Lea Carpenter, Author of Eleven Days
[0:10]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and this is Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:15]As a mom of four kids in New York City and a writer myself, I know all too well how short
[0:19]everyone is on time, so I'm here to help.
[0:21]I'm going to interview authors and writers of all types about their work, especially
[0:25]as it relates to parenting and family issues.
[0:28]Hopefully you can listen while doing 8 million other things, and fall in love with these
[0:31]talented scribes and their fantastic books, essays, and songs like I have.
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[1:01]I'm super excited to be interviewing a wonderful friend of mine today, Lee Carpenter.
[1:07]Lee and I went to business school together and bonded as two writers in a sea of consultants.
[1:11]Lee has since published an incredible book called 11 Days Publish by Knopf, and has
[1:15]a new book coming out this summer.
[1:17]Welcome, Lee Carpenter.
[1:19]Thank you very much so much for having me.
[1:23]So we tell me more about your background in terms of where you grew up, how'd you end
[1:29]up in New York?
[1:30]I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, kind of in the middle of nowhere with a lot of siblings,
[1:41]dogs, and horses, and it was a very quiet childhood.
[1:48]I didn't know if I would end up in New York.
[1:50]I used to come here with my mother on special occasions and we would go out for lunch or
[1:58]go to FAO Shorts or go to the bookstore, go to the theater.
[2:02]So I always knew about New York.
[2:05]And then when I was an undergrad, I really loved the theater and thought maybe my future
[2:14]would be in the theater and if you love the theater, you come to New York City.
[2:17]So I really didn't know what I was doing, but I came here kind of with a long term goal
[2:21]of doing something in the theater, but ended up getting a job kind of working in the literary
[2:28]world.
[2:29]So I hung around there for a while.
[2:32]And tell me more about that, your entrance into the literary world.
[2:35]How did you get into writing?
[2:38]You know, it started with my hearing, a rumor that Francis Ford Coppola was starting
[2:46]a literary magazine and I wanted to get involved with that.
[2:49]So I relentlessly handed the woman who had been appointed the editor until she agreed
[2:56]to hire me as her assistant.
[2:59]And the two of us worked together to figure out what we were doing, which was essentially
[3:05]starting a very small business, but a business nonetheless, which had a literary component.
[3:14]And when I went through that process, I realized that maybe what I wanted to do was be
[3:19]an editor.
[3:20]And we were lucky because we had, among other people working with us, we had hired
[3:25]this freelance copy editor who was Susan Salentag's personal copy editor.
[3:32]She said, even when Susan Salentag wrote a postcard, she would hand it to this woman
[3:35]carlet to copy edit it for her.
[3:39]But I learned there how to copy edit, how to work with writers, what it means to edit
[3:46]a piece, how to read short fiction, which was something that I hadn't focused on before.
[3:54]And I sort of got in my head the idea that Francis Coppola was always saying that a good
[4:04]movie is usually based on a very simple story.
[4:07]And he had lots of examples, and his goal was to create a magazine that would publish
[4:13]short stories, some of which would go on to be films.
[4:17]And that was really the start.
[4:19]And then as you know, I went to, I went to business school, I don't know how I got in,
[4:25]but I went to business school.
[4:26]And then the last, because at that time, I thought maybe what I want to do is start
[4:31]another magazine, a larger magazine.
[4:34]I liked the idea of working with writers, but I didn't really know what capacity I would
[4:40]do that.
[4:43]After business school, I got a job at another literary magazine called the Paris Review,
[4:51]which I entered into at a very tricky time.
[4:54]The founding editor of the magazine, George Clinton, had just died and it was an interesting
[5:01]experience.
[5:02]I used to say it was at the time, everyone who knew me said, oh, this is the perfect job
[5:07]for you.
[5:08]And I used to say I felt like I was dating someone where everyone said, oh, he's the
[5:12]perfect guy for you.
[5:13]And then I would go home and like he beat me up and do drugs because it was an excruciating
[5:18]time.
[5:19]It was hard work.
[5:22]And I realized I was not trying to help shepherd this iconic literary magazine.
[5:28]I was really trying to desperately beg people for money so that we didn't go bankrupt.
[5:34]So that was an incredible learning experience.
[5:40]And I then went on to work as a speech writer for a politician and thought, maybe that
[5:46]was the right avenue for my skill set.
[5:48]And it was during that time that 11 days, you know, was born.
