayhem, sandwich generation. Wreck is so weird because there’s these two sort of very slight plot elements. So it’s, you know, a woman in her mid-50s living in a house with her husband of many years, her daughter, who’s between college and grad school, and her dad, who was fairly recently widowed and in his 90s. And that’s mostly what the book is, but the little plots are that she has a rash—she notices that she has a rash—and it inaugurates this kind of diagnostic tornado. A slow and quiet tornado, but a tornado nonetheless, where she has to see a billion doctors. She has to constantly check her patient portal to see if she’s dying or not, and anyone who’s had—who’s been anything but healthy in the last 10 years will understand the patient portal.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yes, I love the checker. I checked a patient portal from a hockey-rink parking lot, and that’s a mistake, just FYI.

Catherine Newman

Just don’t...

KJ Dell’Antonia

To anyone considering it, don’t do it on a Friday night. Don’t do that.

Catherine Newman

Just don’t even look. And then the other plot point is that there’s an accident—there’s a collision between a car and a train—and a schoolmate of her kids, like someone they went to high school with, is killed in this accident. And she becomes kind of weirdly obsessed with the accident. She looks at it online all the time. She stalks everyone’s...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Which so tracks for the character that you have created.

Catherine Newman

Doesn’t it? And that’s it. And so the book sort of is those things unfolding in this parallel way—these uncertain things.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So when you wrote it, what—what was your intention for this? What did you want Wreck to be in your career and for your readers?

Catherine Newman

What? It’s so funny to be asked questions about my career. I don’t know what I wanted it to be in my career, but maybe while I’m talking to you, I’ll figure that out.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay.

Catherine Newman

Or you can tell me. But for my readers—I do think we’re in this funny place where some of us are hungry to read about the experiences of other menopausal women who are taking care of aging parents, whose nests are emptying, who are in long marriages, who are, you know, doing the things of this age, including tracking weird illnesses. So I guess that—you know, I think, I feel like the thing that I love about writing—one of the things—is when people say to me, like, “Oh yeah, I feel the same way about that,” or they write me and they’re like, “Oh, I read this, and I felt so relieved that I wasn’t alone.” And I guess I have a lot of that hope—you know, that it speaks to someone, or someone’s been in their portal rummaging around and finding out horrible things about their health and Googling them. Like, that’s not a small part of the population who’s probably doing that. So I guess just that—you know, the handout, the “I’m with you on this” vibe.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So what do you love most about it?

Catherine Newman

(Laughing) I mean, that’s a funny and embarrassing question. I... you know, the father character is based very closely on my own father. Many of the things he says are verbatim lifted from conversations and texts with my dad. And I just love that character so much. I think he’s so funny and has this kind of deep wisdom. I mean, Wreck plays him for laughs a little bit, but he offers so much to her. He’s still this really profound caretaking force in her life, even though he himself, you know, is failing in different ways. So I guess that’s what I like.

KJ Dell’Antonia

How does your dad feel about you taking his stuff?

Catherine Newman

He loved this book.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love this!

Catherine Newman

He has not felt that way always about the way I represent him. I represent him in Sandwich in similar ways, and Sandwich—there were just particular things that bugged him. He loved the book overall but didn’t love his character. I think in this book, maybe because there’s so much of his character, that it gets to be a very well-rounded kind of person, and also somebody whose opinion it’s obvious the other characters respect. So he really loved it, which was, like, everything to me, you know?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, oh, wow. I’d give a lot for that. That’s—that’s wonderful. I would—it’s... although all my dad ever says is, “Why don’t you—you only write about mothers? You never write...” I’m like, well, I don’t know if you read some of the mothers. You’re kind of lucky. You’re doing okay. I don’t know why—you guys were great. You should have been better fodder for affection, and then I would... yeah. All right. So, okay, so that’s what you love about it. What was the hardest about this?

Catherine Newman

It’s funny—it’s a little hard to talk about without spoilers, but, um, there’s a difficult part of the plot that involves Rocky’s son, who works for a consulting firm in New York, where she really questions his values, questions the decision to do that kind of work.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That would stun me, frankly.

Catherine Newman

However, he knows a lot about that kind of work, and talked to me a ton about it for the book—like, went on a million walks with me and let me pick his brain about it. And I really just found it so hard to write about this kind of painful conflict between Rocky and her son. I just found it really hard. Yeah...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Obviously, yeah, that’s actually what you did, wasn’t it?

Catherine Newman

I can imagine... that’s it. I imagined it. And honestly, my husband could hardly stand to read it. He found it so devastating. Just—and it’s, as you know, it’s not massive conflict. It’s like...

KJ Dell’Antonia

But it is. It’s...

Catherine Newman

But it is. Yep

KJ Dell’Antonia

I mean, it’s, you know—

Catherine Newman

Yep.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s it—goes back to Alex Keaton, right? [Unintelligible] Both of us, yeah, yeah, no, I get it. It’s a really—and by writing it, even if it’s not autobiographical, which it’s not, it’s fiction, you are saying something about some compatriots, you know, some other—you’re really, you’re—you’re putting—you’re putting a stake in the ground, which I think has always been pretty obvious for anyone who knows you or has read you, but maybe you had not verbalized even in a fictional form.

Catherine Newman

Hmm, maybe.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Could feel judgmental because—it’s judgmental (whispered). But it’s values. That’s what values do. A value that doesn’t judge anyone isn’t a value, even if you don’t want to judge people. But I think it’s kind of true, like...

Catherine Newman

Yeah, yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

You can also be open. But, I mean, that’s—I don’t know if, if you don’t offer that up, then we’re all just sitting here going, “Oh, it’s fine. It’s all...”

Catherine Newman

Everything’s fine.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Everything’s fine, it’s fine. That’s a joke in our house, because we had this Spanish exchange student, and he would always say, “Oh, it’s fine,” when—and it—what that meant was, it wasn’t.

Catherine Newman

Oh no, it wasn’t fine.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, no... that’s what it means when we say, “It’s fine.”

Catherine Newman

Oh my God, KJ.

KJ Dell’Antonia

All right, so this kind of gets to, I think, my next question, which—which is, what about this was, um, bigger for you? Was a bigger leap to take in your writing?

Catherine Newman

It’s like, you know, I think it’s just a little more plot in a novel than I’ve ever managed. Even though, you know—don’t laugh because there’s not a ton of plot. But nonetheless, there were sort of these two vectors of significant—I thought—dramatic contention that I had to manage in the writing, and—and I was anxious about it. Like, I—I like a quiet story that’s not like—is too plot-driven. But anyway, so that is—it was, you know, I definitely plotted it a little more actively before I wrote it, like I wanted to make sure that these plots were unfolding in the timeframe I wanted them to unfold in.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And did that present some new, like, “Oops, I did this too fast, oops...” just that you hadn’t really had to...?

Catherine Newman

No, because I plotted it. It actually didn’t, but it just presented—before I started writing, I had the challenge of, you know, practically trying to graph these two plots to see where they would intersect, and—and the sort of ways that the two plots together create this kind of character arc for Rocky, the main character. And so I was—I just, like—I usually, I have this way that I plot stuff, and it’s kind of based on that book that I use because of you, which is like, you know, Put On Your Pants—or Take Off Your Pants, or, you know, the book...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Catherine Newman

And—and I, so I do this thing where I make a—I write down the numbers 1 to 25, and I print that. I print a piece of paper that has the numbers 1 through 25 in type font. I don’t know why I don’t just hand-write the whole thing. That—and I guess the thought’s how many chapters it’s going to be, but it’s never quite right. And then I fill in what I know. So I put in everything I know, and guess where it’s going to go in terms of the—what are the things? What’s it called when it’s like a thing...?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, the... the turning point or the...

Catherine Newman

Or the beat...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Or the moment of last resolve? Yeah, the beat!

Catherine Newman

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Catherine Newman

So I fill in everything, like, I know, you know. I have a sense of how it’s going to open. I have a sense of the different elements of the two plots, and I put them in this weird numbered-chapter thing. And usually—like, usually as if I’ve written so many books—but with the other two novels, I did that a little willy-nilly, and it was fine. Like, I sat down and wrote the books beginning to end without all of it totally sorted in terms of where everything would go, and that was fine. This book, I really had to understand where it was all going to go, so I had to just be sure that all of the most important plot points were plotted in that 1-through-25.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Do you? I mean, you have a lot of moving emotional pieces too. Asking for a friend—how do you make sure that those are all resolved? Or do you? Or does it just happen?

Catherine Newman

That’s a really good question. I hope they’re resolved, or if they’re not, that that’s intentional, by the way. Yeah, I—I’m just thinking about, like, the different relationships. You know, most of what the book is, is like Rocky’s relationships with the people she loves—like, that is sort of the heart of the book. And then her grappling with herself, both physically and psychologically. I think I have a sense of those. Those are kind of included in those. I have, like, a—in that 1-through-25— sorry if this is too granular.

KJ Dell’Antonia

No, I love it.

Catherine Newman

In the 1-through-25, I have the plot thing that’s like, “Rocky reads her biopsy results,” or, you know, whatever the thing is. And then I have this other column that’s like, the other things that need to happen in that chapter, if that’s what’s happening in the chapter. And that’s where I keep information about stuff that’s like, “Willa forgives her,” you know—whatever other thing needs to happen. So I sort of track the plot, and then I—and I also have a little other column that’s just like, seasonal details. And that I don’t fill out super carefully, but, like, because this book moves from essentially Labor Day to New Year’s, I—I just tracked a little before I started writing, like, around when in that season things were going to be happening, you know, that’s Halloween, it’s Thanksgiving, it’s the winter holidays, New Year’s, and then it’s going to be, like, the leaves are turning, the blackberries that, you know?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, no, it’s so hard. Is it Tuesday? Like...?

Catherine Newman

Yeah (laughing).

KJ Dell’Antonia

Dang it. Oh, wait—if its four days from the first day, and the first day was a Thursday, that means its Sunday, and Sundays do have a particular rhythm on their own. And yeah, no, it’s so hard.

Catherine Newman

It’s really hard, although that part’s my favorite part, probably—besides, I love dialogue. But I love—I keep a lot of notes that are really dull on their own about, like, the weather and the landscape, just in general. I don’t even know what I’m going to use them for. I just keep a ton of notes about the seasons. And I love pilfering stuff for fiction from them because it’s just like—it’s going to be fairly accurate. Like, I will have dated it. I’ll have a fairly strong sense of whether that will work or not.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, you’re not going to put the blackberries in April.

Catherine Newman

And I’m not going to put the blackberries in April, and I have that cheater feeling of chunking in something I’ve already kind of written down, and then your word count goes up by, like, 300 words.

KJ Dell’Antonia

You’re like, hey... [Unintelligible].

Catherine Newman

Yeah, exactly.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh my gosh, I love this. All right, well, one last question, and that is—what have you read recently where you felt like the writer was really, you know, playing big, doing their very max?

Catherine Newman

Yeah, I just read—well, I just got it in the mail, although my kitten—I want to show you, she has, like...

KJ Dell’Antonia

She had some fun with it...

Catherine Newman

Chewed up every corner.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Catherine Newman

So this book is A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews. And she is a very, very favorite writer of mine. She wrote the novel All My Puny Sorrows that I always press on everybody, because it’s like the perfect funny, sad novel. This book I got to blurb, so I read it a while ago, and it just came—and I think it just came out maybe this week, I’m not sure. It’s so incredibly good. It’s really strange—someone—she’s doing some conference in Mexico, and she has to write an answer to the question, “Why do I write?”

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay.

Catherine Newman

And she keeps starting and stopping, and it’s so—it’s nonfiction. I mean, it’s just authentically this, and she includes, like, letters to her sister. Her sister killed herself some number of years ago, and that’s the event that All My Puny Sorrows—which is a novel—is based on. But this, I am under the impression that’s the first time she’s written about it...

KJ Dell’Antonia

In a nonfiction way—yeah.

Catherine Newman

In a nonfiction way. And it is just—I did that thing, you know, when a book is so good? I picked it up because I knew I was going to talk to you about it, and then I read it for, like, an hour.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, no, I get it.

Catherine Newman

Even though I have, like, already read it. It’s so moving and beautiful and so—like, she’s just struggling in this, like, really profound way to process loss and to understand herself and what she’s created in the world. And it’s so good.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It sounds huge, and I would—yeah, I’m going to pick it up. I have a funny story about All My Puny Sorrows, which is that I took it to Spain while I was waiting for one of those patient-portal things. I had cancer at the time, and that’s—the character of the sister who wanted to kill herself made me so angry that I had to hide—not only did I have to leave the book behind, I had to hide it in the hotel so it would not juju me. I obviously survived, because this was, I think, seven or eight years ago. But I couldn’t—like, I just—it was... but that actually speaks to the power of the book.

Catherine Newman

Interesting... yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s not that it wasn’t an amazing book. It was that I literally couldn’t handle the particular, you know, mental illness that the sister was struggling with when I, you know, did not really want to die. Did not want to die, yeah. So I...

Catherine Newman

That’s amazing... yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

She’s a really powerful writer.

Catherine Newman

That—that is a really powerful story. Wait, were you going to share with me a book? Or it doesn’t work that way?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Well, it doesn’t...

Catherine Newman

KJ looks around...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Because I did not prepare.

Catherine Newman

What are you writing, KJ? What are you working on? What’s happening?

KJ Dell’Antonia

All right, we’re going to call this as an episode.

Catherine Newman

(Laughing)

KJ Dell’Antonia

Because it was excellent, and then I’m going to answer Catherine’s question, which all of you listeners kind of vaguely know. Let’s just say I’m trying to play big. All right, so this is me ending with: thank you so much, Catherine Newman, for joining me on the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast.

Catherine Newman

Thank you, KJ; it was a pleasure, as always.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And for all you listeners, we’re still saying it—keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Subscribe to back the show that backs your writing life

Find Kate via her website: Kate Rope, @kateropewriter on Instagram, and her Substack Strong as a Human

Transcript Below!

Jess LaheyHey, it’s Jess Lahey. If you’ve been listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast for any length of time, you know that, yes, I am a writer, but my true love—my deepest love—is combining writing with speaking. I get to go into schools, into community organizations, into nonprofits, into businesses, and do everything from lunch and learns to community reads to just teaching about the topics that I’m an expert in, from the topics in The Gift of Failure, engagement, learning, learning in the brain, cognitive development, getting kids motivated, and yes, the topic of over-parenting and what that does to kids’ learning—two topics around The Addiction Inoculation, substance use prevention in kids, and what I’ve been doing lately that’s the most fun for me, frankly, is combining the two topics. It makes the topic of substance use prevention more approachable, less scary when we’re talking about it in the context of learning and motivation and self-efficacy and competence and, yes, cognitive development.

So if you have any interest in bringing me into your school, to your nonprofit, to your business, I would love to come—you can go to jessicalahey.com, look under the menu option “Speaking,” and go down to “Speaking Inquiry.” There’s also a lot of information on my website about what I do. There are videos there about how I do it. Please feel free to get in touch, and I hope I get to come to your community. If you put in the speaking inquiry that you are a Hashtag AmWriting listener, we can talk about a discount, so that can be one of the bonuses for being a loyal and long-term listener to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. Hope to hear from you.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it’s recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.

Jess Lahey

Hey, welcome to Hashtag AmWriting. This is the podcast about reading all the things—short things, long things, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, articles, queries, book proposals. This is the podcast about writing all the things, but more than anything else, this is the podcast about getting the writing done, getting the work of being a writer done. I’m Jess Lahey. I’m the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The Washington Post and The New York Times and The Atlantic and lots of other places.

And today I have a guest—a guest I’m very, very excited about. So today I’m going to be talking with Kate Rope about a topic that I have wanted to cover for a while and have not had exactly the right person to cover the topic with. Kate Rope is a writer. She is a journalist, and she’s had articles at a lot of the same places that I have, actually—like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and things like that. She wrote a wonderful book called Strong like a Mother [Strong as a Mother], and her new book, Strong like a Girl [Strong as a Girl], is coming out in October—October 14, to be precise. And thank you so much, Kate, for coming on the podcast.

Kate Rope

Oh, I’m so excited. It’s a dream come true. It’s—it’s literally like leveling up in my world.

Jess Lahey

Okay, so help me remember where we actually first met? It could have been through Jess Foundation people, because those people in common.

Kate Rope

No, no, it was before then. I think I just sought you out for—for being a source for a couple of articles.

Jess Lahey

Oh, okay.

Kate Rope

Just because of having read your The Gift of Failure.

Jess Lahey

Normally what I do—what I need, what our computers need now—is a function called “How do I know blah, blah, blah?” Because there are all these people that, like, we know them from online, or I know them because I’ve used them as a source somewhere for some article. So I got on my computer, and I looked in my little, you know, search terms, and I put your name in, and I was looking for, like, our earliest contact, and I couldn’t find it. But I think our computers need, like...

Kate Rope

I think it was a phone call.

Jess Lahey

How—oh, okay, well, there you go.

Kate Rope

I think that’s why there’s no record of it.

Jess Lahey

Well, either way, I’m so glad we’re talking now. I love, love, love your new book. I’ve been fortunate enough to read an early version of it. It’s really lovely. You ended up with a beautiful cover—I can’t wait for everybody to see it. I will be posting a picture of it in the show notes. But I wanted to talk to you—and you actually came up with this independently—but this is this topic I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time: about interviewing kids specifically. Like, logistically, there are a lot of hurdles to get through when you interview kids There can be, I know, depending on, like, the when, the where, the why, and the how. But I wanted to talk a little bit about interviewing—how we interview kids, how we interview people in general, how we get permission, how we approach people. So since you had sort of this idea to begin with, I would love for you to start and talk a little bit about your book—how on earth you got access to the people you talked to in your book, and how that process went for you.

Kate Rope

Sure. So it goes back to my first book. I will admit to having a bias—I do not like books that have case studies that open chapters, and so it’s like, “Sarah and her family could never get homework done,” and so it, you know, went for, you know, this is what they went through. And if you don’t relate to that particular story, you check out. So for my last—my last book, Strong as a Mother—I wanted to have the voices of all different kinds of moms and pregnant people, you know, sharing what their experience was, so that a reader could find some other person that had gone through what they had gone through. And so for that...

Jess Lahey

Can I hit pause? Can I hit pause for just one second? So my—and this is, I’m going to be talking to my Authority to Author person that I’ve been interviewing for a series that I’m doing on going from being an authority to being an author—and we talk a lot about this: like, what’s your framing narrative for the chapter? How do you create narrative? So I want to make sure at some point we talk about—so if you’re not a fan of sort of the case study approach, how do you go about thinking about creating a narrative to use to couch your data, so that it’s not just about data?

Kate Rope

Yeah, I do have stories in there. So I might have, you know, a couple of paragraphs with a particular story that illustrates, you know, whatever we’re talking about in the chapter, but it doesn’t ground the whole chapter in one experience. So…

Jess Lahey

I like that.

Kate Rope

Yeah, it’s trying to bring in different, different viewpoints. I tend to write very much, like, voice-forward. So I bring people in, and I talk about, you know, the research, but I don’t tend to be really clinical or academic. So I tend to kind of create the narrative. I bring the people’s stories in within the body of the text. But then what I did in Strong as a Mother was, at the end of each chapter, I had quotes from pregnant people and moms about whatever the topic was. So, let’s say it was a chapter on breastfeeding, or choosing how you’re going to feed your kid. I wanted the mom who said, “I never wanted to breastfeed. I went to the hospital; I put a sign on my door that said, ‘Do not bring a lactation consultant in here. I know what I’m doing. I’m doing formula.’”

I wanted the woman who was like, “Breastfeeding is all I ever wanted to do in my whole life, and it just didn’t work, and I had to stop. And it was heartbreaking, but I got through it.” I wanted the woman who was like, “This was the one thing that worked out for me, and I loved it, and I did it till my child was four.” Because then, at the end of the chapter, you’ve read this whole chapter on making choices about feeding your child that feel good to you and that work for you—and adjusting if life makes it not possible to live out that particular choice. And then I wanted them to see people who had done it, and who’d gotten through it. So that’s the way I did Strong as a Mother. And it was funny—I had so many in the end, and the only ding I got in Publishers Weekly was that they wanted more. But we had to cut so many, because otherwise the book would have been, like 600 pages long.

Jess Lahey

Which is interesting, because then I have to—I, you know, if I’m going to go with, as I did both in The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, I chose one framing narrative. So I have to be really careful about, how can I make this framing narrative as general, as appealing to as many people as possible? Because it is going to be a very thin slice, no matter what you do. But how you generalize that for people who may be experiencing something different is—it’s a hard thing to do. So that’s a really interesting choice to have to make—to say, okay, I’m not going to focus it on this one story versus, I’m going to give lots of different ways to people. I like thinking about that.

Kate Rope

It’s sort of like if…

Jess Lahey

Because I get stuck in…

Kate Rope

You went to a moms’ group…

Jess LaheyThe way I do things…

Kate Rope

Yeah, it’s—you had went to—then why do you go to a moms’ group early on when you have your baby? So that you don’t feel like a weirdo and somebody else is going through the same thing. So I kind of wanted this to be, like, three pages of a moms’ group for, you know, perinatal depression and anxiety, breastfeeding, sex, co-parenting—whatever the topics were. I wanted them to feel like they had entered a room with peers who were open to all the different experiences, you know, one can have when going through, you know, trying to make or bring a child into your home. You know?

Jess Lahey

I like that. Thank you for opening my eyes to a different way. It’s just what you’re used to, I suppose, and how you want to go about entering into your storytelling.

Kate Rope

Yeah, and so for Strong as a Girl, that didn’t feel quite the right way to go. So what I wanted to do was—and I’m a journalist, so I don’t even have, like you have—you’re a teacher, you’re trained. I am trained as a journalist. So all of the, you know, there’s some stories and advice that come from me living out my experience—me mostly doing things that I’ve learned from experts—but most of the actual advice and tips and everything is coming from experts. So I know I’m going to interview experts—experts for the book—and then I wanted to interview girls themselves, because I wanted to hear from them. What do they want? You know, basically, you know—this book is written for caregivers and parents of kids who identify as girls, elementary-age kids who identify as girls, so big, five to twelve. And you know, you can talk with ten and up, I would say. But, you know, five, six, seven, eight was not necessarily where I was going to get my, you know, sort of most self-reflective comments on what helps them and what doesn’t.

Jess Lahey

Although you do get great—you do get great quotes from kids those age.

Kate Rope

Agreed, agreed, agreed. So I went with, you know, kind of, you know, middle, upper elementary, middle school, all the way up through college. And I gathered focus groups together—and we can talk about why I did focus groups—but the whole point, the whole—what I wanted in the book was girls and young women reflecting on their childhoods: what helps them, what were the things that people in their lives did that were really helpful to them, and what were the things that they wish they had done differently or didn’t have access to? So that it was literally like—the way I would start off the focus groups is, I’d be like, “Pretend you’re talking to an auditorium of caregivers, and you get to tell them exactly the best way to do this job, like the way that’s going to help you the most to just— I want to know those things.” So for that...

Jess Lahey

Okay, so let’s talk about the focus groups. Yeah, the focus groups—because I think A) brilliant, B) how on earth do you get—do you pull a focus group together? Like, it’s something that when most people hear focus groups, they think of, like, oh, you know, this is how you beta test a movie, like.

Kate Rope

Yeah... “Do you like this toilet paper?

Jess Lahey

You do a test for a movie and see what the focus group thinks. Right? Exactly. How on earth do you, as a journalist, pull together a focus group? Because that’s such an incredible, valuable— and how do you select who’s going to be in your focus group?

Kate Rope

Yeah, so I have to give—so I have several writing groups, and one of them is professors in the Education Department at Georgia State. So they all write papers and stuff, and we get together, and I write whatever I’m writing, and so—and they’re all in education, and they’re all in early education. And so they interview kids, and so they said to me right off the bat, “You have to do focus groups. You have to have groups.” Because adults, you know, typically one-on-one, you can get them to start talking. But with kids, they’re going to respond to each other, and they’re going to riff off each other and develop a rapport. But—but you can’t have too many. There were definitely some focus groups—I would say the sweet spot is maybe four to six. Six starts to get a little unwieldy, only because you can’t keep them for three hours, and they all have so much good stuff to say. And so I had focus groups that were anywhere from two people to—I think, I think I had a seven—and they were virtual, because the girls were from all over the country and young women, and I wanted them to represent different lived experiences of girls.

So, you know, girls are not a monolith. You know, there are some things unique to being a female in our society—challenges, strengths, all those things—and then there are things, you know, that are unique to being a girl of color or living with a physical disability. So I wanted to talk with groups of girls who could speak to just the experience of being a girl and what helped them, and then also whatever, you know, their specific identity or lived experience was—what were the additional inputs that were helpful to them, or additional obstacles that they have ideas about how to help girls overcome. So in that case, I wrote—I reached out to organizations. So I reached out to a bunch of different organizations that work with girls of color, and I just said, “This is what I’m doing.” And literally in the acknowledgments, I say to those organizations, like, “You didn’t have to return my email, but you did,” because I just blind-emailed a bunch of organizations and said, “Here’s what I’m doing. Do you have—?” And a lot of these organizations have, like, an advisory council, or a summer camp or they just, you know, work with the same girls again and again. They have ambassador programs. So, you know, they could—they reached out to their network and said, “Who wants to do this?”

And so that was one approach. Same thing with having a focus group of girls living with a physical disability—I reached out to the Disability EmpowHer Network, and they helped me connect with, in that case, I think they were mostly young women. I think they were all about college age, maybe some in high school.And then, let’s see—for neuro—I wanted a big group of girls with neurodivergence, and that I just did pretty much by word of mouth. I created Google Surveys, Google Forms saying, “I’m looking to talk with girls. This is how it’ll go,” and just sent it to everybody, all and sundry, and had caregivers respond and say, “Yes, you know, my child is interested.” Same with LGBTQIA+ kids. So I basically kind of—and—and that was interesting. It was hard for me to find organizations because they are so protective of their LGBTQ youth—which I completely respect—that they don’t really like to do that. So that group, I had to kind of grassroots it, like I did with the girls living with neurodivergence. And I was very clear—and this is an important—we don’t have to do this now if you have more questions—but I definitely want to talk about the ethics and the...

Jess Lahey

Oh, I want to definitely go into this.

Kate Rope

Yeah, yeah.

Jess Lahey

This is all really interesting.

Kate Rope

And the parameters—so, so, so my motto is, you know, in the last book was “No mothers will be harmed in the creating of this book.” In this one: “No girls will be harmed in the creating of this book.” So there—I, the only thing I want to publish is some—I want to publish something a girl is happy to see on the page. Because I’m not supporting the mental health and well-being of girls if I am sacrificing one person’s experience and well-being to make a point or whatever. So I made it very clear from the start that they were completely in control of what ended up—I recorded everything, then I chose my quotes, and then I ran them by them. They could change their mind at any time—like, basically, they had total control of what ended up in the book, including an alias or just their first name. You know, if they wanted to say, instead of saying they were from, you know, Encinitas, they wanted to say they were from Southern California. I’m also very careful, having come up as a research director and editor in magazines that I never want to have identifying information about minors. So I didn’t—I would never do a full name and a location. For instance, I would really never do a full name. It’s always just a first name or an alias, and then location in a general enough way. And that kind of depends too on what we’re talking about and how sensitive it is. So...

Jess Lahey

One of the fun things that I let the kids do often was pick their own alias if they wanted to. It was a fun way—it was sort of like, “Ooh, that’s exciting, oh my gosh.” And then it turned into, like, a whole project—like, “Oh my gosh, what’s my name going to be?” That was kind of fun too. But I love—I think for a lot of people, especially people who have never done this before, it sounds completely overwhelming to try to ethically get the voices of kids into a book. And it can be easier to, you know, just sort of avoid talking to them directly—which is the problem with a lot of books about kids. Or even when you go into education, and I’m like—every once in a while, I’m like, “Or we could just ask them.” And it seems like there’s a big block about actually talking to the kids themselves, because it is complicated. There are considerations that you have to hold dear to your heart if you really are working for the betterment of kids and not, as you said before—which I really like the way you articulated it—you know, you can’t harm one kid in order to get a story out to lots of others, no matter how helpful you think that story is going to be

Kate Rope

Yeah, yeah. And it sounds overwhelming, but first of all, those focus groups were the best part of doing this book. These girls had insight and humor and natural, reflexive inclusivity. And, I mean, they just made me feel better about the world every time I finished. And I mean what I mean—they, sometimes there was one that went for two hours, and that was cool. That was the group of girls who had different neurodivergences, and they got so into each other that, like, at a certain point, I just was sitting there while they were exchanging numbers and sharing what their interests were. And so, so yeah—I, it was so enjoyable, and it wasn’t that overwhelming. Because going through an organization, you’ve got someone helping you, you know, get this all together. You’ve got someone helping you distribute the waivers, because you have to have, you know, release forms signed. And, you know, I just kept a really good Google Sheet of, like, who has signed the waiver, what’s their approved name, what’s their approved quote.

So, so that—I think, honestly, that’s not the hardest part. I mean, I think the other—I do try to be really efficient in other ways with my interviewing. With experts, I always do a recorded—nowadays, mostly Zoom—used to be phone interview. Because I don’t know what they’re going to tell me, right? I know what I’m interested in, but I don’t know what they’re going to tell me. With caregivers—and I also have caregiver quotes throughout Strong as a Girl—I usually want to talk to them about a particular topic. You know, “How did you first handle your daughter’s dyslexia diagnosis? How do you talk about sex with your daughter? When did you start? When she’s having really big emotions, how do you guys work through it?” So for that, I just did Google Forms, because they have—they know the answer to that question. I know what I’m looking for. I’m looking for information about specific things to get a sense of different ways families handle things, and they can just respond in a Google Form, and it’s easier than trying to get a busy, you know, parent or caregiver on the phone.

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Kate Rope

So that was how that—so, like—

Jess Lahey

That makes a lot of sense.

Kate Rope

That made it less overwhelming. I sort of have three tiers of interviews.

Jess Lahey

How do you go about organizing—once you have that information? I find then I have a transcript of the interview, or whatever form—I happen to like having the transcript of the interview—and I’ll underline things and flag things. How do you go about organizing? Do you organize by topic? Do you organize by age group? How—you know—what are the ways that you organize the interviews? It sounds like once you have enough of them, it can be really hard to know how you want to use what information and quotes.

Kate Rope

Yeah, I think, I think the hardest thing is—I think I knew pretty much how I wanted to use everything. The hardest part is, like, the copy editor caught that I said one girl lived in Philadelphia in one area of the book, and then I had her in Denver in the other area. And that’s because she was in a focus group with someone from Denver. And so I can’t say I have the answer to that, because I don’t think I did it really well—but I will do better next time. I basically just—I would, I would screen the transcript shortly after the interview or the focus group, because then it was fresh in my mind, and I could sort of remember, “Oh yeah, I want to...” and then I would just highlight, like, whatever the things were that I really liked. And then I just created one master document with all the focus group quotes, you know, and then...

Jess Lahey

Oh, nice!

Kate Rope

As I’m thinking about—yeah—and then as I’m thinking about the topics—okay, now I’m in the, you know, the chapter on puberty—I’m going to go through and pull out what quotes speak to that. And I use Scrivener. I’m a huge Scrivener fan. I use one percent of what Scrivener offers. I just use the table of contents on the left so I can just plop—so then I would just plop them in there. So that..

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Kate Rope

That was my approach, yeah.

Jess Lahey

I think the reason I ask that question is—I think every single writer has had that moment of, “Oh, I know someone said this really cool thing. Who was that? Where did I file it? Where am I going to find it again? It was in a study, it was on a piece of paper, I know I saw it, it had a red mark on the corner.” You know, all these problems we have with our organization—we’re never going to have, I don’t think I’m ever going to have, the perfect system—but I seem to get a little better at it with each mistake I make.

Kate Rope

Yeah, yeah. I sent—I sent, I sent the wrong quote to one of the focus group participants—to her mom. She was the, you know, the conduit—and she said back, she was like, “Goldie—pretty sure she did not say that in the— they did not say that in the focus group.” And I was like, “Really?” And I went through, and sure enough, it was somebody else. And then I reached out to them—“Oh, yeah, I said that.” Because I’d already checked quotes with them. So that’s another reason for checking quotes.

Jess Lahey

Yeah. I also love the idea of making sure that your subject knows that they will have the right to say, “No, I’d rather—even though I know I said that.” You know, it’s—with a kid, you can’t just say, “Okay, this is an on-the-record, off-the-record sort of situation.” So before, for example, in The Addiction Inoculation, and specifically with kids like Georgia and Brian—the two kids I really featured heavily in the book—they had approval over every single thing that was going to be in the final book. And I think at one or two points, just because I felt really protective of them, I was like, “Are you sure this is how you want to say it? You realize, like, people will read this book.” I think there’s this detachment between, like, the things that come out of your mouth and the fact that it will be out there in public, and I sort of saw it partially as my job to fully make sure they understood the implications and the possible outcomes. And I know you don’t have to go that far, but for me, I felt very protective of the kids and wanted to make sure that ethically, everything was on nice, solid footing.

Kate Rope

Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, the journalism you and I do is not—we are not reporting on politicians who are trying to spin stuff afterward, you know? We’re—we’re telling stories of real people to help real people. So, you know, on the record, off the record, it’s not so—you know, it’s—it’s you have control. And also, obviously, you and I both, like, parent and write from a consent point of view. And so if I’m saying in my book, you know, that a person in a physical interaction can—has—the ability and right to call it off at any time, right?

Jess Lahey

Yep.

Kate Rope

Then the same goes for their participation in my book.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So first of all, one of the things I really loved about this book was the multitude of stories—the multiple angles on the girl experience—and the fact that there wasn’t this one experience that is this monolithic girl experience. I think, especially coming at it from a perspective of someone who is the mom of a kid who maybe doesn’t fit neatly into the box of a, you know, a stereotypical—whatever that is—girl. There’s a lot of ways you can come at this story, and in order to not alienate kids who are not having the experience of, like, whatever it is you want to refer to as a stereotypical girl experience, you have to encompass all of those stories. And I have a lot of respect for the way that you managed to really bring those stories in. So thank you so, so much. As a reader, I really, really appreciated that as well. It just made the book more interesting too, because I have a lot of moments where I’m like, “Oh, that hadn’t occurred to me,” and “That’s not my experience, but cool, now I know what someone else’s experience is.” So the book did double duty for me.

Kate Rope

Well, thank you. That’s awesome. And yeah—and I think, ultimately, as I think about it, like, it’s really about listening, right? Most of what I’m talking about in the book is about listening and letting the person in front of you tell you who they are. You know, that they come into this world with the raw material they need to survive, and this world throws a lot at them. And so how do you just keep them true to that experience—help them develop that sense of themselves? And that goes for, you know, any kind of experience. That goes for learning, you know, that you’re an introvert, and it’s okay if you don’t want to speak up in class. And I have a quote in the book from you, who said—and I loved it—like everyone says, “Here, let’s teach you how to speak up in class,” and you’re like, “That’s, like, one of the most high-pressure places to speak up.” Like, umm...

Jess Lahey

And listen—that was a place that, well, that was a place that I had to come to. It was—that was a painful evolution for me as a teacher, especially because I am an extrovert, and I’m used to teaching to extroverts. And so for me to learn from Susan Cain the way I did, and learn from her book Quiet, and learn from her pushing back on something I wrote once and saying, “Mm-mmm, that’s not how everyone learns. That’s not how everyone shows that they’re understanding what you’re teaching them.” So that was a painful evolution for me, and I do not take credit for just knowing that stuff—definitely...

Kate Rope

Right? Well…

Jess Lahey

That was a hard one for me.

Kate Rope

The world runs on extroverts, right? So, if you—so, if you have an introverted girl, you know it’s a balancing act of completely respecting who she is—celebrating who she is—and then also finding out where you can equip her to operate in the world in a way that helps her, given the world’s expectations. Or understanding the world. You know, in the neurodivergence section, we talked a lot about—and for all these sections—you know, if I was doing a section on, you know, girls of color, or girls with physical disabilities, it was all experts who work in those communities, caregivers whose kids are in those communities, or girls themselves from those communities, because I can’t speak to those experiences. But the people I talked to in the neurodivergence section would talk about how a lot of times parents try to protect them—like, by not telling them about their neurodivergence, or by sort of framing it as a superpower, or not talking about the difficult things. And I think it was Amanda Morin—who’s this awesome neurodivergence and inclusive-schools expert—who said, you know, “We need to teach them about the world’s expectations, not so that they can conform to them, but so that they can understand when they don’t, and advocate for themselves.” So, you know, that’s what this whole thing is about—knowing who you are, understanding a little bit about the world, so that you can be who you are—whether that is, you know, the sex you were assigned at birth, or whether that is living in, you know, a larger body, or all the things. Like, any area where the world is going to try to tack on one more reason a girl isn’t good enough—how do you equip her with, like, real faith and love for who she is? So that was important.

Jess Lahey

Speaking—well, speaking of neurodivergence, did you have to change anything about the way you ran your focus group or the way you did your interviews, based on the fact that you were then interviewing people with neurodivergence?

Kate Rope

No, because they did that for me. They were amazing. I mean, I had one participant who was, I mean, just so eager to share everything. And early on said, “I interrupt. I interrupt all the time.” And then another participant said, “So do I. It’s really hard for me not to. I need to say the thing when I think the thing.” These girls were clearly in families where they had been supported with the right—

Jess Lahey

And empowered...

Kate Rope

Supported and empowered with, like, you know, the necessary school supports or whatever—but also just the understanding of themselves. And so they knew the language, and at one point, the girl who had started off the bat saying, “I interrupt,” and she wanted to show everything in her room, you know, and I just let her go. Like, I wasn’t about—I wanted to see her as who she was. I wasn’t trying to get anywhere specific with the focus group. I really let that go. But at a certain point, she said, “You know what, I can’t stop interrupting, so I’m just going to mute myself, and you’ll see me talking, because I’ll still be interrupting—but I won’t be interrupting.” And I mean, I was, like, blown away. I mean...

Jess Lahey

Wow!

Kate Rope

Just the—in all the groups—the self-awareness...

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Kate Rope

The skills they had developed, you know—and sometimes I would talk to girls who—kids who, you know, had been hurt by their experiences growing up. And I could feel that, but they had processed it. You know, maybe if, from their family of origin, they weren’t getting everything they needed, but I got to them through a mentoring organization where they were starting to get that. And so they were able to articulate what those challenges were and what they wish they had had. So it’s not that they—it was all, you know, rainbows and—and, you know, puppies, but...

Jess Lahey

Well, it sounds like going to…

Kate Rope

But they all had incredible insight.

Jess Lahey

It sounds like going to the kids also through organizations that had given them that opportunity to learn about their empowerment and to give them the language also helped you, because then again, as I said, you didn’t have to—you didn’t have to work quite so hard to help elicit some of the conversations that you needed.

Kate Rope

Right.

Jess Lahey

It sounds like that was a really smart way to go.

Kate Rope

Yeah, these—these kids were in those organizations, in those conversations already. You know?

Jess Lahey

I’ve learned some of the hardest lessons about interviewing when I’m trying to transcribe my own notes. And Tim laughs every single time I do this, because then I hear myself talking too much, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, just shut up. Shut up. Let them talk. What the heck are you doing?” And that—I think that was one of the greatest lessons I had to learn through all of my journalism and through all of my writing these books—is sometimes you just got to shut up. And that’s why I think having these other kids available in the focus groups—brilliant—because they’ll egg each other along, they’ll get conversations going, and you can just shut up and step back a little bit. I love that.

Kate Rope

Yeah, and they’ll—they’ll, you know, in that particular focus group, the one girl who was interrupting a lot, another one was starting to have difficulty with it, and she was so respectful in how she said it. She said, “I feel differently than you do, and it’s hard for me to think when you’re talking so much.” And maybe it was after that that she said, “Okay, I’ll mute myself.” But they were expressing these things to each other in the most kind and direct and empowered ways. But I’m a huge talker, as you can already tell on this podcast, and I do talk too much. And so, I mean, literally every focus group opens with me, like, blathering on about what I’m doing, and then me eventually saying, “You know, I’m going to shut up and you guys talk.”

Jess Lahey

It was also big—it’s a big thing that happened in my teaching, as well, when I let them sort of lead class a little bit more, and I got to step back and just sort of watch them do their thing. I learned way more about them. They learned way more from each other. And it was—it worked all the way around. So, is there anything else you wanted to share with us about the interviewing process for this book? I mean, you have so much experience in interview space, and I love that you’re just talking and talking, because I’m actually learning a ton from you.

Kate Rope

Oh, thanks. That means a lot, because I’ve learned so much from you. I have your book right here. I’ve got my, like—my “best of.” So…it was difficult to—I got men. I did, I did get some dads, but it was difficult. And if I were doing this book again, or if I do a similar book, I’ll really—you know—it’s harder. There aren’t organizations. There aren’t super-active Facebook groups of dads, you know, but it’s growing. There’s a lot more attention paid. And so I will definitely start out earlier thinking about what are the harder people to reach, and I’m going to prioritize reaching out to them. So it’s not like, “Oh God, I got to turn this book in, and okay, I heard from five fathers, and that’s just going to have to be good enough,” you know?

Jess Lahey

That’s a really good point. I’ve actually done a lot of thinking about ways to access more fathers as well. And I was thinking, okay, maybe you could come at it from the influencer angle, or the—you know, that kind of thing. It is tougher, especially in the education space. And there are lots of conversations in education about how do we make it clearer to fathers that they are really and truly invited into education in a way that traditionally it’s just been the moms. And it has been—it’s been tougher, but I think it’s really valuable and really worth doing. So I’m so glad you brought that up.

Kate Rope

Yeah, and as we’re talking about it, I’m thinking focus groups could be really good for that. I mean, it’s hard—it’s hard to get adults available at the same time. It was hard to get kids available at the same time. But it’s—you know, I don’t want to throw men under the bus, but like—like kids, they might do better sparking each other’s ideas...

Jess Lahey

Yeah, absolutely.

Kate Rope

…than having to just make it up from whole cloth when you’re asking them. And, you know, I think people—they get nervous. They think this is like a permanent record, or, you know, it’s like those—you know, those old-timey photographs of people who are like, “This is the record of this moment of our lives.” And so, you know, I did the same thing with caregivers that I— I mean, mostly I did Google Forms with caregivers, but I did interview some on the phone or in person, and I said the same thing to them: “You’re in charge of what goes in this book.” You know?

Jess Lahey

Love it. I absolutely love it, and you’ve written a really powerful book. You’ve written a really wonderful and eloquent book. I’m really excited to be able to take it around and hold it up and say, if you want to read a book about, you know, girls and parenting girls and taking care of girls and raising girls, here’s a new book that I really, really recommend. So thank you so much for writing the book. It was a pleasure to read—it really was.

Kate Rope

Thank you. That means—you have no idea. I mean, just even coming on this podcast is, like I said, leveling up. It’s like, you know, I remember reading and meeting you guys for the first time at Mom 2.0 when my book was coming out, and I had no idea what I was doing. I still think I wouldn’t know what I was doing if I went to a thing like that again. But, like, I’m just not a networker. Worship is a strong word, but definitely looking up to you guys, you know? And listening to the podcast, you know, every episode—and then I’m like, “I’m going to be on it.”

Jess Lahey

Well, if people want to learn more about you, where could they go to do that?

Kate Rope

Yes, my website is katerope.com. I’m on Instagram.

Jess Lahey

A lovely website. I was there just earlier today. It’s a lovely website.

Kate Rope

I am very happy with Booyah Creative—Kayleen Mendenhall, who designed it—@kateropewriter on Instagram. And I have a Substack, Strong as a Human. You’ll find me any of those places.

Jess Lahey

Oh, I love that.

Kate Rope

And Strong as a...

Jess Lahey

We will put you—all of your stuff—yep, we’re going to put the cover in the show notes; we’ll put all the links in the show notes. And I’m just really grateful to you. Thank you so much for taking time to come on the show, and for everyone else, you know how it goes... Until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

One important link we mention: https://wheregoes.com, where you can check any link you’re given to see where it really goes—and you should.

Here’s Rachael’s episode where she reads you her whole scammy letter, and talks about getting so jaded that she almost didn’t open the email from her publicist telling her she’d hit the list: http://www.howdoyouwrite.net/episodes/i-hit-the-usa-today-bestseller-list-and-a-warning

And to sign up for all Rachael’s writerly things (which are EXCELLENT), go to https://rachaelherron.com/write.

Transcript Below!

KJ Dell’Antonia

Kids, I am here today with Rachael and with Sarina. And the reason that I asked Rachael to join us is that on one of the episodes of her podcast, Ink in Your Veins—link in the show notes—she read, in great detail, a letter from a scammer that she almost fell for. And man, I could see why. And right at that exact same moment, Sarina had been forwarding similar stuff, and even since we had that little conversation, the level of opportunities to fall for this stuff has gotten even greater. So this is us recording an episode to help you figure out which of those emails in your inbox are from scammers. You know, spoiler—“all of them”—and how to spot them, how to feel about them, and how not to fall into ye olde traps. So, Rachael, do you want to start? You don’t have to read the entirety of that letter. For that, y’all can go and listen to the episode of Rachael’s podcast. But just tell us a little bit about it. It was so specific.

Rachael Herron

It sure was that was the —first of all, thanks for having me and the and the thing that really chapped my hide about it, as I said in that podcast, is that we do get, you know, as authors whose—I think that our emails should be out there, right? Readers should be able to get a hold of us and you know, a scouting film, film agent needs to know how to find us to give us lots of money. So our email should be out there. And we’ve always got always gotten scam emails, but this one the very first one I got, and since then, have, like you said, have gotten plenty more. Sorry, let me bring it up here. It was about my book, Eliza’s Home, which is actually, it’s not even a full novel—it’s a novella. And the person who wrote it was named Timmy. Just Timmy, may I point out. But he was the founder of “Lit Flare Book Marketing Agency”. And honestly, “Lit Flare Book Marketing Agency”—that sounds pretty great. I mean, that’s actually a good, good name. I would be surprised if that weren’t a real one. And what he did was, yes, he flattered the book. But more than that, he demonstrated that he understood publishing. He—he called me out in a good way. He complimented me for knowing the industry and for being a hybrid writer. And hybrid writer is not a word that anybody who is not inside baseball uses. You know, hybrid publishing is one thing. Hybrid writers are completely different thing. Hybrid writers are people who both self-publish and traditionally publish. He says, you know, and he knew all of the genres that I wrote, including under a pen name that I use. And he complimented that. He complimented the whole world of this book. He taught—and this is the thing—he talked about some things that I had never thought of. This is post-war fiction. It was basically a prequel novella set after World War II in this small town. And he talked about how you could market this novella to people who enjoy post-war fiction.

KJ Dell’Antonia

See—all you’re doing here is making me want to fall into this person’s web.

