Alice Berman, I EAT MEN LIKE AIR
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:11]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Please sign up for my newsletter at ziviowens.com
[0:17]for updates on podcast guests and lots of live events.
[0:21]Today's episode has been sponsored by the Iceland Reader's Retreat, which is happening
[0:25]April 29th to March 3rd in Iceland. Who doesn't want to go to Iceland?
[0:30]While you're there, you'll get small group lectures and talks by renowned authors
[0:33]learning about the rich literary heritage of this Nordic book-loving nation,
[0:37]Adam Gopnik is the special guest this year, and he will be doing a small seminar on memoir
[0:43]between all these intimate book discussions. You get to have literary theme tours of the countryside,
[0:48]hear from other Icelandic writers, and discover some really cool artifacts and
[0:53]raked-of-ex museums. This sounds so fun, and I'm hoping I can somehow manage to get there,
[0:58]but you should check it out at icelandreadersretreat.com. That's icelandreadersretreat.com.
[1:05]The price is $1,600, but that includes so much. Everything for basically four days of your life.
[1:11]So check it out at the Iceland Reader's Retreat. Thank you so much.
[1:14]I'm here today with Alice Vermin, who's the author of the Audible Originals Book,
[1:18]I Eat Men Like Air, a mystery slash thriller. She sold her book, Lost Boys and Technicolor Girls
[1:24]to ABC, where it is in development to become a series with freeform.
[1:28]Alice co-founded the Shop Feed app, which is the Buzzfeed of Shopping,
[1:32]and previously served as the creative director for Pop and Sookie.
[1:35]A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania,
[1:37]where she won the Gibson Peacock Award for Creative Nonfiction.
[1:40]Alice currently lives in New York City.
[1:42]Alice Vermin's book, I Eat Men Like Air, was just nominated for an
[1:45]Audie for Best Original Work on Audible, which is super, super exciting.
[1:50]Alice is also the head of partnerships now for me for mom's time to read books,
[1:54]so anybody who wants to be a sponsor or sponsor an event,
[1:59]talk to Alice and learn more about her here.
[2:02]Welcome, Alice. Thanks for coming on mom's time to read books.
[2:04]I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy you're here.
[2:07]I have to say you were the first person that I've interviewed
[2:09]who has an Audible original.
[2:11]Oh, I feel so special.
[2:12]It's very cool. Thank you.
[2:14]Your book, I Eat Men Like Air, which, by the way, every time I mention this title,
[2:18]people laugh, people are interested. It's like brilliant title.
[2:22]Tell me about, first of all, what the story is about,
[2:24]and also how it ended up being an Audible original,
[2:27]and why you went that route in the whole story.
[2:29]So the story starts out, it has seven main characters,
[2:32]and you find out on page one that one of them is dead,
[2:35]and you kind of follow that thread back in time
[2:39]through what happened to bring him to that moment in time.
[2:43]And there's a sort of traumatic event early on that affects all of these seven people,
[2:48]and they kind of are working through that,
[2:51]while you as the reader are also trying to figure out what happened to Alex, who is dead,
[2:57]and it's all centered around a wedding party and a wedding,
[3:00]which was always something I really wanted to do,
[3:02]because I've been a bridesmaid a few times,
[3:04]and I think it's really interesting to be in this combination of people
[3:07]where you're really close friends with everyone who's else who's a bridesmaid,
[3:11]and you don't know any of the groomsmen,
[3:13]and you're kind of like thrown together over and over again for a year,
[3:16]year and a half, and then you never see each other again.
[3:19]They should do like reunions for the wedding party.
[3:21]They should. I feel like some of my wedding parties.
[3:24]Yeah, me too, and I haven't seen some of these people,
[3:26]since my friends got married.
[3:27]Exactly.
[3:28]You should encourage all of the anniversary parties to it anyway.
[3:31]Everybody's having new parties, thanks to us,
[3:34]which we don't have time to go to.
[3:36]Okay, so you thought of this idea.
[3:37]How did you come up with this idea aside from being a bridesmaid?
[3:39]I came up, I had kind of been kicking it around for a while.
[3:43]I knew that I wanted to focus on the wedding party.
