Jenna Blum, WOODROW ON THE BENCH: Life Lessons from a Wise Old Dog
[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:07]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:12]Check it out, and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things
[0:16]Moms Don't Have Time to Do. All the authors have been on this podcast.
[0:19]Also, check out my TikTok at with Sivi and Tracy.
[0:22]My other podcast, Sex Talk with Sivi and Tracy.
[0:25]Check out Moms Don't Have Time to Write on Medium.
[0:28]And of course, my new publishing company called Sivi Books.
[0:32]And now, back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids.
[0:37]Hi, hello!
[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]Happy New Year, everyone.
[0:42]I hope you all had a great break.
[0:44]I wanted to let you know about something that I've been talking a lot about on social media at Sivi Owens,
[0:49]which is the hashtag 22 and 22 challenge.
[0:53]We are at Sivi Books.
[0:55]We are encouraging everybody like all of you to visit 22 bookstores in 2022.
[1:01]And we're going to provide a whole series of incentives for every five visits,
[1:05]and you'll be entered to win a $500 shopping spree,
[1:08]and you'll get fun things like bookmarks and all the rest.
[1:11]Plus, you'll be part of a great community of people all helping support bookstores, authors, and more.
[1:17]We're really, really excited about it.
[1:19]If you want to join sign up, you just go to 22 in 22.net.
[1:24]That's 22 in 22.net, and click I'm in, and put your information.
[1:29]And then every time you go to a bookstore, you just quickly go back on the site and click log a bookstore visit.
[1:34]And then we'll be keeping track, and we'll be following up with all of your different achievements and awards and everything.
[1:40]So please sign up, spread the word 22 and 22, get your friends to join, and start visiting bookstores,
[1:47]and it'll be really fun and exciting.
[1:50]So here's to a wonderful 2022.
[1:52]I'm so excited that you're listening to my podcast and doing all the fun things that I have been trying to bring into the world.
[1:59]So here we go, 2022, hashtag 22 in 22.
[2:04]Jenna Bloom is the author of Whicho on the Bench, Life Lessons from a Wise Old Dog.
[2:09]Jenna is the New York Times, an internationally bestselling author of novels,
[2:13]Who Save Us, The Storm Chasers, and The Last Family, The Novella, The Lucky One, in the Collection Grand Central,
[2:19]and memoir Woodrow on the Bench about her senior black lab and what his last seven months taught her, available from HarperCollins on October 26, 2021, which of course is already past.
[2:29]Jenna is one of Oprah's top 30 women writers.
[2:32]That's so cool.
[2:33]With her work published in over 20 countries, and co-founder CEO of Literary Social Media Marketing Company,
[2:39]I'm Mighty Blaze.
[2:40]Jenna's New York Times and internationally bestselling first novel, Those Who Save Us, one,
[2:45]The Ribolo Prize, awarded by Hadassa Magazine, and a judge by Eli Wisell.
[2:51]Jenna interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Steven Spielberg survivors of the Show of Foundation for five years.
[2:56]Jenna is a public speaker, traveling nationally and internationally.
[3:00]For her first novel, she visited over 800 book clubs in the Boston area alone.
[3:04]Who knew there even were 800 book clubs in the Boston area.
[3:07]Jenna is based in Boston, teaching at Grub Street Writers, where she has been running master fiction and novel workshops for over 20 years.
[3:14]She earned her MA in Creative Writing from Boston University, and was the fiction editor for AGNI Literary Magazine.
[3:21]For more information about Jenna and to share her real-time adventures, please follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
[3:28]Hi, Jenna.
[3:29]Thanks so much for coming on, Mom.
[3:30]So I have time to read books to discuss Woodrow on the Bench Life Lessons from Wisell Dog, which I absolutely loved and which makes you come across which you are as the most patient kind person ever in your care for your elder dog.
[3:44]But also just your care for your dog and your love for your dog throughout Woodrow's life.
[3:49]I mean, it was just really a beautiful opening into your soul, and so I loved it.
[3:56]Thank you so much as a fellow dog, Mom.
[3:58]You feel me on the same share.
[4:00]I do.
[4:01]I feel you.
[4:02]I haven't.
[4:03]Yeah.
[4:04]I feel you.
[4:05]I try.
