Debra Jo Immergut, YOU AGAIN
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[1:09]needs a treat without a long spring. PageOneBooks.com. Welcome to day four of my July book blast.
[1:17]Today I'm going to be calling this thrilling Thursday, and there are a bunch of thrillers,
[1:23]and suspenseful reads that I thought you'd really enjoy, and that would make great summer reads.
[1:28]A lot of these came out during the pandemic, and they're really worth your time, so I wanted to get
[1:33]them out. I hope you enjoy them. Debra Joe Immrigut is the author of You Again. She's also the author
[1:38]of The Captives, a 2019 Edgar Award finalist for Best debut novel by an American author, which is
[1:45]published in the US, and in over a dozen other countries. She has also published a collection of short
[1:49]stories called Private Property. Her essays and stories have appeared in American short fiction,
[1:55]Narrative, and The New York Times, among others. A recipient of Mitchner and McDowell Fellowships,
[2:00]she has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and lives in Western Massachusetts.
[2:04]Debra, so you again, first of all, tell us in our sleeves what you again is about,
[2:09]and then I want to hear about the impetus for writing this book and everything else.
[2:13]Okay, so You Again is about a 40-something year-old working mom in New York City who is coming
[2:20]home late from work one night and looks out her taxi window and sees her younger self
[2:26]coming out of a nightclub that closed years ago. And it is really about this woman who is literally
[2:33]haunted by this younger self. And what these encounters mean, how they change her, how they
[2:41]throw her life into complete upheaval, and how she comes out the other end of it.
[2:47]So I know this is not your first book, but tell me how this particular book came into your head,
[2:53]were you in a cab, like by the Hudson, don't buy the Hudson title? Is it not called the Hudson
[2:58]tell I'm losing my mind? Hudson's telling, all right? Oh my gosh, I've been out of the city too long.
[3:04]Did you ever see yourself while you were in a cab or somebody who looked like you and then
[3:08]that sparked the novel? That's my theory, but probably is not true. So tell me.
[3:12]Not exactly, but not far off. So what happened was I was walking through my old neighborhood
[3:17]in Greenwich Village with a stroller holding my one-year-old son at that time.
[3:24]And I just happened to be in this area where I had lived when I was in my 20s. And by this time,
[3:30]I was in my late 30s or mid 30s, I guess, yeah, about 35. And I walked by my old building.
[3:37]I just kind of happened onto this block, hadn't been there in a long time. And I just had
[3:43]the strangest sensation that I was going to see my younger self, like coming out of the door.
[3:47]The block is one of those landmark blocks. So nothing had changed. The old tenant building was
[3:53]still there. And I just felt like I could see her coming out. And then I thought, and what would
[3:57]she say to me? Because here I am pushing a stroller. She wanted to be a novelist. I have not yet
[4:04]managed to get that novel out there. What would our conversation be like? And what would I tell her
[4:09]and what would she say to me? And that moment stuck with me for a long time. At that period,
[4:15]I really wasn't writing. And I think that was part of the reason that I felt this encounter might
[4:20]be somewhat difficult. But as soon as I did get back to writing a few years later, that story,
[4:26]I thought I need to just start writing it and see what the girl says.
[4:32]That's so cool. Now I'm thinking in my head, like, wow, at what times could I really have used
[4:37]the me now to go back and say something encouraging to the me that, right? That would be so nice
[4:42]if you had those kind of, I don't know, touchstones throughout life to get you through the harder
[4:47]times. But tell me, so you started writing and then you took a break for like 20 years essentially.
[4:54]And then you came back. Tell me what that journey was like.
[4:57]Well, I went to the Iowa Writers Workshop and got off to a pretty nice start. It sold a story
[5:04]collection half finished. It was really sort of the first handful of stories I'd written in
[5:09]my life. And that was probably not great. I was so green. I really did not have a clue about what
[5:17]I was doing as a writer, as a published author. You know, I just didn't, I was unprepared and I
[5:23]was young. And it kind of threw me for a loop. And I thought, wow, this was, this was a rocky journey
[5:30]and not what I expected. And it was kind of a difficult publishing experience. But as I know now
[5:35]and that since I know so many authors and friends who are writers pretty much every publishing journey
[5:40]has a lot of bumps in the road. But that's how green I was. I didn't know that. So I needed to retreat
[5:46]from it a little bit. And I did write a novel that got rejected. So that even more sent me a signal,
[5:52]I need to step back from this. And at the same time, I became a mom. I had, you know, needed money.
