Tabitha Forney, PAPER AIRPLANES: A Novel
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[0:37]Hi, hi, hello.
[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:47]Here's a little snippet by one of the authors from the anthology.
[0:50]My name is Jean Quack, and I'm thrilled to have contributed to Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:57]My essay is called, whatever you write in this will belong to you.
[1:03]And what I really don't have time for is reading the news with surprisingly disastrous consequences.
[1:12]Tabitha Fournay is the author of Paper Airplanes, a novel.
[1:15]Tabitha writes books to appease the voices in her head.
[1:19]She's a mom, attorney, and yoga, Devote, who lives in Houston with her three kids.
[1:23]And a husband, who was on the 85th floor of the North Tower on 9.11 and live to tell about it.
[1:28]I am sorry.
[1:31]I'm as my original platform.
[1:33]So that's okay.
[1:35]I don't know why I do these Instagram lives.
[1:37]I don't know.
[1:38]They are always some pickups getting started.
[1:40]But anyway, now we're here.
[1:42]How are you?
[1:43]I'm doing great.
[1:44]Thank you.
[1:45]Well, I'm very excited to talk to you today about paper airplanes and Aaron and Daniel and their families and this whole journey.
[1:52]And I'm sorry we had to reschedule from 9.11, but thank you for understanding.
[1:56]I totally understand.
[1:57]Absolutely.
[1:58]It was a rough day.
[1:59]It was a very rough day.
[2:00]But I get it.
[2:01]Right.
[2:02]I feel like this 20th anniversary.
[2:03]I don't know.
[2:04]I've talked to a lot of people.
[2:05]And it wasn't the only one hit hard.
[2:06]Chance start if I hit hard by something.
[2:08]Other people are too.
[2:09]So turn that.
[2:10]That's true.
[2:11]Yes.
[2:12]Okay.
[2:13]Well, let's talk about paper airplanes.
[2:14]I can summarize or maybe you should summarize what it's about.
[2:16]But why don't you go ahead and tell people what it's about.
[2:18]And then I'll ask you questions about it.
[2:20]Yeah, so paper airplane, my debut novel and it's a woman who loses her husband on 9.11.
[2:25]He is in the North Tower on the 101st floor.
[2:29]And it really just chronicles.
[2:31]There's a little bit.
[2:32]There's one prologue from his perspective, but really it's mostly an Aaron's voice.
[2:36]His wife just chronicles her journey to to recovery to overcome the guilt and all the grief and just learn how to live again.
[2:46]And we really do go on Aaron's journey.
[2:48]I mean, you take us all the way through from.
[2:52]You know, well, first of all, this is a complicated grief as often grief is because she feels so much guilt.
[2:58]Right.
[2:59]Aaron was sitting on a beach.
[3:00]She had gone off on this girl's trip when she should have perhaps stayed to go to her mother-in-law's birthday party, but her best-rounded broken up.
[3:08]And so she decided she just has to go and be a good friend versus, you know, being one of many at the mother-in-law's party.
[3:14]And so she finds out while she's sitting on the beach.
[3:17]And was it Marbeha?
[3:19]Where were they?
[3:20]My arca.
[3:21]My arca. Oh my god.
[3:22]I cannot.
[3:23]My husband cows.
[3:24]And here he knows I cannot get these two places straight in my brain.
[3:26]I have some sort of like mixed wires.
[3:28]In fact, we even booked a trip to one and tending to go to the other.
[3:31]But that's okay.
[3:32]Anyway.
[3:33]So she was on the beach and felt horribly guilty because felt like if she had been home,
[3:38]maybe he would have left to go to the World Trade Center a little bit later.
[3:41]And so she lives with this grief for so long.
[3:44]So in addition to the unsettled feelings of not getting closure with the loss as so many of us had on 9-11,
[3:51]it's also, you know, her responsibility.
[3:54]And then of course later you find out the friend also feels responsible for even asking her to come on the trip.
[3:58]So it's like everybody is feeling, you know, a part of this situation.
