Mary Helen Sheriff, BOOP AND EVE'S ROAD TRIP: A Novel

[1:09]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zoe Owens, 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.

[1:43]Mary Helen Sheriff: Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Listeners, if you enjoy this podcast, I promise you will love my new audiobook for moms don't have time to a quarantine anthology. It's not about the quarantine, but a lot of the essays were written during that time about other things that moms don't have time to do or other busy people, things like reading, eating, working out, breathing, having sex. And 60 bestselling and notable authors wrote essays. All those authors have been on this very podcast. So if you like to listen to my conversations, if you want to get to know these authors better, I read the audiobook myself. Check it out on Audible, Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. Again, Audible audiobook.

[2:49]Mary Helen Sheriff: and a BA from UVA. She lives in Henrico County with her two children, two cats, and one husband. Welcome, Mary. Thank you so much for coming on moms don't have time to read books to discuss Boop and Eve's Road Trip. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here. So please tell listeners what your book is about. Sure. So my novel is Southern Women's Fiction, and it's the story of Eve, who is a college freshman, who is struggling with depression, and her spunky grandma boop gets wind of her struggles. And when Eve wants to borrow her car to go find her missing best friend, Boop says, Sure, you can borrow my car, but I have to come with you. And Boop's goal here is, one, she wants to visit her sister in Savannah, and two, she is, and more importantly, she's worried about Eve and trying to figure out what's going on with her. And Boop herself has a history of depression, and so she's tuned into that. So most of the book is their road trip, and it's sort of a love story between a grandmother and a granddaughter. And as Boop tries to help Eve deal with her future and finding herself and her authenticity, she also has to deal with her own past. And helping Eve helps her to do that. Excellent. Well, not to say that a mother figure can cause depression by any stretch, but I don't think that her, Eve's mom and Boob's daughter help the situation. Helps the grief at all. Agreed. So tell me about this whole dynamic, which I feel like is very interesting, the sort of alliance that forms between grandmothers and granddaughters and sort of skips over the more difficult party in between. Like, what gave you the idea for this? Tell me about this particular piece of the relationship puzzle. Sure. So Boop is inspired by my own grandmother, and her name was Hootie. And she had passed away just a few years before I started writing this. And so I was still, I guess, grieving and not, you know, as one continues to probably grieve for people you love forever. But I decided to base Spoop off of her. And my grandmother was a delightful, wonderful woman and a wonderful grandmother, but she wasn't a great mom. And mostly because she struggled with alcoholism and depression, and that just kind of made her an absentee mother for the most part. But when my mom was a young mother herself, my grandmother's house caught on fire and her husband died. And she decided to move in with my mom and kind of, like, reinvented herself and became this the woman I knew, who was just wonderful. Like, I couldn't have asked for a better grandmother kind of person. But to hear my mother and her sisters talk about the, you know, their mother growing up, it was not the same person that I knew. And I was fascinated by that ability to reinvent yourself. And then at the same time I was writing this, I was a young mom, and I was kind of struggling with how to parent my own children. And, you know, I grew up in the '80s and, you know, life was a little bit Kids had a lot more freedom, I feel like, than they do now. And when I was a young mom, I felt like the world was telling me I needed to be kind of helicopter y, but that didn't quite sit right. And I was really sort of struggling with where the right balance is between taking care of my children and protecting my children, but then also letting them fall down and make mistakes and grow from those mistakes. And so I think that Justine, who is helicopter extreme, is sort of like my worst fear of the kind of mom I might become in my quest to want to protect my children. And so what happens in this story is that Justine is trying to be the mom her mom wasn't. And so she goes to an extreme level. Her mother was absent. She felt like she raised herself. And so she wants to make sure that she doesn't do that to her daughter, and so she overdoes it. And so she micromanages her whole daughter's life. And as a result, when Ed leaves for college, she doesn't have the coping mechanisms to deal with life's normal problems because she's used to her mother just kind of creating this perfect little bubble around her. So that's pretty much where starts to fall apart, is just not having the skills because she hadn't really had to develop them over life. And