[5:57]I got a job in the magazine business. And I just thought, let me set it aside for a while.
[6:03]And then in those 20 years, it was not that I wasn't writing. But I was, I did go back to writing.
[6:07]And among other things, I was working on this concept of the older self, young herself,
[6:12]novel. But I was doing it slowly as a full-time working mom and kind of feeling like I love writing.
[6:19]But maybe I'm just not thinking about publishing at this point. So that's kind of where I was
[6:24]for a long time. And then slowly made my way back to publishing. And when I knew I was ready.
[6:30]And this time, this time out has been really different.
[6:33]I bet. Well, it seems like things are going well.
[6:36]Things are going well. So that, that novel that I was rejected all those years ago,
[6:40]I took out of the drawer and I put a lot more work into it and sent it out and got an agent.
[6:45]And then it was sold within two days of going out of the market. And that was just so far beyond
[6:51]my expectations. And that became my first novel, the captives. And then second one, I brought this
[6:58]other novel, the, what has become you again. And for the captives, you spent time talking to,
[7:04]you taught writing to prisoners, men's prisons, got to know them and sort of channeled that into
[7:11]your first book. And then now switching gears to a New York-based, you know, Harriet mother
[7:18]for the characters here. Exactly. Yeah. One of the things I was doing in all those years was teaching
[7:24]writing in incarceration settings of various kinds to both women and men and became very
[7:31]interested in those lives. And so the captives is about a prison psychologist who ends up like
[7:38]he's about in his 30s and he ends up one day a new client comes in and it's the girl he went to
[7:43]high school with who had a huge crush on from afar the whole time and she's incarcerated and it's
[7:49]about what happens between the two of them. So I do, it's funny both of these books have these sort of
[7:54]intense duos and who go back in time and who are now coming back into each other's lives. And I
[8:02]seem to be really drawn to that dynamic. Is there a point in your life that you wish you could go
[8:07]back to and change aside from the being green and the publishing journey? Is there more of like a
[8:12]personal moment or something that you wish had gone differently or that you would love to go back
[8:16]and redo? Well, I would say about my publishing journey now I feel like it couldn't have gone
[8:23]better than it has gone and like I think we just you know we come to things ideally when we're
[8:28]ready and I was not ready that time and this time I am. So I'm and I'll also say as a writer at
[8:33]this point in my life I have so much material to work with when I was in my 20s I was you know
[8:39]you're sort of scraping the barrel a little bit. I feel like I have this deep well so I really
[8:43]wouldn't change that piece of it but what I would do is go back to that ambitious young writer and
[8:49]just really tell her you know what it's going to be okay like the disappointments that feel hard
[8:55]right now you know they it all smoothes out with time and and I think you know I always used to be
[9:01]skeptical about how age kind of you kind of get better with age but I really do feel like life does
[9:08]get better when you have a little bit more perspective for the ups and downs and so I think I
[9:14]had very very little perspective then so I would love to be able to share that with my younger
[9:19]self just to say take deep breath you can't believe it now but this is not that big a deal.
[9:26]That is good advice in general. With the one scene in your book that like I felt like I
[9:31]related to the most is when the main character is going to doctor sing with all these complaints
[9:37]like fainting headaches, vomiting, dizziness, aching and he kind of dismisses her and says like
[9:42]are you under stress and then he says all the mommies are under lots of stress and is like go
[9:47]about your business you know I feel like you hear things like this often that you present with
[9:53]some complaints and everyone's like now it's stress and then you find out that it ends up being
[9:57]all these other things in in your book.
[10:00]It was a very complicated unraveling
[10:01]of a lot of different factors that I don't want to, you know?
[10:04]I won't go into, so it was not to reveal anything,
[10:07]but I don't know.
[10:07]I felt like that was such a classic moment
[10:10]that I'm sure other people have experienced as well.
[10:12]Yeah, he says to her, yes, all the mommies have so much stress.