[4:02]And by the way, what ends up happening to tie this all together at the end.
[4:06]Oh my gosh.
[4:07]I just like brought to you.
[4:08]So my eyes.
[4:09]Anyway.
[4:10]Yes.
[4:11]People are asking better questions than me.
[4:12]What about you to write this story?
[4:13]Yeah.
[4:14]Tell us about your husband's journey that day.
[4:16]I want to hear more about it.
[4:17]You referenced it in the book, but not that much.
[4:19]Yes.
[4:20]So he was on the 85th floor of the North Tower.
[4:23]And his experience was obviously very different from Daniels.
[4:26]And I was really a little bit obsessed by how random it was that day.
[4:32]Like where you were so much.
[4:34]he was on the 85th floor.
[4:36]And I feel like anybody 92 and above had obviously, I think that was the bright line and survival and not surviving.
[4:44]And so he just, you know, he and his colleagues.
[4:48]He was actually about to go down the elevators.
[4:53]The West Side Highway to the world center.
[4:56]Start his day trading.
[4:58]And so he only spent like an hour.
[5:02]The office every morning kind of getting ready.
[5:04]And so I actually didn't know where he was on the 80th floor.
[5:07]If he was the elevators, if he'd gotten out yet.
[5:09]You know, before I talked to him there on the 80th floor.
[5:12]His boss actually saw the plane heading for their building.
[5:17]So that part in Daniel's story is authentic because their office is based north.
[5:24]And he thought it was a plane that had taken off from the board.
[5:27]And he was flying too low.
[5:28]And as he kept watching and kept watching, he realized that it wasn't going to crank up.
[5:33]And he was on the phone with his wife.
[5:35]This is my husband's boss.
[5:36]And through the phone down and jumped into like the middle offices.
[5:41]Like, you know, just as in paint.
[5:43]Not that that was going to do anything.
[5:44]If a plane is headed right.
[5:46]But that was his experience.
[5:47]He was so close to seeing the plane that he actually saw the pilot's.
[5:51]And we all know now that that was Muhammad.
[5:54]So his boss knew what had happened.
[5:57]Told them all that it was a plane.
[5:59]And so within five minutes, they were heading down the stairwell.
[6:02]And so he just went down 85 like theirs.
[6:06]It was very quick at first.
[6:08]It will begin to flood the stairwells.
[6:10]It got more congested.
[6:12]But his story is that people were very polite.
[6:15]And people were very quarterly.
[6:17]There was no pushing or shove it or yelling.
[6:20]It was very mild.
[6:23]And for the most part, just New Yorkers just orderly descended.
[6:26]And it took a long time.
[6:27]It took him like almost an hour to get out.
[6:29]And then he was down.
[6:30]They were directing people down through the tunnels.
[6:33]Like where the subways were.
[6:34]Where that shopping mall was.
[6:36]So they were directing people down and out that way.
[6:38]So that when they came out onto the street,
[6:40]they were several blocks of the world trades.
[6:42]And he was down in those tunnels when world trades are two.
[6:46]stuff.
[6:47]So he was very close if you've ever seen a new age world trade
[6:51]center.
[6:52]He was like 40 yards from where the 40 officers had gotten trapped.
[6:57]And he had just turned a corner.
[6:59]Well, he was walking down with.
[7:01]And that was like the second time he said he thought he would die that day.
[7:04]First from the plane hit.
[7:06]And the building swayed back and forth.
[7:08]And then second when he was down there in the tunnels.
[7:10]And that blast just came from World Trade Center too.
[7:13]And just blasted through the tunnels.
[7:14]And I feel like if he hadn't turned that corner.
[7:17]Just a few seconds before.
[7:19]Might have been a very different story for him.
[7:21]Oh my gosh.
[7:22]So does he feel like survivors guilt and having made it out?
[7:26]Like how does he feel about the whole thing?
[7:28]Let's get him on here.
[7:29]He did for a long time.
