Sunny Hostin, ON THE BLUFFS: A NOVEL

[1:35]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called moms don't have time to a quarantine anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of moms don't have time to write a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Welcome to another day of the June book blast for this podcast. This is rom com Friday, so enjoy all of these fun, lighthearted conversations about different rom coms that I've read and profiled for the podcast. Enjoy. Sunny Hostin is the author of New York Times bestselling novel Summer on the Bluffs. Sunny is a three time Emmy award winning legal journalist and cohost of The View. Last fall, Hostin released her national bestselling book, I Am These Truths, a memoir of identity, justice and living between worlds. She has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Woman, Essence, Newsweek, the New York Post, Latina and Ebony. A sought after public speaker, she has delivered a TEDx talk called a possibility model and has spoken in moderated panels at UC Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism, Corporate Counsel, Women of Color, and the National Bar Association. She has also served as a witness at the Federal Judiciary's Congressional Hearing for the public's right of access to the courts. Sunny Hudson lives with her husband and two children in New York. Welcome, Sunny. Thank you so much for coming to discuss Summer on the Bluffs, your novel.

[3:22]Sunny Hostin: Thank you for having me. Thank you. I have loved

[3:27]Zibby Owens: this book. It's so fun. It's so engaging. I don't know what I was expecting, but I just loved it. It was so great. Anyway, as you know, I've already recommended it lots of places. And it's just, it's a very smart, like modern day relationship book. It's not, I mean, I know Beach Read is something they say that's like disparaging almost, you know, but this is like, it's great anyway.

[3:54]Sunny Hostin: Well, thank you. Thank you. Well, you know, I wanted to write something that I wanted to read, you know, and I do like escapism and I like beach reads, but I don't like them, if I'm being honest to be too frivolous and just to be too light, if that makes sense. So I wrote what I like to read something that isn't dark and dreary but has some heft to it. That was what I planned to do. So I'm glad you got it.

[4:26]Zibby Owens: Totally. I mean, infertility, grief, sexuality, like you got all the things like gender, race, like what else have we not touched on in this book? I mean, it's amazing. So yeah, I mean, you know, it sort of speaks to like, not that I don't love your cover. I love your cover. It's great. But it's like, it's so hard to convey everything just from the outside of a package. You know what I mean? It's like, how would you how do you know sometimes? So anyway.

[4:58]Sunny Hostin: Well, the funny thing about the packaging is the cover art, the picture is actually comes from this house. It's a real house that I walk past every day. I do sort of this like seven mile walk along the water in a bus on East Chop Drive. And there's this house that I look at all the time. And I'm like, if someone would just like decide to just give that house to me because I walk by it and maybe they see me staring at it lovingly, maybe they decide I'm gonna give that person that house. And I literally just stare at it all the time. And I took a photograph of it and I sent it to my editor Carrie. And I said, this is Ama's house, just so you know. And she was like, well, that's the cover then. And so that's where it comes from. But then when I got like the cover art with the house and the pink and the blue, I was like, wow, I don't know if that's what I was thinking of, you know, in all honesty. But the thought was, well, is a beach read. You don't really wanna turn people off, but it doesn't really reflect I think the depth, right? Of what's inside but at least it doesn't turn people away Exactly. From

[6:08]Zibby Owens: think so. Do the people who own this house know that not only do you stalk them but you put it on the cover of your book?

[6:16]Sunny Hostin: Well, don't know that I thirst for their house. They don't know that. Okay.

[6:21]Zibby Owens: It's just a subtle, subtle hint. I did something similar. I was in Rhode Island and I saw this house and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like my dream house. And next thing you know, was like, Can someone find out if I can like talk to the owner and like try to buy it even though it's not on the market? And like, why I would need a house in Rhode Island is like, do you know I mean? And my husband's like, What are you doing? He's like, what if they say yes? And I was like, I don't know. I just have to ask.

[6:50]Sunny Hostin: I've looked at it for years. I'm like, I know it's not for sale because they seem to be enjoying it. Exactly.