[10:16]And then he tells her to go get a massage
[10:18]at the Shiatsu place down the block
[10:20]and he thinks that might do the trick.
[10:23]And of course, it doesn't.
[10:24]And she goes down the block though.
[10:26]She takes his advice, of course, who wouldn't want
[10:28]what stressed out working mom doesn't like the idea
[10:31]of having an excuse to treat yourself to a massage.
[10:34]So she does go there, but while she's in the waiting room,
[10:37]waiting to go in, she sees her son outside,
[10:39]who she is a 16-year-old in a street protest.
[10:42]And so she never ends up getting that massage.
[10:45]She has to go out there and mix in a little bit.
[10:48]I won't say more than that.
[10:49]But yeah, in some ways, that might alleviate her stress
[10:52]a little bit more, kind of getting out into the street
[10:55]with the angry protesters for a moment there.
[10:59]So...
[11:00]Which, by the way, I was reading it.
[11:01]I was like, wow, this is so timely.
[11:04]I mean, the Antifa movement and everything
[11:07]that's grown in Seattle right now.
[11:09]And I mean, I'm sure I'm just totally naive
[11:12]in my own little bubble.
[11:14]But I had not even heard of that particular movement
[11:17]before it had before it's been plastered all over the news.
[11:20]And then it's all over your book.
[11:23]Like, this is so of the moment the protesting, all of it.
[11:26]Like, I don't know.
[11:27]It was like you had a little bit of ESP or something
[11:30]of what was to come.
[11:31]Well, I'm quite amazed by that too.
[11:33]I was aware of them mostly because when I was, you know,
[11:37]sort of in my 20s to early 30s, my husband is a journalist
[11:42]and we lived in Berlin for a few years.
[11:44]And the Antifa has been there.
[11:46]And in Europe, for, you know, it's really
[11:49]since the 1920s in various forms.
[11:51]But there have been lots of these.
[11:52]What we now see as Antifa, these sort of black clad,
[11:56]young people, very far left.
[11:58]That's been very sort of all over Berlin for many, many years.
[12:03]And they always sort of grabbed my attention and fascinated me.
[12:07]They were so wild and kind of intimidating looking,
[12:10]but also often you'd see them.
[12:12]It looked like they were having fun.
[12:13]And I just, as a baby, as a 20 something
[12:15]of a very different variety, I was just like, well,
[12:19]look at those people, you know?
[12:21]And I kind of just always noticed them.
[12:23]I remembered them.
[12:24]And then they round Trump's inauguration.
[12:26]That was really where I saw them here for the first time.
[12:29]I don't know if you remember, but they sort of turned up
[12:31]on an inauguration day in Washington in a small way.
[12:34]And I thought, look, it's the American Antifa.
[12:37]I always wondered if that would ever take hold there.
[12:40]And as I was starting to work on you again,
[12:43]I knew that my 16-year-old character was going to get
[12:46]into trouble of some kind and sort of pushing the boundaries
[12:50]and pushing the envelope.
[12:51]And I thought, given everything that's going on in the country
[12:53]and the crazy atmosphere of the last few years,
[12:56]I just had a sense that that was again,
[12:58]it might be a coming thing and a bigger factor as time goes on.
[13:01]I mean, we are really polarized.
[13:04]Polarized and the extremes are very activated at the moment.
[13:08]So that's where my 16-year-old ends up
[13:10]and actually my 40 something ends up delving into it.
[13:14]I'll say, really brought in by her son
[13:16]and trying to figure out what it is and what it means
[13:19]and how it even reflects on her own life.
[13:21]But without endorsing it in any way,
[13:24]because I would say personally, I'm fascinated by them
[13:27]but in a neutral way.
[13:29]Got it.
[13:32]I know you just meant to, your husband, a little bit.
[13:35]And I just wanted to bring up your modern love piece
[13:37]from early May this year, which was fantastic
[13:40]about needing the space to breathe in your marriage
[13:45]and how Burning Man became a piece of that.
[13:47]And the last line of that, it takes fresh air
[13:49]to feed a fire, just like gave me goosebumps.
[13:53]It was so good.