Rachael HerronI immediately was struck by, “Well, this has to be—it has to be spam, right? It has to be.” But the more I read it, the more closely I read it, I was like, “This person really understands,” and this is not something that he could have found just by scraping Eliza’s Home and all of the information on Amazon, on the Kindle website, right? It wasn’t available. It wasn’t there. But what I think they’re doing—and correct me if you think I’m wrong—but I think that there’s just some, there’s somebody out there either teaching or disseminating this information on how to scrape everything. They basically went and scraped everything about me as a writer from everywhere, and then pitched it toward this book. And it did sound so good, and he did talk about marketing opportunities that I had not thought about. And I thought, “Oh, this person really must know what they—who—you know, they must really know what they’re doing.” So of course, then, because I have been around a while, I started researching. And I Googled his email—absolutely no hits. I looked up… did he have a website at that point? No, he didn’t have a website. “Lit Flare Book Marketing Agency” did have something online, but it was one of those, you know, temporary free sites that had just been built. So of course, it was bam. But the thing that got me so upset is that it’s going to trick people. He will absolutely have people fall for this. They will have people fall for this. “Have you? Have you? I want to hear about what Sarina’s gotten, and KJ, you must have gotten some of these by now.”

Sarina Bowen

Yeah.

Rachael Herron

What are you all seeing?

Sarina Bowen

So let’s take a step back and just let make sure everybody understands that we’re talking about an email that goes into depth about why your book is great and why it should be read by a wider audience. Rachael Herron

Yes.

Sarina Bowen

And um, I have gotten several of these, and the first one was so horrifically specific to my actual book, except for one huge tell, which is that, um, which is that, um, it was all about, like, here’s the character, and he’s so wonderful, and you’ve got this setup, and it’s so great, and this world that you’ve built is fantastic. And more readers should know about this. It’s a tragedy that they don’t. They were passionate about this idea, and, and, but the thing that was, the problem is they’re like, and it only has two ratings on Goodreads. And the thing is, though, that that book doesn’t—didn’t come out for months. Look, it was a month’s forward in the future publication at that point. So I…

Rachael Herron

Wow.

Sarina Bowen

Knew right away that that person like looked like they were paying attention, but wasn’t really paying attention. So, you know, it says, “So my slightly psycho question: do we let Thrown for a Loop keep skating in circles with too few reviews, or do we blast it into the net where it belongs—loud, messy, and impossible to ignore?” And then there’s a string of emojis, like it’s just so over the top. And the thing is that for years, you could spot the low-rent pitches. You know, “I want to improve the SEO of your website,” by their horribleness—like by their bad grammar, by their insufficient detail. But now, what I think is happening, even though I haven’t tested this myself, is there are some AI search engines out where you can provide web links, and all you’d have to do is put a link to the NetGalley listing of this book, put a link to my author bio, and put a link to the Goodreads page for this book. And you could scrape so much information about what the book is about and why people might care. And you could scrape so much information about what the book is about and why people might care. And I think somebody has written a prompt that just, like, makes that email easy to write in, like, 15 seconds. It’s like—remember the olden days when there was no spam? And then people started figuring out, like, “Oh, wait, I could send the same message to a million people inside of one day.” And then that was a, you know, an idea that we had to teach our parents what spam was. Well, this is, like, the version 2.0 of that. It’s just—it’s going to be incredibly easy for people to write you emails where it sounds like they’re passionate and they know what they’re talking about, and they just don’t.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And it—it kind of hurts. I—you know, Rachael recorded her podcast pretty soon, I think, after getting this. And, you know, they say lovely things, and then it’s just—it’s not even a little bit real. Like, it’s just great, and it almost—it’s almost painful. And I want to point out that this is—so this is one level of this: the wonderful marketing email you are getting that is specific to you that seems like a great person that’s really going to help you out. The person’s not real. The stuff’s not real. None of it’s real. Another level that I know Sarina has seen lately is basically anything that you have that is publicly available can turn into this. So can you talk a little bit about the trademark ones you’re seeing now?

Sarina Bowen

Ooh, absolutely. I filed a trademark for one of the aspects of my business, which is just, you know, everybody does it—no big deal. And my trademark attorney warned me that the minute we filed, I was going to get junk mail. And it looked so legitimate, because anytime you’re filing anything that is public record—so that’s like a trademark application, that is the filing for your LLC, of your business. If you do that—even just, uh, doing business as an as name—if you file that with your state, you will start to get spam that’s like, “You have to do the following: send in this fee.” And so that’s getting easier. Like, anything that can be automated can be automated to try to trip us up. So writer scams are just going to get bigger and uglier than they have been in the past, and we have to help all of our friends be mindful of this.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So, Rachael, when you were looking into this to figure out if this person was real, can you walk us through some of the things that… and there is no person. That’s—that’s the frustrating thing. Like, we can’t help but say he and Timmy and—and they—but there’s no, there’s—there’s no, no, there’s no Timmy there.

Rachael Herron

There’s no Timmy. That is made up.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It seems so, like, we’re such a small niche, but I guess any niche is big enough now.

Rachael Herron

We’re such a small niche, and people are desperate enough. If somebody only has one book out, and perhaps they have written alone, and they don’t have a community to help them realize this stuff and to tell them that it’s okay—nobody knows how to sell a book. New York doesn’t know how to sell a book. We’re all just trying to do the best we can. These people don’t know how to sell a book. They think, “Oh, I’ve only, I’ve only sold, you know, 50 copies of my book. I need help. And this person loves my book. I’m going to ask them to help me.” Of course, they have all these complimentary things to say. Since I got that first one, I’ve gotten, you know, dozens and dozens. And—and I really, for a while there, I admitted this on the podcast—that I was having too good a time, maybe playing with them just a little bit. And I would write back—because none of them, it’s bad, it’s not good—but none of them had a website link. So I would write back immediately and say, “Oh, I’ve been looking for someone to help me. Do you have a website, though? I can’t really trust anybody without a website.” And then it would be a few hours, and you could tell that they had thrown a website together. So I really kind of enjoyed that I was making them work quite hard to throw this website together. But here’s the thing that’s scarier about that: they know that we’re talking, and that we’re telling newer writers about this. And now, the ones I’m seeing, they have a website that—usually, you can tell by the URL—is not really professional. It is not “Litflaremarketing.com.” It is a “XYZgen.free.site.litflare.movie” or something, you know. It’s just not a real URL. But they also have LinkedIn profiles now for Timmy and his friends. They have—yeah, they have Instagram that they’re claiming, Facebook’s in order to set this up. So you can go, so you can find that they actually do have… well, it’s not an established presence. You can see that they have a presence, but you can tell that it’s not established, and they are not connected with people, and nobody is recommending them. So you can spend time doing that. I think that there are going to be so many of them, that we used to recommend: Google “Lit Flare Marketing Agency” plus the word “scam.” That was fine when there were a few of them. But when there are going to be dozens of them, more—hundreds of them a day being created—that’s not going to give any results. I think that the hard truth, and—and something that, you know, we need to be talking about more, is that mostly, excellent publicists, excellent marketing people who know what they’re doing and who can help sell some books—because they’ve got a lot of time in the industry—are not going to be reaching out cold. They do not make cold calls.

Sarina Bowen

That is right. They don’t.

Rachael Herron

They don’t make cold calls in this industry.

Sarina Bowen

Right. And even this—even filters down to newsletter advertising for books. Which—by which I mean—BookBub is the most famous one, and authors should feel very confident going to submit for an ad on BookBub. And there are some—there’s another, a second tier: Written Word Media does a nice job. Like, there’s—there’s some places. But I get a lot of emails from those, from people that are trying to appear like that: Hey, we have a network of 5,000 readers, and we want to share. And those people are not soliciting you. They are too busy doing their job. So, yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, I think we’re at the point where you have to assume: if it’s in your inbox and you didn’t ask for it, it’s not real.Rachael Herron

Yep. And that goes for famous authors writing…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, that’s right; this was another one that you mentioned. This was…

Rachael Herron

I haven’t figured out the angle on this one, but I’ve got about five of them now from famous authors, big names, who are reaching out to me to say, “Hey, you know, I discovered your books, and I’m also an author. Would you like to chat?” And I—and I didn’t. I have not known what to do with them, but with Colleen Hoover, I did play too hard. I went over the line, I wrote back to her. She says, she says, “I love connecting with fellow authors and hearing about the stories they’re working on.” And I wrote back, “Are you published?” And she wrote back, “I am a published author. I’d love you to check out my books.” And then I wrote back, “Good for you. How cute that book looks. I wish you the best with that. I do charge $350 an hour for writing coaching, and I charge by the minute, so you owe me $17 so far. How would you like to pay, and when shall we meet on Zoom?”

Sarina Bowen

That is fantastic!

Rachael Herron

But this scammer—I love this person so much—because they wrote back. It looks like about 14 minutes later: “I just sent the payment.”

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh sure, Oh my god.

Rachael Herron

And I was like, you are amazing. Like this person is now playing with me just as much. And then it then, you know, we never heard from each other again. But that was, that was amazing.

Sarina Bowen

Do you know who would love this story?

Rachael Herron

Who?

Sarina Bowen

Colleen Hoover, because, because she is not afraid to play with people who mess with her—like she would do the exact same thing. “By the way, you owe me $17.” That—really, she would. You know, you two should meet.

Rachael Herron

So maybe it was her—she was saying, “I already sent you the money.” But, you know, and—and in terms of her email, it was like, I can just look at it. It was something that would not fool me, but would fool somebody else. Colleen.Colleenhoover@gmail.com—that almost looks… and all spelled correctly. That is, like, the way her name is spelled. That might fool somebody else. But I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten a bunch of these now. But what are they after? What do you think they’re going to do? I don’t know. I don’t know what the friend’s angle is.

Sarina Bowen

Well…send you a bill, obviously.

Rachael Herron

But yeah, you know what?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Colleen Hoover needs a loan—is actually what I… yea, I have no idea. I have no idea what they eventually ask you for. But, umm…

Sarina Bowen

I love it when I can’t figure out what the scam is. I got one just today or yesterday that was offering to write me a Wikipedia page. And of course, I didn’t engage—I just walked away because I didn’t have time to play with them like you. But I’m like, okay…

Rachael Herron

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

What’s the angle there?

Rachael Herron

What is the angle there? There was one that I—there was one that I couldn’t figure out, because I also have a Shopify store where I sell some of my self-published books. And I kept getting many, many sales. I mean, I’m still getting these many sales of Eliza’s Gift [Eliza’s Home] this novella, because I think it’s the cheapest one there. Many sales to weird names—“Tomize Yourbrothe”—and three or four a day.

Sarina Bowen

I know what those are.

Rachael Herron

And nobody buys this book. Those are—I think they are—somebody fishing credit cards, right?

Sarina Bowen

Yes, it’s credit fraud. They are trying…

Rachael Herron

Like, they’re making sure that the credit card works.

Sarina Bowen

So if you have a Shopify store with a free item in it…

Rachael Herron

I do!

Sarina Bowen

Then you could get, then you could get 1000 of those a day.

Rachael Herron

Oh no! They haven’t tried the… they haven’t tried the free thing.

Sarina Bowen

And also…Rachael Herron

Just the $3.99.

Sarina Bowen

Empty cart is what I’ve heard people complain about. Like, if—if somebody… this is a known scam. If you are really struggling with it, I know some people you could talk to about it. But they will either try to charge through, and if it bounces, like, you—you still owe Shopify, like, a few cents or something like that. There’s some…

Rachael Herron

Oh how rude.

Sarina Bowen

Way in which this is making people’s lives really horrible.

Rachael Herron

Thank you. I will look in—I will look more into that. So, scammer is going to scam, and it is disappointing. And we have to be talking about it more, I think, which is why I think it’s so awesome that you’re doing this particular show.

Sarina Bowen

Well, I appreciate your attitude about it. It’s so great. And I do agree with you. It’s just that the hard thing about talking about this is that we are just living in a different world. And it hurts me to acknowledge that. Like, in 2015, every email that came into my inbox deserved a reply—one, because I was a baby author who needed to, you know, engage with everybody who wanted to email me. And then, you know, life got, like, louder and weirder. And now the truth is, we don’t answer every email that comes in—not even the ones that aren’t scammy. We just can’t anymore. So, um, it’s partly because of what has happened to email, and just partly that this business got busier. But, um—but it’s hard to, like, sit here and acknowledge with you guys that, like, yeah, I’m a harder person than I was 10 years ago. I do not have patience for your little, you know, quasi-scam emails, because not everything is a scam. Like, some people are soliciting for, like, badly—bad outcome businesses—and we cannot sort through all that stuff, because our time is valuable. I mean…

Rachael Herron

And this—this reminds me of something that happened just like that, maybe the next week after I did that show. It was that, you know, when you get these emails, a lot of times they will put the book title in the subject line. So, you know, Abigail’s Shop, Fantastic, can’t wait to… and then you can’t read the whole thing. And one morning, I came, looked at my email, and there were a bunch of them—maybe five or six of them. And at the top it said, The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland: USA Today. And that’s my most recent book. And I’m like, oh, these jerks are now spam—and they have been spamming me on this book in particular. But—but I opened it, and it was from my publicist, who was saying, “You’ve hit the USA Today bestseller list.”

Sarina Bowen

Oh No!

Rachael Herron

And I opened it with such an attitude, ready to hit spam.

Sarina Bowen

Ah…yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Sometimes the good news is real. And also, I guess a nice thing about these is that—unlike, you know—as long as you don’t hit any links, just opening the emails…

Rachael Herron

Opening the emails cannot hurt you—don’t hit the links. I do. I do hit the links. Yeah, I do hit the links—when they, when they… when carefully. I do live dangerously. And I’m—and I’m doing a lot less of it, because I did also have the realization that the more that I play with them, the more I’m training their email delivery system that this is a good email address to send to. So it’s just better to report spam and block. Report spam and block. It’s just not as much fun. And every day I have a weak day—I just had it the other day—where I was like, I just… oh, this was my newest fun thing. I was just in a mood, and I wrote back, “Really?” And they wrote back excitedly. And then I said, “Yes.” And I would just write one word at a time until they stopped. They knew they weren’t going to get anything else from me, but it was really enjoyable.

KJ Dell’Antonia

All right, so I want to go through a list of things people—okay—people can do. But first, Sarina has something to add.

Sarina Bowen

I just want to say that if you ever have an email that’s really confused you, and you’re not sure about that link, there are lots of little websites where you can check a link. Like, WhereGoes.com—you can type in the link you’ve been sent, and it will look at the redirect and tell you where you’re going to end up.

Rachael Herron

Oh, that’s fab... and it’s called WhereGoes.com?

Sarina Bowen

Uh huh. But there’s more…

Rachael Herron

That’s awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Sarina Bowen

You can Google, where does this link go? And then you’ll be shown…

Rachael Herron

Right.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay. So that goes on the list.

Rachael Herron

That is very, very smart.KJ Dell’Antonia

So, listen, people, first of all, it’s—it’s spam. It’s fake. I’m sorry. But if you have doubts, look at the email address. If it’s from Colleen Hoover… at Coll—your—what was yours?

Rachael Herron

Mine was Colleen.Colleenhoover@gmail.com.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, so if you see something like Colleen.ColleenHoover or, you know, Colleen.ColleenSnoover@gmail—okay, that’s dubious. Or if it’s from Colleen.ColleenHoover.movie… that’s a red flag. Basically, if it’s a weird sender address, it’s probably wrong. And the same goes for links. If the “Marriott” email is from Marriott.Reservations@guestreservations.com—that’s not real. That’s not actually Marriott. That’s just going to take you somewhere else. Sarina and I were talking this morning about a whole different line of scams, and here’s the rule: if you’re ever tempted to click, don’t—at least not right away. Like Sarina said, you can check it first. Go to a site like WhereGoes.com and paste the link in, or just Google “where does this link go?” to see what pops up. But honestly, the smarter move is to pull yourself out of the email completely. If it’s real—say, “Hi, I’m from PRH and I want this”—then don’t use the link in the message. Just go to the website yourself. Type it in, log in the way you normally do, and see if it’s actually there. It’s the same thing you’d do if you got an email from your bank or your credit card. Don’t click through—go around. Do the thing you know is safe, and then check. And the truth is, most of the time? It won’t be real.

Rachael Herron

But what for—just let’s take a moment with that too. What if an editor at Penguin Random House heard about you from their best friend, read your book, and they really did want to reach out to you? That editor is going to be savvy enough to know that you can—you can go to the Penguin Random House site, look for that editor, and you can even respond to the person you’re worried is a scammer, saying, “I get so much spam, and I’m going to email you from your work address. Is that okay?” And that editor will say nothing but, “Oh, that’s pretty smart. Yeah, I would do that—go ahead and do that.” They understand.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, and just make sure it doesn’t say, you know, “Tara at Singcarlson. Gmail.com,” you know?

Rachael Herron

If it isn’t a Gmail.com, it is spam. Period.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Prob… yeah, probably.

Rachael Herron

A business person will probably not be using Gmail by this…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, they might not. But there’s the slimmest chance they made a mistake. But again, like Rachael said, find the real emails. I mean, really—if a real editor has emailed you, and the… any email is—call the main number of the publishing house and say, I got an email that says it’s from this person. Can you give me their actual email address? And they will do it.

Rachael Herron

And they will do it.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Be careful out there, kids. It’s so depressing that we are doing this. Although I was telling Sarina my theory this morning, which is that this is going to force us all back offline. Like you’re going to have to read an actual newspaper, because no link you get can you ever be sure it goes to an actual newspaper? You’re going to have to call the hotel or the restaurant to make a reservation, because the restaurants are going to give up, because they can’t fight the bots. And you won’t know if you got a real hotel. You’re going to have to call the theater to make—you know, it’s just… we’re not going to be able to—we can’t have nice things, people. And this nice thing—I think that’s, that’s where it’s going to be. That’s my theory anyway, that would be good.

Rachael Herron

I’ve got, you know—in New Zealand, everyone calls everybody else, and it’s horrifying. I’ve got to tell you, like, it’s just… it’s just assumed. I once had my phone ring, and, of course, I didn’t answer it, because I’ve moved here from America.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Of course!

Rachael Herron

And—and then the second time it rang, I thought it almost might be important. And I think it was—I don’t know who it was, maybe my dentist or something. And when I answered, she said, “I just called you, but—but no one answered.” I know! American—we don’t, we don’t do that. Yeah, right. But yeah, America is now going to be going the New Zealand way.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe—maybe not.

Rachael Herron

Worse things could happen.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Anybody have any last advice for people on the subject of not falling into this?

Rachael Herron

Maybe talk to your friends about it, too. If you’ve got writer friends out there, talk to your pals, because it can be fun to screenshot the most egregious of them and send them back and forth. I mean, it is fun—that is, talk smack about it.

KJ Dell’Antonia

If your mother-in-law has been working on a book for a little while…

Rachael Herron

Uh… Lord!

KJ Dell’Antonia

You know, maybe has reached out to some writer sites, and you might want to just, you know, subtly let some people in your life that might need this information—you might want to try to find a way to pass it on. All right. Thank you so much, Rachael, for coming and talking about this. Thanks for taking the time. Sarina and I are so grateful. We are—all our listeners are. All of the things we talked about today are in the show notes, and all of the information about how to check out Rachael’s podcast—How Do You Write now called Ink in Your Veins—which you absolutely should be listening to if you aren’t already. I’ll put the link…

Rachael Herron

Especially the episode or two with KJ on there.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, well, sure. But also to the episode about hitting the USA Today bestseller list and getting this scam at the same time. Rachael has written a bunch of great books, one of which—the most recent—is The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland. Which… did I get the title right? I hope I did.

Rachael Herron

You did!

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay... I loved—and Rachael and I are going to be talking about it on a separate episode—but absolutely check her out. She is worthy of your writerly and readerly time. And that’s it from us, kids. So until next week—or until next time—keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Every draft gets messy. Characters show up too early, reveals happen too late, and suddenly nothing’s where it “should” be. In this episode, Jennie and KJ talk how to tackle the chaos and keep your words flowing.

Episode is free for all and romping through podplayers everywhere. Transcript is below—for paid subscribers only (because they cost $$ to make—thanks for helping us keep them coming!)

(Hearing impaired? Shoot us a note and we’ll work it out.)

Because Free Doesn’t Cover Transcripts

TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell’AntoniaI had written about 13,000 words-ish, and sort of vaguely call it the first five chapters, sort of. I have my loose, rickety Inside-Outline, which gets to the end and becomes almost an only emotion outline, because I’m not entirely sure I know what’s going to happen. I’m not entirely sure how. And, you know, we talked about that, so that’s fine. Like, I’m working—I’m working from that. I’m not working—it’s not like, and next I will write this. It’s more like, here’s the—what—whatever scene I write next, here’s why it has to happen, plot-wise, and here’s why it has to happen, emotion-wise. But it may not be exactly what I outlined. So I’m actually making an outline of what I actually wrote as I write it, which is kind of fun. But then as I’m—so as I’m doing that, and kind of comparing what I think is going to happen to what I’m writing, I realized, after I sent you a big chunk, which we’re partly excited about and partly not—and then it was—it was great—I realized that I needed something. Some things were out of order. Like, I started to write the thing that was the next up in my kind of vague plan, and then I was like, oh, wait. Like, I can’t have—this person can’t be doing this before—or they’re—like, I need—I need—anyway, so I’ve ended up—I went back, but I’m not revising. I’m actually sticking in new things already. So it’s like that 13,000 words is stretching out into, you know, probably 20,000 words as we approach. So I’m still in the world before the big death happens, because there were things... but also, in part, because it was getting too long. Like...Jennie NashYeah. Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So I needed things—so I needed to move some action. I was like, oh, well, now I’m supposed to have, like, five more things happen before the death. I can’t put another 10,000 words in here. Those things have to go back up. They have to start happening within what I’ve already done. So some of it was that as well.

Jennie Nash

Well, it was super fun to read your pages, because I can just feel the wheels turning, I guess, or the engine of the whole thing. And there were parts of it that felt super assured and like, oh, this is going to be good. And you really know this character now, which is what you’ve been circling around—like, really, who is this and really what’s going on here? And that was so fun to see. It was like, oh, yeah, more of this. This is great. This is—this is going to be good. And then there were other parts, it was like, well, what’s happening here?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, well, that was one of the parts that was like this. That was—it was in the wrong place. It was like; I was trying to do too much sort of introductory throat clearing.

Jennie Nash

So, KJ, I want to stop and ask you a question about something you just said, because you whizzed by it and it’s—it’s like an incredible skill that you have. Where you said something was out of order. It wasn’t that the thing was—what you wrote was not good or not right for the book. It was that you determined it was in the wrong place. And there’s so much that goes into that, like it’s about thought, but it’s also about rhythm and pacing and feel. And I just feel like that’s something a lot of people don’t know how to do. Like, can you talk about that for a hot second?

KJ Dell’Antonia

I can try. Some of this I learned from Sarina [Sarina Bowen], and from reading her thriller draft while she was still working on it, and talking about the process of paying attention to what the reader learns when—both from a thriller... this works—it’s not just from a thriller perspective, it’s also—I think we all have this urge to sort of, like, introduce—like you—when you read Save the Cat and you read all this, there’s—there’s an introductory period where you have to establish that you know your protagonist, everything is going wrong in their home life, their work life, and their emotional life. And the reason for that is—the you know—their emotional flaw. I’m probably mashing together a lot of different systems here. So you learn that, and then, you know, you want to write, like, 30,000 words of what’s wrong with your character and what’s going on—it’s all backstory. And then, you know, maybe you do that, and you realize there’s not enough action in it, and there’s not—you know, you do want the reader to know those things, but they need to know it more gradually. And then you start paying attention in the books that you’re reading to how little you maybe know before things happen, and how much fun it is to figure things out. Even silly things like, oh, you know, why—why are they not going back to their apartment all day? And it turns out to be because their ex was clearing their stuff out of there that day or something like that. But they don’t say that, because that’s not how they think about it. They just think, all right, can’t go back to the apartment, damn it, you know? And I just spilled coffee all over myself. Where am I going to take a shower? Better call this friend. And so your brain is like, wait, why can’t you go back? And so creating—building that—is really hard. And I think paying close attention as you read, and learning to pay attention even as you read for fun to what’s making it fun is kind of what has helped me build that. And again, then watching Sarina build her endings and be like, oh, I gave this up too soon—which is a different process. So I was more—I’m more in the “I took too long to tell you this,” or “I took too long to let this happen.” I worried too much about telling you everything before I let it happen. I’m at that stage—like at the beginning of the book. Things need to happen while you’re telling the reader things.

Jennie Nash

Well, this is so good because what you’re really saying is that you’re not just writing your story—you’re thinking about the reader’s experience of being in your story. I mean, that’s the pro move, right? Is...

KJ Dell’Antonia

I hope so.

Jennie Nash

Doing both things at the same time—like, what—what is the reader going to know? What are they going to feel? What are they going to think? What’s—what’s your question—what’s going to be fun for them?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Jennie Nash

Such a good question.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah. And this is a multi-protagonist book—or not multi—it’s not—it’s a multi-POV book with one protagonist. So that balance is also really interesting. And I’ve tried to pay attention to how other people do that. But that was part of it—was realizing that’s what that was. The mistake that I was making was—I had—there’s going to be five points of view, but, as I said, one protagonist. And so I had given you two of the other points of view, and one of them—um, Summer—was—was embroiled in the action. Like, I feel like that one in turn—but the other one was too introductory. It was too much this—and so I moved that to after Nate breaks his leg. That’s when we really meet her for the first time. And it’s just very—and it—so it makes things happen faster.

Jennie Nash

That’s so good. That’s so good.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, we don’t need—we don’t need an introduction to her, and we’re not really getting an introduction to any of these other characters other than through the protagonist. You just suddenly get their point of view. And that’s—I don’t know that. It feels modern, it feels fast. We’ll see...

Jennie Nash

Well, and it’s—the other point of view, are there not to tell their own story...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Right.

Jennie Nash

But that’s a structure, but that’s not your structure. They’re there to help—to tell the protagonist’s story.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, and to help—yeah, they have their own stories, but exactly—exactly. They’re there to tell—I mean, they’re there to help tell the protagonist’s story. But really, they’re also there... they’re there because they need to be there to tell the larger story.

Jennie Nash

Right. Right.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So they’re there for the plot story, but the plot story all is also very intertwined with the protagonist’s story. So—but—but—yeah, so every time—but every time I go to them, it needs to be, why are we here? Like we can’t—I can’t ever just go to that other—that other point of view so we learn what’s going on with that point of view. That’s not why they’re there.

Jennie Nash

Right.

KJ Dell’Antonia

They’re only there if it’s something about the mystery or something about the protagonist.

Jennie Nash

That’s good. That’s a good stress test.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It is, and—and it’s been—I mean, I’m glad I sort of sorted that out so quickly. I feel like in my initial draft of The Chicken Sisters, even though it didn’t have other points of view, it had some extraneous subplots that were just there for the subplot.

Jennie Nash

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’re on your way. And some of the writing was—was like I said—I used the word assured. It was—I particularly love your writing about—I mean, this book has a lot of—the setting is important. There’s a natural spaces setting that we’re in a lot, and the way you write about that is really good and really puts us there. And it’s clear that you—that you’ve spent a lot of time in that space. You know, like literally walking through snow. That is not a thing I’ve spent a lot—a lot of time doing, and your writing about it really put me there, which was cool.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And that is an interesting—I mean, I’m really enjoying this. But this is actually about something else, or a different person setting. I feel like when you read something like that, if—if you have spent a lot of time in that setting, then you can definitely tell. If it’s not particularly important to the book, it’s not necessarily annoying that maybe somebody got the setting wrong. But sometimes—you know, I was just reading something that I know was written by a writer who does not live in the part of the country that they were writing about, and I suspect never has, because I have lived in that part of the country. And there’s this—this chunk that they wrote about, a particular journey that is common to it, and I don’t—because this is someone I know, I’m not—I’m just not—I’m going vague. But—and as someone who’s experienced that particular journey that is taken within the process of living in this particular place, I’m like, oh, this—clearly this person read about doing this thing on the internet. Like, you can just tell. And it’s painful as someone who’s been there, and it was some of what led me to stop reading the book. But not—not all of it. Not all of it. I could have—I could have tolerated that. And there are plenty of times where you’re reading along and you’re like, okay, I know this person’s not really a vet, but they’ve clearly been in a vet’s office, and this is—it’s fine. Like, it doesn’t matter. I’m happy. It’s working. It’s working for me. So it’s just one element. But it goes on the list, right? If you’re...

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So I feel like that’s something to be super careful about—is when you’re kind of Googling to see what something’s like is—or maybe to play it down, it might have just been that there was a lot about this particular journey. And I was just like, it is not really quite right. Anyway...

Jennie Nash

I had a funny experience when I wrote my novel called The Threadbare Heart, which was so long ago that I can barely even remember what it was about. But there was—there was a fire, and somebody lost a fabric collection in the fire. That—this was important to the story and to this character. I can’t even tell you why that was so, but I do remember I did a lot of research on fabric collecting—why people do it, what they collect, how they store it—because I wanted to get those details right. And the—now I’m, like, wishing I remembered why—why I landed on that for this character. But the book—the book had to do with what you would take in a fire, basically. And I think I needed somebody with something very physical. I think that’s how I got there. But anyway, I had done all this research, and I quite love textiles in—as a concept. I don’t collect them my own self. I’m not a seamstress my own self. But I like them, and so I did a lot of research. And there’s a whole quilt underworld out there of quilters, and I went down that rabbit hole. But the funny thing is that when the book came out, I got all of these requests from sewing places. Will you come on and talk about your fabric collection? Will you come on and talk about your sewing machines and how your grandmother taught you to sew? And I was like, oh, that was made up. My grandmother did not—I didn’t—I don’t know how to sew. I don’t have that sewing machine. But it was—I was so proud, because it was not just one. It was a lot. I got a lot of requests that people thought this was an expertise that I had. And I was like, look at me!

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love that! Yeah, you did it. You got far enough into—I think there’s—the trick is to get far enough into something that you know a lot more than makes it into the book. And the...

Jennie Nash

Yeah!

KJ Dell’Antonia

Mistake that was made in the thing that I was reading with was that this was a person who had essentially gone, okay, when you’re in California, you get to, you know, Los Angeles from Santa Barbara by taking the 1 [Highway 1], and you see the following things. And therefore I’m going to write those things. But they didn’t—like if they’d driven it 452 times, they might not have mentioned, you take the 1 [Highway 1]. They might have said, you know that—that part where you—you see that one turn-off, and that, my God, that rest stop has been closed since 1982. Like, they might have said something like that. And so you got deep enough to get into that, and the writer that I’m complaining about did not.

Jennie Nash

So interesting. So interesting.

KJ Dell’AntoniaYeah, and you don’t see it. You shouldn’t see it. That’s the crazy stuff about this. Like everything else, you don’t—as a reader, as a regular reader who’s not reading from a writer-y point of view—and even when you’re a writer, you should not feel the sausage being made.

Jennie Nash

That is a great place for us to end.

Jess here. I love it when Sarina schools me on all things publishing nerdery, so we decided to make it official and create a whole new series. I have a long list of things I want her to explain for us, so stay tuned for more.

In the meantime, our first Nerd Corner chat is a timely episode about the Anthropic case specifically and registering your copyright specifically.

We’re going to discuss:

* The benefits of registering your copyright with the United States Copyright Office.

* The possibility of a settlement in the Anthropic lawsuit, and what that could mean for authors.

* Why copyright registration will be part of any potential settlement.

* How to register your copyright.

* Did your publisher fulfill its obligation to register your copyright?

For more information about the benefits of copyright registration, see the Copyright Alliance

To register your copyright yourself, you’ll need Copyright.gov.

You will also want to read the Authors Guild post about, “What Authors Need to Know About the Anthropic Settlement”

Hit that “play” button and nerd out with us for fifteen minutes!

Transcript below!

EPISODE 466 - TRANSCRIPT

Jess Lahey

Hey, it's Jess Lahey. If you've been listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast for any length of time, you know that, yes, I am a writer, but my true love, my deepest love, is combining writing with speaking. I get to go into schools, into community organizations, into nonprofits, into businesses, and do everything from lunch-and-learns, to community reads, to just teaching about the topics that I'm an expert in. From the topics in The Gift of Failure, engagement, learning, learning in the brain, cognitive development, getting kids motivated, and yes, the topic of over parenting and what that does to kids learning, to topics around The Addiction Inoculation, substance use prevention in kids, and what I've been doing lately that's the most fun for me, frankly, is combining the two topics. It makes the topic of substance use prevention more approachable, less scary when we're talking about it in the context of learning and motivation and self-efficacy and competence and, yes, cognitive development. So if you have any interest in bringing me into your school, to your nonprofit, to your business, I would love to come. You can go to Jessicalahey.com. Look under the menu option “Speaking” and go down to “Speaking Inquiry.” There's also a lot of information on my website about what I do. There's videos there about how I do it. Please feel free to get in touch. And I hope I get to come to your community. If you put in the speaking inquiry that you are a Hashtag AmWriting listener, we can talk about a discount. So that can be one of the bonuses for being a loyal and long-term listener to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. Hope to hear from you.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.

Jess Lahey

Hey, welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. I'm Jess Lahey, your host, along with another host today—this is going to be super fun. We are the podcast about writing: short things, long things, poetry, prose, book proposals, querying agents—we're basically the podcast about getting the work done. I am Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my journalism at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.

Sarina Bowen

And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of many contemporary novels, and also a council member on The Authors Guild. And it is in that spirit that we are bringing you a special episode today, which we're calling part of our Publishing Nerd Corner segment.

Jess Lahey

Our favorite stuff.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, so publishing nerd stuff. Here we go, and the topic is pretty timely.

Jess Lahey

And juicy.

Sarina Bowen

And juicy. We're talking about why authors copyright their work, what it means, and how it ties into everything going on with the Anthropic lawsuit and potential settlement.

Jess Lahey

So, backing up, could you tell us a little bit about the Anthropic lawsuit, and sort of what it was about, and why everybody's talking about it right now?

Sarina Bowen

Of course. So, Anthropic is an AI LLM, Large Language Model Company, just like OpenAI is the same as ChatGPT. Anthropic are the people who make Claude, but all the AI big companies are being sued right now, including Meta, including Microsoft, or...

Jess Lahey

Google. Google.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, sorry.

Jess Lahey

Not Microsoft.

Sarina Bowen

And also the new one is there's a new lawsuit against Apple. So, basically, everybody who went out and made a big LLM model using stolen, pirated books and articles downloaded from the Internet is being sued variously by different organizations, and it looks like the Anthropic lawsuit might be resolved first.

Jess Lahey

Okay, so what are they being sued for?

Sarina Bowen

They're being sued for a couple of things. First is the wholesale piracy of lots of books downloaded off the internet, and second, for feeding all of those books into their models to teach them how to speak and compose.

Jess Lahey

A while ago, weren't some—I think some—internal memos around the whole Meta thing where, essentially, they acknowledged how much it would cost to purchase legally all of the things they needed to model, do their large LLMs, and they decided, “Wow, that would be a lot of money.”

Sarina Bowen

Right.

Jess Lahey

“We'll just steal them.”

Sarina Bowen

We don't want to deal with copyright. Well, specifically, the most interesting internal memos that we've seen have been involved in the Meta case, which we're not really talking about tonight, but yeah, there are some big smoking guns out there. But I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about the practical nature of copyrighting your work, because there's a potential settlement on the table that's taking shape in terms of how authors will be paid some portion of a $1.5 billion settlement from this Anthropic suit, potentially, and whether or not you have a registered copyright on your book is going to matter. So, first of all, in this case, the judge did rule—well, we wanted him to rule—that using these books to train the model was not a fair use situation.

Jess Lahey

Right. They were trying to say, “No, no, this is just fair use.”

Sarina Bowen

Right.

Jess Lahey

“We shouldn't have to pay anybody.”

Sarina Bowen

And unfortunately, we don't have a ruling in favor of this concept yet, and The Authors Guild cares very much that it's not fair use and will continue to fight for that. But we instead were ruled in this case something that is actually quite powerful and important to the whole conversation, which is that the judge said that Anthropic downloading all of these titles—these millions of stolen books—from a piracy site was, in fact, illegal and that they are going to have to pay. So the ruling was against them. So now this is a class-action suit, and in a class-action suit, all of the parties in the class—you can opt out if you want to, like if you're an author who would rather sue them individually, you can still do that. But it looks like in defining the class of who is eligible to receive a payout; you're going to have to have a registered copyright. Your copyright will have had to have been registered within five years of publication, and also before they downloaded it.

Jess Lahey

So, to clarify, some of the questions I've seen floating around on the interwebs are about, “Oh, but there was that big list that was published by The Atlantic.” You could go to The Atlantic and just see, and “oh my gosh, I had six titles that were on that list. Does that mean that I'm going to get money for all of those titles?”

Sarina Bowen

Okay, well, that is a great question. And actually, I need to stipulate real quick that I am not a lawyer.

Jess Lahey

Right.

Sarina Bowen

You're a lawyer, and almost certainly I'm going to make an error when I'm speaking on this tonight. I have spent a lot of time listening in meetings about these things, so I feel comfortable enough to discuss it with you tonight. But, um, but I'm going to make a mistake. So you need to check everything...

Jess Lahey

Right.

Sarina Bowen

…when you make your own legal decisions. So wait, what was the question?

Jess Lahey

So the question was about that big list at The Atlantic.

Sarina Bowen

Oh yeah!

Jess Lahey

That was like, what, 5 million titles or so?

Sarina Bowen

Well, that list was taken from a specific piracy site.

Jess Lahey

Right.

Sarina Bowen

But it doesn't know which titles the company actually downloaded, so only the company has that list. So, first of all, that database is sort of handy and interesting, but it is not definitive in terms of this list.

Jess Lahey

So do not count on looking at that list and saying, “Oh, I have six titles there, maybe I'll get a payout for all six titles.”

Sarina Bowen

Right. So, um, but let's—we really need to talk about copyright registration because there's so much misinformation floating around out there. So it's true that if you sit down right now and write something, you already own the copyright for it. So that's powerful—sort of—right? Um, but the point of registering your copyright—and these benefits are right on the Copyright Alliance website. So we're going to link to the copyright website—but, um, one of the primary reasons why people register is because registration is a necessary prerequisite for bringing, for U.S. copyright owners, to bring a copyright infringement suit in federal court. And of course, this is a federal court action, but also because statutory damages and attorneys’ fees can only be sued for if you have a registered copyright. If you just own your copyright without registering it, you can sue for damages. The damages in the copyright suit are pretty hard to prove, or at least quantify. So that is why the statutory part of damages is what is being enacted in this judgment.

Jess Lahey

But Sarina, I have a publisher. Didn't my publisher register my copyright for me?

Sarina Bowen

Well, probably. My newer contracts all say the publisher must register them, and as far as I can tell, those newer contracts, the publisher did. So, yay. But I do have an old contract from about 2014 that only says that the publisher may register it. And guess what—they didn't. So, first of all, you need to see—you can go to a different database, which is the U.S. government copyright database—and look yourself up and see if your book is in there. And honestly, if your publisher was supposed to register you, and they didn't, The Authors Guild would really like to hear from you, because they're sort of looking into this. Suddenly, you know, in the last 10 days, there's a bunch of people who are like, “Oh my goodness, hang on, they didn't actually do it.” So that's something to think about, something to look at.

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

Meanwhile, because statutory damages are what is going to be paid by this company, that is why the registration—it's not just to make people mad. It's not just to… it's not a gatekeeping thing. It's a legal issue with the settlement. So if you have not been in the practice of registering your copyrights, it's a pretty darn good idea to do that now. It's a completely online process. The site is quite antiquated and not that much fun to work with, and there are some moments in there when you're like, “I don't understand what's being asked of me.” But it's worth taking the time. It costs, I believe, $65 for a single title. They mail it to you at home, and then you have the certificate forever with your copyright registration number, but it's also kept in that database. You are required to deposit a copy—two copies of… well, a digital copy of your book, or two physical ones, and we usually use digital at this point. But totally worthwhile, and all the people who've been slogging it out on the copyright website up till now are probably feeling pretty good about it.

Jess Lahey

Okay, so there's been this settlement, and I don't know yet whether or not my book is included in that settlement because Anthropic has not turned over their list yet, but let's say I'm on it. When can I get my sweet, sweet dollars?

Sarina Bowen

Well, right now there is a really important The Authors Guild blog post about what to do, and we will also link to that, and they, in turn, link to—I think it's the lawyer's website with a form, a contact form—saying, yes, you know, please keep me in your thoughts and send me the email so that when the list is really ready, we can find each other.

Jess Lahey

And another plug for why you should be a member of The Authors Guild, if you qualify to be a member of The Authors Guild, is that The Authors Guild made sure that their authors were included in the class action suit.

Sarina Bowen

Well, just that they're going to hand the names.

Jess Lahey

Yes. Exactly.

Sarina Bowen

Except I actually think that if you have multiple titles, if you have multiple publishers, if you use a pseudonym—there's lots of reasons to go to that lawyer's page and fill it out anyway.

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

So, I mean, the worst that can happen is that both The Authors Guild and you have turned in your name, and they'll have to sort out some duplicates. But that is not the end of the world. And I went there, and I'm filling it in as well.

Jess Lahey

The Authors Guild is a great source of reliable, factual information on what is going on with this suit at the moment.

Sarina Bowen

It is, and it's not like… I'm very proud of my work on the council, but it's like a couple of meetings a month. But what's really happening is that the people who work at The Authors Guild—it's their job. It's a bunch of lawyers who are very good at copyright law, and they've been working on this, like, you know, without sleeping practically, for like a year and a half. So, you know, all of these suits are what they're focusing on all day long. And they want to make sure that the greatest number of authors receive the compensation that they deserve, and it's basically like their whole entire lives right now.

Jess Lahey

It's always cool, actually, as a side note, in the annual meetings—I like to attend the annual meetings virtually—and it's always amazing when they give sort of a download of what's been accomplished by The Authors Guild over the past year. So it amazes me, the advocacy that's going on.

Sarina Bowen

It's a lot of suing people who aren't working on behalf of authors and against book bans and things like that.

Jess Lahey

Absolutely, absolutely. Is there anything else that we need to know that's pressing?

Sarina Bowen

Register your copyrights, people, let's go.

Jess Lahey

Go to the show notes. The links will be in the show notes, as Sarina said. Worst case scenario, you go to that lawyer website, law firm website, and you double—you know, you've done it, and so has your publisher. But who cares, whatever, as long as you've done the work. And, in fact, I will, when I write the show notes, be going back and doing the same myself. And you know, this is a moving target. This is not over yet. This is a continuing saga.

Sarina Bowen

Right.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, and it's definitely not like a done deal, like, “Yay, I'm going to be getting a check in the mail next week.”

Sarina Bowen

No.

Jess Lahey

That's not the way...

Sarina Bowen

It's going to take a long time, but there's going to be more of these suits. So, of course, the best time to register your copyright was five years ago. The second-best time is right now.

Jess Lahey

So, go do that. You have a to-do list. You have homework. Go do those things. And thank you for explaining that stuff. And thank you also for working with The Authors Guild. Because I know it's a ton of work. Not only is it a ton of work for you, doing the meetings and all that sort of stuff, but it's hard to go online and see on social media so many people misunderstanding either what this case is about, and you do a lot of clarifying, which is very sweet.

Sarina Bowen

Oh, thank you. But you know what? It's complicated.

Jess Lahey

It is very complicated.

Sarina Bowen

And I am not a lawyer, and I put in the time to understand it. But the truth is, it's hard. We're dealing with some really complicated concepts. IP is tricky, and, you know, I learn a little more every year, but it's hard, and if it confuses you, you are forgiven for feeling that way.

Jess Lahey

So, again, thank you. Go do your copyright thing. Go to the law firm website, go to The Authors Guild website, and just catch up. Catch up on what this is all about. And we will keep you posted in our little nerdy corner here, which I'm really excited about. I have a full page of questions I want to ask Sarina about some of the things that she understands really well about publishing and all of the stuff that goes into it—all these things, especially about independent publishing—that is not a world I'm a part of, but you always seem to have great answers to those questions. So we will be delivering those questions and answers to you in our Nerd Corner. And thank you so much for being with us. And until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

His books, There is Life After College, Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions and his forthcoming book, Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right for You are all essential reads for teens and emerging adults as well as parents of teens and emerging adults. I adore all three, but I wanted to talk with Jeff about a few aspects of his writing: how he created a speaking career, finds his topics, and how on earth he gets people to talk about topics that tend to be shrouded in secrecy behind very high walls (such as college admissions). Check out Jeff’s newsletter, Next, and Podcast, Future U

KJ here, as you probably know, to tell you that if you're not listening to the Writing the Book episodes Jenny Nash and I have been doing, you should be. Jenny's working on her latest nonfiction, and I'm working on my next novel, and we're both trying to do something bigger and better than anything we've done before.

We sit down weekly and dish about everything—from Jenny's proposal and the process of getting an agent to my extremely circular method of creating a story. We are brutally honest and open—even beyond what we are here. Truly, we probably say way too much. And for that reason, Writing the Book is subscriber-only.

So I'm here saying: subscribe. That's a whole 'nother episode a week, and always a juicy one—plus all the other good subscriber stuff: the First Pages: BookLab, Jess’s From Author to Authority series, and whatever else we come up with. (It varies enough that it's hard to list it all.) Plus, of course, access whenever we run The Blueprint—which, I don’t know, might be soon.

That's all I’ve got. So head to amwritingpodcast.com, get yourself signed up, and come listen to Writing the Book. Then talk to us. Tell us—tell us about your book writing and what's going on. We really want to hear from y’all.

Thanks a lot. And Subscribe!

Transcript below!

EPISODE 465 - TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell'Antonia

Howdy, listeners—KJ here, as you probably know—to tell you that if you're not listening to the Writing the Book episodes Jennie Nash and I have been doing, you should be. Jennie is working on her latest nonfiction, and I'm working on my next novel, and we're both trying to do something bigger and better than anything we've done before. We sit down weekly and dish about everything from Jennie's proposal and the process of getting an agent to my extremely circular method of creating a story. We are brutally honest and open—even beyond what we are here. Truly, we probably say way too much, and for that reason, Writing the Books is subscriber-only. So I'm here saying: subscribe. That's a whole other episode a week, and always a juicy one—plus there's all the other good subscriber stuff: the First Page Booklab, Jess' From Author to Authority series, and whatever else we come up with, which kind of varies enough that it's hard to list out. Plus, of course, access to whenever we run the Blueprint, which—I don't know—it’s going to be soon. That’s all I got. So head to AmWritingpodcast.com, get yourself signed up and come listen to Writing the Book, and then talk to us. Tell us—tell us about your book writing and what’s going on. We really want to—we want to hear from y’all. Thanks a lot, and please subscribe.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.

Jess Lahey

Hey, it's Jess Lahey, and welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, poetry, proposals, queries, nonfiction, fiction—all the stuff. In the end, this is the podcast about getting the work done. And in the beginning of this podcast, our goal was to flatten the learning curve for other writers. So I am super excited about who I have today. Oh—quick intro. I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post, as you can find the work of my guest there too. So my guest today is someone that I have looked up to for a long time, and someone I use as sort of a—to bounce things off of and to think about how I do my work and how to do my work better. Jeff Selingo, thank you so much for coming to on the show. Jeff is the author of a couple of books that I'm a huge—In fact, I can look over at my bookshelf right now and see all of his books on getting into college, why college is not the end point. He has a new book coming out that we’re going to be talking about—really; it’s coming out real as soon as this podcast comes out. And I’m just—I’m a huge fan, Jeff. Thank you so, so much for coming on the pod.

Jeff Selingo

Just the same here—and I'm a huge fan of this podcast as well. It’s on my regular rotation, so...

Jess Lahey

Oh yay.

Jeff Selingo

I am thrilled, as always, to be here.

