Steven Rowley, THE EDITOR
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:33]I'm really excited to be here today with Steven Roly.
[0:36]Steven is the best-selling author of Lily and the Octopus.
[0:39]His second novel, The Editor, comes out April 2nd.
[0:42]He has worked as a freelance writer, screenwriter and newspaper columnist, a graduate of Emerson
[0:46]College.
[0:47]He currently lives in Los Angeles.
[0:48]So welcome to Steven.
[0:49]Hi.
[0:50]Thanks for being here.
[0:51]I'm so thrilled.
[0:52]Thank you.
[0:53]So The Editor was fantastic.
[0:54]I couldn't put it down.
[0:55]Oh.
[0:56]Really.
[0:57]I'm not just saying that.
[0:58]That was really great.
[0:59]I thought around the fictitious relationship with Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Mrs. Onassis
[1:04]in the book, and your narrator, James Smell.
[1:06]So I was wondering how you picked her as the focal point of this interaction.
[1:12]And how you came up with the idea for the whole book.
[1:15]Yeah.
[1:16]It's a little bit of an unexpected follow-up, I think, for those who read my first book,
[1:20]Lily and the Octopus, which was about a man sort of reckoning with this sort of impending
[1:25]death of his dog and grieving that relationship.
[1:29]But in order to understand the editor, I think we have to sort of backtrack and talk about
[1:32]Lily for one moment.
[1:33]Please.
[1:34]Let's talk as long as you want.
[1:35]Let's talk.
[1:36]That was a book that I wrote.
[1:38]I never expecting to publish it, let alone it becoming a bestseller or translated in
[1:43]19 languages, and now there's a movie in development.
[1:46]That was just a small project I thought when I was writing it.
[1:50]And as a writer, I was just putting words on paper to try to understand.
[1:55]There was a real dog named Lily, a dog that I had, and I lost her to a brain tumor
[1:59]in 2013.
[2:00]So.
[2:01]And I thought I was intellectually prepared for this loss.
[2:05]Writing is a very solitary occupation as it is, and I didn't realize how much I'd come
[2:09]to depend on the companionship of this friend.
[2:13]But I thought I knew dogs don't live as long as people do.
[2:16]I thought I was prepared for this, but I was left sort of spiraling from the loss of
[2:21]her sort of daily companionship.
[2:23]And I sat down to write just to try to understand an octopus entered the picture.
[2:29]Because to me, it became very clear what I was writing about was attachment and how
[2:34]difficult it can be to let go.
[2:36]So there was something about having a sort of tentacular metaphor that made sense to me.
[2:42]But you know, as I continued to work on it, I said, this is a small strange project that
[2:48]I was thought, you know, I was writing mostly for myself.
[2:51]So I put in, you know, it's very autobiographical, but I put in a lot of emotional detail
[2:56]that I might not have put in the book had I known from the outset that it would be published
[3:02]in a major way.
[3:03]The journey to publication was interesting, because if you want to hear crickets on the other
[3:08]end of the phone, you know, call agents and say, would you like to read my book about a dog
[3:13]with an octopus doctor and you don't get anywhere fast?
[3:17]I remember trying to pitch it once as a cross between Joan Dydian's Year of Magical
[3:21]Thinking, which I love.
[3:23]Yes.
[3:24]And Moby Dick.
[3:26]And Moby Dick.
[3:27]Which is not two books you should ever see together.
[3:29]That's an interesting process.
[3:30]Yeah.
[3:31]That didn't get me anywhere either.
[3:32]So it was sort of an interesting sort of path to publication, and I was actually going
[3:36]to self-publish it at one point, and I thought, you know, I'm proud of it as a piece
[3:39]of writing.
[3:40]But perhaps this isn't going to speak to a larger audience because of how personal it is.
[3:46]So when it did connect with readers in a very exciting way, I had a few moments where I was like,
[3:50]oh, no, what did I actually say in the book about myself and about other people?
[3:55]And just going back to your road to publication for a second, I thought I read an interview
[3:59]with you where you said you had actually given up on it, but then sent it to a friend
[4:03]and you published it without an agent, right?