so there's lots of tension between even her mom and between her mom and boop, and there's secrets and choices that they've made to not tell each other things that have made them misinterpret things and caused them to, like, wonder whether they were loved and all kinds of important questions that haven't been answered because they're not being honest with each other in an attempt to protect themselves and maybe to protect each other too. Wow. Can we go back to the fire? Yeah. Do you feel comfortable talking about that? Sure. Can you tell me more about it? That sounds horrific. So my understanding is that my grandmother was alone in her house and she fell asleep and baby passed out and her house caught on fire with her in it. Someone came in and got her out. The house was gone. She was okay. I mean, no one was hurt, but the house was gone. Their stuff was gone. Like all of the photographs of, you know, that they'd taken over the years were pretty much gone. Which back then, I mean, you didn't have, you know, the digital backup of anything, right? So the photographs that she had of her family and stuff were people like her sister might've had them or, you know, somebody else had them. And so she kind of had to like recreate stuff. And so your grandfather did not die in the fire? No. He had a heart attack. Oh, no. Yeah. Wow. It is so interesting, this sort of ability for grandparents to, like, have a do over. Right? Everything. Make up for the sins of the past with the, you know, the doting in the present. Yeah. And I think there's just like this carefree there's a freedom in being a grandparent because the responsibility isn't completely on your shoulders. And so I think you're able to be a little freer and more forgiving and more accepting of the mistakes your grandchildren are making and your perspective on life is a little bit more balanced perhaps than especially young moms. I think that's just a really hard time to try to define yourself as a mother. I mean, my kids are now in middle school and I'm getting a little nervous about high school and exactly how you know, that's a different kind of parenting that I've had to do. So we'll see how that goes. I mean, I'm in the same boat. We have two almost eighth graders now and and also some little kids. But, yeah, I'm like, okay. So now I talk in a different voice. You know, like, even like the depth that the the how high an octave I speak, like, drops over time. Right? I am literally, like, have a different voice with each of these. But You have to like I mean, they are able to think through things and make choices, and you have to give them some freedom to do that even if those choices aren't always the best. I loved what you said earlier about like sort of this need to helicopter, how that was, like, of the moment and you didn't buy into it. Because it does feel also like there are these parenting trends, if you will, and, like, see changes. But there's even though, like, a few years before that was not the thing, now that it is the thing, you have to do it. And it's like, what? What happened to that? What I had to do three years ago? No, we're done with that? It's different. It's different. Yeah. I remember thinking like, is this because of when you're kids, remember how all the milk cartons had the pictures of the missing children on them? You'd have your cereal at breakfast. Like, is this the result of like a lifetime of looking at missing children on milk cartons? And then you're now a parent and you're just worried your kid's going get kidnapped all the time? I mean, I'm not saying no one ever gets kidnapped and bad things don't happen, but I don't feel like they happen with the regularity that we fear they do. Or one could probably argue that they don't happen because of the vigilance. But Could be true too. You never know. Which came first, right? I mean, I think everything has its benefits and its pros and cons, right? Like it's all about balance and that push and pull and trying to figure out the right spot, but that's hard. But essentially I feel like why there are so often sort of these headbutting incidents with like between generations is because we all, it's like have to embrace those trends. Right? Right? Like when my mother, my grandmother says something and I'm like, no, no, no. Like this is, you have, everyone has to, you know, say breastfeed or whatever, whatever it is, right? They're like, well, we didn't. And I'm like, well, you know, You did it wrong. Right. And I think it all comes from this place of deep insecurity because ultimately none of us know what we're doing because we can't possibly know. Like it's new to everybody and it's constantly changing. So we cling to, you know, you have to be very sort of strong of character, I think, to go against the mold and be able to justify it because like there's so much data all the time. Right? And whatever the collective has picked, there's data. Yes. You can find data probably to support a lot of different choices, right? And even if one thing is better in a certain way for your kids, it might be like maybe helicopter parenting makes your kids physically safer, but maybe