Jane Green, THE FRIENDS WE KEEP
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the webinar-nominated podcast,
[0:12]Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books. This episode of Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books
[0:16]has been sponsored by Himalaya, the best app for discovering,
[0:20]listening, and organizing podcasts. Himalaya was nice enough to reach out and make me an
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[0:30]I'm excited to be here today with Jane Green. Jane is the author of many best-selling novels,
[0:35]including The Beach House and the Sunshine Sisters. Her latest book, The Friends We Keep,
[0:40]debuted early this summer. Jane's novels have been published in 25 languages. She has more than
[0:45]10 million books in print worldwide. A graduate of the International Culinary Institute in New
[0:50]York, Jane is an avid cook and gardener. Originally from the UK, Jane currently lives with her husband
[0:55]and children in Connecticut. Thanks so much for coming on, Mom. Don't Have Time to Read Books!
[1:00]Thank you, it's lovely to be here! So, Jane, can you tell listeners please
[1:04]where The Friends We Keep is about and what inspired you to write this story?
[1:08]So, I'm going to talk about the inspiration first, which was that I realized that when I started to
[1:14]think about writing a new book, I was probably 49 or 50 when I started writing this book.
[1:20]And I always draw from the themes of my life and I started to realize that I have lots of
[1:25]of friends and a great life, and yet my life is much more isolated than I ever expected.
[1:31]And partly, I blame technology. I think we're also busy hiding behind our phones and our screens
[1:37]that we're not connecting with people face to face in the way we used to. And the busyness of life,
[1:43]and I realized as well that we're about to be empty-nesters in a couple of years,
[1:48]the kids will all be gone. And every time my husband and I went after dinner with friends,
[1:53]we'd always end up having the same conversation, which was, hey, you know, why don't we buy
[1:58]a piece of land somewhere or a big farm? And we'll all have like a tiny house, we'll all have
[2:05]our own space, but then we'll have a communal barn, excuse me, with a kitchen and a living room.
[2:10]So, we can all go into what Jung called the afternoon of life with the people we love most. And
[2:16]everybody, we're all so excited about this. My thought, hey, there's something in this. I,
[2:22]I think what I need to be the theme of my new book. So what I did was I took a group of people
[2:29]who meet at university in the UK in the 1980s, half are American, half are English.
[2:35]And they live together at university, they become best friends and they swear that they're
[2:40]going to be friends forever and ever. But of course, life gets in the way they graduate.
[2:44]One of them is harboring this great secret. So she really has to withdraw from the others. So we
[2:50]follow them individually throughout their lives. And, and Evie is a model who then is in an abusive
[2:56]marriage and a single mother. We have Tofa, who's a soap actor, who is gay, but has tremendous
[3:03]issues with intimacy. And then we have Maggie. And all Maggie has ever wanted is a big countryhouse
[3:09]filled with animals and children. And she doesn't get to have the life that she wants. And we
[3:15]follow them throughout the course of their lives. And then at their 30th reunion, by which time
[3:21]they've all completely lost touch, they all show up at their 30th reunion. And within minutes,
[3:28]it's as if time has stopped, they've, they're swept back to those early days. And they realize
[3:33]these are our true friends. These are the people who, who know us best, who still, we still love
[3:38]each other. And what starts as a fantasy, hey, wouldn't it be great if we live together becomes
[3:43]a reality? And they all move in together. But of course there is still this secret from the past.
[3:49]And because this is a novel, and because this is a Jane Green novel, we know that the
[3:54]secret is going to show up and threaten to explode and destroy everything that they've created.
