Nancy Johnson, THE KINDEST LIE
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:53]Hi, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but I have an anthology coming out called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology.
[1:01]And it comes out on February 16th and has essays by 60 plus of the authors who have been on this podcast.
[1:09]So first of all, please pre-order this book.
[1:11]I think you will love it.
[1:13]I'm so excited about all the authors who are represented just to give you a few.
[1:18]Chris Bajillion, Jewel Parker Rhodes, Ashley Prentice Norton, Gretchen Rubin, Rima Zaman, Eileen Zimmerman.
[1:26]And that is just from the first page of the multi-page table of contents.
[1:30]So please pick up this book.
[1:31]Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology.
[1:34]It's available anywhere you buy books, Amazon, bookshop.org, and your local independent bookstore.
[1:39]So please pick up a copy.
[1:41]And also, I want to invite you listeners to my fundraiser slash launch party.
[1:49]The night it comes out on February 16th, the Tuesday at 7 p.m.,
[1:53]bookhampton, and the Children's Museum of the East End are co-hosting it for me.
[1:58]And 50 of the authors who wrote essays in this book, as well as many of the amazing authors who blurbed this book,
[2:07]who wrote little praise worthy quotes at the front, will be there.
[2:10]And you can be there too.
[2:12]So if you go to my website zibbyowens.com and just click on Anthology and go to book tour,
[2:18]you will see a whole fundraiser section.
[2:21]And for $50, you can attend.
[2:25]You'll get a copy of the book.
[2:27]And you'll get to Schmooze on Zoom with all of these amazing authors.
[2:32]This is like going to be the literary happening of February.
[2:35]So please come.
[2:37]I would love to see you all in person on Zoom, I guess.
[2:40]But even see some of your faces.
[2:43]I know so many of you are really loyal listeners.
[2:45]And that makes me really happy.
[2:47]All proceeds of the book and the fundraiser are going to the Susan Felice Owens program
[2:53]for COVID-19 vaccine research at Mount Sinai Health System.
[2:58]And it is named after my husband's mother who passed away from COVID over the summer,
[3:03]which many of you followed along on Instagram as I recounted that horrific experience.
[3:08]So all the proceeds are going there.
[3:11]The cost includes the price of a book.
[3:13]So thank you for supporting this effort.
[3:16]And for supporting my book, I can't wait to see you there.
[3:19]Today's episode has been sponsored by author Joe Piazza's new podcast Under the Influence.
[3:26]Under the influence is a deep dive into the mom internet, a place haunted by aspirational marketing
[3:31]where it feels like every other moms is social media influencer trying to sell you something
[3:36]all while posed in white kitchens that never seem to get messy with toddlers and cloth diapers
[3:40]that never ever leak, a bastion of carefully curated lives that are hashtag blessed.
[3:45]And behind this airbrushed perfection is money so much money, billions and billions of dollars,
[3:50]a multi-billion dollar industry we never talk about.
[3:53]Journalists and mom of two Joe Piazza brings a keen reporter's lens to examine how we got here.
[3:59]What it all means and how the commodification of motherhood is driving normal mothers to the break.
[4:05]And through adults, she wonders if she should just join the ochre huge ranks of the moms to grammars.
[4:10]If she too can make thousands of dollars off beautiful photos of bath time,
[4:15]frolicking and fields of purple flowers and posing her newborn next to a beautiful latte,
[4:20]and if this is the future of content, check it out.
[4:23]Joe Piazza's Under the Influence.
[4:25]Hi everyone, today is day four of the February book blast where we're going to be introducing some new novels.
[4:32]If you missed the last couple days of the book blast and a book blast is just a time where I have to release more than one a day
[4:37]because I have ended up with so many amazing episodes.
[4:40]So I hope you can get your fix this February during these winter cold depressing months with lots of new content.
[4:47]Anyway, Monday was memoir Monday, then nonfiction Tuesday, literary fiction Wednesday.
