Kristan Higgins, PACK UP THE MOON: A Novel
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[0:38]Kristen Higgins is the author of Pack Up the Moon.
[0:40]She's also the New York Times,
[0:42]and USAIDA bestselling author of more than 20 novels,
[0:45]which have been translated into more than two dozen languages,
[0:47]and have sold millions of copies worldwide.
[0:49]Her two most recent novels were each selected
[0:52]as People Magazine's Pick of the Week.
[0:53]Her books have received many awards and accolades,
[0:56]and she is the six-time nominee for the Kirkest Prize
[0:58]for Best Work Affiction.
[0:59]Kristen is also a co-host of the Crappy Friends podcast,
[1:02]which discusses the often complex dynamics
[1:05]of female friendships with her friend and fellow writer,
[1:07]Joss Day.
[1:08]Higgins lives in Connecticut with her family.
[1:11]Welcome, Kristen.
[1:12]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read books
[1:15]to discuss Pack Up the Moon and a million other things.
[1:18]What's so nice to be here?
[1:21]So nice to have you.
[1:22]Well, let's start with your most recent book.
[1:25]Can you please tell listeners
[1:26]what Pack Up the Moon is about?
[1:29]Pack Up the Moon is the story of how to be married,
[1:34]how to take care of your spouse,
[1:36]how to prepare for death.
[1:40]It's the story of Lauren and Josh Park,
[1:43]newlywed couple, they have everything going for them.
[1:46]Josh is this sort of super genius
[1:49]on the spectrum medical device engineer,
[1:53]and he lives this very closed-in life.
[1:56]He works for himself.
[1:57]He has like three people, but he loves in the world.
[2:00]And then he meets Lauren,
[2:02]who's the complete opposite.
[2:03]She's bubbly and outgoing and they fall in love
[2:06]and they get married and they're both just kind of blown away
[2:09]by how great life has been to them.
[2:11]And then about a year after their wedding,
[2:13]they discovered that she has a terminal disease,
[2:17]videopathic pulmonary fibrosis,
[2:20]12 syllables of doom, they call it.
[2:22]And it's kind of about what do you do with the rest of your time?
[2:27]How do you look after the person you love the best?
[2:31]And then how do you get through that time after they're gone?
[2:35]So in a way it's Joshua's story more than Laurence
[2:38]because Josh is living in the present.
[2:41]And what Lauren has done to kind of help him through this year
[2:45]because he is so relying on her for this new life
[2:50]that they had.
[2:51]She leaves him a letter for every month of his first year
[2:54]of adulthood and she gives him a job in each letter
[2:57]to kind of lure him out into the world
[3:00]and outside of his comfort zone
[3:02]and try to kind of help him step back into life.
[3:07]And it really was amazing in the book,
[3:09]the relief that he felt when he realized
[3:12]when her friend Amanda brought over the letters
[3:14]and he realized that even though she was gone,
[3:17]he would still be hearing her voice from beyond, right?
[3:19]And then he had something to do
[3:21]and that she wasn't complete.
[3:23]Like there would still be drifts and drabs of her
[3:25]throughout that he could cling to
[3:28]which is so important because even in the book
[3:31]you talked about how the grammar has to change, right?
[3:35]She isn't my wife, she was my wife
[3:37]and how you have to kind of adjust to that.
[3:39]And I feel like this idea of the letters,
[3:43]sort of almost soften the blow a little
[3:46]and made me personally be like,
[3:47]I totally need to do this.
[3:49]Like everybody should do this for the people that they love.
[3:51]Like what am I going to do this?
[3:52]I don't know, I'm not going to put it in my calendar.
[3:54]Like write letters, post-mortem, you know, whatever.
[3:58]Anyway, but it's so true of the comfort
[4:01]that that can provide.
[4:04]And in a way, you know, Lauren is torn about it
[4:06]because she, on the one hand she thinks
[4:08]he's definitely going to need me more than ever
[4:10]after I'm dead, you know?
[4:11]So it's this conundrum of how to look after him.
[4:14]And the other she thinks,
[4:15]and I just prolonging his grief by popping in
[4:18]every month.
[4:19]And of course, in Josh's mind,
[4:21]no, this is his lifeline.
[4:23]But yeah, I mean, I think about my own death all the time.
[4:27]Everybody has a hobby the other day.