[5:57]It's probably too long of a story to go into.
[5:59]But the short version is I was working with this politician and writing a book with him.
[6:05]And we had to get an agent.
[6:07]And while we were writing that book, the politician got sick and the book I put on hold.
[6:13]But that agent took me to lunch and said, you should write your own book.
[6:16]You know, I've seen your work and you should write a book.
[6:18]And I kind of thought, I think I'm an editor, not an author.
[6:25]And then he dared me.
[6:27]He said, I dare you to try and write 10,000 words under your own name.
[6:32]And he gave me a deadline.
[6:33]He said, if you can write 10,000 words under your own name, I will represent you.
[6:36]Because he was sort of representing the politician, not me.
[6:41]And he gave me a deadline for those 10,000 words, which was May 3rd, 2011.
[6:49]My father had died.
[6:50]My father had been in the military.
[6:51]So I was reading at that time everything I could about the military.
[6:54]I was newly interested in a subject I had not had a lot of interest in before.
[7:00]I was just reading everything I could, particularly on the subject of special operations
[7:05]because of what my father had done.
[7:08]And one of the books I read was called Lone Survivor.
[7:15]And my Marcus Lutrell, who was a Navy SEAL, who went missing for a period of time in
[7:21]Afghanistan.
[7:22]And that was all, you know, interesting.
[7:25]But the part of the book that really, you know, broke my heart was when he came back
[7:32]from Afghanistan, he arrived at his house in Texas.
[7:36]And he saw what had gone on in that house while he was gone and what had gone on in that
[7:40]house was everyone in that town had come to help take care of his mother in particular.
[7:48]And they had brought food and, you know, it was sort of like awake and the house filled
[7:53]up with people.
[7:54]The house filled up with so many people, if I'm remembering correctly, that they built
[7:58]a second structure on the property to help kind of contain this, this vigil.
[8:05]And I remember thinking at the time, how would I feel if I was in that house, if my
[8:09]son was missing and I was in that house?
[8:12]And I answered the question, I would want to get out of the house.
[8:18]So I thought I would write 10,000 words about a woman who's son is missing who has to
[8:24]get out of the house.
[8:25]And so she goes for a jog.
[8:26]And I wrote that.
[8:28]And then because, you know, whether or not it was because of Marcus Lutrell in particular,
[8:34]I decided to make her son a Navy SEAL because I knew some Navy SEALs.
[8:38]And I thought, well, at least they can, I can call them and they can tell me, you know,
[8:42]I'm spelling something wrong.
[8:45]And then I went to meet that agent on May 3rd.
[8:48]And on May 2nd, we had killed Osama bin Laden and it was SEAL Team 6 who killed Osama
[8:52]bin Laden.
[8:53]So I sat down to meet him and I said, here are my 10,000 words and he said, what, what
[8:57]is it about?
[8:58]I said, it's about Navy SEALs.
[8:59]He said, oh my God, you're kidding me, they run the cover of every newspaper.
[9:03]I said, I'm actually serious.
[9:05]That's, that's what I wrote about on the basis of that 10,000 words.
[9:10]He said, if you write another 20,000, I want to take this out to publishers because suddenly
[9:14]there was this sort of seal, suddenly everyone knew what a Navy SEAL was.
[9:19]So I wrote, I ended up writing 40,000 words, you know, which is not a book, but was, was
[9:27]enough.
[9:28]And the basis of that 40,000 words, we sold the book to Kenov.
[9:35]That was, that was the start of the journey.
[9:37]That's amazing.
[9:38]That's amazing.
[9:39]Story, I didn't even know that background.
[9:41]Well, you know, and then what happened was I, then I actually had to write a book because
[9:45]I had a contract and that August, August of 2011, I got pregnant, which was not planned.
[9:54]So suddenly I had an even bigger deadline than the book, which was I was about to have my
[9:59]second son.
[10:00]And I thought I've got to write this book before I delivered this baby, so I went to meet with my editor
[10:06]Knoth and I said and she said, you know, to take your time with the book and I said, well, I
[10:10]I I won't take my time. You'll have the book in April because the baby's coming in April
[10:16]And then I was in this weird
[10:19]But not weird. I was in an unusual position being a pregnant
[10:24]woman
[10:25]Writing about the CL team community
[10:28]I think it helped in making me seem less
[10:32]Threatening maybe than other journalists because
[10:35]At that time so many people were trying to talk to Navy SEALs and ask them questions like
[10:40]Who killed us? I'm a bin Laden who was in the room?