[4:05]Yeah.
[4:06]Yeah.
[4:07]You know, and I'm old enough to know this is not how it works, but this is a little bit
[4:12]of magic, you know, that I can't help but thinking there's a little, you know, friendly
[4:16]dog spirit up there, helping pulling some strings.
[4:19]Yeah.
[4:20]I was, indeed, I had given up on, I spent two years trying to get it published, I had given
[4:24]up on it, I hired a freelance editor in New York because I was going to self-publish it,
[4:29]but self-publishing is a wonderful tool for writers, but it runs the gamut, there's great
[4:34]self-publish stuff and there's very sort of schlockey self-publish things too.
[4:39]But I wanted at least for it to appear as professional as possible.
[4:42]So I hired a freelance editor and it was through that editor that she was able to pass
[4:46]it along to someone she knew at Simon and Schuster.
[4:48]Wow.
[4:49]And that sort of snuck it in the back door, which they usually don't look at on agent
[4:53]things.
[4:54]Do you ever want to just call some of those editors who pass and be like, huh, look
[4:57]at everyone?
[4:58]Well, I will say this, for aspiring writers out there who are in the process of looking
[5:04]for an agent and it is, you know, it can be very fraught with sort of the agent search.
[5:09]If you have an offer for publication, you kind of get to choose.
[5:12]So I could go back to the people who, you know, who had sort of passed before and be like,
[5:16]maybe take another look.
[5:19]So anyway, yeah, that was very lucky to have that happen.
[5:22]I had changed the names, you know, there's some fictitious things.
[5:25]I never really thought there was an octopus on my dog, you know, and I changed the names
[5:29]of all the characters.
[5:30]But there's some people it's hard to disguise.
[5:32]Mom comes to mind, you know, somehow Eagle like readers cracked that code.
[5:39]So, you know, ultimately though, it was a very good positive experience for me, but
[5:45]I sort of understood immediately that what I wanted to write about next was something
[5:51]similar, you know, a character where they write something very autobiographical and
[5:56]it spirals beyond his control.
[5:59]The actual events of how it happened to me was not interesting enough to sustain a novel.
[6:07]But so I was looking, you know, in all apologies to Mrs. Onassis, as I call her in
[6:12]the book.
[6:13]I was looking for the octopus, you know, that additional magical element that could elevate
[6:20]a simple story into, you know, and give it the depth that a novel requires.
[6:24]And actually of all things, you know, I had seen a project runway challenge where they
[6:29]did a Jackie O project runway challenge in season seven or eight while ago, but it always
[6:34]stuck with me because, you know, lots of people, you know, they showed a lot of pictures
[6:38]of her throughout her life and, you know, designers gravitated towards, you know, like
[6:43]a very sort of like Chanel like suit that she might have worn as First Lady or a, you
[6:47]know, a gauzy, a drape thing that she might have worn on the yacht with onassis or something,
[6:52]but there was this, there was this one image of her walking down the streets of Manhattan
[6:55]with her face buried in a book, you know, and for those of us who have lived in New York
[6:59]before, you know, like that, I was like, oh, who's that woman?
[7:02]Because that, that's someone I relate to.
[7:05]And that was the most interesting version of Jackie to me.
[7:09]And I immediately wanted to know more about her.
[7:11]And I knew that she'd had this career in publishing, but I didn't know the particulars,
[7:15]but it started me down a road of being interested in her.
[7:19]And I read a few biographies on her at the time.
[7:21]And it was, I don't know what the exact moment was.
[7:24]And I folded these two stories together.
[7:26]But once I did, I realized I had something special.
[7:28]It's so neat.
[7:30]It felt so real.
[7:31]Like, are you allowed to just do that with any historical character?
[7:34]I know that's a silly question, but like, can you just make it all up and have her just,
[7:39]I mean, is it okay?
[7:41]Yeah, I know, right?
[7:41]What do you ever get in trouble?
[7:43]First question with to my agent, particularly, you know, she's well enough known that,
[7:48]you know, she's enough of a public figure that, yes, I do have the right to do that.
[7:53]Also, it's not slanderous in any way.