Jess Lahey

It's—it’s changed over the years, and now that we have four different, you know, co-hosts, there’s sort of different takes on it. We’ve got, like, Sarina—the business side, and Jess—the nonfiction geek side, and KJ—the fiction side, and Jennie—the nuts-and-bolts editor side. So it’s been really fun for us to sort of split off. But what I wanted to talk to you about today are a couple of different things. Your book Who Gets In and Why is—um , on the podcast, we talk about dissecting other people’s work as a way... In fact, I was talking to my daughter about this yesterday. She’s writing a thesis—what she hopes will be one chapter in a book. And I was saying, you know, one of the things you can do is go dissect other books you think are really well constructed—books that are reaching the same, similar audience. And your book, Who Gets In and Why, I think, is essential reading for anyone who's writing interview based, and specifically nonfiction around attempting to get their arms around a process. And a process that—for you—what I’m really interested about in this book is a process that’s usually, you know, guarded and kind of secret. And no one wants to let you in for real on all the moving parts and how the decisions are made, because the college admissions process is—it’s an inexact recipe. It depends on where you are, it depends on the school, but everyone wants the secret. Like, Jeff, just get me the secrets of how to get in. So how do you approach people who are, in a sense, some ways, secret-keepers and guardians of the secret sauce—to mix metaphors? How do you get those people to agree to be a part of a book—not just to be interviewed, but to actually put themselves out there and to put the sausage-making out there in a book, which can be a huge leap of faith for any organization or human being?

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, and I think it's definitely harder now than it was when I did Who Gets In and Why. I think it's harder than when, you know, other people have been inside the process—whether it's, you know, Fast Food Nation, with the, you know, the fast food industry, which is a book that I looked up to when I was writing, Who Gets In and Why. I think it’s—people just don’t trust writers and journalists as much as they used to. So I think that’s—a lot of this is really trust. First of all, you have to approach organizations that trust their own process. When people ask me, “Why these three schools?” You know, I approached 24 schools when I wrote, Who Gets In and Why, and three said yes. Twenty-one said no. And when I describe the people who said yes and why they said yes, they trusted their own process. And they also trusted me. But the first thing they did was trust their own process.. And so when I heard later on from people who had said no to me—and I would, you know, talk to them, you know, off the record about why they said no—there was always something about their process, their admissions process, that they didn’t trust. They were getting a new, like, software system, or they had new employees that they didn’t really quite know, or they were doing things—it’s not that they were doing things wrong, but that, you know, it was at the time when the Supreme Court was making a decision about affirmative action, and they didn’t quite know how that would play, and so they didn’t quite trust it—and then how that, obviously, would be used by me. So the first thing you have to do is think about organizations that really believe in themselves, because they’re going to be the ones that are going to talk about themselves externally. And then you just have to build trust between them and you. And that just takes—unfortunately, it takes time. And as a book author or a reporter, you don’t always have that on your side.

Jess Lahey

So when—were some of these cold? Like of the 24, were all of these cold? Were some of these colder? Did you have an in with some of these?

Jeff Selingo

I had an in with most of them, because I had been covering—I mean, that’s the other thing. You know, trust is built over time, and I had been covering higher ed for almost 25 years now. So it was just that they knew me, they knew of me, they knew of my work. I had other people vouch for me. So, you know, I had worked with other people in other admissions offices on other stories, and they knew people in some of these offices, so they would vouch for me. But at the end—so, you know, it ended up being Emory, Davidson and the University of Washington. It was really only Davidson where I knew somebody. Emory and University of Washington—I kind of knew people there that were the initial door opener. But beyond that, it was just spending time with them and helping them understand why I wanted to tell the story, how I thought the story would put play out, and getting them to just trust the process.

Jess Lahey

There's also something to be said for people who have some enthusiasm for the greater story to be told—especially people who have an agenda, whether that’s opening up admissions to the, quote, “whole student” as opposed to just their test scores, or someone who feels like they really have something to add to the story. Both of the people who I featured in The Addiction Inoculation and who insisted on having their real names used said, you know, there’s just—there’s a value for me in putting this story out there and finding worth in it, even though for these two people, there was some risk and there was embarrassment, and there’s, you know, this shame around substance use disorder. But these two people said, you know, I just think there’s a bigger story to be told, and I’m really proud to be a part of that bigger story. So there is a selling aspect also to, you know, how you position what it is you're doing.

Jeff Selingo

And there’s—so there’s a little bit of that, and that was certainly true here. The admissions deans at these places were longtime leaders who not only trusted their own process but understood that the industry was getting battered. You know, people were not trusting of admissions. They felt like it was a game to be played. And there was definitely a larger story that they wanted to tell there. Now truth be told—and they've told this in conferences that I've been at and on panels that I've moderated with them—there was also a little bit of they wanted to get their own story out, meaning the institutional story, right? Emory is competing against Vanderbilt, and Davidson is a liberal arts college in the South, when most liberal arts colleges are in the Northeast. So there was a little bit of, hey, if we participate in this, people are going to get to know us in a different way, and that is going to help us at the end—meaning the institution.

Jess Lahey

Do you have to? Did you? Was there a hurdle of, we really have, you know, this is some PR for us, too. So did that affect—I mean, there’s a little bit of a Heisenberg thing going on here. Did the fact that you were observing them change, you think, anything about what they did and what they showed you?

Jeff Selingo

It's an interesting thing, Jess. It’s a great question, because I often get that. Because I was—you know, originally, I wanted to do one office. I wanted to be inside one institution. And when all three of them kind of came back and said, yes, we’ll do this—instead of just choosing one of them—I thought, oh, this is interesting. We have a small liberal arts college. We have a big, private urban research university. We have a big public university in the University of Washington. So I wanted to show—kind of compare and contrast—their processes. But that also meant I couldn’t be in one place all the time. There’s only one of me, and there’s three of them, and they’re in different parts of the country. So clearly I was not there every day during the process. And somebody would say to me, oh, well, how do you know they’re not going to do X, Y, and Z when you’re not there? And I quickly realized that they had so much work to do in such a short amount of time that they couldn’t really—they couldn’t really game the system for me. After a while, I just became like a painting on the wall. I just was there. And in many cases, they didn’t even notice I was there—which, by the way, is where you want to be—because they would say things, do things, without realizing sometimes that a reporter was present. And there’s the opening scene of the book, which is just a fantastic—in my opinion, one of my favorite scenes in the book—right where they’re talking about these students and so forth, and in a way that is so raw and so natural about how they did their work. If they knew I was in the room at that point—which of course they did—but if they really perceived my being there, that would have been really hard to pull off.

Jess Lahey

Did they have, did you guys have an agreement about off the record moments or anything like that? Or was there and speaking of which, actually, was there any kind of contract going into this, or any kind of agreement going into this?

Jeff Selingo

I basically told them that there would be no surprises. So everything was essentially on the record unless they explicitly said that, and that was usually during interviews, like one-on-one interviews. But while I was in the room with them, there was really nothing off the record. There couldn't be because it was hard to kind of stop what they were doing to do that. The only thing I promised was that there would be no surprises at the end. So when the book was done, during the fact-checking process, I would do what The New Yorker would do during fact-checking. I wouldn’t read the passages back to them, but I would tell them basically what’s in there, in terms of it as I fact-checked it. And so they really kind of knew, for the most part—not word for word—but they kind of knew what was in the book before it came out.

Jess Lahey

I like that term—no surprises. It’s a real nice blanket statement for, look, I’m not looking to get—there’s no gotcha thing here.

Jeff Selingo

There’s no gotcha, exactly...

Jess Lahey

Right. Exactly.

Jeff Selingo

This was not an investigative piece. But there were things that, you know, I’m sure that they would have preferred not to be in there. But for the most part, during the fact-checking process, you know, I learned things that were helpful. You know, sometimes they would say, oh, that’s an interesting way of—you know, I would redirect quotes, and they would want to change them. And I said, well, I don’t really want to change direct quotes, because that’s what was said in that moment. And then they would provide context for things, which was sometimes helpful. I would add that to the piece, or I would add that to the book. So at the end of the day—again—it goes back to trust. And they realized what I was trying to do with this book. It’s also a book rather than an article. Books tend to have permanence. And I knew that this book would have, you know, shelf life. And as a result, I wanted to make sure that it would stand the test of time.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about your new book—your book that's just coming out as this is getting out into the world—called Dream School. And by the way, such a great title, because one person’s dream school is not another’s. But like, my daughter happens to be at, I think, the perfect school for her, and my son went to the perfect school for him—which, by the way, wasn’t even his first choice. And in retrospect, he said, I’m just so glad I didn’t get into that other place—my, you know, early decision place—because this other place really was the perfect match. And I think that’s why I love that title so much, because I spend a lot of time trying to help parents understand that their dream may not necessarily be their child’s dream. And what makes something a dream school may, you know—in fact, in terms of time—my daughter was applying to colleges just coming out of COVID. Like, she had never been to a school dance. She’d never—you know—all that kind of stuff. So for me, the dream looked very different than maybe it would have four years prior, thinking I was going to have a kid that had the opportunity to sort of socially, you know, integrate into the world in a very different way. So I love that. And is that something that—how did—how do your ideas emerge? Did it emerge in the form of that idea of what is a dream school for someone? Or—anyway, I’ll let you get back to...

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. So, like many follow-up books, this book emerged from discussing Who Gets In and Why. So I was out on the road talking about Who Gets In and Why. And I would have a number of parents—like, you know when you give talks, people come up to you afterwards—and they say, okay, we love this book, but—there's always a but. And people would come up to me about Who Gets In and Why, and they would be like, love the book, but it focused more on selective colleges and universities. What if we don’t get into one of those places? What if we can’t afford one of those places? What if we don’t really want to play that game, and we want permission? And this—this idea of a permission structure came up very early on in the reporting for this book. We need to be able to tell our friends, our family, that it’s okay, right? You know how it is, right? A lot of this is about parents wanting to say that their kid goes to Harvard. It’s less about going to Harvard, but they could tell their friends that their kid goes to Harvard. So they wanted me to help them create this permission structure to be able to look more widely at schools.

Jess Lahey

I like that.

Jeff Selingo

So that's how this came about, and then the idea of Dream School—and I’m fascinated by your reaction to that title. Because the reaction I've been getting from some people is—you know—because the idea, too many people, the idea of a dream school, is a single entity.

Jess Lahey

Of course.

Jeff Selingo

It’s a single school; it’s a single type of school. And what—really, it’s a play on that term that we talk about, a dream school. In many ways, the dream school is your dream, and what you want, and the best fit for you. And I want to give you the tools in this book to try to figure out what is the best match for you that fulfills your dreams. It’s kind of a little play on that—a little tweak on how we think about the dream and dream school. And that’s really what I’m hoping to do for this book—is that, in some ways, it’s a follow-up. So you read Who Gets In and Why, you decide, okay, maybe I do want to try for those highly selected places. But as I tell the story early on in in Dream School. A. It’s almost impossible to get into most of those places today—even more so than five or six years ago. And second, many of the students that I met—young adults that I met in reporting Dream School—ended up at, you know, fill-in-the-blank: most popular school, brand-name school, highly selective school, elite school—whatever you want to put in that blank—and it wasn’t quite what they expected. And so that’s another story that I want to tell families in this book—is that, hey, there’s a wider world out there, and there is success to be had at many of these places.

Jess Lahey

There's something I say occasionally, that I have to take the temperature of the room, just because I—you know, you and I speak at some fairly similar places, like, you know, the hoity-toity private schools that—you know, everyone's just go, go, go, do, do, do, achieve, achieve, achieve. And every once in a while, I like to insert—I like to, number one, tell them that my college was, I think, perfect for me. I went to my safety school. I went to the University of Massachusetts and had an extraordinary experience. But I'm a very certain kind of person, and maybe for another—like, for example, my daughter, when we were looking at schools, our state school was just too big for her. It just—she was going to get lost. It wasn't going to work very well. But the thing I like to say when I can, when I feel like the audience is ready to hear it is: What if it’s a massive relief if you don’t have an Ivy kid? If you have a kid who’s not going to get into an Ivy school, isn’t it a relief to say that’s not what we’re aiming for here, and we can actually find a place that’s a great fit for my kid? And that sometimes goes over really well. For a few people, they’ll come up and thank me for that sort of reframing afterwards. But for some people, that is just not at all what they want to hear.

Jeff Selingo

And it's—you know, it's really hard. And I think you go back to audience, and—you know—most people make money on books kind of after the fact, right? The speaking, as you mentioned, and things like that. And it's interesting—this book, as I talk to counselors about it, high school counselors—oh, they're like, this is perfect. This is the message I've been trying to get through to parents. Then I talk to the parents—like, I'm not quite sure this message will work in our community, because this community is very focused on getting into the Ivy League and the Ivy Plus schools?

Jess Lahey

Yes, but that’s why your title is so brilliant. Because if you're getting—and I talk a lot about this, I don’t know if you’ve heard, I’ve talked about this on the podcast—that with the substance use prevention stuff, it’s hard for me to get people to come in. So I use The Gift of Failure to do that, right? So you've got this title that can get the people in the seats, and then you, in your persuasive and charismatic way, can explain to them why this is a term that may—could—use some expanding. I think that's an incredible opportunity.

Jeff Selingo

And it's important, too—early on, my editor told me, “Jeff, don’t forget, we’re an aspirational society.” And I said—I told, I said, “Rick,” I said, “I’m not telling people not to apply in the Ivy League. I’m not saying they’re terrible schools. I’m not saying don’t look at those places.” All I'm saying is, we want to expand our field a little bit to look more broadly, more widely. So we're not saying don't do this—we’re saying, do “do” this. And that's what I'm hoping that this book does.

Jess Lahey

Well, and the reality is, people listen to the title. They don’t read the subtitle, because subtitles are long, and they have a great use—but not when you’re actually talking about a book with someone. And so what they’re going to hear is Dream School, and I think that's a fantastic way to position the book. But since you opened up the topic, I also—I am right now mentoring someone who is attempting to sell a book while also planning for a speaking career, which, as you know, is something that I did concurrently. How did you—did you know you wanted to do speaking when you were first writing your books? Or is this something that sort of came out of the books themselves?

Jeff Selingo

It just came out of the books. You know, the first book, which was College (Un)bound, which was 2012, sold better than I expected, but it was aimed at a consumer audience. But who ended up reading that were college leaders, presidents and people work at colleges. So I had a very busy schedule speaking to people inside the industry. Then I turned my—you know, the second book, There Is Life After College— really turned it to this parenting audience, which was a very new audience to me, and that really led to me to, you know, Who Gets In and Why, and now this book. The difference—and I’m always curious to talk to parenting authors like you—is that college, you know, people—even the most aspirational people in life, I understand, you know, people in certain cities think about preschool, what preschool their kid’s going to get into to get into the right college—but in reality, they’re going to read a college book when their kids are in high school. And that is the more challenging piece around, you know, I—unlike most parenting authors who have a wider audience, because a lot of the issues that face parents face parents when they have toddlers, when they have pre-teens, when they have teens. Obviously, some parenting authors just focus on teens, I get that.

But this book really has kind of a short life in terms of the audience. And so what we’re trying to do—so think about it: Who Gets In and Why— it's still in hardcover. Has never been published in paperback, largely because there's a new audience for it every year, which is fantastic...

Jess Lahey

Yeah, I was going to mention that. That is the massive upside. And for me, it's usually a four-year sort of turnover in terms of speaking anyway.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, you’re right. And so the nice thing on the speaking front is that I have almost a new audience every year, so I could continue to go back to the same schools...

Jess Lahey

Right.

Jeff Selingo

...every year, which has been really helpful—with a slightly different message, because the industry is also changing, and admissions is changing as a result. So, no, I—the speaking came afterwards, and now I realize that that's really kind of how you make this thing work. I couldn’t really have a writing career without the speaking piece.

Jess Lahey

Since figuring that out—and I guess assuming that you enjoy doing it, as I hope you do—is that something that you’re continuing to market on your own?

Jeff Selingo

Yes. So that’s what we’re doing. You know, one of the big changes from the last book is that we have developed a—you know, we built a customer relationship management system under our newsletter. So we use HubSpot, which is, you know, like Salesforce. It's something like that And so we’ve now built a community that is much stronger than the one that I had five years ago. That’s a community of parents, of counselors, of independent counselors. So we just know so much more about who we serve, who our readers are, and who will ask me to come speak to their groups and things like that. So that, to me, has been the biggest change since the last book compared to this book. And it has enabled us—and it’s something that I would highly encourage authors to do. I don’t think they have to go out and buy one of these big, robust systems, but the more you know about your readers and build that community, the more that they’re going to respond to you. They really want to be with you in some way. They want to read your books. They want to come to your webinars. They want to listen to your podcasts. They want to see you speak. They want to invite you to speak. And building that community is incredibly important to having that career, you know, after the book comes out.

Jess Lahey

It's also for marketing purposes. So Sarina Bowen—again, brilliant at this. he way she does that is, she slices and dices her mailing list into all kinds of, like, where the reader came from—is this someone who's, you know, more interested in this, did I—did I meet them at this conference, you know, how did I acquire this name for my list? And she does a lot of marketing very specifically to those specific lists, and that information is amazing. And I think so many of us tend to think just—and I have to admit that this is where I spend most of my time—is just getting more emails in your newsletter. Owning, you know, the right—because it’s an honor of being able to reach out to those people and have them be interested in what you have to say. But that’s your—I may have to have you come back to talk specifically about that, because it’s increasingly—as we’re doing more of the marketing for our books—I think that’s the future for people who want to keep things going.

Jeff Selingo

And that's—you know, that is the reality today. That's why proposals sell. Because people—you know, publishers really want people with platforms. And if you're not a superstar, there are very few of those out there, you need to figure out another way to build that platform. And so marketing yourself is critically important, and I've learned that from book one. You know, people would say, “Well, you're always just selling your book.” And I said, “Well, if I don't sell it, no one else,” right? So at some point, the publisher—you know, there's only so much the publisher is going to do. And they don't really have the tools that you do. And more than that, Jess, like, you understand your audience. Sarina understands her audience, right? Like, we understand our audiences in ways that publishers, who are doing, you know, dozens and dozens of books a year, just don't get.

Jess Lahey

Right. No, absolutely.

Jeff Selingo

Like, no offense against them. I think they're doing really good work. But it's just—it’s hard for them, I think, to really understand, well, who's going to really read this book?

Jess Lahey

And I love the idea of using the questions you get. As you know, I tend to take the questions that I get and turn them into videos or—and I do answer all the emails—but I keep a spreadsheet of what those questions are so that I can slice and dice it in various ways. And they’re fascinating. And that shapes like, oh wow, I had no idea so many people—like, I had no idea that so many kids were actually interested in knowing whether or not the caffeine—amounts of caffeine that they're drinking—are healthy, or how to get better sleep. Because if you ask their parents, they’re like, “Oh no, they don’t care about sleep,” or, “They just drink so much coffee and they don’t care.” And yet what you hear from the kids is such a different story. And the thing that I also love is the idea of, you know, what that dream school concept means to the actual kid applying. You’ve probably heard this before, but I needed some symbolic way to let my kids know that this was not, in the end, my decision, and how important this decision was for them in terms of becoming adults. And so I said, the one thing I will never do is put a sticker for a school on the back of my car. Because your choice of where to become a young, emerging adult is not—I don't—that's not my currency to brag on as a parent. It's too important for that. And so people go nuts over that. They're like, “But that’s what I really want—is that sticker on the back of the car!” And so I have to be careful when I talk about it, but for my kids, that was my one symbolic act to say, this is about your growth and development, and not my bragging rights. And I think that’s a hard message.

Jeff Selingo

I think that's really important—especially, I have two teens at home. And I think this is a whole topic for another conversation around, you know, most parenting authors are also parents at the same time that they're doing this—advice out to everybody else. And I—I’m very aware of that. I'm also very aware of the privacy that they deserve. And so that’s an—it’s a fine line. It’s a hard line to walk, I will say, for authors, because people—they want to know about you. And they ask you a lot of questions—like, especially around college—like, “Well, where are your kids applying? Where are they going to go?” Like, “Oh, I bet you—especially this book, where I’m encouraging parents to think more broadly—well, you're probably giving that advice to everybody else, but you're not going to follow that, surely, right?” So it's—you just have to—it’s hard when you’re in this world that you're also part of every day.

Jess Lahey

It’s really tough. And things have gotten a lot more complicated—as listeners know, I have a trans kid, and that means that everything that I’ve ever written about that kid is out there. Some of it changeable, a lot of it—most of it—not. And would I do it again? I don't—I don't think so. And that—you know, that’s been a journey. But it’s also been—you know, we can’t know what we don’t know. I don't know—it’s a tough one. But I really admire your—that’s why I throw my safety school thing out there all the time. I'm like, “Look, you know, I went to the place that saved my parents a boatload of money and allowed me to do stuff like traveling that I never would have had the ability to do if I hadn't gone to my state school. And my priorities were big, and adventures, and lots of options.” And I’m very, very clear that standing up for myself was something that I wanted to learn how to do more. On the other hand, that’s not been the priority for both of my kids, so... Can I just—I want to ask one quick college question, just because it’s—in reading all of your books, this comes up for me over and over again. How do you help parents see the difference between their dream and their kid’s dream—or their goals and their kid’s goals? And how do you dance that line, which I think is a very easy place to lose readers, lose listeners, because they just shut down and they say, “That’s not something I want to mess with. This is too important to me.”

Jeff Selingo

It's a fine line. It's a difficult line to walk. At some point I have to realize who’s the you that you're speaking to. And I even say this in the introduction of the new book—it's largely parents. They're the readers. I know that—I hope their kids will read it. Maybe—maybe they will, maybe they won't, and maybe they'll read it as a family. But I'm really speaking to the families, and I want them to understand that college especially is an emotional good. It's something many of us—you’re talking about your undergraduate experience. I'm not going to ask you how long ago that was, but my undergraduate experience...

Jess Lahey

I'm 55. So it's been a long time ago.

Jeff Selingo

And I'm 52, right? So same here. But we have this—you know, most people, because of the audiences I tend to speak to, they're not first-generation students, right? They're mostly parents. You know, most of the parents in the audience went to college themselves, and for many of them it was a transformative experience, like it was for me.

People met their—they met their lifelong friends, they met their partners, they decided what they wanted to do in life. It was— it was this experience we all think it is. And as a result, I think a lot of parents put that then on their kids. “Well, this was a transforming experience for me, so it definitely has to be a transformative experience for you. Oh, and by the way, these are all the mistakes I made in doing that. I want to make sure you don't make any of those.”

Jess Lahey

And, by the way, no pressure, but this is going to be—this is where you're going to meet your best friends, your spouse. It's the best years of your life, so don't sacrifice even a second of it.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And then I...

Jess Lahey

No pressure.

Jeff Selingo

No pressure. And not only that, but it is—it is something we bought a very long time ago. I'm always amazed when—sometimes we go to the Jersey Shore on vacation, and I'll be out on a walk on the beach in the morning, and I'll see people wearing, you know, college shirts, sweatshirts. And, you know, some of these people are old—much older than I am. And I say, “Oh”—you know, we'll start to have a conversation, and I'll say, “Oh, so does your grandkid, you know, go to X school?” Terrible assumption on my part, I know. But they say, “No, that's where I went.” And it's amazing to me—these are people in their 70s and 80s—because I’m the only other person out that early walking—and they love this thing so much that they're still kind of advertising it. But it was so different back then. And that's the thing that I—going back to your question—that's the thing I try to explain to parents. You can guide this. You can put guardrails up. You might have to put guardrails up about money and location and all that other stuff. But college has changed so much that—don’t try to make this your search. You had your chance. You did your search. It worked out. It didn’t work out. You would have done things differently. I think that’s all great advice to give to your kids. But this is their life. This is their staging ground. They have to learn. And again, it's also different. Like, part of what I hope my books do is to try to explain to people—who, you know, kind of dip in and dip out of higher ed just when their kids are applying—that it’s very different than when they applied and went to college.

Jess Lahey

The thing I like to mention a lot is that people in admissions read so many applications that they can tell when something is sincere and something is personal and smacks of a kid, as opposed to when something smacks of a parent. That is a very different application. It's a very different essay—which is the thing that I guess I have the most experience with. But—so I am just so incredibly grateful to you for this book. I'm so grateful that there's evidence that people will actually agree to be interviewed, even in thorny situations like college admissions, which—I don't know. I'm still in awe of the fact that you got anyone to say yes. But—and I heavily—I heartily, heartily recommend Dream School to anyone who's listening. I just—I don't even have anyone applying to college, and I think it's just a fascinating topic, because the idea of where we become who we're going to be, and how we prime lots of other stuff that's going to happen later on in our life—I think that's a fascinating topic. So thank you so much for writing about it. Thank you for writing about it with such empathy and such interest. That's the other thing—is you can tell when someone really is interested in a topic when you read their book. And thank you for providing a book that I recommend all the time as a blueprint—as a dissection book—for people writing nonfiction, heavily interviewed nonfiction. So thank you, so, so much. Where can people find you if they want you to come speak, if they want you—if they want to find your books—where can people find you?

Jeff Selingo

Pretty simple. Jeffselingo.com is my website, and you can also follow me on most social—handle is @jeffselingo, as in Jeff. And I just love hearing from readers. As you know, books change lives, and I love hearing the stories when readers tell me they read something in a book and they acted on it. It's just the most beautiful thing.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, it's the best. I get videos occasionally; too, of like little kids doing things their parents didn’t think they could do. And—“Look! Look! They did this thing!” It's just—it's an amazing and place of privilege. You have a newsletter also…

Jeff Selingo

I do. Called Next. It comes out twice a month.

Jess Lahey

It's Fantastic!

Jeff Selingo

Oh, well, thank you. And I have a podcast also called Future U— that’s more around the kind of the insider-y nature of higher ed and how it works. But a lot—I know a lot of families listen to it to try to understand this black box that is college. So that's called Future U as in U for university.

Jess Lahey

The reason I love the podcast so much is, a lot of what parents get exposed to when they're doing the college admissions process are those graphs—scatter graphs of like, where do your numbers intersect with the expectations of this school—and it's a real human version of that. It's a human version of how that black box operates.

Jeff Selingo

And at the end of the day, as I always remind parents, it's a business. You might have this emotional tie to college, but if you don't—if you don't—and you know a mutual friend of ours, Ron Lieber, who writes for The New York Times around...

Jess Lahey

He's the best! The best!

Jeff Selingo

College finances, right? He always reminds people of this too. I don't remind them as often as he does, and I probably should. It’s this—you’re buying a consumer product. And you have to act as a consumer. Yes, you can have an emotional tie and a love for this place, but this is a big purchase, and you have to approach it like that.

Jess Lahey

Did you see his most recent piece about, yeah, taking some time and seeing—seeing what kind of offers you can get? I loved it. I love Ron’s approach to—he’s just a great guy. And his books are fantastic. Thank you again, so much. I'm going to let you get on with your day, but I'm always grateful for you. And good luck with the launch of Dream School.I will be out applauding on pub day for you.

Jeff Selingo

Appreciate it. Thank you, Jess.

Jess Lahey

All right, everyone—until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output—because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Guests:

* Rossana D’Antonio – Author of 26 Seconds: Grief and Blame in the Aftermath of Losing My Brother in a Plane Crash

* Marty Ross-Dolen – Author of Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter’s Search for Truth

Two authors, Rossana D’Antonio and Marty Ross-Dolen, each faced the unimaginable loss of loved ones in separate plane crashes decades apart. Their grief led them to write powerful memoirs—Rossana’s 26 Seconds and Marty’s Always There, Always Gone—that explore truth, healing, and the lasting impact of tragedy. In an extraordinary coincidence, both books were released in the same week, a situation that could easily spark feelings of rivalry or jealousy between writers. Instead, their shared experience created a bond as they connected over loss, resilience, and the courage it takes to turn pain into story. This episode dives into that connection, exploring not only grief but also the unexpected solidarity found in telling similar stories side by side.

Hey everyone, it's Jenny Nash. This episode happens to feature an Author Accelerator book coach. Author Accelerator is the company I founded more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. If you've been curious about what it takes to become a successful book coach, which is to say, someone who makes money, meaning, and joy out of serving writers, I've just created a bunch of great content to help you learn more. You can access it all by going to bookcoaches.com/waitlist. We'll be enrolling a new cohort of students in our certification program in October, so now's a perfect time to learn more and start making plans for a whole new career.

Transcript below!

EPISODE 464 - TRANSCRIPT

Jennie Nash

Hey everyone. It's Jennie Nash. This episode happens to feature an Author Accelerator book coach. Author Accelerator is the company I founded more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. If you've been curious about what it takes to become a successful book coach, which is to say someone who makes money, meaning and joy out of serving writers. I've just created a bunch of great content to help you learn more. You can access it all by going to book bookcoaches.com/waitlist. That's bookcoaches.com/waitlist. We'll be enrolling a new cohort of students in our certification program in October, so now’s a perfect time to learn more and start making plans for a whole new career.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

Jennie Nash

Hey everyone. I'm Jennie Nash, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we talk about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, pitches and proposals. Today I'm here to talk with two writers who I brought together because of a very interesting coincidence; each of these writers recently published a memoir about a plane crash. They each lost somebody that they love in a plane crash, and they wrote a story about their search for understanding and their search for healing and what it all means to their lives. These two books are really different stories, which I think is so interesting and says so much about the creative process. And what's remarkable is that these two books were published just one week apart, and these two writers became aware of each other's books and became friends. I happened to have a connection to each of these writers. At several points throughout her writing process, I coached Rossana D’Antonio including the very first time she came into a classroom to write about this story. Her book is called 26 Seconds: Grief and Blame in the Aftermath of Losing My Brother in a Plane Crash. Marty Ross-Dolen is the other author. Her book is called Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter's Search for Truth. Marty is a writer who came into my Author Accelerator book coach certification program to study how to become a book coach, and that's when I became aware of her and her story. In this conversation, Marty and Rossana come together with me to talk about grief, writing, jealousy and so many of the things that make memoir such a difficult and challenging genre to write and also such a satisfying one. I can't wait for you to listen. So let's get started. Welcome Rossana and Marty. I'm so excited to have you both here today to talk about this incredible topic. And before we get going, we are talking just days after there was a terrible plane crash in India in which a lot of people died and one man walked away, and there's a plane crash at the center of both of your books. And I just wanted to start by asking, how do you feel when this happens as it happens so many times, you know, are you okay as we sit here today? Or does this weigh on you? What is it? What is it like to sit here today? So maybe we'll start Rossana with you.

Rossana D’Antonio

Okay, well, thanks, Jennie, for inviting me on your podcast. It's really exciting to be here and to share, you know, this podcast with Marty. And, yeah, I mean, I, I agree with you. It's really, I mean, I think our memoirs—it's just so timely that they're out during this time because it's, you know, it's not just Air India. We've had several incidents within the last several years, actually, that have brought to light the strain in the aviation industry. It's been, it's been really interesting because, as it seems like there's not a day that goes by that there isn't something in the news with regards to plane crashes or plane incidents, near misses, whatever it may be. But as we experience each incident, and it becomes breaking news, and you know, we're witnessing it on live TV, it is, it is hard not to relive the experience. And I'm—I'll speak for myself—it is hard for me not to relive the experience. And in the book, I kind of talk about it because I say that it's kind of like we belong to this group that we never asked to be part of and this group is made of families of the victims of plane crashes. And, you know, the very first images that you see are of the grieving families and the pain and the grief that is stamped on their faces, the shock of it all. Plane crashes are so dramatic and so violent that it's hard not to get caught up in the whole story, and it's hard not to think of the families and want to comfort them, knowing that their hell is just starting, and all the things that they're going to have to go through, you know, with regards to the aftermath, the investigation, recovering their loved ones and their loved ones' belongings. So it is hard, but I try to, I try to focus on hoping that their recovery or their healing—the sooner they face the disaster, the tragedy—their healing can actually start.

Jennie Nash

It's got to be so hard. We'll, we'll return to all of these topics again. But Marty, you’re... what are your thoughts?

Marty Ross-Dolen

I echo what Rossana says about how—first, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you. I echo, and I love being here with Rossana, and I echo what she says as well. When I see some sort of headline or announcement that an airplane accident has taken place, my heart sinks. My stomach sinks. I know that I'm going to be in it for a couple of days, if not longer, and nowadays, with social media and the immediacy of information—and for the first time, with this devastating Air India crash, and part of it is because there was a survivor—we have information that we've never had before about the experience of it, and somehow, what came across my news feed on social media as well were videos of the inside of the cabin just before the crash. I don't even know how these were available. I don't even know if they're real because of AI—it's... but then I see that because I can't not see it, and I'm stuck with that in my brain until it goes into that little pocket that contains all those things that we see over our lifetimes that we try never to think about again. So it's hard, it's really hard, and it's really hard to get on an airplane. But that's true for everyone. That's true for everyone, but because, as Rossana describes, we're members of this group, this club that we didn't sign on for, it's probably extra hard.

Jennie Nash

Yeah, I want to come back to that "get on an airplane" thing, but just so our listeners can know about the stories that I'm referring to here, we know that you both wrote books, and they're both memoirs, and they're very, very different experiences for the reader—vibes, purposes, feelings, all of those things—and yet they share this plane crash at the center. So I wanted to ask if you would each just give a summary of what your book is about—the title, what it's about—so our readers can know, our listeners can know, what we're talking about. Your readers, our listeners. Rossana, we're kind of in a pattern here, so why don't you go first?

Rossana D’Antonio

Sure. Thanks, Jennie. So my story, my book, is 26 Seconds: Grief and Blame in the Aftermath of Losing My Brother in a Plane Crash. And it's the story of—well, the title says it all, right? So on May 30, 2008, TACA Flight 390 departed from El Salvador International Airport en route to Miami, Florida, with an interim stop in Honduras at one of the most notoriously dangerous airports in the world, Toncontín International Airport. The area was buffeted by Tropical Storm Alma at the time. So there was a lot of wind, a lot of rain, a lot of fog, and when TACA Flight 390 attempted to land on the airport's very short runway, it overshot the runway, crashed into an embankment, and killed five people—three in the plane, including my brother, the pilot, and two in a car that were crushed when the plane landed on them. The book is my search for the truth as to what truly happened on that day. I suspected my brother would be made a scapegoat. Seventy percent of airplane accidents are blamed on the pilot, and so I just suspected that that would be our reality. And so this book is the story about me finding answers to the questions as to what happened that day.

.Jennie Nash

And in terms of the timeline of this story, when I first met you, you had just begun to write about it. I think it was 10 years. Oh, no, I've got that wrong. How long after the event? You came into a class of mine at UCLA—it was really close to the event.

Rossana D’Antonio

Yeah. So it was February of 2009, so it was a little over six months. So it was still very, very raw.

Jennie Nash

I know the 10 years part is you came back to me 10 years later, having finally wrapped your hands around how you wanted to approach it. So the story as you write it is 10–15 years after the event, looking back on it and all the work that you did to understand this crash and you are uniquely positioned. And I remember thinking about this way back when I first met you. You have a very unique perspective on disaster, and you have a very unique positioning or perspective from which to look at that. Do you want to explain what that is?

Rossana D’Antonio

Sure. So I'm an engineer. I'm a civil engineer, and I worked for over three decades in the public sector at Los Angeles County Public Works. I was over—as I left county service, I was a deputy director over our emergency management business area, and so I was trained to respond to all sorts of different disasters. Our agency managed several pieces of infrastructure, including five different airports. So I was trained to not only plan, design, construct infrastructure, but also to respond to emergencies following not only natural disasters but, you know, human-made disasters. And following these disasters, I was the lead for preparing after-action reports, which essentially describe what happened, what went wrong, what went well, and what lessons learned can we actually take away from these disasters. So that was my background.

Jennie Nash

Yeah, it's an incredible connection to this tragic event. So we'll come back to that in a minute. So Marty, tell us about your book.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Sure. So my book is entitled Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter's Search for Truth. And in 1960, my grandparents were killed in an airplane accident that was a collision over New York Harbor. Their plane—they had left Columbus, Ohio. They were traveling to New York, and they were on a TWA Super Constellation, and then a United jet that had originated in Chicago was flying in. My grandparents’ plane was set for landing in LaGuardia. The United flight was set for landing in Idlewild, which is now JFK Airport. The United plane got off course and collided with my grandparents’ plane. My grandparents’ plane landed in Staten Island in an empty airfield, and the United flight actually continued for a few miles and landed in Park Slope, Brooklyn, killing people on the ground. So on the planes, there were 128 people who lost their lives, and then six people on the ground in Brooklyn. And because of that horrific situation in Brooklyn, that's where most of the sort of media was focused. There was one survivor who survived for about 24 hours—a boy—but he didn't live. My grandparents were on their way from Columbus to New York to meet for a meeting to talk about their family business, their iconic family magazine Highlights for Children, and they were looking to place the magazine on the newsstands. So they were executives with the company, and this accident was actually the largest commercial jet airplane disaster up until that time in 1960, so it was a pretty well-known, famous accident.

Jennie Nash

So you two have a very unique connection to that accident, and where you stood when you wrote about it is much further in the future from the crash itself, because your mother, if I remember correctly, was 14 years old at the time.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Right. So my mom was 14. It was six years before I was born, so obviously I didn't know my grandparents. My mom was the second oldest of five, and they moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Austin, Texas, to live with a paternal uncle and his family. And so my book is more about my experience of being raised by a mother who was in protracted mourning after having lost her parents and not had a way to process her grief as an adolescent, and as she got older. So my approach to my book is from that angle primarily, in addition to getting to know my grandmother through her letters, which was a significant goal through the writing process.

Jennie Nash

Right. So you have this reverberation through time of this accident and your connection to the work your grandparents did. You're a writer, you're an editor, you're a person who deals with story, and they were—I mean, I was such a reader of Highlights back in the day—and that, you know, you use the word iconic, you know, probably launched the careers of so many writers and thinkers, and you have a connection through time with that, which is a very unique perspective to have on your story. So you each bring these very different ways of looking at this event. So before we kind of dig into the decisions you each made around how to structure your book, and the tone and shape and all of that, part of the reason we're all talking here today is this, what I think of as a very delightful outcome of these books, which is that you know each other. You've met each other after the books were written. And oftentimes we think, when we're writing something, that well, we think several things: nobody's ever written anything like this, and everybody else has already written this story. What do I have to say? You know, those sort of back-and-forth thoughts that writers often have—Is this unique? Do I have something to add? Do I have something to say? How am I going to serve my readers, or what experience am I going to give to my readers? And then, you know just those pinging back-and-forth thoughts. And it's not very often that we get to actually meet a writer who, at the same time, in the same phase here of publishing, you know, just the same year even, has written something that is similar-ish, you know, about a plane crash, but totally different books. But I just want to ask you each about the meeting of each other and the thinking of that book, and what that's like, because it's so unusual to get to have this kind of conversation. So, you know, I imagine there are lots of things going through your head when you heard about this other book or, you know, I don't know if I have a connection to both of you. I don't know if it came from me or what, but why don't we start this time with you, Marty.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Yeah, one of the great joys of this last year has been publishing with the same publisher as Rossana, and for us to get to know each other, because we both published our books with She Writes Press, and we just happened to be in the same cohort of summer 2025. We published in the same month, one week apart. Yeah, yeah. And I remember when we first were introducing ourselves as a group, and Rossana mentioned what her story was about. And my reaction was, is it really true? Is there really another airplane accident story amongst us? Because it is—it's not common. I mean, you don't very often come across people who have lost loved ones this way, and what became clear to me over time was that our books were very, very different. And by the nature of the fact that Rossana lost her beloved brother, who she was very close to, and I lost grandparents I had never met, our stories were just—and there's decades that separate these events—so by those natures, it was clear to me that our books were going to be different. I was excited to read Rossana's book. I was also apprehensive because, for the same reason that I described about when I'm reading about it in the news, it's just hard. But I will say, in reading Rossana's beautiful book, I immediately noticed just kindred spirits with her as a writer. It happened early in the chapters that I was reading. I had used the word lullaby to describe the sound of the engines getting going when you're sitting on a plane and it's about to take off, and sort of the sound of almost a lullaby that will put you to sleep. The person who was working with me as I was writing kept crossing that word out: “That doesn't make sense. Why would you call that a lullaby?” And I wanted it in there. It felt so right. And Rossana described that exact time, those sounds, as a lullaby. It was like; this is something that's just unique about people who have experienced what we've experienced.

Jennie Nash

Oh, wow, that's so interesting. Rossana, what about you? Your coming upon Marty's book.

Rossana D’Antonio

I know. What are the odds, right? I mean, I had never met anyone who had ever experienced a plane crash in their family. As a matter of fact, I'm going to get geeky here, but the U.S. Department of Transportation statistics indicate that one in 2 billion people will die in a plane crash. So what are the odds that, you know, life would bring Marty and I together, that had this connection, not only with the plane crash but also with you, Jennie? I mean some that came out later on. And so I thought, wow, you know, talk about serendipity and, you know, the mysterious ways of life. And although, you know, these are very different stories, I mean, they're connected at their core by a common theme, right? Very similar tragedies. And when I read Marty's book, like she says, there was—I was taken aback because there were many similar passages, you know, how we describe things or how we perceive things. There were a lot of commonalities, even though we came from it from different perspectives, which again reinforces my belief that we're part of this group that we never want to be a part of, and we'll always be connected in one way or another. I think one of the things, though, that was obvious when I read her book was that I connected, I understood, I related to her mom, obviously, right? Her mom was one that had experienced this plane crash, so it was kind of obvious the way it had impacted her, the tragedy, the aftermath, the bottling up of her feelings, PTSD, whatever—all of that I, like, clicked. But I think the most fascinating part of Marty's book was how that grief could be transferred from generation to generation. And I thought that was the fascinating thing that I learned that I really didn't know, and how these tragedies can be prolonged for, you know, generations.

Jennie Nash

Yeah, it's—well, first of all, thanks for geeking out because that is a good description of what your book is. You have a lot in your book that is kind of geeky in a—you know, you really get into the aviation industry, into the nuts and bolts of, literally, planes and how they function to the way that governments and reports about accidents function. So when reading your book, people get that layer, which is, you know, you bring to that work. So, geek out all you want. It's great. And Marty's book, by contrast, is this exploration of, you know, you drop a pebble in a pond, and how does it hit the shores? And that very emotional—you know, she had a mother immersed in grief. And what does that do to the child? And then the child's impulse to—I think it's the word search in both of your subtitles, I think it might be, or certainly the concept of it—but that idea of a quest or a journey or, you know, a need to understand. And in Rossana's case, it's what happened on that day. In Marty's case, what happened to my mom? You know, like, what was this thing that happened to my mom? And you're both seeking—that core of both of them. So I want to ask about, because I'm fascinated by this—you know, there's a raw material of a story, and how you make your choices about what the tone of that story is going to be, or the shape and structure of that story, what you want the reader to feel or to experience. Can you both go back to when you knew you were going to write about it? I think that's the first thing, is how did you catch this idea as, "This is a thing I'm going to write about"? Marty, do you want to start with that one?

Marty Ross-Dolen

Sure. I started writing after I attended a 50th anniversary memorial event for the airplane accident. And there's a sort of story that leads up to that memorial event and my attending it. But prior to that—which was, so that was 2010—prior to that, I wasn't necessarily inclined to write about it. So after attending this memorial event in 2010, a few months later, I just started telling the story of the memorial and putting some backstory into it, and that ended up being an essay that was about... I don't know, it was a long essay, like, say, 40 pages, but I was told the story was done. Because for those of us that like to use writing and words and language to try to process those things that are sitting—that we're obsessing about or sitting in our minds—I wanted to have done that and be done, because this thing was deeper than anything else that I could excavate in terms of pain in my life. So after I submitted this essay to a class that I was taking at Ohio State—writing, creative writing workshop—and at the end of the semester, the professor said to me that he thought that really what I was doing was writing a book, because there was too much material here and I hadn't done what needed to be done. My stomach sank because I didn't want to write a book. It wasn't—I wanted to be done with this topic. So I took his feedback and all of my workshop peers' feedback, and I stuck it all, the pile of papers, into a cabinet, and it stayed there for 14—well, 10—years.

Jennie Nash

Wow!

Marty Ross-Dolen

Yeah. And then, during that time, my mother had become the archivist for Highlights, for the family business, and was going through all of the saved artifacts and materials and papers related to the company and the family. And I had always wanted to know my grandmother better. My grandmother is the person I'm named for. I had always known a lot of stories about her, but I asked my mom if she had access to any letters that she might come across in the attics and basements that she was excavating—could I have them? So she started sending them to me. So while I had an essay in the cabinet, I had bins of letters from my grandmother in the basement. And that whole time, anybody who would ask me what I was working on, writing-wise, I'd say, "Well, you know I've got these letters in the basement..." but I never did anything with it. I just couldn't—it was too—everything was too overwhelming. And then what happened for me is that COVID—when the pandemic, you know, 2020, started—became part of our lives. I realized that it was an opportunity for me to pursue an MFA that I had wanted to do for a long time because it was going to be remote. And then I realized I've got time, and I could pull all of this out and see if it was something worth tackling. So that's the story of the decision to write. It was a slow one.

Jennie Nash

Wow. Oh, so interesting. And Rossana, well, we heard that you, six months after your brother died, you were in this class trying to learn how to write about it, which, at the time, I didn't quite put together that had been so recent. So when did you decide you were going to write about it? How did you know?

Rossana D’Antonio

Yeah, so, I mean, I didn't set out to write a book. I just started to write. And as you know, as an engineer, I wasn't really trained to be like a memoir writer or writing essays of this type of nature. But I have to give you so much credit, because when I went to your class—and I went out of curiosity to see, well, is anything I'm scribbling down in these journals, is anything really good?—and so your class brought me together with all these other students, and, you know, reading some of the material out loud, all of a sudden, it was a four-day—I don't know if you remember—it was a four-day, one of these four-day intensive classes, and at the end, we're reading our material, and all these strangers are suddenly referring to my brother like they know him, and I recognize that it was because I was somehow relaying his story to them, and I was somehow, maybe through my work or my words, keeping him alive in some way, and that was really transformational for me, because I thought, well, maybe I can do this. And you were very kind. You said that the work was actually pretty good, and then I had some teachers that, you know, added to that. So it started out like, you know, just like playing with words, and then it turned into a grief memoir. That's the… you know, it's evolved greatly. It turned into a grief memoir, which you—I went back to you and you said, “Well, this is great, congratulations, but it's really not marketable, and if you really want to get it out into the world, you're going to have to make some changes.” And so at that point, that's when I decided, all right, I'm going to go ahead and explore. I'm going to go deeper and try to explore the truth about what happened that day. Maybe make it more scientific, more technical; maybe bring in some of the elements that were missing from this memoir. And so along with working with you and working with my editor­— Jodi Fodor—both of you, like within the last few years—I thought I had written it, I thought I was fine, I thought it was done. But then I'd come back to all of you, and you would ask me these probing questions. Perhaps I hadn't developed a scene well enough, or maybe I needed to go deeper. You know, memoir is different than what I was trained to do, and that would send me down this rabbit hole in search of answers to, you know, the questions you were asking, which, by the way, was very annoying because obviously I did not want to come to terms with, you know, the questions that you were asking, because it would, like, get me down into the feeling part of the whole memoir writing. But I did the homework, I came back with answers, and then I realized that memoir is a different animal. And I really felt that your input, your feedback, your questions, your probing, really did make it a lot richer of a story. And even through those seeking answers to the questions that you had brought me to self-discoveries, epiphanies, that perhaps… things that I had bottled up, and that even at the tail end of writing the story, there was still so much more to discover with regards to grief and healing, and which was a lesson to me that I suppose this journey never really ends.