[4:06]I mean, it's so hard because as you point out in the book, it's like with dogs, you just, you know, they will predis, you don't know.
[4:11]There's a high likelihood that they will predisuse you.
[4:14]And yet you love them so openly and with all your heart knowing this.
[4:20]It's like the ultimate better to have loved and lost.
[4:24]Yes, they teach us how to love in that really brave way.
[4:28]When you love your kids, I imagine because you're a mom and I'm not a mom of humans.
[4:33]But you know that they will knock on wood out last you and carry your legacy of love and caring in the world and with a dog you or any sort of fur pet for animal child pet.
[4:44]You think, okay, there is a good chance I will out this pet will predisuse me.
[4:48]And yet you take care of them and love them every day because that's what they do for you.
[4:52]They show us how to do that.
[4:54]It's so true.
[4:55]I think though in showing us what it was like towards the end of Woodrow's life, you also reveal a lot about your own relationships in the past and even your girlfriend friendships and how you feel about asking people for help.
[5:09]And there's so much about you and your resilience, you're not wanting to bother people really that you almost are superhuman.
[5:19]I mean, the scenes where you're literally carrying woodrow up and down the stairs and going out in the winter and running around like all the things that you do.
[5:29]I was like, think to myself, how was she doing it?
[5:32]I mean, you had this one line where you were like, I wasted all this time on cardio when really I needed to be using weight.
[5:38]So I could lift this dog up the stairs, right?
[5:42]It's true.
[5:43]I did take a lot of physical care for when he was old in his last chapter.
[5:46]He weighed 85 pounds and his back legs had gone because he's a lab and that often happens to them.
[5:52]And he could kind of get around, but then mostly not.
[5:54]And he had heart failure.
[5:55]So for a while there I was carrying him in this great harness called a help in that harness.
[6:00]So if anybody out there has an old heavy pet that they need to carry around, totally recommend it save my back and it gave him another long chapter of his life.
[6:09]But it was really physically draining and I think that I'm sort of anti superhuman in Woodrow on the bench because I had to learn to ask for help.
[6:20]And I had to learn to let people help me, which is tremendously difficult for me. I was raised to self-reliance.
[6:25]And that's my sort of family tradition.
[6:28]So Woodrow really taught me a lot about being less than superhuman and instead just being human and letting people in.
[6:35]It was such a valuable lesson that I am still exercising to this day.
[6:39]You had one really moving scene where your mother had just passed away and right then Woodrow ended up having some inexplicable eye thing happen.
[6:52]I didn't know how to describe where his eyes were essentially like bulging out of his head.
[6:55]And you were like, no, no, I cannot be the person whose mom dies and then a week later the dog dies.
[7:01]You were like, that cannot be me. I cannot write that narrative and you somehow had to like get through it. And at the end of that little, you know, interlude.
[7:11]You said you thought it might have been Woodrow trying to just get you through the pain of losing your mom by making you focus on something else because it resolved itself like all in its own.
[7:22]Yeah, it was this changes things to be. So my mom passed from breast cancer in 2018. And while she was in her extremity, my then fiance called me and said, I'm so sorry to bother you with this, but there's something going on with Woodrow's eyes.
[7:36]And his eyes were like bulging out of his head in different directions like he was some weird pet cemetery dog who had been run over by a car and then put back together the wrong way.
[7:46]And nobody knew what it was. I took him to like dog, ophthalmologist and a neurologist and all theseists and nobody could figure it out and he had an MRI.
[7:57]Look at his brain and it was okay. And then the next day after he had a samurai survived it. He was 13 by the way. So it was people were just like, yeah, this is obviously like the end for him.
[8:06]But the day after the MRI, he pulled his eyes back into his head and was like, haha, mom, because that was how he talked to me. He's like, I made it my eyes bulge out in different directions and wasn't that funny.
[8:17]And I was like, no, that was not funny that was like $5,000 worth of not funniness. I was so grateful, though.
[8:23]And I do think that either Woodrow or my mom sort of manufactured that distraction for me that sort of fresh panic so that I didn't have to feel so much like Bambi after the forest fire, which is how I think many of us feel after we lose our moms.
[8:37]I'm so sorry that you lost your mom. I'm so sorry. Thank you.
[8:42]I know it's been several years, but it's not like that makes it any better.