it makes them mentally less safe. Right. Yep. And so how do you find that space between like my kids are relatively physically safe and relatively mentally safe. And it's not the same for every kid. It's not the same for every parent. It's not the same in every community. Mean, I just it's so it's a really hard thing to figure out the best way for you to parent your child in your time. So true. Yeah. As I've I mean, maybe as you've gotten as your kids have gotten older and so, you know, as we have alongside them, right, I think there's I feel much more confident now making choices that I didn't feel like before. And I do think that having people like boop in your life or people who have made different choices or who, you know, are so individualistic helps, right? To see that sort of role model to have it out there. Right. You don't necessarily have to do what everyone else is doing, but it's good to think about what everyone else is doing and what the thought behind that is and why that might be appropriate in some cases and not other cases. We do a lot of judging parents for the way they do things and that feels awfully unfair and hard on each other too. Totally. I do also feel though, and that there is this piece of feeling a little left out by the mom in the sandwich of the daughter and the grandmother. You know, am I you know, I don't think my mother would say this out loud. Maybe I shouldn't even say this, but, like, I was super, super close to her mom. And I always you know, I would be like, yeah, I'm going to visit Gagi. And she's like, wait. You're you're taking a whole trip now to visit your grandmother. Like, what about visiting me? She would never say that, but, you know, you get And it then I wonder, like, am I is that gonna happen To you? Like to me or am I gonna bypass my daughter and because I'm so obsessed with her daughter? I don't know. It's it it does create some sort of like almost not competition, but it's like exclusion, like you're, you know, like you're back on the playground again. I think there's a natural tension between mothers and children and maybe even especially daughters. I think that we feel some responsibility for how they turn out in the same way we might be hard on ourselves. We tend to be kind of hard on our children. And I don't think grandmothers feel that sense of responsibility for how they turn out so much and see themselves more as a friend figure. And that makes it a little bit easier. And it's nice to have somebody in your life like that who just loves you sort of unconditionally and isn't putting a whole lot of pressure on you to be who you who your parent you know, your parents think you should be somebody. That's a reflection on them if you're not. Yeah. Very true. Wait. So tell me a little more about the writing of this book and how you even decided to like how you came up with the plot, how long the whole thing took and all of that. And then I wanna hear about your other stuff that you do, like your blog and all of So that care how long? Okay. So I started writing this. It took me about six years probably, yeah, total to write it. And I started it when my daughter was four and was leaving to go to preschool five mornings a week. I had had a part time job up until then. And I decided that the amount of money I was making teaching part time was really not the difference in our lifestyle. And this had been a long time dream and maybe this was my chance to grab it. So I spent the time when she was a preschool, largely writing. And in about two years I had what I thought was a complete manuscript. I'd had a critique group and I was feeling really good about it. And I sent it out and I just got form letter rejection after form letter rejection, which was great fun and liked that. Because it, especially with the form letter, you don't even know what's wrong. So I don't know if my letter just stinks because that's like, you don't send that much, right? Like you send a letter and you send maybe five pages, maybe 10, maybe a chapter, but it's not much. So what's wrong? I don't know. And I found this writing retreat called the Algonquin Writing Retreat. It's in St. Augustine, Florida, which is a spot in my novel. And it was already a spot in my novel coincidentally. But anyway, I went to this writing retreat because he kind of sold it as like the tough love writing retreat. And they had six, I think industry professionals there that you got to meet with for twenty minutes at a time, which is kind of unheard of. And you got to give them your pitch and then they told you exactly what they were thinking, which I like that. And bad, right? And so what I learned that day is that particular draft of this novel had three red flags that basically they all agreed they would never even read the first page after reading my cover letter because of these three red flags. Okay. Red flag number one. The book was originally set in the 1990s. That's not contemporary and it's not historical. So it makes it a little tougher because it doesn't sit on a natural shelf. So if you are a debut author, they do not like your book to be set. They're like 1950s or before or now. But