[3:45]I've always been a huge fan of mysteries,
[3:47]and I knew I wanted to write a mystery and kind of
[3:50]make it a little more focused on sort of the feelings and thoughts
[3:54]behind the characters, because I love Agatha Christie,
[3:57]but you never really get that deeply
[3:59]into any of the characters thought process,
[4:01]except for the detectives.
[4:03]And that's great.
[4:04]But I wanted to read something that went a little more deeply
[4:08]into kind of what everyone was thinking, maybe,
[4:12]would allow you to see why someone would get to the point of murder.
[4:16]Interesting.
[4:18]And is there any firsthand experience with any crime?
[4:20]Anything?
[4:21]Not at all.
[4:22]I think you want to share it right now.
[4:24]This is my moment.
[4:25]Okay.
[4:25]But I read this.
[4:26]Robert wrestler book called, I think, those who fight monsters,
[4:30]and he is the man who sort of coined the term serial killer.
[4:33]He worked for the FBI for years, and he traveled around the country,
[4:36]interviewing all of these very famous serial killers like Tex Walker and Charles Manson.
[4:41]I'm not sure if I got Tex Walker's last name right, but anyway.
[4:44]And I was really struck by him talking about, you know, Ted Bundy as a human,
[4:49]and what the psychology looked like there,
[4:52]and how easy it was to forget that these people were more than just killers.
[4:56]And I thought that that was really fascinating.
[4:59]And he talks about this one moment where he's alone with a very famous serial killer who was,
[5:03]I can't remember what one it was, but he's like, you know, six, five and very strong.
[5:07]And he got really nervous just sitting there and remembered suddenly that he was a killer,
[5:12]because he'd forgotten and spending three hours alone with him until these last five minutes.
[5:16]And I was so struck by that as something that we forget to humanize people a lot of the time.
[5:22]Although I feel like sometimes people think there's too much attention on the killers
[5:26]and not the victims.
[5:27]Like it's some like, in some crimes that are,
[5:30]I had this woman Caroline Mernegan, and she would book all the hot one about,
[5:34]and someone had murdered a friend of hers.
[5:36]And she was upset by how much attention murders get, like,
[5:38]maybe people who are sort of mentally unbalanced to begin with,
[5:42]crave that attention, and then the media sort of perpetuates it.
[5:45]Completely. And that's actually a huge part of the book,
[5:47]which is about a Robert Russell's book, not at all in my book.
[5:50]Okay. But now we're just gonna talk about other books.
[5:54]But I completely agree. And I always think it's interesting when you go into
[5:57]the victims family and you're actually seeing these people who are affected by it.
[6:02]And that was part of why I wanted to kind of shrug away from the mystery genre of just focusing
[6:08]on, you know, one person or maybe one person solving the crime and get into everyone
[6:12]and their friends and their family and their background.
[6:15]Well, you did a good job because I had no idea.
[6:16]In fact, I was reading it and I always like involved my kids with the books.
[6:19]I'm reading. I'm like, this is a mystery. Let me tell you what happened.
[6:22]And there's this thing and there's this watch and I don't know.
[6:24]Like, whatever. And they're like, well, what do you mean?
[6:27]Why would he be dead in a bathtub? And I'm like, I don't know.
[6:29]Then I was like, maybe I shouldn't be sharing all this.
[6:32]Anyway, so like every day they're like, who did it?
[6:34]Oh, that sounds amazing.
[6:35]So they were very, I'm so happy.
[6:37]And I did not do it in the coming time.
[6:39]Good, that makes me so happy.
[6:41]So you wrote this book and you've also written another book,
[6:44]Lost Boys and Technicolor Girls, which you sold to ABC.
[6:47]Yes, so that's in development.
[6:48]That's in development, but that's also not an actual book.
[6:50]No, we haven't sold the print rights for that yet.
[6:52]We haven't really that kind of like got sold almost accidentally through a weird series of events.
[6:57]I was working in fashion at the time and I'd written it and given it to a friend at UTA.
[7:02]And it just sort of happened, which has been amazing.
[7:05]And it was kind of similar with Audible.
[7:07]I knew it was still working full time pretty much at the time.
[7:10]And I knew that I wanted it to be a book.