[8:45]No, it's a journey. It's a process. You know this. You know about grief and anybody who has lost a parent or a primary figure knows that it's a journey you go on your whole life.
[8:54]It just sort of changes and takes you in different directions, but it you're never really off that journey.
[9:00]And one of the reasons that I wrote Woodrow on the bench is so I could hold up a torch for people in some ways.
[9:06]So we're going through that in the same way that Cheryl straight hold up a torch for so many of us with wild talking about losing her mom and the things that made her do.
[9:14]So Woodrow is not necessarily about my mom's death, but it is about grief and getting through grief and have sometimes a fresh grief recalls and older grief and how people process that and how you really you survive it and you need your community to survive.
[9:29]I just read actually that for a book I'm going to do coming up about trauma that anytime you play it back in your head, you know, like on a loop, right, pressing pressing play and reliving it, it actually imprints as new memories and it makes it even worse.
[9:48]No, you totally did.
[9:51]If there's a lot of controversy about trauma and how to deal with trauma and I write about trauma in my novels as well.
[9:57]So I'm fascinated with this topic that we used to think.
[10:00]that talking about the things that happen to you, like we go on Oprah and like share, you know,
[10:04]all of your miserable life experiences and get affirmation that you were okay,
[10:09]that the talk therapy was a good thing, but if it's not done in a very specific way,
[10:13]you can actually re-traumatize yourself by going through the same experience over and over.
[10:18]So I'm really interested in how we help guide people through these memories of loss
[10:24]without re-enduring them and instead giving them some release. I think the jury's still
[10:28]a little bit out on that. Yeah. I have not figured out how to do that.
[10:33]I still think it's better to talk about things than bottle them up, but it's just a simple way that,
[10:38]you know, you're not ruminating on it, I guess, or dwelling on it and instead giving it to other
[10:42]people for safekeeping and sort of using good tools of self-care to move on. I also loved in your book,
[10:50]just to go back to some of these scenes, how the bench and Woodrow, every time you took them outside,
[10:55]whether walking or going to the nearby hotel or wherever you ended up taking him,
[11:00]the day on the beat, anything. You have this Woodrow effect, you called it, and people would just
[11:06]show their kindness to you, right? So it's like Woodrow held up this mirror and it was like this magic
[11:14]spell where you got to see the nicest bits of people. It's very neat when you think about it.
[11:21]It was magic. Woodrow is one of those sort of magic dogs, I think. Some dogs have just very
[11:28]outsized and tremendous personalities that broadcast well in Woodrow, even when he was in his
[11:34]dota, and she was sort of like an ambassador. We would walk around our neighborhood in Boston,
[11:38]and people would greet him and be drawn to him as if they were being drawn to a magnet,
[11:42]and they would say, oh, how old is this dog? And can I cut him and he would kind of smile at them with
[11:46]this big doggy grin and be like, hey, ladies, how you do it? But it was really amazing to me
[11:53]that in a place like Boston, like a big city, like New York or anywhere else, people tend to be
[11:58]fairly impatient and not connect to strangers easily. And yet when I took my old dog out and tried to
[12:05]get him across the street, we live on Commonwealth Avenue, which is a really busy artery of Boston,
[12:10]to his bench, traffic would stop for us, and not so people could yell things at us that were
[12:16]angry, but because they could yell encouragement, like, you got this dog, you go dog, you got it,
[12:21]mama, you can do it. And that had never happened to me before. If I tried to cross Commonwealth by
[12:25]myself, people would mow me over and be like, the light used up cross walking. So that was the kind
[12:31]of effect Woodrow had. We could be anywhere. Once I was in a parking lot in Ohio, lifting him into
[12:37]my car, and a lady came out of this hotel we were staying in. And she said, I just want you to know
[12:43]that what you're doing is really hard. And I'm so grateful you're doing it and giving your old dog
[12:47]this kind of love and attention. And then she just got in her car and drove away. And I thought,
[12:52]God, thank you, universe. Like, there's no reason for people to be that kind for you. But that
[12:57]was the kind of kindness Woodrow drew to me every day. Like, what an incredible gift.
[13:01]That's amazing. It's like, it's just so beautiful. How did you, I know you have another dog now.
[13:07]How did that happen as like a PS to this book, you know, like what the aftermath?