that in between time makes them super uncomfortable. Now, if you've got a reputation and you write, that's different. But for someone who I've never heard of you, then red flag number one. Red flag number two was, this is still a character driven novel, but it was even more character driven in its first draft. This book was sort of held together with the thread of Eve's best friend has sort of gone missing in action and they're trying to find Before, that was a very small subplot in the whole book. So the rewrite ended up pulling that storyline out to make that the art. And the third problem was that it was in first person point of view. And my background was writing You in middle grade, which they loved first person in that genre. But apparently adults books sell better if they're in third person. So what each of these people told me independently was with three things that we don't like from debut authors, we wouldn't read your book. Now, of course you can think of a million books that break all of those rules, but they usually aren't someone's first book or they're someone famous's first book, which doesn't have to follow those rules either. So interesting, I had been writing for a long time and I never knew any of this stuff. I've yet to see it written down anywhere, but that was apparently the thing. So I spent a few months grieving for the loss of this book that I thought was really great. And apparently it wasn't commercial enough for an agent to be interested in it. And then I put on my big girl pants and did a massive rewrite. I mean, changing the time to adding a plot line and changing the point of view in particular was huge. Now this draft that resulted from that is way better than the draft that didn't sell. So, you know, do I regret it? No. Was it hard to do that? Yes. So that's the journey of that book and it's rewrite and why it took so long and all that good stuff. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. 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In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zippy. Wow. That is so interesting. I have not heard those things either about debut novels. Who were the insiders? Did they work in publishing houses? Were they agents? They were agents. Some of them did more like a TV like we're kind of one of them was like a TV to book to TV kind of guy. The others were agents, three agents, one TV guy, and one, what was that person? So a Pulitzer Prize author who wasn't talking about that so much, talking to other stuff, the E were the ones in particular who sort of pointed this out. That's so interesting. I mean, it's almost like it could save authors a lot of time to go to a bootcamp like that before they write the book. Like if you had only Yes. And I think that's what he would have liked to do. I mean, this guy sort of was thinking you write your whole like synopsis before you write the book and that's what you're bringing with you. But most of us had already worked on our books and had already invested a lot of time into them to then go, It's this was also hard to have a fully formed idea without actually writing it. Like, maybe you need to write that draft to figure out what, you know Yes. Things unfold as you write, blah blah blah. It's hard to see the whole thing from Yes. The outset. Yes. Absolutely. Wow. I guess some people think differently too, but I'm with you. Definitely like learn my characters as I write them. And the plot changes as I go. And I mean, I always have an outline, but the book in the end is not what the outline was. And how did you get started writing and publishing? So I started, I think that was, well, I was 23 when I wrote my first book and I was in graduate school to be a teacher. I had an assignment to an assignment that went awry and ended up being basically a novella, which was not at all what the assignment was supposed to be. But I turned it in with a sheepish apology of, you don't really have to read this. I'm hoping that you're just gonna be excited that your assignment encouraged this to happen. But I understand if I have to redo it the way I was supposed to do it in the first place. But the teacher was very gracious and was like, this is awesome. I love it. But I really had so much fun writing that book. And the professor said, hey, you know, you should try to like submit this and get it published. And I was like, yeah, maybe I should. But it was only like 80 pages, which isn't a book exactly. So I did rewrite it and I tried submitting it and it didn't really go over very well. But to be frank, I mean, it was bad. So it's okay that it didn't go over very well. From that, I decided that I did really enjoy writing and I wanted to be a writer, but I was teaching as my job. So over the summers, I got an MFA at Hollins University in writing for children and young adults, because that's where I thought, you know, that's where my heart was, I guess, at that time. And I've written three, two You books and one middle grade book that sit on my computer. And Boop and E's Road Trip was going to be a young adult book, but Boop ended up being really a dual protagonist. I mean, she has as much of a story as Yves does. And you really can't have an 80 year old be a main character in a young adult book, even if the other person is young. And so I made Eve a little bit older when I realized that was happening and put her in college In the original thought, she was going to be more like in boarding school or something like that. So younger, but still away from mom. But anyway, so she's nine Eve's 19 and boob is 80. So Wow. And now also you do your blog and you have these amazing literary care packages. Talk about those things. Yeah. So I have a blog called The Gift of Story. And one of the things I do there is something called a literary care package. And I did one for your anthology. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. But basically, it's the idea of people like to gift books, but sometimes it's overwhelming to think, There are a million books out there. Which book do I give? And what for and who for? And so what I try to do is find a book that I think would make a great gift for a certain target audience, and the example of your book being people who are mothers, and then come up with two items that are related to the book, usually thematically related to the book, so that you have something more than a book to give, though a book is a lovely gift, but sometimes people want something to kind of round it out a little bit. And so I call them literary care packages, and I make one a month, and then I have a larger e guide that's 12 of them. So sometimes they're related to a holiday or a particular event. So like, if you're going to a baby shower, here's a great gift. Or if you're going to a wedding, here's a great gift. And then sometimes they're related to a certain target like yours was, you know, this is a great gift for moms, whenever you might give a mother a gift. I mean, obviously, Mother's Day is a nice time to do that. But I mean, people have birthdays all year long and sometimes So I do those, and I also have a Facebook group called Bookish Road Trip, which is for travelers and readers, and we do lots of fun things there. And Zibby is gonna be our guest at our next book club, which is July 7 at 07:00, and we're going be discussing Moms Don't Have Time to a Quarantine Anthology. So we'd like to have the author come if they're able to, and we do a different book every month. It runs the gamut, It's lots of different kinds of books. Last month, we did a Stephanie Dre's recent release of The Chateau Lafayette Women of Lafayette. I'm mangling that. But a historical fiction book, and we've done all kinds of different things. We'd like to have fun and chat about books and we do panels and lots of fun things. Amazing. Well, I'm so excited for my book club, I have to say. Thank you for making me a care package. So excited to have you. Oh, I can for something. It's amazing. Awesome. So in terms of writing, you have all these businesses and writing and all this great stuff. What are you doing another book? Or are you on hold with the books for now? What do you think? I am writing. I'm not writing as much as I would like to be. I am very much struggling to figure out how to find time to write and find time to market. You know, I think when the book came out, the marketing sort of took over, and it's been hard to, like, pull back enough to find large amounts of time to write. But I'm writing about an hour a day, give or take, which is slow, but it's steady. And I decided to do something really strange this time with this novel. It's very different from Bupini's Road Trip. It's a dystopian novel set in the future. But I was having trouble writing it because I kept, like, writing, I don't know, ten, twenty, 30 pages and then realizing that's not what I wanted to happen and throwing them away, which is not a very efficient way to get into a book. And so I decided to write a screenplay of it first because for me, dialogue comes the easiest. So I thought I could just basically write the dialogue for the whole book and find the characters and find the plot. And if I need to throw out a scene, whatever, that was maybe a half an hour of my time, you know, not a big deal. And I'm going to finish that screenplay this week. So the real test is going to be in July when I start writing it in narrative form, whether that's an easy transition, and I don't know yet. So it's kind of an experiment. I've never heard of anyone writing a book this way. I kind of made it up. I'm crossing my fingers. The the screenplay was easy to write, though. I did, like I mean, I'm not saying it's the best screenplay, and I'm sure a real screenplay writer would tell me lots of things that are wrong with it. But as far as getting what I needed to do as an exercise, it's kind of like a cross between a rough draft and an outline, essentially. It's a 100 ish pages. So I'm hoping that, you know, I take the scene and I turn it into prose and it it works beautifully. We'll see. I love that. What a great idea. And also it can be a movie. I mean, there you go. It's already done. There you go. There you go. I could have somebody who actually knows what they're doing writing a screenplay, fix it up. You at least have the bones