Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, ANONYMOUS SEX
[0:01]Hi, this is Ziggy Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[0:05]Moms don't have time to read books.
[0:07]And speaking of books, I have two of my own books coming out this spring and summer.
[0:12]Princess Charming is a picture book, which debuts on April 19th, and bookends, a memoir
[0:18]of love, loss, and literature.
[0:20]Comes out on July 1st, and it is truly a labor of love.
[0:24]I hope you'll pre-order, order, and join me on tour as I go across the country.
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[0:35]at zibbyowens, because I always post about everything.
[0:38]Enjoy the show!
[0:41]Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lillian Tan, our co-editors of anonymous sex.
[0:47]Hillary Jordan is the author of the novel's Mudbound, which, by the way, was a Netflix show,
[0:53]which my brother ended up producing, and when she woke.
[0:56]Mudbound was an international bestseller that won multiple awards and was adapted into
[1:00]a critically acclaimed Netflix film that earned four Academy Award nominations.
[1:05]Hillary is also a screenwriter, essayist, and poet, whose work has been published in The
[1:09]New York Times, McSweeney's and Outside Magazine, among others.
[1:12]She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
[1:14]Cheryl Lillian Tan, his author of the International Best Sellers, Sarang Party Girls, and
[1:19]a tiger in the kitchen, a memoir of food and family.
[1:22]She is also the editor of the Fiction Anthology, Singaporean War.
[1:26]Cheryl was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, in style, and the Baltimore Sun.
[1:30]And her stories and reviews have also appeared in The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement,
[1:35]The Paris Review, The Washington Post, and Bon Appetit, among others.
[1:38]Born and raised in Singapore, she lives in New York City, and actually, her partner owns
[1:43]and runs a restaurant on the Upper West Side.
[1:45]So after you listen to this podcast, when I say I'm going to stop by the restaurant,
[1:50]I actually did.
[1:51]I went there that very night, or maybe it was the next night, and got to know her and
[1:55]partner and all of their friends, and we've been back a few times, and it was super fun.
[2:00]And I just think she's awesome.
[2:02]I'm very excited today.
[2:03]I have two authors, Hilary Jordan and Cheryl Lillian Tan.
[2:07]Did I say that right?
[2:08]Yeah.
[2:09]Anyway, anonymous sex, amazing anthology with a super unique concept, which I am just in
[2:16]love with.
[2:17]It's so cool.
[2:18]Will both of you introduce yourselves, and then please explain how this project came
[2:22]to be.
[2:23]Cheryl?
[2:25]Well, this is Cheryl, and I am originally from Singapore.
[2:29]I have written fiction and nonfiction.
[2:31]My first book was a tiger in the kitchen.
[2:33]It was a food memoir about going back to Singapore to discover the food of my grandmothers.
[2:38]And then my novel was called Surong Party Girls, which was about what is like being a modern
[2:42]woman in Asia, and both were international best sellers.
[2:45]And now we have anonymous sex.
[2:47]Congratulations.
[2:48]Hi, I'm Hilary Jordan, and my first novel, Medbound, was the winner of the weather
[2:54]prize for socially engaged fiction.
[2:57]And it was made into a movie that did pretty well, it got for Academy Award nominations.
[3:00]Oh, my gosh.
[3:01]My brother produced that movie.
[3:02]Oh, really?
[3:03]Yeah.
[3:04]With weather.
[3:05]His name is Teddy Schwartzman.
[3:06]He's from Flagler.
[3:07]Oh, yeah.
[3:08]I met Teddy.
[3:09]Yeah.
[3:10]My gosh.
[3:11]Too funny.
[3:12]And I met him at the shoot, actually.
[3:13]And he gave me a lift back to New Orleans.
[3:14]Yes.
[3:15]Well, there you go.
[3:16]Yeah.
[3:17]But yeah, so that was really exciting.
[3:18]And my second novel is called When She Woke, and it's a dystopian novel that's sort of
[3:23]coming true.