[6:57]Zibby Owens: I'm like, who are these people in the backyard of my house? Oh my gosh. Well, I thought one of the really beautiful, interesting parts of this book was how you dealt with loss and grief with this thirty three year long marriage between Omar and Amelia, and how it took her, like, three years to go through the morning Yeah. Which I found so interesting. Tell me a little bit about that. And and you even had something I loved. Wait. Let me try to find this quote that I thought was so beautiful. When you talked about his passing away, you said she had mourned him with the patience that had been the hallmark of their marriage. In the first months, she'd carefully edited then digitized all their photo albums. She wanted her girls and the children they would have someday to know what black love looked like in the twentieth century when the world was changing so fast and so slow at the same damn time. Yes. Yes. Well, you know, I've been married for over twenty years, and my husband is a very

[7:54]Sunny Hostin: old fashioned guy. Omar, in many respects, is based off of my husband Manny. And he's quiet and a man of few words, like Omar. And I often think and it's a little bit macabre, but you know, what would life look like without him? You know, I don't know how what that looks like. I don't want to know what it looks like, but I don't know what it looks like. And when we first started dating, he would write me letters. He was born in Spain. His mom's Spanish. And he'd write me letters when he would visit Spain. And now it's a lot of text messages and that sort of thing, but I've saved the letters. And I've often thought, you know, that's something that I eventually, I think will show my children. And so the story, it's fictional, of course. But a lot of it is based, I think, on our patient relationship. And the other thing that I based part of their love story on is one of my best friends. She lost her husband at a very young age when she was pregnant with my godson. And one of the things that she explained to me was and it was a long illness. It was CTE related. One of the things and so she sort of watched him die. And one of the things that she said to me was that she kept his shirt and it smelled of him. And I thought, wow, it's so poetic. And I asked her permission to sort of borrow that because I think that is such a interesting sign of not only loss, but longing and affection, right, and love. And I write about that in the book about his sort of turtleneck. And that's where kind of that description of what I believe marriage is and what loss would look like. I love that he wears turtlenecks and jeans only in Paris.

[9:45]Zibby Owens: Like, what is that? Okay, cool. It's really a character that he puts on. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, why not? No, that image of his closet and that she could keep the door closed and keep the smell sort of trapped as if Oh trying to freeze my gosh. It was just very poignant. Really beautiful. And also and by then, speaking of the letters, you had a whole section in here, of course, about like you were like, how can people even fall in love these days with emails and texts and dating apps? I get it. I don't get it. I have some of my friends that are dating

[10:18]Sunny Hostin: and one guy like broke up with her by text. And I was like, romance is dead. It's so dead with this like swipe right, swipe left. And, you know, I like, I'm in pain for my children. Like I have an 18 year old and a 15 year old. I'm like, what is that experience like? You know, I just, I don't know that looks like. How do they find that everything is so urgent and disposable? And I definitely wanted to address that. Like, things aren't disposable. Love has to be very patient. Relationships have to be very patient. And I try to put myself in the place of a 20 and in the place of a 60 year old. I try to have that span for women, the life of a woman because we're so complex. We're so complicated. And our relationships are so complicated. And our friendships especially are so complicated. And our choices are complicated. And we have to own those choices as the characters in the book do. But dating today is just like, I'm so happy I'm not dating. I'm

[11:27]Zibby Owens: so happy. I have four kids and my oldest are twins. They're almost 14. And I'm like, is like not gonna work. Like they can't spell. Like, what are how are they going to be like texting and professing their love to each other? And like, oh my gosh. No. It's like They can't even write in script. It's thoughtful. That's so true. Oh my gosh. I also thought it was so great that you showed love at a young age, but then this like second stage of hot, hot and heavy, you know, I mean, for an older woman and her how old was she supposed to be? Like 60, right? Omar was 73 when he passed away, something like that? Yeah. I mean, how often do we not read about relationships that get that are particularly like passionate things that happen in later life? Like, how great.

