Lynn Steger Strong, WANT
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[1:04]by it is a gift to housewarming if you actually go somewhere or just give it to yourself. Everybody
[1:09]needs a treat without a long spring. PageOneBooks.com. This is day five. The last day of this week
[1:16]for my July book blast. And today is fiction Friday. I'll be releasing a few episodes of
[1:22]novels that I think are pretty awesome. And can't wait to introduce you to these authors.
[1:26]I'm doing the July book blast because I interviewed a lot of people during quarantine and
[1:31]the books came out during quarantine. And I would love them to get the airtime they need now to
[1:35]get the word out. Also, a lot of these books are great beturids. And if you have any time this summer,
[1:41]I would love for you to hear more from these authors directly. So please enjoy fiction Friday
[1:46]and stay tuned. This whole week was memoir Monday, debut Tuesday, beturids Wednesday,
[1:51]thrilling Thursday. And now today, fiction Friday. I hope you've had a chance to listen to
[1:56]a few this week. And enjoy this one by Lynn Stegorstrung is the author of Want a Novel and
[2:02]also Hold Still. She was born and raised in South Florida and has an MFA from Columbia University
[2:09]and teaches writing. Welcome, Lynn. Thanks so much for coming on momstone. Have time to read books.
[2:13]Thanks so much for having me. Mom's definitely don't have time to read books right now.
[2:19]Isn't it even harder now? Do you think it's even harder with everything going on? I mean, it must be.
[2:24]Oh, yeah. I mean, my husband is commuting to work. So I'm also, I'm by myself with my kids all day.
[2:30]So yeah, and I get up very early. But yeah, I haven't been reading very much. Yeah, it's hard.
[2:38]It's hard. Yeah. But your book, I made time to read. So that's good. So your novel is called
[2:46]of want coming out in July. Tell listeners what want is about and what inspired you to write this
[2:52]It's about a woman, a mom who, I mean, the short answer is she declares bankruptcy and she gets
[2:58]in touch with an old friend. But I think I hope it's about sort of being a woman and motherhood and
[3:04]privilege and sort of the particular fact of trying to want when you've been told you can have
[3:12]anything you want and then realizing that that's not true. Yeah, I think, I mean, I started
[3:19]at the start, which is to say I started with the opening scene. I started with this idea of a woman.
[3:26]I mean, I was really interested in someone who's going through a lot and who on paper seems like
[3:34]she's struggling, but also has an obscene amount of privilege. So I started with a woman who
[3:39]walks out of her job and literally disappears and realizes no one notices. And so I think that
[3:46]the idea of like who has the power and privilege to disappear was a lot of what started the book
[3:51]for me. I feel like the book throws you right into this woman's sort of, I don't want to say
[3:58]nonchalances around where it her like ambivalence about everything, like her lack of
[4:03]being able to feel it all, right? She's like going through the motions and like the way even do
[4:08]you describe the scenes in the shower with her husband and everything is just like matter of fact
[4:13]and like she gets it done and then she moves on and then she like, you know, she's like catatonic,
[4:18]which I feel like as a state so many people can get to when they're not like fully happy in their
[4:22]lives, right? And you just like, you didn't even have to say it. It's just you just like illustrated
[4:27]it with your words. So yeah, that's great. Yeah, I know. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think the idea of
[4:32]ambivalence was sort of one of the grinding factors. And I was constantly like, okay, so if
[4:37]something seems one way and the next scene I wanted to almost see in the exact opposite, right?
[4:42]Like if a character seems sort of good or nice in the next scene, I want the reader to see how
[4:47]also there another thing that the idea of like everything being not only but also was I think running
[4:52]through my head a lot. And you had your main character like obsessed with her childhood friend Sasha
[5:00]why? Like what was that about? Did you have a friend that you like
[5:03]stalk on Facebook or something? Like how did you come up with that as a divisor was it from life or
[5:08]I mean, I think that we're all sort of obsessed. We have I at least have like very intense female
[5:14]friendships and in a lot of ways they've been formative to me in ways that both feel familiar in
[5:21]terms of I think a lot of my friend again, like they're my friends. So whatever a lot of women
[5:26]have those experiences. But I think again, with regard to this idea of like motherhood and womanhood,
[5:32]I think that our mothers are our models. But I also think that the other women in our lives
[5:37]become our models in ways that we don't always realize. So for me, Sasha especially was this sort
[5:43]of way, you know, I think when we're teenagers, we play it being grown up and we don't realize
[5:50]that sometimes our actions have grown up consequences before we're ready to know what our actions
[5:55]are, right? So I think Sasha is there to sort of show how when the main character tries to love
[6:02]people, she doesn't have any other model besides her own mother. And her own mother is not a great
[6:08]model. And so then when she tries to love Sasha, she accidentally does things that as a grown-up
[6:14]and as a mother to her own children, she would never do and she regrets. So I think it was sort of this,
[6:19]the obsession was with another female character, but it was also this sort of obsession with wanting
[6:25]to be good at taking care of people and not knowing how to do that well. Interesting.