[3:25]And I'm also a screenwriter.
[3:28]So yeah.
[3:29]And this project started because Cheryl and I love food.
[3:34]And we also love erotica.
[3:36]So when we were introduced many years ago by Juliet Glass, who was our very first contributor
[3:42]who signed up for this wonderful project, you know, we discovered we had these shared interests.
[3:48]And over dinner one night, we were just talking about, you know, why isn't there more
[3:53]really great erotica like D.H. Lawrence and Nias Ninn.
[3:58]And we thought, well, wouldn't it be wonderful if we made a book like that?
[4:02]And we did it with some of the very best writers in the world, all writing at the top of
[4:07]their game.
[4:09]And then it was a matter of, OK, well, how do we get these amazing people like Louise
[4:13]Erdrich, you know, Paul Thoreau to sign on to this project.
[4:18]And we thought, well, what if we just list their names?
[4:21]What all the stories are anonymous?
[4:23]So you have to guess who wrote what?
[4:26]And we would call this project a verse and not a message.
[4:30]And even though we came up with this idea about seven or eight years ago, time passed,
[4:34]Hillary would say, hey, let's do that project now, but I would be busy working on a book
[4:37]or I'd be like, hey, I'm free now and she'd be working on something.
[4:40]So nothing, the stars never really quite aligned until the pandemic happened.
[4:44]And suddenly it was, you know, a summer of 2020, we were all locked down.
[4:49]I was at home in Singapore, my childhood bedroom and my mom's home in on this strict lockdown
[4:54]for two months.
[4:56]And I was in a FaceTime call with Hillary, who was then in her own isolation and main.
[5:00]And we were like, why don't we do it now?
[5:02]We really have the time now.
[5:04]And you know, we thought if there were any, ever a time that the world needed to be reminded
[5:09]of intimacy and sex at a time when you couldn't even hug your own friends, couldn't
[5:13]see them, this would be it.
[5:14]And so we thought, OK, well, let's see what happens.
[5:16]And so we maybe invited Julie Glass, she was the first ask and she was an immediate, yes,
[5:21]I called her on FaceTime from Singapore.
[5:23]And from then on, we just made a wish list, we just dreamt big and we managed to get
[5:28]so many of the names that we had on that list and we were so amazed.
[5:33]And I think it was partly because it was a time when people were really seeking connection.
[5:37]And I'm just going to read the amazing contributors if that's okay for people who are not,
[5:42]do not have the book in front of them.
[5:44]So your contributors include Robert Olin Butler, Catherine Chung, Trent Dalton, Heidi W.
[5:49]Duro, Tony Epral, Louis Erdick, Jamie Ford, Julia Glass, Peter Godwin, Hillary Jordan,
[5:55]Rebecca Makai, she was in my podcast, Valerie Martin, Dina Nayari, Chigose, Obioma, Tia
[6:01]Obrecht, Helen, oh yeah, yummy, Mary Louise Parker, Victoria Radell, I'm sure I'm butchering
[6:06]all these names.
[6:07]Jason Reynolds, SJ Roseanne, Meredith Talison, I did a IG live with her, Cheryl, Lulian
[6:13]Pen, Sue, Sue Vankem, Thamavangsa, Jeet, Thayil, Paul Throw, Louis Alberto, Rhea
[6:22]and Edmund White.
[6:23]How did I do that?
[6:25]That's amazing.
[6:27]That is quite a list of literary superstars.
[6:31]I mean, that's amazing.
[6:32]And by the way, Julia Glass, I loved the novel Three Dunes, same Julia Glass, right?
[6:37]And she has a new one coming out, vigil forever on May 3rd, so you should have her on
[6:41]too.
[6:42]Oh, way.
[6:43]Did I not know that?
[6:44]Okay.
[6:45]I'm running that down.
[6:46]I went a long time ago before I even had kids.
[6:48]I went to some sort of literary event for her at someone's home in Brooklyn, in Brooklyn
[6:52]Heights.