[12:16]Sunny Hostin: You know, it's funny. I you know, I talk to you know, I work with women on the view of different ages. That was Barbara Walters dream every, you know, a woman from every decade. And we really have that on our show, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. The person that like talks about sex the most is like in her 70s. And I, you know, she needles me all the time because I'm like a Catholic school girl, really, you know, I'm Catholic and like many Catholics, you know, I don't talk about sex. And writing about that, I thought, I don't understand why women in their 50s or 40s are like put out to pasture. And like we no longer have a love life and we no longer have desire. And I was like, I want to break that mold. And while I want write about this coming of age and career and all the crap that women have to go through, there is life after 40. There is life after 50. And especially I've seen it in some of my older friends. Their kids go up to college, man, and they are reborn. I don't recognize these women. They are like hot to trot and they are happy. And they're going on these like self discovery missions and it's really terrific. And the women that have read it, especially those that are in their sixties, they're like, thank you. Thank you. There's hope for me. And I think that the love story between Amma and Carter especially is probably the sexiest, I think out of all the relationships, Like who doesn't want Carter in her life?

[13:51]Zibby Owens: I also want Carter's photos, please. Yes. Like, could I like buy those somewhere? Where are those?

[13:58]Sunny Hostin: Photos, you want his boat, you want Yes. This bohemian lifestyle, you want this freedom, which should come at that age when you know yourself and you're grown. You know, I definitely that was something that, that his character, I enjoyed writing like more than anything, actually, Ama and Carter. I just thought that was like pretty cool. Yeah, I agree. That was super cool. It

[14:22]Zibby Owens: was like hot. I started co hosting this other podcast lately called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Sex. And I am like you. I am like, I don't talk about this stuff. I am like so shy and whatever. And I do it with this sex expert who's 59 years old and is like, she's British, so everything's like hilarious, you know? But it's all about, you know, she'll like share all this stuff about like her life and women later and, you know, it's just so funny. So it sort of opened up my eyes to like the unending nature of this, right? Like, I don't know when I was younger, was like, Oh, I'm sure old people don't have sex.

[14:58]Sunny Hostin: Know, I know. And it's so not true. So not true. So not true. And love and lust and you know, you're sort of untethered at that age, which is really cool. And especially if you have two people that are rediscovering themselves and each other, not themselves really rediscovering each other and they're financially secure. I mean, it's like, wow, that's

[15:24]Zibby Owens: true freedom. And this whole like life is short. I mean, you're in your seventies, like, not? Why not? Not? Let's not now win, you know? Exactly. Yeah. I love that. Well, you totally captured that with their characters. Oh, good. It was so real. It was awesome. And then you have this whole other dimension with infertility struggles, which of course more women like you've tapped every woman of every age. Somebody can relate to everything, you know? And even when, I don't want to like give things away or whatever, but when one of the characters thought that her boyfriend was cheating and the other girl was pregnant, the issue was more that she was pregnant, right? Then that was like the biggest thing. Like she didn't want someone else to be pregnant. Well,

[16:08]Sunny Hostin: yeah. You know, I went through infertility, years of infertility. And what I realized, and I wrote about it in my memoir and the response, my memoir was extensive, but the most feedback that I got hundreds of emails was about that particular chapter. I called it motherhood. It just reminded me that people still suffer in silence about infertility. It's almost like shame based for some reason when so many women suffer through it. And I just remember that when I talked about it, people were like, okay, okay, I was like, enough, enough, but we shouldn't be talking about it. You know, I'm kind of a blabber mouth in that sense. So I thought that's something that I'm definitely gonna write about because I know that women are going through this. And I remember my best friend, used to like, I nicknamed her in my mind, not to her, well, she'll know it now. But I nicknamed her like Fertile Myrtle because like you just look at her and she got pregnant and I was like struggling with it. And it was a little unnerving because every time I turned around, she was pregnant and complaining about being pregnant. I was like, what I would give to be pregnant. And so that was sort of where that came from because I would imagine that's what would upset me the most if my spouse or my partner cheated on me. Would not be it would be that someone else got pregnant. And then I think I would project this sort of notion that, oh my goodness, it's me. There's something wrong with me. Especially if you're a type A personality