[13:54]Tell me about selling that to modern love
[13:56]and also what it felt like to be needing that kind of
[14:00]recharging and how Burning Man fit into everything.
[14:03]Well, I think there's some common themes there in you again
[14:07]and my modern love piece, which shows you how personal
[14:10]this book really is.
[14:11]And it is kind of my statement of being a woman
[14:14]in a very long marriage, in having really worked hard,
[14:18]raising a kid, paying the bills, all of those things
[14:22]that we have to do.
[14:23]And yet somewhere in there is still that sort of teenage girl
[14:28]yearning to break free.
[14:30]And I think that's what Abigail goes through.
[14:33]And that's because that's what I sort of have experienced
[14:36]in the last few years too.
[14:37]And yet, I am crazy about my husband.
[14:41]He is wonderful in every way.
[14:43]And we have such a deep, long connection at this point
[14:47]that I knew that I didn't want to walk away from it
[14:50]if I could in any way help it.
[14:52]So the Burning Man piece is really like,
[14:54]what can we do to kind of get some of that freedom
[14:58]into our tight bond without breaking that bond?
[15:02]And the Burning Man adventure was one way
[15:05]that we decided to try to do that, something
[15:08]that I was really reluctant to do.
[15:09]He was very kind of had a, just a, he was curious about it
[15:13]for years and when I came into this kind of my life
[15:16]of feeling like I needed freedom, I thought,
[15:18]well, this is something I can do for him
[15:20]and it might help us.
[15:21]And so it did.
[15:23]It was amazing.
[15:24]I wouldn't say it was like, and then everything
[15:25]was completely different.
[15:26]Like, as you well know, marriage and having a family
[15:31]is an ongoing project, you know, and it's always changing
[15:35]and moving and evolving.
[15:37]But that was a kind of a crisis moment
[15:39]that I wrote about that we got through
[15:41]in by just having a great adventure together
[15:44]and something really out of our comfort zone.
[15:47]And it was fun.
[15:48]It was really fun.
[15:50]I have to say, you know, I don't know if we'll go back.
[15:53]We might.
[15:54]We're not like hard curve Burning Man people,
[15:55]but what we found out is doing something really out there
[15:59]is good for us.
[16:00]It's probably good for everyone.
[16:01]And now, doing something out there
[16:03]would just mean like leaving my house, but, you know,
[16:07]Burning Man could probably really, you know,
[16:10]shake things up.
[16:12]That is true.
[16:13]Going to the grocery store these days
[16:15]feels like pushing the envelope.
[16:17]So yeah, that's amazing how in the two years
[16:20]feels like an eon ago.
[16:23]I got my hair done for the first time.
[16:26]And, you know, four hands.
[16:27]Yes.
[16:28]And like going into a salon felt like, oh my gosh,
[16:31]I've like, this is a whole new world.
[16:33]And like, all these people and smells and sounds.
[16:37]And it's like, anyway.
[16:39]You're making me a little jealous.
[16:41]I have to say it.
[16:43]It was pretty awesome.
[16:44]It was pretty much the most awesome three hours I've spent
[16:47]for not too much of a change, but it's OK.
[16:49]It was just nice to, you know, get a little trim
[16:51]and all the rest, but it's all to say that are, you know,
[16:55]our standards and what constitutes really exciting things
[17:00]out of the ordinary can shift very quickly.
[17:04]Absolutely.
[17:05]And I would just add like, for all you long married folk
[17:09]up there, Burning Man is not necessary,
[17:11]but maybe a little, you know, thinking about how to add
[17:14]fresh air.
[17:15]You know, I think it's a really good question
[17:18]to address together.
[17:20]And I guess maybe what really came out of that whole
[17:22]experience was the honesty of our conversations.
[17:25]And I think that's really what changes.
[17:28]It was even just hard to address that this was an issue,
[17:31]you know, that we had to really look
[17:34]and work at our relationship,
[17:36]which really had been very easy for many years, you know.
[17:39]So even that is a great step to take every so often.
[17:43]Well, it's really great you shared it
[17:45]because I feel like marriage is one of those things
[17:47]that people only discuss on the surface sometimes.
[17:50]And when you actually open up and talk about the real stuff,
[17:54]all it does is help other people
[17:56]through whatever they're going through.