[7:55]Right.
[7:56]And I am a huge fan.
[7:58]And I'm greatly admire this incredible third act that she had to her life.
[8:03]And not a lot of people know about, you know, I wanted to say when she was done with men,
[8:07]but she wasn't.
[8:07]She had a long-term relationship with Maurice Temple's men, who was a sort of European
[8:11]businessman, Belgian businessman, who stayed the background.
[8:15]And jokingly, they called him Mr. Kennedy, Onassis, because she was finally front and
[8:19]center in her life.
[8:21]But, you know, this career that she had, and she worked for 15 years as a book editor, editing
[8:25]almost, you know, just over 100 titles, I believe, over those 15 years.
[8:30]And I just thought that it's such a fascinating thing.
[8:33]It's not the first thing we think about, unfortunately, when we remember her, right?
[8:37]Honestly, I think by design, she was done with the spotlight.
[8:41]She had enough of that.
[8:43]She only granted one interview in her entire career to publish her weekly.
[8:47]So I didn't entirely make it all up.
[8:50]I did a lot of research, there's some wonderful books on her publishing career that people
[8:56]can check out if they are interested in knowing more.
[8:59]But there is that little bit of magic where I had to fill in the gaps a little bit.
[9:03]And this is kind of a wish fulfillment, right?
[9:05]It's a little bit of a fantasy.
[9:06]I don't have to.
[9:07]We all wish we could have a friendship with someone like that.
[9:10]So I wanted to lean into the fun of it a little bit too.
[9:14]I loved how, in the beginning of their interaction, you were talking about how people sort
[9:19]of stayed away from Jackie a little in the hallways of the editing, because they just
[9:22]didn't know how to interact and it took this one lunch lady basically who said Jackie,
[9:27]what do you want?
[9:28]And everybody was more relaxed.
[9:30]Did you make that up?
[9:31]No, I didn't.
[9:32]But a wonderful little detail that I pulled from a biography of her called Reading Jackie
[9:38]by William Kuhn that actually happened.
[9:40]There was this sort of lunch lady who broke the awkwardness in the office.
[9:46]So another really cool element of your book in addition to weaving in this element of
[9:51]historical fiction as you have this book within a book situation originally called The Quarantine
[9:55]and then called Ithaca, which you explain in the book.
[9:58]Have you ever thought about...
[10:00]because then when I finished reading the book,
[10:01]I then wanted to read the other book.
[10:03]You wanted to read the book.
[10:04]Yeah, I wanted to read the book at the end of the book.
[10:06]Like maybe there's like a little sliver you could write
[10:09]of that as like, I don't know, I don't know.
[10:10]Well, I got, yes, I've thought about it.
[10:14]Yes, I've probably written a little bit more of it
[10:17]than appears in the book that sits in a file on my computer.
[10:20]But for the moment, I think I'm done torturing my mother.
[10:23]I can't wait for her for that I find another subject matter
[10:27]other than mothers and sons.
[10:29]But you had this great quote about your mother
[10:31]in the book when she had helped facilitate this cake building
[10:35]contest between James and his dad.
[10:37]And you wrote, as the bridge that spans the widening golf
[10:40]that exists between my father and I, my mother sometimes
[10:43]seems feeble.
[10:43]The cable is a keeper suspended,
[10:45]feel tired and frayed.
[10:46]But tonight, as she turns back to smile at me
[10:48]before patting my father on the leg,
[10:50]she seems fully made of steel.
[10:52]So that's nice, that was like, it's not all bad.
[10:55]No, no, it's not all bad, but it's complicated.
[10:58]Yes.
[10:58]And I think there's great beauty in complication sometimes.
[11:03]My mother is probably my biggest fan right now,
[11:06]which is very sweet, despite the fact that I'm sure she wishes
[11:10]I wrote about other things other than mothers.
[11:14]But she comes from a family where she was raised.
[11:19]People were very not emotive in the same way
[11:22]or not exploring a feelings, I think probably
[11:25]is fair to say.
[11:26]Whereas as a writer, I always want to get in there and poke.
[11:30]And get it all out in the open.