[6:53]And I didn't have kids and everybody, the whole dinner was talking about their kids
[6:57]and their schools and, and St. Anne's and this and that.
[7:01]And I was sitting there being like, I don't understand.
[7:02]I have nothing to add.
[7:04]Like, I want to hear about the bug and all this stuff and now that I'm a mom, I'm like,
[7:07]oh, I got it.
[7:08]It was just a bunch of school moms with like a fabulous guest in there.
[7:11]I don't even know what I was doing there.
[7:12]It's come to think of it.
[7:13]I have no idea.
[7:14]Maybe it was a pen event or something, but anyway, I was such a huge fan.
[7:18]I went and met her and it was so cool and it's one of my favorites and now it's like
[7:23]all coming full circle.
[7:24]Here you are.
[7:25]Okay.
[7:26]So now I have to have her on.
[7:27]Amazing.
[7:28]And she's a nice person and her story in the collection is wonderful, but we can't tell
[7:31]you which one it is.
[7:32]Of course.
[7:33]Have you revealed who wrote what to anyone on the planet?
[7:37]We're not allowed to.
[7:39]We're all contractually bound to keep it secret for a year and a half after publication,
[7:45]what our story is.
[7:46]And in fact, there are a handful of people who know our editor, Kara Watson knows, but
[7:53]she actually read the story blind, all the stories blind.
[7:57]She wanted to sort of come to it the way a reader would.
[8:00]And she was really confident that she would be able to guess, you know, a lot of the names
[8:04]because she's obviously very familiar with many of these authors.
[8:08]And she got two out of 27 right.
[8:11]So but other than Kara and our editor in the UK and like the payroll person who put
[8:16]the check, there's almost nobody who knows any of the names.
[8:21]How does it feel for you guys to walk around with a big secret like that?
[8:24]I have a really hard time keeping secrets.
[8:26]They can't use on me.
[8:27]I have like an arm personnel now following me around a kid in case like a kidnapped and interrogated.
[8:35]Because some of our writers say, you know, obviously, I mean, you know, so we're not hiding
[8:40]behind, you know, the secrecy or anonymity, but you know, but at the same time, it's this
[8:45]kind of fun literary parlor game.
[8:47]And some of our, some of the contributors say that they never want to reveal it just
[8:50]because, you know, it's kind of fun to be in this bubble of, you know, just sort of secrecy
[8:54]and not having people know.
[8:56]What happens after a year and a half?
[8:57]Then you know everybody?
[8:59]But people's right to publish it in an anthology, revert to them, but there's not going
[9:04]to be any sort of big announcement.
[9:06]And personally, I'm going to take it to the grave.
[9:08]And I hope a lot of the other writers follow suit because the more that are identified,
[9:13]the easier it gets to identify the remaining people.
[9:16]So I think, I think most of our writers are approaching it in the sense of, you know, we're
[9:22]in this together and it's a secret.
[9:25]Wow.
[9:26]So in the introduction when you described why you did the projects and all that, you had
[9:30]something that was super interesting about sort of love and sex in the pandemic that
[9:34]I thought which sort of echoes what you were just saying now, but, well, I loved this
[9:37]last part of it too, but this is not what I was talking about, but that's okay.
[9:40]It doesn't matter.
[9:41]And thinking about how to describe the collection, we kept coming back to the last
[9:44]line of altitude sickness, the fourth story in the anthology.
[9:46]She grabbed the man's hand and kissed him without shame as the plane began to tilt.
[9:50]While the world has certainly been more at tilt than usual recently, the truth is it's
[9:54]always tilting in ways large and small for each one of us.
[9:57]Sex can be a grounding force in that day to day pit.
[10:00]It can also be part of the upheaval.
[10:02]Either way, it's a connection many of us both want
[10:04]and need a way to reach across the divide
[10:06]and know that we aren't alone,
[10:08]which is what inspired us to take the sleep together.