[6:30]I love how you like took it all the way back to when Sasha, what is the narrator's name?
[6:35]I'm like blanking on this. A lizard bit. A lizard bit. It's my name actually.
[6:38]How can I say it? Yeah. Anyway. And when they contrast even how they grew up and how Elizabeth
[6:43]was saying, you know, her house was much bigger and it would seem like maybe that would make
[6:49]for a happier home. When in fact, not at all, the exact opposite was home and her parents
[6:54]were just like strolling barely acknowledge her. And then in Sasha's house, which was much smaller
[6:58]and they didn't maybe have as much privilege, it was all about the love and like, you know,
[7:02]what was missing, right? I feel like so much in female friendships, you look for what you're missing
[7:07]in yourself a little bit. Yeah. Try to fill that gap. So anyway, that was neat. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.
[7:14]Yeah. Well, and again, I think that privilege, right? Like, it's such an elastic slippery word.
[7:18]It's like, okay, on paper, Elizabeth's family has more, but in reality, it feels like Sasha's family
[7:25]has more, but also the other things are true too, right? Like also Sasha has more student debt than
[7:31]Elizabeth. So, you know, and I read one of your articles on catapults about writing about how you
[7:37]had dinner with your family and you wanted to write a story about them, but then you'd have to
[7:42]like make the characters and maybe they wouldn't be perfect characters. And I was just wondering
[7:47]how you ended up with fiction. What if you ever did attempt to sort of fictionalize your own
[7:53]family if that has crafted its way into your novels and just how you ended up becoming a novelist,
[7:58]really? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it all creeps in and I think people who say it doesn't
[8:03]are lying. But, you know, I think that I have tried to write nonfiction and I've actually
[8:10]written a bit of nonfiction, but ultimately, like, I think I always return to fiction because I
[8:14]think that scenes are the most, at least for me. They're the thing that I'm best at and I
[8:19]think they're the best sometimes at communicating ideas, not least because I don't really
[8:23]want to make any arguments. Like you said, like, I'm really interested in ambivalence,
[8:27]and the best way I think to sort of make readers sit inside of spaces of not knowing or this sort
[8:32]of like everything is often more than one thing at the same time is to just depict scenes as
[8:38]sort of carefully and precisely as I can. So that's sort of how I think continually return to
[8:44]fiction. I'm trying to think of all of your questions. I think- I know, sorry, I like
[8:48]the model. Yeah, I mean, I think again, I think the sort of particular way that I was loved
[8:57]and the particular way that I think that love is always flawed and that we always kind of
[9:03]curl that word at one another, but fall short in different ways. Like, obviously that
[9:08]came from personal experiences, which then I think is also how I became a novelist, you know,
[9:13]in terms of like, I think I became a writer in some ways because I felt like I was saying things
[9:22]and I was given language, but that language never matched up with the experience. And it was just
[9:27]sort of this long process of trying to find language that was effective enough that people heard
[9:33]what I was saying. You know, there's that great- I had this New Yorker cartoon when I was
[9:38]in college maybe or 20s or I don't know. That was like this girl sitting in a window saying,
[9:42]dear mom and dad, like, you gave me a good childhood and as a result, I can never be a writer,
[9:47]which is silly and funny. And like, you know, my parents love me very much, but it's a funny,
[9:52]I feel like everybody who becomes a writer, I think in some ways has experienced some-
[9:57]not- I feel like traumas do strong a word, but I think-
[10:00]specifically trauma around language, right?
[10:02]That like words have been used against them
[10:04]in ways that makes them want to kind of
[10:06]reappropriate that power in some way by saying,
[10:09]okay, I know how powerful language can be.
[10:12]I want control of that,
[10:13]and I'm going to sort of enact that out of their people.
[10:17]That's interesting.
[10:17]I like, that's an interesting theory.
[10:18]I'm gonna test that out.
[10:19]Now I like it.