[11:33]It's just my writer's curiosity.
[11:35]It's what I think of a kind of as a life's work
[11:39]is just to talk about the messy parts.
[11:42]And so there is a little bit where we
[11:45]butt heads sometimes.
[11:46]But ultimately, she's very thrilled for her son.
[11:50]And I think nothing tickles her more
[11:52]than going into a bookstore and seeing her son's book.
[11:56]Like every mother's dream.
[11:57]Yeah.
[11:58]Kids, please write books.
[12:00]I wanted to ask, he goes and looks
[12:01]to her and tell over you as well.
[12:04]But you had such great details.
[12:06]And I wonder if these were from your own life
[12:08]where one time you cut yourself shaving and called your mother,
[12:11]like, I can't stop the bleeding.
[12:12]And even as an adult, you turned to her for that.
[12:15]And yeah, there is something, I don't think there are moments
[12:19]that happened to you in life.
[12:20]And it doesn't matter how old you are
[12:21]that you still want that sort of motherly comfort.
[12:25]And it doesn't matter if we're five years old, 50 years old,
[12:29]or into old age yourself when your parents are long gone.
[12:33]I think there's always something where you yearn for that safety.
[12:39]And yeah, some of those details I pull from life, some are made up.
[12:42]But sometimes I'll do a scene that sort of feels
[12:45]like something that happened to me in real life,
[12:47]as long as the emotional truth is the same.
[12:50]Sometimes the actual details, you can fudge a little bit.
[12:53]I did the same thing.
[12:53]I broke a spoon in college and sliced open my finger,
[12:57]trying to scoop some frozen yogurt at the time.
[12:59]I thought it was so healthy.
[13:01]And I remember calling my mother and being like,
[13:03]I'm not sure what it was like, what can I do anyway?
[13:05]But and so I relate it to that because it's in a lot.
[13:09]So you also, as the book goes on and I won't give anything away,
[13:12]but you have it end in a way that I was personally
[13:14]was not expecting it to go.
[13:16]When you started mapping out this book,
[13:18]did you start knowing all of the events
[13:21]that would unfold, including the ending?
[13:23]Or did you take it as it came?
[13:25]Like, do you outline?
[13:26]Do you just flow with the characters?
[13:28]What's your process?
[13:29]I do outline, but I don't know everything.
[13:32]I'm not a rigorous outline, or I know some writers
[13:35]have the whole book mapped out.
[13:37]And writing to me is a journey.
[13:40]And it's the same even when I travel, right?
[13:43]Like I have the few highlights I want to hit,
[13:45]the few points of interest.
[13:47]But I like to leave some room open to discover things
[13:50]that I didn't know until I was in the thick of it.
[13:55]And so there are a few surprises along the way.
[13:57]When I wrote Lily and I decided on using an octopus
[14:01]in the book, I knew immediately the book
[14:03]needed to be written in eight parts.
[14:05]And each part would have an octopus theme,
[14:07]one of the sections was called Inks.
[14:09]So then I started, then I can sort of map out, oh,
[14:12]well, there's a bit about a war shark test in there on a tattoo.
[14:15]And so I could sort of, I laugh now thinking
[14:20]about that particular example because an octopus
[14:22]is an invertebrate.
[14:23]But I was thinking, you know, that gave me a skeleton
[14:25]for the book.
[14:27]And with the editor, it's sort of the same way.
[14:29]It's written in five parts.
[14:32]And they're sort of distinct, they're
[14:35]not quite each an novella.
[14:37]But they have a distinct flavor to each one of them as well.
[14:42]I knew where the book would end.
[14:45]But I also wanted to play with certain surprises
[14:49]in the book as well.
[14:50]So I started thinking about, you know,
[14:51]clearly the editor, the titular editor, is Jackie Onassis.
[14:55]But I started to think of the ways
[14:57]in which the mother could be an editor as well
[14:59]over the facts of James' life.
[15:03]And a little bit how James could be an editor
[15:05]over the audience, like the book is told in the first person.
[15:08]But he's not always the most reliable narrator either,
[15:12]which leads to a surprise that comes later in the book, too.