Jennie Nash

Oh, I want to defend myself when I said, “This is great, but it's not marketable.” There is such a danger with memoir, particularly memoir around big things, and you both are writing about a big thing, and also particularly around grief, where it's so big in your own head, it takes over your whole mind or life or heart or world, that you assume that everybody else gets it. Right? Like this thing happened, and it's tragic, and in Marty's case, it reverberates through my whole life, and it's so easy to skip over the work of making that story mean something to the reader, and of just sort of resting on the fact that this dramatic thing happened in your family and your life. And there are so many manuscripts like that that when they land on the desk of an agent or the hands of a reader, it's not enough, right? It's not enough. And so that was what I was responding to you. And I know because I got to work with you, and I know from Marty, because I see the result of her finished book, you both did that really hard work, and when I say it's really hard, you just named, Rossana, why it's hard. You have to look at yourself in a way… you know you have to dig in there to things you might not really want to think about. You certainly probably don't want to feel. Do you even want to share them? All of those decisions and choices and ideas. That's what's so hard. And you both put yourself through that process. So I want to ask you each about that—what was it like? So Marty, we'll start with you. In your case, you're digging into these letters, you start then digging into the news, the articles, the pictures, the—you know, all this stuff that your mother never spoke about, and here you're digging, digging, digging. What was that like for you on an emotional level?

Marty Ross-Dolen

Ah, it took over my life for a period of time. It was very time-consuming and overwhelming, and nothing about it was easy. I spent a lot of time and tears. I had a tough time sleeping. I did a lot of the work of writing in the middle of the night. In my head, I would wake up in the middle of the night reciting something I had written the day before. It had totally taken over my brain, and fortunately, my mother is very supportive of my work and has been very supportive of the book. And while I was reading the letters—and I read them all, and there are hundreds and hundreds of letters and thousands of pages of them—my mom was available to me to have very long conversations each day through it, because I would want to share something that I read with her, check with her about a story, or she would add and fill in some cracks. And she and I spent a lot of time on the phone crying. We also spent a lot of time laughing, because my grandmother was hilarious, which helped the situation. Her letters were a joy to read. But it really—it's a commitment. It's something that anybody who decides that they're going to take on a project that's going to just sort of open up the wound and create a rawness you're not even familiar with until you're there certainly needs to have established the support system. And I also had my husband, who was incredibly willing to talk about—I mean, he's been talking about this with me and listening for, at this point, for years, but certainly all the time back then, during those days. So it's not pretty, it was hard, but there's nothing about it that doesn't feel like the biggest gift I've ever given myself, because as much as I was trying to avoid it for all those years, there was a reason. I had to do it. I had to go through the process. And also, no question, there's a healing component to writing about something like this, and that reflective writing process, when you do the deep work and try to really dig and let yourself—as Rossana was saying—you know, the annoying stuff that was really like not where you wanted to go, but that is what really changed how it helped me heal in terms of grief, but it really also changed the way I thought about the story and imagined the story, and helped me not look at it through quite as much sadness and even anger, as much as I then was able to look through more of a lens of love at all of it. And I would venture to say that Rossana may have felt that too, because I read her book, and her book is all love. So…

Jennie Nash

Yeah, so Rossana, what was that experience of writing like for you?

Rossana D’Antonio

Yeah, well, like Marty said, you know, it was, it did become all-consuming. I became obsessed. For me, though, it was the plane crash, right? The plane crash is the common thread throughout the whole book. And I would venture to say that the crash is a character itself. I like to think of it as the crash is the villain that I battle throughout the story. Everything revolves around it, and it was all-consuming. I analyzed it a million different ways. I deconstructed it. I peeled layer after layer, fact upon fact, trying to get to the core of what truly happened, right? And then I put everything back together, reconstructing it to try to make sense of it all in an effort to find out the truth, with a little bit of fear as to what I may actually find, right? There were no guarantees that I would like what I actually discovered. And as a matter of fact, you know, working with my editor—because I got so ingrained in it, because I got so weedy and geeky and just too technical—you know, she would actually slash dozens of pages, and she said, “I'm not even going to read this because this is not memoir appropriate. You need to do better.” And I think it was at that point where I had that conversation with Jody that the crash evolved from a thing to a character that I could eventually conquer. And like Marty said, there is a healing, and at the end, I actually make peace with this experience. You know, not that I'm all healed, but I make peace with it. There's really nothing I could do. My search was for the truth, and I got the truth, and then I was able to let it go and actually continue to live, because it was so consuming that I wasn't really living until I let it go.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Can I ask, Rossana, do you think that all that writing that you did that got slashed out—do you, because I have writing also that had to be removed—do you feel that that had to be written in order to be removed, in order to get on the other side of it?

Rossana D’Antonio

Oh, that's a good question. I never thought of it that way, but yeah, it could be. I mean, it's part of the quest. It wasn't appropriate for the work that I was working on, but it did highlight facts that I needed to know in order to, like you said, let it go.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Yeah, I just think that's interesting, because I have material that didn't end up in the book, but I know I couldn't have written the book if I hadn't written that material. It's just… yeah.

Jennie Nash

So you both talk about having arrived at a place of peace, or you use the word a “gift to yourself,” Marty. It sounds like during the writing of these books it didn't feel like that… it feels like that now. So why did you keep going when it was so hard? Marty, what would you say to that?

Marty Ross-Dolen

I think because even though it was hard, I was sensing that it was necessary. I was sensing the value of it, and I had just decided that I was committed to it, and I wasn't going to give up. I just had a sense that once I found myself on the other side, I would be in a place that would have made it all worth it.

Jennie Nash

What about you, Rossana?

Rossana D’Antonio

Well, I mean, for me, there are two things. I mean, people who know me know that once I say I'm going to do something, I cannot let it go. So that's one. But the whole purpose of going down this journey was I needed to know what happened. So not knowing what happened was just not an option. I mean, that was the outcome that I was looking for, and there was fear and pain that I knew I was going to take on. But in order to get there, I needed to go through it. So it was just something inevitable. I just knew what I was getting myself into. And I—you know—bring it on.

Jennie Nash

Yeah. So I want to ask about the shaping of the stories. You know, there are so many different shapes a story can take. And Rossana, we heard how you started with one type of book, moved into another. You cut this and that. And Marty, you had this incredible amount of primary source material. How did you make a decision? I mean, there are so many questions we could ask here, but I'm going to just focus on the plane crash as part of this discussion. How did you decide where in the story the crash would come—let's call it the scene of the crash—because it appears in very different places in your books, and in some ways, that colors the tone or form or experience for the reader of that book. So, Marty, how did you make that decision? Because the crash comes quite late in your book, where we actually see it. And it struck me when I was reading your book that that was exactly right for your story, because your mother never spoke about it. You didn't know about it. It wasn't a thing you were playing over in your head, and so the not feeling the crash or knowing about the crash was part of the story of it, in a way. So how did you make that decision??

Marty Ross-Dolen

I will say that the essay that I wrote in 2010 that I described as the foundational essay for the book was largely what part five of my book is. So in many ways, I had written the end of the book. That was the first thing I wrote. And then figuring out where to put what was really the largest challenge. And I ultimately started to realize that I knew that I was coming to the book with the goal of not having the book be about my grandparents’ death, but having it be about their life, particularly my grandmother's life. And so I wanted to downplay, even though the details of the accident and my discovering it were critical to the story, I wanted to downplay their death, because that's what I was trying to do for myself, because I had grown up my whole life only knowing their death, and that wasn't what I wanted people to know about myself, my mother, or my grandmother. So that was probably the biggest reason that I decided to put it at the end. And then also I put it at the end because I did want to have some buildup. I sensed some value in the reader getting to know the characters well before finding out what actually happened, and I also wanted it to correlate with my own—as you said—my own discovery of the story, which happened later in my life.

Jennie Nash

Well, then there's this—yeah, there's this cool thing that I thought was really cool that happens in your book, which is your grandparents have this magazine, this business, and they make a decision: “Oh, maybe we should see if we could get this in—was it dentist's offices or, you know, doctors' offices waiting rooms?” And then, you know, they're on this plane to try to get it on newsstands. And we know the incredible success that those ideas went on to have in terms of a business. You know, the seeds that they planted bore incredible fruit. And so that part of the story, I thought, was really beautifully handled as well, because we all know what Highlights was and what it became. And then to find out those were their ideas, and then they died. They were not the ones that saw that through. There's something so powerful about that, that their ideas were so strong. They were so prescient. They were, you know, they created this thing that reverberated—there's that word again—through so many people's lives. I thought that was really a beautiful touch to how you placed that plane crash too.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Oh, thank you. That's interesting to think of it from that perspective because, in addition to my not wanting the story to be about my grandparents’ deaths solely, it was also not meant to be the story of the history of Highlights. It was meant to be who they were. And, you know, it really is more of a focus on my grandmother in relation to the company, but they saved the company. And there were many times in the 1950s when they were struggling to keep it from bankruptcy and the decision—the sort of… actually, it was an epiphany of a salesperson who came up with the idea of selling through doctors' and dentists' offices. But their decision to implement that happened a couple of years before they died, and that's when they actually started to see the company thrive. So they died when the company was thriving, and they were, just as you said, pursuing more. Because the whole Highlights is a mission-driven company. Our whole goal is to have material that will help children become their best selves. So the more children that it touches, the more successful the mission. And so, yes, I mean, it is part of the story as much as maybe I see it as separate. It's just not separate. But making decisions about how much of one thing, you know, is this book supposed to have? I mean, there were people who wanted me to write the history of Highlights more than I did, for sure. There were people who wanted more airplane accident, for sure. And I wanted more of my grandmother, my mother, and me, so…

Jennie Nash

Right.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Yeah, it was a balance.

Jennie Nash

Right. Well, you pulled it off beautifully.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Thank you.

Jennie Nash

And Rossana, in your book, the plane crash literally starts on page one—or even in the title. How did you…? And I feel like it was maybe always that way. Was it always that way? Was that one thing that never changed?

Rossana D’Antonio

Yeah, I was just going to tell you, the book went through a ton of revisions, but the one thing that remained constant was the opening scene, which was the timeline of the 26 seconds that describe touchdown to impact. And I remember reading that in your class early on, and there was a sense of shock from the reception from the other folks in the class, and I knew that that's how I wanted to start the book. I mean, that's the premise that sets everything in motion. So that was the one constant, and I'm pretty proud of that.

Jennie Nash

Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. So we know from the very beginning what happens. And then you circle back to talk about how you learned of the crash, which is a very dramatic story as well. So how did you hold the tension through the rest of the book? When the reader knows what happened, this is not a mystery, then you have to construct the story in such a way to hold the reader—you know, what else are we going to root for or learn or find out? How did you pull that off? Because you did.

Rossana D’Antonio

Well, the mystery is, you know, what happened? The mystery—I mean, I talk about how the industry had, continues to have, a tendency to blame one individual, which is the pilot, the last person that touches this very complex system that is the aviation industry. And so I kind of made the industry somewhat of a villain. And this quest for me to seek the truth and hopefully to—you know, I suppose the reader wanted me to be right that the industry was somehow to blame. And so that's how I thread the story, in addition to the fact that, you know, there were facts that kind of reinforced my whole premise, right? I mean, the accident report was never—so the accident happened outside of the country. And so here in the United States, the NTSB will always do an investigation and release the report as public information, as a public document. But outside of the country, the accident investigation—although the NTSB and the FAA participated in it—the lead was the Salvadoran Civil Aviation Authority, and they opted not to make that investigation report public. And so to me, that screamed of a conspiracy. So I thread that into the whole story. And, you know, my family gets the report through indirect means, and I'm able to dive into it, and lo and behold, I discover smoking guns in the report that indicate that the industry lied and covered up. And there were conspiracies, which are not—they're not unique to this one accident. And that's the other thing I do in the book, is I bring in parallel accidents here in the United States that reinforce that the industry is a global industry, and that corporate greed is alive and well in this industry as well.

Jennie Nash

Yeah, indeed, your book is revelatory that way. And that leads me to a question I want to ask you both, which I'll start with you, Rossana. Given how hard it was to write the story, and to be in it, and to think about it, and how this plane crash dominated your thinking for so long, what do you think about when you step on a plane? Is it hard for you?

Rossana D’Antonio

Well, there's a little trepidation. Yes, absolutely. Every time I have to fly, there's a thinking in the back of the mind, right? I think I had a conversation with you, Jennie, where we talked about when I crossed the threshold, whether we like it or not, we are relinquishing all sense of control to those people who are flying the plane and to everybody else in the industry who helps support that pilot and co-pilot, and we have to trust that everyone has done their job. And we've discovered with recent incidents that that isn't always true. So, I mean, there are things that I do. I mean, I try to sit in the exit row. From now on, I will be sitting on 11A, you know? And, you know, I do pay attention to the safety message that the flight attendants do before we depart. I think that's a common courtesy. And by the way, you know, a lot of us feel that we're professional flyers, but we've never been tested under the most dire of conditions in an accident, so we just assume we know what to do. But do we really? And hopefully we'll never be, you know, required to put that knowledge into use. I text my husband, “We're leaving now, taking off,” and then when we land, I tell him that we've landed safe and sound, because there's no guarantee, there's no guarantee that we will make it to our destination. I like to believe—you know, we've been conditioned to believe—that flying is the safest mode of travel, and I believe that, I really do. I don't want to dispel that. I don't want to cause fear. But I do also believe that the industry is under tremendous strain. Those two things can be true at the same time. We can't just say, “I'm not going to travel.” That's just not realistic. And so I choose to trust just like my brother trusted the system when he was alive. I choose to trust the system, and we'll leave it at that.

Jennie Nash

I love that. Marty, what about you?

Marty Ross-Dolen

I find, interestingly, I have a lot more anxiety leading up to flying than actually while I'm flying. In the days before, I can't really focus. Part of it is this feeling of needing to get every little thing in order. And it just sort of takes over in my mind. So the thing that I like the least about flying is the days before I actually do it. And then I have a tradition that I insist that anybody flying with me, that I know personally, also take part in, which is that I kiss the plane, kiss my hand, and place it on the outside of the plane. I think that that's super superstitiously protective. And then I actually feel some relief once I'm in my seat that it's going to move forward. And maybe, maybe part of that is that whatever control I've had up to that point, I can let go. But I do, you know, my husband always says it's safer to fly than drive. And I think that that's true. I'm not a great passenger in a car, for sure, but I'm with Rossana. You trust the system, and you have to live, and you can't choose not to travel or not use a mode of transportation. It's just the way our society and lives are. And I guess I feel grateful and fortunate that we have those options. So, yeah.

Jennie Nash

I love that! Kiss the plane. I might start doing that. I cannot recommend both of these books more. They're so beautiful, they're so different. Reading them together would be incredibly powerful if that's something listeners are inclined to do. But just to remind folks, Marty's book is called Always There, Always Gone. Rossana's book is called 26 Seconds. Thank you both for coming on with each other to talk about this unique connection you have to each other and also your individual books. Can you tell folks where they can go to learn more other than the obvious, go-buy-the-book places? Marty, why don't you go first?

Marty Ross-Dolen

Sure. Thank you. All of my information—there's a lot to learn through my website, which is martyrossdolen.com. It's M-A-R-T-Y-R-O-S-S-D-O-L-E-N.com, where there's things to learn about Highlights, there's book club questions, there's Q&A’s, just lots of things. There are links to things I've done and all places where you can find the book.

Jennie Nash

We'll link to that in the show notes. It's just a beautiful book about mothers and daughters and grandmothers and history and our place in it, and grief and life and all of it. It's a beautiful read. And Rossana, where can people find your geeky and soulful book about your beautiful brother, Caesar [Captain Cesare D'Antonio], and his love of flying and this tragedy that unfolded and how you made sense of it? Where can they learn more?

Rossana D’Antonio

Yeah, thank you. So my website is rossanadantonio.com—that's R-O-S-S-A-N-A-D-A-N-T-O-N-I-O.com—and you can find all sorts of information there as well.

Jennie Nash

Well, thank you both for talking to me today.

Rossana D’Antonio

Thank you, Jennie. Thank you, Marty.

Marty Ross-Dolen

Thank you, Jennie. Thank you, Rossana. It's been a pleasure.

Rossana D’Antonio

It's been fun.

Jennie Nash

And for our listeners, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

In This Episode, We Explore:

* How to identify and overcome your mental stories and obstacles in writing

* Strategies to open up creatively and align your work with your values

* Practical ways to harness and focus your unique genius energy

* The importance of ritual and community in the writing process

Books Mentioned

Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most

In the Absence of the Ordinary – by Francis Weller

Thinking of starting a book?

Join the September 16th virtual writing workshop with Jennie and Diana:

https://drdianahill.com/wise-effort-book-idea-lab

Book two, The Summer Guests, is even more rooted in Maine, on its history and the social dynamics of its natives and its summer people.

Once I tore through those first two books, I went back to Gerritsen’s first book, The Surgeon, one of Time Magazine’s top 100 thriller/mystery books of all time and the first in the Rizzoli & Isles series, consequently made into a long-running television series.

Gerritsen has a fascinating career trajectory, lots to talk about regarding pantsing and plotting, where the ideas come from, and lots of other geeky details about the writing life. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Find Tess at Tessgerritsen.com, or on Bluesky, @TessGerritsen

Transcript below!

EPISODE 462 - TRANSCRIPT

Jennie Nash

Hey everyone, it's Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, the company I started more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. In October, we'll be enrolling a new cohort of certification students who will be going through programs in either fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, and learning the editorial, emotional, and entrepreneurial skills that you need to be a successful book coach. If you've been curious about book coaching and thinking that it might be something you want to do for your next career move, I'd love to teach you more about it, you can go to bookcoaches.com/waitlist to check out the free training I have—that's bookcoaches.com/waitlist. The training is all about how to make money, meaning, and joy out of serving writers. Fall is always a great time to start something new. So if you're feeling called to do this, go check out our training and see if this might be right for you. We'd love to have you join us.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

Jess Lahey

Hey, this is Jess Lahey, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is the podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, poetry, prose, narrative nonfiction, fiction, creative nonfiction, queries, proposals. This is the podcast about writing all the things. More than anything else, this is the podcast about the writing life and about getting the work done. I am Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my journalism at The Atlantic and The Washington Post, and my bi-weekly (formerly bi-weekly) column at The New York Times, The Parent-Teacher Conference, ran for about three years I am joined today by Sarina Bowen, who has written 50-odd books. She has written lots and lots of romance, and her most recent addition to the world of publishing has been her thrillers, Dying to Meet You and The Five Year Lie. And she has a book coming out this fall called Thrown for a Loop. The reason I am recording this intro on my own—which, as you may know if you've been listening, is highly unusual for us—is because I know myself. And I know when I'm really excited to talk to someone on the podcast; I'm going to flub the intro. I'm going to forget something. I'm going to forget to introduce them altogether. So today, I'm doing that first, so I don't mess it up. A while ago on the podcast, you may have heard Sarina and KJ read some books by an author named Tess Gerritsen. I had heard of Tess Gerritsen, but I had never read any of her books. I just hadn't yet. I haven't read Nora Roberts yet. I haven't read—there are lots of authors I haven't read yet. And sometimes you don't even know where to start. So when Sarina and KJ recommended Tess Gerritsen's new series set in Maine—the first one being The Spy Coast and the second one being The Summer Guests—I figured I had a good place to start. And you know, as a New Englander, I love a good book about New England, and that was the start of my interest in Tess Gerritsen's work. I have gone back to the beginning and started with her book The Surgeon, which was her first book in the series that became the Rizzoli and Isles Series, as well as a television show. Tess Gerritsen has a—she's written through 33 books at this point. And as I now know, she has also directed a documentary called Magnificent Beast about pigs, which I listened to this morning while I was vacuuming the house. I loved it. She also—she has a lot to say about genre, about publishing, about second careers, about a writing place, and about process. So let's just jump right into it. I am so excited to introduce to you today, Tess Gerritsen. So from the perspective of what our listeners love—this podcast, the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast —is super geek. People who love the nuts and bolts and the dorky details of the writing life. Sarina has a past life in finance, and so she tends to be, like, our “no, but let's talk about the numbers” kind of person. I'm just the research super dork, which is why I spent my morning watching your documentary about pigs.

Tess Gerritsen

Oh my god! (Laughing)

Jess Lahey

Magnificent Beast. I—I've joked in the past that if I could, I would probably just research things in—in, you know, maybe there'll be a book out there, maybe there won't, but I would research things and—and just learn as much as I could. And so I loved—loved—your Magnificent Beast documentary. I thought it was fantastic. But one of the reasons that we wanted to talk to you, just from the very beginning, is that we feel like you do some pretty incredible world-building and relationship-building with your places and your characters. And so I just—I would love to start there, mainly with the idea of starting with the real nuts and bolts stuff, which is, like, what does an average writing day look like for you? And how do you, sort of—how do you set that up? What does it look like, if you have an average writing day? Maybe you don't.

Tess Gerritsen

Well, it's hard to describe an average writing day, because every day is—there are days when you sit at your desk and you just, you know, pull your hair. And there are days when you get distracted by the news. And there are many days when I just do not want to write. But when I'm writing, the good days are when my characters are alive and talking to me. And it's—it's—you talked about world-building and character-building. That is really key to me. What are they saying to me? Can I hear their voices? And it sounds a little—a little crazy, because I am hearing voices. But it's those voices that really make characters come alive.

Jess Lahey

I—You have said in other interviews that you are very much—sorry to those of you who hate the terms—that you are very much a pantser. And you are sitting on this interview with a consummate plotter. Sarina is our consummate plotter. So could you talk a little bit about how those character—how those voices—influence, you know, the pantsing of the—of the book, and—and how that works for you?

Tess Gerritsen

Well, I mean, it is weird that I am a pantser. And it's funny—I think that people who are plotters tend to be people who are in finance or in law, because they're used to having their ducks lined up, you know. They—they want everything set up ahead of time, and it makes them feel comfortable. And I think a large part of becoming a pantser is learning to be comfortable with unpredictability. Learning to just let things happen, and know you're going to take wrong turns, know you're going to end up in blind alleys—and yet just keep on forging ahead and change direction. So I suppose that what helps me become a pantser, as I said, is hearing a character's voice. If, for instance, when I wrote The Spy Coast, the first thing I heard about that book was Maggie Bird's voice. And she just said, “I'm not the woman I used to be.” And that's an opening there, right? Because you want to find out, Maggie, who did you used to be? And why do you sound so sad? So a lot of it was just—just getting into her head and letting her talk about what a day-to-day life is, which is, you know, raising chickens and collecting eggs and becoming—and being—a farmer. And then she does something surprising in that very first chapter. There's a fox that's killing her chickens, so she grabs her rifle and kills it with one shot. And that opens up another thing, like—how are you, a 62-year-old woman, able to take out a rifle and kill a fox with one shot? So it's—it's those things. It's those revelations of character. When they come out and they tell you something, or they show you they—they have a skill that you weren't aware of, you want to dig deeper and find out, you know, where did they get that skill?

Sarina Bowen

And that is a really fun way to show it. I mean, you're talking today with two people who have also kept chickens.

Multiple Speakers

(All laughing)

Jess Lahey

And had foxes take their chickens, actually.

Sarina Bowen

Oh yes, because the two go together.

Tess Gerritsen

Yes.

Sarina Bowen

But yes, I admit I have never shot a fox, and maybe wouldn't.

Jess Lahey

I have yelled very loudly at a fox, and he actually—I have to say—really mad respect for the fox, because he took one look at me—he did drop the chicken that I was yelling at him for grabbing—and then he went across the street, around the neighbor's house, around the back of the other neighbor's house, and came at the exact same chicken from the other side of the house, where I couldn't see him out the window.

Tess Gerritsen

Oh, they are so smart. They are so smart.

Jess Lahey

So smart. Sarina, it sounded like you had something— you had something you wanted to add, and I interrupted you when we were talking about pantsing and we were talking about world-building and characters speaking to you.

Sarina Bowen

Well, I just had thought that it was a lovely moment to explain why I was so excited to read this book after I heard Tess speak at Thriller Fest 2024, in a packed room where there was nowhere to sit except on the floor. You told the audience a little bit of a story from your real life that—that made you want to write that book. And I wonder if you could tell us what that was, because for me—I mean, we were only five minutes into your talk, and I'm like, oh, I'm—I'm going to download that tonight.

Tess Gerritsen

Well, yes, it was. A lot of my books come from ideas that I've been stewing over for years. I have a folder called the ideas folder. It's an actual physical manila folder. And if I see something in an article or a newspaper or a magazine, I'll just rip it out and stick it in there, and it sometimes takes a long time before I know how to turn this into a book. So the idea for The Spy Coast is a little bit of obscure knowledge that I learned 35 years ago, when I first moved to Maine. My husband is a medical doctor. He opened up a practice, and when he would bring in new patients, he would always get an occupational history. And he used to get this answer—this very strange answer—from his new patients. They would say, “I used to work for the government, but I can't talk about it.” And after he heard that three times, he thought, what town did we land in? And who are these people? And we later found out that on our very short street, on one side of us was a retired OSS person, and on the other side was retired CIA. A realtor told us that our town was full of CIA retirees. So, I mean, of course you want to ask, why did they get here? What are they doing here? What are their lives like? I knew there was a book in there, but I didn't know what that book was. I needed 35 years to come up with the idea. And what I really needed to do was become old and—and realize that as you get older, especially women, we become invisible. People don't pay attention to us. We are over the hill. You know, everybody looks at the young, pretty chicks, but once you start getting gray hair, you fade into the background. And with that experience myself; I began to think more and more about what it's like to be retired. What is it like to be retired from a job that was maybe dangerous, or exciting, or something that you really risked your life to—to achieve? So that was—that was the beginning of The Spy Coast. What happens to CIA retirees—especially women—who are now invisible? But that makes them the best spies of all.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, and we have—we did this really cool thing, this really fun thing for us on the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. It's like a supporter-only thing, where we call First Pages, where very brave authors—very brave writers—submit their first page to us, and we talk about it and decide whether or not we'd want to turn the page. And you have an incredible skill on your first pages. You're very, very good at first pages. And I was thinking about The Summer Guests, that you had this wonderful line that I'm going to read now:

Purity, Maine, 1972. On the last day of his life, Purity police officer Randy Pelletier ordered a blueberry muffin and a cup of coffee at the Marigold Café,

Which immediately reminded me of my very, very favorite line from all of literature—my very favorite first line—which is Irving’s first line from A Prayer for Owen Meany, in which he ruins the story for you right there in the first line:

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God.

There is this incredible power to first lines. And I'm sort of wondering where—how first lines happen for you. Do they happen first? Do they happen last? Do they happen along the way?

Tess Gerritsen

First lines usually happen last. I—it's—I will write the whole book, and I'll think, something's missing in that first chapter. How do I open this up? And, you know, there are things that make lines immediately hypnotic, and one of those things is an inherent contradiction—something that makes you think, wait, okay, you start off this way, but then all of a sudden, the meaning of that line switches. So, yeah, it starts off with, you know, this guy's going to die. But on that last day of his life, he does something very ordinary. He just orders coffee at the local café. So I think it's that contradiction that makes us want to read more. It's also a way to end chapters. I think that—that if you leave your reader with a sense of unease—something is about to go wrong, but they don't know what it is yet—or leave them with an unanswered question, or leave them with, as I said, a contradiction—that is what's page-turning. I think that a lot of thriller writers in particular mistake action for—for being—for being interesting. A car chase on the page is really very boring. But what's interesting is something that—you could feel that tension building, but you don't know why.

Sarina Bowen

I have joked sometimes that when I get stuck on a plot, sometimes I will talk at my husband and—and say, “you know, I'm stuck here.” And he always says, “And then a giant squid attacked.” And it—of course I don't write books that take place where this is possible, so—but it never fails to remind me that, like, external action can sometimes be just, you know, totally pointless. And that if you're stuck, it's because one of your dominoes isn't leaning, you know, in the right spot. So...

Tess Gerritsen

Yeah, it's—it's not as much fun seeing that domino fall as seeing it go slowly tilting over. You know, I really learned this when I was watching a James Bond movie. And it starts off—you know, the usual James Bonds have their cold open to those action and chasing and death-defying acts. I found that—I find that really, in that movie anyway—I was like, Ho hum. Can we get to the story? And I found the time when I was leaning forward in my theater seat, watching every moment, was really a very quiet conversation aboard a train between him and this woman who was going to become his lover. That was fascinating to me. So I think that that transfers to book writing as well. Action is boring.

Jess Lahey

You and Sarina do something that I feel, as a writer; I would probably not be very good at, which is creating that unease. I—Sarina in particular does this thing... I've read every one of Sarina's books, as a good friend is supposed to do. And I text her, and I say, Why don't they just talk about it and just deal? Get it out in the open! And she's like, you know, we just got to make these people uncomfortable. And you both have this incredible talent for helping—keeping the reader, uh, along with you, simply because there is this sense of unease. We're slightly off-kilter the whole time. And yet in me, as a people pleaser, that makes me very uncomfortable. I want people to be happy with each other. So how do you—if you get to a place where you feel like maybe things aren't off-kilter enough, or things aren't off-balance enough—how do you introduce a little bit of unease into your—into your story?

Tess Gerritsen

Well, I think it comes down to very small points of conflict—little bits of tension. Like, we call it micro-tension. And I think those occur in everyday life all the time. For instance, you know, things that happen that really don't have any big consequence, but are still irritating. We will stew about those for—for a while. And, you know, I used to write romance as well, so I understand entirely what Sarina is doing, because romance is really about courtship and conflict. And it's the conflict that makes us keep reading. We just—we know this is the courtship. So there's always that sense of it's not quite there, because once the characters are happy, the story is over, right?

Sarina Bowen

Yeah.

Multiple Speakers

(All laughing)

Sarina Bowen

Also, writing the ends of romance novels is the least interesting part. Like, what...? Once the conflict is resolved, like, I cannot wait to get out of there.

Tess Gerritsen

Right, exactly. You know, I—I pay attention to my feelings when I'm reading a book, and I've noticed that the books that I remember are not the books with happy endings, because happiness is so fleeting. You know, you can be happy one second, and then something terrible will happen. You'll be unhappy. What lasts for us is sadness, or the sense of bittersweet. So when I read a book that ends with a bittersweet ending—such as, you know, Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove—I ended up crying at the end of that book, and I have never forgotten that ending. Now, if everybody had been happy and there had been nobody to drag all those miles at the end, I would have forgotten that book very quickly. So I think—I try—I always try to leave the end of the book either bittersweet—I mean, you want to resolve all the major plot points—but also leave that sense of unease, because people remember that. And it also helps you, if you have a sequel.

Sarina Bowen

That's so interesting you've just brought up a couple of really interesting points, because there is a thriller—I actually write suspense now—and one of the books that so captured my attention about five years ago was killing it on the charts. And I thought it was actually a terrible book, but it nailed the bittersweet ending. Like, the premise was solid, and then the bittersweet ending was perfect, and the everything between the first chapter and the last chapter was a hot mess, but—but—um, that ending really stuck with me. And I remember carrying it around with me, like, Wow, they really nailed that ending. You know, and—and maybe that has, like, legs in terms of, like, talking about it. And, you know, if it—if—if it's irritating enough, like, the tension is still there—enough to, like, make people talk about it—it could actually affect the performance of that book. But also, um, one thing that I really love about this series—you have—what is the series title for the...?

Tess Gerritsen

Martini—The Martini Club.

Sarina Bowen

The Martini Club, right? So The Martini Club is two books now. I inhaled the first one last summer, and I inhaled the second one this summer. And The Martini Club refers to this group of friends—these retired spies. And of course, there are two completely different mysteries in book one and book two. And I noticed a couple of things about the difference between those mysteries that was really fun. So in the first case—or in one of the two cases, let's see—in one of them, the thing that happens in their town is actually, like, related to them. And in the other one, it's kind of not. So to me, that felt like a boundary expansion of your world and your system. But also, I just love the way you leaned into the relationship of these people and their town in such a way. And how did you know to do that? Like, how—what does your toolbox say about how to get that expansiveness in your character set? Like, you know, to—to find all the limits of it?

Tess Gerritsen

That—you know, so much is like—it's like asking a pole-vaulter how they do it. They just—they have just—I guess its muscle memory. You don't really know how you're doing it, but what I did know was—with age, and because I love these characters so much—it really became about them and about what is going to deepen their friendship? What kind of a challenge is going to make them lean into each other—lean on each other? That's really what I was writing about, I think, was this circle of friends, and—and what you will do, how much you will sacrifice, to make sure your friends are safe. No, you're right—the second book is much more of a classic mystery. Yeah—a girl disappears. I mean, there was—there were—there were CIA undertones in that, because that becomes an important part of the book. But I think that what people are—when people say they love this book—they really talk about the characters and that friendship. And we all want friends like this, where we can go and—and—and have martinis together, and then if we—one of us needs to—we'll go help them bury a body.

Multiple Speakers

(All laughing)

Tess Gerritsen

That's—they all have shovels, and they're willing to do it. That's the kind of friendship—friends—we want.

Jess Lahey

Well, and that's funny you mention that—I had an entire question—it wasn't even a question, it was a statement—in here about friendships and being grateful to you for the reminder about the importance of relationships. And this entire podcast was born out of the fact that we were talking writing all the time, and we just wanted an official way to sit down once a week and actually talk about the work. And your work is suffused with just these incredible relationships—whether that's the Rizzoli and Isles—you know, in your first—in the one of your other series—and I'm just—I'm very grateful for that, because we—especially—I think I re—I really crave books about female relationships, especially about older female relationships. And I have been loving your books, and I've—like, as I may have mentioned to you in my initial email—I had—I'm so sorry—never read your books before. And I admitted in the introduction that there are lots of very, very famous authors whose books I have never read. And it's always so exciting to me to dive into someone's series and realize, oh, this person really touches on themes that mean a lot to me, and I can already tell that I'm going to be enjoying a lot of their books to come forward. So thank you for all of the great descriptions of relationships and how we do rely on each other for various aspects of just how we get through all of this stuff.

Tess Gerritsen

Yeah—get through life. But you know what's funny about it is that it didn't start that way. For instance, let's go back to Rizzoli and Isles. The very first time they both appear in a book is in The Apprentice. And they don't start off being friends. They start off being—they're so different. As the TV producer once said, “you’ve really written about Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.” That's okay—they are—in the books. They are not natural friends. But like real-life friendships, sometimes—just kind of develop slowly, and—and they have their ups and downs. So there are times when—when Jane and Maura are barely speaking to each other because of conflicts they have. But by the time book twelve comes around—or maybe book seven comes around—you know that they would risk their lives for each other. So I think that if you're writing a series like Rizzoli and Isles, or like The Martini Club, it really helps to develop the friendship on the fly and see how they react to certain stresses. The next book, which I just turned in, called The Shadow Friends—it even put—pushes them even further, and it really—it really strains a marriage, because it's—it's more about Ingrid, and an old lover comes back into her life. She used to—they were both spies—and he is, like, hot, hot, hot—Antonio Banderas kind of guy. And here's Ingrid, married to Lloyd, you know, who's just a sweet analyst who cooks dinner for her every night. And I—when I was coming up with that story, I thought, I want to write a book about their marriage. So it wasn't—the plot wasn't about, oh, you know, international assassinations, even though that does occur in the book. It's really about the story of a marriage.

Jess Lahey

And it gives you, it gives you added unease. You know, if you have your two characters not speaking to each other, and you know your readers love those characters and crave those characters to be getting along at some point, then that's just another reason that we're following along. I was just thinking about, uh, Michael Connelly, uh, book the other day, because I really, really like the series he did with Renée Ballard and her relationship with the Bosch character, and how that series is totally about crime, but yet it's also very much about the relationship. And I think I follow—I continue to read those because of the relationship between those two human beings, and less so because of the murder mystery sort of stuff.

Tess Gerritsen

I think it really becomes important if you're dealing also with Hollywood television series. I still remember what the producer first said when he called me up about Rizzoli and Isles. He said, "I love your girls, and I think they belong on TV.” He didn't say, I love your plots. He didn't say, I love your mysteries, you know, all your intricate ups and downs. It was really about the girls. So if you hope to sell to a television series, really, it's about characters again.

Jess Lahey

Absolutely.

Sarina Bowen

I was going to ask about longevity, because you have so many books, and you're so obviously still invigorated by the process, or there wouldn't be a book three that you just turned in. So how have you been able to avoid just being sick to death of—of writing suspense novel after suspense novel?

Tess Gerritsen

I refused. That's what it is. You know, I—I don't—I guess I could say that I have a little bit of ADHD when it comes to—to the books I write. I cannot—after 13 books of Rizzoli and Isles, I just had a different idea. And it takes—it takes a certain amount of backbone to say no to your publisher, to your editor, to people who are going, well, when's the next one in this series coming out? And to be able to say, I need a break. I need to do something completely different. So over—how many years I've been a writer—almost 40 now—I've written science fiction and historicals and a ghost story and romantic suspense and spy novels and medical thrillers and crime novels. I've been all over the place, but each one of those books that took me out of what I was expected to do was so invigorating. It was a book that I needed to write. As an example, I wrote a book called Playing with Fire. Nobody wanted that book. Nobody expected that book. It was a historical about World War II, and about music—about the power of music—and having to do with the death camps. I remember my publisher going, "What are you doing?" And, you know, it's—it's true—they're—they—they are marketers, and they understood that that book would not sell as well, and it didn't. But it still remains one of my favorite books. And when you want to write a book, you need to write that book. That's all—even—even if nobody wants it.

Jess Lahey

I actually was—I'm so pleased that this came up, because that was actually going to be my question, because both you and Sarina have done this—done, you know, 90 degrees—whether it's out of, you know, one genre into another—and that, to me, requires an enormous amount of courage. Because you know you have people expecting things from you. And you in particular, Tess, have people saying, "No, I want the next one. I love this relationship. I want the next one." And—and dealing—you're not just dealing with the disappointment of whether it's an agent or an editor, but the disappointment of fans. And that's a pressure as well. So when I used to do journalism, I remember a question I asked of another journalist was, "How do you continue to write without fear of the comment section?" And essentially, for us, that's our—you know, those are our readers. So how do you find that thing within yourself to say, no, this really is the thing that I need to be writing now?

Tess Gerritsen

Well, that is a really—it's a really tough decision to buck the trend or buck what everybody's expecting, because there's a thing in publishing called the death spiral. And if your book does not sell well, they will print fewer copies for the next one. And then that won't sell well. So you start—your career starts to go down the drain. And that is a danger every time you step out of your tried and true series and do something out of—you know, completely out of the ordinary. I think the reason I did it was that I really didn't give a damn. It was—it was like, Okay, maybe this will kill my career, but I've got to write this book. And it was always with the idea that if my publisher did not want that, I would just self-publish. I would just, you know, find another way to get it out there. And I—I was warned, rightly so, that your sales will not be good for this book, and that will—it will hurt the next contract. And I understood that. But it was the only way I could keep my career going. Once you get bored, and you're—you're trapped in a drawer, I think it shows up in your writing.

Jess Lahey

I had this very conversation with my agent. The—my first book did well. And so then, you know, the expectation is, I'll write like part two of that, or I'll write something for that exact same audience again. And when I told my agent—I said, "You know, this book on substance use prevention and kids—I—it's—I have to write it. And I'm going to write it even, you know, if I have to go out there and sell it out of the trunk of my car." And she said, "Okay, then I guess we're doing this." And yes...

Tess Gerritsen

(Laughing) They had their best wishes at heart.

Jess Lahey

And honestly, I love—I loved my book that did well. But The Addiction Inoculation is the book I'm most proud of. And, you know, that's—yeah, that's been very important to me.

Tess Gerritsen

I often hear from writers that the book that sold the fewest copies was one that was—were their favorites. Those are the ones that they took a risk on, that they—I mean, they put their heart and soul into it. And maybe those hurt their careers, but those are the ones that we end up being proud of.

Jess Lahey

I like to remind Sarina of that, because I do remember we text each other constantly. We have a little group, the three of us, a little group text all day long. And there was—I remember when she first wrote a male-male romance, she was scared. She was really scared that this was going to be too different for her readers. And it ended up being, I think, my favorite book that she's ever written, and also a very important book for her in terms of her career development and growth, and what she loves about the work that she does. And so I like to remind her every once in a while, remember when you said that really scared you and you weren't sure how your readers were going to handle it?

Sarina Bowen

Right? Well, I also did that in the middle of a series, and I went looking for confirmation that that is a thing that people did sometimes, and it was not findable. You know, that was...

Jess Lahey

What? Change things up in terms of—change things up in the middle of a series?

Sarina Bowen

In the middle of a series. And anyway, that book still sells.

Tess Gerritsen

That is a great act of courage, but it's also an act of confidence in yourself as a writer. There are ways to do it. I think some writers will just adopt a different pen name for something that's way out there.

Jess Lahey

It's funny you should say... it's funny you should say that.

Sarina Bowen

Well, no, and I never have done that, but, um—but anyway, yeah, that's hard. I, uh...

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

It's hard to know. Sometimes...

Jess Lahey

We entertain it all the time. We do talk about that as an option all the time. Shouldn't we just pick up and do something completely different? One of the things that I also—I mentioned at the top of the podcast about, you know, you went off—not only have you done lots of different things in terms of your writing—but you went off and you did an entire documentary about pigs. I have—I have to ask you where on earth that came from and why. And it is a total delight, as I mentioned, and I have already recommended it to two people that I know also love the topic. But, you know, to go off—and especially when you usually, as some of us have experienced—our agents saying, so when am I going to see more pages? or when am I going to see the next book? And you say, I'm really sorry, but I have to go off and film this documentary about pigs.

Tess Gerritsen

Yes. Well, you know, I was an anthropology major in college, and I've always been interested in the pig taboo. You know, back then, everybody just assumed it was because, yeah, it was disease or they're dirty animals—that's why they're forbidden food. It never quite convinced me, because I'm Chinese-American. Asia—you know, Asia loves pork. Why aren't they worried about all that? So I was in Istanbul for a book tour once, and I remember I really wanted bacon, and, you know, I couldn't get bacon. And then I thought, okay, I really need to find out why pork is forbidden. This is a—this is a cultural and historical mystery that never made sense to me. The explanations just never made sense to me. It cannot be trichinosis. So I told my son that—my son is—he does—he's a filmmaker as well. And he just said, "Well, let's do it. Let's—we will pose it as a mystery," because it is a mystery. So it took us probably two years to go and—you know, we interviewed anthropologists and pet pig owners and archaeologists, actually, just to find out, what do they say? What is the answer to this? And to us, the answer really just came down to this cultural desire for every—every tribe—to define us versus them. You know, they eat pigs. They're not us, so therefore they're the enemy. And it was fascinating because we—we ended up finding out more about pigs than I was expecting, and also finding out that people who have pet pigs can sometimes be a little unusual.

Jess Lahey

And the people who purchase the clothes for the pigs are also crazy.

Tess Gerritsen

Yes. Sew outfits for their pigs and sleep with their pigs. And there was—there was one woman who had—she slept on the second floor of her house, so she had an elevator for her pig who couldn't make it up the stairs, and, you know, ramps to get up onto the bed because they've gotten so fat—they've been overfed. But it was—for me, at the heart of it was a mystery.

Jess Lahey

As a nonfiction author whose whole entire reason for being is, "I don't know—let's find out," I think that's just the most delightful thing. And I loved your framing as, "I don't know, we have this question, let's go out there and just ask people about it and find the experts." And that's—oh, I could just live on that stuff. So...

Tess Gerritsen

So could I. You know, research is so enticing. It's enticing. It is—it can get you into trouble because you never write your book. Some of us just love to do the research.

Jess Lahey

Sarina actually has taken skating lessons, done glass blowing—what else have you done? Yoga classes and all—all kinds of things in the pursuit of knowledge for her characters. And I think that's a delight.

Sarina Bowen

Yes. If you can sign up for a class as part of your research, like, that is just the best day. Like, you know, oh, I must take these ice skating lessons twice a day for five months, because—yeah—or twice a week, but still.

Tess Gerritsen

You must be a good ice skater then.

Sarina Bowen

I'm getting better.

Tess Gerritsen

So you never gave them up, I see.

Jess Lahey

Well, it's fun because she usually writes about hockey, but she has a figure skater coming up in this book that's coming out this fall. And she's like, "Well, I guess I'm just going to have to learn how to figure skate."

Tess Gerritsen

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

I also—one time I went to see Rebecca Skloot speak about her big nonfiction The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Tess Gerritsen

Oh, okay.

Sarina Bowen

And she said that all her best ideas had come from moments in her life when she went, "Wait, what?!"

Tess Gerritsen

Yes. Yep.

Sarina Bowen

Including for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Like, she learned about the cells in high school—she was in high school biology class—and the teacher said, like, "This woman died in the '60s, but we're still using her cells," and she said, "Wait, what?!" And that's—that's what you made me think of with the pigs. Like, I think...

Jess Lahey

Well, and also your folder of ideas. I mean, I immediately texted Sarina after listening to a podcast where I heard an ad, and the ad made me go, "Oh that could be creepy." And then I'm like, "Okay, this is—this is a plot. This is going in the folder somewhere." And so you have to just think about how those things could unfold over time. And I love the idea of—and even in journalism—there are articles that I've written where I said, this just isn't their time. And then, like, five years later, I'll hear something out there, and I'm like, okay, finally, it's the time for this thing. And there's a reason you put that article in your idea—in your paper—manila folder of ideas.

Tess Gerritsen

Well, I think writers are—we have to be curious. We have to be engaged in what's going on around us, because the ideas are everywhere. And I have this—I like to say I have a formula. It's called "two plus two equals five." And what that means is, sometimes you'll have a—you'll have a piece of information that, you know, there's a book here, but you haven't figured out what to do with it. And you wait for another piece of information from some completely different source, and you put them together, and they end up being like nuclear fusion—bigger than the…

Sarina Bowen

Yes!

Jess Lahey

Yes!

Tess Gerritsen

Some of the parts.

Sarina Bowen

Most every book I've ever written works like that. Like, I have one idea that I drag around for, like, five years, and then I have this other idea, and one day I'm like, oh, those two things go together.

Tess Gerritsen

Yep.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, absolutely. I think Stephen King mentioned that about Carrie. I think it was like, telekinesis, and that usually starts about the time of menstruation, and it was like, boom, there was Carrie. You know, those two things came together. I love that so much. So you mentioned that you have just handed in your next book, and we don’t—we do not, as a rule, ask about what's next for an author, because I find that to be an incredibly intimidating and horrifying question to be asked. But I would love to hear; you know, is this—is this series one that you hope to continue working on? The main series, mainly because we have quite fallen in love with your little town in Maine—in Purity, Maine. Fantastic name for your town, by the way. It's really lovely. It creates such a nice dichotomy for these people who have seen and heard things during their careers that maybe are quite dark, and then they retire to a place called Purity. Is this a place where we can hopefully spend a little bit of time?

Tess Gerritsen

Well, I am thinking about book number four now. I have an idea. You know, it always starts with—it starts with an idea and doodling around and trying to figure out what—you know, you start with this horrible situation, and then you have to explain it. So that's where I am now. I have this horrible situation, I have to explain it. So, yeah, I’m thinking about book four. I don’t know how—you never know how long a series is going to go. It’s a little tough because I have my characters who are internationally based—I mean, they’ve been around the world—but then I can’t leave behind my local cop who is also a part of this group as well. So I have to keep an eye out on Maine being the center of most of the action.