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[19:49]Sunny Hostin: Okay. So, yeah, that was you know, it's all fiction, but certainly I plucked a little bit of that from my life because, you know, I know so many women go through that. I just know it. And you do question yourself, right? You question your femininity, you question, it's like, why me? But it's why a lot of people,

[20:14]Zibby Owens: a lot of people are going through that. Just because a lot of people go through something hard doesn't mean the people going through it can't say, why me? Exactly. It's still something. It's like if everybody broke their arm or something, they'd still be like, did I break my arm?

[20:29]Sunny Hostin: It's okay to feel sorry for yourself. And that's another thing that I learned. It's like, it's okay to feel this way. And that's something that this character kind of needs to learn. Like it's okay. It's okay that

[20:41]Zibby Owens: you feel this way. Well, now I have to go back and read your memoir. I didn't read it before this. Now I'll go, I'll read it this summer. That's great. And by the way, I heard you have like a whole series of Summer on the Seg Summer on Sag and what else? What's the third one gonna be? Summer on Highland Beach,

[20:57]Sunny Hostin: which is in Maryland. And the way I sort of thought of it is my good friend, Larry Graham, he passed away recently, but he wrote Our Kind of People. And it's a wonderful book about sort of just the history of African Americans and really the bourgeoisie in particular. He's written a lot of books, but that history included discrimination, of course, against African Americans, but the places where the black bourgeoisie was sort of able and permitted to buy beachfront property. And I thought, wow, I've been to all of those places. One was Oak Bluffs where black folks have been on vacationing since before the Harlem Renaissance and Sack Harbor in the Hamptons and then Highland Beach in Maryland. And it was just so interesting to me also to just, and that's how I pitched it. And Harper Collins was like, this is not one book, this is three books. And I hadn't written a word yet. So I was like, yeah, it is three books. So I'm actually right in the middle of writing somewhere on SAG now. But what was fantastic is what I also wanted to explore was, you know, I'm biracial. So I wanted to explore interracial relationships. I wanted to explore relationships between black women and white women because in all of those places, these were communities that were extremely welcoming to black people. And I thought that's a wonderful, especially given today's day, wonderful time and place sort of explore this welcoming community, especially between Libby and Ama, because I have a lot of friendships like that. So I thought, you know, that sisterhood was very, very special in those places. And you see that again, of course, in Somewhere on Sag because you'll see Olivia and Anderson. Oh, good.

[22:38]Zibby Owens: Uniqueness of their relationship in Sag Harbor. Are more characters from this set gonna be in Highland Park too? Well, right now,

[22:47]Sunny Hostin: I'm not sure. I have no idea. Okay. But I know that so far, Ama, of course, is sort of a guiding light. So she's and Olivia looks up to her. So Ama has made an appearance. Carter is pretty integral right now to Summer on Sag. And Olivia has found sort of a fathered figure in Bill Pickens' Withingham. And I have a really pretty relationship. And then I have some really cool women that she meets some new summer sisters, including a really cool sommelier and a real estate agent and a couple of cool women. So I'm having fun with that. That is awesome. Well,

[23:28]Zibby Owens: if you ever want a book party in the Hamptons, let me know.

[23:31]Sunny Hostin: Definitely.

[23:33]Zibby Owens: That could be fun. So how how did you go about you hadn't written a novel before, at least not that I know of. How do you just start doing it after one meeting with Harper Collins? Like, because it's you did a really good job. Like I read a trillion books and, you know, it doesn't feel like a debut novel.