[4:52]Today's new novels Friday and tomorrow will be family themed memoirs.
[4:55]So enjoy Nancy Johnson is the author of The Kind to Slide, which is her first novel, a native of Chicago's south side.
[5:03]Nancy worked for more than a decade as an Emmy nominated award winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide.
[5:10]A graduate of Northwestern University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
[5:15]she currently lives in downtown Chicago and manages brand communications for a large nonprofit.
[5:19]Welcome, Nancy. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books.
[5:24]Thank you so much for having me, Zibi.
[5:26]I'm a huge fan of yours.
[5:28]I listened to your show all the time.
[5:31]So it's just a delight to be here.
[5:33]Thank you.
[5:34]Thank you.
[5:35]Your book, I could not put it down.
[5:37]I read it in like, I don't know, a day or something.
[5:40]I thought it was so good.
[5:42]And I particularly, I mean, I loved the whole thing.
[5:44]But the beginning introduction and first couple chapters on the heels of the Obama election and all of that,
[5:52]I have never seen an election results situation like that in contemporary fiction.
[5:57]And it was so strong.
[5:59]It was just so great and the leading down the road with all the people wearing white and that whole event.
[6:05]And it was so visual and fantastic.
[6:09]And then of course is the book went on.
[6:10]You just got more and more immersed.
[6:12]But in terms of like awards for openings, I feel like thank you.
[6:16]Because I think that's one of those times in history, everybody kind of remembers where they were on election night.
[6:22]Yeah, it was such a monumental time.
[6:25]But it's so great to watch it through fictionalized people.
[6:28]You know, it's like different to take contemporary fiction versus historical fiction.
[6:33]And I don't know, it's just really neat.
[6:35]It was great.
[6:35]Oh, thank you for that.
[6:37]I'm glad to enjoy that.
[6:38]Well, tell me about the inspiration for writing this novel.
[6:42]And I saw in your bio, you've won all sorts of prizes for first novels before.
[6:48]And so tell me how you got into fiction after your whole career in TV and everything else.
[6:53]Yeah, so I'm from Chicago and I worked in television for 11 years as a reporter.
[6:59]And I got tired of it because it turned into that whole, it bleeds.
[7:02]It leads kind of thing, you know, when I was covering, you know, I'd be on a really cool story feature story that I loved.
[7:09]It was interested in.
[7:10]And then they were the painter would go off and the scanners would go off.
[7:13]And you know, you've got to go to a triple homicide, a couple of counties over.
[7:17]And so yeah, so I kind of got tired of that.
[7:19]But I think that was good training round for moving into writing fiction.
[7:24]Because I've always been curious about the world and been a storyteller.
[7:28]But now I get to create the world of the stories.
[7:31]And so that's the best part of it.
[7:33]And also just training in terms of writing for the year and being able to hear the cadence of a story.
[7:40]So much of that's important in broadcast journalism.
[7:42]And I use a lot of the same techniques when I'm writing my fiction.
[7:46]So, but the inspiration for the kind of slide came November 2008 when Obama was elected president.
[7:54]And it was a bittersweet time for me personally.
[7:57]My father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer during that year.
[8:01]And so it was just, it was so difficult.
[8:04]And he was looking forward to Obama being president.
[8:07]I remember one point he was in the hospital.
[8:09]And you know, the doctors asked questions just to see how lucid you are.
[8:13]You know, like what's the date, you know, what's your date of birth, that kind of thing.
[8:17]And the doctor asked him who's the president.
[8:19]And this was in October of 08.
[8:21]And my father and this crookie voice said Barack Obama.
[8:26]And the doctor said, well, hold off, not quite, not yet.
[8:31]And so I knew that it was important to him that Obama become president.
[8:35]And so I convinced him to vote early.
[8:38]And so he voted early in October.
[8:40]And he was very sick, you know, by the time of election day he was confined to the bed.
[8:45]And so he was a man who survived World War II and the great depression.