Sarina Bowen

Right, because how many international plots can you give Purity, Maine?

Tess Gerritsen

That’s right, exactly. Well, luckily…

Jess Lahey

Look, Murder, She Wrote—how many things happened to that woman in that small town?

Tess Gerritsen

Exactly, exactly. Well, luckily, because I have so many CIA retirees up here, the international world comes to us. Like the next book, The Shadow Friends, is about a global security conference where one of the speakers gets murdered. And it turns out we have a global security conference right here in our town that was started by CIA 40 years ago. So I'm just—I'm just piggybacking on reality here. And—not that the spies up here think that's very amusing.

Sarina Bowen

That is fantastic, because, you know, the essential problem of writing a suspense novel is that you have to ground it in a reality that everyone is super familiar with, and you have to bring in this explosive bit of action that is unlikely to happen near any of us. And those two things have to fit together correctly. So by, um, by putting your retired spies in this tiny town, you have sort of, like, gifted yourself with that, you know, precise problem solver.

Tess Gerritsen

Yeah, reminding us.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah.

Tess Gerritsen

But there’s only so far I can take that. I’m not sure what the limits... I think book four is going to take them all overseas, because my local cop, Jo, she’s never been out of the country—except for Canada—and it’s time for her dad to drag her over to Italy and say, "Your dead mom wanted to come to Italy, so I’m taking you." And, of course, things go wrong in Italy for Jo.

Jess Lahey

Of course, of course. Well, we’re going to keep just banging on about how much we love these books. I think we’ve already mentioned it in three podcast episodes so far in our “What have you been reading lately that you’ve really loved?” So we're—we’re big fans. And thank you so much for sitting down to talk with us and to—you know, one of the whole points of our podcast is to flatten the learning curve for other authors, so we hope that that's done a little bit of that for our listeners. And again, thank you so much. Where can people find you and your work if they want to learn a little bit more about Tess Gerritsen—her work?

Tess Gerritsen

You can go to TessGerritsen.com, and I try to post as much information there as I can. But I’m also at Bluesky, @TessGerritsen, and what is now called “X”—a legacy person on X—@TessGerritsen, yes.

Jess Lahey

Thank you so, so much again. And for everyone out there listening, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music—aptly titled Unemployed Monday—was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

I have never been quiet about how much I enjoy Karin Slaughter’s work. So when the opportunity arose for me to read her brand new book, We Are All Guilty Here, and then interview her about it, I raised my hand faster than an extra in a deodorant ad.

The new book is a series starter with a kickass female heroine, and I could not have loved it more!

Join as as I quiz Karin on:

* How to write a sweeping series starter

* Small towns as a setting. How small is too small?

* The difference between a procedural and psychological suspense

* Character development and much more!

Karin is incredibly smart and such an important voice in suspense. You won’t want to miss this one!

Other favorite’s of Karin’s that we discussed include:

Pieces of Her

The Grant County series

Hey, Jess here to talk to you about a series I have created just for supporters of the #AmWriting Podcast.

I met an aspiring author and speaker who has an idea for a book that just knocked me over. I said, please, please write that book. This is someone who had an idea that has a place in the market. It's timely. She's the perfect person to write it, and I asked her, I begged her, if I could please mentor her through this process publicly on the podcast.

So while we're not giving her full name and we're not giving the actual title of the book, because we don't want to hand those things away, I am coaching her through the entire process, from preparing her book proposal to querying an agent. I'm going through the whole thing with her. She knows nothing about the publishing industry, she knows very little about how one goes about writing a book—so essentially, this is as I mentioned before, from soup to nuts, From Authority to Author, and hopefully we'll get her there.

But really, whether or not this book ends up selling, whether after this book she ends up having a speaking career, this is about the process of preparing to do that. I hope you’ll join us.

This series is for supporters only, so if you are a free subscriber right now, consider upgrading. Remember, if you upgrade, you'll also get the ability to submit for our First Pages Booklab, and lots of other fun stuff that we put out just for supporters—So come join us. It's a lot of fun.

Transcript below!

EPISODE 461 - TRANSCRIPT

Jess Lahey

Hey, Jess here to talk to you about a new series I have created just for supporters of the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. I met an aspiring author and speaker who has an idea for a book that just knocked me over. I said, please, please write that book. This is someone who had an idea that—it has a place in the market, it's timely, she's the perfect person to write it—and I asked her, I begged her, if I could please mentor her through this process publicly on the podcast. So while we're not giving her full name and we're not giving the actual title of the book, because we don't want to hand those things away, I am coaching her through the entire process, from preparing her book proposal to querying an agent. I'm going through the whole thing with her. She knows nothing about the publishing industry. She knows very little about how, you know, one goes about writing a book. And so she—essentially, this is, as I mentioned before, From Soup to Nuts, From Authority to Author, and hopefully we'll get her there. But really, whether or not this book ends up selling, whether this book—she ends up having a speaking career—this is about the process of preparing to do that. How do you write a book? How do you prepare to become a speaker on the back of that book? So I hope you join us. This is a series for supporters only, so if you are a free supporter—or if you're a free subscriber right now—consider upgrading. Remember, if you upgrade, you'll also get access to the ability to submit for our First Pages Booklab and lots of other fun stuff that we put out just for supporters. So come join us. It's a lot of fun.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.

Sarina Bowen

Hello, my name is Sarina Bowen, and you're listening to the AmWriting Podcast. This is the podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, fictional things, non-fictional things, pitches and proposals—in short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done. I am alone today with an interview that I could not be more excited about. I don't know how I drew the long straw here, but today I have the pleasure of interviewing Karin Slaughter. She is the author of more than 20 instant New York Times best-selling novels, including the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and standalone novels The Good Daughter, Pretty Girls, and Girl Forgotten. That's actually an amazing one, by the way—go read it. She's published in 120 countries, with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. She also has a number one Netflix series and another long-running series. She has hit all the bells and checked all the boxes in thriller land, and she is also just one of my favorite writers. So happy to be here. Welcome, Karin Slaughter.

Karin Slaughter

It's my pleasure. Thank you.

Sarina Bowen

We're here to talk about your August release, which is called We Are All Guilty Here. I received this ARC a few months ago—actually read it immediately—because I love your suspense, and I also was really excited to see that it was clear as day on the release. So you owe me now that it's a series starter.

Karin Slaughter

It is, yeah. It was a lot of fun planning it out.

Sarina Bowen

Oh, good, yeah. And I want to hear a little bit about that, but I'm just going to read the very short flap copy for We Are All Guilty Here so we all know what we're talking about.

[Reads flap copy]The first thrilling mystery in the new North Falls series from Karin Slaughter. Welcome to North Falls—a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think. Until the night of the fireworks, when two teenage girls vanish and the town ignites. For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home. But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did. Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?

So, flap copy very much pitched as a thriller. Here is the problem here—you know, we're wanting the solution, but I would argue that your novels are always, always about bigger than the problem and its solution. So how did you conceive of this town, and what does North Falls mean to you as you were getting into it?

Karin Slaughter

Well, I mean, North Falls is a very small town inside of a larger county. So it's rural, but it's not tiny like my Grant County Series. And I think that I learned some lessons in Grant County—mainly, make it a larger town so there's more people you can kill, because at a certain point, why would anyone live in this tiny town? But also, I knew going into it that it was going to be a series. And so, you know, unlike Grant County and Will Trent—which I was hoping would be series, but I wasn’t sure, and I was at a different point in my writing life—you know, I'm pretty sure, 25 books in, that they're going to publish at least two or three more of my books. So I thought, let me set this up as a series, and let me do this world building that can carry on into several books, and let's make this town. You know, North Falls is the seat of the county, but it's also in a county called Clifton County. And the main narrator you meet is called Emmy Clifton, and she's a sheriff's deputy. Her father, Gerald Clifton, is the sheriff of this county. There are Cliftons everywhere—there are rich Cliftons and poor Cliftons—and so you have this family saga potential. But also, it gave me the opportunity to plant a lot of different seeds that will later grow into novels. So I was really happy about that, but I definitely structured the county in a way where there's plenty of space to tell stories.

Sarina Bowen

Right. So I noticed, and when I read a book like this, I am reading it as a reader, but also as a writer.

Karin Slaughter

Yes.

Sarina Bowen

And so I really noticed how long the character count in this book is—by which I mean how many characters there really are, how many named characters. There's so many of them, and that felt really fearless to me, you know, like you weren't sitting there at your keyboard wondering if you were going to ask your reader to remember this other family member, but you just went for it. And is that something that you ever try to balance? Like, you're not taking it easy on us here, and ultimately, I loved every word of it. But do you ever worry about that? Like, do you let that voice from other books past into your brain to say, like, well, that one time…

Karin Slaughter

Not really. You know, I think a writer's job is to trust the reader, and it's certainly my job to tell a story that is gripping and that makes sense and that pulls them into the world. And so what I was thinking about as I was writing this was, I need to write these characters in such a way that you care about them; otherwise, you won't care what happens. And, you know, Emmy is in a pretty universal position for a lot of millennial women. She's in a marriage that's not a great marriage. She's trying to raise her son. Her parents are starting to get older—you know, they're failing a little bit—so she's noticing that. And in the middle of this, she has this horrific crime happen where these two girls are abducted. And because they are in this small town, she knows one of these girls, who's actually a stepdaughter of her best friend—her best friend since kindergarten—and so just that one thing happening blows her world apart. To me, that's what the hook is. You know, there's this greater mystery of what happened to these girls, what's going to happen, who took them—all those things—but there's also something that I rely on a lot in my books, which is the mystery of character, and people wanting to know more about how does Emmy navigate this. What happens to her brother and her sister-in-law, and this handsome guy who is the school resource officer? You know, how does this all play out? And that, to me, is the job of the writer—to make these characters interesting and make the plot and the balance of the character stories fit together in a way that, you know, when there's not a car chase or a gunfight or whatever, you still want to keep reading because you're involved in the mystery of the character.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, and we sure are. And Emmy is just the beating heart of this book, but she is not your only point of view character. And how—is that something you really have to fiddle with as you go, like, do you try on other point of view characters and then pick the winners as you go?

Karin Slaughter

Yeah... I never have, you know, I think that I'm a very opinionated writer. I have a very firm sense of point of view. And so I knew that Emmy was going to get the bulk of the first part of the story. And then I knew that Jude was going to come in when she came in, and that I would have to build out, like, just drop the reader in this unfamiliar, new world, right in San Francisco, with like, a completely different character, and you don't know what's going on, and you make assumptions about her based on what she does for a living and all this other stuff. And you know, I knew that was coming all along and that the book would be told from these two women's points of view. I never felt—other than the early part with Madison, one of the girls who is abducted—I never really felt like anyone else could tell these stories.

Sarina Bowen

Okay! And you mentioned that you learned some things from writing your Grant County Series that informed your choice of the size and milieu of what you chose for North Falls and for Clifton County. What do you think? How did it feel to start a series in 2025 versus starting one, you know, a decade ago? Like, is there anything about the world that made your choices different, or is it all, um, you know, coming from what you've learned as an author?

Karin Slaughter

Yeah, I think it's cumulative. I mean, the point of being an author with a 25-year career is to learn from each book, and I never want to feel like when I finish a book, oh, that's perfect. I can't do better than that. I always, you know, want to learn something, and then the next book I want to try something new. I mean, I could have just kept writing Will Trent novels and occasionally standalones for the rest of my life. I mean, and I am going to write more Will Trent novels interspersed with North Falls. It's really important to me to—I love that character, I love Sara Linton, and I want to keep telling those stories. And I actually have another idea for a standalone I want to do. But, you know, the point of being a writer is to get better at it. I think anybody who loves writing and the challenge of writing, and feels a calling, wants to be better with each story—to hone certain skills, to do novel things (to use a pun there) in their writing that challenge them and make the work more interesting—and that's what I try to do with every book. So starting North Falls this far into my career was a leap, but I think, hopefully, it's one that has paid off for me as a writer, just to have the ability to tell new stories and kind of prove that I've got more stories in me.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, I confess that I regularly have moments where I stop myself and ask, have I said this before this way? Have I done this little thing before? And what would you tell me about that—like, to just, like, get over myself? Or, you know, what happens when you come to a moment like that in your own story craft?

Karin Slaughter

Well, I mean, in polite terms, you could think of it as an homage to yourself. I mean, honestly, I'm writing about murder. I'm writing about violence against women. I mean, I do write about men dying, but no one seems to care—so sorry, guys. You know, I had one book where I killed, like, six men, and then the next one I killed one woman, and they were like, wow, this return to violence. I'm like, come on, guys. But yeah, you know? So I think how you do it is you have to think of it through the lens of the character, and that's a choice I made in Grant County and Will Trent—was that they were going to be affected by what happened in the previous book, right? So, you know, you don't have a situation—you know, I love series novels, but there are some where… and Jack Reacher is an exception because I love Jack Reacher, and every Reacher book is: he gets to a new town, people are doing bad s**t, and he shoots a lot of people, and he makes it right, you know. And I love Jack Reacher. But, you know, some writers do write the same thing over and over again—they have the same concept or the same gimmick—and that's never been a career that I'm interested in. For me, I want to tell new stories and do new things. And, you know, after a while you run out of crimes that are new crimes. You know, I've written about abduction before, I've written about abuse before, but it's the character—the way the character sees a story, and the connection, the emotional connection the character has—that makes a difference. And, you know, in many ways, it's harder to write a novel in North Falls, where Emmy has a personal connection to the crimes that are occurring, as opposed to writing a Will Trent novel set in Atlanta, where, you know, it's a stranger to them. And so I have to...

Sarina Bowen

If Will Trent knew—yeah, if Will Trent knew every dead person, that would just seem weird.

Karin Slaughter

Yeah, exactly, yeah. And so I have to find a way into the story, and with Will and Sara, for instance, it's a little more difficult than something where, okay, there's this immediate emotional connection, because I'm writing in North Falls more psychological thrillers, as opposed to Will Trent, which is more procedural.

Sarina Bowen

Okay, can I poke you about that a little bit? Because, um, these words are used a lot. Procedural, to me, I've always understood to be a professional character. So Emmy Clifton is a law enforcement officer—she's a pro—so in strictly, strict definition, this is a procedural novel. But how do you feel the difference between psychological versus procedural functions in those two series?

Karin Slaughter

Well, you know, I think absolutely, if you want to be strictly by definition, it would be procedural. But, you know, the thing about thrillers is they're all things now, right? I mean, you could call it domestic—a domestic thriller, or domestic mystery, or whatever—you could call it, you know, a family story. And I think of it more as a saga, because it is about a family spanning generations, and this town spanning generations. But, you know, yeah, there's a procedural element. There's also—like, it's very emotionally tied into the character. There's a darkness to it, so it's psychologically, you know, you're very close to the bone on it. And I think that's why I would call it more of a psychological thriller, as opposed to Will Trent where, you know, it's very led by the investigatory steps, right? Like, you know, if Will Trent is going to be there, they're going to talk to witnesses, they're going to talk to suspects, they're going to, you know, have to fill in with their boss. There are just different parts of that that, in one way, the structure makes it easier to write than something like We Are All Guilty Here. But, you know, with this in particular, where you have it talking about not just the crime, but how f*****g hard it is to grow yourself into a woman, as Emmy says, and friendships and relationships and family and dealing with aging parents and, you know, siblings and that sort of stuff—that, to me, is what makes it more in the realm of psychological.

Sarina Bowen

Okay. I've actually really admired the way that you sometimes walk the line on this. For example, I really enjoyed Girl Forgotten, which is the character that is first introduced in Pieces of Her, where she is not a professional. And then in Girl Forgotten, she has joined a law enforcement agency, but it's still her first day on the job—which is just such a wonderfully fun way to throw things at that character—because then it becomes both a procedural and not. Like, she is technically a professional, but she doesn't know what the heck she's doing, and not everybody there is willing to help her. So to me, that was a fantastically fun way of making both things true at once. And when I was reading that book, and of course then this one, I wonder—how you get the legal—the law enforcement stuff? So, like, how did…I know that by now, at this point in your career, you must have many people you can talk to about this, but how did you start that? Like, how did you inform yourself of what you didn't know so that you could fix it and not get those things wrong?

Karin Slaughter

Yeah, you know, when I wrote my second book, I had met a guy who's a doctor, and he is married to a pediatrician, and his brother works on a body farm in Texas. So this is, like, the perfect family for me for what I'm doing to make Sara the smartest doctor on the entire planet. Because, you know, it might take my friend David, who advises me, four days to come up with a solution, but Sara has to do it in half a paragraph. So she's definitely the doctor you want if anything very unusual happens. I mean, her career would be the subject of scholarly articles forever.

Sarina Bowen

Zebra is not horses for her.

Karin Slaughter

Exactly, yeah. And so I am…I have them—I have a lot of police officers I speak to, a lot of retired GBI officers. One of them was very helpful in this novel because, you know, the GBI—it escalates, you know, crimes in the state of Georgia escalate completely when there's a child involved, just because, you know, somebody who's in Fulton County can't jump to Acworth, for instance, as far as policing, but the GBI is in charge of the entire state—Georgia Bureau of Investigation—so they handle a lot of kidnappings and abductions. And most of the time, you know, it's statistically…there's a 1% chance it's going to be a stranger. Usually it's a parent or “Uncle Bob,” or, you know, the youth pastor, or someone like that who has access to a child. And so she hooked me into the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is a remarkable resource. And, I mean, I think they're just amazing in what they do. But, you know, the thing is, as much as I know about this stuff, I always check my work because I'm not a professional. And, you know, it's very rare these days, I think, for people to say, hey, I'm not an expert in this, let me talk to someone who is and has spent 20 years becoming an expert. But it's really important to me to get those details as correct as I can. Now, they're not always going to be 100% accurate because I'm telling a story, you know? If putting in a chest tube takes 20 different steps…Sara’s going to do it, you know, in like a sentence.

Sarina Bowen

Right.

Karin Slaughter

So I have to—but I feel like I need to know the rules and I need to know the facts before I fudge them so that I can still give them a sense of believability. I'm writing…not writing textbooks, I'm writing fiction, but I want to be as accurate as possible, and I think that's really important, you know? And I know that a lot of my readers are very immersed in true crime and podcasts and all these sorts of things. And sometimes you can get the accurate information from those. A lot of times you don't. And I want them to say, wait a minute, you know, on “Murder Death Podcast”, they said this would never happen, and if they look it up, or they talk to an expert, they'll be like, ha, “Murder Death Podcast” was wrong. You know, maybe I shouldn't trust this guy or gal who's doing a podcast out of the backseat of her car for my forensic knowledge. So that's my job as a writer—to get it as factually accurate as I can.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, and there are areas, um, where readers care more. Like, when I ask readers, um, what do you—what drives you nuts in research? It's the nurses are really, like, um, triggered by bad medicine. But…

Karin Slaughter

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

But there are some areas, you know, like technology, and there are some places where, you know, less accuracy—or more creative accuracy—is more excusable than if you do the nurse thing wrong, because they will come for you.

Karin Slaughter

Yeah, yeah, they will. Or guns…

Sarina Bowen

Right.

Karin Slaughter

You know? And it's really because the armorer for the GBI—I actually confirmed some details with him in a book—and, like, some guy in, I don't know, Idaho sent me this angry email saying I got it wrong. And I'm like, talk to the armorer, right? I mean, people…people just want to fight sometimes. But yeah, nurses can be brutal when they come for you. It's like, come on, man. It’s funny that you mentioned doctors, actually; doctors are like, you know, people get it wrong, but nurses are like, no, you got this wrong, you need to apologize.

Sarina Bowen

It's funny that you mentioned the guns, because I heard last year Gregg Hurwitz speak, and he said, “Don’t get the guns wrong. The gun people will come for you. And don't hurt the cat, because the cat people will come for you.”

Karin Slaughter

True. It's true. I would say the cat people are more brutal than the gun people.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah.

Karin Slaughter

As it should be. You should never hurt an animal in a book.

Sarina Bowen

Right. So back to the idea of a series again. I was so excited to see that this will be a series, and I—the expansiveness of the first book makes a lot of sense series-wise. What do you think is actually harder about writing a series versus a standalone, or the reverse?

Karin Slaughter

Well, you know, in a standalone, the stakes can be much higher because you're not going—you can damage these characters. I mean, you can kill the characters. You can kill them all by the end of the book, you know? So the sense of jeopardy is always heightened in a standalone, at least in my standalones, because I'm not precious with people, even if they're narrators. But, you know, I think it's really important to—no matter what you're writing—just keep in mind that there's someone out there who has experienced the crimes you're writing about. And, you know, a case of gender violence is happening right now, and right now, right now, and right now, right? So it's like every second of the day in the world, it’s happening somewhere. And I keep that in mind when I'm writing, and I want to make it matter. I don't want to use it for effect—it’s not titillating or sexualized, or any of those things. So, you know, when I'm writing—whether it's a standalone or a series—I want to set up that world where the lives of these people matter, and you understand that the loss of life is felt in the community, and by the family, and the characters, and the investigators, and everyone there. And so, you know, the challenge with the standalone is finding that world, building that world, and then leaving that world, right? It's a lot of work, as opposed to in a series where you know you're going to carry it on. So you have to be a little careful about how you structure things, and you don't want to leave your character in a place where the next book you don't know how they're going to go on, also. And so you have to have some sense of hope, or some sense of closing that one chapter and moving on to the other. I mean, I use a lot of humor in my books. I get a lot of questions about the violence, but I never get questions about the humor. I think it's really important to have that lightness among the darkness. I mean, my grandmother used to say, “You can't fall off the floor,” and I'm a big proponent of that. I think at some point, you know, you have to have some relief from it. And in a standalone, you know, you have a very short runway to do that, but in a series, you have a longer…you know, you can trust the reader, as they get to know these characters, that they have a little more empathy and sympathy with what they're going through.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, so you mentioned darkness, and I've been thinking a lot about this. And your books have some very dark topics and themes, as they must, because you are carrying storylines that are, um, can be very dramatic and have very high stakes. One thing I've noticed about your books, and why I like them so much, is that even in the year of our Lord 2025, when I pick up a Karin Slaughter book, it could be dark as anything, but I know from at least chapter one and a half who I am rooting for and who I care about. So Emmy is a wonderful example of this. Ten minutes into my journey with her, I know that she's my girl. You know, I'm very invested in her, even though that does not mean she has to be perfect, that she isn't flawed, or that she even knows what's going on—but I know, because of the cues that you've given me, that I'm supposed to care about her, and I do instantly. So when I began reading lots and lots of suspense three or four years ago, as I was writing my own, I very quickly sorted all of the suspense in the world that's selling right now into two pots, without trying to—which is the books where I know who I'm supposed to root for immediately, and the books where you don't. And I noticed that that second category is awfully popular now, and maybe is sort of on an upswing, like where the mystery, the story, might be very beautifully rendered, but I don't necessarily care about any of the people, or I'm not sure who to pull for. And that’s not because these books aren't well written, but because that's a mood, and I wonder if you've noticed that, and, um, and how you feel about it, just from a writerly perspective. Like, what is going on there? Like, why is there so much darkness in the reader's perspective, and, you know, not just in the themes right now?

Karin Slaughter

Well, I mean, I think it's where we are, just in the world, right? You had a lot of that before 9/11, and then there was a need after—I mean that, and I speak to 9/11 because that's…my first book was published a few days after 9/11, so…

Sarina Bowen

Oh, wow.

Karin Slaughter

And there was this idea, like, you saw it in the TV show 24, where there's good and bad, and there's, you know, black and white. It's very—and then we've moved definitively toward grays. But, you know, I like books where you know where you stand. And I have written books with unreliable narrators at times, and, you know, Gillian Flynn did it best and kicked that off. But, you know the thing about an unreliable narrator or an antagonist being your narrator is, I prefer a Tom Ripley, right? I mean, Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith’s character, is decidedly a bad guy. He murders and steals and, you know, but you're rooting for him, even not to get caught, you know. And a lot of the tension comes from him making really stupid mistakes, and you're cringing as a reader and thinking, God, how's he going to get out of this? And I don't want him to get arrested, even though he's this bad guy. And I love books that play against that. I think sometimes we have books where people—I mean, what you're saying about not knowing who to root for—I mean, if they're a good antagonist or they're a good foil, like a Moriarty…I mean, a lot of times you're not rooting for Sherlock, you're rooting for Moriarty. It just depends on how it's drawn. But for me, I just felt like, you know, this is sort of a return to Grant County, which is…I started writing Grant County, and, you know, you believe that Jeffrey and Sara and Lena, for the most part, were always trying to do the right thing. And I think we've lost the benefit of the doubt for a lot of people—particularly police officers have lost the benefit of the doubt—which is very troubling, because they police with our consent. And we need to understand who we're giving consent to. And we need to understand—you know, “defund the police” has been, like, a buzz…buzzword, phrase, whatever, for a while now, but rural areas, particularly in smaller states, have been defunding the police for years. And it's not a movement or anything; it's just not paying people enough money to live off of, right? So we've got police officers who have two or three jobs, rather than professionals who have one job, and that pays their bills, and they can take care of their responsibilities with that. So we've been defunding them. We don't give them enough training, and we're just seeing an erosion of that. And so it's something that I'm going to talk about a little bit in this next novel—is that defunding of police and how it's been, like, a nationally…it’s been a real issue. We're seeing a deterioration in police forces because of it, and particularly in retention. And so that's definitely something I want to talk about, but I think you have to put it in context and take the politics out of it, because it's not politics. It's just people not having money to pay, or choosing not to pay for services that they really need.

Sarina Bowen

Right. Or it is politics. It's just not party politics. It's just…

Karin Slaughter

Exactly, yeah, yeah.

Sarina Bowen

It's just bad politics.

Karin Slaughter

Yeah, well, it's bad social engineering.

Sarina Bowen

Yes.

Karin Slaughter

Basically. So it's there…if you could look at it from a sociological standpoint, it's just a really bad idea. And, you know, you don't retain good officers. So what do you have when that's over? You know, and not to say, like, paint entire police forces as bad because they're just not making money—but, you know, it takes…all it takes is a few bad cops, and a police force is in jeopardy.

Sarina Bowen

Right, like, would you rather live in a state where the cops and the teachers were paid well, or a state where they weren't and…?

Karin Slaughter

Yeah, yeah.

Sarina Bowen

Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today about all of these story craft problems that were mired in all week along. If listeners want to find you, where is the best place for them to look, besides the bookstore, where this this book is coming?

Karin Slaughter

Well, I I'm all over social media. All you have to do is search for me. You see a little black cat with gorgeous green eyes. That's my baby boy, Dexter. So that gives you an indication of it. You're in the right place, or Facebook, obviously, but yeah, I'm all over the place.

Sarina Bowen

Wonderful! Thank you so much for being with us today, and listeners, until next week—keep your butts in the chair and your heads in the game.

Jess Lahey

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Also asked: how did you learn to write action so well? Do you take all kinds of crazy self defense classes? Or dissect movie fight scenes in slo-mo? Are you fun to watch a spy movie with, or terrible?

I would have asked her if she used to BE a spy…but then she would have had to kill me.

LINKS

National Spy Museum

The Blonde Who Came In from the Cold

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

The Blonde Identity

Ally Carter

Ally’s rec: Netflix: The Residence

Instagram @theallycarter The newsletter

Hey everyone, it's Jenny Nash. This episode happens to feature an Author Accelerator book coach. Author Accelerator is the company I founded more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. If you've been curious about what it takes to become a successful book coach, which is to say, someone who makes money, meaning, and joy out of serving writers, I've just created a bunch of great content to help you learn more. You can access it all by going to bookcoaches.com/waitlist. We'll be enrolling a new cohort of students in our certification program in October, so now's a perfect time to learn more and start making plans for a whole new career.

Transcript below!

EPISODE 460 - TRANSCRIPT

Jennie Nash

Hey everyone, it's Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, the company I started more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. In October, we'll be enrolling a new cohort of certification students who will be going through programs in either fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, and learning the editorial, emotional and entrepreneurial skills that you need to be a successful book coach. If you've been curious about book coaching and thinking that it might be something you want to do for your next career move, I'd love to teach you more about it, you can go to bookcoaches.com/waitlist to check out a free training I have—that's bookcoaches.com/waitlist. The training is all about how to make money, meaning and joy out of serving writers. Fall is always a great time to start something new. So if you're feeling called to do this, go check out our training and see if this might be right for you. We'd love to have you join us.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia, and this is Hashtag AmWriting the weekly podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, pitches, proposals, fiction, nonfiction. We're the podcast about getting things done. And I'm going to be solo this week because I am interviewing, and I'm so excited to interview one Ally Carter, whose name, I'm stealing this from her bio, because it was such a great line—is synonymous with hilarious action and heart-pounding romance. And as someone who's read much of it, I can vouch kids. So Ally's most recent big book that you've probably seen around was The Blonde Identity . Her current book that you're going to want to go straight out and grab is The Blonde Who Came In from the Cold, and her other book that she wrote just for me—because it was like exactly what I needed in a book in that moment and I really appreciate it. I'm glad other people got to read it, but it was really, for me— The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year those are her adult books. She's got a ton of young-adult books, also with heart pounding action and hilarious...wait, heart-pounding romance, hilarious action. I feel those are exchangeable. And even some middle grade if you've got some kids who might be reading in those lines. So Ally does all the things, and we're going to find out how, and immediately be able to do it ourselves. Ha! Ally, thanks for coming.

Ally Carter

Thank you so much for having me, KJ. I appreciate it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

We are super excited.

Ally Carter

I also wrote The Most Wonderful Crime [The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year] just for me, because it's— that's like, I love a mystery, and I pick them up, and I'm like, this would be great. Where's the romance? And then I love a romance, and I pick it up, and I'm like, where's the mystery? And so that's, that's how Most Wonderful Crime [The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year ] came to be. It is two great genres better together.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Also, it's writers in a—like writers in a mansion, with secrets and surprise identities, and things people can do that no one knows they can do, which is my jam. Yeah, really enjoyed it.

Ally Carter

Thank you.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Thank you for that. Not that I didn't I love The Blonde Identity. My daughter has it right now, and she's super excited, because I can give her The Blonde Who Came In from the Cold, early, because I might have gotten an early copy. So she'll be reading that on the beach next week after she finishes the first one.

Ally Carter

That is some good cool mom points right there.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well, it is, yeah, and they're rare. But that is a great thing about your—I mean, my daughters are 21 and 19, so they're older, but I would have given the blonde books and The Most Wonderful Crime to, you know, a 16... ?... like, they're not—not that I don't actually give some pretty steamy stuff to my kids, but if you're not somebody who does that, they're steamy, but they're not—anyway...

Ally Carter

Yeah, there are books that, like, grandma and mom and daughter can all read together

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, I was just going to say I would give them to my mom too. Yeah. I mean, they're just super fun. Because sometimes the better test is not “Would I give it to my daughter?” It’s “Would I give it to my mom?”

Ally Carter

You're exactly right. Agreed, agreed.

KJ Dell'Antonia

So my first question is this: how dare you?! Okay, and now you're like, wait, what?! No, seriously, like, your books are—the plots are so out there, and glorious, and outrageous, and the action scenes are wild, and they're sort of everything you fantasize about in a spy romance novel. And as a former journalist, I spend a lot of time sitting around staring at my plot thinking things like, yes, but how would this person have health insurance? And I feel like you've transcended that. So can you talk to me and all of us about how you've, you know, embraced this world of the wild, glorious, fun, and outrageous in your plotting?

Ally Carter

You know, that's a—thank you. First of all, that's a lovely compliment. I really credit it toward, you know, how most things are in my life and my career—it was total accident and sheer dumb luck. So 20 years ago—I realized not long ago—like, literally 20 years ago this spring, I saw it. I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You. And I was, you know, big dumb kid, didn't know what I was doing, sheer dumb luck, had this amazing idea. And most of all, I had an amazing idea at a time when the YA [young adult] genre was just expanding exponentially—like the shelves of shelf space at Barnes and Noble was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so it was a big tent, and there was room for everybody. And so I was lucky in that I got in there. I was especially lucky because I had a brilliant editor named Donna Bray. And Donna could see, like the shift coming—like, she could see Twilight and the, like, the move to paranormal, and the move to, you know, moving away from contemporary fiction to genre fiction. And she was like, we have to get this out fast. And so we crashed it. And so I sold it in, like, April or May of 2005, and then I had to go to copy editing in October, and I had—I had 32 pages.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Sorry, (laughing)

Ally Carter

And a day job!

KJ Dell'Antonia

Oh, my goodness!

Ally Carter

So I had the summer of absolute deadline. I would come home from my day job, I would eat a fast dinner, and I would write till midnight. But this was also back, like, before we really had smartphones in our pockets all the time—definitely pre, like, social media—and so that's what you did. And I'm like, man, if I did that every day, think about how much writing I would get done today.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Ally Carter

But because I was so fast, the turnaround there was so fast, I didn't have time to, like, go down a rabbit hole of, well, exactly what type of nylon cord would they use to rappel into such and such—you know, I just got—I made it up, and I got away with it. And so I realized that, you know, I would—I did do a lot of research on actual tradecraft.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Right.

Ally Carter

So the things like the girl—there's a scene where the girls have to go through the boy’s garbage. And there's this—you know, there are scenes where they're, you know, planting bugs and those types of things. Those—I watched documentaries, I read a lot of, like, actual decommissioned, sort of old CIA handbooks and things.. The International Spy Museum has a wonderful reference section, and you can actually order...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Oh, that’s cool.

Ally Carter

Old, like, World War Two training manuals and things. It's really great

KJ Dell'Antonia

I did not know that.

Ally Carter

So I did do that. What I did not do was I didn't worry about, like, the brand name of what you might call it. So as a general rule, I tell my readers, like, the more specific something is in the book, the more likely it is I made it up. So when I'm like, well, then she did the one death ski maneuver—and, like, I don't know what the one death ski maneuver is, but they don't either—I made it up. But the actual sort of bones of what the school would teach and how they would teach, it was very accurate.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well, it must have come in handy because you have another school in the current book.

Ally Carter

Yeah. And it’s—it was a little harder, because it is, you know, it's not for kids, and so it has to have a little bit more of an air of sophistication. And I wanted to base it off of the actual CIA training facility, “The Farm,” which is at Camp Peary—which is in the book, what I couldn't figure out were things like, do they sleep in apartments? Do they have a dorm? Is there a are there barracks? Are there, you know, is there, like, a big cafeteria? Are they?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Very few people will know what's real, and they can't tell you, right?

Ally Carter

They can't tell me. And so I actually, when I was on tour for The Blonde Identity, I was in D.C., and I did a wonderful event, had hundreds of readers there, and they were like my Gallagher Girls who had grown up and now they all are spies. I mean, they like, literally work for the CIA. They're literally with, you know, "I'm with Homeland Security." You know, several of them were like, I can't actually tell you where I work, but you were very popular there and so, and I actually did a like, show of hands, like, if you can say so, how many of you have been to The Farm and, like, multiple hands went up.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Oh, wow!

Ally Carter

And I'm like we're talking when this is finished. So I got a little bit, but not very much, you know. And I guess the thing also with “The Farm” is, you know, they bring in, like, their actual undercover operatives to train there, but there are a lot of different groups that also use that facility. So, for example, I think I'm not dreaming this. I think this is true. Like, if you are an ambassador or an ambassador's family, and you and you are going, maybe not like the ambassador to London, but if you're going to, like, you know, someplace that could be a little bit dangerous, they'll send you there for, like, evasive driving training and things like that. So you get a little bit of training. So it's not just spies who train at Camp Peary, it's multiple groups.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I have a new life goal now, which is to never need evasive driving training.

Ally Carter

Right?! And see, I kind of want to learn how to do it. I don't want to need it…

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah no, no but no, it's not to need it. I don’t want to need it.

Ally Carter

I want to know how to do it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah. Well, yeah, you could, you could use it. Yeah, I just—it. I miss—your books inspire the writer in me to remember, like you said, that very few people care what brand of nylon rope you would use to repel, and from there, it's a pretty short step to, you know, whether or not you can really stop a cable car halfway.

Ally Carter

Yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, we're and we're not going to but.. It’s just...

Ally Carter

And the way I see it is, if you are the person who knows what brand of rope it is... even if i get the rope right, i could get everything else wrong.

KJ Dell'Antonia

You're either not reading this, or you don’t care.

Ally Carter

Yeah. There... This is, this is not for them, probably.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Or if it is, it they've they're there, like...

Ally Carter

They're there.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That's fine.

Ally Carter

You either buying in or you're out. And that's fine. And I—and nothing but respect to the people who do know that? Because now, I grew up on a farm, and so I can't read, like, cowboy books, because I'm like, oh gosh, geez Louise, of course, your barn burned down. You put that hay in there way too soon—you are you really baling green hay?

KJ Dell'Antonia

They’re literally haying in my field right now.

Ally Carter

Right. You know, I'm like, seriously, seriously. This is, you know, you're, you're, you're not. You didn’t do a semen test on your bull? Like—you know?"

KJ Dell'Antonia

"You are not milking that cow. I know how you're supposed to hold your hands."

Ally Carter

Exactly!

KJ Dell'Antonia

See I did.

Ally Carter

Yeah, I'm, I'm not, I'm not here for and so I'm, like, this is the same thing. Like spies have no reason be reading me. I have no reason reading the things that I do know about. Because it's, you know, it's, it's just, you're also, it's not exciting to me. And so I'm sure most spies, you know, there's a line in...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah it's not a fantasy.

Ally Carter

Yeah, so…

KJ Dell'Antonia

It can't be a fantasy, because you're too stuck on, you know, the...

Ally Carter

Exactly, and so...

KJ Dell'Antonia

The reality that our hay baling chute is broken, and therefore we will need multiple people tomorrow to go around and pick up each individual bale…

Ally Carter

Yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And put it on a flatbed truck, and drive to the barn, and take each individual bale off the flatbed truck, and then stack them in the barn. Y’all are missing my arm gestures, but Ally knows of which I speak.

Ally Carter

I know, I know those gestures. You got to buck it up with your knee. It's a whole—it's—it is not easy work. It is very hard work. And so…

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, I’m hoping not to go out there, but I know I will.

Ally Carter

Oh no, you don’t want to do that, and you will itch for days.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I've done it. I've done it for years and I know I'm going to end up there. It's my birthday tomorrow too.

Ally Carter

Oh no, that’s not the…Yeah, so it’s the reality. I think it’s very easy—also, when reading, as a reader—I hate it when it’s very clear that an author has done a ton of research and they’re not going to let it go to waste. Yeah. And so there’s like, you know, they’ll introduce the thing, and then they’ll have, like, a paragraph explaining all of the things that they have learned. I’m like, this serves no purpose whatsoever.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I also thank my editor for my leaving out the entire history of Prohibition-era alcohol rules between Kansas and Missouri in The Chicken Sisters.

Ally Carter

Yep. See, if you, if you want to write that, the nonfiction is right there, you can— you've got it. So I like to do enough research to inform the story. And, you know, there are definitely things, you know, scenes and lines and wonderful things that have come from the research. But I never do research just so I know, like, what kind of rope it is.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Right.

Ally Carter

I—you know, that's that I think then, then, then also, are you doing research, or are you procrastinating?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well...

Ally Carter

Because I think most people are just procrastinating.

KJ Dell'Antonia

We all know the answer to that. So how about the action scenes? You write such great action scenes, but I am also not a reader who's like picturing, well, clearly at this point, he's upside down and her hand. You know, that's not how I read anything. I just kind of go (shwoop) through that. So how do you handle writing them? Are you like slowing down action films so you can dissect the movies?

Ally Carter

No, I really don't like writing action scenes. They are hard, and it feels like I've done everything, like they're okay. Well, hey, here we are. We're doing that again, but there. They are. They come with the job. And so I think most of all, you just have to remember, sort of the blocking of it. Like, okay, who is where? The other hard thing that that comes and, you know, movies have it so much easier. Like, you don't need a name for the for the six bad guys, that black Willow...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Right,, the one on the right, and the one behind... Yeah, yeah, no.

Ally Carter

And so I'm like, Okay, but how is the reader keeping these different so, you know, like, well, one of them has a has glasses, and the other one has a goatee. Okay, well, then from that point forward, I the author just call them glasses...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Glasses and goatee. Right.

Ally Carter

And so you have to remember, like, okay, glasses is down. Goatees still at large, you know, or whatever.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Is there a special copy editor for that?

Ally Carter

They're not special, but that is definitely can fall into a copy editor's purview, especially things like during that fight sequence. Okay, well, it was 100 pages ago, but it was also yesterday that your heroine got shocked. Is she really fighting at full strength? Oh, ouch, you know. So that type of thing, because, again, reader wise, that's, that was, I've, that was the midpoint. I'm to the climax now. But timeline wise, no, that was yesterday.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Right.

Ally Carter

And so the...

KJ Dell'Antonia

And probably with some readers, reader wise, that was an hour ago.

Ally Carter

Yeah! So...

KJ Dell'Antonia

I mean you know, we're eating this up.

Ally Carter

Exactly.

KJ Dell'Antonia

So much faster to read than to write.

Ally Carter

So you have to think about those types of things. Like I wrote that two months ago, but nope, it's still right there.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Ally Carter

So that's the kind of thing that, you know, again, you can't really worry about in a first draft. Like, let that. That's future-use problem.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah. Now, in contrast to, you know, the wild plotting and the crazy, enjoyable, delicious action, your people feel, you know super, super real. They have, ah, big reasons for being the way that they are, but the feelings feel real. I think that is an amazing um, contrast. Do you start with the, do you start with, like, you know, the person's flaw, or what it would there's some term of art for this which I have forgotten. Or do you start with, I need a person who, or does it vary book by book?

Ally Carter

Thank you. I, you know, it's I spend a lot of time with that.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That's why they work.

Ally Carter

Thank you.

KJ Dell'Antonia

No, seriously, no one. I mean, The Blonde Identity would maybe be fun if it wasn't also, like, you really want her to figure out who she is, and you really want to know why is this happening, and what is up with and like, you want all that for the character you believe in, in her.

Ally Carter

And that's always I find as much about tone as anything, this particular sub- genre, it can go wacky or kooky really fast, like it's very easy. You know, I like to say that spy movies exist on a spectrum that range from get smart to Zero Dark Thirty.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Ally Carter

Anything along that spectrum is a spy movie. But those could not be more different. And so are we? Are we doing like James Bond, like he's cool and suave, but he also has gadgets, or are we doing like he's, you know, kind of bumbling with gadgets? Or are we doing it's very realistic?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well are we doing Roger Moore James Bond, or are we doing … um…guy who now models for…

Ally Carter

Daniel Craig?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Thank you—oy vey—Daniel Craig, which are very different. James Bonds really…

Ally Carter

Very different James Bonds, because I've heard people the James Bond people talk about the Daniel Craig, James Bond doesn't exist without Jason Bourne.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Ally Carter

That's who they looked at and so all of these things, you know. And so when I'm trying to figure it out, and I think that's one of the hardest things about genre bending romance, whether you're bending fantasy and romance or horror and romance, or romance and mystery or romance and action, or whatever, you could only really write in the Venn diagram space, where there's overlap. And so I couldn't, you know, the realistic version of this is not something where people are falling in love, like it's, you know, it's too dark. And it's definitely not a comedy, definitely not a comedy. So you're, you have to find the place where, no, they're in real, actual peril. This is really terrible. This is... they really might die

KJ Dell'Antonia

And they understand that.

Ally Carter

And they understand that they get that and also, but they still have time to, you know, okay, well, now I'm going to, you know, now we're going to slow dance, you know, you still have to find those times. And the other thing is, you know, you have to figure out just where on the spectrum you want to be and lean into that. Like, if you want to write, like, the kooky, sort of Agent Cody Banks of it all, then you have to do that. But then you have to realize the other parts of the spy kind of world that you can't touch. And so it's—you're just—you're always threading needles. It’s, it is a, it is a task of, of absolutely threading needles all the time.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I think that, yeah, when it comes to tone, where on the spectrum do you want to be, is like, like maybe one of the greatest questions that I have heard. And it's just one that, you know, I think we all wrestle with.

Ally Carter

Well, and I’ve had people that really don’t—people who should get it—who don’t get it. So, you know, I was in a meeting one time with some Hollywood producers who were looking at some of my stuff, and I said, “Well, tonally, where do you want it to be?” And they were like, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, do you want it to be like, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith or Bourne Identity?” And they said, “Well, those are the same thing.” And I was like…

KJ Dell'Antonia

No, no, no, no!

Ally Carter

“This meeting is over. Thank you very much”.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Ally Carter

It's... I don't understand how people don't get that, but to me, I spend 90% of my time worried about it. Oh, I remember now what I was going to say earlier. I got my start—and I'm never going to be, like, a full-time or big-time of this—but I've done some screenwriting. . And so there’s a screenwriting podcast [Scriptnotes] by two guys who are very big, very dominant—dominant—screenwriter. One of them did, like, the Charlie's Angels movies and the Aladdin remake and all those. The other one does The Last of Us and a bunch of big, like, HBO shows. And, um, they always talk about "the Want song". So in every Disney musical, the first—the first song—sets up the world. It's "Belle," you know, like, you know, wandering through town. The second song is the "whatever she wants." And so, you know Moana, you know, "See the line where the sky and the sea meet, it calls me"—like, Moana wants to travel. She wants adventure. And so I spend a lot of time, when I'm setting up these characters, thinking about what their "Want song" would be. And so, like, for The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, her "Want song" is, "I want to be Eleanor."

KJ Dell'Antonia

Right.

Ally Carter

You know she wants to be Eleanor Ashley [from The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year], who is my, like, fake off-brand Agatha Christie, and so that's, that's what you have to think about a lot like, you know, what Alex [from The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold] wants is to sort of be free like she wants, she wants to be enough. She wants to pay her—you know? She has paid her debt for—you know, sort of having been born strong and healthy, where her identical twin has been born very, very sick. And so she, she wants—and she wants to never lay eyes on Michael Kingsley [also from The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold], ever again, who was her, you know, on again, off again, partner, slash love interest. And so that's—you know, that I always start with that, what is their wound? What is the thing that hurt them in the past that they're trying to get over? And what is their want?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Ally Carter

And almost always, what would they realize over the course of the book is that the thing that they want is not the thing that they need.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Ally Carter

And so that's, that's an Ally Carter book. That's an Ally Carter character progress.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That's it. Now everyone can do it.

Ally Carter

Yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah. Oh, but if it were that easy, everyone would do it, right? Um, no, this... this is amazing and delightful. I hope really helpful for people. I got distracted by taking some notes on what you just said. So, people—for me, for the Post-its on my computer, as well as, oh my gosh, so many Post-its, so many Post-its—let's talk just a little bit about the difference between YA [young adult] and adult when you're—fundamentally—I mean, some people sort of switch genres entirely. You were writing very similarly toned books for different audiences. How? How do you think of that evolution?

Ally Carter

That's—in a way—yes, I did switch audiences. In another way, they're the exact same readers. And so that's—that's an interesting and weird thing about YA is, about every three years, you have to make all new readers because they have grown up and they've aged out of you. And even if they haven't aged out of you, they have what I call "cooled out of you."

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, yeah.