[10:20]I mean, I fully agree that, you know,
[10:22]I have a girlfriend who came to this one like book event
[10:25]I had, and all these people were talking about,
[10:28]all these authors are talking about different books
[10:29]and she was like, you know,
[10:31]I think I've just had like two happy a life.
[10:33]She's like nothing really bad has happened to me,
[10:36]and she's like, I feel kind of badly saying that,
[10:38]but like my parents are happily married
[10:40]and like very lucky, and I have a nice marriage.
[10:43]Anyway, so I do think there's something too
[10:45]having had some sort of pain that you can,
[10:48]you know, that can infuse you're writing in some way.
[10:50]I think it generally helps, but something has to inspire you.
[10:54]Or maybe not, I don't know.
[10:55]I feel like writers are gonna be like,
[10:56]no, nothing bad happened to me, but.
[10:58]Yeah, I know, and I have plenty of friends with,
[11:01]and again, I put myself in this category
[11:03]in a lot of ways, who had very idyllic childhoods.
[11:06]It's also just I think more a relationship
[11:08]to like recognizing the ruptures in your life
[11:11]and other people's lives and then like thinking
[11:13]about how those shift your experience.
[11:16]You know, like I think if you're paying a lot of attention,
[11:19]which I would argue is like the one rule of being a writer
[11:21]is to just pay a lot of attention.
[11:23]If you're paying a lot of attention, like you see sort of
[11:26]all the fissures and ruptures,
[11:28]even if they're not necessarily happening to you.
[11:30]Love that.
[11:32]This is great.
[11:34]So you, and you teach writing too.
[11:36]I do. Yeah.
[11:37]So tell me about some of the things that you tell your students.
[11:40]Like give me like a sneak me some information
[11:44]that you share with them.
[11:45]Well, I always have my first, I do a lot of generative.
[11:50]I try to do a lot of generative writing in almost all
[11:53]of the classes that I teach, which is to say
[11:55]that I think that language is as much generative,
[11:58]is communicative, which is another way of saying,
[12:01]so you have an idea and it's in your head
[12:03]and you think that you can just pop it in a word.
[12:05]But I don't believe that that's true, right?
[12:07]Because language is a limited object, right?
[12:11]And I might think I feel love,
[12:13]but my idea of that word love is very different
[12:15]from your idea of that word love.
[12:17]So already there's like a disconnect, right?
[12:19]But because language is separate, we can take language
[12:23]and we can see what language can teach us, right?
[12:26]So that's a long-winded way of saying,
[12:27]I think it's really important that sometimes you write
[12:30]and not think about what you're writing,
[12:31]but just keep going.
[12:32]So I make my students do a lot of that,
[12:35]especially in the beginning of our different,
[12:38]depending on the class I'm teaching.
[12:39]And I guess in that vein, the first assignment I always
[12:43]give them, which is stolen wholly from Amy Hempel,
[12:45]is to write the thing that destabilizes
[12:48]your sense of yourself.
[12:49]And that can be both you as a human,
[12:52]but also you as a writer, right?
[12:54]So depending, like I teach grad students and whatever.
[12:57]And also just depending on the mood you're in, right?
[12:59]Like some of us don't necessarily want to be sitting
[13:01]in a room with a bunch of strangers crying.
[13:03]So like, you know, so you can always write the thing
[13:06]that destabilizes your sense of yourself as a writer.
[13:08]But you can also write the thing that destabilizes
[13:11]yourself as a human.
[13:13]I would argue they're connected.
[13:14]I'll also say just for whatever it's worth,
[13:16]I don't ever make people share any of this.
[13:20]And again, I think that's an important part of being
[13:23]a writer and writing and finding a way to saying something
[13:25]worthwhile is you have to inhabit spaces where you're like,
[13:28]I will never share this with anyone ever.
[13:31]What would I write if I gave myself that space?
[13:35]And then maybe just, you know, 17 drafts later,
[13:39]you might find yourself in a space where you would share it.
[13:41]But to make sure that you sometimes sit down and say,
[13:44]no, this is just a secret.
[13:46]And I'm seeing what that secret feels like in language.
[13:50]That's the one other thing.
[13:51]And then I'll stop.
[13:51]But that's the one other thing I think I tell students.
[13:53]And the thing I hope my books feel like
[13:56]is that like one of the thrills of reading,
[14:00]which is like different than most other, you know,
[14:02]we have so many forms of storytelling at this point.