[8:50]And Jim Crow, and he cast the last vote of his life for America's first black president.
[8:57]And that was just so pivotal.
[8:59]And, you know, that election was just such a point of pride for us as a family.
[9:05]And I think for so many in the country, no matter what your political persuasion was,
[9:09]it was kind of that moment of saying America, we did this.
[9:12]You know, we made history.
[9:14]You know, we overcame something by electing a black president.
[9:18]But the thing was, I had a lot of folks say to me, we are now in a post racial era.
[9:23]But I knew right away that was a fallacy that there was nothing post racial about it.
[9:28]You know, and all I had to do was go on my social media feed.
[9:31]You know, back then Facebook was just kicking off and getting started.
[9:34]And I just remember going on Facebook and just seeing the ugliness and this bitter divide between black and white in America.
[9:42]And so much of it was not about policy debates.
[9:45]You know, I could have understood and respected that.
[9:47]But it was deeply personal and it was racially motivated.
[9:52]A lot of what I saw there.
[9:53]And then through the first two terms, those two terms of Obama's presidency, we saw so much racism.
[10:00]a lot of racial violence.
[10:01]So I knew it was not a post-racial period at all.
[10:04]And so this was something I was very interested in,
[10:06]was just how we were all in these separate entrenched corners,
[10:10]black and white America.
[10:11]And so then I tried to think of who are the characters
[10:14]that I could create in fiction
[10:15]who could inhabit this kind of world.
[10:17]And I was interested in the tiny small lives of people,
[10:21]of characters who could speak to these larger macro issues.
[10:25]And so that's where the idea for the book came from.
[10:28]Wow, that's great.
[10:29]Really beautiful.
[10:30]Yes, I would say we are definitely not in a post-racial era.
[10:33]I feel like things have sort of become magnified.
[10:38]And everything has been spilling out.
[10:40]Good, bad ugly recently.
[10:42]So there's sort of no better time for a book like yours.
[10:46]And empathy that characters bring, right?
[10:49]Just stories, show how all this racial divide,
[10:53]I find just we're all, I don't mean to sound stupid.
[10:56]It's just that we're all people underneath
[10:58]and all of this attention to color.
[11:00]I feel undermines how similar we all are in so many ways.
[11:04]So anyway, I'll get off my.
[11:06]I'll get off my soapbox here.
[11:07]And yes, that was a pivotal moment.
[11:10]And you captured it beautifully in your story.
[11:13]Your story also contains a lot of secrets
[11:17]and sort of the damage keeping a secret can do
[11:20]on the secret keeper and in the secret keeper's relationships.
[11:23]And what happens when the secret comes out
[11:26]and when should it come out?
[11:27]And so I was actually thinking,
[11:29]I don't know if this was the kindest lie.
[11:31]I mean, was it kind of, I don't know.
[11:33]So tell me about choosing this title
[11:35]and how you and do even see it as a lie,
[11:38]the secret that was kept.
[11:40]Yeah, yeah.
[11:40]Well, first we guys should tell you what the book's about
[11:42]a little bit that is about race class.
[11:44]That would be good.
[11:45]That's all right.
[11:46]So people know what the book is about.
[11:48]Yeah, so it's about race class, family at the dawn
[11:51]of the Obama era.
[11:53]And it centers on Ruth Tuttle,
[11:54]black woman engineer.
[11:56]She's very successful chemical engineer in Chicago.
[12:00]On the come up, you know,
[12:01]she's got this great husband and great life.
[12:03]And he's ready to start a family,
[12:05]but she can't do that until she makes peace with her past.
[12:09]And so she's been harboring this huge secret
[12:11]that she gave birth to a baby
[12:14]when she was just 17 years old.
[12:17]And she never told anybody about it.
[12:18]And her husband doesn't know it.
[12:20]And so she decides to go back to her hometown,
[12:23]so dying in the end of factory town for youth
[12:26]to try to search for a song.
[12:28]And when she gets there, she meets
[12:30]and forms this unlikely connection with midnight.