[7:13]And my wonderful agent found my wonderful editor at Audible Jess.
[7:17]And she was just so understanding of the book.
[7:20]She grew up on the upper east side.
[7:22]She knew a lot of the places that are mentioned in it.
[7:24]And the second we met, I was like, oh my god, here's the book.
[7:28]Take it and go with it.
[7:29]And she was just such an amazing editor and so great to work with.
[7:32]And that was really as much as I love Audible as an audio as a medium.
[7:38]Because I do a ton of listening.
[7:39]She was really the reason why I went with Audible 100%.
[7:41]I just trusted her so much.
[7:44]Somebody was asking me this question and I had no answer.
[7:46]So I'm going to ask you these questions that make me seem very stupid.
[7:48]But how did economics of publishing an audiobook versus a regular book work?
[7:54]Like if you're an author and you have the choice of where you would want to sell things,
[7:57]how do you, like how does it work with Audible?
[8:00]It's really similar and Audible makes it incredibly compelling
[8:03]since they've started their originals program.
[8:05]They pay you a really generous advance and then they pay you kind of bonuses
[8:10]per download, very similar to royalties.
[8:12]And so it's similar.
[8:13]Pretty much exactly the same.
[8:15]Yeah.
[8:15]Except you never get a printed book.
[8:17]Yeah.
[8:17]But you can go sell your print rights, which I haven't found the right person for this book yet.
[8:21]But when I do, like also my print rights and then I'll get kind of twice as much.
[8:26]So then so even after they err it and you get all your downloads and blah, blah,
[8:31]you can sell the print rights to a traditional publisher.
[8:33]And then they go sell it at a bookstore.
[8:35]Yeah.
[8:36]That's so cool.
[8:37]It's amazing.
[8:39]And I will also say working with Audible, they are so kind and thoughtful and easy to work with
[8:44]and they're so big on supporting authors and whatever we can do for you.
[8:47]And I've been amazed at how they will answer any phone call at any time or any question,
[8:52]any text.
[8:53]Like I know pretty much everyone there and I feel really comfortable with them.
[8:57]And because this was my first book that was coming out, that was really important to me.
[9:01]because it's very scary to put yourself out there like that.
[9:04]And I felt like I had a really strong support system with them.
[9:07]And then they have like a free distribution platform.
[9:11]I mean, they didn't get anything into stores.
[9:13]So once they put it up, it's amazing.
[9:15]It's just there and everybody can download it.
[9:16]So it's almost like they have no cost.
[9:18]I've been so surprised with how many people have read or listened to the book.
[9:22]People reach out to me on Instagram who I don't know or I'll read the reviews.
[9:26]And I'm like, I don't know this person at all.
[9:28]I've never met anyone who lives in Kansas or whatever.
[9:31]It's astounding.
[9:33]And do they help with marketing?
[9:34]They definitely help with marketing.
[9:36]I mean, they have such a strong sort of following, I think, that anything that's promoted
[9:42]on their website, you're immediately getting eyes onto that title, which I really appreciate
[9:47]it and enjoy it.
[9:48]And do they, sorry for all these questions, do they guarantee you that they'll promote,
[9:52]like do they have so many titles that they only promote some people on the website?
[9:55]Is it like Apple?
[9:56]You know what I mean?
[9:57]We're like, there's so much content or do they make it, is-
[10:00]part of the deal that they will promote you on the website.
[10:02]I don't know if that was part of my deal.
[10:03]I'm embarrassed to say, but I definitely,
[10:05]they promoted me on the website in an email
[10:07]and I felt really just supported as the best word.
[10:10]Like whenever I was like,
[10:11]oh, I don't know, how's it doing?
[10:13]They were like,
[10:14]everything's great.
[10:15]Yay for everything.
[10:16]So it was really, it was a great experience.
[10:19]I loved working with them.
[10:20]So, Nate, so when you were writing,
[10:22]did you know, like at what stage did I will get involved?
[10:25]Like, because I know I saw the print version.
[10:28]So, did you like self-published,
[10:29]who gave, I had it printed galleys.
[10:32]A lot of people were not willing to listen to it
[10:35]and it was kind of a way of getting people
[10:37]who are book influencers or people like you
[10:40]to sort of listen to the book.