[15:15]So I really wanted to sort of think in ways
[15:18]in which they were all sort of editing
[15:19]the experience of this story.
[15:22]That's great.
[15:24]You did a really beautiful job describing
[15:26]sort of same-sex relationships, especially
[15:28]as the men were getting older.
[15:30]You have this beautiful scene of outside a movie theater
[15:33]where one man is straining the tie
[15:35]or some little detail of his partner.
[15:38]And then in the book, you have James think,
[15:40]you know, is this what my relationship with my current partner
[15:42]is going to be like, are we going to grow all together?
[15:44]And you go into, you know, quite graphic depth
[15:47]of some of their interactions, which I thought was great.
[15:50]Because I feel like I don't read that enough.
[15:52]I feel like it's not, was that intentional?
[15:54]Did you sort of scope the landscape
[15:56]and see what you wanted to add?
[15:57]Or I think you did a really beautiful job of portraying
[16:01]all of that intimacy really?
[16:03]Well, thank you.
[16:03]Yeah, the interesting thing about writing
[16:05]that, no, to have Jacqueline O'Massus be a character
[16:07]in this book, she obviously passed away
[16:10]in the mid-90s about 25 years ago.
[16:12]So I had to set the book, you know, before the book
[16:15]takes place in the early 90s.
[16:17]And that's an interesting time period
[16:19]in terms of gay relationships, gay rights,
[16:23]what was happening for gay men, particularly with the AIDS crisis,
[16:27]was, you know, we think of it.
[16:29]I tend to remember it as more of the 80s,
[16:31]but there were more fatalities in the first half
[16:33]of the 90s.
[16:34]It was really a very different time.
[16:37]And we forget how quickly, because gay rights,
[16:39]gay marriage, you know, these things,
[16:41]society has changed so fast, so fast,
[16:45]that usually it takes generations for these types of changes
[16:48]to happen, that it was very interesting to go back
[16:50]and sort of take my sort of lens of today off
[16:54]and remember what it was like.
[16:55]And for me personally, that's around the time
[16:58]that I came out myself in the early 90s.
[17:00]And I never thought I would see gay marriage
[17:04]in my lifetime.
[17:05]So that sort of model of relationship
[17:07]just was off the table.
[17:09]Additionally, there was an entire generation
[17:13]of men 10 to 20, 30 years older than me
[17:16]that was kind of wiped out, you know?
[17:19]And so you don't, they were missing, they were missing.
[17:22]And to see a couple together,
[17:24]an older couple together like that was not the norm.
[17:28]Or they, you know, had learned to live a closeted life
[17:32]and so they weren't as visible.
[17:34]And so there's a real haunting sadness to that idea.
[17:38]So when I spotlighted an older couple in the book,
[17:41]like I really thought that was such a beautiful moment
[17:45]and a powerful thing for particularly young gay men
[17:49]at that time to see, because it does give them,
[17:52]I mean, it doesn't have to be aspirational,
[17:54]but it does lay out, oh, this is one path
[17:57]that is available to us if we want it.
[18:00]And it's interesting to think like how gay relationship
[18:04]models have changed so quickly in 25, 30 years.
[18:07]Was that vignette something you actually saw
[18:09]or another part of your imagination?
[18:11]I remember seeing not that particular vignette,
[18:14]but I do remember always being taken aback
[18:17]when I saw moments of affection at that time
[18:23]as a young man just coming out.
[18:26]And also, you know, I was, you know,
[18:28]I lived in a city in college when I came out
[18:31]and you know, you'd always be scared, you know,
[18:33]it was scary, you know, even today, you know,
[18:35]we're having a slight backtracking a little bit
[18:38]in our current political situation and climate.
[18:41]But it's, you know, you worry about holding hands
[18:43]in public or kissing in public sometimes,
[18:45]but particularly then like it was a little bit dangerous.
[18:48]So when you see just a moment of intimacy,
[18:51]and this is just really just a man helping another man
[18:53]with his tie, but it's done with such love
[18:57]that it was, I remember seeing some moment like that
[19:01]that was sort of shocking to me.