[12:33]And it's a white boy 11 years old.
[12:35]He's nicknamed midnight.
[12:37]And he's a drift also searching for his own sense
[12:40]of family connection.
[12:41]And he's really mired in that very poverty
[12:44]that Ruth managed to escape.
[12:46]And so when the two of them come together,
[12:48]they're just on this collision course of race and class.
[12:52]And it ends up just upending both of their lives.
[12:55]And so that's the background of the story,
[12:57]but the title, the kindest lie.
[13:00]And so interesting, I kept thinking,
[13:01]oh, will the publisher change the title?
[13:03]You know, because a lot of times you've come up
[13:05]with a working title and then it gets changed
[13:07]as you go along and the publishing process,
[13:09]but it's stuck.
[13:10]And so I was excited about that.
[13:12]And I chose the kindest lie
[13:14]because I'd often we keep secrets,
[13:16]we tell lies for the best of reasons,
[13:18]the best of intentions.
[13:20]And so that's what I meant by the kindest lie,
[13:23]the grandmother in the story.
[13:24]And I don't want to get too much away,
[13:25]but that's Ruth's grandmother, the character mama.
[13:28]She keeps a lot of lies.
[13:29]She tells a lot of secrets and tells lies,
[13:34]but she does it not to be malicious.
[13:36]She does it to protect her grandchildren.
[13:39]It's out of love that she tells lies.
[13:43]And then I also think the other level of lies
[13:45]is that there are lies that we tell ourselves.
[13:48]You know, and I think Ruth in this story
[13:50]is lying to herself in many ways
[13:52]because she thinks she can outrun her past.
[13:55]You know, she's got this nice, fancy life.
[13:57]She in Chicago, she's awkwardly mobile, great job,
[14:00]great husband, all that.
[14:02]And she thinks that, you know, this is it.
[14:04]I could just live this life
[14:05]and not worry about what I've left behind
[14:09]in my hometown.
[14:10]And not just her son who she left behind,
[14:13]but also her family.
[14:14]I mean, they're the ones who convinced her to never come back,
[14:16]but still she's left them behind
[14:19]this community that she grew up in
[14:21]and the family that she was part of.
[14:23]And so in that way, she's lying to herself
[14:25]because as we find in the book,
[14:27]she cannot outrun her past.
[14:29]And then the other level
[14:30]on which the kind of lie works is America.
[14:34]You know, when you look at it in a larger sense,
[14:37]I think America has lied to itself about how good it is,
[14:41]how decent and honorable.
[14:43]You can be, you know, but it's not always decent and honorable
[14:47]to everybody in the country.
[14:49]You know, we still have so much work to do as Americans.
[14:51]And I think a lot of times we wrap ourselves in the flag
[14:54]and we like to lie to ourselves and pretend
[14:58]that we're better than we really are
[15:00]when there's really so much work to do.
[15:02]That was beautifully said.
[15:04]In the book, when you were just talking about how her family
[15:07]wanted her to leave everything behind, right?
[15:09]It almost became not her choice.
[15:10]They were like, go, go, go, we'll take care of everything.
[15:13]A lot of the text, and maybe this is because I went to Yale,
[15:16]but I feel like there was a lot about Yale
[15:18]in the book and how her going there was sort of totally
[15:22]like life-changing moment.
[15:23]And from there on, she could study engineering.
[15:25]She could get this amazing job.
[15:27]And it was a huge turning point.
[15:29]And it was either do the, you know,
[15:31]the fork and the road set is fake, right?
[15:33]You can go this way or you stay here
[15:35]and you basically depicted what happened,
[15:38]would she have stayed when we see what happened to her brother
[15:40]and sort of the other people who work in a factory town
[15:43]and the effect of that.
[15:45]So tell me about that.
[15:47]And is it really like one moment?
[15:49]Is it those one decision nodes that change everything?
[15:52]I do think so.
[15:53]I think it's all about the choices that you make.