[10:09]We hope you enjoy every eloquent provocative,
[10:11]delicious word.
[10:12]I love that.
[10:13]I love that.
[10:14]And people don't often talk about it that way
[10:16]that is unifying that it's something
[10:19]that we have to hold on to.
[10:20]I had an anthology that I worked on at the same time
[10:24]called Moms and Have Time to,
[10:25]a quarantine anthology,
[10:26]which I originally just put essays out on my website
[10:29]because it was supposed to be another project.
[10:30]It doesn't matter.
[10:31]Anyway, one of the essays is by Claire Gibson,
[10:33]who is an author,
[10:34]and it was about her sex life with her husband
[10:37]and how he was such a germaphobe
[10:39]and how that affected their relationship.
[10:41]But how the part of it that really stayed with me
[10:43]is just they're sort of glomming onto each other
[10:47]and how those moments, those intimate physical moments
[10:51]stopped time in a way and stopped all of the panic
[10:56]and the uncertainty and everything
[10:58]and just got them back in the moment so much.
[11:01]And so the power of that,
[11:04]which of course is like throughout the story,
[11:06]although they have lots of very salacious things in here.
[11:10]But that theme, it is so important.
[11:12]And that's one of these joking things
[11:14]why I have Moms and Have Time to Have Sex
[11:15]is like one of the things in my anthology
[11:19]because without those moments of reconnection
[11:22]to the people you love,
[11:23]I mean, without it there might not be people.
[11:25]I mean, now we have advanced science.
[11:27]It's true.
[11:28]We have a lot of different kinds of sex in there.
[11:30]I mean, we have sex with ghosts, holographic sex.
[11:33]We have bad sex, bondage sex, good sex,
[11:36]but we have a lot of good married sex too.
[11:40]One of my favorite stories in the book
[11:41]involves a teacher who is, she's in school
[11:44]and she catches her daughter having sex
[11:47]in the supply closet.
[11:48]And then she comes home and she's just really frazzled
[11:51]and then she's just sort of like,
[11:52]oh, I have all this grading.
[11:53]And then her husband is in the kitchen,
[11:55]holding a piece of cheese and he's like, let's go.
[11:57]And, you know, if you wanna read the story,
[11:59]you have to buy the book,
[12:00]but it's not a moment between just sort of this
[12:03]like really happy married couple.
[12:05]And it's like this stress point in her life
[12:07]that suddenly just gets lifted.
[12:10]Also in, what was the name of this one?
[12:13]History lesson about the two people at the conference
[12:16]where Michael, I think it's Tim's Michael,
[12:19]was threatening to reveal all these videos
[12:22]of the two of them when both of them
[12:23]are basically cheating on their partners,
[12:25]some sanctions, I'm not.
[12:27]And then revealing on Twitter this very intimate moment
[12:33]and then having to go back to the conference.
[12:34]I mean, this is like my worst nightmare.
[12:37]Basically, I can't even think of anything more terrifying
[12:39]than having your most intimate that have,
[12:42]you know, the scene where she's like pulling off
[12:43]her necklace, like, oh no, maybe the necklace
[12:45]is gonna give it away.
[12:46]Anyway, what did you guys think when you,
[12:48]like when you got that story, for instance,
[12:50]how did it happen?
[12:51]Did they send it to you in like Google Docs
[12:53]or you got it on email?
[12:54]Did you read it on your computer
[12:55]and were you just like, oh my gosh, this is amazing
[12:57]and then how much editing went into it?
[12:59]What was that all like?
[13:00]That was actually a joy to get.
[13:02]Actually, all of them were.
[13:03]Because when we commissioned this,
[13:05]we invited people, so we did not ask for the line of it.
[13:08]We didn't ask for people to submit blindly.
[13:10]We invited people specifically and we said,
[13:12]we want to set a story between 1,000 words
[13:15]and 8,000 words.
[13:16]That's all we told them.
[13:17]So we were kind of worried when we get close to deadline.