[14:05]But I think one of the thrills of reading
[14:06]that I want to give readers is the thrill of like secret
[14:10]sharing and you can't, you sort of take
[14:13]it that energy of secret sharing if you're never sharing
[14:16]secrets or what feels like secrets, you know?
[14:20]I feel like secrets are another motivating factor in writing.
[14:25]I feel like anyone who has held a secret,
[14:27]which is basically everybody in some form or another,
[14:30]depending on like the level of destruction
[14:32]that that secret has wrought in their lives.
[14:34]Like I feel like that informs so much, so many stories
[14:37]and entire novels and...
[14:39]Totally.
[14:40]Yeah, there should really just be a whole thing
[14:42]on like write your secrets
[14:44]and write your secrets on the way to your novel
[14:46]or something like that.
[14:48]Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[14:49]No, that's another, that's another sort of writing
[14:52]exercise I give students is it's just like share a secret,
[14:55]but also share a secret with someone
[14:58]for whom the secret is high stakes, right?
[15:01]So it's not just like, it's like write that letter
[15:03]to the mom character in the book
[15:05]that if like she got that letter, she would cry, right?
[15:09]Because that's also it, right?
[15:11]Is it sort of like how do secrets function
[15:13]and sources of tension?
[15:14]They almost always do if you look at the right people.
[15:17]But then it's the trick of turning those into fiction, right?
[15:20]Yeah.
[15:21]When you said that first prompt,
[15:22]something like popped into my head
[15:23]that like happened in college that I was like,
[15:26]which I haven't thought of in like forever,
[15:28]but then I was like, well, no, I couldn't write that
[15:29]because like I could never share that.
[15:32]Yeah.
[15:33]And then I was thinking, well, you know,
[15:34]maybe that would be interesting in a novel,
[15:36]but you know, then I would get on a call
[15:39]with somebody to say, look, do that really have it to you
[15:41]and then what would I say?
[15:43]Yes or no?
[15:44]No, but what would you say, right?
[15:45]Like fiction, I mean, this is, and this is like fiction.
[15:48]So fun, right?
[15:49]Is that like you would turn it into something concrete
[15:53]that's separate from the secret, right?
[15:55]So like for example, and this is giving away a part of the book,
[15:59]but like no one has ever offered my family money
[16:03]for my husband's firm, right?
[16:05]Like that's a detail in the novel.
[16:08]But what has happened, I think in my life
[16:10]is that I've had a complicated relationship
[16:13]with my femininity and my husband's masculinity
[16:16]and my ability to make babies in my relationship, right?
[16:20]And so I've thought a lot about that.
[16:23]Again, no one's ever offered me money for my husband's firm,
[16:26]but that idea that sitting at a dinner
[16:28]and having someone say, we think that your husband's ability
[16:32]to procreate, we think your husband's ability
[16:33]to make a home is more powerful than yours
[16:37]is absolutely a thing that I have felt, right?
[16:39]But then in fiction, it becomes this very specific scene
[16:42]with a very specific action that has consequence
[16:45]that has like other people to interact around it.
[16:48]But in my life, it's just a thought.
[16:52]That's really neat.
[16:53]This is great.
[16:54]I feel like I've just taken like a little mini writing
[16:55]tutorial here.
[16:56]I'm like so inspired.
[16:57]This is great.
[16:59]No, I've all seen you.
[17:00]I'll send you some writing prompts when we're done.
[17:02]I love writing prompts.
[17:04]Yeah, I actually subscribed.
[17:06]There was a, I can't even remember what was called,
[17:08]somebody did like pay 50 cents a day
[17:10]for a writing prompt or something like that.
[17:12]And every day she would like send a writing prompt.
[17:13]Anyway, I ended up deleting it and like, I don't know.
[17:16]I don't have time to write write does.
[17:17]I'm not writing.
[17:18]But the whole idea of like everything sparks all these stories
[17:21]and they're all like tucked away.
[17:23]Like I feel like I don't know about you as I get older.
[17:25]I feel like I'm probably much older than you.
[17:26]But like if someone says like, tell me a story from college,
[17:29]I'm like, I don't know.
[17:31]But if somebody reminds me of a specific thing,
[17:33]like somebody went to college with, of course, it comes back.
[17:35]But you might not think of it
[17:37]until you have like the, I don't know.
[17:39]Right.
[17:40]Like the, I don't know, the red carpet that rolls out
[17:42]right to that moment.
[17:43]Yeah.
[17:44]Yeah.