[15:56]And you sometimes you have that one moment in time
[15:59]to make a decision and your life can just go
[16:02]on a certain direction or not.
[16:04]And I think that's really what Mama was getting at
[16:07]was saying, you know, you need to leave this behind
[16:10]and that sometimes leaving is the best way
[16:12]that you have to make a decision
[16:14]or your life trajectory can change forever.
[16:17]And it can build an absolute wrong way.
[16:19]I think that's what the message for Mama was.
[16:21]And so we have the scene where Ruth gives birth at home,
[16:25]you know, in her bed.
[16:27]And you know, it's a really difficult scene
[16:28]and it's not just that, well, it's really dealing
[16:31]with the two difficult things.
[16:32]I mean, labor, you know, going into labor,
[16:35]giving birth to a baby,
[16:36]but also at the same time dealing with the emotional labor
[16:40]as well of trying to decide, what do I do?
[16:43]You know, I'm having this baby, you know,
[16:45]in a way she's like, I want to hold onto this baby,
[16:47]you know, this is my child.
[16:49]But yet she's also dreaming of what's beyond
[16:52]this tiny bedroom and this little shotgun house
[16:55]and this little auto plant town, you know,
[16:58]and that's a Yale, you know, and that's life beyond.
[17:01]And so I do think that there are times in life
[17:03]where we make a choice.
[17:05]And but even if you make a choice,
[17:07]it may not be the wrong choice.
[17:10]Whatever the choice is, I think it just impacts
[17:12]the rest of your life and the way that's gonna go.
[17:14]But I think you almost also have to revisit too.
[17:16]It's like a sliding doors moment.
[17:18]Sometimes the decisions you make sometimes they're by chance.
[17:22]The decision of what to do with a child born
[17:26]either too soon or in the wrong circumstances
[17:29]is a very, you know, politically fraught one
[17:32]in and of itself, right?
[17:33]And it is part of the book,
[17:35]which also touches on politics.
[17:38]You know, and it's opening scene
[17:39]and as a theme that courses through it,
[17:42]was there any intention of like why she had the baby
[17:45]or are you trying to make any sort of statement
[17:47]or was this just like a mechanism
[17:49]to tell the story you wanted to tell?
[17:51]Yeah, I think it was a mechanism to tell the story
[17:53]and you mentioned that opening scene with the election night.
[17:56]And it's in that scene that Ruth and her husband's savior
[18:00]at different points are thinking about what it means
[18:03]to have a child at this moment in time in history
[18:08]because they're bringing, I mean,
[18:09]she's brought a child into the world,
[18:11]but she doesn't, and she's excited about this new era,
[18:14]this new president, and all the promise of opportunity
[18:18]for black people in America,
[18:20]but she doesn't really know what situation her son is in.
[18:25]And she's assuming the worst that he's languishing
[18:28]in the poverty that she managed to escape.
[18:31]And so I thought that was interesting,
[18:33]this whole idea of a child out there
[18:36]because children are, you know, we think of them
[18:38]as the future, you know, and think about
[18:40]what the opportunities are for them
[18:42]and people we all want the best for our children.
[18:45]We want them to have a better life than you had.
[18:48]And, you know, and that's part of what the character
[18:50]of Mama is wanting.
[18:51]You know what I mean?
[18:52]She's got a lot of unfulfilled dreams of her own
[18:55]that we find out about in the book,
[18:57]but yet she wants the best for her children
[19:00]and for her grandchildren.
[19:02]And so I just think just that legacy of generations
[19:06]and always wanting the next generation to go beyond
[19:10]and exceed the opportunities that you had,
[19:12]to me that's really interesting.
[19:14]And so that's one reason for having childhood
[19:17]and motherhood be a part of this narrative.
[19:21]The scene where, I don't think I'm giving much away,
[19:24]but when Ruth goes home and Mama has sort of a gentleman
[19:28]and a suitor trying to fix the toilet.