Ally Carter

And they're like, I liked those books when I was a little kid, and so current me can't possibly like those books, because those are little kid books. And so I was on the phone during the pandemic with my friend Rachel Hawkins and Rachel had written YA for a long time, and then she switched to adult. And I was talking about... do I...? What do I...? I need to sell something. Do I sell another middle grade? Do I sell a YA [young adult]? Like, what do I sell? And she says, you sell an adult. You sell an adult book that appeals to your Gallagher Girl readers. And I, I said, oh, Rachel, I've spent, you know, 15 years building a career in YA, I've got, you know... And she said, your readers aren't there anymore. They are the girls who read you when they were 12, ten years ago, and are 22 now. And I'm like, oh, that's right, they are. They've grown up. And so I—and I had the idea for “the spy twins” and had tried to do it as YA, and then at one point I even tried to do it as middle grade, and I could never make it work. And the problem wasn't, one of the twins wakes up with amnesia and somebody's trying to kill her—that I could pull off. The problem was, how and why is her identical twin on the run? And what does she have? And, like, you know, she...

KJ Dell'Antonia

She needs a longer history than you can have as a teenager.

Ally Carter

Yeah, exactly. Like, is she actually working for the CIA, like, because then again, we get into Agent Cody Banks territory, then it's, you know, well, we've got a super-secret branch of the CIA who recruits kids. I'm like, no, you don't that's stupid. Like so...

KJ Dell'Antonia

And she's been there since she was 10, and now she's on the lam.

Ally Carter

Exactly.

KJ Dell'Antonia

You know, and then at age 12, she went rogue.

Ally Carter

Yeah. And then you've got, like, well, no, you know, it's a Parent Trap situation, and one of them was raised by a spy and one of them was raised by ordinary people. I'm like, oh, maybe... I don't know, but, you know, I just couldn't quite make it work. And so I was talking to Rachel, and I said, what am I supposed to do? Just dust off that old spy twin idea, except now, instead of a super-secret organization, she's just on the run from the CIA? And then I was like, wait a second.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well yes!

Ally Carter

If she's 30... she can—so every single problem and logic challenge that I had with that premise went away once those characters became 30. And so I just—and it was the easiest writing I've ever done. I feel almost guilty about how easy that book was to write; because I'd been, I'd been working at it and hammering at that idea for so long. And so it was almost like, instead of starting it at the beginning, I started it at the end of the writing process, where you have that one, like, little linchpin thing that you think, oh, but what if I do this? And then the whole plot just...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Right.

Ally Carter

So I started it there. I started at the...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Wow!

Ally Carter

Domino moment. And I'm spoiled, because it'll never be that easy again. But that's, that's how the transition went. And, you know, it's been great because my readers, they're so excited to see me. It's like, they're, I hear from readers all the time, they're like, you know, it feels like you wrote this just for me. I grew up with you, and now you're writing books for me again, and that has been very full circle and very, very fulfilling.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That, that's great. Well, you're writing them for me too. So, love that, and I think for a lot of our listeners—who I really think are going to enjoy this episode.

Ally Carter

Thank you.

KJ Dell'Antonia

So before I let you go, can I ask you what you have read and loved lately?

Ally Carter

Oh, sweet mercy. I have been so underwater, on a—on a book, and it's been the kind of—it's been the kind of deadline and the kind of book... You know how the old adage is so true that you never learn how to write a book—you just learn how to write the book you're writing right now. And so this one has just... and when I get that way, I don't enjoy reading because my inner critic can't turn off. But I will share a show that I loved, and I—they just announced that they're not doing a season two, and I'm heartbroken over it. And that is, on Netflix, there's a Shonda Rhimes show called The Residence, and it's a murder mystery set at the White House. You know, somebody drops dead during a state dinner. And it's got kind of a kooky detective and a wonderful, colorful cast, and it's very, very funny, but it also—it threads that tonal needle, where, like, no, no, there was a murder. This is still serious, but, oh, by the way, I'm going to go look at the body, but first I saw a bird I want to check out, you know. And so it's just—tonally and voice-wise—it does really amazing things. And so if any of your listeners are looking for a really great, like, eight-episode series, it's great. I could not recommend it more—The Residence on Netflix.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That sounds super fun. Well, I am in the midst of The Blonde Who Came In from the Cold. So, you know, I don't normally recommend a book until I know if the writer is going to stick a landing. But I feel quite confident in this one, and have enjoyed—as you can obviously hear from the podcast—the rest of Ally's work. So I am going to just push all of you listeners to, you know, head out there, grab the new one, grab the old one, and have a good time with them.

Ally Carter

Aww, thank you.

KJ Dell'Antonia

You're welcome. Thanks so much for being here. Oh, should people follow you on social media? Do you do anything fun? Are you...?

Ally Carter

I do nothing fun. I'm not fun at all. I'm mostly on Instagram; I guess at this point I'm the Ally Carter over there. I have a couple of kind of defunct Facebook pages that I update occasionally. I just updated it for the first time, evidently, in two years. So that was fun. I'm on Threads very seldom. I used to be on Twitter and I still have that account I don't update it very often. Um, but yeah—and of course, my newsletter, like the newsletter is—I think we need to come back. We all need to get back to the newsletter, because it will deliver the news directly to your inbox. And so if you want to make sure you don't miss any like, you know, tour events, which, by the way, I'm coming to Boston on tour in a couple of weeks. So looking forward to that a lot. I think its Lovestruck Books? Is that Boston?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Probably yeah.

Ally Carter

Yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That's the new romance bookstore there. I've been with Sarina a couple of times, and yeah, it's a great—it is a beautiful store. Like, every detail. Their bathrooms are phenomenal. That's how wonderful this store is. So, very cool. All right, I will link up the newsletter in the show notes, and yeah, about, you know, once every week, I decide to just cancel all the rest of my social media and only do my AmReading email. And then I imagine what my agent would say. And yeah, I don’t do it, but...

Ally Carter

It's, you know, and I feel like I'm such a broken record, like, oh, you know, go buy my book. Oh, go, you know, I'm going to be here on tour. Oh, this is how you get signed books. But—and I just say over and over and over again—and then inevitably, and this really happened to me one time, I was sitting at the LAX Airport waiting on a flight home, and I got an irate message from a reader that I never come to LA. And I was like, I did an event here last night—like, I was at the Barnes and Noble at The Grove or wherever—last night. And so we said, we—it feels like we are just beating a dead horse letting people know about these things, but it's so easy for things to get lost. And so...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah! Jess tells the story—that's one of my other co-hosts—about, you know, someone who had come up to her, really one of her biggest fans, “Good new book.” And, “I get your idea, I love this, and I love that you wrote, like, knew a lot.” And then she said, “Oh, well, did you enjoy my latest book?” And they're like, “You have a new book?!”

Ally Carter

It happens every time. And so, you know, it's—it's just part of the business at this point.

KJ Dell'Antonia

You've got to do it—it's just part of the business. All right. Well, thank you again...

Ally Carter

Thank you.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And as always, listeners until next week keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Jess Lahey

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

In this episode, Jennie interviews Sarina about the new book, and about the difference between writing romance and writing thrillers. You may think that’s obvious, but Sarina has recently shifted into writing thrillers and she has such a nuanced understanding about what it all means. She gets into what defines a genre, how you have to honor your readers expectations, and the different ways you hold tension when telling a story. It’s a masterclass in genre.

Books mentioned:Dying to Meet You, Sarina Bowen

Sarina’s other thriller, The Five Year Lie

The Guest List, Lucy Foley

On a Quiet Street, Seraphina Nova Glass

Rowan Gallagher is a devoted single mother and a talented architect with a high-profile commission restoring an historic mansion for the most powerful family in Maine. But inside, she’s a mess. She knows that stalking her ex’s avatar all over Portland on her phone isn’t the healthiest way to heal from their breakup. But she’s out of ice cream and she’s sick of romcoms.

Watching his every move is both fascinating and infuriating. He’s dining out while she’s wallowing on the couch. The last straw comes when he parks in their favorite spot on the waterfront. In a weak moment, she leashes the dog and sets off to see who else is in his car.

Instead of catching her ex in a kiss, Rowan becomes the first witness to his murder—and the primary suspect.

Digital books at: Amazon | Nook | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | AudiblePhysical books at: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indigo | More paperback links here!

Transcript below!

EPISODE 459 - TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell'Antonia

Listeners who I know are also readers—have I got a summer book for you. If you haven't yet ordered Dying to Meet You, Sarina Bowen's latest thriller with just enough romance, you have to. So let me lay this out for you. Rowan Gallagher is a devoted single mother and a talented architect with a high-profile commission restoring a historic mansion for the most powerful family in Maine, but inside, she's a mess. She knows stalking her ex's avatar all over Portland on her phone isn't the healthiest way to heal from their breakup, but she's out of ice cream and she's sick of rom-coms. Watching his every move is both fascinating and infuriating. He's dining out while she's wallowing on the couch. The last straw comes when he parks in their favorite spot on the waterfront. In a weak moment, she leashes the dog and sets off to see who else is in his car. But instead of catching her ex in a kiss, Rowan becomes the first witness to his murder—and the primary suspect. But Rowan isn't the only one keeping secrets. As she digs for the truth, she discovers that the dead man was stalking her too, gathering intimate details about her job and her past. Struggling to clear her name, Rowan finds herself spiraling into the shadowy plot that killed him. Will she be the next to die? You're going to love this. I've had a sneak preview, and I think we all know that The Five Year Lie was among the very best reads and listens of last summer. Dying to Meet You is available in every format and anywhere that you buy books. And you could grab your copy—and you absolutely should—right now.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.

Jennie Nash

Hey, writers, I'm Jennie Nash, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we talk about writing all the things—short things, long things, fiction, non-fiction, pitches, and proposals. I'm here today to talk to our own Sarina Bowen. Her newest thriller, Dying to Meet You, just came out a few weeks ago, and I've been dying to talk to Sarina about the way she's been switching back and forth between romance and thriller. This is her second thriller. The last one came out last year. That one's called The Five Year Lie. And so we're just here to talk about genre, and romance, and thriller, and how Sarina does it—this back-and-forth kind of code switching between genres. So, welcome, Sarina.

Sarina Bowen

Thank you. It's always fun to talk about genre. It's my favorite thing.

Jennie Nash

Well, I just was really struck when I was reading. I've been reading your romances for so long, and you have so many of them, and you're so good at them, and...

Sarina Bowen

Well, thank you.

Jennie Nash

And then here we have an entirely new genre that you have entered into in a really big way. And it's not—so this is not about, how do you come up with your idea, or how did you do it? Or—I mean, all those are great questions. We love those. And I've heard you talk about those other places. But what I want to try to get at here is this idea—really, what is genre? So when you think about that, you're sitting down to start one or this other. What do you think about, like, what are the things that—genre? What does the genre mean to you?

Sarina Bowen

Well, I talk about this a lot when I am discussing my books, which is that I don't find that—that the thriller genre and that the romance genres are all that different. Like, each one of those things makes a promise to the reader and then must deliver it by the last page. It's just that the promise is slightly different between those two things. So in a romance, the reader is promised a satisfactory romantic conclusion to the book. And in a thriller, the reader is promised that whatever mess and confusion is established on page one, that it will be rectified and solved by the end of the book—that the chaos will become at least understanding, if not order. So the thing is that the job of the novelist is kind of the same in both situations, which is, we are going to take the main character on a journey, and she is going to learn some stuff before it's over—or it's not really a novel. Now, to be fair, not every novel is constructed like that and does both of those things. Like what—what makes it feel familiar to me in both cases is that I always write an empathetic main character, and not every author of suspense does this. So there are a lot of really popular suspense novels where you're not sure who to root for, and you don't really like any of the characters. And those books can be really exciting and really well written, and there's a total—a huge audience for that. But that is not what I do in suspense space, and that doesn't make me unique. Like, there are a lot of suspense authors who also operate this way. For example, Harlan Coben and Karin Slaughter write best-selling novels of suspense where you always know who to root for from the first chapter. Like, you are given a main character who is a likable human—a flawed person—but still, like, you know, somebody to root for, and you're rooting for that person until the end of the book. So it's not like this is just my special romance author's twist on it—like, it's a thing. It's just that there are other suspense authors who don't operate under that, you know, scenario. So that's one of the reasons why, to me, like, the job feels kind of similar to writing a romance and writing a suspense the way that I do it. It's just that when I'm writing a suspense, first of all, it takes a lot longer, because a suspense reader is really there to match wits with you, and you have to deliver on—on that experience of paying a lot of attention to where the camera is swinging, and to show them some truths that will turn out to be only half-truths, and to make it a really great ride. Like, the roller coaster of a suspense novel requires more engineering than the roller coaster of a romance, and it can be a lot less linear in construction. And, you know, there are complexities that a romance does not need to—to succeed. So yeah, it's not exactly the same job. But, you know, romance requires on a different level a lot of those same narrative tricks. Like, people love to say that romances are formulaic, and I always want to cry, because if that were true, then it would be so easy. And I—I would spend less time sweating at my keyboard if a romance was formulaic, because then I would know what to do. And it's almost harder to hold the tension when the reader knows you're going to get somewhere satisfying. So, you—you know, you have to make sure that couple has some real issues to work through, and that's hard.

Jennie Nash

Yeah, we're going to come back to so many things that you're saying because...

Sarina Bowen

Okay.

Jennie Nash

This is—this is great. But I want to return to something you said at the very beginning, where you were explaining this, which is the promise to the reader, and this idea of a contract that the writer and the reader enter into. When—when a reader starts a book, there's this promise, there's this expectation, there's—And you—it sounds like what I heard from you, which I just think is so interesting, is a very deep respect for the writer—I mean, for the reader's experience. And is that something that you have as a human, or, you know, like, is it—is that just—does that just come from respect for the time somebody's going to spend and that sort of thing? Or is that respect of the genre?

Sarina Bowen

Oh, it's both. I mean, of course, we were all readers before we were writers, and I know what I find frustrating and unsatisfying in a book. So I want to deliver a reader experience that aligns with my most satisfying experiences in—in each genre. And it's such a work in progress. Like, over 10 years of delivering stories, my understanding of what really matters is constantly shifting.

Jennie Nash

Ooh, can you say more?

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. So—I have the things that I like as a reader. So of course, those are going to figure in heavily. Like, I love a good secret unveiled, no matter what genre I'm reading. Like, a secret in romance that comes out and changes everything is just as satisfying as when that happens in suspense, even though it's less necessary. And each genre has its own bell curve of stakes, let's just say. Like, if you picture a bell curve of stakes—for romance, you could have on the lower end, like a rom-com, where the stakes, you know, are only as large as this couple. And in a thriller, like in an international spy thriller, the stakes could be like, the world might end, or—or a bomb might go off in the middle of Times Square, you know. So there's a bell curve of stakes. And as a—as a writer, I'm not suggesting that you can't, you know, move around on that bell curve and make it work for you. But the two genres—you know, the bell curves are in different spots, and you have to figure out where you are on that gradient of possible results, and then figure out where your stakes are coming from. And I guess what it took me a real—a really long time to learn is how much in control I am of what the reader is paying attention to, and what the reader is focused on, and that the best way to write a novel is almost always to ask yourself, what experience do I want the reader to have? And then figure that out. Like, it's almost like—if you think about roller coaster design, and there's just this really fun video on the WIRED Magazine website with an actual roller coaster designer who shows you how it's done.

Jennie Nash

Oh that's very cool. We'll get the link for that in the show notes.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, I'll try to find it. But it makes you think about all these things you don't think about when you're getting on it. Like, your view of getting on a roller coaster is that weird little shed where you step into the car, and you know, you pull on your protective stuff, and you think to yourself, like, whoa, I hope it doesn't fail this time—ha ha ha. And then you experience it, you know. And certain parts of the ride are really predictable, like the initial climb—like, no roller coaster starts without that initial climb—and then the first drop. And, you know, parts of the experience, you—you know before you get on what's going to happen. And then other parts of it are just like, you know, a thrill a minute, like waving you around, and, oh, you didn't see that curve coming. And so, you know, looking at that thing and designing it from the outside to have that experience is something I didn't realize I had to do. Like, as a reader of genre fiction, I just experienced everything like the person getting on the roller coaster at the beginning. And it's taken me, like, a decade to realize that, you know, I have to actually view this thing—like, plan ahead. What—you know, what I want people to feel. Like, where do I want them to cry? Where are we going to laugh? Like, how can we put those two things in the same book? And you know, that—that's the job, and I really like it. But it requires a certain amount of analysis, which is why, when I meet somebody who doesn't plan their books, I'm always, like, stunned. Although, you know, it can—it can work.

Jennie Nash

That idea of what you want the reader to feel is why we're having this conversation. Because I actually can barely stand to read suspense or thrillers, because I get too scared. I really get into it, and I—I freak myself out, and it's been that way for a very long time. But I really wanted to read yours, because I wanted to see this shift in your professional life, and I wanted to see what all the buzz was about, because people are loving these thrillers. And I thought, oh, I surely can handle this now. But it's so hard for me because—and you do such a good job of making that scary tension so palpable, and that what you feel as the reader. And then I was thinking about why the same thing happens in Sarina's romances. I feel something. You know, you're—there's a tension that you're wanting, a resolution that you're—what—you know, wondering, will they? Will they, you know, declare their love for each other? Will they—whatever the thing is? And it just really struck me that I'm in the hands of somebody who's not manipulating that, but has engineered that form. And so it's curious to hear that you're—that's the work you feel that you do. So can you talk about how that is different from plotting the novel—that emotional engineering, if you will? Or is it?

Sarina Bowen

No, you're right. It is—it is? Um, so one of the things that I feel I'm pretty good at is establishing empathy early in the book. And I—uh, like I said, there are some thriller authors who write entire books without doing that—like, where you're not sure who you're supposed to like. But to me, that actually seems harder, because if you establish empathy for some characters early on, then the stakes are automatically higher.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

Because the reader cares about that person.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

And I read a book a couple years ago that I thought was so good with this, and it was On a Quiet Street by Seraphina Nova Glass. And she establishes empathy with a character in the prologue, and then chapter one establishes empathy with a different one. And she has this sort of medley of voices that tells this story of something dire happening on a quiet street. And the thing is that she does later—is she really shifts your empathy around, where you care about all these people but you can't—like, because somebody is guilty. So, you know, the length of your empathy is actually going to be snipped in a couple of places, which I think is masterful. And I think it's more masterful than the thriller author who, um, doesn't care if you like anybody but is still delivering, like, big shocks. To me, that just has less emotional resonance, and I care less. But apparently, that's unique to me, because if you look at The New York Times bestseller list, it does not reflect my preference for empathy.

Jennie Nash

So what do you do to create that empathy? How are you doing that work in the start of the book?

Sarina Bowen

Oh, wow, I never think about this.

Jennie Nash

I'm sure you—sure you have an answer, though.

Sarina Bowen

No, I—yeah. Okay, so I guess the reason that my thrillers read a little bit like my romances to you, is that I really like a female main character who is like one of us, who's just trying to get through the day. And maybe she has even a glamorous job, and she's a super successful person, but that doesn't mean she's not, like, a little bit of a mess inside—but a relatable mess. So establishing empathy early on, to me, is just like breathing. Like, you know, we might have this glamorous job, but, my God, the world is just so irritating. Or—right? Or, how did we just, you know, make ourselves sound like—like a dunderhead in front of the hot guy or whatever, you know? Like, to me, that's not hard.

Jennie Nash

Right, right. And so you talked about engineering and complexity as a difference between the two genres, and that the thrillers require more engineering of plot, is what I imagine you're referring to. How do you go about—how does it differ? So here you're creating a character. You're creating empathy for the character. And now these genres are going to go in really different directions. What? What are the steps? Not like, how do you do it, or how do you write a novel, but sort of almost your emotional steps, like, okay, now I need to do X, or now I need to—I want them to feel Y.

Sarina Bowen

Right. Well, one way to think about it—and this works for almost any novel that you'd ever want to write—is you have to look at the sort of landscape of this story you're going to tell, or the plot you think you're going to pull off, and you have to say, what are my "oh s**t moments"?

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

Where do I want the reader to go, oh s**t? And if you don't know that when you start the book—like, I would find that to be a problem.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

And you don't have to know exactly where they're standing when this happens, or exactly what page of the book. I'm actually terrible at that. I never know how long anything is going to take. But—but you have to know what that oh s**t moment is. And then you have to sort of back—work backwards from that. Like, okay, well, if I know why that's a big problem and a big deal—like, why is it, and how am I going to set that up? So—and I also think ahead of time about the fun and games part of any book.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

Like, what is the sort of rising action of, like, the learning about it and the deepening of the problem. So I'm working on a romance right now that takes place at a wedding.

Jennie Nash

Fun!

Sarina Bowen

And I... yeah, well okay, is it, though? Because one of, one the reasons I chose this setting, is that it's a hockey player. And I've written so many hockey books that take place, like, at the arena and at the office. And I'm like; we got to get out of here. Um, so we're both going to a wedding—this—we have to go to the same wedding, and work—everything's going to happen here. And I never write weddings. And then I'm into it, and I'm writing this wedding, and I look at myself and I'm like, you know why we don't write weddings? We don't like weddings very much.

Jennie Nash

What don't you like about them?

Sarina Bowen

Oh, because they're all the same. I don't know. It's—to me, they feel—I guess I'm not a really reverent person. Like, ceremony isn't a big part of my life, and I don't love it. So—um, so what I was able to do in this book that makes this book something that I can identify with is that neither one of our characters is totally excited to be here, either. So there's some problems like this. There's some real family mayhem that is preventing either of these characters from being like, woo hoo, wedding! Yeah, let's have a good time! And then—yeah, so I have to bring my own experience into it. And then, of course, the ceremony itself—it turns out they're both feeling a lot of things. And, you know, there's this very lovely part right at the beginning. I'm like, okay, okay, so we got here, we can feel the feelings, but we didn't have to, like, every moment of this wedding for—to pull it off. So—um—but I looked at my, like, little scaffolding of what I wanted these characters to experience and what their "oh s**t moments" might be, and then I sort of grafted them onto the typical wedding experience and, you know, tried to find the best matches for that. And that was kind of the work of this book.

Jennie Nash

So the "oh s**t moment" in a romance is—what would some of those be? Like, oh, I think—I think he likes me, or, oh, I think I like him? Like, is it those ratcheting up of the emotional stakes?

Sarina Bowen

It's—yes. Like, oh s**t, I can't believe I have revealed myself like this. I have exposed myself like this. I have made myself vulnerable. And then—and then, as the—as the arc goes on, you're like, oh s**t, here's why I don't usually do this...

Jennie Nash

Right.

Sarina Bowen

Here's the reason I didn't want to make myself vulnerable and exposed—because, oh s**t, you know? Like—so you get to—you get to play with that. And hopefully, in most romances, there's a moment when, you know, it looks like it's all going to go wrong.

Jennie Nash

Right. So what strikes me in listening to you, is that, writing about human nature—of course, because they're people and their stories—and the human nature around romance is—well, you said, I don't want to reveal myself or be vulnerable, so you want to protect your heart. And in the thrillers, it's, I want to protect my body and the bodies of the people I love. Is that—is that a fair differentiator? Like, we're trying to keep ourselves safe in some profound way in each of these genres, right?

Sarina Bowen

Right. And we're also trying to avoid betrayal, and, like, to avoid backing the wrong horse in both genres as well.

Jennie Nash

Ooh, that's interesting, right? Let's talk about that.

Sarina Bowen

Well—um, in a thriller, one of the best ways to craft a twist is when you get the reader to back the wrong character. And, you know, you have multiple characters, and if—even if you're going along with a relatable protagonist that the reader knows is not going to turn into a bad guy—that person still has people around them, and they're going to trust some of them and not others. And did they pick correctly? So that's the kind of betrayal that makes a good twist. But in a romance, it's the same possibilities. Like, you know, you made yourself very vulnerable to this other romantic partner. And, you know, it might not be a straight-up betrayal of, you know, oh wait, I love someone else. But it could just be a betrayal of priorities, or, you know, of courage.

Jennie Nash

And at the end of each of these types of stories, the reader feels a sense of—we're back, we've talked about the bell curve—of back to safety, or—or homeostasis, or there's a relief, or it's going to be okay, and everything's okay now. So they have that in common too, right? That intense resolution of the tension.

Sarina Bowen

Right. And then sometimes, in suspense space, you see an author pull this off in a way that all of that is done at the reader's own level, and not at the character's. Like, there's this book I love by Lucy Foley, called The Guest List, and that book is not typical, in that the work of the book is not to solve the crime in real time in the story. The work of that book is for the reader to understand what happened—like, the reader is the sleuth.

Jennie Nash

Oh.

Sarina Bowen

But nobody is actually sleuthing the story... at all. You know what happens, but it's to the satisfaction of you as the reader, but not the people running around in the book.

Jennie Nash

Right, wow that sounds cool.

Sarina Bowen

It is very cool, but it's still true. Like, the—the work of the book is to figure out what happened, but the people on the page are not figuring out what happened. It's you having the experience that is figuring out what happened, but there's no mystery about it in the actual book. It's really—you would just have to try it.

Jennie Nash

Is it fair to say that your second thriller—the new one, Dying to Meet You—is creepier than the first one, which is, The Five Year Lie? Do you think that's fair to say? Are people saying that? Do you feel that?

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, okay—yes, a little. But I think what's a better classification is that Dying to Meet You, sits a little more fully on the thriller shelf. It has a plot arc that is more typical of thrillers that are also on that shelf than The Five Year Lie.

Jennie Nash

Okay, maybe that's what—maybe that's the feeling, because The Five Year Lie—there's a—there's a romance baked into it as well. Like, there is so much going on in there. So that's interesting, that you—did you consciously move in that direction, or did—was it just right for that story?

Sarina Bowen

I think maybe both. I can't even remember now.

Jennie Nash

Yeah, yeah.

Sarina Bowen

But I really loved the premise of Dying to Meet You, and I wanted to play with that. And—I mean, I guess what distinguishes them from a reader standpoint, who's, like, reading the backs of both of those books, maybe, is that there is a dead body at the beginning of one of them and not the other one. So, like, it—it lands more firmly in the reader's expectations, that Dying to Meet You is more thriller-y, because you know—it says in the flap copy, like, this book starts when somebody dies.

Jennie Nash

So you said that it was a little harder to plan out the—to engineer a thriller and the complexities. And we all know that you are a very fast and efficient writer, so I'd be curious to hear: how much time do you set aside to get the complexities and engineering of the thriller versus the romance? What's the time demand of that?

Sarina Bowen

I think, at least at this point, thrillers still require twice as much work in terms of, like, days.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. It's like six months instead of three.

Jennie Nash

Yeah. Wow. Wow. And is the moving back and forth from one to the other—do you—are you finding that satisfying? Are you finding it difficult? Like, what's that like? Because I know right now—well, you—you're working on a romance, and then thriller number three is coming up. So do you—how are you making those transitions?

Sarina Bowen

Well, I think any writer would agree that the book you're not working on today is always the one that seems more appealing.

Jennie Nash

It's always a better book…

Sarina Bowen

Right?!

Jennie Nash

Such a good book.

Sarina Bowen

So, of course, I'm in the finishing part, on the romance that I'm working on, which is, everybody knows, the hardest part, where you have to make all the toughest decisions. So I just cannot wait to write that thriller.

Jennie Nash

Do you—are you—do you cheat? Are you cheating on your romance? Like, do you—do you cheat and do a little research on the new—new thriller?

Sarina Bowen

Well, I've actually written part of that thriller already.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

I wrote part of it, and then I had to stop and finish this other one. So it's not cheating exactly. It's how I had to do my crazy schedule this year, because I had two deadlines in 2024, and they're closer together than I could execute, like, a whole book in each. But cheating is a wonderful thing to do, because when you're like, technically, I'm writing the romance this month, and almost all my time is spent on that—but when you give your brain permission to, like, not be finishing that other book, it goes in all these exciting places, and it comes up with stuff for you. So even though I'm writing a romance this month, I have made notes in my notebook for, like, four other books, some of which I might never write.

Jennie Nash

Oh, that's so funny. Well...

Sarina Bowen

Yeah.

Jennie Nash

And—and are they thrillers or romance?

Sarina Bowen

Oh, just that—we're all over the place here. Like, I have made notes for... a romance in an ongoing series, that I'm not sure if I'm continuing, for an unrelated romance that I might never write, and I have, like, scribbled down plot frameworks for unrelated books in two other genres that I probably—probably will never write.

Jennie Nash

So it's interesting—that's an interesting habit that you're talking about. Because I often see with writers—there was an agent, and I can't remember who it is, which pains me—but they said something that was just so funny and so clever, which was a criticism of a writer who—the phrasing would be, you know, "puts everything and the kitchen sink into every book." But the way this agent framed it was, it was "no note left behind." You know, every note you have goes into the book—and that—that's not good. And you have such a restraint. It's not like, oh, here's a good idea, I'm going to shoehorn it into what I'm writing now. I'm going to shoehorn it into the thriller. I'm going to, you know, wedge it in here. You—this restraint of where an idea belongs or doesn't belong, or that it might get written or might not get written—where do you think that discernment or restraint comes from?

Sarina Bowen

You know, it doesn't feel like restraint when I'm in the middle of trying to finish a book. Like, every book feels like—so messy. You know, it's like, if I'm building a roller coaster, like, the parts are laying all over the field right now. Like, that's how it feels at every moment. And even for the end of this book, I have, like, written—scribbled down ideas for, like, nine different scenes, and they're not all going to make it, and they're going to have to duke it out.

Jennie Nash

The scenes are going to have to duke it out?

Sarina Bowen

Yes. And, like, oh, this would be cute. Oh, that would be cute. Oh, this would be cute. But you can't have them all—like, they're not—that just doesn't work. So I'm looking for the best, most efficient way to execute that emotional arc that the end of this book needs.

Jennie Nash

Yeah. yeah.

Sarina Bowen

And I do—okay, fine, maybe it is restraint, because I do care about efficiency. Like, I'm not just going to write and write and write and write because I had a cute little thing that I wanted somebody to say. Because in order to put all that stuff in, I'm going to need too much, like, filler—junk.

Jennie Nash

Yeah, that is restraint, Sarina. That is totally restraint.

Sarina Bowen

Well, honestly, I think one of my strengths—like, writers don't think about their strengths all that often, to be honest. Like, we only think about the stuff that's hard. But one of my strengths has always been that every scene is accomplishing, like, two or three things. Like, no bit of dialog is ever just in there because my brain spat it out when I was sitting at a keyboard. Like, it has to be doing something.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

So I have to look at this little collection of cute scenes and—um—make it do something. Just yesterday, I thought, wouldn't it be funny if the rookie on the team that shows up for this new season to start—you know, after the wedding—spoke entirely in Gen Alpha slang, like my 19-year-old? So I wrote, like, a little bit of dialog where he does this in a—in the rink, and—and the—the main character of the book is like, oh, my God, I don't even know what you just said. And I'm like, oh, I'm so cute and funny. This is going to be great. And then I realized that I just didn't need a bit of discussion in the rink. So I moved that conversation to a different spot, where the heroine was also present. And, like, she jumps in and responds in Gen Alpha slang and to—like, to solve his issue. And the hero is impressed. So, you know, I just needed—it was a fun idea, but I needed it to work harder.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

And then I found a way for it to work harder. But if I hadn't, then that bit was just going to have to be cut. It could just go somewhere else—a different book, a different day.

Jennie Nash

There's a scene in The Five Year Lie where the main character is on a bus—a very long bus trip with her small child—and it goes on for some time at a place in the novel where the tension is pretty high. And I read it—I read it three times, actually, because I was like, what is going on here? What's... what am I—what am I supposed to take away? Like, what? What's happening here? What's—you know, what is the work that this scene is doing? I was curious about it because it felt—the feeling really shifted for me as the reader, where it was a tension reliever for one thing. Like, the tension was really high, and so it was a sort of a chance to breathe. And then there was something that happened on the bus trip that made things much, much worse for this character, so that they're showing up in an even more vulnerable place. Like—and I started seeing the layers of what was happening on that bus trip. And that—I think that's another strength you have—is that the—you don't show your hand. The reader has to work if they want to figure out what—what are all these scenes doing? Like, because you're just in it as the reader. But it was... it was sort of beautiful. I sort of loved that scene because I saw—well, I was trying to figure it out, but I saw, oh, I see what's happening here. I know what she's doing. Like, this is cool. I don't know, you're very good at—uh, like I said, not showing your hand. It's not—you don't see the mechanism of the engineer when you're reading the books.

Sarina Bowen

Well, thank you. That scene—I actually am. It's the first thing I wrote for that book.

Jennie Nash

What?!

Sarina Bowen

Which is—yeah, I know.

Jennie Nash

That is so interesting.

Sarina Bowen

It comes really deep in the book. That's why Jennie is so surprised, because it's, like, near the end. But I wrote that scene in my head—which, you know, you sort of almost never do—five years before the book came out. Like, I was—I was wandering around this town nearby while my kid took a violin lesson, and I thought of that. I'm like; wouldn't it be terrifying if you were on a bus, you know? And I thought it—like, I scared myself with this idea of how vulnerable she is at that moment in time. Like you said, it's a moment of safety, and it sort of is a little bit, because, you know, nobody can get her on the bus. But at the same time, if you read the prologue, you realize that, like, it's not really a moment of safety because—and then also, then I did that thing that makes her even more vulnerable. And that's the thing that scared me. Like, I'm like, oh, that would be really bad. And then I sort of filed that away in my head until I figured out what book it fit in.

Jennie Nash

Oh yeah, it's brutal. It's a brutal moment.

Sarina Bowen

But then—but that actual scene, like, that is a really long bus ride, and I had to keep cutting that scene. Like, I wrote it, and I cut it down, and I cut it down, and I cut it down, because I didn't want it to drag. And it was actually really hard to get that right. But people mention that scene to me a lot, so I'm staying—and they don't say, hey, that scene lasted too long.

Jennie Nash

No—well, when I say it's a moment of safety, it's—what I mean is, she's gotten away from the immediate threat. So there's a—there's a chance to sort of take a little bit of a deep breath. But as it goes on and on, it—that scene—she's on all the different buses, is what I mean. She's moving toward- like, there's a lot that could be really bad. So it was great. So to wrap up, can you tell us what you want to tell us about Dying to Meet You? So to entice those who like to be—match wits with the writer and be in a tense thriller, and there's a sort of haunted house vibe to this one. Tell us. Tell us about this book.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, so—who doesn't love a creepy old mansion? That's kind of what this book is about. But also, the dedication to this book tells, like, a lot of what I was thinking about when I wrote it. And the dedication is to my sons: "Thank you for sharing your location with me so that I could think up the terrifying plot of this book." And when there's—when my older son had got his—got an e-bike is when I first opened the—that app where I could see his location, because I wanted to make sure he got places safely, because I was really terrified. But that—the weird thing of being able to watch him in real time, like his—the blue dot move on the map—um, I thought that was, like, so existentially creepy. And I just thought—kept thinking to myself, like, what's the worst thing that could happen with this? Like, if I'm—if I find this creepy, you know, what if it really was, you know? And that's just kind of where I went from that. And it turned out to be a really good time.

Jennie Nash

My husband likes this app called FlightAware that tracks the airplanes. And when my children fly, he's always saying, "Oh, they're over wherever." And I'm like, nope, nope. I want none of this information. I do not wish to know where in the sky my child is hanging,

Sarina Bowen

Right.

Jennie Nash

I don't wish to know that.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, I get it. I get it.

Jennie Nash

So, Dying to Meet You—out now. So good. Before that, The Five Year Lie. There's a third one coming that you'll be writing soon. So we get Sarina Bowen—romance, thriller, back and forth for the foreseeable future?

Sarina Bowen

I hope so. Let's keep it going.

Jennie Nash

Awesome. Well, thank you for chatting about genre and how you do it. It's always fun to get inside your brain. And for our listeners—until next time, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Jess Lahey

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Mechanics.

* Leave yourself notes about the project when you leave off, for example, “The next thing that needs to happen is this…” so when you come back, you know how to get back into the project. This is Sarina’s daily practice, but it really helps when she has to leave a project behind. This can be especially helpful when you have to go away for an unexpected emergency.

* Jennie adds that the only way you can do this is if you have a place to keep and find those notes to yourself. In one of your 47 notebooks or in the document itself? Or, as Jess adds, on the side of the cardboard box you use for trash in your basement workshop that you almost recycle by accident.

* Jennie also notes that you have to have intentionality, to know what you are writing so you can know what comes next, whether that’s in your outline, inside outline, or whatever.

* Jennie has a little notebook she brings on vacation with her and she downloads those ideas into that just before going to sleep at night when she’s away.

* These vacation inspiration moments are much like shower thoughts, part of the magic of our brain unhooking, getting into deep default mode network, and becoming its most creative.

* Sarina mentioned an article about how walking makes you more creative, also a study in why tapping into the default mode network is so effective as a practice.

Fear

* The only way to get over this is to sit down and do it. Open the document. Just start.

* Jennie points out that getting back into a manuscript when it’s disappeared feels horrifying but it’s much easier than it sounds and has happened to one of our frequent guests, Sarah Stewart Taylor, when her then-toddler created a password for the document that was not recoverable. She had to give in to the fact that her book was gone, and recreate it out of her memory.

Guilt and Identity

* It only took Jess until her fiftieth year to figure out that her process - of walking, gardening, beekeeping, musing - is a part of writing, and that’s cool.

* Can you be a writer if you are not actively writing? Yes, if research, planning, thinking and otherwise cogitating is a part of your writing process. Get over it. The words have to land on the page eventually, of course, but if you are doing both, have grace for the not-actively-writing part of the writing process.

#AmReading

Tess Gerritsen’s series set in Maine (The Spy Coast and The Summer Guests) and, once she finished those two books, Jess went back to The Surgeon, where it all started for Tess Gerritsen. Stay tuned for our interview with her!

Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary (Don’t watch the movie trailer if you plan to read the book!)

Sarah Harman’s All the Other Mothers Hate Me

Amy Tintera’s Listen for the Lie

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer The Unfolding

Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club (coming to Netflix in August!)

Janelle Brown’s What Kind of Paradise

Want to submit a first page to Booklab? Fill out the form HERE.

Writers and readers, KJ here, if you love #AmWriting and I know you do, and I know you do, and especially if you love the regular segment at the end of most episodes where we talk about what we've been reading, you will also love my weekly #AmReading email. Is it about what I've been reading and loving? It is. And if you like what I write, you'll like what I read. But it is also about everything else. I've been #AmDoing: sleeping, buying clothes and returning them, launching a spelling bee habit, reading other people's weekly emails. Let's just say it's kind of the email about not getting the work done, which I mean that's important too, right? We can't work all the time. It's also free, and I think you'll really like it. So you can find it at kjdellantonia.com or kjda.substack.com or by clicking on my name on Substack, if you do that kind of thing.

Come hang out with me. You won't be sorry.

Transcript below!

EPISODE 458 - TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell'Antonia

Writers and readers, KJ here. If you love Hashtag AmWriting, and I know you do, and especially if you love the regular segment at the end of most episodes where we talk about what we've been reading, you will also love my weekly Hashtag AmReading email. Is it about what I've been reading and loving? It is. And if you like what I write, you'll like what I read. But it is also about everything else. I've been ‘hashtag am-doing’, sleeping, buying clothes and returning them, launching a spelling bee habit, reading other people's weekly emails. Let's just say it's kind of the email about not getting the work done—which, I mean, that's important too, right? We can't work all the time. It's also free, and I think you'll really like it. So you can find it at KJdellantonia.com or kjda.substack.com or by clicking on my name on Substack, if you do that kind of thing or of course in the show notes for this podcast. Come hang out with me. You won't be sorry.

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the weekly podcast, while writing all the things—short things, long things, pitches, proposals, fiction, nonfiction. And somebody told me they thought this was a recorded intro. And I just want you to know I do this live every time, which is why there's this, come on, there's more variety here, people, and you should know that. Anyway, here we are, all four of us, for we got a topic today. But before we do that, we should introduce ourselves in order of seniority, please.

Jess Lahey

I'm Jess Lahey. I am the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. And I laugh, because when you said seniority, all I could do was think of us in our little eave space in my old house, down the street from you, not knowing what the heck we were doing. But yeah, we've been doing this for a long time now. You can find my... you can find my journalism at The New York Times, at The Washington Post, at The Atlantic, and everything else at Jessicalahey.com.

Sarina Bowen

I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of many novels. My new one this fall is called Thrown for a Loop, and it will be everywhere that books are sold, which is very exciting to me, and all about me at Sarinabowen.com.

Jennie Nash

I am the newest of the co-hosts, and so happy to be among this group of incredibly smart and prolific and awesome women, and I'm the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, which is a company on a mission to lead the emerging book coaching industry. And you can find us at bookcoaches.com or authoraccelerator.com.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of three novels, the latest of which is Playing the Witch Card, and the most televised of which is The Chicken Sisters—Season Two coming soon to a Hallmark network near you. And I'm also the former editor and lead writer of The Motherlode, making me our... well, and Jennie too, like the crossover. I've done too many different kinds of writing—probably should have stayed in my lane. Oh well. And our plan today—as we're recording, it is summer. And a pretty frequent thing that happens in the summer is that you need to put your project down for a little while, because you have house guests, because you're going on the kind of vacation that does not involve working, because you just need a break or you're sick. That's not really a summer thing, but it definitely happens. Anyway, we wanted to talk about how, you know, what—what do you do to make that work better?

Jess Lahey

I think a lot about being a parent and needing to take a break too. And you know, this is something I talk a lot about with, you know, other writers who are sort of struggling, especially since I read a lot about parenting—who are struggling to—with that guilt of, you know, like, I feel like I owe my time to the words, and I feel like I owe my time to the children. And finding a way to take a break from the words and not feel guilty about not being with the words can be really, really hard, especially when you're going gung-ho on something. So I want to make sure that we figure out a way to have a break without guilt. That's like the big question I get a lot—is, how do you, you know, either from the parenting or the writing side?

KJ Dell'Antonia

And I was thinking about it more from a mechanics side.

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

How do you put this thing aside for a week or two weeks or even a month? And know where you were?

Jess Lahey

Right.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And come back and feel like it does not take you forever to dig in.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. Um, so we've got the guilt question. We've got the mechanics of how to do it. And I would just like to add a layer, which is the fear factor.

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

I have this thing where, when I walk away from a manuscript, I become afraid of it. So it seems scarier when I take a break. Like, even if it's not true—that I don't know where I am or that I become unmoored from the channel of that book and it seems intimidating to go back to.

Jess Lahey

Can I add one more layer as well? And that's the identity factor. You know, if I identify as a writer, what am I if I'm not actively writing something? And that messes my head up a lot. So I would love to add that added layer in as well and make sure we discuss that.

Jennie Nash

Well, and I have something totally different from all of those, which is that I often find when I go on vacation, I am more inspired and motivated to work on my project than I was in my real life. It tends to light a fire under me. So then I'm faced with that choice of, you know, wanting to really lean into it. And, you know, just like a really small piece of that story is, I love to write on airplanes. I just love it. Give me a very long flight, and it's—I just want to work and not talk to anybody. And, you know, it's awesome. So I feel some guilt around that. When I'm with my family, it’s like, don't talk to me, don't watch movies. You know, I'm—I'm enjoying my plane time, doing my work. So I have that reality.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well, that's the choice that you have to start with, is, am I just, you know, can I not? Am I—do I need to accept the reality, which is that this is a beach trip with extended family and some, you know, my—to multiple generations, and I inevitably am going to be the person who is cooking and figuring out where the garbage has to go in the Airbnb? I should, you know, I—I will feel better if I just accept the reality that I'm not going to wake and work. Or, you know, is it a—is it a trip where you can schedule some work time and want to? Or is it a trip where you affirmatively want to give yourself a break? Or is it also, I mean, I sort of think that the last possibility—well, there are probably multiples—is I just want to touch this every day. So I feel like you can kind of—you're like, you're either like, just—no, not going to happen, not going to pretend it's going to happen, not going to feel the guilt. That's the—that's where we are. And there's sort of a, I just want to open the file every day and keep it warm and friendly. And on, you know these three—three days I have an hour.

Jess Lahey

So let's do this. Let's—let's do mechanics first, since that's the real nuts-and-bolts stuff, and then we'll talk about all the touchy-feely stuff after that. So let's do mechanics first. It sounds like you have thoughts, KJ…?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well, I was actually thinking that Sarina did this pretty recently.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, that's true.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. Like, you know, I, um, I have found mechanically that leaving yourself notes every time you walk away from your manuscript is a good thing. So this is sort of like a best practices in your life idea, where I will have a writing day, and it's done now, and I'm going to get up and go do other things in my life. If I pick up my notebook, and I write down where I am—like, okay, and the next thing that has to happen is this—like, it could be really short or not. But taking better notes about the structure of the thing I'm working on is serving me on so many levels that it just slots right in here. Like, I took a big trip in April, and I thought I might work, but then I didn't, and I really seamlessly came right back in, because I knew where I was, and I avoided a lot of my own fear. So, if the practices that help you become a good day-to-day writer also can be practices that help you in this very instance, the mechanics of picking up your book again are that you left yourself a note right in your document, um, or in your notebook, that says, and here's what I think is supposed to happen next. And, yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That's going to be gold for an unexpected break too, because that happens, you know, right? You get one of those phone calls, and it's a week before you're back or more.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah. I love this practice. This is one of those things I forget to do.

Jennie Nash

I feel like I—I feel like I have to add to that a couple things. That the only reason you can do that is, A, if you have a place to take notes, which—which could be your, the document itself that you're working on. But Sarina talked about a notebook, right? You have a place that you know, that you can find that, which is not an insignificant thing to have, or...

Sarina Bowen

Correct!

Jennie Nash

Right?! Or, in the case of me, it's like, I have 47 notebooks. Well, which one did I put the note in?

Sarina Bowen

Right.

Jennie Nash

But then the second thing is, I mean, this is something that I find so inspiring about the way you work, Sarina, and it—and it's a thing that I teach—is you have to know what you're writing, you know, in order to know where you are, what the structure is, and what you're doing, and to ask those—like, you have to have done the thought work of what, what it is you're trying to do and what your intention is. Otherwise, you sort of don't ever know where you are or where you're going. So...

Sarina Bowen

Right, but that's on two levels. Like, you could—let's just say you have successfully written yourself an Inside Outline, you know, the way that you do it—you still might need that granular thing.

Jennie Nash

Oh yeah!

Sarina Bowen

Like, you might know where you are in the arc of the book, but you might actually need the note that's like, "And now we're going to wash the dishes." I mean, let's please not put that in the novel, but you know what I mean.

Jennie Nash

Yeah, yeah. But that intentionality of, on the big picture, what am I doing, and on the small picture—in this chapter, in this scene, in this moment, and with this character—what was I... how'd that fit into the whole? What was I thinking? And those things are not—they're not easy. Like, we're talking about them like, "Oh, you just..." You know, like I was saying, what if you have 47 notebooks? That literally is a problem I have. It's like, I know I wrote this note down, and I don't know where I put it—digitally or analog.

Sarina Bowen

Right. I confess I actually do still have this problem. Like, even with all of my best practices, like, put into—sometimes it's like, well, is that in the document, or is it in my notebook? And then—or I thought about it at four in the morning and actually didn't write it down anywhere. And I'm looking anyway...