[17:57]So anyway, thanks for doing that.
[17:59]So tell me a little more about your writing process.
[18:03]Like when you are writing you again, how long did it take
[18:05]to write and where do you like to write?
[18:07]Do you sit right where you are now?
[18:08]I'm, we're on Skype.
[18:09]So I'm like, look at you.
[18:10]It's because you're a little couch
[18:11]and beautiful light streaming in.
[18:14]I actually sit on the other side of the room here
[18:17]right in the center of my house.
[18:19]One thing I've discovered about myself over the years
[18:21]is I actually being,
[18:23]putting my writing space really sequestered
[18:25]somewhere in a corner of the house makes me not go there.
[18:28]So I finally set up my office and my desk
[18:31]right in the center of the house.
[18:34]And I have pretty much been, you know,
[18:37]now my, I have one child and he's been in college.
[18:41]Of course, now he's home.
[18:42]And that's a fantastic sort of bonus
[18:46]of what's been a really hard and awful time.
[18:49]I never thought we'd have him home
[18:51]but I think it's been four or a going on four months now.
[18:54]So he's around.
[18:55]So I, you know, that's fantastic.
[18:58]But I really do kind of write in the midst of my family.
[19:02]And I try to at least touch my work every day.
[19:06]But I will say I do believe in intermittent persistence
[19:10]and especially for women who are trying to write
[19:13]and juggle many other things.
[19:15]So I would say I've gotten two novels out there
[19:19]in a collection of short stories
[19:20]and a bunch of other essays and things writing persistently
[19:24]but with breaks.
[19:26]And it's okay.
[19:27]I mean, I think sometimes there's a machu-smo
[19:29]in the writing world about you must write every day.
[19:31]You must do so many words every day.
[19:34]And when I'm able to do that, my life allows, I do that.
[19:37]But there are other times when I have walked away
[19:40]when I need to and I go back and it's still there.
[19:43]So I just like to put that message out
[19:45]for women who are trying to write.
[19:47]I think intermittent persistence is a good strategy
[19:50]if you can't make it every day.
[19:52]I like that.
[19:53]It takes a little over the pressure off.
[19:56]Do you have other advice to aspiring authors?
[19:58]I think I would just say.
[20:00]you need to find your core stories like you again coming out of this moment in my life and it just
[20:06]felt like a very urgent question to answer how to make it in a long marriage, how to grapple
[20:13]with unfulfilled ambitions or sidelined ambitions. So I think you can't, you can't shy away from
[20:20]going there, you know, to those hard for deep issues. That's the well. It doesn't mean you have
[20:27]to write openly and lightly about them. But I sometimes think of it as method acting like
[20:33]when the director needs a child actor to cry and he goes up and whispers in his ear, you know,
[20:39]remember when your dog died, like, you know, that's what you want to be thinking about. So you can
[20:44]and the scene may concern something completely differently. I think you need to tap into those
[20:49]emotions. But if you're, you know, then write a spy thriller, if that's what you want to write,
[20:53]but try to locate it in your core, that works very well for me.
[20:58]Love that. That's so great. Just going back to structure for two seconds because so much in this book,
[21:04]there was so, like, I loved at one point there was somebody who was like, okay, let's go over
[21:07]all the facts right now and you like outline them all like step by step. Here's what we know.
[21:12]There were so many different pieces. It was like a kaleidoscope sort of of what's true and what's
[21:17]not true and who believes what and what's transcript and whatever. How did you assemble that?
[21:21]Like, how did you do it? Just tell me how you made that work. I'm very impressed.
[21:26]When I began the book, I really just had that vision that I talked about before with me and the
[21:31]stroller and the girl coming out of my old apartment building. I had no idea what the explanation
[21:36]for this could be how this woman could be seeing herself. And I just wrote with a fair amount
[21:42]of fear and trepidation, how am I going to explain this and one thing I knew for sure was I didn't
[21:47]want it to be like, she woke up and it was all a dream. Like, I really said to myself, if you're
[21:51]going to tackle a woman haunted by her younger self, you must have some plausible explanations
[21:57]for why it happens. And yet, you must maintain mystery and depth like not over explaining.