[4:29]Oh, when my son was still home for the summer,
[4:31]he said, but he doing.
[4:32]And I said, I'm just updating my funeral instructions.
[4:35]He's like, as one does, you know?
[4:37]And that's a document that I've had since I was like 20, 23.
[4:42]Because, you know, I've lost,
[4:44]I've had some profound losses like every human.
[4:47]my dad died in a car accident.
[4:49]I had drunk driver and, you know,
[4:51]life changes in that instant.
[4:53]And then a few years later, I lost a baby.
[4:57]So I know that feeling of,
[5:01]I will never be happy again.
[5:02]Like I don't even remember what happiness is when you,
[5:06]you lose something, you've life changes so profoundly.
[5:09]And there's this question of like, you know,
[5:13]how am I going to get through all these days?
[5:15]You know, there's so many days to get through.
[5:18]And then I think at some point, you know,
[5:22]you make that choice of how are you going to be
[5:25]for the rest of your life?
[5:26]You know, are you going to be a constant open wound?
[5:30]And the answer is, you know, yeah, sometimes,
[5:33]absolutely, you can't, you don't get over people, you know?
[5:37]And you just learn to carry their memory and their loss
[5:41]more easily and with more strength, maybe.
[5:46]So this is what Lauren is trying to do for Josh.
[5:49]And Josh is a great person.
[5:50]You know, he's very loving.
[5:52]He's, you know, he's a little bit different
[5:55]because he has, you know, difficulty reading people
[5:58]and, you know, because he works alone
[6:01]and he has that little tiny circle.
[6:03]Lauren knows, you know, she's going to need to push him out of it
[6:06]and find more people for him.
[6:10]And so a lot of her tasks and these letters are
[6:14]just getting him out into the world.
[6:15]The first one is go grocery shopping.
[6:17]And he's so happy that she knows, like she says something,
[6:20]like if I'm correct, you know, you haven't showered in days,
[6:24]you have this stubbly little beard
[6:26]that an eighth grader would grow.
[6:28]Your vegetables are melting into one big vegetable, you know?
[6:32]So, and he's like, yes, you're right buddy, you know?
[6:35]He's like, she's here.
[6:37]And he's so elated to go out and do something for her
[6:40]to make her happy.
[6:42]And then the jobs kind of progress in import throughout the book.
[6:48]And we also learn a lot about Lauren
[6:50]because her stories told backwards.
[6:53]Share her like her last, the last time we hear from her
[6:56]is the first chapter of the book.
[6:58]She's about a week away from dying.
[7:00]And she knows things are changing.
[7:03]She can feel it getting closer.
[7:05]And IPF is a lung disease.
[7:07]So it can be very erratic, like you can have good days.
[7:10]And then you can have days when you need to be rushed to the hospital.
[7:13]But she tells her story from that day backwards.
[7:19]So that by the time her story is done,
[7:22]we learn how she's met Josh and the kind of impact
[7:26]that meeting him has had on her.
[7:28]So both their stories end on this note of hope for the future
[7:33]and excitement for the future.
[7:35]And that's kind of like, you know,
[7:37]gait into a new phase of life.
[7:40]Wow.
[7:41]Well, so many things.
[7:42]First of all, with the errand to the grocery store,
[7:46]I thought it was so moving how you had him forget his wallet
[7:51]and that the clerk let him, you know,
[7:54]realized that she, you know, Lauren had passed away
[7:56]and was like, no, no, don't even worry about it.
[7:58]And he was, it's like he hadn't even, you know,
[8:01]because in the midst of grief, you forget all the normal things, right?
[8:04]You can only do so much.
[8:05]And remembering a wallet sometimes seems like the hurdle, right?
[8:09]Like, yeah.
[8:11]So I just love that detail.
[8:12]In fact, the types of details that you have everywhere,
[8:16]which are so real, right?
[8:17]And so relatable and so just on point.
[8:20]And second to your, to all of your losses,
[8:23]which I had known about before,
[8:25]but still I'm just so sorry.
[8:27]I know it was a while ago.
[8:29]It doesn't matter.
[8:29]And I'm, you know, I'm just terribly sorry.
[8:32]To your point about the funeral, I too have a document.
[8:34]I also think about this all the time.
[8:37]I think about my death constantly.
[8:39]It's terrible.