Jennie Nash

Oh, I do that too. I absolutely do that too. I'm convinced that I left a note while I was driving—that's a thing I often do. I'll leave—I'll have Siri write me a note, and then somehow it doesn't appear, or it's like, I know I did this, I know I asked her to do this... you know.

Jess Lahey

I actually have—I was doing the recycling, and I realized that I was in big trouble because three sides of a box I'd had down in the basement with me while I was working on a project—I was doing something with my, getting some beehives ready—and I was listening to an audiobook that is research for a project I'm working on, and I had scribbled some really important notes to myself about how I was supposed to start a chapter on. And it was a great start. It was like a whole paragraph on the three sides of the box, with an old Sharpie I found down in the basement. And then I realized I almost recycled, like, some really useful outline stuff.

Multiple Speakers

[all laughing]

Jess Lahey

So normally—no, so I actually have them. While you guys are talking about something else, since we do see each other while we're recording this, I'll show you later. But the thing that I normally do is either in the document, like right where I left off, or in my main notebook, because I am so bad at finding those notes that I have strewn all over my office or on the side of a cardboard box.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I have had the problem lately of I'm not in a manuscript, and that it's much easier when you're in a manuscript to come back to a manuscript, but I'm in a notebook full of assorted random Blueprint challenge, you know, like trying to—I'm, I'm in figuring out where this is going mode, which means I do a lot of thinking while I'm not working that then hopefully I go and write down. But it also means that I frequently sit down and I'm like, well, am I going to think about who these people are? Am I going to think about what the plot is? What am I going to do? So I've been trying to leave myself like a task, something that will, that will just get me, get me back in, because sometimes that's the problem. I, you know, I open the notebook, and there's no obvious thing to do, and the next thing I know, I'm buying running shoes.

Jennie Nash

Well, since we're talking about nuts and bolts, when I said that I often get inspired when I go away or go on vacation and I want to work, I'm not talking about I'm going to go sit in a library or coffee shop for three hours. What, what I mean by that is I often have ideas that I want to capture, and so I have a little notebook that I bring on vacation, and what I like to do is go to bed early enough that I can download all the things I thought that day. I need that space and time to—if it's, if I'm working on something, it's in my head. It's not going to not be in my head. And so the one sort of new mechanical thing that I, that I do, is have that "vacation notes notebook" with me.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I always carry one, and I never use it. So there's that.

Jess Lahey

I get—I am at my most inspired to write when I specifically can't write, which is usually behind the wheel of my car. So I use, in my car, I have been known to, you know, either scribble on things—which, totally don't do that—or to record myself on my phone. But then, audio things, I'm particularly bad at going back and listening to; that seems like it's just too much work. So those tend to get lost a lot. I need to come up with a better system for that. But it is predictable that if I am in a place where I cannot physically write, I will be at my most inspired to write.

Jennie Nash

Jess, that's kind of what I'm talking about. That's what happens to me, is I might say I'm leaving all work behind. I'm going off the grid. I'm not doing the thing. And that's when I most want to do the thing. And I, like, my brain seems to really get inspired. What? What do you think that's about? Is that...

Jess Lahey

I, you know, I, I was very worried that it was my sort of, um—sorry, what's the word I'm looking for? It was—it's my, my brain's way of saying, "Oh, you couldn't possibly work now, so let's have some of the best ideas so that you seem like a good little doobie writer, but it's physically impossible for you to write now." It's just a really weird thing, and maybe one of the other things I thought about is that I'm often listening to a book that I'm really into, which also inspires me to write. I've been listening to a lot of really great books lately, and you can't listen to a book—even one that inspires you deeply—and actually write at the same time, which is another quandary.

Sarina Bowen

You know what, though? This is not uniquely your brain messing with you—like, this is shower thoughts.

Multiple Speakers

[Overlapping: “Mm-hmm.” “Sorry.” “Ohhh...”]

Sarina Bowen

But everybody—everybody has those great ideas in the shower, and it's because you have unhooked yourself. You are just in there with the shampoo and the conditioner and that razor that you probably should change the blade with, and like, you know, there is nowhere to write and nothing to do. So your brain is like, I am free right now to unclench and actually solve this problem of chapter 17, and that's what—that's what happens.

Jess Lahey

It is my duty, whenever we mention this, to bring up that—years ago, Ron Lieber, the write... uh... the "Your Money" columnist at The New York Times, told me that he has a waterproof little whiteboard situation that’s— that lives in the shower. He and his wife, Jodi Kantor—amazing writer as well, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, even— that these would be people who might just need a waterproof whiteboard in the shower with them.

Sarina Bowen

But would that ruin the magic…?

KJ Dell'Antonia

It might just...

Multiple Speakers

[all laughing]

Jess Lahey

If you had a place to write it down, your brain would—like—be... your brain would say, "Sorry, I'm not coming up with good ideas."

Sarina Bowen

Because I don't think I am willing to take this risk. I take a lot of risks in my life, but this one—like; we do not mess with the shower thoughts. I think, I think...

KJ Dell'Antonia

So, so what do we do if you didn't do any of this? If what—you know—what are—you're listening to this podcast, coming back from your trip, and you're like, I... was writing... something...

Sarina Bowen

You know what, though? I almost feel that we should point out the fact that, like, that is kind of unlikely. Like, somebody should feel welcome to take this trip and to have all those thoughts, and even if you didn't write them down on your whiteboard in the shower or on your handy notebook, like, I would argue that unhitching yourself in the first place possibly leads to a lot of creative development that, even if you don't capture it in the moment, is still with you. Like, I had this fantastic trip in April. I thought I was going to work, and then I did not, and it was, like, the best two weeks of my life. So then, the other day, my husband said, “Hey, there's a new article you need to read in The Athletic,” which is a New York Times sports blog, and I have just pulled it up so that we can recommend it, about how walking makes you a better problem solver. And the framing story of this article is about a retired baseball coach, but, um, but then, when they got around to studying it, um, they said this question planted the seed for the first set of studies to measure if walking produces more creativity. In the series of experiments, Oppezzo and Schwartz [Marily Oppezzo & Daniel L. Schwartz] asked 176 college students to complete different creative thinking tasks while sitting, walking on a treadmill, walking outside through campus, or being pushed in a wheelchair. In one example, the students had to come up with atypical uses for random objects, and anyway, on average, the students’ creative output increased by 60% when they were walking.

Jennie Nash

That's so cool!

Sarina Bowen

And the article is—it's so cool—it's called An MLB manager found value in long walks. Research suggests it’s a ‘brain-changing power’.

Jess Lahey

I have put a spot for it in the show notes. And I should mention that this is all part of what we call the default mode network. This is the—the part of our brain that is the wandering, most creative part of our brain. And we can get there lots of ways. Walking is a fantastic way to do it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Sarina, if you do have the fear of the manuscript when you're coming back to it, like, take—you know, travel back in time to maybe when you were a little less confident in your abilities. What do you do to get past the fear and sit down?

Sarina Bowen

There is only one solution, and that is sitting down. And I'm not so great at this—like, when, when the fear creeps up on me, in spite of my best intentions, man, I will do anything to avoid that sucker. And then when I finally do, and I wade back in, almost every time my response is, Oh, this isn't so bad. I know where—I kind of remember now. It's going to be fine, you know. But it's so easy to put off work out of fear. It's—it's the—it's the one big obstacle. Like, I don't put work off for other reasons, you know, because I'm tired or whatever. It's because I'm afraid that there's something fundamentally wrong with the project, or fundamentally wrong with me, and that is almost always what's keeping me from doing good work.

Jennie Nash

There was, back in the day before computers became what they are now, people would frequently lose manuscript drafts. It was just much harder to save your work. And I can't—I can't explain exactly what changed, but it was. People frequently lost huge chunks of their work if they didn't actively back up. And when I was a new coach and working with writers who would lose their manuscripts, they would be—understandably—beyond devastated. And this often was full manuscripts, just unrecoverable, full manuscripts. And it was true that if they sat down to recreate what they'd written, it would really flow from them, for that same reason—it was still in their brain. They—they had—they'd written it, so there was a sense that they had, they owned it, and they could sit down, and it was kind of quite remarkable. And I would confidently say to them, just sit down, start writing. I think it will come to you, and it always did. It's very interesting.

Jess Lahey

There's an example—we've interviewed Sarah Stewart Taylor many times now, and she tells the story of, a long time ago, her youngest managed to crawl across the computer in such a way as to create a password for the document itself, and there's nothing that can be done. She was on the phone with Word—with Microsoft—for a long time, and they're like, look, this is a password you created. We can't—that's not recoverable. So she had to go and recreate—I believe she was about a third of the way into a book—but she said that it actually flowed really well, and that, you know, she'd had it, it had been cooking and stuff like that. So that massive fear of, oh my gosh, how am I going to get back into this project when it has just disappeared? It turned out to be not a thing—that it actually came really easily to her.

Jennie Nash

Jess, you're bringing all the very weird stories today, and I'm so here for it—notes on boxes, babies making passwords.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, well, and the hard part—the funny part about that—is like, you cannot recreate a toddler, essentially, like bashing away at your keyboard and creating a password that's never coming back. Sorry.

Sarina Bowen

There is a writer—she once gave a talk that I heard—a very successful young adult author, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and she apparently wrote a discovery draft of the novel to, like, figure out what it was about and then deleted it and started over on purpose.

Jennie Nash

On purpose?!

Sarina Bowen

Yes, and everyone in the room gasped because, of course, you know that I just rather, like, been in a lot of pain. I'd rather have oral surgery than delete my first draft of a novel. But, um... but yeah, if she was unafraid to get back there after that kind of break, then I think we can all handle it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

This is true. I've never deleted a draft, but I have just gone—poofft—"Let's, let's, let's start again." In fact, almost every time. Kind of sad. I'm doing it now, actually, but it's not a full draft. Anyway. So take the breaks, right? That's what we're saying here.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, take the break.

KJ Dell'Antonia

You can break however you do it, you know, whichever thing you pick, and if you don't do what you thought you were going to do, that's cool, too. It's going to—it's going to be fine.

Jess Lahey

Can I mention something that has—so that now that we've sort of done mechanics, we've done a little bit about the fear thing, the—the identity thing—has been really hard for me, in that I have these two books that I've written, and I've written a bunch and researched a bunch of things over the past couple of years, and people keep asking me, what are you writing? What are you writing? And the reality is, like, I'm not. I'm working on something, I'm researching something, and I've written a lot of things. In fact, now I'm holding up my cardboard box pieces—I found them. But the day—I'm not, like, meeting a 1200-words-a-day goal. And sometimes I feel really... I feel like a fraud. I feel like a massive fraud. Like, what kind of writer is not actually sitting down and writing 2,000 words a day? And that's incredibly difficult for me. Like, I don't deserve to call myself a writer, even though I have a couple of books out there and I wrote—you know—did all this other stuff. But the thing that I have—there are a couple of things that have really helped—and one of those is to understand that and have some grace for myself around what I happen to know full well what my process is. Yes, I wrote a couple of book proposals that didn't turn into books, but it was only through writing the book proposals that I discovered that those books weren't something that I wanted to write, and only through doing all of this research on audiobooks and writing on the side of cardboard boxes. That's the way I've written every one of my books. And it's not—it's just what works for me. And so having a little bit of this, you know, this feeling of insecurity as a writer, I don't think is—I don't think is unique to me. I think a lot of writers feel this, and it's...

KJ Dell'Antonia

No, all the rest of them are...

Jess Lahey

All of them are really...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, no, everyone else is just like, well, of course. No, I'm not an imposter.

Jess Lahey

But what's great is when I sit down with other writers and I say, what is an integral part of your process that isn't actually about putting the words on the page? That's not some bogus, like, excuse for not writing. You know, the gardening is part of it, the—the research is part of it, the listening to audiobooks is part of it. The writing—or the walking—is part of it. And it's not just a part of it. It is an incredibly important part of it for me, and—and understanding that and owning that about myself has been really a good thing for allowing myself to not—I'm not productive when I just feel guilty or like an imposter every day. It—that's not good for my process. But none of you ever feel that, right?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Or apparently the people around you…

Jess Lahey

The other thing that has been—well, the other thing that's been really, really helpful is the—and especially from the parenting perspective—is, or the marriage perspective, or the dog perspective, or the bees perspective, is I need to be fully committed to the thing right in front of me when I'm doing that thing. And if I'm feeling guilty about not being with the words when I'm with my children, or not being with my children when I'm with the words, that is awful, too. And so I have found that when I have to let go of all the other stuff and be fully, 100% in, I'm highly distractible. And so if I'm not fully in the thing, and that—all that guilt of not being over there doing that other thing—that's just taking away from the actual process of writing or researching or whatever it is, or taking care of my bees. I have to be fully in the thing I'm in and not feel guilty about not doing something else. And that's been a growth moment for me, too. It only took me—how old am I? I'm 55 now, and I got there somewhere around 50, I think.

Jennie Nash

There is also—I mean, I—I love what you're saying, and that is a thing to strive for, for sure—to be, to be present in whatever you're doing. But there is also this idea—I always think of it as mental real estate—that you leave for your project, for your idea, for your writing, for your book. That you, that you have a space in your brain devoted to that, and that you visit, whether or not you're producing words. And I think that that, too, is writing. I think, in some ways, that's more writing than sitting at the keyboard. I mean, I always object to the process of just putting words down. And a lot of the things that challenge writers to do that, because they skip that part—the thinking part and the having-the-part—you know, the real estate-in-your-brain part. And I think this connects to the shower—shower thoughts, right? You're gardening or beekeeping, you're walking, you're thinking, you're writing proposals and throwing them out. You're doing all that, that, that's writing. That's the—that's writing in my mind.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And it's not... I mean the other thing we do say a lot is, you know, "Good writing comes last."

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

You've got to do the other stuff. So you can do it on vacation, or you could not do it on vacation. This—I don't think—we just—maybe I—this was my idea, and I think maybe I just needed the reassurance. I have a couple weeks coming up where I'm probably not going to do anything, and I just needed a reminder that that's cool. That's cool. It's all right. It's going to be okay. That's what I—if y'all could just pat me on the head and say "it's going to be okay."

Multiple Speakers

[Overlapping voices: “Mm-hmm,” “Sorry,” “Ohhh...”]

KJ Dell'Antonia

Six or ten times an hour, that might be about what I need.

Jess Lahey

Well and one of the other things that has been really cool this summer is I've been on a streak of really good books. And every one of those really good books that I've been reading has made me like, Oh, I could do this. Oh my gosh, I could do that. I could write like her. I could I could write this other thing. And it's, it's all that energy is good and it's all a good thing to sit on a beach and read a book, or sit in the woods and read a book. It's all great.

KJ Dell'Antonia

All right, everybody, go collect some energy. Hey, on that note, who's read something good lately?

Jennie Nash

I want to hear all these great books, Jess.

Jess Lahey

So I really have been on this roll. I've already talked about Atmosphere in an earlier podcast, the Taylor Jenkins Reid thing. But then I've been on this Tess Gerritsen jag, because we're—I'm interviewing Tess Gerritsen later this week. You guys will get to hear her later this summer. I am... Sarina and KJ, I believe, read the first of her new series that she has set in Maine and with a couple of retired CIA agents and spies in Maine. And then I enjoyed those so much that I went all the way back to the beginning—to her first book, The Surgeon, which I didn't even know was turned into this whole series called Rizzoli and Isles. It's a television show—I had no idea. And now I'm deep into Tess Gerritsen land. I'm still—I found out that there's going to be a movie of the book by the guy who wrote The Martian, Andy...

Sarina Bowen

Andy Weir

Jess Lahey

Andy Weir, thank you. And I was warned very specifically on social media not to watch the preview—the trailer—for the new movie that is going to be coming out with Ryan Gosling later on this summer, because it ruins the book. The book is called Hail Mary… Project Hail Mary. So I very quickly turned away from social media and said, Ooh, I better read the book really quickly before anyone ruins it for me, and I am enjoying the heck out of Project Hail Mary. So it's been really fun. Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

I am reading a book that KJ put into my hands. And the fun part is that I don't remember why she put it into my hands, you know. Like, why did I pick up this book? Like, it happens all the time. It's called All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman.

Jennie Nash

What a great title.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, like, I picked up this book, and my husband said, oh my God, what a great title. And so, yes, that's super cool. And it's very voice-y. And the—the flap copy has the—a premise that smacks of a thriller, but the voice isn't like all deep, dark thriller. And so I think maybe the contrast of those two things might be why KJ put it into my hands. But I am enjoying the fabulous writing, and I'm—I'm still at the beginning, but the way she introduces characters is really sharp. So even that alone is like a little master class on introducing characters.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, that was why I gave it to you, was that we'd been talking about, you know, the voice, and also because we'd been talking about, like, funny thrillers versus thriller-y thrillers. And this isn't funny, but it's super voice-y. It reminds me of the one you pressed into my hands, which maybe is a little funnier—Listen for the Lie.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, yeah.

Jennie Nash

Well, I'm reading something very different, which is not—not very beachy. I go to a yoga class that is taught by a middle grade English teacher, and she runs her yoga class sort of like English class, where she always starts with a poem and throughout the class, she refers back to the poem in a very embodied way that you're doing the yoga around. And then she reads the poem again at the end. It's—its spectacular. She's—she's so popular at our yoga studio that you have to, you know, fight your way in. But she read a poem by a woman named Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer—and that’s Rosemerry like Christmas Merry, so: Rosemerry. And the book is called The Unfolding. And I say it's very different from what you are all mentioning because this woman experienced the death of her young son and father in very close proximity, and her poems are ostensibly about grief, but they're just filled with joy and hope and delight. And, you know, it's kind of that thing you're talking about, Sarina—that it's—here's a book about tragedy and grief, but it's—there's something about the voice that just is—is fresh. And they're just—they're just stunning, just absolutely stunning. And I have gone and ordered all her books, of which there are—are many. So she's a new voice to me, and I just—I can't get enough of them. They're incredible.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well, here I am going to go back to the fiction summary read-y thing. I am very late to The Thursday Murder Club party, but it is joy. It is so much fun—really your sort of classic Agatha Christie stuff, but way, way funnier and more entertaining, with a dash of elderly spies. So we're on that theme. And then I also want to mention, just because I liked it so much—and I'm not sure I want everyone to read it—What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown. This could be your lit fic read of the summer. It's somewhere—but—but it's still a page turner. And I thought the premise was extremely great. Basically, it's: what if the Unabomber had also raised a young daughter with him in the woods on all of his theories, back when the Unabomber was living in the woods, and inadvertently involved her in his first kill before she got away? And now she's an adult looking back at what happened. And Janelle Brown is a Silicon Valley person. She's really steeped in this culture. She really knows this world. It's a really good book—plus super entertaining.

Jennie Nash

I love it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That's it!

Jess Lahey

I love it when we have a lot of good stuff, because there have been a couple weeks this year where we were like, I was just let down this time around. But yay, I'm loving this.

KJ Dell'Antonia

All right, I think that's it for us this week, kids. Remember, if you support the podcast, you get bonus content every week right now, because we are killing it. You might get Jess's Soup to Nuts series, where she is coaching a fellow writer on creating a nonfiction proposal that also will work with her speaking career. You can join me and Jennie on a weekly basis as we flail our way through the beginnings of writing a couple of books. And of course, on a monthly basis, we've got the Booklab, where we look at the First Pages of novels submitted by listeners. And if you'd like to submit to the Booklab, that'd be great. Jess will put the link in the show notes.

Jess Lahey

Indeed, Jess will. And until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

Tune in to hear our interview with Stephanie. We’re discussing how she got this idea, where she turned for advice, and how she figures out what to stock and where to park La Fleuria!

Show links include:

#YouAndYourBookstore episode with Mary Laura Philpott

La Fleuria book truck

Stephanie on Instagram

Stephanie’s Linktree

La Fleuria’s popup schedule

Thrown for a Loop, Sarina’s upcoming release (pub date 11/4/25)

TropeTruck, a book truck whose owner generously contributed knowledge

Ingram, the wholesale bookseller we discuss in some detail (because Jess needed to understand how this bookseller access to indie authors works!)

Books Stephanie recommends and loves to sell at La Fleuria:

Yes No Maybe by Jessica Sherry (La Fleuria’s #2 bestseller!)

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

All Rhodes Lead Here by Mariana Zapata

Hey, Jess here to talk to you about a new series I have created just for supporters of the #AmWriting Podcast.

I met an aspiring author and speaker who has an idea for a book that just knocked me over. I said, please, please write that book. This is someone who had an idea that has a place in the market. It's timely. She's the perfect person to write it, and I asked her, I begged her, if I could please mentor her through this process publicly on the podcast.

So while we're not giving her full name and we're not giving the actual title of the book, because we don't want to hand those things away, I am coaching her through the entire process, from preparing her book proposal to querying an agent. I'm going through the whole thing with her. She knows nothing about the publishing industry, she knows very little about how one goes about writing a book—so essentially, this is as I mentioned before, from soup to nuts, From Authority to Author, and hopefully we'll get her there.

But really, whether or not this book ends up selling, whether after this book she ends up having a speaking career, this is about the process of preparing to do that. I hope you’ll join us.

This series is for supporters only, so if you are a free subscriber right now, consider upgrading. Remember, if you upgrade, you'll also get the ability to submit for our First Pages Booklab, and lots of other fun stuff that we put out just for supporters—So come join us. It's a lot of fun.

Transcript below!

EPISODE 457 - TRANSCRIPT

Jess Lahey

Hey, Jess here to talk to you about a new series I have created just for supporters of the Hashtag AmWriting podcast. I met an aspiring author and speaker who has an idea for a book that just knocked me over. I said, please, please write that book. This is someone who had an idea that it has a place in the market. It's timely. She's the perfect person to write it, and I asked her—I begged her—if I could please mentor her through this process publicly on the podcast. So, while we're not giving her full name and we're not giving the actual title of the book, because we don't want to hand those things away, I am coaching her through the entire process—from preparing her book proposal to querying an agent. I'm going through the whole thing with her. She knows nothing about the publishing industry. She knows very little about how, you know, one goes about writing a book. And so she essentially—this is, as I mentioned before from soup to nuts, From Authority to Author, and hopefully we'll get her there. But really, whether or not this book ends up selling, whether this book—she ends up having a speaking career—this is about the process of preparing to do that. How do you write a book? How do you prepare to become a speaker on the back of that book? So I hope you join us. This is a series for supporters only. So if you are a free supporter, or if you're a free subscriber right now, consider upgrading. Remember, if you upgrade, you'll also get access to the ability to submit for our First Pages Book Lab and lots of other fun stuff that we put out just for supporters. So come join us. It's a lot of fun.

Multiple Speakers:

Is it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.

Jess Lahey

Welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting podcast. This is the podcast about, oh, writing all the things—the short things, the long things, the nonfiction, the fiction, the poetry, the book proposals, the agent queries—all the things. In reality, though, this podcast is about two things. It is about getting the work done, and flattening the learning curve for other writers. I'm Jess Lahey. I am co-hosting today. I am the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my journalism at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.

Sarina Bowen

And I'm Sarina Bowen. I am the author of many romance novels. My next one is called Thrown for a Loop and it's coming from Forever in November, and I could not be more excited. And it is in the vein of romance, publishing, and readership that I have invited a guest to talk to us today because she has done something so outrageously cool that I needed to hear more in person. So please welcome Stephanie Pao, who has started Los Angeles' first romance book truck. She’s become a bookseller, and I am here to hear all about it. Welcome, Stephanie.

Stephanie Pao

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Sarina Bowen

My pleasure. If you wouldn't mind, I would love to hear—how did this happen? Like, how did you decide that the world needed a book truck? Because that is just a cool idea and I never thought of it. And like, so how did you decide to actually make it a thing? And what did you do?

Stephanie Pao

Yes, okay. The idea actually came to me—I lived by the beach, so I was walking by the beach and I saw a vintage Volkswagen truck for sale, and I just couldn't get it out of my mind. It isn't the truck that I have now, but I kept thinking, what could I do with it? And I've always loved books—romance in particular—and I've been looking for something that I could do that kind of took my previous experience, which is marketing, but melded it with something I really enjoyed. And I just thought maybe I could start a book truck. And I started to do research and I saw that there are many book trucks across the country. At the time, I think maybe there was just one or two romance ones and I was lucky enough to be able to speak with someone who had a romance book bus called Trope. She has a bookshop now and she really gave me a lot of confidence that I could probably do this too. I ended up taking a course on bookselling and started looking for a truck. The truck I ended up finding was actually the first truck I found on Facebook Marketplace. The man who was selling it had completely restored it. And he was so excited that I wanted to do this book shop in a truck idea, that he actually helped me and designed all the shelves, and he built it, and he didn't charge me for it.

Sarina Bowen

Oh my goodness!Stephanie Pao

Yeah. So it felt very serendipitous and almost meant to be. And now it's been like two months and I'm having so much fun.

Sarina Bowen

Wow. Wow. Oh my goodness. I feel like you should be teaching a class on how to live, right? You're like, "I'm good at this thing, but I'm really interested in this other thing, and I'm going to stick them together and it's going to be great."

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, I feel like it was a little bit of like manifesting, I guess.

Sarina Bowen

Well, wow, that’s so great. So how many books does your truck hold at once? Like, what is the size of your store?

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, so it holds about 350 books, and I've taken to also stacking books on top to display my favorite books. So I think it might hold almost 400.

Sarina Bowen

Okay. And so of course, when we think about the bookstores that we grew up going to—you know, there are these giant cavernous Barnes & Nobles, there are smaller independent bookstores—and they’re all numbering in the thousands. But by specializing in a category that you really love, like suddenly 400 is you know, it’s a workable amount for what romance readers might be looking for on any given day. So, but still, there's a lot of good books in the world. How do you choose?

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, I do a mix of like books that I've read and loved. I have been a voracious reader—I've read my whole life—but I've been a voracious reader for a couple of years. I also do a lot of books that I get recommendations from friends or that I just see are very popular online. So I think people will want to find those, but I think it is hard. I'm still figuring out the right balance of what types of romance to carry.

Sarina Bowen

Right. Right. Because we all have our favorite you know, parts of the genre and they might not be the ones that are killing it.

Jess Lahey

But the thing that I'm really excited to hear about is the thing that I love so much about independent booksellers. I get a sense for the bookseller when I go to the bookstore. Like, there are certain bookstores I rave about not necessarily because they're huge, not necessarily because they're beautiful—but because I can tell that when the bookseller recommends something to me; I know who that person is. Or I know the sense of the curation at the store. And that excites me because I feel like I'm in capable hands. So I'm really curious—especially to hear about your curation, and how you decide what you're going to carry—and then I'm also, and I know Sarina is going to ask this question, but in my head, I'm like, how do you find your readers? That's the part I'm so excited to hear about. Like, how do you know where to go? How do the people find you? Because I think that's the magic—is connecting the people with the books. And that’s what I feel like a really great curation does. It says, "If you like this, try this," or, "Oh, you're new to this genre? Let me tell you where you should start with this genre." That’s what’s magic to me about independent booksellers, and the idea of you getting to do it in a very concentrated way with a particular genre is just—it makes me so happy. I'm just so happy you're out there doing this, Stephanie.

Stephanie Pao

Thank you.

Sarina Bowen

So one time I was reading the listing of a literary agent, I think, and somebody had said, "What do you like about this job?" And the agent said, "I get to invest in my own taste." And I thought that was a really interesting way of looking at her job—but also of your job as well. And before we get to “How do you find the readers?”—because that is a really important chapter of this conversation—I just, from the listener standpoint: are you constantly deluged by authors who are like, “Pick me, pick me”? Like, what would you tell an author who is trying to navigate the bookselling world? What have you learned about your end of being a bookseller that an author might need to hear?

Stephanie Pao

Yes. Okay. So first I want to say, like the curation part—My like number two best seller is actually an indie author's book who I love, and I can see from the book selling, like software that I use, that I'm the only bookstore of the 200 plus bookstores that carry her book, and it's the second best seller for me. Like. I've sold over 30 copies in like two months. So I think it really is like the passion of the bookseller, and I have had quite a few authors reach out to me, and they'll come to events. And I feel like it's, I don't have a good process on how I'm vetting all the authors, but I think it's like, if we make a personal connection, I will try to go out of my way to like read their book, because we've connected in some way, and I love reading, and I just feel like because we've like, either met in person or we've exchanged nice messages on social media, it does make me want to read someone's book more, because I have that personal connection, which is probably how people feel when they go shop at an indie books, or they have the personal connection with, like, a bookseller. So I think that's very similar. Um, I had people like, bring me their books, which does make it easier for me to, like, already have it ready. I don't have to look it up to read it or remember to look it up as well, but I know that, like, probably has a cost to it as well. But I had someone just bring me an F1 romance book yesterday at one of my pop ups, and I've been on an f1 kick. I don't know if she noticed that from my personal social but, like, I am very intrigued already, and now I have it

Sarina Bowen

That’s so lovely.

Jess Lahey

For the listeners out there who are interested in this very specific topic, in our show notes I’m going to link to an episode we did with Mary Laura Philpott, who used to be at Parnassus, about making connections with booksellers. Because there are things you can do to go out of your way—before your book comes out, or when your book is coming out—to say, “Hey, I have this book coming out, would you be interested at all in getting a copy?” So it’s something that can happen that authors can work on. And I’m going to definitely drop the link to that episode in the show notes.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah. I had this earlier this year. I was noticing—I started keeping track of how many romance bookstores are in the world. And now I have a list of 60, more than 60. And for a little while, when one just sort of popped up in my social, I was writing an email—because authors get a lot of publisher copies, you know, and sometimes after the launch of the book we end up with a box of like 15 copies still sitting here—and I was sending an email like, “Congratulations on your new store! That’s amazing. Can I send you a signed author copy? Because I just have them here. It’s a gift.” And the uptake of that is, you know, almost 100%. But I don’t ever want to presume that a bookseller wants a copy, you know, unless I check first, because that just seems cheesy. You know, it's, it's, it's hard for authors to know, like, how to be a good partner and not irritating. And anyway, I just thought, you know what your thoughts about that are?

Stephanie Pao

Yeah. I mean, I think for me, like, I am a new store and, like, a single-person business. So anyone that reaches out to me, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, what do you mean? How do you know about me? Why would you want to send me something?” So I'm sure, like, the like, weariness goes both ways, where we are, like, we're also—a lot of people are, like women—or maybe like, not used to promoting themselves more. So I think, like, just shoot your shot. I have an event coming up at like, a big, like, kind of mall, and they said they don't really do things like that with partners like this, but they were impressed that I shot my shot. So I have like, a summer series with them, and I think it's the same for, like, promoting your own book.

Sarina Bowen

Yeah, I guess this whole conversation is an exercise in trying.

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, like the worst that could happen is, I think probably they would maybe say no or not respond to your request—which I do feel like I am guilty of that, because I get a lot and I don't know how to best, like, manage the flow of people saying that they want to send books. But that isn't because I don't want to reply. It's more like, I don't have a good system.

Sarina Bowen

It's hard. So I definitely want to hear how you figure out where to go. Like, where does the truck go? How do you know who to ask? Like, is that a lot of asking and hoping for the, for the best as well. Like, how does it come together?

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, that has been a trial and error process. I think I started off applying to more markets, because they're looking for vendors anyways. But those usually have costs. And I found a few markets that I really enjoy going to, so I go to them monthly now. And…

Sarina Bowen

What kind of markets, can I ask?

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, they're like, one is like a night market. They do it like, a couple times a month in a city of LA called Lakewood, and there's like food, there's usually, like a theme, so like, there was an AAPI night, or they had— I don't know if you know those, like toys called Labubu — but the last event I did was a Labubu themed one. And then I do another market that is in Culver City, and it is similar—like, there's food and drinks and then there's, like, people selling different like, a lot of artisan-made things,

Sarina Bowen

Okay.

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, um, and then I reach out to local businesses as well. And I found, like, right away, I reached out to so many, and I didn't hear back from that many, because I was just starting out. I didn't have that many followers at the time. But the people who I found, and I did pop up set, they were so kind, and they let me dictate, like a day where I come back monthly, so I just have like places that I will go monthly, which makes it a lot easier to, like, have it like a set schedule, and then I just try to test new places and add on.

Sarina Bowen

Like, what kind of business? What? What makes a good what's a good sort of connection?

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, well, so the first place that said yes to me was another women-owned business. And I do feel like they are, like, more inclined to, like; take a chance on another woman-owned business. So she actually has a flower shop, and she does like high tea on the days that I go. So she has people going there for like, high tea— but it's on a very visible Street. It's on the Pacific Coast Highway, so I think it's—I'm not sure it's benefiting her in any way, because I'm not sure my customers are going to buy flowers, um, but she has a space for me to pop up, and it doesn't like detract from her business, and it adds something fun to her guests. And I also go to coffee shops and breweries, and I do want to start reaching out to restaurants as well.

Jess Lahey

I'm actually looking at her pop-up schedule on her site right now, and there's also—I wouldn't have even occurred to me—but these silent readings that I see every once in a while on social media that I'm like, "Oh, if I lived in a city, I would be going to those all the time," where people just get together to read together. I've also seen them—people getting together just to write together—and those? That's brilliant. Showing up for something like that is such a wonderful idea, and your pop-up schedule looks fantastic. I'll definitely be dropping that into the show notes as well.

Sarina Bowen

Well, I just want to push back on the idea that the flower shop isn't getting anything out of you stopping there, because, like—so she runs a flower shop. I'm just certain she has a tiny core number of people who come every week and get fresh flowers because, you know, money is no object, and why not.But then there are other people who are on her list, maybe, who are only there when it's somebody's birthday three times a year. But if you're coming on a certain day, and she can tell her following, you know, that, "Oh, stop by on Tuesday because La Fleuria is going to be here, and it's, you know, the romance book truck, and you definitely want to check it out," it gives her a timely thing she can tell the people that do like flowers. And, you know, she's going to maybe have more foot traffic on that day than she otherwise might not have had.

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, I think it’s more maybe imposter syndrome, because she has like 800,000 followers.

Sarina Bowen

Wow!

Stephanie Pao

So I’m like drop in your bucket.

Sarina Bowen

Wow. Well, maybe we should all be in the flower business.

Stephanie Pao

Yeah.

Jess Lahey

Well, what did you have to sort of overcome with your own resistance in order to try this new thing? Because when writers have this same problem, we have an idea. It's a little glimmer, a sparkle, of an idea. It's so appealing in our minds. But, like, the commitment to actually, like, set aside six months of your life and write an entire book because you had this glimmer of an idea is a process, and that is why there aren't as many people who write complete books as you have ideas for them. So how did you convince yourself that, um, that this risky thing was—was something you ought to commit to? And how did you make that decision?

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, I think I’m still convincing myself that...

Jess Lahey

Okay, fair, fair.

Stephanie Pao

Um, I think it's actually really—it's really hard, because I think we're really programmed, or at least I was, on, like, this typical metric of success, which is, like: go to college, get a job, keep climbing the corporate ladder. And so I just kind of thought I would be doing that my whole life. But I never once thought, like, does that make me happy? Like, I was in a marketing job, and I was like—I climbed up to, like, VP, but I didn't enjoy it at all. And I just thought that's what we were supposed to do. So I think for me, I have been freelancing for three years because I got really burnt out, and I've just slowly come to terms with, like, maybe what I build for myself, or what I want for my life, is different than what all my friends have. Because I still talk to my friends that I've had for a long time, and I don't think they understand what I'm doing. And I feel like you will get a lot of resistance from people that you know, because they just want you to do the thing that feels safe to them, which is not venturing and doing something completely unknown. So I think it's, like, being really comfortable with the idea yourself and that not everyone's going to get it—but that's okay, because the people who do will, like, really support you. And then, of course, like, I'm not going to sugarcoat it—it is like a big financial risk. I think if you're setting aside time to write and not doing, like, other work, like—it is a risk either way. So I am lucky enough to have support, and I think that's, like, really important to share; that, like, my parents supported me so that I could take this on. And I—I started taking less and less clients from my, like, freelancing work to prepare to do this. And, like, I am still not, like, super profitable, but I know that I can, like, push back into freelancing if I really need to. So I think it's—I'm comfortable knowing that there are other means of, like, income if I really need it. But I really want to give myself time to see where this goes.

Sarina Bowen

Right, I love that. So, of course, you knew that freelancing was—that you had some connections there, which helps, so you have, like, a little bit of a cushion for yourself, which is amazing. You—you mentioned earlier that you took a course in bookselling, and I just wonder how you found that, and how—how you felt. Was it information that you already had? Did it just give you confidence? Or did you really learn a lot from that course?

Stephanie Pao

Well, I found it through the American Booksellers Association. It was, like, a linked course that they had on, like, how to get started with opening your own bookstore. And I did learn a lot. I think at the time, I was really debating whether I should do a bookstore or do something more mobile. And that course actually made me feel like—when we did all the calculations—the rent is so much in LA that it just seemed, like, much, much too risky to do a store first. Like, maybe building up a customer base before investing in a shop. So I think I did learn a lot. I also—there's—I get a lot of the same questions from people who want to start something similar. And I got all of that information through this course. Like, a lot of people ask me where you buy books from, and things that have to do with bookselling that aren't very well known. And I think the course provides that information.

Jess Lahey

Nice. Do you do you use Ingram [Ingram Content Group], and so you have like a special account as a bookseller?

Stephanie Pao

Yes. And I just started opening, like, accounts with the publishers, because I wasn't sure how much I was going to order, and you have to meet minimums to order through the publishers. I was like, I don't know how quickly my inventory is going to go, but now I think it will be more worth it, because you get a better, like, discount through the publishers.

Jess Lahey

As someone who's not involved in the bookselling community or the independent publishing community—just for my knowledge—one of the things that I, you know, often lament is if I like an author that is an independent bookseller and their print books are hard to come by. How do you—is Ingram someone who helps you bridge that? Does Ingram do this, like, print on demand? Sorry, there—my husband's home. Could you explain how this works a little bit to me?

Stephanie Pao

So I also—well, I'm not 100% sure—but yes, Ingram does the print-on-demand books, and they have books from a lot of independent authors on there. I have a friend who is an indie author, and she said that she first listed her book on Amazon, but then the bookstores couldn't buy it, so she had to do something to get it on Ingram. So I'm not sure how that works, but I've also bought directly from a few authors, like the author I mentioned, who is, like, my second best seller. I buy directly from her, and I'm not sure where she gets her copies, but it is a much better deal than through Ingram.

Jess Lahey

Yeah. So, Ingram—their first and primary business was as a wholesaler for traditionally published books. So, you know, in the ’90s, when I briefly worked at Random House, Ingram was—you know, when a new book is published, Ingram buys a certain amount of them, and Baker and Taylor buy a certain amount of them, and they stand as a middleman who is ready to wholesale those books to booksellers. And then, of course, they created their print-on-demand service so that, probably, when you log into Ingram, you can see indie titles and traditional titles sort of all together in their offered database. But I did learn something recently about indies and Ingram that was a real eye-opener for me, which is that an author who opens an IngramSpark account and uploads their files there—like, like an indie author that you buy from probably does—has to set a discount amount. And unfortunately, the number that the bookseller gets is not the same as what the author sets. So the author can set a discount to retail in a band between, I don’t know, 40 and 60 or something like that. But, um, in order for a bookseller to get their maximum discount, I have to put 53% discount or greater—like 53 or 55—and if I put 52 instead, then the bookseller gets, often, a very bad discount that is not 52%; it’s more like 30%. So there’s this magic that happens at the 53% author discount that allows you and your colleagues to get the max discount in your Ingram account. And it took me only, like, eight years to learn this magic.

Jess Lahey

So Stephanie, this is why we keep Sarina around, because she knows how this stuff works.

Stephanie Pao

I figured it was there was something, because the range in discounts I see from indie offers is so wide from like 20 to 40% and at 20% it's almost not even worth it to carry.

Sarina Bowen

Right. I bet it isn’t.

Stephanie Pao

Yeah.

Sarina Bowen

So you if somebody Well, but, and that's where the confusion comes in, because here's an author, and she's putting 45% in that box, and then you're seeing it at 20 and going, this isn't worth it. And of course, like both of you, could be frustrated because…

Jess Lahey

Exactly!

Sarina Bowen

Because that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So um, but I have learned that 53 is the magic number, and that if an author puts 53 and then you will get your max discount. And it took me way, way too long to understand this.

Jess Lahey

This is like… this is, this is—these little random things that come up occasionally—are, you know, why I talk about flattening the learning curve for other authors or booksellers or whomever that listen to this podcast. Because how on earth would you know that? And then you're frustrated because you can't carry a book, because you can't make money on it. The author's incredibly frustrated because you can't—won't—carry the book, and then that piece of information never gets across. So thank you for diving into that dorky detail for me, because, again, I think that's such an important piece of information that no one would ever know unless someone somewhere is discussing it. So thank you.

Sarina Bowen

Um…you're welcome. It's really just inside baseball—like picky junk that takes up my week. But here we are.

Jess Lahey

I know. But the people who listen to this podcast—in particular, the people who are fans of Sarina Bowen—are often people who are also writing within the indie space. And so how, you know—how are they going to find this stuff out?

Sarina Bowen

Well okay.

Jess Lahey

Okay.

Sarina Bowen

Even if it's not as you know, as joyful as the following your dreams and the flower shop stuff, but we're here to do all of it.

Jess Lahey

Well… But the big—this is also a big part of it, because there are also going to be people out there who are like, Oh, I don't want to open a brick-and-mortar store, but Oh, a truck? I mean, like, for me, that's the entry point. That's very, very exciting to me. So, the other reason I wanted to be on this podcast today is because I want to understand how that works, and is it a way into something that would really feed your soul and your heart—and not to mention your book… sell—your, your bookshelves.

Sarina Bowen

Of course. So, Stephanie, before we go, I would love—since you're the expert here—I would love for you to recommend a couple romances that you're excited about right now. And if you wouldn't mind, I would be super thrilled to hear what your number two bestseller is—that you, that you are her best bookseller.

Stephanie Pao

Yeah, okay. It's Yes No Maybe by Jessica Sherry, and it is a story of a woman who has, um, scars on her face from, like, an accident from when she was younger. And she's, like, always felt not worthy of, like, all the good things in life, and she's settling. And she moves next door to a romance writer who has writer's block, and she becomes basically his muse. And it's, like, very sweet but very emotional. Some other books I love—I recently finished Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and I've never cried so hard in a book. And it's, like, also such a beautiful love story. I, like, have chills thinking about it.

Sarina Bowen

Wow.

Stephanie Pao

Yeah. And then, just like a favorite that I always recommend is All Rhodes Lead Here by Mariana Zapata. I'm in my late 30s, so I feel like I love when characters are in their 30s and still figuring things out, and I love a slow burn romance.

Sarina Bowen

All right. Thank you so much. I, um—I love those choices. Um, we've all walked into bookstores and seen, like, the same five books on the front table that we've seen in every other bookstore we've walked into that month. And it's really lovely to hear some different recommendations from you, and we really appreciate it. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today to talk about this super fun project that—that Jess and I are like, Ooh, we could just quit everything and get a...

Jess Lahey

Yeah. Well, no. The other thing is, I'm like, Okay, when's my next speaking engagement in Los Angeles, and can I make it coincide with one of your pop-up dates so that I could come by?

Stephanie Pao

I will drive the truck to you.

Jess Lahey

That… actually, we'll figure it out. Because I just, I'm dying to see your truck, dying to see how it works. I just, I'm loving the selections. And I'm just really happy for more than anything else, I'm really happy for someone who has found a way to turn something they love into a business that can work. So I'm just so happy for you.

Stephanie Pao

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.

Sarina Bowen

It was entirely our pleasure. And thank you listeners for tuning in once again to the am writing podcast, and until next week, keep your heads in the game and your butt's in the chair.

Jess Lahey

The Hashtag AmWriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

In her debut novel, Slanting Towards the Sea (Simon & Schuster, July 2025), Lidija Hilje has mastered it. The story feels so raw and so real—and English is not even Lidija’s first language! It’s a remarkable achievement.

I’m excited to speak with Lidija about her path to publication and how she figured out how to get the emotion of her characters onto the page.

Links from the Pod:

Article from Jane Friedman

Guide on Literary Fiction from Lidija

Lidija’s website: www.lidijahilje.com

Author Accelerator book coaches Barbara Boyd and Nita Collins

Hey everyone, it's Jenny Nash. This episode happens to feature an Author Accelerator book coach. Author Accelerator is the company I founded more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. If you've been curious about what it takes to become a successful book coach, which is to say, someone who makes money, meaning, and joy out of serving writers, I've just created a bunch of great content to help you learn more. You can access it all by going to bookcoaches.com/waitlist. We'll be enrolling a new cohort of students in our certification program in October, so now's a perfect time to learn more and start making plans for a whole new career.

Transcript below!

EPISODE 456 - TRANSCRIPT

Jennie Nash

Hey everyone, it's Jennie Nash. This episode happens to feature an Author Accelerator book coach. Author Accelerator is the company I founded more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. If you've been curious about what it takes to become a successful book coach—which is to say, someone who makes money, meaning, and joy out of serving writers—I've just created a bunch of great content to help you learn more. You can access it all by going to bookcoaches.com/waitlist. That's bookcoaches.com/waitlist. We'll be enrolling a new cohort of students in our certification program in October, so now’s a perfect time to learn more and start making plans for a whole new career.

Multiple Speakers:

Is it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Alright, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.

Jennie Nash

Hey writers, I'm Jennie Nash, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting podcast, the place where we talk about writing all the things; short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, pitches, and proposals. Today I'm talking with Lidija Hilje, the author of the novel Slanting Towards the Sea. And what we're talking about is how to capture emotion on the page—the most elusive thing in the entire writing universe. Lidija lives in Croatia. She's a former lawyer who I know because she became a book coach through Author Accelerator. This is her first novel, and it's something else. As a longtime book coach, it’s really hard for me to read for pleasure anymore, because it's so hard not to see the writer at work and the seams of the creation. But Slanting Towards the Sea—I saw none of that. I fell wholly into the story and became lost in it; the olive trees and the sea, the pain of these people and this love triangle, and also just the love that they had for life and each other. It's almost unbearably raw—the way life itself can feel sometimes. And yet, since I know Lidija and her story to becoming a writer, I also know how much work it took to create this feeling and emotion. I'm so excited to speak with Lidija today, and so excited for people to hear about her and her story. So welcome, Lidija. Thanks for coming onto the podcast.

Lidija Hilje

Thank you so much for having me and for this incredible introduction. I'm so honored.

Jennie Nash

Well, before we get started, I want to read the jacket copy for Slanting Towards the Sea, so that our listeners can hear the bones of the story that you wrote. Is that okay if I read it for our listeners?

Lidija Hilje

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Jennie Nash

Okay.

Ivona divorced the love of her life, Vlaho, a decade ago. They met as students at the turn of the millennium, when newly democratic Croatia was alive with hope and promise. But the challenges of living in a burgeoning country extinguished Ivona’s dreams one after another—and a devastating secret forced her to set him free. Now Vlaho is remarried and a proud father of two, while Ivona’s life has taken a downward turn. In her thirties, she has returned to her childhood home to care for her ailing father. Bewildered by life’s disappointments, she finds solace in reconnecting with Vlaho and is welcomed into his family by his spirited wife, Marina. But when a new man enters Ivona’s life, the carefully cultivated dynamic between the three is disrupted, forcing a reckoning for all involved. Set against the mesmerizing Croatian coastline, Slanting Towards the Sea is a cinematic, emotionally searing debut about the fragile nature of potential and the transcendence of love.