[19:03]I always was able to clock it and,
[19:06]and you know, those things, these little tiny acts
[19:08]just stay with you.
[19:09]And the way you wrote it, I mean, you wrote the whole book
[19:12]in such a visual way, which is probably why it's
[19:14]on its way to being on the screen,
[19:15]but like that scene in particular to me
[19:17]when I flip through and my mental images of the book
[19:20]is one that particularly crystal clear.
[19:22]Yeah.
[19:23]Anyway, I just love the way you wrote that little.
[19:24]Speaking of screenplays,
[19:25]so tell me about what's the latest on turning this
[19:28]into with Fox, right?
[19:29]This is this one's with Fox or the other one's with Fox.
[19:31]Tell me what it looks like.
[19:32]Yeah, well, well, Fox got to tell you this.
[19:35]Fox is merging of Disney at the moment.
[19:36]So there's a little bit up in the air,
[19:37]but yeah, I'm working with Director Greg Berlanti
[19:39]who did Love Simon last year and is quite a TV empire
[19:43]to bring the editor to the big screen.
[19:45]Excellent.
[19:46]And I am writing the adaptation,
[19:48]which I'm very excited about,
[19:49]and casting Jackie has been a fun parlor game
[19:53]between my friends and I.
[19:55]So what's exciting?
[19:57]Well, two things.
[19:57]There's two great roles for women.
[20:00]who are about 60 in this movie, the mom and Jackie.
[20:04]And there's so many actresses who are underserved for material.
[20:08]So I'm very excited to see a sort of double-header with two strong women.
[20:13]That's the kind of movie that I grew up with, like, terms of deer men.
[20:17]That's my favorite.
[20:18]Yeah, yeah, yeah, those, you know, are still magnolia,
[20:20]those, those types of movies.
[20:22]That was one of the first movies that I realized, like, I could cry because of a movie,
[20:26]harder than I could because of my own life.
[20:29]You know, that's feeling like you don't realize,
[20:30]anyway, go on sets of character, tear jerk or volatize.
[20:33]Someone who writes sort of tear jerkers now.
[20:36]It's interesting.
[20:37]And then secondly, I'm excited because, you know, as pervasive as Jackie is in our sort of pop culture,
[20:43]we've never seen her portrayed at this age.
[20:46]I think, you know, there was an HBO adaptation of Great Gardens,
[20:49]where she showed up for a few minutes and she was probably 40, 45 in there.
[20:54]But we've never seen her represented in pop culture
[20:57]or at this, at this point in her life.
[20:59]And I'm, I'm excited to be a part of that.
[21:01]That's excellent.
[21:02]And Lily and the actress also being turned into,
[21:05]also being adapted into a movie by Amazon Studios.
[21:08]I did not write that interestingly enough.
[21:11]You know, when I decided I was working as a screenwriter,
[21:14]when I decided to write Lily as a novel,
[21:17]I sort of took off my screenwriters hat entirely and sort of thought,
[21:22]okay, how can I lean into, you know, if I'm going to make it a novel,
[21:26]how can I lean into the strengths of what,
[21:28]what novels can do what I can't do as a screenwriter.
[21:30]So it's very internal.
[21:32]It takes place largely in one man's imagination.
[21:35]And there's, you know, a big battle at sea.
[21:37]And there's a dog and an octopus and all this stuff.
[21:40]You know, I could just, you know, I was snickering when I was ready
[21:42]because I could hear a producer saying,
[21:43]well, we're not doing that.
[21:44]We can't even do that.
[21:45]And like, no one's going to give you the money for that.
[21:48]So when there was movie interest, I sort of thought,
[21:52]good luck, you know, to whoever you hire to write it.
[21:55]And then there was a wonderful writer who adapted it.
[21:58]And so moving forward, slowly, but surely.
[22:01]But I just didn't think, and also because it was so deeply personal to me,
[22:05]I just didn't think I would be the best person to adapt it,
[22:09]even if I knew how, which I did not.
[22:13]With the editor, however, it's a little bit more of a straightforward adaptation,
[22:17]compared to Lily at least.
[22:19]And I'm very excited to be at the helm of that.