[8:39]I, you know, but actually I ran into a girlfriend recently
[8:43]and I always think about it in terms of like the funeral
[8:46]and all of that and like the aftermath.
[8:49]But she worries about it in terms of like,
[8:52]who will find her and how?
[8:54]And I had not worried about that yet.
[8:57]But since our conversation,
[8:58]now I worry about that too.
[8:59]I know so much to think about so much to think about.
[9:04]Anyway, so I totally get that.
[9:06]And I get the, just once you've had lost you,
[9:09]you know, it's so present that you can't sort of get past it.
[9:12]But, you know, but in that it can improve your life too.
[9:15]So it's like all of these things.
[9:17]I mean, you don't want to reduce it too.
[9:19]I'm a better person for having loved and lost
[9:22]because it's so much more complicated than that.
[9:24]You know, you can't say.
[9:26]At one point, Lauren says, you know,
[9:28]I'm not gonna be an idiot and say that I'm glad
[9:31]that I have risk, well disease.
[9:35]But it is part of my life and I love my life.
[9:38]And, you know, it's always that sort of,
[9:41]you don't want to glamorize dying in a young person.
[9:45]I think, you know, it can go very modeling
[9:49]and sanctimonious very quickly.
[9:51]So I worked really hard to keep Lauren normal
[9:54]and to have her have her meltdowns.
[9:57]She's not a saint.
[9:58]She's not all annoying.
[9:59]But like.
[10:00]The author, she loses her dad at the young age
[10:02]and it kind of introduces her into this world of adulthood.
[10:07]Because I think that one of the biggest hurdles
[10:11]in becoming an adult when you're in your teens and twenties
[10:15]is for a lot of people, their first loss comes
[10:19]in early adulthood.
[10:21]And it's whether it's like a beloved grandparent
[10:23]or a parent or a classmate driving wildly
[10:28]or something like that.
[10:30]And it really shapes the adult that you become.
[10:33]It really doesn't, you know,
[10:36]and grief and loss is something that every human experience is.
[10:40]And grieving is love, you know?
[10:42]It's like the purest form of love in a way
[10:45]because you knew how lucky you were.
[10:48]And, you know, friend of mine just lost her dad
[10:50]and I just like I miss him so much
[10:53]and I said he deserves that, you know?
[10:55]That's a sign of your love.
[10:57]That's because he was a great dad.
[10:59]And, you know, you don't need to shy away from it
[11:01]or be up, like so many of us Americans try to do.
[11:05]How old were you when you lost your dad?
[11:08]I was 23.
[11:09]Aw.
[11:10]How old were you?
[11:11]Can I just read from your,
[11:13]you wrote this beautiful essay for mom's,
[11:15]don't have time to write called Preparing for Widowhood
[11:19]where the happiest couple I know
[11:20]despite the fact that I've written his eulogy four times.
[11:23]You wrote it in April and it's so beautiful.
[11:25]We'll include the link in this, you know,
[11:28]this show description for this.
[11:30]But can I just read like the couple opening paragraphs
[11:32]because it's so good?
[11:33]You wrote, my father died three years before my wedding
[11:36]killed by a drunk driver while stopped at a red light.
[11:39]It was a random, preventable, horrible death.
[11:41]Until then, my life had been just fine.
[11:44]But suddenly dad was gone and everything changed.
[11:46]My mom fell apart.
[11:47]I became the de facto head of the family,
[11:49]the older daughter, the one who lived nearby.
[11:51]My sister was still in college, utterly heartbroken
[11:54]and my brother distanced himself in the rest of us,
[11:56]cloaking himself in his life out of state
[11:58]and his then fiance's family.
[12:00]I handled everything from my father's business
[12:02]to the court case against the drunk driver
[12:04]to taking care of my mom.
[12:05]I became a true adult while my mom became a ghost.
[12:09]So wrecked by grief, she was lost in it.
[12:11]I felt like I was lost.
[12:13]I felt like I lost both parents the day my father died
[12:17]and then I got married.
[12:19]Oh my gosh, it's so good.
[12:21]Then you said we were young and happy and healthy
[12:23]and I immediately started preparing for young widowhood.
[12:26]Weird?
[12:27]Sure.
[12:28]Oh, so moving.
[12:31]That's my, that's my paradigm.
[12:32]Sadly, you know, is looking at my mom who was 47
[12:36]when my dad died, you know?