[7:31]I think when people would tell him, you know, God has plans for you.
[7:37]He would think.
[7:38]So God didn't have plans for all the people who were above me.
[7:41]You know, like how that doesn't really answer.
[7:44]I know people mean well, but it doesn't really answer anything to.
[7:47]To say that God had plans for him.
[7:49]So I think he had to have guilt for a long time.
[7:51]But he talks about his experience a lot and that helps him to process it.
[7:54]And he's also just a very like steady personality.
[7:57]So he has managed it better than some colleagues.
[8:00]I know for sure.
[8:01]So.
[8:02]And so how did you as a spouse experience that?
[8:05]Like what did you how much did you know at the time?
[8:08]Like did he did you talk to him at all as he was escaping?
[8:11]Would you have known had anything happened?
[8:13]Like how do you like put your life back?
[8:15]And then how did it culminate in this book?
[8:18]So I actually have there's similarities to Aaron because I was,
[8:22]I had taken the red.
[8:23]I flight to London on September 10th.
[8:26]So I was there for business.
[8:28]I had two friends who were going to come join me on that Thursday.
[8:31]And we were just going to have a fun weekend in London.
[8:34]Obviously that was the last one.
[8:35]And we were just going to have a fun weekend in London.
[8:37]Obviously that did not happen.
[8:39]So I had just arrived.
[8:40]I got there like seven a.m. London time.
[8:42]And I talked to him on the phone while he was getting ready for work.
[8:45]It was like seven a.m. seven thirties like that.
[8:48]And then I went to lunch with my colleague over there.
[8:51]And we came back to our we had a one person office.
[8:55]Like very Jason London and the financial district.
[8:58]And we were just working with my colleague.
[9:01]His name was Ian.
[9:02]He got an email.
[9:04]And he kind of like sat back in his chair like this.
[9:07]And he kind of had this like smile face.
[9:09]Like kind of an incredulous smile.
[9:10]Like you're not really quite sure what I should have yet.
[9:13]So you just kind of like he just leaned back and he said,
[9:16]a plane just hit the World Trade Center.
[9:18]And I looked at him and I said,
[9:20]my husband works in that building.
[9:22]And he like he just like is face just dropped and like his eyes went wide.
[9:26]What are you talking about?
[9:28]And so then of course we tied a good on the internet
[9:30]and like nothing you couldn't get on any internet pages.
[9:33]It was not probably not as redundant as it is now.
[9:36]So we tried getting all these different ways.
[9:39]We were just getting information from our colleague in our office
[9:42]who was giving us little bits and pieces of what was going on.
[9:45]And finally he got an email from one of our colleagues that said,
[9:49]WTC to just collapsed.
[9:53]And we were like,
[9:55]what are you talking about that cannot happen?
[9:58]That cannot be true.
[10:00]We were not getting good information and I finally, I was just like, I can't do this anymore, I can't do this anymore. I've got to find a TV.
[10:06]And so he led me down to the street, we went on a pub and walked into a pub at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon in London and everybody was smoking and drinking and I just remember the smoke.
[10:16]Like just made me feel so nauseated and we sat there for a while watching the news and everybody was watching the news and we watched as his building filled out.
[10:30]So in that sense, my story and errands are very similar, obviously very different because she's a fictional character but and she had a lot of guilt issues that I didn't have.
[10:39]I wasn't in a spat with my husband but I thought what if we had been so a lot of her story comes out of my what if this what if that what if I had been there.
[10:48]I've left later or earlier, what have you been what he had been in the elevator so there's just so many little what ifs because every little thing you did that morning made a difference.
[10:57]And yeah, and then from for me, what if I had never heard from him, I did answer your question, I did hear from him.
[11:05]After we watched the building fall down and like time seemed to stop for me, like I don't even really remember how we got back to my hotel, but my colleague Ian, I was like I can't stay here any longer.
[11:17]And she pulled me out of the pub and we somehow found my hotel and I somehow mustered up the courage to walk up to the front desk and say hello, I'm in room 613 or whatever, do I have any messages and she said in her very lovely British accent, she said.