[22:22]And is it fun working?
[22:23]I've heard it's really fun to get to the screenplay
[22:26]that you have the whole team that you're working with.
[22:28]Yeah, well, no, novel writing particularly is a very lonely endeavor at times.
[22:35]And yeah, so it's a double-edged sword.
[22:39]I remember the first time I sat down with my book editor for Lily.
[22:43]She was giving me a few notes and said something like,
[22:46]but I defer to your creative authority.
[22:49]And I almost fell out of my chair because of 15 years
[22:52]and trying to pursue screenwriting.
[22:53]And I like, no one ever deferred to my,
[22:55]because screenwriting is creative authority.
[22:58]You know, film is, it's a director's medium.
[23:00]And it's a large, you know, there are many cooks in the kitchen.
[23:04]But having spent now, several years working on these two books
[23:07]and a third that I really welcome working with a team,
[23:12]especially when you assemble the right team,
[23:15]which I'm very lucky to be working with the people I am.
[23:17]And what's the third book?
[23:18]Yeah, it hasn't been announced yet, but it'll be out next year.
[23:22]Okay. Yeah, I'm not really allowed to talk about.
[23:24]Yeah, I did.
[23:25]Well, it finishes a word on a slide.
[23:27]Okay, well, you know, a draft is done.
[23:30]Okay. Oh, that's exciting.
[23:32]Fiction still.
[23:32]Fiction still, yeah.
[23:33]This is also a bad of struggling writing.
[23:35]It is not.
[23:35]Okay, good.
[23:36]And I didn't, I didn't even think of that.
[23:39]I didn't sort of put together that I now twice written
[23:42]about struggling writers.
[23:43]I guess I'm not a struggling writer.
[23:46]I know.
[23:47]I don't think you can write about struggling writers anymore.
[23:49]That's it.
[23:50]You're done.
[23:50]So now that it's a special writer.
[23:52]Yeah, that's my full time profession.
[23:54]But interestingly enough, the third book does have a character
[23:57]who was very successful and walked away from it.
[24:00]I'm not considering doing that because I've waited my whole life to be this busy.
[24:05]But I'm just putting that together in my head now, interesting.
[24:08]Excellent.
[24:09]And you have more ideas for after that.
[24:11]I hope so.
[24:14]It's a fun, you know, you spend years writing, right, you know, and people can,
[24:19]you know, you spend two years writing a book that people can read in two days
[24:22]and you're, and you're, and when's the next one?
[24:28]I have, I have faith.
[24:29]I'm sure you will think of more great stuff.
[24:32]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[24:36]Yeah, don't try to copy anybody else's style or voice.
[24:42]Like the greatest thing you can do is discovering your own voice and,
[24:46]and sticking to it.
[24:48]One, because it helps develop a brand later on.
[24:50]That's probably bigger thinking.
[24:51]But just in the moment, I think it'll really serve you to find your way
[24:57]as you stumble through darkness, which is sort of what novel writing is.
[25:01]And if you have a story inside you and you don't see it,
[25:03]you know, if you don't see yourself portrayed or represented,
[25:06]if you have a story, you know, write it.
[25:08]Be the one to write it.
[25:09]Don't, don't wait for someone to give you permission to do it.
[25:12]Just do it.
[25:13]And you, you know, you'll be surprised where the journey can lead.
[25:16]Excellent.
[25:17]Well, thank you so much for coming on mom's.
[25:19]Don't have time to read books.
[25:20]This has been a lot of fun.
[25:21]Can't wait to see all these movies.
[25:24]Thank you for the third book.
[25:25]I mean, you're, you're, you're booking my entertainment quota for,
[25:28]you know, I think you just together.
[25:29]We'll try to leave room for others.
[25:31]Okay, I'll do it.
[25:32]All right, thank you.
[25:33]Thank you.
[25:33]Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box.
[25:36]S-C-R-I-A-L-B-O-X.com.
[25:39]cerealbox.com, delivering addictive book content and shortlisten or read instalments.
[25:44]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound for the audio editing and mixing.
[25:48]Thanks for listening to mom's don't have time to read books.