of it, which is great. Awesome. Well, that's exciting. I love how your brain works, how you're thinking about things a little differently. And to your point on marketing, like, oh my gosh, book marketing is like, you know, you can't just have a book come out. It's like a whole it's a whole thing. A whole thing. Never ends. Whole thing. And you talk to these people who write like, you know, four books a year, I don't know how they do that. I don't know. You've got another book coming out soon. I do. I know. I have a couple of books coming out. I don't know how I'm gonna do it. I'm still trying to sell this book. I mean, I don't know. I have no idea. I'm like, in my head, I'm like, oh, well, I'm just gonna not make it as big a deal the next time. But already I'm like, oh, if I spend all weekend making this presentation, like, maybe if I sell it in this store, that will change everything. What if I do? And I'm like, I just you just can't stop thinking about it, right? Like at least me, I don't know. Like, can always do it better, you know? The truth is that selling books is hard. Yeah. I mean, it's not as easy as selling a lot of other things, I think. Even though they're not an expensive product, there's a time cost in someone buying your book too, right? It's not just the $20 your book costs, it's the, I'm also promising or setting myself up to spend six hours of my life Yep. With this book. And I think that's the hurdle, maybe more than the $20. Yeah. But also, $20 is a lot if you don't know if you're gonna like something. Right. True, true. True. You know, when I'm, like, scrolling on iTunes for a movie or something, I'm like, oh gosh. I can't rent this one? Forget it. You know? Yeah. I have to buy this movie? What if I don't like it? What a waste. Yeah. Yeah. And that brings in the point of, like, how important reviews are, which I didn't realize. I was a reader for really many, many years before I ever had a book published, and I didn't know that my spending five minutes writing a review for somebody was such a huge help to them. Yep. Especially if they're nice. So now I try really hard to write a review for books that I read. And it doesn't have to be some long, huge four paragraph thing, you know, a short paragraph, couple sentences. But it does make a difference because people who are scrolling through and don't never heard of an author, especially new authors, I've never heard of you. I don't know if I wanna invest $20, six hours of my life into what you're you're writing. So having people say, hey. Yeah. I did do that, and I don't regret it. You should too. It really helps. Very true. I know. I'm writing this memoir now, I'm like, it's getting long, and I'm like, oh gosh. I feel so bad asking people to spend all their time reading this. You know? Like, this is a lot of time. Wonder if I could sum this up for something. I don't know. Maybe I should put, like, cliff notes at the end of each chapter or something funny. I don't know. You know? If you don't feel like reading this chapter, here's what you missed. You can do like a choose your own adventure. Remember those books? 12. Oh my gosh. Okay. So advice, do you have any advice for aspiring authors? My biggest advice is to make friends with other authors. I think no matter what stage you are in your career, you can benefit immensely from those friendships. You know, if you're new, kinda learning the ropes and helping someone with your craft and doing critique groups or beta swaps or that kind of thing can really be helpful. But then as you move along, having someone introduce you to agents or publishers or other book influencers can open up lots of doors for you. So, I know And then the emotional support, you know, should not be overlooked. I don't think anyone who doesn't write books understands how hard emotionally this experience can be. So having people who have been there and done that and, you know, can say, Hey, yeah, that stinks. Now put your chin up and keep going, really helpful. Very true. Yes. It doesn't get easier being rejected. It doesn't matter how old you are or how much time you've invested. If someone doesn't like what you've done, it really stinks. Yeah. Fun. Yeah. And even constructive criticism, which is, you know, helpful and helps you grow and get better and and not to be overlooked, it can still also be a little bit of a, oh, yeah. I'm like, I should really show this draft to someone. I'm like, but maybe I won't. Maybe I'll be a little bit. Maybe I'll I won't be done. Anyway, well, so nice chatting with you and I'm so excited to come to your book club and thank you for all of your support of me along the way and delighted to chat with you and yeah, just so glad our paths have crossed. Yeah, thanks so much. It was great to finally get to interact one on one with you. You too. All right. Have a great day, Mary. You too. Bye bye. Bye bye.

[34:16]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram ZibbyOwens and momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com 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,

[34:36]Mary Helen Sheriff: and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.