[4:00]So that is the friends we keep. I could listen to you talk all day. Oh, seriously,
[4:04]now I want you to like describe every book you've ever written in August here and listen to all
[4:10]I want to tell you something funny that a few years ago about it was probably eight books ago,
[4:14]I said to my publisher because I tend to talk if I give talks. And if I read, it's not very long,
[4:20]it's maybe half a page or a page. But every time I read, people would come up to me and say,
[4:25]oh, you should narrate your own audiobooks. So I phoned my publisher and said, hey, I'd love to
[4:30]narrate. And they went, Jane, every author thinks that they can, they can do their own audiobooks
[4:36]and they're always terrible and it just doesn't work. And I went, well, I think I might not be
[4:41]terrible. And they said, no, no, no. I said, well, could I at least audition? Because if I'm,
[4:46]if I'm no good fine, but I'd love to try. So they sent over a radio producer. And she was very
[4:54]grumpy. She actually became somebody I grew to love dearly, but she was very grumpy in my husband
[4:59]over the door. And this woman standing there with radio equipment and microphones. And my husband
[5:04]said, oh, come in, Jane, so excited to try out for this. And she went, oh, every author is terrible.
[5:09]And she came into my little office and we started recording and I watched her face change.
[5:15]And so I have recorded my own audiobooks, the last eight books. So if you really like my
[5:22]voice, you could listen to me for hours and hours. I can't go into it. Good for, good for road trip.
[5:28]Yes. Oh my gosh, I feel like all summer, I've just been like, do do do do do do this.
[5:32]will be a good, I can keep you confident. Thank you. That's lovely. So you mentioned before,
[5:38]because it was a Jane Green novel, there was a secret. And so what is a Jane Green novel to people
[5:44]who aren't familiar with your work? So it just changed enormously over the years. I started off,
[5:51]I was a journalist in my 20s. I was a feature writer, women's features. And I actually started
[5:57]writing my first novel after I read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.
[6:01]Oh, that was so good. And it was so good. And every man I knew was saying, oh my God,
[6:05]this book's about me. And every woman I knew was saying, oh my God, this book's about him.
[6:09]And I thought, God, no one's doing this for women. Of course, little did I know that
[6:15]that about two miles away from me, Helen Fielding was sitting in her little flat in Westbourne
[6:21]Grove, writing Bridget Jones's diary. And I, so my first novel was called Straight Talking. And it
[6:29]was about a single 30-something woman living in London. And it came out about three or four months
[6:34]after Bridget Jones's diary. And so suddenly the press leapt on it and said, this is a new genre,
[6:39]this is chicklet. Because what was interesting about that time, and this was the late 90s,
[6:46]that up until then, women's commercial fiction had been Barbara Taylor, Bradford and Judith
[6:52]Crantz and Jackie Collins. It was all glitzy and larger than life and aspirational. But there
[6:57]was nothing that reflected the lives of real women. And we were the first to write about real women.
[7:05]So I went from writing about single women in the city in quite a raw edgy way. And quite funny
[7:13]as well, quite humorous, to writing about life. I mean, and my books have very much chartered
[7:21]the course of my life. So from being single to marriage to motherhood, to grief, to losing friends,
[7:27]to Tina, I mean, the gamut of things that life throws at you. I think what marks a Jane Green novel
[7:35]is an emotional resonance that I try and write very authentically. Ellen Hildebrand described it
[7:41]beautifully. We were doing an event together. And she said, what you need to have to write books
[7:46]like ours is a tremendous amount of empathy without judgment, which I thought was so beautiful,
[7:52]because you're writing about the human experience. And I'm writing about real women. But even
[7:58]if you haven't been through the experiences that I'm writing about, you can put yourself in their shoes,
[8:04]you can feel what it would be like. It's funny when you were saying, writing about the real
[8:08]stories. I feel like this happened in art history too, that it was only at a certain point in time
[8:13]that people that artists began painting what was actually in front of them. And that was revolutionary
[8:18]at the time. And you're like, what, why were they not doing? They were only painting biblical
[8:21]scenes or this set of things. Right. And it's like, the same thing with you. It's like, you're
[8:25]taking from what life gives you. And all of a sudden, that's something new and different and amazing
[8:30]that somehow people thought it would work. Yeah. So it's well, thank you. I feel incredibly lucky
[8:37]and grateful to have written the right book at the right time. And in fact, that my first book
[8:42]book to be published here was a book called Jemima J, which was an updated Cinderella story.