[10:43]Because I think it's great to listen to it,
[10:46]but if you're not someone who naturally listens to audio books,
[10:49]you have to kind of actually see
[10:51]and hold the galleys and start reading it to be like,
[10:53]okay, I could listen to this.
[10:55]And then once you start listening to it,
[10:57]the woman who performs it is so talented,
[10:59]it becomes more like an experience
[11:02]rather than just reading.
[11:04]When I listened to it, I was in the car
[11:06]and my baby said we're not listening
[11:07]while the kids were like doing their own stuff in the car.
[11:09]And it's like, we've got so engrossed immediately
[11:12]because it's like all the tones of voice and the lulu
[11:15]and that's, and then I finished it reading it
[11:18]because I read faster than I listened to it.
[11:19]Definitely, I read faster than I listened to it.
[11:21]It's like 12 more hours, what?
[11:23]It's like 12 hours, I'm like two hours.
[11:27]No, but it was great.
[11:28]And like if I was in my car more,
[11:30]I don't have like a car-based lifestyle.
[11:32]Definitely.
[11:33]But for people who do, I mean,
[11:34]if I were, you know, even if it was a summertime
[11:36]where I'm in the car a lot more,
[11:37]this would have been like a perfect.
[11:38]Absolutely.
[11:39]When I lived in LA, that was when I got into podcasts
[11:42]and audiobooks because I was in the car all the time.
[11:45]So it was always listening to something.
[11:47]And also you had a podcast character
[11:50]as like the central guy that you framed the story around
[11:53]the investigator who runs a crime podcast.
[11:55]Which I also found so interesting
[11:56]because I love now like seeing podcasts pop up in books.
[12:00]Yeah.
[12:01]Like, oh, maybe they're here to stay.
[12:02]Who knows?
[12:03]They are definitely here to stay.
[12:04]I mean, I don't know.
[12:05]So new at it.
[12:06]I mean, not that.
[12:07]I was so taken by serial and S-Town
[12:10]and those kind of crime podcasts.
[12:11]And I loved the idea that these journalists got so close
[12:15]to their subjects that it became kind of,
[12:17]they were questioning their own morality in the situation.
[12:20]And I just thought that it was such an interesting dilemma.
[12:24]So that was why I decided to include a podcast narrator
[12:28]as the person who solves the crime.
[12:30]But then going back to your original question
[12:33]of when did Audible become involved,
[12:34]they became involved at the very end.
[12:35]I didn't, I wasn't initially thinking of this
[12:38]as an audiobook, but the second my agent suggested it.
[12:41]I was like, oh my God, because there's a podcast in this,
[12:44]that is so perfect.
[12:45]I kind of get the crime podcast that I wanted.
[12:48]So I was really excited about that.
[12:51]That's so cool.
[12:52]It was great.
[12:53]So because in the galley version,
[12:55]you have notes on how you want people to read it.
[12:57]So did you go back in and add those?
[12:59]I went back in and added those.
[13:00]And that was great.
[13:01]And also cuts down on the word count,
[13:02]which everyone is always trying to do.
[13:04]So I was so happy.
[13:06]You know, I think I ended up cutting like 4,000 words
[13:09]of just directions of voices by giving the narrator
[13:14]this wonderful woman Elizabeth Evans, the directions.
[13:16]And I was so happy with her because, I mean,
[13:18]for so many reasons, but she had such a sense of humor.
[13:21]And there were so many times that I didn't realize
[13:23]I had written something that was really funny,
[13:25]but because she delivered the line in a funny way,
[13:27]I was laughing, which I loved.
[13:29]Did you get to have any input and who read it?
[13:32]Yeah, they let me listen to a,
[13:34]I think probably six different narrators.
[13:36]And I just, she was the second one I listened to.
[13:39]And I was like, oh my God.
[13:40]This woman's amazing.
[13:41]Let's do her.
[13:42]She's great.
[13:42]The section they had her reading was where they talk
[13:44]about lands or half lands.
[13:46]And a lot of the other narrators, this not to be rude,
[13:50]because they were all lovely and talented.
[13:51]But they all had these really long, complicated pronunciations
[13:55]of like, long, they're half long.