[19:30]And she feels like even though Papa is not here,
[19:34]it's still like having another man in the house
[19:37]is just rubs her the wrong way.
[19:39]And you mentioned sadly, I'm so sorry about your father
[19:42]and having lung cancer.
[19:43]And I'm wondering if that stemmed
[19:45]from some sort of situation with your own mom
[19:48]or did your mom start dating again?
[19:50]Or where did that particular scene come from?
[19:53]Just out of curiosity.
[19:55]No, no, that did not happen.
[19:57]And she did not start dating again or anything like that.
[20:00]that. But I was just really, you know, thinking about how things change with loss, you know,
[20:06]with the loss of Papa, he was really, he was the patriarch of that family, the foundation that they
[20:12]all clung to. And so then when he was gone, that just really interrupted everything in the lives
[20:18]of the characters, you know, and so Mama's had a hard time moving on, you know, and then Ruth, too,
[20:25]in a route, it was very tethered to her grandfather, you know, and I think that's one of the
[20:31]reasons that she got involved with Ronald, you know, her high school boyfriend and got pregnant,
[20:37]you know, as because she was looking for that love, you know, and looking for that male figure
[20:43]in her life. And so I was just really interested in someone who's not present, but still has such
[20:49]a huge presence in the life of the characters in the book. And so yeah, it's what's very difficult
[20:55]for Mama to move on, but it's kind of like she's trying to find herself, too, just as Ruth is trying
[21:00]to find herself, you know, and I thought it was interesting too that you've got a woman, black woman,
[21:05]78 years old, you don't usually see that kind of a character on the page, you know, and someone who's
[21:11]not just there to take care of the people in her life, you know, she's doing that, of course,
[21:17]but she also has a love interest, you know, and so to me, that's interesting for a woman that age
[21:22]to have that on the page, and she has like I said before, unfulfilled dreams of her home too. So she's
[21:29]really her own person, and I thought that was pretty cool. My grandmother recently passed away at
[21:33]97, but when she was in her early 90s, someone tried to set her up with a man who was like 95,
[21:40]and she was like, oh, don't be silly. He's way too old for me. That is so cute. So it just like
[21:47]never ends, you know, like, you know, just doesn't, doesn't that? Tell me a little more about
[21:52]the writing of this book, the actual writing. Tell me about like, did you structure the whole narrative
[21:57]beforehand? Did you outline where and when did you write it? Tell me about it. Yeah, yeah. So in the
[22:03]writing circles, people talk about being a plotter, you know, where you outline everything or
[22:07]you're a pants or you write it by the seat of your pants. I'm definitely more on the pants or
[22:11]side of things, so I did not outline anything. I never had an outline the entire time,
[22:16]but then sometimes it takes you a little longer. You know, it took me six years, but of course,
[22:20]this was the first book, so it takes a little longer because you don't necessarily know what
[22:24]you're doing and you're kind of fumbling around in the dark as you write the book. But I think
[22:28]as a writer, I'm definitely interested in what keeps me up at night, you know, what are the
[22:32]burning issues that are on my mind? And so that was the whole thing with the election and the
[22:37]racial divide, the class divide in America. So that's where I tend to start is with what I'm really
[22:46]passionate about at the time. And then from there, it's all about the characters. So I'm definitely
[22:50]a character-driven writer. I'm really interested in delving deep into the character motivations,
[22:57]you know, why do they do the things they do? And, you know, what is it in their past that informs
[23:02]their present? So those are the things I'm definitely get excited about as a writer. And then
[23:07]the ideas come to me at the most inconvenient times. And so I'd say the most mostly ideas I get
[23:15]are a lot of the most brilliant ones I get for exposition or snatch the dialogue, come to me
[23:20]what I'm writing. I'm sorry, but I'm driving on the interstate. And so, you know, I'm here,
[23:26]you know, doing 16, 65 on the interstate, driving along, and an idea will hit me. And for safety
[23:31]reasons, I can't write it down. So I usually pull out my iPhone and I use the voice memo function
[23:38]of the phone and just talk into it. And it sounds really weird later when I listen to it,
[23:44]you know, the things, the ramblings when I'm on the interstate, you know, you might hear
[23:48]horns honking or crazy noises. But if I don't do that, I lose it. You know, if I don't get the
[23:54]idea down, write them. And then, and I'd say in terms of where I'm, I write because we're in the
[24:00]pandemic. I'm usually writing at home. And so, but when I was writing this book, I wrote some of
[24:05]it at home, but a lot of it at Starbucks. And so people are wondering, how can you write in a coffee
[24:11]shop? But for some reason like that word of the cappuccino machine is kind of cool. I like the rhythm
[24:16]of that. And I can write to that kind of noise and people sitting right next to me talking. And
[24:22]I think maybe by because of my news days, you know, I'm accustomed to just, you know, writing
[24:28]on the side of the road or in the back of the police car, you know, going on some kind of drug
[24:33]raid or wherever it doesn't matter. I can write pretty much anywhere and block out the noise.