[8:47]So that was more of a fantasy. But you know, my books have changed. My voice has changed.
[8:53]And I'm working on something very different now, which I shall tell you about a bit later on.
[8:57]Okay. And you've written 20 books, is that right? Yes, I am halfway through my 21st.
[9:01]Wow. That's amazing. Do you have other books that you never published?
[9:05]Like, have you really written like 50? Yeah. I think a couple of times,
[9:11]I have abandoned books after about 10,000 words. I think that's happened twice.
[9:17]Or I have rewritten them so completely that it's unrecognizable. It's still the same theme.
[9:24]And I always think, gosh, I should dig those out and put those on Amazon or do something with them.
[9:30]Yeah. Like bonus feature. Exactly. So in this book, the friends we keep, it centers on the three
[9:36]characters who are at university together. And I was wondering, did their experience mirror years
[9:41]in any way? So funnily enough with this book, I have really drawn from my life. And I don't
[9:46]always, every book is different. But this one probably has a little bit more autobiography in it than
[9:54]many of the others in that, yes, I did have two really close friends from university. There was...
[10:00]an evil Ben, and I still don't know his surname,
[10:02]but I had a massive crush on this really grumpy scallop
[10:07]boy called evil Ben, and they used to absolutely send somebody
[10:12]running back from the pub to say evil Ben's in the pub.
[10:15]And I'd go scurrying out to the pub.
[10:17]So that was really lovely.
[10:19]I felt like I revisited those days.
[10:22]I will say, I'm still in touch with them
[10:24]because the beauty of Facebook, which I'm very, very
[10:27]rarely on Facebook now.
[10:29]But of course, you do get to friend the people from your past.
[10:32]And so we are still in touch.
[10:34]And we did have a little reunion about four years ago.
[10:37]And I have to say it was just as it was in the book
[10:41]in that these are girls I haven't seen in 30, 35 years.
[10:46]And we all, well, 30 years, it was 30 years.
[10:51]It was so comfortable immediately and so much fun.
[10:55]And it was just lovely.
[10:57]So I absolutely drew on that for this.
[11:00]I had a recent college reunion.
[11:01]It's the same.
[11:02]People use fun so much time.
[11:03]Like you can just jump right back in like time.
[11:05]Yeah.
[11:06]Well, I also think there's something
[11:08]very magical about those friendships
[11:09]because you're teetering on the brink of adulthood.
[11:13]So it's before you've decided who you're going to be.
[11:17]It's before you've put those constructs up
[11:19]of what kind of adult you're going to be.
[11:21]So they really know the real you.
[11:24]And I think there's a freedom in those friendships
[11:27]that even whatever age you are now,
[11:29]you're able to bring up the real you.
[11:32]And there's something so magical about that.
[11:35]I totally agree.
[11:36]So for any college girlfriends listening,
[11:39]we're having a complete appreciation of that time.
[11:42]And all of you, you wove in cooking throughout this book
[11:47]in such detail that I was getting hungry.
[11:49]There was some omelette you made with feta.
[11:51]You like described all the ingredients.
[11:53]And I'm like, OK, I need to find a way to go have this omelette
[11:56]right now.
[11:56]And then of course I read that you have a culinary background.
[11:59]So tell me a little more about that.
[12:01]Well, it's not the funny thing is my mom is a great cook.
[12:05]My dad's a great cook.
[12:06]My grandmother was a cook.
[12:07]I come from a family of cooks.
[12:09]So food was a very big part of my childhood.
[12:13]And I learned to cook sitting at my mother's knee.
[12:16]But I always described my cooking as it was a bit like Russian
[12:19]roulette in that sometimes it was fantastic.
[12:22]And sometimes it was terrible.
[12:23]And I was utterly fearless.
[12:25]And one of the stories that actually made it
[12:28]into a book I wrote years ago called Mr. Maybe.
[12:31]It was an absolutely true story.
[12:32]I was 21.
[12:33]I had a new boyfriend.
[12:34]It was the first time I was meeting his friends.