[10:43]Tell me about your gear
[10:44]Dada da da da da and I was going and talking to these people and saying
[10:49]What's your relationship with your mother like? How many times did you Skype your girlfriend from your babe from the base?
[10:56]Do you get depressed and?
[11:01]Almost without exception, you know after someone's talked to you about their mother their girlfriend and they're you know
[11:07]The fact that they use whatever they use to manage their
[11:11]Their bad days
[11:13]Almost invariably I would then say thank you very much and they would then say
[11:19]Aren't you gonna ask me about the Captain Phillips or don't you want to see my you know?
[11:24]Thank you for my weapons or um, there would always be at the end this moment where they would want to actually talk about
[11:32]Nothing classified, but they would want to talk about what they do of course and so I sort of accidentally got a lot of
[11:40]Interesting stories many of which I tried to weave into the book and I got to know
[11:45]You know, I got to know some pretty remarkable people I
[11:52]Want to talk a little more about 11 days and you're beautiful writing in it?
[11:57]I'm gonna read a passage from page 131 of the heart cover
[12:01]when
[12:02]The mom is on her way Sarah is on her way to find Jason
[12:08]Having been notified that some things up and she has to
[12:11]take a plane and go rescue him and as a mom the feeling of
[12:16]What what she must be going through emotionally having to get on a plane and travel knowing that you know
[12:21]Is her son alive is everything okay. All right. This is what you wrote, which is beautiful
[12:26]At the station in DC. She thought she would stop and get something to eat
[12:29]There was never anything edible on airplanes and she knew they were in for a long flight perhaps several flights
[12:34]She would buy something to eat and something to read
[12:36]She had the same feeling in her stomach. She'd had each time she knew Jason was about to come home
[12:40]The feeling of anticipation and relief that before long she would be laughing with him as they had always done together and hearing
[12:46]What was new in his life?
[12:46]It was the feeling that couple of the ease of being with family with the comfort of no longer being alone
[12:52]That's what I liked about this little passage was as a mom sometimes you're sitting there by yourself and then
[12:58]Immediately you're in it again with your child and the juxtaposition of not having a family and then having you know, Jason return and what shape would he be in and
[13:08]the dynamic of that
[13:11]Interaction between the mom and the son. So I really liked that
[13:15]Maybe you could speak more to you. You know mothers of
[13:23]Mothers of people serving in the military don't generally
[13:28]fly on private planes to Afghanistan to meet with their children
[13:33]But so that part of the book is actually quite is almost like a
[13:38]fantasy element, but I wanted to show I
[13:42]Wanted to take a mother to the battlefield
[13:47]You know another very famous book that had a huge impact on me is a book called Black Hawk Down which was also made into a movie and
[13:54]That book opens with the line
[13:56]You know sergeant Matthew Eversman puts on his helmet and I
[14:02]Opened 11 days with the line in the bedroom Sarah puts on her running shoes. I wanted to weave throughout the book
[14:09]If I tried to weave throughout the book this idea that the mother is the warrior
[14:14]She is the warrior because we you know, we all are
[14:17]Fighting with that out of being being mothers and I thought if I really want to take that
[14:24]To conclusion she's gonna have to go there. I have to take her to the Middle East
[14:29]Normally in these kinds of cases the the child comes home to the mother
[14:35]By the way, he's not a child. I mean, he's a grown man by this point, but of course we will always think of our children as our children and
[14:42]I wanted to
[14:45]Contrast in the book the incredible complexity of the training
[14:49]That her son has undergone and for example all of the things that he wears when he goes out to do what he does and
[14:58]The simplicity of her the relative simplicity of her life
[15:01]She's a very complex woman, but you know that for her she wants to
[15:05]You know wear something appropriate and eat something healthy and she's trying to think about these simple things in a moment of
[15:12]incredible crisis
[15:14]She's trying to
[15:17]stay calm
[15:19]And I know as a mom, you know, recently you've gone through a divorce as if I
[15:25]Do you use exercise in that way?
[15:27]Do you feel like you grab you know grab on to simple things in the face of chaos?