[13:57]And I was like, oh my God, no, no, no.
[13:59]And Elizabeth just said lands or half lands.
[14:01]And I was like, great, that's true.
[14:02]Got it.
[14:03]Oh my gosh.
[14:04]So tell me a little more of your backstory
[14:07]before you got into writing.
[14:09]So you started an app like a shopping.
[14:11]Yes, which I, you know everything.
[14:13]Well, I went online.
[14:14]I was like, ooh, another, look at all this.
[14:16]Look at all this.
[14:17]There were two different shopping sites.
[14:19]I'm like, I got to get off of these websites.
[14:21]I can't keep doing research into this author
[14:23]by shopping anyway.
[14:25]I went to Penn, and then I moved to LA
[14:27]and worked for an interior designer.
[14:29]And then ended up working at a friend's shopping app
[14:32]that was called Shop Feed, which was great.
[14:34]And I learned so much about, that was really
[14:35]where I learned how to write concisely,
[14:37]because I was writing all the articles.
[14:39]And I loved that.
[14:40]That was an amazing experience.
[14:41]And then I left and went to work at a director
[14:43]consumer accessories company where I learned a lot more
[14:46]about sort of tech packs and developing products
[14:49]and leather samples.
[14:51]And that was also great.
[14:52]But I was basically only writing copy for the website,
[14:55]which we didn't meet a lot of copy.
[14:57]So I really missed writing.
[14:58]And that was when I started writing at work,
[15:00]like around three o'clock, every day things
[15:02]would kind of calm down.
[15:03]And I would just sit at my desk.
[15:05]And I started writing this book.
[15:06]And then it came to be.
[15:08]Wow.
[15:09]And then you also had this profile in architectural digest
[15:12]on your family's home.
[15:13]But you were like the tour guide of it and all the history
[15:16]imbued in it and how it moved from place to place.
[15:18]And it was part of the revolution.
[15:19]It was a fascinating house.
[15:22]And part of the background of this,
[15:24]everyone's always surprised when I tell them this.
[15:25]It took me about six months while I was at work
[15:28]to write the first third of the book.
[15:30]And then I came home to my parents' house in DC.
[15:33]And I wrote the last two thirds of the book in a month.
[15:35]So it was so much faster than the first part of it,
[15:38]because I was just so comfortable there.
[15:40]And I felt so safe.
[15:41]And I think no one really talks about that enough.
[15:45]But you have to have your space
[15:47]where you feel like anything you do is going to be OK.
[15:51]And I really felt that way being at my parents' house.
[15:54]And it is a really unusual house.
[15:56]It's the oldest house in Washington, DC.
[15:58]It was moved from Danvers, Massachusetts,
[16:01]on a train car piece by piece and reassembled
[16:04]in this DC neighborhood in the 1920s
[16:07]that at the time had no houses.
[16:09]And it has been a girls boarding school.
[16:12]It was a headquarters for the Revolutionary War at one point.
[16:15]There are so many just little hidden, amazing pieces of it.
[16:17]I was in my parents' bathroom the other day.
[16:19]And I noticed there's one huge floorboard that
[16:22]is all etched, hand etched.
[16:24]And I think that probably happened
[16:25]when there were girls living there.
[16:27]And someone did that for fun at boarding school.
[16:28]I went to boarding school.
[16:29]So I know you get up to some weird stuff.
[16:32]And it was just a really amazing place to write.
[16:35]And an amazing place to think about.
[16:38]I just kept thinking over and over about all the different people
[16:40]who had been in this room that I was sitting in
[16:43]and how ephemeral everything is
[16:45]and how important writing is in comparison to that
[16:47]because it's the only thing that really indoors
[16:50]and how I was curious, I wish that I could have read
[16:53]some of the writing of these people.
[16:56]I don't know, it was just a really amazing experience.
[16:58]So did you, and you had a picture of this green couch
[17:01]on which you wrote most of the books?
[17:02]Yes.
[17:02]Which I was like staring at longingly.
[17:04]I could just like picture you sitting there
[17:06]with like no one bothering you.
[17:07]And this, your dog is not a glist dreaming in.
[17:10]And I was like, oh, it's so nice.