[24:40]So that's, that's my writing process. So what is your go to Starbucks drink when you're working
[24:46]on your writing? Funny thing is I don't drink coffee. I don't like the taste of it. I love the smell
[24:52]of it, you know, but I don't like the taste of it. So I drink hot chocolate. And I'm really into
[24:57]things that are sweet. And so I like hot chocolate really strong. Five pumps of mocha, no whipped cream,
[25:03]sometimes the whipped cream cuts down on the chocolate. I am. What I mean with whipped cream is a
[25:08]distraction. It's a total distraction from the, yeah, man, that's okay. I love it. Sometimes they
[25:15]make a mistake and they put it on there anyway. But yeah, I am a fan. I just actually tried the Starbucks
[25:20]peppermint hot chocolate for the holiday. But I would not do that if I read, but anyway. Oh,
[25:24]really? Okay. Okay. Also cuts down on the chocolate. Just on the chocolate. Yeah, and it's all
[25:29]about the chocolate. The best thing is Starbucks. And then I'll get back to your writing is the
[25:33]chocolate covered almonds. Have you ever had them there? I have not had those. They keep being sold
[25:38]out everywhere. And I feel like somebody else knows that they're so good at like matching them. But
[25:43]if you ever see a pack, they're like the best chocolate covered almonds. Okay. I will look at those.
[25:48]The chocolate are hoarding them. Yeah, really good. Anyway, okay. I'll try this out.
[25:52]So are you hard at work on another book now? You must be. I can't imagine that you're letting it go
[25:58]this. No, no, no, I don't want to be just a one book one. Sure. The thing is, I can't say a lot
[26:05]about it yet, but I am working on something new. And the thing is, I'm still waiting to finalize these
[26:11]initial three chapters in summary, which is called option material to send to my editor to see
[26:17]if she wants to acquire it for William Marrow. So fingers crossed about that. But I can say that
[26:22]it's about it's again about race, class and identity. So some of those same themes that I'm always
[26:28]interested in, but at some different moments in history. I seem to always be fascinated by certain
[26:35]moments in time, like the big national moments and how individuals fit into that individual lives
[26:42]fit into those big moments. And so that's what I'm looking to do again. And a lot of people have
[26:47]asked me when I've done other interviews or just check good reads, people want to know about
[26:52]a sequel to the kind of lie. And I don't have any plans for that. But, you know, if Hollywood is
[26:58]listening and wants to continue the story of Ruth and midnight, you know, on the bigger small screen,
[27:04]that would always be fun. Because I think there's probably more to tell about where those characters
[27:09]go from here. You could also, you could do a whole spinoff about the lesbian couple. I'm forgetting
[27:14]their names. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but they were really interesting too. I mean, you had that one thing
[27:19]where, you know, one of them confides to Ruth, like you're so lucky that you can just touch
[27:24]the person you love in public. And it's not that easy for us. And, you know, the emboldened,
[27:29]the feelings of being emboldened after the Obama win and how more public they were in their
[27:33]displays of affection. Right. Yeah, I think that could be another story too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[27:39]You know, if you're running out of material. Yes, yes, I think that would be fascinating.