[17:44]Well, and you also think about it again,
[17:45]like I had a grad school professor or Victor LaValle
[17:48]who's a genius.
[17:49]And he was talking about sort of,
[17:51]you think about how you remember an experience as a feeling,
[17:54]but actually feelings have logistics.
[17:57]So he was talking about he was writing about a depressed
[18:00]college kid and depression inevitably feels really one-note.
[18:04]And like I think I'm playing that with that in my book,
[18:07]too, but actually a ton happens.
[18:10]Like in my book, I think it don't happen,
[18:12]but also like his description was, okay,
[18:15]but then I remembered like I was a depressed kid
[18:18]who smoked a lot of weed,
[18:19]which meant I had to interact with my dealer,
[18:21]which meant that was sometimes funny.
[18:23]And actually I ate a lot of food,
[18:25]which A is like food is super,
[18:27]and like I'm sort of obsessed with food
[18:28]is like a really useful space to think about families
[18:31]and relationships and et cetera.
[18:33]But you know, you think about the thing that you felt
[18:37]and as writers, we often wanna talk about our feelings, right?
[18:39]But then you think about like there are usually logistics
[18:42]and rituals around those feelings,
[18:44]and those can provide scenes.
[18:46]I don't know.
[18:47]So great.
[18:48]I hope, I don't know.
[18:50]Tell me about the process of writing want
[18:54]or and how it differed from your first book.
[18:56]I wrote, hold still was my first book and it came out
[19:00]and I wrote it and I was not very happy
[19:03]with the reception, which I think most writers
[19:05]are sort of like my dream came true
[19:07]and like I still have to do all the, I'm still myself
[19:11]and that's, it can be a jarring experience,
[19:15]just still have to be yourself.
[19:17]So then I wrote this, I wrote this,
[19:18]I had this big complicated novel that I spent a few years on
[19:22]that was like nine point of view characters.
[19:25]Anyways, long story short,
[19:26]after a few rounds of submissions, it did not sell.
[19:29]And so I was pretty devastated,
[19:31]but also pretty much like, okay, well, I tried
[19:36]and it didn't work.
[19:37]So now I'm just gonna do whatever I want.
[19:40]And I started getting up,
[19:42]I tend to get up pretty early,
[19:44]I started to get up around three or four instead of four
[19:47]or five and wrote a bunch.
[19:50]And my kids were in camp for,
[19:52]you know, there was like this very short period of time.
[19:54]I usually have three or four jobs at a time
[19:57]and for that period of time, I think I'm,
[19:59]I had this.
[20:00]one job, one or two jobs on and off, but like many fewer jobs than usual and needed to do
[20:06]much less childcare than usual. And I just like was a little bit of a crazy person. I was probably
[20:12]very hard to live with. I was getting up the three or four. I would write until my kids woke up,
[20:17]I would take them to camp. I would write until it was time to pick them up. I would watch them
[20:23]slash-litch, then watch television. I would put them to bed and I would write more. So it came,
[20:29]it came out very, very quickly and it was sort of intense and unsustainable. And then I had a draft.
[20:35]And then the draft, you know, once I have a draft and this is always true, once I have a draft,
[20:39]I can sort of calm down because I know what it is and I feel like it has the energy and the
[20:44]rhythm I want it to have. And now I can sort of like do the stuff that feels more like the actual
[20:49]work of like figuring out how to put the pieces together. But yeah, I mean, the process was
[20:53]very intense and again, probably not super fun for my husband. But yeah.
[20:59]What time would you go to sleep on the days you were weighing up at three?
[21:02]Like 10 or 11 because again, I'd work, I'd work again once they, once my kids went to bed.
[21:08]But also, I think, and I don't know, you probably, I don't know if you feel as a parent,
[21:12]like I also just need like some time when no one needs anything from me. Even if I don't,
[21:18]you know, like even if I don't sleep and like to go real low and high brow, like I'm watching
[21:23]real housewives, like I just need some time when like no one wants to talk to me. So I would
[21:28]I also have to fit that in somewhere. Every so often when a kid wakes me up in the middle of the night,
[21:33]and it's like, I mean, I don't usually get out of bed ever before three. And I try not to be in the
[21:38]streets. But sometimes they wake me up and I'm just like, my brain just starts going and I'm like,
[21:43]how nice I could like go into the kitchen. And no one will walk over to the table and follow me.
[21:49]Yeah, I could do anything. I could read. I could write. I could prepare for all these podcasts.