[13:20]What if we get 25 stories about the same kind of sex?
[13:24]What if we get 25 stories about, you know,
[13:26]sex in a park in New York?
[13:28]So, but then, you know, we invited such a variety of writers.
[13:31]They've been violence for the Booker Prize.
[13:33]They've won the Pulitzer Prize, they won the National Book Award.
[13:36]You know, we have a children's author
[13:37]who won the Carnegie Medal in the UK.
[13:40]So, you know, obviously we ended up getting a huge range.
[13:44]But you know, when we got that story, it was,
[13:46]we were like, wow, we were blown away by all of them,
[13:48]but that one, we were like, okay, this is really steamy.
[13:51]It's really hot.
[13:52]And it really is.
[13:54]I felt like, you know, I know this writer,
[13:56]I can't reveal who it is.
[13:57]And I was just like, wow, this is really something
[13:59]like nothing I've ever read from this person before.
[14:01]And it was, it made me feel really happy
[14:04]because it was exactly what we wanted to do.
[14:06]We wanted to kind of open the door
[14:09]to maybe ask people to go down a road with us
[14:11]that perhaps they'd never gone before.
[14:12]And ourselves included, Hilary and I both have a story in it.
[14:16]Wow, but you'll never say what yours is either.
[14:19]You know, okay, you guys are good.
[14:22]You're really good.
[14:23]Tell me for a second about the cover.
[14:26]So the cover for people listening is bright red
[14:28]and there is one strawberry, one plump delicious looking
[14:32]strawberry right in the middle
[14:33]with its little green leaves at the top.
[14:35]Tell me about that, how much input you had,
[14:37]what you wanted it to look like and how that came to be.
[14:40]Well, that is one very wicked looking strawberry
[14:43]for those of you who haven't seen a couple of the book.
[14:45]And I will hold it up for it.
[14:47]Just quite a lot of different things we think.
[14:51]We really like that it was suggestive in multiple ways.
[14:55]And there was one other cover that they showed us,
[14:57]which was actually two lemons.
[15:00]But we loved our wicked strawberry
[15:02]because it's just, it's fun.
[15:03]You know, and that's also part of what this project was
[15:06]in addition to sort of intimacy and connection.
[15:10]We wanted it to be fun.
[15:11]I mean, we were all, all the writers craving something fun
[15:15]during that time.
[15:15]I mean, this was before vaccines, you know,
[15:18]when we started conceiving this
[15:19]and when people were writing these stories.
[15:22]And you know, sex is fun.
[15:24]And it really helped, it helped me get back into writing.
[15:28]I mean, I was pretty paralyzed the first few months
[15:31]of the pandemic and I was by my, I'm single.
[15:34]So I was by myself for a long time.
[15:37]And you know, Cheryl and I have talked a lot about
[15:39]how this project really helped get us through.
[15:42]But for me personally, I hadn't written a word of fiction
[15:46]until I began my story.
[15:48]And so it was, it was just, it was a fun project, you know?
[15:53]And it was just delightful.
[15:54]And we loved that the American cover reflects that.
[15:58]And you can cover this very different.
[16:00]Ooh, look at that.
[16:02]So it's kind of this, I know a friend of mine, Cheryl.
[16:05]If you, I know, like he said, I tried to scan
[16:07]this QR code and Tinder popped up.
[16:10]I like how you do it.
[16:13]I mean, seeing different things.
[16:14]That's cool.
[16:15]But so it's, so I love that both.
[16:17]We have two wonderful covers and the strawberry,
[16:20]what I love about it is it's very, it's very inclusive.
[16:22]It's very broad because it could be size,
[16:23]it could be behind, it could be the front.
[16:25]You know, it could be anything really.
[16:26]So it's very inclusive.
[16:28]Yes. Very inclusive.
[16:31]Interesting. Never in a strawberry the same way again.