[27:44]They also have, I just, I'm late to this party. Have you sort of scribed? It's like,
[27:49]no, what is that? So I'm even later than you to the party. No, it's a whole, it's like a,
[27:54]they have audiobooks and books and it's almost like audible in a way, but they summarize,
[28:00]they'll have articles, excerpts. Anyway, my point is they have scribed originals and they're like
[28:05]10,000 words. So you could do like a scribed original. I love that idea. I'm writing that down,
[28:11]scribed original. Yeah. And it's audio. No, you can read it too. Like, I mean,
[28:16]you can read it too. Okay. Yeah, I mean, everyone who wrote one shortly. So,
[28:19]okay, because I'm thinking about those aren't there like audible originals. This is,
[28:24]this you read. There's probably an audio version as well. I don't know. I just,
[28:28]yeah, I'm like, that's another format to, I love that to extend the life of the story. I'm on the
[28:33]book. Yeah, that's actually a good marketing idea. I know. Do that kind of thing. You're good.
[28:38]I'm good. I like that. I need to hire you. Feed me all the best ideas. I love my unsolicited
[28:49]advice. That is the best. I really like that. Anyway, I'm getting speaking of advice. What advice
[28:55]would you have for aspiring authors? Yeah, I would say for authors to really be true to yourself
[29:02]to whatever the intention is for the book that you want to write. Stay true to that,
[29:08]to what's authentic and real for you. Because I talk to so many writers who say, you know what?
[29:14]I think I might want to write about vampires because I heard vampires might be coming back
[29:19]in vogue, you know, or I'll do domestic suspense because I hear that's kind of hot. And if I put
[29:24]girl in the title, it'll definitely sell, you know, but I don't think you can write to trends
[29:29]and do your book in the justice because then you're just writing to the market. You're writing,
[29:34]you know, what you think people want to read and what you think is going to sell. And I think
[29:38]what's going to sell and what's going to be successful is what comes from your heart, from your
[29:42]soul, from your passion. You know, so that would be my main advice is to just write what's true
[29:48]to you. And also be gentle with yourself too because, you know, going through the pandemic,
[29:53]you know, everybody is just going through so much emotionally right now. And, you know, our lives
[29:58]lives are crazy, even though.
[30:00]We're, you know, tethered at home, you know, in sequestered, but I think be gentle in terms of how often you write. I don't just, I don't necessarily believe you have to write every single day to be a successful writer.
[30:11]I think you write when you feel compelled to write, but also at the same time, I think you have to be disciplined to, you know, if you ever want to get anything done.
[30:20]I think you have to keep plugging away at it and not always writing just when you feel like it because you may not always feel like it.
[30:27]Sometimes you do have to push yourself, but don't feel that you have to do it every single day. But as long as you're getting words on the page and you are telling the story that only you can tell that's going to resonate, you know, with other people, I think because it's your story.
[30:42]That's great advice. You make me want to stop what I'm doing and start writing.
[30:45]That's our writing. There you go. That's my gift to you. Well, thanks, Nancy. Thanks for coming on mom's no time to read books. As you can see, mom's also don't have time to do podcasts. And thank you for your great book and let's stay in touch.
[31:01]Definitely. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. Bye.
[31:06]Today's podcast has been sponsored by Under the Influence, a new podcast by author Joe Piazza.
[31:13]And just a reminder, again, please pre-order a copy of my book, Mom's Don't Have Time to a quarantine anthology and go to my website under the anthology tab for the fundraiser.
[31:25]And I hope you'll buy a ticket and join me for an I should have mentioned all proceeds go to COVID-19 research. So please join me for the fundraiser.
[31:35]Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have time to read books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books.
[31:44]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[31:51]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.