[22:04]So that was scary as I got further and further in and was really committing to the story and not
[22:09]knowing exactly how to do it. What I found is like, I'm sure you've heard authors say this before,
[22:14]your subconscious is smarter than you are. And so slowly, explanations started to emerge.
[22:22]As I brought in other characters, as I brought in Abigail's history and the whole backstory and
[22:27]what's happening with her younger self, the explanations were sort of embedded in the facts of her
[22:33]life. And I think, you know, so we we discover that the things that happen to the 20-something
[22:39]lay the groundwork for this haunting. And that's like I'm about as much as I can say with
[22:44]that really giving too much to wait. But it was embedded in there for me that I had to get,
[22:49]you know, about two-thirds in to the first draft before that started to take shape. And then
[22:55]all those other pieces that you're talking about, the sort of mosaic of explanations and facts and
[23:00]kind of twists, that comes in revision when you really see, okay, I need to, you know, I need to
[23:07]account for that plot strand. And, you know, and again, I would look at what I'd set, what the
[23:14]groundwork I'd set with Abigail's story. And there were things that I could draw out sort of
[23:19]possible explanations, possible factors, and weave them in. It's a mysterious process,
[23:24]but you really do need to trust yourself when you're writing a novel, I think. And if you do that
[23:30]enough, I don't know, there's some magic to it. It comes together. Well, that's really exciting.
[23:36]I take a lot of notes too. I ask myself questions. I have a notebook for each novel and ask myself
[23:42]questions, sleep on it. Again, I think it kind of comes out of the subconscious if you, if you allow
[23:48]it. Okay. Well, that's it. I can't wait to hear what comes out of your subconscious next.
[23:54]Are you working on another book? What are your plans after you celebrate the book of you?
[24:00]I am working. I am hard at work on novel three. I do believe that one of the lessons I learned
[24:08]from my earlier publishing sort of rough seas was that just be working on new things and really
[24:15]going to that beautiful magical imaginary place. And that's why we do it, right? To be able to spend
[24:23]creating and living in our imagination and trying to make dream worlds that will please
[24:30]our readers. So that's the fun part. So I've really learned publishing the best sort of
[24:35]antidote or counterbalances writing. So I've been writing a lot the last few months as I get
[24:41]ready for you again to come out. And it is set partly in Berlin, drawing from those years in the
[24:45]90s when I lived there, which was a really exciting time. And partly in the small college town,
[24:50]which is where I live now in Massachusetts. And there's also there's a mother in a daughter in it.
[24:56]So it is sort of an older and a younger again and a past story and a present story. I'm really
[25:03]starting to see my patterns. But that's okay. William Faulkner read the variations on a very similar
[25:11]stories and he won the Nobel Prize. So I guess that's okay. What's that expression is not broken. Don't
[25:16]fix it, right? Like, you just keep at it. I mean, it seems to be working. So the subconscious, I mean,
[25:22]that must be what its shape is for me. So go with it. Go with it. Love it. Well, thank you so much.
[25:28]Thanks for coming on Monster on Time to Read Books. And thanks for your modern love,
[25:32]inspirational piece and this beautiful dreamlike state of novels. So thank you.
[25:38]Thank you, Zibi. And I just want to say a huge thank you to you for all you're doing for
[25:43]writers and readers during this time. And before that also, but especially now,
[25:49]it's just fantastic. Thank you. I can say on behalf of everyone who's trying to write,
[25:54]we thank you. Oh, so nice of you. It's my pleasure. I love it. All right. Thanks.
[26:00]Oh, a great day. All right. Thanks. Bye, Tim. Thanks for listening to this episode from
[26:05]The Riller Thursday, part of my July book blast to get great authors into your hands while the
[26:10]summer is still going on. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[26:16]Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram
[26:22]at Zibi Owens and at Moms don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list at
[26:27]Zibi Owens.com so you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to you. Thanks a lot.
[26:32]Thanks so much to Page One Books for sponsoring today's episode. I hope you'll all check out my
[26:36]summer beach bundle at page one books.com. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for
[26:41]the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[26:46]out trim music. Thanks for listening. You could always email me at Zibi at Zibi Owens.com.