[13:13]Yes, I'd love to write like a sequel to Woodrow called Henry, like the pandemic puppy could
[13:18]so many of us got dogs during the pandemic. And the tagline for that book would be,
[13:23]forgive me puppies are a holes because I had forgotten it had been so long since I had a puppy
[13:28]that I knew intellectually there, tough to train and they made some cute for a reason. So you
[13:32]don't kill them. And now my Henry Higgins is the same. Henry is 19 months and he settled down and
[13:38]he's being an absolute prince. Like he's been on book tour with me for Woodrow. And he has also been
[13:43]a little ambassador of joy and good wolf for everybody and saying, Hi, it's a lovely lady. So good.
[13:48]But I made this decision. It's something people ask me, got a lot to be like, when do you get
[13:52]a new dog after you've let go of your old beloved dog? And I don't think there's a right answer
[13:58]for that. It's a very individual answer. For me, I knew I would not do well without a dog.
[14:04]Dogs are my structure and also importantly, my daily joy. Like the dogs are so silly. And so loving
[14:10]and I really needed that. So even when Woodrow was really experiencing this last health issues,
[14:16]I was looking at labs, you know, people who were breeding labs and saying I would love to have
[14:21]another little lab who's not just like Woodrow because nobody will ever be just like Woodrow
[14:26]but somebody who will bring me that joy. And the best advice I got about this was from a friend
[14:30]of mine who sat with us on the bench. She had a young dog that she had gotten one month after her
[14:36]old dog passed, which seems really soon. And she said, you should get a new dog when it feels
[14:41]right to you. And you will think your new dog is really weird because he's not the old dog.
[14:48]And that's totally true. I mean, Henry has all these mannerisms that Woodrow never did have.
[14:53]Like Henry loves to shall we say redesign shoes. Like he redesigned one of my coach sandals
[14:59]by stripping the soul off it. And I keep looking at him thinking like, who are you?
[15:03]Actually, he's obsessed with my building's door stoppers and he gets a door stopper and he's like,
[15:07]best day ever, it's door stopper and one's all around the building, which these things Woodrow
[15:11]never did. But I kind of enjoy the process of discovery and thinking, who is this new little
[15:16]soul I bought into my life to do all these zany things. So I wished that for any dog owner who
[15:21]has lost a dog and is thinking about getting a new one, I hope you can expand your life in your
[15:25]own time to make room for that joy. And what's the latest with Jim? Oh, Jim. Okay, so for those of
[15:32]you who have not yet had drove, Jim had my former fiance who was Woodrow's dog dad for like
[15:37]seven years of Woodrow's life and we're really close. We're still incredibly close friends, Jim
[15:41]lives at my family house in Minnesota. He's a severe weather photographer. So that's his base.
[15:46]And we correspond like daily about Henry. And he keeps sending him like silly Henry videos and
[15:52]silly Henry photos and silly Henry everything. And I think Jim is one of those people.
[15:59]I'm very lucky to have this in my life. One of these people who has become family to me
[16:03]after being romantically involved. We're not romantically involved anymore. But he is somebody who
[16:09]will always be in my life in a very profound way. And that's that's kind of a hat trick and it's
[16:13]really due to his patience and his understanding and me writing about him and giving back. Like
[16:20]that's a pretty generous. He's really grateful to Jim. He's a great guy. Okay, Jenna. So I know
[16:27]you've also started a Mighty Blaze with Carolyn Levitt during the pandemic, which has now become
[16:31]this major force in helping authors and doing all this great stuff. Talk a little bit about
[16:36]a Mighty Blaze. And then I want to like touch on the rest of your writing because I know you
[16:40]novels and you're so prolific. So talk about a Mighty Blaze first. I would love to. And it takes
[16:46]one to no one to be because you started with the books and before that in momstone have time to
[16:50]everything and the anthologies and you bought so many writers together and helped connect us all
[16:54]during the pandemic, but also before the pandemic and also after the pandemic. So when the pandemic
[17:00]first started to close in on us in March 2020, I was watching in total horror as my friends
[17:05]book tours were being shut down. One by one, like all during that first awful week that I'm sure
[17:10]everybody remembers, they just sort of winked out. And a book is such a labor of love. It can take
[17:15]people three, five, 10, 20 years to write a book. You get one shot to kind of launch it into the world.