[12:38]And you know, my husband's a fire fighter,
[12:41]so that doesn't help.
[12:44]And you know, if he's late for work,
[12:46]I turn on the news and start looking for the, you know,
[12:49]the fire where he might be or, you know,
[12:51]the horrible wreck.
[12:52]He learned long ago not to come home late
[12:56]without telling me because the first time he did,
[12:59]I was just certain.
[13:00]I was certain like there is no reason we had
[13:02]the young children at the time.
[13:03]There's no reason he wouldn't call to say,
[13:06]I'm stuck on a call or something like that.
[13:08]And by the time he got home, I was so tightly wound
[13:12]and he said, what are you doing?
[13:14]And I said, I'm riding your eulogy
[13:16]and I just burst out crying.
[13:19]You slept so sorry.
[13:22]But yeah, you know, I think that grief is such a beautiful
[13:27]emotion because it is such a representation of love,
[13:31]but also like as a writer, it's so complex.
[13:35]And it's so layered, you know, there's all those anger denial,
[13:38]you know, bargaining pieces of it.
[13:40]But also it doesn't, it's not like, okay,
[13:43]it's been six months, I should be feeling better now.
[13:46]It's not a straight line.
[13:47]And it'll turn around and smack you
[13:50]when you least expect it, sometimes decades later, you know.
[13:54]And yet again, it's something that we all have to deal with.
[13:58]We all carry in.
[13:59]So I wanted to rate this book.
[14:01]I was on the beach here on Cape Cod in February,
[14:04]a couple of years ago.
[14:06]And it was bitter, bitter cold and the wind was her,
[14:09]you know, howling and I was running like a parka
[14:11]and sweat shirts and I was freezing cold,
[14:14]like six degrees out.
[14:16]And my dog and I were there.
[14:17]And we see this guy standing at the edge of the water
[14:21]is like a windbreaker because, you know, we're yankies, right?
[14:24]We don't like to admit there's weather.
[14:26]And you didn't have a hat on.
[14:28]I was like, you know, that little kid in Christmas story,
[14:31]you know, it was so, and there was this guy, you know,
[14:34]just staring out at the ocean and not moving
[14:37]and not affected by the weather and the wind.
[14:40]And I thought to myself, he looks like the loneliest man
[14:43]in the world.
[14:45]And I want to write his story and I want to save him, you know.
[14:49]So I decided to write about a young widow or who has to.
[14:54]I've done this before I've written widows and widowers,
[14:56]you know, I've written this my 21st book,
[14:58]but I've never walked a person through that immediate time
[15:03]and also with the knowledge that your spouse would die,
[15:06]you know, facing that.
[15:09]And one of the reasons I did that was because I liked
[15:12]to write about difficult subjects, you know,
[15:14]things that we tend to look away from sometimes,
[15:18]whether it's one of my books dealt with body image and weight
[15:22]and women and how hard it is for us to come to like accept ourselves
[15:27]when we're in a society that, you know,
[15:29]worships bodily perfection and also food, right?
[15:34]I wrote a book about which book was that, it's just good to put that.
[15:39]It was an ordering that now.
[15:42]It features the three women who met at weight loss campus,
[15:45]teenagers and their different journeys,
[15:48]one of them dies of complications related to obesity
[15:51]in the early chapters.
[15:53]And then with this book, you know,
[15:55]when you see a young person with a terminal disease,
[15:58]what do you say?
[16:00]You know, and people say a lot of dumb things,
[16:02]which was really fun to write about, you know,
[16:05]like, oh my God, my uncle had that and it was horrible.
[16:07]And you know, he died, he didn't look human at the end, you know?
[16:11]Or like, you know, heaven will have another angel.
[16:14]And we don't like to just be with this very difficult, sad situation.
[16:21]And, you know, as someone who has planned her own death
[16:24]many, many times, I think if I did have a terminal disease,
[16:28]you know, how would I want to be,
[16:30]what would I want to leave for my family,
[16:34]what kind of memories, you know,
[16:35]how could I work that best?
[16:37]And Lauren gets to do that, you know?
[16:40]She knows, she doesn't know when she'll die,
[16:43]but she knows it's not going to be, you know,
[16:45]she's not going to be too old.
[16:47]And, you know, there's like a purity of having to come face
[16:51]to face with that, like you're all stripped away
[16:53]and you have to look at, okay, so I have a few years, you know?