[11:33]Yes, she's just called, she says your husband is fine, and of course, she had no idea what she was talking about, and I just like broke down in the lobby and Ian like grabbed the piece of paper was like thank you very much and then from there it was just like the
[11:46]a lot of people calling me, calling people and me trying to get a hold of Billy my husband and we finally talked later it was nine o'clock at night in London, it was like four o'clock in the afternoon in New York after he had walked all the way back up to we lived on the Upper West side, 94th in Broadway.
[12:03]And he had walked all the way home and even gone and got and checked out at Columbia Hospital, Columbia University Hospital.
[12:09]And finally we were able to connect because you know the cell phones didn't work because the tower was on World Trade Center one.
[12:17]And we were able to connect with his friend in San Francisco finally got through to him and he said, Jay the first thing I want you to do is call my wife right now.
[12:28]So this friend in San Francisco passed this in freeway conversation San Francisco to New York to London actually I was in the middle of the English countryside by then because my colleague wanted to go to his parents house in some
[12:41]Gloucester or Winchester or something like that.
[12:44]And so we were like driving through these country roads in England at night and I was talking to my husband it was very bizarre and surreal, but that's the first time I was able to talk to him.
[12:55]Oh my gosh what a story I just can't believe it.
[13:00]So anyway, it's unbelievable. How did you then when did you decide you wanted to try to fictionalize this and did you try to write about it from like a memoir type perspective over the years and why now is this
[13:14]why is it coming out now?
[13:16]I went to the 9-11 memorial in museum in September of 2015.
[13:22]I was up there my husband had a business trip and I talked along with him and the morning I was leaving that afternoon and that morning we went to the museum and it just opened.
[13:32]We had been to the memorial before but not the museum and it was just so impactful and it brought it all back.
[13:38]I mean right after the event it was very difficult to process the event right like what happened and so we went on with our lives as you do and mourn the law who were lost and you know we started having kids and we moved back to Houston and we just you know got busy with our lives in our careers and but then when I went back to that museum and just it all kind of came back and all the artifacts and the audio from from I remember sitting in that pub.
[14:07]During the newscasters saying nothing and I wanted nothing more than information.
[14:12]I wanted to know what floor was hit. I wanted to know how many people were in the building. I wanted to know if they were evacuating people.
[14:17]I wanted to know everything and nobody knew anything.
[14:20]And I just remember how frustrating that was and it all came back when I was listening to the to the news like the morning anchors which they play that audio in the museum.
[14:30]And really what was most impactful was walking kind of towards the back of the museum and walking around like a corner. There was an alcove back there with the warning signs to those who entered that the images could be disturbing and it was you know images of the people who fell to their deaths.
[14:47]It just struck me is so so sad that those people are not only did they die in such a horrific way, but they are sometimes just not acknowledged. I think they're largely unknown their identities.
[15:01]And a lot of I've read a lot of stories about you know the families of people who potentially were the people who fell don't want to acknowledge that they're loved one might have died that way because of.
[15:13]Religious beliefs about suicide being a sin, which I think is so sad because obviously they didn't go to work that day intending to jump out of 110 story building.
[15:23]And there was nothing that they chose about it. So I just I just felt strongly like I had like I as a writer I just wanted to shed a little light on their stories.
[15:34]So I went straight to the airport with your security sat down at my gate and started typing out Daniel story.
[15:41]And how did you recreate the first part because I've also wondered so much about what that what those moments were like and how did you piece that all together and like the floor heating up and sitting on the desk and the stairwell like was that just from people who had been there or how did you how did you do that.
[16:01]Very good question. A lot of it I had my husband that in terms of the layout of the floors because he he worked in that building that same building. And so I had him bet like is this realistic what kinds of things did you see up here.
[16:16]What could you see and after that it was just a lot of research because obviously there's no eyewitness accounts.