[12:36]I was desperate to impress them.
[12:38]So I decided to make a Thai green curry.
[12:41]I have no idea why.
[12:42]And when I went through the ingredient list,
[12:45]they called for four large green peppers.
[12:48]And I went to my grocery store.
[12:49]And they didn't have any large green peppers.
[12:52]They only had these teeny tiny ones.
[12:54]No, I figured, well, maybe 16 to 20 would equal here.
[12:58]So I made a curry that burnt my fingers off.
[13:02]Actually, as I was slicing that, I mean,
[13:04]it was just so hot that nobody could get near it.
[13:06]You couldn't eat it at all.
[13:08]A pinio curry.
[13:09]Yeah, exactly.
[13:11]And so I continued like this.
[13:13]And that sometimes it was great.
[13:15]I never made a mistake quite like that.
[13:17]But then about 10 years ago,
[13:20]I decided to take myself off to culinary school.
[13:22]And so I took a break.
[13:24]We were building a house anyway.
[13:25]So I was sort of having a bit of a break
[13:28]at that time from writing.
[13:29]And I went off to what was the French Culinary Institute.
[13:33]I think it's now called the International Culinary Center.
[13:37]And I arrived there every day with kids.
[13:39]They were all sort of late teens, early 20s,
[13:42]and going into a cooking career.
[13:45]And I just went and learned the science of cooking, actually.
[13:50]And I really loved it.
[13:52]I loved being a student again.
[13:53]I loved learning new skills.
[13:56]And my cooking is definitely much better now.
[13:58]But my books have always been filled with food,
[14:00]because it's such a huge part of my life.
[14:02]And I wrote a cook book as well.
[14:03]That's right.
[14:04]A few years ago, I have a cook book called Good Taste,
[14:06]which is all easy comfort food,
[14:08]because I don't think anything in life should be complicated.
[14:12]I felt like for Maggie, your character,
[14:14]because she wasn't able to have children,
[14:16]cooking for her was like her main caregiving initiative,
[14:19]if you will.
[14:20]And she could do his cook for her friends.
[14:22]And withhold that when she was upset with Ben and all of this.
[14:25]So it's like the language of love, food.
[14:28]100%.
[14:29]And I always say, I show the people I love
[14:32]that I love them through food.
[14:33]And I also want people, the minute you walk into my house,
[14:38]I want you to feel warm and safe and nurtured.
[14:42]And I want to sit you at my kitchen table
[14:44]and feed you the kind of foods that make you feel loved.
[14:47]Well, now I feel better.
[14:48]I didn't feed you anything when you walked in my house.
[14:49]No, no, no.
[14:50]I had to trust me.
[14:51]You do what?
[14:52]Trust me.
[14:53]One and a half breakfast already today.
[14:55]So I'm very glad you didn't feed me any of you.
[14:58]I do say that to my kids, though,
[15:00]even if I make them scrambled eggs in a hurry
[15:02]before a school or a camp.
[15:03]I'm like, do you taste the love?
[15:04]So I put the love in there anyway.
[15:05]And by the way, they can is my answer, because we can.
[15:09]And you know, you know the difference between going,
[15:12]even going to a restaurant, you can taste love and care
[15:16]in food always.
[15:17]I feel like my husband's food.
[15:19]There's nothing like it.
[15:20]It's just something about it.
[15:22]And my mom, anyway, so from food to drink.
[15:25]So Ben ends up not giving anything away.
[15:28]It was brought up early in the book,
[15:30]but Ben has issues with his drinking, which affects Maggie.
[15:33]And at one point, her mother says to Maggie, this will pass.
[15:38]No marriage is good all the time.
[15:39]The most important thing in marriage is kindness.
[15:41]And Ben is a kind man.
[15:43]Even if he's drinking again, he will stop.
[15:45]He always does.
[15:46]You just need patience.
[15:47]So what did you think of that advice?
[15:49]Do you think that's the right advice for a mom
[15:51]to give a daughter?
[15:52]I, well, what do you think?