[17:21]And I didn't want those books to get extinguished. And so I went to Caroline who basically is
[17:26]like a heart in human form. She was doing a video blog tour called Not Everything Is Cancelled or
[17:33]Nothing Is Cancelled. And we fused forces to put together a social media platform called
[17:38]A Mighty Blaze on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And every Tuesday we featured the new books
[17:42]that were dropping so readers could find those books all in one place. And it gave writers also a
[17:47]place to talk about their books. And then because it was one of the few initiatives that existed
[17:52]at that time, it quickly glazed out of control. And as we're getting 16 hour days in my underwear
[17:58]just trying to keep up, but we are trying to give a voice and a platform to every writer who is
[18:02]publishing during 2020. And thank God initiatives like yours came along so that we could all
[18:07]love people at friends and fiction, same thing, right? So we could all loft people up and get them
[18:12]to readers who were then watching in their home saying thank you, thank you, thank you for connecting
[18:16]us. And now the blaze, I call it like my little TV network because we do what you do. We have
[18:21]author interviews every week. And we have regular shows like The Thoughtful Pro and Let Check and Mighty
[18:27]Mysteries. We even have a baking show. We feature debut authors. We do Friday Frontliners featuring
[18:31]authors like Erica John and Cheryl Strayed and John Irving. We have Lieutenant Colonel Vynman
[18:36]on. I mean, it's just a craziness. And what an incredible privilege to have a new chapter in my own
[18:42]life that is for service that connects writers with readers and brings us all together in this big
[18:49]community. I hope you get as much satisfaction out of this as I do. I love talking to writer people
[18:55]every single day. So it is amazing. Amazing experience. Well, I think it really just speaks to
[19:00]the need that you I mean, there was such a need in the marketplace, so to speak. Not that it's
[19:06]a mark, you know, not that we're doing this as a market, but there was just such a need. There
[19:10]was such a vacuum when everything started happening. And sometimes it takes a smaller more nimble
[19:16]person or company or collection of people to do what isn't being offered, right? So it's
[19:22]I'm so glad, you know, it's just so nice when Mighty Blaze and you're right, friends, it fiction
[19:27]is amazing having all these resources, especially as authors are selling like places to go,
[19:32]you were so nice at me on and my thought to came out and yeah, friends and fiction and like
[19:37]everybody, I don't know. It's just very nice. And also I've found that before I like started this
[19:42]whole thing, I did not realize like authors are my favorite people and like so great, such good people.
[19:48]I mean, it's hard to find like a terrible person who's written a great open stirring memoir.
[19:53]You know, I mean, you're going to find a good person except there are all these rumors that like
[19:57]authors are strange and maybe creepy and we're.
[20:00]temperate or whatever. And I grew up thinking of myself as aspiring to being like one of those
[20:04]writers who shows up drunk at festivals and was like, yeah, you don't know me. And they could
[20:08]become sort of a literary legend, but I never quite made it to that status. I think honestly,
[20:12]we have been working with people since March 2020 who have every right to be diva. It's like
[20:17]every right to be like jerky if they want to just because they've achieved this literary stature,
[20:22]there hasn't been a single person, not one in all of that time. What is that like 18 months now?
[20:28]since I'm my math is off. But you know, in all of that time, we have not had a single person
[20:32]who is a pain to deal with. Everybody has been totally lovely in the writing communities
[20:36]incredibly supportive. And I feel grateful to be able to share that with people as well.
[20:41]And then take me back to when you started writing fiction. Oh my god, I was four.
[20:47]Literally, I started writing stories and I was four. My dad was a journalist. He was a
[20:50]broadcast journalist and wrote for Walter Cronkite and Harry Reissner and Dan Rather at CBS and then
[20:55]wrote for GMA. And so I grew up listening to his typewriter and like, please tell me that you
[21:00]remember what an actual typewriter sounds like. Like it's not just an app invented by Tom Hanks.