[16:25]There are a few from the floors underneath so that's where I got you know that things were really hot at the state of the stairwell being covered like a screefield of debris.
[16:35]That was all just from research I did and I mean it took forever it was I did painstaking research because I did not want to get it wrong.
[16:42]I did it to be as authentic as possible and yeah it took probably years to write that prologue I mean I probably edited it for years and it was it's the most heavily researched and edited chapter in the book for sure.
[16:57]Well definitely you know it's so gripping from that moment and I mean it's just so emotional and intense and anyway how do you feel having written it how do you feel now that it's out in the world.
[17:11]It feels good I feel like a lot of people ask me about 9-11 and I'm certainly not an authority on 9-11 or or overcoming grief.
[17:18]I was really hesitant to put it out there for a long time just as you are being a writer and putting all your thoughts out to the world and there's just a point at which you just decide.
[17:31]I know my purpose in writing this was to honor the victims and I think it's good and I just have to be brave and take that step and put it out there.
[17:42]And it's really scary I can't tell you how many times I wanted to pull it back like I can't do this I can't do this this is so scary and it was actually then you get to a point of no return and you're like it's okay I can do this I can be brave
[17:58]and put it out there and you get to that point and there's no turning back so.
[18:03]But I do feel good I feel I do feel like I did my best and you know I had an agent tell me that it needed to be a bigger and needed to be a bigger story and so I spent a year rewriting it for her to make it bigger and then we ended up parting ways and I took it back to air and story because bigger isn't always better.
[18:23]As anybody who's watched the Lorax knows but I just wanted to honor their stories and I really want to and I spent so much time on that Daniel chapter that I felt like.
[18:33]I just wanted the world to get a peek as to what it was like to be there on that day and what it was like to be impacted by that day.
[18:41]So that was my goal for writing it because I knew from my husband's experience that there's so much interest in his experience and what it was like to be there and so.
[18:50]Well, I don't know if you're seeing all these comments coming in on this Instagram live but so many people are lotting your braveness and bravery and how much they want to read it now and.
[18:59]You know how much you're honoring all the people who are affected by this by telling your own story and there's as well other questions included why is it called paper airplanes which I know having read it do you want to address that.
[19:10]Sure, there are there's like kind of a few meanings first of all paper airplanes is how Daniel and Aaron met and I don't remember how that came to me.
[19:21]I think that was just one of those like moments where you're sitting down in the zone and that comes out and I love love the chapter that's actually chapter one where they met.
[19:30]And he Daniel set a paper airplane flying towards her and let it on fire because it was his burning desire he was he was into paper airplanes he was a paper airplane craftsman I guess is so I don't know what the word is.
[19:46]But that's how they met and then that's also how they got engaged is he sent a paper airplane flying towards her when she was sitting at a park bench in New York and then also the paper has another layer of meaning.
[20:00]in that when the towers were hit,
[20:03]it's like a plane went in.
[20:05]Obviously, the airplane is symbolic of the plane,
[20:08]but the plane kind of went in
[20:10]and what came out was like paper, paper
[20:13]and smoke and fire, obviously.
[20:15]But I just remember the images of the paper
[20:17]like floating down to the ground.
[20:20]And like, I had this thought like,
[20:22]isn't it sad that people can't float down like that
[20:25]because a lot of that paper was intact, you know?
[20:27]And survived.
[20:28]And so, yeah, it's kind of got a triple meaning there.
[20:31]Oh, my gosh.
[20:34]So someone's wondering if that's how you got engaged?
[20:37]No, it is not.
[20:40]So, and hi to you, Chechi, from Africa is here too.
[20:44]So we have people from all over the world
[20:45]tuning into your story in the global nature
[20:47]of this tragedy, really.
[20:49]So now that you've written this
[20:51]and sort of spent all these years in time
[20:54]getting this story, having us lived or Aaron,
[20:58]all of the stuff she goes through
[21:00]with her coping mechanisms, you know,
[21:03]her eating issues and drugs and alcohol,
[21:05]and like how she gets by and regroups
[21:08]and ultimately it's through helping others
[21:10]that she defines her meaning again in the world
[21:13]in the way that he wanted her to do.