[16:34]Tell me though about both of your backgrounds
[16:37]a little more not related to this book
[16:39]and how like what your projects are now
[16:41]that you're working on not related to this,
[16:42]but screenwriting or if you're doing another book yourself
[16:46]and all of that and now I have to go back
[16:48]and I really want to read your memoir.
[16:50]I love food related memoirs and all of that.
[16:52]I have to go back.
[16:53]I will do that and I'm excited too
[16:55]and just really excited about Mudbound and all the rest.
[16:57]So just tell me more about your careers
[16:59]and how basically how you became writers.
[17:01]Do you want to go first?
[17:02]Sure.
[17:03]I actually started out as an advertising copy writer.
[17:06]So I spent 20 years writing disposable sentences.
[17:11]I mean, I did some good ads, but you know,
[17:13]and I was in my early to mid 30s
[17:15]and I was living in Texas and was married
[17:17]to the wrong person and I just woke up one day
[17:20]and I was working 60 hour weeks
[17:22]and making a lot of money.
[17:23]And I just woke up one day
[17:25]and I just said this can't be my life, you know,
[17:28]because it just didn't feel worthy
[17:30]of how I wanted to spend my time.
[17:32]So I went back to school.
[17:34]I went to Columbia and got my MFA
[17:37]and started Mudbound.
[17:38]I actually started both of my novels in the same workshop,
[17:41]the January of the second workshop I took.
[17:44]And I didn't know what to do with the other one
[17:47]and I wrote Mudbound, which was very loosely,
[17:49]very loosely based on family stories
[17:52]of my grandparents farm.
[17:54]Would I live after World War II?
[17:56]And the cast of characters is actually pretty similar
[17:59]in terms of the makeup.
[18:00]There's a couple with two young daughters
[18:04]across your father-in-law
[18:06]and this handsome soldier who comes home from the war
[18:09]a little bit traumatized.
[18:10]So that much is true.
[18:12]But you know, nobody killed my great-grandfather
[18:15]although I think my grandmother might have liked to.
[18:19]And you know, just other things that happened.
[18:21]So that book was my first novel
[18:24]and it really, it just did so well
[18:26]and it wanted, you know, wanted to award
[18:28]and sort of changed everything.
[18:30]And then while that was happening, I wrote the second one.
[18:34]And then when Mud years passed obviously
[18:37]and when Mudbound got made into a film,
[18:39]I sort of caught the screenwriting bug.
[18:41]So I actually have done an adaptation of When She Woke,
[18:44]which is now searching for a director,
[18:46]if you know anybody.
[18:47]And I'm about to embark on another screenwriting project
[18:50]about the Texas prison rodeo.
[18:53]And I'm also working on a third novel.
[18:55]So quite busy these days.
[18:58]How do you go back to the intensity of like
[19:01]into the character's lives when you're doing so many?
[19:04]Like it feels like novel writing
[19:06]takes a certain mental headspace.
[19:08]Like it's not the same as an essay.
[19:11]I mean, not that that doesn't.
[19:13]But how do you go back and forth?
[19:15]I read somewhere once I felt Roth spent most of his time
[19:18]and towards the end in his house in Connecticut
[19:20]because when he was writing anyway,
[19:23]because he said he needed to be in touch
[19:25]with his characters every day.
[19:26]And it was kind of hard to do that in New York
[19:28]because you're distracted, you know, you go to Z-Bars
[19:31]and it's exciting.
[19:32]And it's like, you know, so I can kind of see that.
[19:36]You know, I didn't tell a lot artists,
[19:38]residents, she's in Charlotte and I both have done those.
[19:41]And I'm actually going back to one
[19:43]that we have in common Yatto in a few weeks for a month.
[19:47]So you get a month where it's just that helps a great deal.
[19:51]I went to the Yatto benefit right before the pandemic
[19:54]where they were reading all sorts of letters
[19:57]by the most iconic, amazing.
[20:00]authors who had been there in the past and not just authors, but authors are just so
[20:04]amazing notable people and what Yato had meant to them. It was crazy. It was like sitting
[20:09]through a history thing. It was just so cool. Yato, I really would love to go at some
[20:13]point, just to take a little tour or something. Anyway.