[23:50]Sunny Hostin: You're very kind. Thank you. I was very lucky. I reached out to Veronica Chambers, who's someone who doesn't really write novels actually, but she's just a wonderful guy. And I reached out to her. She had never been to the vineyard. So I was like, Oh no. But I invited her to join me and sort of gave her the storyline. I'm like, I have this idea. This is the house. These are the women. This is what I'm thinking of. How do I tell this kind of story, this sort of multilayered story? And we just sort of went back and forth. I did it much in the way that I did the memoir in terms of dictating it. And then she would shape it. She would send it to me. And then I'm kind of a crazy editor. You know, my editor Carrie is like, you're taking my job for me. It was very difficult for me to give her pages. And then, and so we go back and forth like that. And she just sort of taught me how to show and not tell, which was really difficult for me. You know, one example that she used was instead of saying, he was walking on a cold night, I would instead have to write, you know, as he walked along the grass and the leaves crunched under his shoes and he had to zip up his jacket and, you know, as he was shivering, you know, that kind of thing, had to learn how to do that. And then ultimately, because I still was nervous, we held these writers rooms because Veronica had written on Girlfriends, a television show. And I invited people like Lindsey Davis, who's anchor of World News Tonight on the weekends, and some of my girlfriends. And I was like, does this sound real? Does this sound authentic? What do you think? And I invited men too. Does this sound accurate? And some of my male friends were like, it sounds too accurate. That sounds like me. That sounds like the night that I did this. And some of the women were like, this is me. I know that story. Please take it out. And that's sort of how it came to be. And then sort of by the end of the process, I was just able to write and it was kind of cool. Wow. Yeah, it's a, I think a lot of people, I was a journalism major and I had written things before, short stories,

[26:22]Zibby Owens: but this was definitely different. Without Veronica, I would not have been able to make it. It's interesting what you say about showing, not telling. Because essentially what you're doing is like changing it to what could be a stage direction or something, right? You could say in a movie like, have the guy zip up his coat. Like, sound editors bump up that, you know, the leaves crunching.

[26:46]Sunny Hostin: It's very hard. It's definitely a skill, but I I don't know. I started dreaming the characters. They felt very real to me. I called my editor Carrie and I said, am I crazy? I like, I can see these people. I feel like they're talking to me. I'm getting up in the middle of the night and I'm writing what they are saying to each other. She's like, no, it just makes you a novelist. It's fine. I do this all the time. So that's when I knew I had it. Towards the end of the book, I could hear Billy. I could hear Dulce say, I love to cook. I'm part owner of a restaurant. So that stuff came easy, the dishes and all that. The artwork, I collect art, that came easy. But it was just sort of the putting it together that Veronica was really, really, she was really helpful. Yeah. Did love all the art references,

[27:33]Zibby Owens: especially with all the girls rooms in the house and Thank you. And you know, all of the I'm like, well, this is quite a range of art in this house.

[27:45]Sunny Hostin: I love art. Yeah. Oh, it's amazing.

[27:48]Zibby Owens: Well, do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

[27:51]Sunny Hostin: Yeah. I think that you should write about what you love. I think that's really important and what intrigues you. You know, I'm also writing this other thing that my agent is like, send it to me. I'm kind of intrigued by witchcraft and magic and creating those kinds of worlds. I love fantasy. And so I just started writing something. And he's like, I love it. And I think that's, I think you write about what you love, what you want to read. I think that's what you write about. Even Toni Morrison said that if there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. I think that's the best advice possible. And that would be my advice to any author.

[28:35]Zibby Owens: If you wanna read it, then write it. I watched a bunch of your interviews about the book before we did this. And I was like, okay, I really wanna talk to her about stuff that I didn't already just learn in all these other interviews. I was like, because you say that quote in a lot of them. And I was like, I hope I can get her to talk about stuff that's not just that quote. And I was like, oh, look, now here's the quote. Oh, no. It's unique. No, it's amazing. It's the best quote ever. I mean, that's

[29:00]Sunny Hostin: That's what you write about. You write about what you wanna read, what you dream about. I think that's, I like fantasy. I'm gonna write fantasy. I like beach reads centered. I hadn't seen beach reads centered on women of color. I just, I didn't find it. I mean, I read all there was out there. I had read Waiting to Exhale. I read Dorothy West. I'd read Crazy Rich Asians. I've read all that. Was like, well, I'll write something. So that's my best advice. And it's the reception that this book has gotten. I'm kind of overwhelmed. It's like sold out on Amazon. I was shocked by that. I would never have believed that in a million years, that there would be a thirst for it, way I thirsted for it, you know, But that goes to show you that if you want to read it, someone else probably does too.