[21:04]It's like a machine that we used in the olden news to write stories. So all I wanted to do ever
[21:09]was be a writer like my dad. And when I was in my teens, I wrote short stories. I won the 17
[21:16]magazine National Fiction Contest in 2016 and thought the world owed me a living as a writer
[21:21]subsequently. And look it went out. And behind you, it's like time's up. It dog time. But I found
[21:31]out shortly that the world owed me a living in food service. And that was what I did for like
[21:35]15 years while I was trying to publish short stories and novels. I went to grad school. So I
[21:40]could be a teacher of writing as well, which I'd love to do. I teach for graduate writers now,
[21:44]which is phenomenal. And it took me until I was 30 before I published my first book. So I just
[21:50]want to say to all of you writers who are struggling and inspiring out there, it's not an instant
[21:55]gratification profession. But it is the most rewarding thing when something that you make with your
[22:01]brain gets out into the world and changes other people's lives. It's such a magical thing. And I'm
[22:06]very blessed to be able to do this. What are you teaching? Are you teaching now at Grump Street?
[22:10]Yes, I'll be teaching my novel workshop, which I've been running for. I want to say like 15 out of
[22:15]the 21 years I've been teaching for Grump Street people. It's not even listed on their website
[22:20]because people get grandfathered in. And so like I've been working with the same people. Some of
[22:24]them for 20 years, some of them for six months. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So it's an amazing privilege. And
[22:30]many of the authors that you feature and I feature have been through that workshop and I just
[22:34]really love that. And I have people that I'm going to send you for 2022 who have books that are
[22:38]going to be coming out in 2022 and 23. That also is it taught me I think how to create
[22:44]community and how to maintain community. And right now like so many teachers I'm grappling with
[22:49]the question of do I continue to do online so I can have authors from all over the world be in
[22:54]this workshop as during the pandemic or do I go back to in person so I can hang out with my keeps.
[23:00]So I think maybe a little bit of both. And I feel like I don't know. Do you feel this way that the
[23:04]world is going to be that way from now on that we have in person wants and then supplement them
[23:10]or complement them actually I should say with virtual events that are equally powerful and have
[23:14]advantages. Yes I think you're right. I think it's going to be I think it's sorting itself out which
[23:19]ones should stay virtual and which ones would be better off being in person and you know how we can
[23:25]do that. But yeah I mean access to people and people coming together from like all over the world
[23:29]that's the coolest. I love that part. Same. I mean I had dear friends who are in Colorado and California
[23:34]taking my novel workshop who would not be able to do it if I did in person. So I think
[23:39]I might do that virtually and then just have a lot of branches and party. Yeah it's
[23:44]evenable right? It would be like once or once or twice a semester or something. Have a little
[23:49]floor every weekend even or ever. That's a real party. It's true. I've had like everyone from
[23:56]all the states but yes I don't want to go right. Right. Right. Yes my book was not quite as ambitious
[24:00]as that. Yes whoever's in town can just come and have a bloody marriage the way I think of it.
[24:04]So aside from the sequel to Woodrow which I hope you are taking notes for and everything and
[24:10]actually writing what other projects are you working on? So I'm teaching and my device.
[24:15]I think you need another project. Yeah I think right exactly don't tell my agent back because I
[24:19]know she would love for me to sort of shut down some bandwidth on the other endeavors and get back
[24:24]to work on a new book and I'm planning to do that this winter and you know what it's like to sort
[24:29]of be running on all cylinders. You make the time for the things that are important. So I'm not
[24:34]really sure I'm taking notes for the Woodrow sequel that the Henry like Candy Puppy follow up
[24:40]and sort of my Instagram and social are my notes for writing blog books because they are memoirs
[24:45]but I just this morning texted my friend Mark Cecil who's the thoughtful girl on the Mighty Blaze and
[24:50]said I have a book idea that I'd love to walk around with you next week like let's like air it out
[24:57]and do a writing session and it's very rare that I have these ideas for him just like boom
[25:02]Thunderbolt but that's what I required to start a book. I'm not very disciplined in the way that
[25:06]some of our friends are like pam gen off you know starts a book like finishes a book in the
[25:11]morning it starts a new one in the afternoon I admire this so greatly it's totally not me I need
[25:15]to feel really emotionally gripped by an idea that I thought oh I think I have an idea it start tapping
[25:22]my fingers gradually together and so I'm going to kind of explore that for the rest of the year
[25:27]and then if that whole right some short stories about it if that holds water then I'll work on it