[21:15]But, you know, as so many of us, right,
[21:17]you have to latch on to something
[21:18]that gives you meaning and purpose.
[21:20]And anyway, I don't think that's giving anything away too much,
[21:23]but, you know, hopefully.
[21:26]Anyway, are you writing more books now?
[21:28]Is this it? Are you one and done?
[21:29]Or do you have plans for more books?
[21:32]And also like, what advice would you have
[21:34]for aspiring authors?
[21:36]Definitely not one and done.
[21:38]I'm definitely a writer first.
[21:39]And, you know, impacted by 9.11 second.
[21:42]I think I wrote it because I am a writer.
[21:44]And so I've actually got another book that's finished,
[21:47]going back to that story, I had with the agent
[21:49]where I took out half the story
[21:51]and tried to make Aaron's story bigger.
[21:53]And I brought in a character named Rosie
[21:55]who's a 9.11 dispatcher.
[21:57]And I just adored Rosie
[21:59]and had all these chapters dedicated to her.
[22:01]And I braided their narratives,
[22:03]kind of retrofit Aaron's story with hers.
[22:05]And then when I had the revelation
[22:07]that I needed to take it all apart
[22:08]and take it back to Aaron's story,
[22:10]I had all these wonderful chapters of Rosie's life.
[22:13]And I really wanted to explore that
[22:15]because she had a very complicated relationship
[22:16]with her mother who died when she was 10.
[22:19]And so I actually went off and wrote that first
[22:22]and finished that story called The Seven Best Ways to Die.
[22:26]And so that is Rosie.
[22:28]And she still is in paper airplane.
[22:31]She is the 9.11 dispatcher who takes Daniel's loss call.
[22:34]And then she is, she's the fire driver
[22:37]that Aaron sees when she's down at Ground Zero
[22:40]looking for Daniel.
[22:41]So that's my next book.
[22:42]And then I've got another one.
[22:44]I've got two more in the works.
[22:46]One is half finished.
[22:47]And so yeah, I'm gonna keep writing.
[22:48]And advice for a writer is just don't stop.
[22:52]And don't let imposter syndrome get you
[22:56]like just keep writing and keep writing once in your heart.
[22:59]I mean, I write what I'm called to write.
[23:01]Like I write what pulls on me or tugs at me.
[23:04]And it would be easy to quit
[23:07]because the odds are so stacked against you.
[23:10]But I write because I have to.
[23:12]That's how I process the world and feelings and emotions
[23:14]and things that happen.
[23:15]And so just don't quit.
[23:17]Just keep going every day.
[23:19]Do a little bit, even if it's reading
[23:21]what you wrote the day before.
[23:22]Just every day, stay connected to it.
[23:24]And keep going.
[23:25]Don't quit.
[23:26]I think that's good advice for everything it is.
[23:29]We'll tap into thank you.
[23:30]Thanks for doing this IG live today.
[23:32]And this will eventually be a podcast about paper airplanes.
[23:35]Thank you for giving us another perspective on what happened
[23:38]and even perhaps some closure of the people wondering
[23:41]what it might have been like.
[23:43]And thanks for letting me reschedule this
[23:45]that I'm glad we finally spoke.
[23:47]And thank you so much.
[23:49]Thank you.
[23:49]It's so great to chat with you.
[23:50]You're amazing.
[23:51]You're an inspiration.
[23:52]All the stuff that you do, I don't know how you do it.
[23:53]So thank you so much.
[23:55]Thank you.
[23:56]All right, take care.
[23:57]Bye.
[23:58]Bye.
[24:00]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[24:01]Don't have time to read books.
[24:03]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebioans
[24:06]and at Moms.
[24:07]Don't have time to read books.
[24:08]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[24:11]and sign up for my virtual book club
[24:12]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:15]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[24:16]Like, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:19]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[24:21]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.