That’s it! What a—what a—what a summary, right? So I want to start by talking about the genre of this book, Lidija. As a book coach, you specialize in helping people write literary fiction. And you're extremely articulate about defining exactly what it is. And I'd like to just start there, by talking about how you see this novel, where it's positioned and, um, and your sense of it in, as a—in the genre, um, categories, if you will. Um, and I'll share with our listeners before you answer that English is not your first language—which is something we're going to talk about from a writing perspective, but just from a listening perspective, to give people some context for that. So let's talk about—let's talk about genre.

Lidija Hilje

Yeah, well, genre is one of my favorite topics as a book coach, and so naturally it is something I love talking about. So the first book I ever wrote, which is now safely shelved in a drawer at the bottom of a drawer, was women's fiction. And the reason why it was women's fiction was that because I was learning how to write, I was learning how to weave a story together. And in doing so, I was trying to find some commonalities in stories—like how stories work, how you develop them, how you develop a character arc, how you wrap it up towards the end. And—but my intention always was to write literary. I was just not very good at doing it. And so I kind of—like all the feedback that I got throughout my—from developmental editors—it was like geared towards kind of channeling the book towards women's fiction. And this is something that really still strikes me as a book coach: how different it is to coach literary fiction as opposed to genre fiction, which is more formulaic. So basically, that first book is safely shelved. And when I started writing this book, I was working really hard at trying to make it not be formulaic. And actually, one of the book coaches from our community helped me. I had a conversation with Barbara Boyd where I outlined my story for her, and she said there was this moment where I kind of did something in my outline…what could basically be called a cop-out—so that… I killed a character, basically, so that the…you know, that the book would close neatly, right? And so she called me out on it and said—because I talked to her specifically because she coaches literary fiction but didn't like or coach women's fiction—and I thought that perspective was something I needed. And so she said, "Why are you killing that character?” And that was the wake-up moment for me, because that was the moment when I realized that in doing so, that was the typical moment where a writer kind of goes toward the genre. And where the interesting thing in the literary fiction genre lies is exploring, you know, what happens when you don't kill the character—when you don't take the easy way out. And so, genre-wise, what I, you know—I run a book club for writers, and we read a lot of literary fiction. And so, I was constantly trying to figure out, like, what is it about these books that, you know, define genre? And in studying these books, there are several things, and I could talk about this, I guess, for centuries, but I'll try to...

Jennie Nash

I—I love it. Let's do it.

Lidija Hilje

So basically, in literary fiction, there are many things that genre fiction also has. There are themes, there are character arcs—you know, a character might grow, though not necessarily. But basically, it's much less clear than in genre fiction. In genre fiction, for instance, you have—especially in women's fiction—you will have a woman who is shy and then she becomes confident toward the end. Or you have a horrible, you know, self-obsessed character who learns their lesson toward the end of the book. It's really clear-cut. The reader can latch on to what the problem is without thinking too much about it. And literary fiction does the opposite. It fans out a little bit. It touches on many different things that kind of seem unrelated, but they are related. And this is a problem in writing it, as well as coaching it, because as a coach or as a writer, you have to be aware of all these things. You have to beware of how these things tie together so that you have the idea of this through line that goes throughout the story, whereas the reader might not be catching on as fast but does have the confidence that you, as the writer, are going to get them there, if that makes sense.

Jennie Nash

Oh, it makes so much sense. So when you were working on—I actually remember reading some opening, maybe the opening chapters of the novel that has been shelved. When I read those pages, they struck me as if they had that feeling of literary fiction. Was that your intention with that novel as well?

Lidija Hilje

Yes, it was. It was just that I was unable to... I came to writing late. I mean, I was always a writer in the sense that I was always writing something, but I came to writing fiction and specifically books very late. It was 2017 when I started writing that book in Croatian. And the first, you know, contact with any craft or writing happened in 2019 when I finished the draft and I translated that book into English, and I started looking for ways of pub... you know, publishing that book and realized that the first draft is not the last draft. Like that was the—like it was—sometimes it's so funny to think like how recently I didn't know anything about publishing or writing at all. So basically, I did want that book to be literary fiction. I always wanted to do, you know, to write the type of fiction that I wrote in Slanting [Slanting Towards the Sea], and obviously I hope to, you know, hone my craft in the future, but it wasn't—it wasn’t on that level. And the first developmental editor that I worked with in 2019, she was giving me all the logical advice that you can give someone, which is... hone the character arc you are telling here, show, you know, all those things that we tell our clients when we work with them as book coaches. But what it did is it completely stripped the literary part from it, and it made me write in scene, which is not how literary fiction is written. You know, like, one of the differences between commercial fiction and literary fiction is that you don't necessarily write in scenes. You write in summaries, and you write in postcards, which is the type of a scene that goes deeper instead of forward, if that makes sense. So you're not kind of—nothing changes for the protagonist, the protagonist doesn't realize anything, they don't decide on a new course of action, nothing new happens, but the reader's understanding of the character happens. And this is also true when you're looking at the character arc on the, you know, scope of the whole novel. Like in literary fiction, it will often be that, you know, that the character doesn't change much in terms of, like what I said before—she was shy and she stopped being shy, right? It will just be that the reader's understanding of the character deepens. And so my first book was an attempt at literary fiction, but it was not an execution. You know, the execution didn't really match that, and I feel like the advice that I got from my early developmental editor was just kind of trying to put me in the confines of commercial fiction. Which is... you know... understandable. You know, and I'm great— I'm even, like, today—I'm grateful for it because you first have to learn how to walk and then you can run, right? So I did have to go through the process of learning how to write a good scene, of learning how not to tell, of learning how to hide the seams that you—that you were talking about—you need to hide your fingerprints as a writer. And that was my learning book. I learned a lot from writing it, but by the time I was done with it, it was not—it didn’t—it was not a bad book, and I got a lot of full requests for it, but it was not—it did not end up being what I had hoped for it.

Jennie Nash

So, in 2017, when you started that book, you said you came to writing late. Do you mind sharing where you were in your life, if you want to share your age or what you were doing in your life, just to give us some context for what you mean by that—by coming to it late?

Lidija Hilje

So yeah, so 2017 was one of the hardest years in my life, I think. I think it's just the moment where I was around 35, I think. I would have to do the math, but mid-30s. And I had just been fired for the second time after my second maternity leave. And, you know jobs in my profession, which is—I was an attorney—were scarce, and I opened my own law firm. And I sat there in my law office, you know, a woman working as an attorney in Zadar, Croatia. It was not, you know, I was not having like flocks of clients, you know, going through the door. And you had to sit there from 8am to 4pm, which is our work time. And I had, um, ii had um... I started writing basically to pass the time. And I was writing just the scenes that I was interested in that, you know, brought me joy and then I, you know, wrote the intermittent scene, and the book grew and grew. And by the time I had finished it, which was a year and a half later, you know, it became... It just became a thing that I was—it took over it took over my whole life. I could not, you know and financially it was a difficult time for us as well. We had reached—my husband and I, like I said mid 30’s—and we had kind of peaked career wise here in Croatia. So basically, what people don't understand about Croatia is that even if you're a brain surgeon, or if you're a lawyer, or if you're a programmer—like my husband—the money you make is not much more than the average wage. And so, you know, we were at the top of our game professionally, but not earning enough to make ends meet. And so we had started thinking about moving to Ireland basically, which is the, you know, IT hub for the... in Europe. And in thinking about it, I was sitting in my law office and I was basically crying my eyes out thinking if I go there, I'm going to be stripped of my identity as an attorney. I had been working toward that for basically 15, 20 years. And in trying to get over that pain of working towards something that in Ireland, it's not going to mean anything because, you know, the legal system is so very different and my use of language was not, you know, it's still not really good. Like professional English is not the same as this spoken English, you know, everyday English. And so, in kind of trying to accept that we are going to move and I'm going to be stripped of that identity as a lawyer, I was, in a way, you know, to make it easier for myself, I started accepting all the things that I didn't want to look at, which is I hated my job.

Jennie Nash

Right, right.

Lidija Hilje

I loved being in a courtroom, like that was a good part of it. But everything else, you know, the intellectual part of it, like thinking about law, applying law to a certain case was interesting to me. But everything else was horrible. And so, once I accepted that, and my husband got a job, you know, like working for... as a freelancer for an outside company, and we could stay in Croatia, I was like, "And what am I going to do now? I can't go back to being a lawyer." And so, because his wage was a little bit more than, you know, for the first time, he could afford for me to go, you know, to take a year off and to see what I could do. And so, for a while, I interned at a foreign literary agency—that didn't go anywhere. Then I wrote, you know, a copy for a startup that didn't end up, you know, paying me. So that was kind of like—I was at the end of my rope by the, you know, toward the end of that year. And then I encountered the Author Accelerator program for book coaches, and I had during that year I had connected with writers and I have realized that basically the legal knowledge really translates beautifully into book coaching. So it was kind of like, you know, working on a story, or if you're working on a case, or working on a book, it's kind of a similar thing, similar logic applies. And so it was a… you—you know, it was, I know I'm mixing a little bit the books coaching and legal and, you know, writing careers...

Jennie Nash

No, it's fascinating.

Lidija Hilje

But they are so intertwined in my life, yeah.

Jennie Nash

I mean, it's fascinating the way that you trained yourself on story, basically. And I remember the conversation when you approached Author Accelerator, because you were nervous about being able to meet the requirements of our program because of your language—that English is not your first language. But I, I mean, we have a system whereby it's you try it, you know, if—if you'd meet the requirements, you meet them and if you don't, you don't. And it struck me that your grasp of story was so profound. That I didn’t know... you know, it was one conversation about your grasp of the written language. But, um, you were... you were very nervous about your ability to do the work of book coaching in another language. And it's just interesting from where we sit now, so I want to circle back to the book itself and the novel and what you accomplished in it, because it really does have the thing that so many writers are always trying to do, and they talk about it—it is so elusive. Which is this capturing this feeling, emotion, letting the reader sit in the mirror of what those characters are feeling, and you feel it your own self, and that it, you know, when it, when it works, it's, it's like a magic trick. And it strikes me that you came at that very deliberately. It was not accidental. Is that fair to say? Would you believe that?

Lidija Hilje

I think I always wanted to write about... I always wanted to write quiet stories. And for quiet stories to work, you have to make the quiet things loud in a way. And the loud things are the emotions. And so yes, yes, it was always my goal. I was not always good at it... in writing emotion. But yeah, like during that process of writing that first book, I struggled with it a lot. I struggled with what I guess happens a lot of the time when we are writing is that we're trying very hard for the reader to see things the way we are seeing them. And this counter-intuitively causes the very reverse effect. You know the reader—is the more you're trying to make them listen to you, the more you're trying to, you know, impose your view of things on them, the more they resist. So the trick is basically, and I'll make it sound very easy, it's not easy at all to execute, but the trick is to kind of, you know, to try to find a way and to deliver that emotion without judgment. Like, this is what I'm feeling, or this is what my character is feeling. And not trying to explain it, not trying to get compassion, not trying to get the reader to feel anything. Like, you're just putting things out in the ether, and you're allowing the reader to do their own math. And this is something you can do in literary fiction, which is more open-ended, right? And the readers of genre fiction, I do need more hand-holding in that sense that they will not maybe work as hard as the literary reader. So yeah, I did work very hard. And, you know, the first book, the “shelved” book, really got to a point where I couldn't do that work anymore. But when I started Slanting [Slanting Towards the Sea]… the literally... the first scene in Slanting [Slanting Towards the Sea], came out the way it did. Like that's…

Jennie Nash

Oh wow!

Lidija Hilje

It didn't change. We had this meeting of writing friends and one of them said, let's exchange, like, let's read 500 new words and I was not working on anything. I had been focusing on book coaching at that moment—that was 2021. And I went to the moment in that room when she is thinking about her ex-husband, you know, when the protagonist is thinking about her ex-husband, and it just came out the way it is. I don't think I changed basically more than three words since that scene came out the way it is. And so...

Jennie Nash

Oh, that's amazing. I want to... I want to read some of the lines from that opening scene, if I can, to give the readers... I mean the listeners a sense of what we're talking about. So here's how Slanting Towards the Sea begins.

I open his socials and sift through his photos. I know their sequence like I know the palm of my hand. Better even, because I can never memorize what my palm looks like, how the life line twirls into the love line, how it begins tight and uniform, but then turns ropey. It scares me to look at it, to trace the lines, to see where they might lead me in years to come. But I know Vlaho’s photos by heart.

And it goes on from there. It's, it's just, it's so haunting. And, and the whole, the whole novel is, is that, has that feel to it. So when did you, when did you know that with this story you had it? You knew with the other one that you couldn't get it back, or that it wasn't going to happen. When did you begin? Was it after the sharing of that scene where you thought, oh, I've got this?

Lidija Hilje

I knew that I could write a scene, but there's a difference, you know, a postcard. I would call this a postcard. This is the typical example of a postcard, a scene where nothing changes for the protagonist and she doesn't understand anything new, but it kind of deepens the reader's understanding of, you know, her situation. So I knew I could write it, which is something I struggled with, with the first book, but I—there's a long road from doing one good postcard and then, you know, writing an entire book, which in literary fiction you have this additional, you know, challenge. You do a ratio basically of normal scenes and summaries, and postcards, and you have to maintain that ratio throughout the book. So, um, yeah for the... relatively early in the book I had submitted that first scene for some competitions. And I got great feedback. It won a critique match, writing a competition in the literary fiction category. And it was long listed in the BPA Pitch Prize in the UK. So I knew that... you know... you know... that the opening of the book was working. So that was good. But from then on, it was such a struggle, because you read the book, and so you know, it has dual timelines; it spans 20 years. I was struggling so bad trying to figure out whether I should do, you know, the past in flashbacks? Whether I should alternate timelines? How do I set this massive story up, which has, you know, the past, and, you know, the present, which happens over a span of... I don't know... five or six months in the present timeline. So I struggled with it a lot. But the thing that I struggled with the most was accountability. So basically, for the first year and a half—for the first year—I wrote, I think, maybe 150 pages. They were not very well set up. I was unsure of them, and I would always push the book backwards to work on client stories. And so what really changed the game for me was when I—I have this program that I run in summertime and one of our book coaches was in that program, Nita Collins. And after the program ended, we partnered up. And so she was my accountability—you know partner, as well as…you know, feedback giver and cheerleader and all the things. And so, you know, I still struggled with how to set up all the things and how to build up the narrative, which I think is really hard for people to coach literary fiction, because you can basically only offer solutions that are kind of geared towards tropey, right? So the author really does have to do all the work, in that sense, but she was absolutely instrumental in terms of me getting the pages down and just seeing if the pages hit the mark or didn't, why they didn't, you know, talking to her, just voicing, talking about the book. And so this went on for a year and within one year I had a full first draft and from then on it was a quick revising process and within three months I had three agent offers. So it was a fast process from then on, from having the first draft, to getting an agent.

Jennie Nash

Well, big shout out to Nita Collins and the Author Accelerator community. I love that a connection happened for you guys. It's really beautiful the way you describe it. So can you explain why you decided it was time to go out to agents? With the first book you decided... this is not going to go anywhere. I'm putting it aside. And with this one, very soon after you finished the first draft, you decided to pitch. What was that decision-making process like for you?

Lidija Hilje

So I want to be completely honest. I didn't shelve the first project because I thought it was not, I could not get it to a level. I was convinced that it was on a level, and I had pitched it, but I had been rejected over 100 times. So basically the industry decided for me that it wasn't going to happen. And one of the things that was really hard for me in that first book is that I set it in the US, which I've never been to the US. So it made it very difficult, but I felt like if I set the book in Croatia, I would, like the cultural perspective would overpower the quiet narrative. And I thought that I couldn't do it. And so I, you know, in Slanting [Slanting Towards the Sea], this is the base of the book. Like, it's, you know, I've found a way to weave the cultural perspective as seamlessly as I could. But the pitching process—I basically... I had the first draft done when I had decided to pitch the book. It was a little bit—to be honest, I was a little bit hasty. I had applied for The Muse & the Marketplace conversation with agents. You could...

Jennie Nash

Like the speed dating.

Lidija Hilje

Yeah, like the speed dating. And so I purchased a few tickets for that. And this was done for two reasons. The first one was to, you know; give myself a goal to work towards—to kind of make it all go faster. And the second goal was to see how the industry looks at this. And if there are any issues that they have with the, you know, with the book or with how it's set up, I would rather know sooner than later. And so, because they were reading not just the pages—they were reading, like, 10 pages, a synopsis, and a query letter—which I would also wholeheartedly recommend writing during the writing phase. Preferably, you know, toward the end of the first draft, you would have to do the pitching materials, because they inform so much of... they make you really focus on what the book is about and kind of drawing out the themes and the plot and kind of parsing all those things out. So I told myself: if I go there, and if I get some, you know the best thing that could happen is I could get some full requests. The worst thing that could happen was they will tell me that I'm not there, that my writing is not there, and that the and/or that the book doesn't hold together. And so what happened is, I was... I had just finished my first draft, but I knew that the ending wasn't right. I had the wrong ending. So I knew I had to rewrite the last third of the book, at least. And I went on to that conference, and out of five agents I had talked to, four had requested a full manuscript—toward, like, when I had it. So it was a huge, you know, confidence builder, and that summer I really, really—I can't, it's really amazing what happened—I just, I was so energized, and I just, you know, I don't know, it's like a visit from the muse, even though it's just work. But it felt—I felt very inspired, and I completely rewrote the book, basically, and that gave it the ending that it needed to have, which was also one of the fights against the genre confinements which I had kind of put on myself. So yeah, so that was the decision that I should be doing that, and at the same time, I wanted to be, like, 100% sure that when I sent the manuscript out, it would be finished—that it would be the best that I can make it by myself, you know, and, you know, for Nita to read it, for a couple of beta readers that I've really trusted—and they have the same taste in books that I do—to read it. And only with that feedback was I really ready to send it out to agents.

Jennie Nash

So—the—we'll get to what happened with the agents in a minute. But I want to return to something that you said about the culture of Croatia and the role that it has in the story, and you called it foundational. And it really feels both the setting of the country, meaning the land, there's... there's a lot you write about, um, the sea, and the food that comes from the sea, and the winds that travel, um, both on the sea and on the land, and there's olive trees that play a large part in this story. So there is a lot about the country itself, and then there's, there is a lot about the, the culture and the, the changing bureaucracies and politics and things that are going on. And it's interesting that you spoke in your own life about contemplating leaving the country, because your characters at some key points, contemplate leaving as well. So there's—there was very much about the constraints of the world of this place, and that's part of what the, you know, it's interesting that you talk about it as your concern was that it would overwhelm the story, but it's part of, for me, what the container in which that emotion happened. It felt not separate from the story, but a really critical component of it. The way these characters lived on the land, and in this place, and what that allowed them to do,—or to be—or not be and how they bumped up against it. It was... It's really like you have a historian's grasp of that, your world, was that something you were conscious of while you were writing as well?

Lidija Hilje

Yes. I was always worried about writing, you know, a Croatian perspective. Like that was always a big concern for me because I, you know, when you're looking at literature and what interests readers, it's either, you know, the book set in the UK and US, which is kind of the clear narrative, it doesn't, it's, it's a pervasive culture that we all understand when it kind of becomes invisible, or, you know, a background noise, it doesn't really affect the narrative. Whereas the other interesting things that readers, when they want to travel somewhere, they will want to go somewhere exotic, you know, whether it's Nigeria or, you know, Eastern Asia, Japan, China, you know? So it felt like Croatia is different, but not different enough, you know? And so it's, it's kind of like almost like it makes the reader constantly forget that they're in Croatia, while at the same time kind of jarring them when you remind them of the differences, and this was one of the, one of the, you know, key points of my work with Nita, was when she would just notice things like, what is, you know, what is the, why are there, there are no dividers in the hospital between the beds? And it's just like... and now I realize that I have to explain how our hospitals look like, and it's not like yours. Or the difference in the tides, which in America are, you know, over, over, I don't know how many feet, and in Croatia they're just, um, and we talked about it when you were here in Zadar as well. So it's just like, it's very similar to America, but not quite. And that was very frustrating at times to try to depict. But on the other hand, in writing Ivona, I wanted to, I feel, I have felt and still feel a lot of frustration with my country. I love it, but I have been planning, like there have been multiple, you know, periods in my life when I had hoped to leave, just because how frustrating it is to live here sometimes with the bureaucracy and just the way the mentality is here and everything. So basically in writing her story, I wanted to air out those grievances in a way. To give them voice, to examine them, to see what they are, and like everything, you know, it's not black or white, it's the way we are here, and it's also the way I am, you know. I notice this when I interact with people from other areas, and they say that us Croats and, you know, Balkan people are very, you know, always like, always complaining about something, which is true, we are. And so, yeah, so it's difficult. It's difficult because I wanted that to be a part of the story. And at the same time, you know, there, you know, there is the possibility of the American reader who doesn't see that it's a part of the culture here, basically. That they could look at Ivona, and say, you know, why does she just not snap out of it?

Jennie Nash

Hmm…

Lidija Hilje

And, you know, it's almost like saying to me to snap out of the issues that I had as I was like, trying, you know, like banging my head against the wall, trying to get my career going, and t's not working. Like whatever you're, you're trying—like it's easier for me to make it in the US, never having set a foot there, than in Croatia.

Jennie Nash

Right.

Lidija Hilje

I mean, my book is being published in the US; it's still not being published in Croatia, just for the record. So it's really hard, and it's really hard to make that a part of the book, but not have it, like, weigh the book all the way down. So it was a process. It's like all the things you try and miss and, you know, sometimes you go overboard, and then you have to pull back, and you have to be careful not to go too deeply into your own experience and just feel that the character is separate from you, and obviously she has some different issues than I had and a different occupation, but a lot of her grievances are mine as well.

Jennie Nash

Well, that yearning and, can… I guess confusion really does come across. The how will I, how will I live? How will I love? How will I spend my days? I mean, these are the questions of our life, and they're the questions of this character in—as she goes through what she's experiencing. That they're, they're both mundane questions and, and, you know, the most profound. And, and the way you capture it... I mean, that was just to circle back to my initial idea of talking about how to capture emotion on the page, you know, which is the work of a novel. That's what it's for. That's its point. And it's just so hard to do. And you just did it on so many levels in a language that's not your first. And it really is just extraordinary and moving. And in preparing to talk to you today, I read a lot of the early reviews—people who got advanced readers copies, 'cause the book comes out in July, 2025, and we're speaking a few months before that time. So it's not fully out in the world, but it's enough that, um, I can see that reaction rippling through the readers and, and certainly through the, um, professional, um, colleagues and, you know, who've blurbed the book. But this idea of it being—the word people kept using was “moving.” And there was a lot of words like “tender” and “haunting,” you know, people really felt what it sounds like you intended them to feel. So how, from where you sit now, how does that—how does it feel to have gotten that feedback from some of the writers you admire? And to know that it did… it works doing what you want it to do? How does that feel?

Lidija Hilje

Oh, it's, it's impossible to talk about that because I guess I'm typically Croatian in the way that it's easier for me to sit in my failures than to sit in my successes. So it's absolutely incredible. I mean, when you get a blurb from Claire Lombardo, who is, you know, I absolutely adore her books and I think she's insanely talented, you know, and for her, you know, she used the words “humane,” and that really—I was so moved by that. So my… kind of my goal is for, for people to see the humanity in these, these characters. And so it's really, it's really amazing. It's, it's beyond, you know, some of the, you know, I got really great blurbs from authors I really, really deeply admire: Thao Thai, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Amy Lin, and Madeline Lucas, and as well, you know, Claire Lombardo, whom I mentioned. It's really incredible. It's so life affirming for me, you know, to be able to do that. But like I said, it's always, you know, when I'm reading the reviews, which I probably shouldn't be doing, I'm always focusing on the few that are not—just not feeling it. And then I have to remind myself it’s not—this is not a book for anyone, for just everyone. And it's, you know, it's a journey. It's still, like you said, early days. I'm learning to be an author, to grow an even thicker skin in that sense. But yeah, it did feel great to get those beautiful reviews. And I'm so grateful to them for reading and donating their time to me.

Jennie Nash

I mean, it's so not fair what I want to say. It's so not fair. But I want to ask anyway. Quite a few of the reviews said they can't wait for your next book, which, you know, it's like you're not a machine. You've just done this one. But are you thinking about that? Are you… do you have thoughts about that?

Lidija Hilje

Yeah, I am trying to work on my new book. But, you know, I'm admiring the writers who put out a book a year. That's definitely not going to be me. There's an insane amount of work in putting the book out. You know, there's invisible work that goes behind the screen, you know, that people don't see, but it’s happening and it takes up a lot of time. And there's also this emotional, you know, it's, it's—it’s difficult sitting in, like… you're trying to make this your career. You wrote your heart on the paper and you're offering it to the world. And now you're suspended in this period when you put it out and you're waiting to see how it's received, whether someone tramples on it or whether it's upheld. And so it's a difficult, emotionally difficult place to be in, and I'm one of those writers who struggle to create when I'm not, you know, when I'm feeling… when I'm feeling stressed. So work on my second novel is going slowly. I’ve gotten to page 100, but then I realized it needed, you know, I needed to make some changes, so I'm back to page 30. So it's a, you know, it's a—it's a process. I think, you know, writing literary fiction takes time. It takes self-examination; it takes a lot of reading of other people who have done it successfully—the type of novel that you're trying to execute. So, so yeah, I'm trying to work on it, but, um, but it may, it may be a while.

Jennie Nash

All right. I know—that's why it wasn't fair to even ask. Um, so back to… I just want to pick up the story back to—you got the three or the four, um, agent requests, and you, you finished the novel, and, um, and you pitched to them. Can you just share what all unfolded? Because… it was pretty extraordinary.

Lidija Hilje

So, basically, what happened was I didn't pitch all the four agents that had requested the pages. I had the first querying experience, which is what I said—you know 100 rejections. I took a long, hard look at it and realized that many of the time I was querying the wrong agents, genre-wise, which, you know, I was not aware of at the time. So a lot of those rejections were basically because I was querying a women's fiction book to literary agents. And that was one thing. And the other thing is… I was pretty, you know, unselective with whom I was querying the first time around. And the second time around, I was really intentional with the type of agent and their reputation and the connections within the industry—you know, just much more aware, approaching it much more professionally in terms of, you know, just wanting a good fit that would actually be able to do something for me, you know, to sell the book. And so a friend who had, you know, she had given me a referral to her agent—that didn't pan out. I gave that agent a month, an exclusive. And when that didn't pan out, I basically sent the query to my now agent, Abby Walters, at CAA. And, you know, it was a form on the website. I didn't even write her an email. It was just a form. So I didn't think that anyone would read it, basically. And I got—quickly I got like five or six requests, right out of the gate, those maybe first 10 days. And by the end of the second week I had gotten an offer of representation from Abby. And I followed up with the rest of the agents. The total, uh, the total number of, uh, full requests ended up being, I think, maybe nine out of 20, 25 queries. And, uh, I got three offers of representation, um, from fantastic agents. And, uh, deciding was hell. I was—I was—it was horrible to be in a position where you had to say no to an agent that you admire and that you would genuinely love to work with, but you know, for some reasons I chose Abby and I'm really happy with working with her. She's fantastic. I—I, you know, love her to death. And yeah, so that was the story of getting an agent. It was—it was—it was pretty quick and painless, I have to say, the second time around.

Jennie Nash

Right, from 100 rejections with the first one to—to nine full requests and three offers on—on this one, that's an extraordinary swing, for sure. And I love the—the way that you approached it the second time with that intention. It just says everything about the kind of person and writer you are, and the book landed with Simon & Schuster and will be coming out soon, and I can't wait to share it with our listeners. It's a beautiful, beautiful novel. I just—I cherished reading every page, and we had the really great good fortune of my taking a vacation to Croatia and coming to your town and meeting you and walking through the town with you, and I treasure that for so many reasons. But having read the book, I felt like I could taste it and see it in a really special way, having had a tour of your city with you. So that, for me, was just a special—a special part of it too.

Lidija Hilje

Thank you so much, Jennie. But actually, you kind of were a part of that, because when I thought about the places where Ivona would take a seer to, you know, to see, I had our tour in my—you know, on my mind, because I was thinking, like, what would she show someone who's from another place? Like, where would she take him? And it wouldn't be the things I showed you. I mean, I showed you some of the big things that you have to see when you're here. But I took you to the places that are more intimate to me, like more personally important to me.

Jennie Nash

Yeah.

Lidija Hilje

And so this is—this is what's behind the scene where she shows him her school. And, you know, so, yeah… you know, real life.

Jennie Nash

Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. Well, yeah, I did get to see where you went to school and where the law office was. And—and one of the things that's really stayed with me was we went to a bookstore and it… Um, and it—just knowing what your life in books has been, Lidija, and how you've studied them and how you've worked to become a writer of the caliber that you are. And that bookstore was so small, and it had mostly books in Croatian, and it was not anything like the kind of bookstore that one would think would spark a major literary career. And it… that just has stuck with me, because you—you made your own bookstore, right? You found your own literary community. You found your own career and way, and it's just been a joy to watch and to cheer you on. And thank you for coming and talking with us today.

Lidija Hilje

Thank you so much for having me, and all the encouragement over the years. I'm really grateful for that as well.

Jennie Nash

All right, well, until next time, for our listeners—keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Jess Lahey

The Hashtag AmWriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

I first met Nat when her book Cured: The People Who Defeated HIV came out and I attended a book event at Dartmouth Medical Center. She is so smart and curious and in this episode we will be talking about the process of researching elusive history, where her ideas come from, and who gets to tell what stories.

Nathalia Holt’s website

Transcript below!

EPISODE 455 - TRANSCRIPT

Jess Lahey

Hey, AmWriters! It's Jess Lahey here. I am so excited to talk about a new series that I am putting out there on the Hashtag AmWriting platform called From Soup to Nuts. I interview and work with and mentor an author—a nonfiction author—who has subject matter expertise and a killer idea, frankly, that just knocked me sideways. This author really thinks this is the time and place for this idea. And I agreed, and I asked her—I begged her—if I could mentor her through this process in a series. We're having to work together on agenting and proposal and all the stuff that you've got to do, from soup to nuts, to get a book out into the world. This series, From Soup to Nuts, is subscriber-only. The first episode is free, so you can go back and listen to that. That's for everyone. But if you want to join us for the whole process and learn from her mistakes—and learn from the stuff that I'm working on right now too—you have to subscribe. So consider supporting the Hashtag AmWriting podcast. It helps us bring you stuff like this—these extra series—not to mention the podcast itself. Alright, it's a lot of work. Help us support our podcast and these extra bonus series. By becoming a supporter, you'll get a sticker for it. You'll get your hypothetical, figurative sticker for being a good Hashtag AmWriting.

Multiple speakers:

Is it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause… I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.

Jess Lahey

Hey, this is the Hashtag AmWriting podcast. This is the podcast about writing all the things—writing the short things, writing the long things, writing the queries, the proposals, the poetry, the fiction, the nonfiction. This is the podcast actually, at its heart, about getting the work done. I am Jess Lahey. I am your host today. I'm the author of the New York Times best-selling The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my journalism at The New York Times and The Atlantic and The Washington Post. And today I am interviewing an author I respect deeply. I have known this author since she wrote her first book, which overlapped with some work that my husband does and some work that I had done in a previous career, and she has gone on to have a glorious and enviable career in nonfiction. My dream has always been to be one of those people that can, like, get curious about a topic and then just go off and write about that topic. And this is what she does. So Natalia—NAT—Holt, I am so excited to introduce you to our listeners. They are deep, deep, deep lovers of the nuts and bolts and the geeky details of the writing and the process. So welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting podcast.

Nathalia Holt

Thank you so much. I'm excited to talk to you today.

Jess Lahey

So we have a book on HIV—the first book, Cured, which is the way that I got to know you. Also, full disclosure, we share an agent. Laurie Abkemeier is our agent, and I think she actually may have introduced us in the first place. Yeah, your first book—yeah, your first book, Cured, about the Berlin patients. Really interesting—if you've never heard of the Berlin patients, listeners, just, just Google it. It's really a fascinating story. I'll go over—I'll go read Cured. Cured is all about the Berlin patients. And then we have The Queens of Animation—the women behind, sort of, the way Disney does what they do. And—and—and then we also have Rise of the Rocket Girls, which is another fascinating book out there about the women behind a lot of the math and the planning and the work that was done to get us into space. And so when I heard about your new book, I'm like, "Oh, NAT's working on a new book. Great! What women are we going to talk about this time?" And it's such a departure for you, and it is such a fascinating topic for you. And, well, for me, it’s like—it’s deep in my geeky, Jess-book-loving nonfiction zone. Could you tell us a little bit about it and where the idea came from for this book?

Nathalia Holt

Sure. The book is called The Beast in the Clouds, and it's about an expedition that the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt took in 1928 and 1929. And they went to China and Tibet in search of the giant panda, which at that time was unknown to Western scientists. And even in China, there were very few people that were aware of where this animal lived, what it ate—so little was known. So during this time period, the 1920s, you have all of these expeditions going to China, trying to find this black-and-white bear that no one is really sure exists. It's just a crazy period of history, because you have all of the other bears at that time—even polar bears—were known and even were in zoos. But the panda was not, and many people even thought it would be a ferocious bear. They thought this was going to be, you know, a combination of polar and black bears.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, yeah.

Nathalia Holt

So that's what the Roosevelts are going to. And so the expedition ends up being torturous, deadly. They're going through the Himalayas. They're not very well prepared. They lose all their food. They're attacked. They get lost. Just every crazy thing happens to them. But it's also a journey of transformation. They're documenting all of the ecology around them, and it really ends up changing their own worldview. And so it was such a fun book to research and to write. And I spent a lot of time also going into many of the other ex—many of the other members of the expedition, which was—which was fun, and maybe a little bit different than other books in this genre. But yeah, for me, you know, it's scary to be writing a part of history that is very different than what I've done before—but it's also fun.

Jess Lahey

Where'd the germ of the idea for the book come from? Because I had never heard this story before. I guess it had just never occurred to me—like, where do we—how do we know about the panda bear?

Nathalia Holt

Yeah, it's not a topic that has been written about much before, and I came across it while I was researching my last book, which is called Wise Gals, and is about women that helped form the CIA. And as part of that book, I was looking into the Roosevelts' role in World War Two. And it's so confusing when you research the Roosevelts, because they all have the same name. It's just Theodore and...

Jess Lahey

Actually, I have to tell you, Tim's a huge fan—my husband, Tim, who you also know, is a big fan and has read a lot about—and he's like, "Well, which Roosevelt?" So you—and I'm like, "Oh, that's a really good question. I don't know which Roosevelt... like, the adventuring ones." He's like, "Well..." [unintelligible]

Nathalia Holt

Yeah, there's so many of them, and they all have the same name. And so as I was trying to parse out son and father—who are both named Kermit Roosevelt and both served in World War Two—I kind of stumbled across this expedition that the elder Kermit Roosevelt had taken. So he and his older brother, Theodore, who were the sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and so it just kind of—it came from there. Just sort of came from wanting to learn more about it. And I always love a challenge. If there's a topic that's difficult to research, that seems impossible to find anything about—I'm there. I want to know everything.

Jess Lahey

Yeah. So, okay, so here's a—really a question that I—well, first of all, you and I are both research geeks. I just—I have said I could just keep researching books and not actually write the books. I just love that process. So aside from the easy answer, which is Google, like, where do you start with a story that hasn't been told yet? How do you start diving into that story, and where do you find information?

Nathalia Holt

It's difficult, and it depends on the topic. For this one, I went through a number of different archives, and that was great. I was able to get old letters that the Roosevelts had. But I really wanted to bring in other voices. I was really, really persistent in my desire to bring in Jack Young, who was this young, 19-year-old, Hawaiian-born translator and naturalist on the trip. And I was fortunate enough that I was able to track down some interviews he had done with another author back in the 1990s, and I just was persistent. I just pleaded until I got these tapes and was able to get all these interviews with him. And then I also contacted his daughter, who lives in Hawaii, and was able to get his unpublished autobiography. And it gives such an interesting perspective, because Jack Young went on and became a very impressive person and really deserves a biography all of his own, but he was also very close friends with the Roosevelts. They had a real connection—a real bond. And you get a different sense of the story when you're hearing it through his descriptions of what it was like, because he is young, and he is sort of really documenting things for the first time. And then, in addition, I was so lucky with this book because I was able to also get the field journals from a scientist that was on the expedition, as well as all the writings from another naturalist. So it was fascinating, because there were so many different accounts of the same events, which really lets you go into detail about what it was like, what people were feeling, what they were seeing. And I don't think I've ever had that before—where I have so many different accounts of the exact same events.

Jess Lahey

That's really cool, because it gives you that ability to, you know—if we went with just Jack Young's account, then you've got the Jack Young lens. And as you well know, history gets to be told by certain people, unless someone like you comes along and says, "Oh, wait, this account has not been brought to the surface," whether it's the women who are the animators at Disney, or whether it's the women who are part of NASA. So how do you—if you go into something like this and you have a limited number of perspectives—it sounds like you had a fair number of perspectives going into this, but since the documentation happened—usually tends to happen among the more powerful, the more privileged people—how do you manage getting a full perspective on an event like this expedition when you may have limited perspectives?

Nathalia Holt

That is the real challenge, because it's easy to get the Roosevelts’ documentation.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nathalia Holt

I have all of their journals, all of their letters. I am able to get into real detail about what this expedition was like for them. Even the difficult parts—for them—they really documented that, and everything has been saved. For the others... it's much more difficult, and it really requires that persistence of being able to get the letters. Being able to get the autobiography was really key, because he goes into so much detail about what things were like. And these interviews that he did were also really, really helpful, because he goes into a lot of his feelings about what it was like to be with the Roosevelts on the expedition, about how he felt… Because his father was born in China, his mother was born in San Francisco, he himself was born in Hawaii—which, at that time, is not part of the U.S.—he feels like he doesn't have a country. He doesn't know where he is. So when he's in China, he can speak all of these languages, but he's still struggling to connect and be able to talk with people, because there are so many dialects.

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Nathalia Holt

And so to be able to get into what that was like, and how he felt—just gives such a perspective—a different perspective of the expedition than perhaps what is usually had in these kinds of books. And he also talks a lot about the guides on the expedition, which was really interesting. There were a lot of women that were part of this expedition. Half of the guides, who kind of act as Sherpas—they, you know, they carry things, they lead the way, they guide the route, they make camp. And so there are just some great moments with these guides—especially the women guides—where they are just protecting from crazy marauders that have come down and have attacked the group. And lots of great moments like that. That was really interesting to document. And in addition, another thing I was able to get for this book is—there was actually some early video and a lot of photographs that were taken.

Jess Lahey

Oh my goodness.

Nathalia Holt

By one of the members. And that is just such an incredible thing—to be looking at video of this expedition in the 1920s—it's just amazing.

Jess Lahey

Okay, so geek question here, since this is definitely what our listeners like the most. So I haven't laid hands on the book yet, because it's not out yet—did you put photographs in the book? Were you able to get access to photographs, and did you put them in the book? And I ask that because whenever I write a proposal or we're working on a book proposal, we have to indicate whether or not there's going to be artwork, and that changes things in terms of budget, and it changes things in terms of permissions and stuff. And I was curious about—I’ve never dealt with that side of it before, but maybe you have.

Nathalia Holt

I have. I've always sent photographs, and I love it. Because I feel like it helps when you read the book—especially a book like this.

Jess Lahey

Yeah.

Nathalia Holt

You know, when I'm describing what they look like, and where they are, you want to see it with your own eyes. And so it's really interesting to be able to see those photographs. And I had so many, and it's always a challenge to parse out—who has the permissions? Where do they come from? Finding the photographs—this always takes forever. Fortunately, this particular book was maybe a little bit easier, because a lot of the photographs are out of copyright, that had been published at that time. So that was nice. But yeah, no, it was still just a mess, as it always is. It's always a mess to figure out who do photographs belong to. I feel like I would love to become a lawyer—just for that moment in researching a book.

Jess Lahey

That's a whole layer I've never had to go into. And it was easier for me to—rather than just say, "Yeah, I'd like to include this one thing," and then I realized the nightmare that's ahead of me in terms of accessing and getting permission and all that stuff. I'm like, "Eh! Let's just stick with what we got in the print." But, for something like this—and especially when you're writing about, for example, animation, or if you're writing about, you know, this expedition, and there's art available—you know, it sounds like it's really, really worth it for that aspect. I mean, that's definitely something I would want in this book. So I think I know the answer to this question. This is a heavily loaded question, but are you—when it comes to research and it comes to what you include in the book—are you an overwriter or an underwriter? Or do you land pretty much—like, when you're doing your editing, are you like, "Oh no, this was the perfect amount to include?"

Nathalia Holt

Oh, I'm a terrible overwriter.

Jess Lahey

Oh. So am I!

Nathalia Holt

It's really a problem. But I worked very hard on this book at cutting, and it was not easy for me, because I do always tend to go way overboard. I'm always over the word count that I'm supposed to be at—with the exception of this book, where I did a very good job of cutting it down and really trying to focus and not, you know, getting too distracted.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, we joke all the time with my other co-hosts and friends that my—like, my history sections in both of my books could have been half of the book or, you know... and all the stuff that ends up on the floor ends up getting told in cocktail parties. You know, "By the way, did you know how many, you know, kegs of beer there were on the ships that came over? I do. Can I share? Because I did all this work and I've got to put it somewhere." And there's this weird—there's this weird line between, "Look, look how thorough I am. Can I have an A+ for how thorough I am?" versus what your reader might actually be interested in. I keep some of my favorite notes from my former editor, and she's like, "Yeah, the reader... no. Reader doesn't care. Not going to care. You know, this may be really fun for you, but maybe not for your reader." So—but I can imagine with something like this, you know, the details of the flora and fauna and all that other stuff—it would be really easy to get off on tangents that are not necessary for the core mission.

Nathalia Holt

Yes, absolutely. But in some ways it was easier than my past books, because it only takes place over a year, which is incredible. Most of my books take place over decades, and the cast of characters is much smaller as well. And unlike some of my past books, I feel like I need to include everyone out of fairness—which is kind of a weird way to approach a book. I don't recommend it. That's not the way to do things. But yeah, if you're really just looking at a few—a handful of people—over a year, it's much easier to stay on track. So that was a good exercise for me.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, there's a—there's a line I love, where David Sedaris talks about the fact that what it takes for him to purchase something is if the clerk at the store has gone to the trouble to take it out of the case, to show it to him, and then he feels like he has to buy it because he—someone went through the trouble. And same thing for me. If, like, someone's going to go to the trouble to be interviewed, then cutting that entire interview, or cutting that whole through line, or whatever that person is a part of, is incredibly painful to do. And then I feel like—I feel obligated. So it's a difficult—it's a difficult balance, you know, between what your readers are going to actually want and what makes for a good book, versus doing right by the people who spent time talking to you. It's a hard balance to strike. Alright, speaking of being in the weeds and geek questions—so I'd love to talk to you a little bit. I was just—I'm mentoring someone for a little series we're doing for this podcast, sort of from soup to nuts, from the beginning of an—from the inception of an idea to getting a book out. And the very first thing she did was send something to me in a Pages document. And I had to say, "Hey, you might want to think about using Word or maybe Google Docs, because, like, I don't have Pages." So—some details about how you work. Number one, do you have a preferred app that you like to write in? Because I'm a Scrivener gal.

Nathalia Holt

I mean, I prefer Word because I feel like it is the most universal. It's the easiest to send to people... and so that's what I go with.

Jess Lahey

Yeah, I use Scrivener only because it allows me to blank out the rest of the world really easily. Okay, and then organizing your research. This is something—the question of organizing your research, how you know you're done researching and really just need to actually start writing the words—are the two questions that I get the most. Because the research could go—especially on a topic like this—could go on forever. So number one, given this voluminous research that you had, how do you organize your research? Do you use folders on your computer? Do you use folders in—you know—how do you do all of that?

Nathalia Holt

I do folders on my computer, and then I also do hard copies that I actually keep organized in real folders, which helps me, because then, if I'm going into a specific topic, a lot of times it can be easier to actually hold on to those documents and being able to see them. So I do both. Um, and...

Jess Lahey

Has everything pretty much been digitized in this area? Do you feel like—or do you have to go into rooms and, like, actually look at paper documents, and sometimes they don't let you scan those? So, you know, how does that work for you?

Nathalia Holt Yes, it's very difficult if they don't allow you to photograph them. Usually they do. Usually you can. So I have always had to digitize documents, and there's so many different ways to do it, but now it's much easier just to use your phone than anything else, which is great. Very happy about this development. And yeah, I think—I think maybe that's part of the reason why I do like to print things out is because that's how I was first introduced to the material, so it can be useful for me. But there's way too much material to print everything out. I mean, there's so many hundreds, thousands of pages even. And so it's always just going to be sort of key documents that end up making their way into the actual folders, and then the rest—it's just, you know, organized by topic. Make sure images are separate, by person.

Jess Lahey

So then, how do you know you're done? Like, how do you feel like you're at a place where I now know enough to come at this from—to come at the storytelling from an informed place?

Nathalia Holt

That is really a good question, and I'm not sure I can answer it, because I feel like you're never done. You're always going to be researching. There's no real end to it.

Jess Lahey

But you have to start. Well, and this—this takes—this is separate from the question of, like, how much research—how much research do you have to have done for the book proposal? Like take it for example, for example, The Addiction Inoculation, where I needed to learn, really, a whole new area... that was a year-long process just to write the proposal for that book, and then another couple years for the book. So, for me—and I'm very happy to say—I got to ask Michael Pollan this question, and he had the same answer that I feel like is my instinctual answer for this, which is when I start to say, "Oh, I'm starting to repeat. Things are starting to repeat for me," and/or, "Oh, I already knew that," and so I'm not finding out new stuff or encountering things I don't already know at the same rate. It's starting to sort of level off. Then I feel like, "Oh, I've got this sort of, like, you know, mile-high view of the—of the information," and I maybe have enough in my head to start actually being an expert on this thing.

Nathalia Holt

That's a good answer. That sounds responsible. I'm not sure that I do that, though. I think for myself, there's not a bad time to start, because it's going to change so much anyway, that for me, I almost feel like it's part of the learning process. Is that you start to write about it, and then as you go along, you realize, "Oh, this is not right. I'm going to change all of this," but it's all just part of helping you move along. And I think even from the beginning, if you start writing even just bits and pieces of how you want to write the scene, you want to think about this or outline it, that can be helpful, and it doesn't matter, because it's all going to change anyway.

Jess Lahey

That's true. I actually find I write—the way I write is very specific, in that each topic I'm going to write about in a chapter has a narrative arc, story that goes with it. So I—that narrative arc story gets written first, and then I drop the research in as I go along. But I remember, with The Gift of Failure, a book came out that had a key piece of research that then I had to go back and figure out, "Oh my gosh, this impacts everything." And so I had to figure out how to sort of drop that in. And I couldn't have done it at any other time, because the research didn't exist or I hadn't found it yet. So that's a tough thing to do, is to go back and sort of link the things to something new that you think is important. But the research part is just so much fun for me. Again, I could do that forever and ever and ever. Do you? So the other thing I wanted to ask... and this is selfishly... do you have large boxes in your home of all the research that you feel like you can't get rid of, even though you wrote the book, like, five years ago, ten years ago?