[17:12]Exactly.
[17:13]And I could sit there for a month and read.
[17:15]Completely.
[17:16]It's like, I never thought writers were treats
[17:19]for anything until I had this month.
[17:21]And then I realized, you know, it makes a difference.
[17:23]This sounds so trivial, but not worrying
[17:25]about what you're going to eat in a day.
[17:27]Even just like, whether or not there is food in the fridge
[17:29]makes such a difference.
[17:31]Oh my gosh.
[17:32]Just like what I'm feeding my kids at like how many,
[17:35]I can't think about dinner.
[17:36]Again, it always comes back.
[17:37]I can never cross it off the list.
[17:39]And I would just show up and there was like orange juice.
[17:41]And I'm like, oh my God, I haven't seen orange juice
[17:42]in six years.
[17:43]I mean, I go to the grocery store.
[17:45]I could just buy myself orange juice.
[17:47]Alice, I'm going to go check into your parentele.
[17:49]I know, I'm going to be like, you know, yatto.
[17:53]You know, forget about yatto.
[17:56]People can just go to dinner for me.
[17:59]In the book at one point, we would be one of your characters
[18:01]as the best part of being an adult is eating cookies
[18:03]for dinner, but that all the rest of it is just exhaustion.
[18:07]It's like just what we were talking about.
[18:08]Pretty sweet.
[18:09]Do you find yourself like run down by sort of hashtag adulthood?
[18:13]Definitely.
[18:14]I don't feel like an adult at all.
[18:15]Someone asked me how old I was the other day.
[18:16]And it was like 25.
[18:18]Wait, I'm 29.
[18:19]What am I talking about?
[18:21]I don't know.
[18:22]I think it's living in New York is also just so different
[18:25]from living in LA.
[18:26]I've only been here for like a year and a half
[18:28]and in LA because you go everywhere in your car.
[18:31]It's just, I feel like life felt a little more convenient there.
[18:36]And in New York, it's harder to kind of figure out like
[18:39]where your Whole Foods is and walk there
[18:42]and carry your groceries back.
[18:43]I mean, all this sounds very trivial,
[18:45]but it's just a lot more thinking about life.
[18:47]And I think also because I spent so many of my formative years
[18:50]in LA shifting to the New York mindset
[18:53]and learning how to live in a new city as an adult
[18:55]is actually something that's kind of a life skill
[18:57]that you have to sort of figure out.
[19:00]My husband moved here.
[19:01]He grew up in Florida and then lived in Charleston
[19:05]all these places in the South.
[19:06]And now that he's here, he's like, I don't understand.
[19:09]Like, I want to like take my car and go to the grocery
[19:12]and put the bags in my car.
[19:14]And he like bundles up to go to Cinderella
[19:16]and like the freezing cold and he's like, this is terrible.
[19:19]And he's like, you know, nobody has to live in the Northeast.
[19:22]He's like, this is a choice.
[19:23]Why is everybody here?
[19:25]I completely agree.
[19:26]It's so interesting because I went to boarding school in New England
[19:29]and I love New England.
[19:31]And I feel as though New Yorkers have this little bit
[19:33]of that New England Puritan, like, I will be tough
[19:35]and I'll do whatever it takes to live in this place.
[19:38]And you're like, why though?
[19:40]But that is amazing and magical.
[19:41]I know, I know, I know, but then I can't leave it.
[19:43]Exactly, but I don't know.
[19:45]I don't even travel as much as I moved here
[19:46]because I love living here so much.
[19:48]And it's such a unique experience.
[19:50]And every day is something different,
[19:52]which I just think is, I don't think you could find that
[19:55]anywhere else.
[19:55]No, it's pretty awesome.
[19:57]And you include a lot of that in your back, too.
[19:59]It's all the look.
[19:59]Thank you.
[20:00]Clearly, you're tapped in because you have like all the local haunts and food stores and
[20:05]every reference to basically everything that is in my day-to-day life in your book.
[20:10]So, well done.
[20:11]Thank you.
[20:11]After a year and a half.
[20:12]So, what is coming next for you?
[20:13]Are you going to write another book or do you have it?
[20:15]Yeah, that book's finished.
[20:16]That will go out for sale in January.