[21:54]It doesn't matter. No, it's going to talk to me. And so that alone isn't enough to give me
[21:58]out of bed in the middle of the night just to like enjoy the silence. Yeah. No, it's, it's like,
[22:03]I feel like people look at me like I'm crazy, but it is a magic time, you know, like it is so,
[22:09]because it's also like this weird pressure to be productive and efficient,
[22:14]which I feel very much, right? Like just also as a person who has to survive in the world.
[22:18]But like I feel weirdly at four a.m. I can get myself a break. You know, like this morning,
[22:23]I looked at the pigeons like I was up at four. I went for a run. But then I came back and I
[22:28]like watched the pigeons out our window. And at five thirty, that feels unproductive. And like
[22:36]I need to start doing something. But at four, it's like, nah, it's fine. The other day I like,
[22:41]we was like literally three thirty and I was like, oh, this is, look at these cool shadows
[22:46]on the books in my office. And I start like taking all these pictures. And I'm like,
[22:50]then of course I like put my little like card in my computer the other day. And I was like,
[22:54]oh my god. Oh my god. What was it? I don't know. Yes, it's very, it's very nice to escape the chaos,
[23:03]the non stuff. Especially these days, I feel like it's just been, you know, and we
[23:07]little kids are similar ages. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot.
[23:12]Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. So are you writing another novel now? What are you up to?
[23:19]I am. Yeah. I'm writing. Like I said, I'm mostly looking at the pigeons these days. And like
[23:24]you say, I'm trying to do sort of our very hobbling version of remote learning because my kids
[23:30]are still doing that for a couple more weeks. But I have a book that is about, I think,
[23:36]I mean, it's interesting because I started it before everything that's happened. But and I was
[23:40]thinking a lot about the climate, as I imagine, as I think a lot of people are. But it was about
[23:44]a kid who goes missing. And it was about making art. But it was just, you know, it's very specific.
[23:51]It's over the period of a weekend. It's over the period of a holiday weekend. And a child
[23:56]goes missing and the families go out in search of her. But it's also about like trying to
[24:04]raise people well and make art when both of those things in different circumstances could
[24:10]feel like sort of absurd endeavors in our current context. But I have had 167 pages of that book
[24:17]for a couple months now. And it's not. Yeah. It's, you know, it's a tricky. It's a distracting
[24:24]tricky time. But yeah. That is true. Do you have advice to aspiring authors? Keep going. Keep going.
[24:32]You know, you're going to write, you're going to write bad things and also the things you write
[24:37]that are good. People are going to tell you are bad. So keep going. And I think create language
[24:43]for an ideas around what you want to make because you might be the only one who knows when you've
[24:49]made it. And you want to be able to sort of stand up and say, no, you don't like it or no, you don't
[24:55]want to publish it. But this is what I want to make. So if this is not what you want, then I will
[25:00]find someone else. But yeah, I mean, just keep going. It's such a weird, slippery, hard path. But
[25:06]the only people I know who have published books are the people who kept trying to write books.
[25:12]So yeah. Great job. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for all your insights.
[25:16]Thank you for coming on the show. And I will be thinking of you in the middle of the night.
[25:21]Yeah. I know. Enjoy your shadows. That's to me. That's so exciting because yeah.
[25:27]Anyways, yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Good luck with your children and all thanks.
[25:36]Thanks so much for listening to fiction Friday, part of the July book blast of Mom's No Time
[25:42]Read books. I hope that you found some really great reads this week, all five days. I've
[25:46]launched tons of episodes so that I can entertain you and you can connect with stories and
[25:52]just feel a little better in the world knowing that these stories exist and that these authors are
[25:56]out there. So I hope you enjoyed all of these fiction Friday episodes and that you had a great day.
[26:02]And I hope you have a really great weekend. And come back next week because I'm doing one more week,
[26:07]one more five days, I should say, of another July book last week and I'll have five new
[26:13]fan days then and then back to normal. But anyway, you can have a little like binge podcast
[26:18]fest or something. Anyway, I have a great weekend. Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[26:24]Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram at
[26:30]Zippy Owens and at Moms don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list at
[26:35]Zippy Owens.com so you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to. Thanks a lot.
[26:39]Thanks so much to page one books for sponsoring today's episode. I hope you'll all check out my
[26:43]summer beach bundle at page one books dot com. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[26:49]for the sound editing and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic
[26:53]intro and out trim music. Thanks for listening. You could always email me at zippy at zippyowens.com.