[25:31]it would be historical fiction again I think wow it's so cool thank you busy I know it's amazing
[25:38]this is good to be busy I like to be busy I like to think this is a productive life is a
[25:43]rewarding life for me very true so what advice would you have for aspiring authors never given
[25:50]I have on my wall of my desk in my study the Winston Churchill quote never given never given
[25:55]never given and I think you have to be unrelentingly optimistic about your chances to push
[26:02]through an industry that is often indifferent seeming it's not you know agents and editors and publishers
[26:09]really want to get good books out there and there are so many books that are aching to be born
[26:15]and just cutting through a lot of the process that it takes to get your book out there you have
[26:21]to have a great daily belief in yourself and in the world that you've created whether it's
[26:26]fictional or it's memoir so I would just say never given it's equally important to have grit as
[26:31]talent in this industry and I know you're giving authors a shake in a different way so I mean
[26:37]all of us want to know more about that we're so excited about your new model your new publishing
[26:41]model thank you I know I was thinking when you mentioned your your graduate novel writers I was
[26:45]like oh don't wait for them for the podcast like when like show me this birthday working on first
[26:50]birthday books but oh I totally oh I would love to oh my god you guys all heard that here first
[26:54]I will I've got you know it's an interesting industry too because it's not again an instant
[26:59]gratification thing you have a book that you give to a publisher and then it comes out a year
[27:04]or a year and a half later because it takes that long to alchemize the manuscript into a book but
[27:09]I will definitely feed you my people they're amazing they're so talented a lot of them are blazers
[27:13]because of course I poached from my own workshop and that really strong community to create another
[27:18]community but yes we've got some fantastic juicy delicious novels coming your way and is there
[27:24]anything coming up new one exciting from the blaze what is coming up that is new and exciting for
[27:29]the blaze oh my gosh I've been on tour for the last three weeks driving around the country with
[27:33]Henry so I have been really away from my captain seat on the blaze what we are having a lot of
[27:39]holiday shows coming up so we have like the best of 2021 shows readers if you haven't gotten your
[27:45]wrecks or you want to add to your ever towering TBR pile we're going to be compiling our wrecks from
[27:50]every genre so that will be fun without the baking show coming up Jane Green just did our baking show
[27:55]and I'm going to be doing it in a couple of days for Woodrow because I make maple bacon short
[28:08]and we have in the new year we've got a lot of really exciting stuff coming up I know we have
[28:12]Fiona Davis coming on because she has a new book out and now I'm like blanking on every
[28:16]single name of everybody besides Fiona but anybody who has a book coming out in 2022 we have
[28:22]poached them so yes I was trying to aggregate that list and I'm like failing I was trying to
[28:27]remember all the people who have been on my podcast who have new books coming out and I keep
[28:31]forgetting I love the other one yeah Fiona's mission is the coming out in February Rachel
[28:36]Baronbaum who is our big mother yeah atomic Anna coming out which I cannot wait to
[28:42]reach a deeper floor and we've got them we've got some really fantastic stuff coming up this week
[28:47]actually tomorrow oh my god it's almost Tuesday we have Gary Steingaard coming in oh everyone's
[28:52]raving about that book I love it but I was listening to it I haven't ready it oh it's funny
[28:58]because he's super funny so I was listening in my car and laughing out loud while driving
[29:03]1,500 miles from you know Minnesota to Boston if you can get our country friends this is what
[29:10]it's called yes our country friends I bought it last weekend but yes okay it's on my list
[29:16]when do you have time to read like everybody must ask you this question I mean I read for
[29:20]like I read in the car yesterday for three hours and I had to get through a couple books you know
[29:25]but yeah that's just what I do I don't make the time you must be a speed reader also I'm a speed
[29:30]reader yes it'd be reader Jenna thanks it's been so nice getting to know you like this pandemic
[29:38]this I mean through all this stuff anyway can't wait to hang out and thanks for everything
[29:42]me too and I can't wait till the day we can hang out in person but meanwhile let's keep comparing
[29:46]notes online I just love this and I love seeing you thank you okay all right thanks bye Jenna
[29:54]thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books don't forget to
[29:58]follow me on instagram
[30:00]at Zibi Owens and at Moms don't have time to read books.
[30:02]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com
[30:05]and sign up for my virtual book club
[30:07]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:09]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[30:11]in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[30:13]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:15]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.