[20:18]That's so soon!
[20:19]Yeah!
[20:20]Sorry, this is coming out probably after I will already be for sale.
[20:22]Yes, sorry, it's not going for sale.
[20:24]It's going out to publishers.
[20:25]Sorry, confusing thing.
[20:27]It's going out to publishers in January.
[20:28]It will probably be out in like 40 years.
[20:30]Right now, I understand.
[20:31]And that is kind of like Royal Tenenbombs meets Gossip Girl, I guess.
[20:35]It's sort of also set on the upper side and it's two girls who moved to New York
[20:41]from LA.
[20:42]They moved back home to their childhood home and they're kind of kicking around in this
[20:45]crazy house with their three other crazy siblings and their mom and they're sort of navigating
[20:51]being adults but being back where they grew up and kind of feeling like they're in a state
[20:56]of arrested development.
[20:58]I love it and there's a murder.
[20:59]And there's a murder.
[21:00]And there's a murder.
[21:01]And there's a murder.
[21:02]And there's a murder.
[21:03]Yeah, just throw that in.
[21:04]Wow.
[21:05]And so, are you going to take...
[21:06]Do you want that to be...
[21:07]Oh, I'm in question you want to ask.
[21:08]Do you want that to be an audible or are you going to go back to the traditional road
[21:11]or are you open to anything at this point?
[21:13]I'm really open to anything.
[21:14]I feel like everything that's happened so far with my book career knock on wood.
[21:19]It's just been really easy and lovely and I think the biggest lesson I've learned is
[21:24]just when you relate to someone and you meet someone who you like and you feel as though
[21:28]they understand what you're saying, that's the right person to work with.
[21:32]That's great advice.
[21:33]Yeah, I was going to ask you for advice.
[21:35]What advice do you have?
[21:36]Okay, so find the right editor and publisher or whatever.
[21:38]I see one thing that I completely learned from you and I'm so grateful for is to be friends
[21:42]with authors.
[21:43]I knew like one other author before I came into the mom's don't have time to read books
[21:47]family and it is so lovely having this community of people who can talk about what it's
[21:54]like to sit and write all day can talk about taking days off from writing and agents
[21:58]and advances and print numbers and all of this stuff.
[22:03]It really makes a difference because it's a very unusual group of people and it's kind
[22:07]of hard to tap into and that's, I've been incredibly grateful for everyone I've met
[22:11]here.
[22:12]They're also friendly and so helpful.
[22:14]Oh good.
[22:15]Definitely makes a huge difference I think.
[22:16]Oh, I'm so glad it helps.
[22:17]It does.
[22:18]Alice has been coming to the book events here because I've been having not gotten to this
[22:22]book for quite some time and I've had it and I'm sorry, but I've loved coming to
[22:26]the book about it.
[22:27]It's so fun having you here.
[22:28]Awesome.
[22:29]Well, I'm so excited that our paths have crossed in life and I'm so looking forward to
[22:34]your next crime with them.
[22:37]I will partially listen to perhaps in my car and the rest I will read and I'm just, I'm
[22:43]so impressed with all you've done at age 29.
[22:45]I'm actually like insanely jealous of you and I can't wait to watch.
[22:49]You've done a lot.
[22:50]Are you kidding?
[22:51]It's your follow.
[22:52]What happens next with all you.
[22:53]Thank you so much.
[22:54]And thank you for all of the book recommendations.
[22:57]Oh, sure.
[22:58]What a leave me a spot on the couch.
[23:00]I definitely will.
[23:01]I'll tell you like crazy.
[23:02]Anytime.
[23:03]All right.
[23:04]Hey, so you've been listening to Moms Don't Have Time to read books with Zibi Owens.
[23:08]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com to get more updates about
[23:13]episodes like these and also lots of live events.
[23:16]Thanks so much.
[23:17]Today's episode has been sponsored by the Iceland readers retreat.
[23:20]Don't forget to check it out, April 29th to May 3rd, 2020, Iceland readers retreat.com.
[23:27]You can follow me on Instagram at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[23:31]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[23:35]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now
[23:38]trim music.
[23:39]Thanks for listening.
[23:40]You could always email me at zibiowens.com.