[15:31]I I do you know, I'm not really a runner and
[15:36]the idea of Sarah
[15:38]being a runner I stole from back to
[15:42]Francis Ford Coppola
[15:44]when I was
[15:46]Working for him one of the stories I read that I had never read before is it is a
[15:51]Is an incredible short story by John Chief or called the swimmer and the swimmer is the story?
[15:58]It's a perfect short story and it's a story of a man
[16:01]who goes
[16:03]Running through his neighborhood swimming through his neighborhood swimming pools and
[16:09]As he goes from backyard to backyard and swims each pool
[16:13]He has this train of thought and I sort of stole that that structure for the opening of my book where Sarah
[16:20]Goes running and while she's running a rent near where she lives through her neighbor's property. She's she's thinking about her son
[16:28]So I don't use running
[16:31]I don't use meditation, which I probably should but I do use exercise. I do feel that that is a
[16:38]Simple way for me to do one thing that I can do and then if I do nothing else the whole day
[16:46]I feel I've I've done that. It's a way of
[16:50]Having some kind of routine because our days as parents as you well now get
[16:55]Our heart to predict
[16:58]What do you think is one of the hardest parts of parenting at least right now your your sons are my sons are nine and five
[17:07]You know when I was little
[17:09]My best friend's mother
[17:11]Yesterday my nine-year-old told me that he knows what it means when someone puts up their middle finger
[17:20]My response to that was to tell him when I was little my best friend's mother
[17:25]used to put up her pinky finger and she would say for those who don't deserve the very best and
[17:33]this woman was
[17:35]So cool. She was cool beautiful funny
[17:40]bright
[17:42]mother who was also deeply religious who talked to us about
[17:47]you know Christ and gratitude and forgiveness and and
[17:51]responsibility
[17:53]But always what I remember and what I think about when I think of her was that pinky finger holding up that pinky finger for those who don't deserve a very best
[18:01]because I think the hardest thing about parenting is to
[18:06]Really on the fact that no one else's judgment matters
[18:11]You know that we feel judgment I feel judgment whether it's from
[18:16]You know other parents or teachers or coaches or
[18:21]You know to kind of to kind of say you know what matters and who matters
[18:25]You know is my my ethical arrangement my ethical contract with myself
[18:32]What matters is my children?
[18:35]You know and then pretty much everyone else can can have the pinky
[18:40]It's like it's just remembering that
[18:44]Everyone's just trying to get through the day, you know and to to judge less. I think I
[18:51]Get it totally agree
[18:54]11 days was absolutely amazing. I know just you it's and everybody. I know moms don't have a lot of time, but
[19:02]11 days is definitely thank you so much for the list
[19:05]I know you have a new project coming out sometime to me more about that. Um, yes, I
[19:10]the new book is called red white blue
[19:16]It's
[19:18]It's coming out from Kenov in August
[19:21]It's about what I've been saying. It's about the CIA and marriage
[19:27]and I chose the title red white blue because the book is a
[19:33]lot about China and
[19:35]There's an avalanche that's very central to the book and there's a scene involving the ocean that's very important
[19:42]So I was sort of had that as placeholder colder title
[19:46]But it's talking in someone point it a right or I admire pointed out to me the other day that red white blue is sort of a nice
[19:54]Title for a book about marriage because you have sort of the the red heat
[20:00]of the love and the passion and you have the white of what can often be very chilly,
[20:06]lonely moments and you have the blue, which is water, which, you know, maybe your tears
[20:12]of joy or tears of sadness, but it's a story of a woman who is married to a very successful
[20:21]music producer and who sells his company and comes to her and says, you know, I want
[20:27]to be a politician and how she then goes down the rabbit hole of having to be a politician's
[20:32]wife and how that changes her.
[20:34]That story told in parallel with the kind of confession from a former China-based CIA case
[20:43]officer.
[20:44]So as you learn the history of this woman, I also try to tell a history of CIA and I don't
[20:50]know.
[20:51]I hope it has, I hope it has, it's on yet, it sounds amazing to read it.
[20:58]Thank you.
[20:59]Thank you so much for coming in and talking to this podcast, moms don't have time to read
[21:04]books and again, Lee Carpenter, 11 days and look for her new book this time.
[21:10]Thank you.
[21:11]Thank you so much.
[21:12]Okay.
[21:13]Thanks so much for listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[21:16]Please check out my essays on zibbyowans.com.
[21:18]Again, this episode has been brought to you by Chloe's fruit, the cool way to eat fruit.