[15:54]I don't know.
[15:55]Not necessarily.
[15:55]Maggie isn't, she's close to her mother.
[15:57]She loves her, but they don't spend a lot of time together.
[16:00]And I think that's one of the sort of naive things
[16:03]that a mother might say to her daughter.
[16:05]By the way, I do think kindness is the most important thing
[16:07]in marriage, but I think marriage to an alcoholic
[16:10]is something quite different.
[16:11]And I have dealt with this many times,
[16:14]because I have quite a lot of addiction in my background.
[16:17]So I am very familiar with addiction and with 12-step programs.
[16:22]And I've done Alenom a lot.
[16:25]And I've done living with an alcoholic.
[16:26]And I've done being an alcoholic.
[16:28]And I just didn't want to go there.
[16:30]But I actually, well, I have conflicting views, actually,
[16:34]about alcoholism.
[16:35]partly because I'm reading a book called Lost Connections
[16:40]by Johan Hari.
[16:42]And it's so fascinating.
[16:44]We, especially here in the Western America, particularly,
[16:48]we tend to think it's 12-step or nothing.
[16:51]You go into AA or NA or whatever
[16:55]is your drug of choice to look for help for a higher power.
[16:59]And Johan Hari actually points out
[17:02]that countries that have less punitive penalties
[17:06]for drug use, where people, communities,
[17:09]gather together to look after people,
[17:11]addicts do much, much better.
[17:14]And there's a lot of scientific studies showing, you know,
[17:16]whether it's with mice and rats.
[17:19]But it is all about community that if you
[17:23]put out a very addictive drug, the rats will always
[17:26]go to it unless they have, in isolation,
[17:30]they will always go to it.
[17:31]But when they build a community,
[17:32]they don't make those same choices.
[17:34]Which is partly, I think, why 12-step programs work?
[17:37]It's about community.
[17:39]But so often when you love somebody with an addiction,
[17:43]there is not, it's just as isolating.
[17:45]They call alcoholism a disease of isolation,
[17:48]but so often the partners, the children, the parents,
[17:52]get ignored.
[17:53]But that is a disease of isolation too.
[17:55]And I think really, that's what happens for Maggie.
[17:58]She becomes more and more isolated.
[18:01]I don't think the advice is correct.
[18:03]But actually, Maggie figures it out for herself
[18:05]because she solves the problem of isolation
[18:08]by moving all her friends in.
[18:10]Let's talk a little about Evie too.
[18:11]I don't want to ignore her.
[18:13]So Evie, who had a childhood actress upbringing
[18:17]becomes a model and dives into DEXA trim during college,
[18:21]thanks to Tofer's mom.
[18:23]She then has major body issue, a journey.
[18:28]A body issue journey, if you will.
[18:29]Tell me what you think about the effect of all
[18:33]of the different life stages and then how
[18:34]lands her future husband, body shames her so terribly.
[18:38]I mean, I could not believe what you had him say to her.
[18:41]I felt like, what did she look like?
[18:43]Was it really, tell me you just tell me a little more
[18:46]about the body image dimension of Evie's character.
[18:50]Well, that, again, eating disorders and that sort of body
[18:54]and just small fear and body image and shame
[18:57]around food and eating is something I've written.
[19:00]Well, I wrote about it more in the earlier books.
[19:02]In straight talking, and Jemima J was all about a girl
[19:06]who was very overweight, who met somebody online,
[19:09]and then shed huge amounts of weight to go and meet him
[19:14]and discovered that it wasn't the key to happiness
[19:17]after all, by the way.
[19:18]And I think what was interesting for me with Evie,
[19:21]the modeling was interesting.
[19:22]I have a lot of friends who modeled and were ballet dancers.
[19:26]And there is so much craziness around food,
[19:31]particularly in the 80s and 90s.
[19:34]And so that was how I got her plunged into the eating disorder.
[19:40]And then, yeah, her marriage with Lance,
[19:43]I think he, she married a man who wanted a trophy wife.
[19:46]He wasn't interested in her mind.