[29:53]Zibby Owens: Well, it's as I was saying, with all the different storylines and characters and everything, it's really like there's somebody can, almost any woman can find something in there that they are like, oh yeah, that happened to me. Or I feel I relate to that. So that's like the recipe for success, right? Yeah.

[30:13]Sunny Hostin: That's what I wanted. I wanted everyone to, you know, see something in it that spoke to them. And what the best thing that came out of it is that men are reading it. Like I would have never imagined that in a million years, Matthew Yates does my hair Monday through Jared Monroe who does my hair on Friday. He does whoopies hair Monday through Thursday. And I had the book here. I would have never like said, oh, Matthew, you know, read the book. And he's like, can I, can I have a copy? I was like, really? Sure. He came to me. He's like, I'm on chapter six. This is like after one night. So I love it. I love this about it. I love that about it. I love this about it. My father read it. He read it like in three days. My husband listened to the Audible and they're like asking questions about it and they're seeing themselves in the male characters, which is unbelievable. You know, women of all ages are seeing themselves in it. It's especially, I think resonating with the 20 and the 60. I'm definitely seeing that from the emails that I'm getting on my website. Like they're saying, oh my gosh, I'm going through this now in my career, I wish I had an AMA. And then I'm seeing, you know, women talking about like, can I have, can I find a Carter in my life? So that stuff has been really encouraging

[31:34]Zibby Owens: that people are relating to it. And I do feel that your male characters are very well developed too. So maybe that's why they're seeing that. There gonna be a movie? There must be. Right? Yes.

[31:46]Sunny Hostin: Yes. Right now, the plan is to make it into a series. So I'm kinda shocked at that. I I I gave the book to Octavia Spencer. I mean, it was almost like I was giving it to her out of my car trunk. Was kind of embarrassed because it wasn't even like round or anything. First draft. Here are my pages, catch. They're loosely It tied had a big binder, so tacky of me and I had just moderated a panel and I knew her kind of, I met her a couple of times and I literally was like, I just read this book and I would love for you to like, just read it. And I didn't want much. I wanted like an Instagram post, if I'm being honest. I just wanted her approval. I don't know what I wanted. And she read it and literally called me, got my phone number from my agent and said, you're going to have a lot of interests. There are going be a lot of people that want to partner with you. Let me explain to you why I would be a good partner. I mean, Octavia, the incredibly talented Spencer is like pitching me on why this Oscar winner should do like a project with me. I was like, I thought it was a joke. Was like, she's serious. And I did, I had other people sort of, you know, come to me about it, but who wouldn't wanna work with her? She's so lovely. She's so girl power. She made sure that I got appropriately compensated. She kind of tied her deal to mine, was like something she said Jessica Chastain did for her. She's amazing. And so ABC's I'm in partnership with Octavia, her partner, producing partner, Brian, also ABC Studios.

[33:27]Zibby Owens: And so hopefully it'll be streaming. That is so cool. That's so cool. Well, I'm sorry. I went a little over. I was so enthusiastic about it. Congratulations on the book. Best of luck with everything. And I'm not kidding about Sag Harbor if you want. Yes. Definitely. R. A. Of any kind. We're hoping it will be out by next summer. If I can just get my pages in, I'm like, we're separating over it right now.

[33:53]Sunny Hostin: It's I'm trying to show Natel.

[33:55]Zibby Owens: Right. Twenty twenty two summer, here we come. All right. Bye bye, Sunny. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to part of my June Book Blast. I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow for more. Thanks

[34:22]Zibby Owens: and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. 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 outro music.