[16:58]What am I going to do?
[16:59]And it's hard, you know, sometimes heartbreaking,
[17:01]but she teaches us the author included, like,
[17:06]how to get through it, how to do it,
[17:08]how to do it well with your loved ones first in your mind.
[17:13]And I, you know, I always say like,
[17:14]my books make you laugh, they make you cry,
[17:16]they make you laugh again.
[17:17]This one's like makes you laugh, makes you cry,
[17:19]makes you cry harder than makes you laugh again.
[17:24]Yeah, let's go back to the 21 books.
[17:26]I mean, you are the only author, by the way,
[17:29]who has a downloadable PDF link of all your book titles
[17:33]because there are so many, which as someone learning
[17:36]about you, that was very helpful.
[17:38]But that's, I mean, it's amazing to even keep track
[17:40]of so many books.
[17:42]How did you start writing novels?
[17:44]Like, when did you know this is what you were sort of meant to do?
[17:48]I didn't know.
[17:49]I never thought about being a writer.
[17:52]I certainly never thought about being a writer for a living,
[17:55]you know, as a career because it's not the kind of career
[17:58]you can say like, I think it'll be a novelist, you know?
[18:01]I mean, you can be a hobby novelist.
[18:03]You can plan for that, but to have a be your day job.
[18:07]So my kids were little.
[18:10]I was a stay at home mom.
[18:11]My husband was working with the two jobs
[18:13]that most firefighters work.
[18:15]And my son was in nursery school
[18:19]and I kind of did the math and thought,
[18:20]okay, I have like three more years before he,
[18:23]the younger child will be in full day school.
[18:26]And once he starts full day school,
[18:27]I'm going to have to contribute somehow
[18:30]to the family finances.
[18:32]And I, again, I wanted to stay home.
[18:34]So I was like, well, what, you know, what could I do?
[18:36]I have very few life skills.
[18:38]I couldn't clean it out, which I did.
[18:40]I thought like, well, I'm a fast typist,
[18:42]but I also thought, well, else, I read a lot, right?
[18:45]So I could write a book.
[18:47]How hard could it be, right, Sivi?
[18:49]He's a cake.
[18:51]I mean, fine.
[18:53]So I thought, I've read thousands of books.
[18:56]I've always loved romantic comedy.
[18:59]And so I'll write that because everybody likes that, right?
[19:03]So I wanted to write about regular people,
[19:06]not like, you know, super billionaires
[19:09]or famous people.
[19:11]That's not in my wheelhouse.
[19:13]And so I wrote a romantic comedy about, you know,
[19:17]people who could be like your friend or your sister,
[19:20]you know, the guy, you know, from high school.
[19:22]And I gave myself like three years to get it published.
[19:25]And then I did, I did get a contract.
[19:27]And then I got another contract.
[19:29]And, you know, another another.
[19:31]And at some point, I looked back and said like, wow,
[19:34]I've been writing for 15 years.
[19:37]I've been published now for 15 years
[19:39]and writing for like 18,
[19:42]which is a generation, you know,
[19:45]it's kind of crazy.
[19:47]My daughter remembers the time before I was a writer.
[19:50]My son does not, you know, he was,
[19:53]there.
[19:54]Yeah, it worked out shockingly well.
[19:58]I think that.
[20:00]There's there's a couple things about being an author. Your success is not up to you. You could write the best book in the world.
[20:07]And it could flop. You could write the best book in the world and sell 100 copies. There's a lot of luck in publishing. And there's something called right book right time.
[20:19]And at the time I had the right book at the right time, it was a word of mouth hit. And my publisher kept offering me contracts. I think my.
[20:28]My third book was my first best seller. And I remember, you know, my, my editor telling me that I'm like, there must be a mistake.
[20:39]I think they counted wrong, you know, so you can never really expect success. And of course, you're, you know, your popularity can wane and rise. But I've been really lucky. And here's a secret. I hate writing books for a living, you know, 80% of the time it's misery and self doubt.
[20:59]And you think like I can't believe I have 300 pages to go before this thing is even like pretending to be a first draft that 20% of the time. I love so much.
[21:11]You know, when your book finally takes shape and the characters are three dimensional and they know what they're doing and thinking and how to take on their problems and what to say.
[21:21]It's so rewarding, but it takes a while for me to get there.