[19:48]He wasn't interested in her.
[19:49]He was interested in having the most beautiful,
[19:53]the most stunning.
[19:54]And because he was abusive, she having,
[19:57]having actually been quite relaxed around food.
[20:00]was always every drug of choice and so when she realized she was married to this incredibly
[20:06]controlling man her comfort again became food and of course the bigger she became the more
[20:12]he shamed her because for him as a narcissist she was the reflection and so when his wife
[20:19]was less than perfect it made him feel that other people were looking at him thinking
[20:24]he was less than perfect and I did love writing her journey which was really
[20:29]approaching menopause that so many of our bodies change so however we've lived in our
[20:35]teens 20s 30s 40s suddenly you hit menopause and for so many of us and I know plenty of women
[20:42]who spend three hours a day in pure bar and Pilates and they look fantastic and I can't do that
[20:49]I have no interest I have no desire I have no time and so part of me has had to accept that
[20:56]this is not the body I had even five years ago let alone 10 years ago and the beauty of getting older
[21:04]is that you do reach a point where looking at your sudden photos may be difficult at times but you
[21:10]also reach a point where you just realize people are not looking at you thinking oh my god she's
[21:15]20 pounds overweight I can't be friends with her and you reach a point where you realize you have to
[21:20]accept yourself because you don't have as much control as as you might have had when you were younger
[21:27]and that's the journey that ever has just really reaching a place where where she learns to be
[21:33]ultimately the goal is to love yourself but that's that's a journey and and she does it what
[21:38]with affirmations and changing the narrative and I think changing the narrative is so often
[21:45]something that we forget to do whatever it is in life when you know when we're feeling scared and
[21:50]we'll have anxiety often often deciding not to feel that way is the first step in not feeling that
[21:58]way did you see in the paper this morning I read this little thing that there was a study where
[22:05]if you freeze some part of the ovarian tissue and then re-implant it you can delay on set of
[22:10]menopause by 20 years it's worked for nine women oh my goodness so anyway they were saying well
[22:17]you'll die on out I don't know for 20 years you can have it start 20 years later which would
[22:22]then minimize the risk of osteoporosis and I don't know just anyway and I'm not sure about that yeah
[22:30]so I'm not sure about that I think well too late for me now say well terrible idea
[22:39]but you know the other thing that that I think is part of every show and all of their
[22:42]which is very much been part of my life which ties into this changing the narrative is I just
[22:47]I always try and get this quote him because it's really the quote that changed my life it's a
[22:51]psychology professor called Robert Emmons and he talks about gratitude and he said gratitude
[22:58]is a sustainable choice for life that can be freely chosen for oneself it is choosing to focus
[23:05]on blessings rather than burdens on gifts rather than curses and people report that it transforms
[23:11]their lives and and I think for all of these characters they all whatever hardships they've come
[23:17]through they get to a place in their life where they realize that they have a choice they can
[23:23]they can focus on the good or they can focus on the bad. Talk to me for two seconds about the process
[23:28]you go through to write your books where do you write how long does each book take? So what time
[23:34]is it? Yeah and I've always been a morning writer for years and yet I don't I can't write at
[23:39]too many distractions so I have always either gone to the library or had a little office but I
[23:46]like having other people around because I feel like I'm then accountable I'm not going to play
[23:51]computer solitaire all day or whatever it is but for years because when my kids were young I
[23:57]always made sure I was finished by lunchtime so I probably wrote for three or four hours a day
[24:02]and then I'd be done and I'd be back to being mum for the rest of the day but now the kids are
[24:08]either gone or they're teenagers they're self-sufficient so I'm writing my 21st novel and I'm
[24:14]writing it completely differently to any of my other books in that I'm now in my office eight hours
[24:20]a day but I'm still writing the same number of words and so I feel like I'm putting much more
[24:28]care into the writing so so many of my books particularly the earlier ones were they felt
[24:34]almost like stream of consciousness and and yes I go back in and edit and edit but I would just
[24:40]write very quickly and get it all out now I'm taking my time and I feel like the writing is
[24:46]much better with the book I'm writing now than it has ever been. Now that it's your 21st it's like
[24:51]your first adult novel really right? You're turning 21. I like that so yeah. So what is it about can
[24:56]you say? Yeah it's very different. It is the story of the 29 year old daughter of a Steve Jobs
[25:04]like tech tycoon so it's all Silicon Valley it's all West Coast and she was the invisible child.
[25:12]He abandoned her for the first few years of her life and then came back in and and he is a
[25:17]mercurial difficult genius and she never knew where she stood with him he's very volatile he has
[25:24]a lot of rage but he can also be charming and wonderful but she has spent her life walking on eggshells
[25:30]and trying to win his his love his attention and his approval and she is has finally been allowed
[25:36]to work for his company and she's brilliant she she has a degree from Harvard but she's meek
[25:42]and it ends up with him being diagnosed with cancer and he goes off for experimental treatment
[25:48]in Switzerland and she has miraculously managed to pull off this this deal not by her technical
[25:54]knowledge but by because she's a millennial she understands it's about connection it's human
[25:59]and she happened to make a human connection with with the woman behind this deal and as a result
[26:05]he puts her in as the interim CEO of the company but once she's in she desperate to prove herself
[26:11]her father realizing that that he he did see her all along she finds that she is just screwing up
[26:18]every step of the way and there's she has a female mentor in the company and they decide to sort
[26:23]of send her off on a world tour and while she's away on this world tour she discovers that they're
[26:28]using child labor to manufacture some of their technology and she's horrified and she comes back
[26:36]to find her father's on his deathbed the woman who she considered her mentor has taken over the
[26:43]company she's been locked out of the office and her father on his deathbed seems to have signed
[26:49]papers authorizing this and so the rest of the novel is spent with her fighting for her
[26:57]fighting for her life and fighting for her father's legacy and going back in and and seeing
[27:04]she can see not only stop the child labor but sees the company back that sounds so good it's
[27:10]you know it's very much the films that I loved it were back in the sort of 80s and 90s were
[27:17]films like Working Girl and Pretty Woman and those those kind of female empowerment wishful
[27:24]film and and that's very much what this book is so it's a real departure for me and I am loving
[27:32]every minute of it excellent do you have any parting advice for aspiring others yes I do okay I
[27:38]always say to people that writing requires a PhD but in my world that is persistence humility and
[27:48]discipline and persistence because there will be roadblocks every step of the way and you you just
[27:54]have to keep the fell forward you know if something gets in your way and stops you keep moving
[27:59]just don't dwell on it you just keep moving forward humility because it's particularly if you
[28:05]are an aspiring writer and a new writer it's so easy to think well these are my words and they
[28:10]can't be changed because this is my voice I know what they but so I would say choose one or two
[28:17]people who you really trust and ask for honest advice and when they give it to you listen to them
[28:23]you've got to have humility and then discipline because it's so hard to finish a book and life
[28:33]always gets in the way and I always say the greatest training I ever had was that I started off as
[28:38]a feature writer and I was on a daily national newspaper and every day I had an editor standing
[28:44]over me saying Jane we need a thousand words in an hour and I couldn't say oh I'm so sorry I'm
[28:50]not inspired today try me again tomorrow I had to write a thousand words in an hour on whatever
[28:55]subject I was given whether I felt like it or not and that has served me so well and that's what
[29:02]like that it requires tremendous discipline set yourself a number of words or pages and it could be
[29:09]it might be 500 words it might be half a page whatever it is but do not get up from your chair
[29:16]until those words are on the page wow PhD I like it very catchy thank you well thank you so much
[29:23]for coming oh thank you folks thanks for sharing your experience and I'm excited for your next book
[29:27]thank you lovely to be here thanks again to today's sponsor of momstone of time to read books
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[29:38]thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books you can follow me on instagram
[29:42]at moms don't have time to read books thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for
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[29:51]and now trim music thanks for listening you could always email me at zibi at zibiowans.com