[21:25]Wow. Well, you know, you started this conversation with this horrible, you know, how do I get through all the days feeling which is just, you know, relatable sadly to so many and look at the way you've gotten through the days.
[21:41]I mean, by helping so many other people get through their days. It's really amazing. And the way you write about grief and friendship and, you know, your podcast and, you know, how you're helping friendships with crappy friends and everything. I mean, it's, it's really amazing. So I just think it's awesome.
[21:57]So what are you, what is your next book and then what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[22:03]Okay, so my next book is called out of the clear blue sky. I think it will be another summer release.
[22:09]And it's here on beautiful Cape Cod and it's about a woman who learns the night before her own child's high school graduation that her husband is going to leave her at the end of the summer when her kid goes to Montana 2000 miles away to go to college.
[22:27]And so, like in the space of a night, her whole future kind of crumbles.
[22:32]And she goes a little crazy. She becomes kind of obsessed with her husband and his new wife, which is fun, not in a healthy, benign way, but in a way like how can I mess up their lives without breaking the law.
[22:47]And it's kind of a book about, you know, that, that midlife crisis that women have when their babies go to college and, and you think like gosh, for 18 years or 25 years or however long it is, I know you have four kids, I see.
[23:03]You know, by the time the last time goes to school, you will have been mothering for so long.
[23:09]And you think like, well, what am I now, you know, if I don't have to pick up a kid or go to a track meet or piano lessons or something like that.
[23:18]What do I, how do I fill my time and then when Lily's husband leaves her, she's, you know, doubly reeling.
[23:25]So that's a much funnier lighter book than pack up the moon, which was, you know, a very emotional book.
[23:32]And then my advice for, for new writers is, is twofold it's, it's believe in yourself, because every writer was unpublished once that is the universal truth of writers.
[23:44]So whether it was Stephen King who almost became like head janitor instead of author or Nora Roberts or, you know, Jasmine Gillery, you know, all these, all these wonderful authors.
[23:57]They were unpublished once and they got rejected numerous times I'm sure. So you have to believe in yourself and you have to develop a thick skin because the industry is very tough.
[24:08]And you also have to get over yourself because you are not this diamond dropped into the world, you know, meant to change the industry and be heralded.
[24:20]You know, your readers will decide if that's true, not you.
[24:25]So you need to work really, really hard, compare yourself to the best authors in your genre study them learn from them and keep trying to be better.
[24:37]You know, I think that that's one of the reasons that that I've been successful is because I am so hard on my own books that whole 80% of hating them gets me to that 20% of, I think I know what I'm doing here.
[24:49]The book is really clicking along.
[24:52]Wow, I love that. I actually, now I've been trying to remember what you said about all those years of not being of being a mom and then right there finally out of the house.
[25:02]There was another book I read recently where there were a bunch of women in old, like in a nursing home.
[25:09]And whenever four o'clock or 330 would come around, there would be the sense of, you know, we should be somewhere for a pickup and everything.
[25:17]And it just like didn't go away ever.
[25:20]So I don't know if that sort of made me think of that.
[25:22]Anyway, well, Kristin, I'm so glad to have met you.
[25:26]You know, as you've been talking, you know, when you said you don't want to romanticize grief or what it does to you, it's like, I don't want to do that either.
[25:35]But I feel like when you've gone through loss and can talk about it and relate to people, it's almost like, you know, you can still see like without loss, you still have like the beautiful trees, right?
[25:46]With the loss, you get to see down into like the root structure further and further in.
[25:51]So it's just like the tree still stays the same, but you have a new appreciation for all of it and a deeper understanding of it.
[25:59]So I don't know.
[26:00]Beautifully said.
[26:01]That's what I came up with.
[26:02]Okay.
[26:03]Anyway.
[26:04]Thank you so much for coming on mom's no time to read bugs.
[26:07]Thank you for pack up the moon.
[26:08]Thank you for writing for mom's no time to write.
[26:10]And I hope we can stay in touch and meet in person sometime.
[26:14]We do.
[26:15]Thank you so much, Debbie.
[26:16]All right.
[26:17]Have a great day.
[26:18]Bye bye.
[26:19]You too.
[26:20]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have time to read books.
[26:23]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books.
[26:28]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.
[26:35]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[26:37]Heck, texture sound for the sound editing.
[26:39]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outroom music.