[20:16]Well, Yato was a huge turn for me. I mean, for me, I always knew I wanted to write books.
[20:22]I grew up in Singapore in a very traditional Chinese family. And so when I said I wanted
[20:26]to write books when I was five or six, because I've been reading Ena Blighten and Judy
[20:29]Bloom. And I just, I wanted to write things like that that could take people somewhere else.
[20:35]And my parents were like, well, people were like, how do you make money doing that?
[20:39]Like, no, you're going to be a lawyer. And so I said, well, okay, well, what have I figured
[20:42]out how to make money with writing? And so I was like, I'm going to become a journalist.
[20:46]They have regular paychecks. So I went to journalism school, loved it, worked for the Baltimore
[20:50]Sun, went to Instal magazine. I was a fashion editor there. And then the Wall Street Journal,
[20:54]I covered fashion. And I would have been coming fashion for like 10 years, and living
[20:59]in the US, and my family is all in Singapore. And I was starting to really miss eating
[21:03]food of my, like, family. And especially, I think it's particularly a cute, because I
[21:08]was surrounded by people in an industry in fashion where they were actively avoiding food
[21:12]and eating. And so obviously I started really craving like my grandmother's food and my
[21:16]mom's food. And I was like, okay, I'm just going to take a break and go home and like
[21:21]learn how to cook with my aunties for like a weekend. And so I did that. And I wrote an essay
[21:25]and an editor called me and said, let's learn from Penguin called and said, let's turn
[21:28]us to a book. And so that's literally how like everything started. And I remember I got the book
[21:33]contract. I had this book to write. I didn't know how to write it. I remember saying, if you asked
[21:37]me to write a 1500 word story in like an hour, I can do it, hands down. But you asked me to write
[21:43]a 90,000 word book in a year. I have no idea where to start. And so going to Yato really,
[21:48]really helped me because it kind of cleared my head. It kind of showed me how to be an artist
[21:52]because I was around other writers. I saw how discipline they were and how they worked. And that
[21:57]really, that really helped me. That's how I wrote, I was actually a Yato for seven weeks that I
[22:01]wrote a tiger in the kitchen. My first book goes food memoir at Yato. And then, well, and then before
[22:06]I was, I was done with that, I was sort of, I started writing what would become my first novel,
[22:10]Serong Party Girls, which is also sentencing before. And it's about young women in Singapore and
[22:15]you know, just sort of how difficult it can be to be a woman in modern but patriarchal Southeast
[22:20]Asia. Wow. So amazing. You two are so accomplished. And this is so inspiring. What a story
[22:26]amazing. And what about you? What else is coming up for you? Well, I'm working on my next novel right
[22:30]now. So apart from anonymous sex, all my books have been sentencing. More than the next one
[22:35]is too. So I, I'm not saying very much about it, but it's all right. It's got some sex in it. So
[22:40]And in the meantime, you help your boyfriend with his restaurant.
[22:45]Well, I write that I write it every day. So if you come to Manny's Bistro at 225 Columbus on
[22:50]the Upper West Side, I am literally at the little table by the door. But you know, if I, if I look
[22:55]busy, if I'm typing in my earbuds and don't talk to me, but I don't have my earbuds and it's okay
[22:59]to talk to me. But that's why I work on my book these days because, you know, the, the tea is
[23:03]free flowing. And anytime I'm hungry, the kitchen is right downstairs. That's so neat. I'm not
[23:08]even kidding. I'm proud. I'm going to just like come and have another night or something. You'll
[23:11]be surprised. Are you there at night too? We're just during the day. I'm open there at night too, yeah.
[23:15]Oh, wow. Okay. Sure. There's the hostess. She's my social person. It's just like the perfect thing
[23:21]for her. I love it. Oh, my gosh. That's always like been a dream that you could like have a
[23:26]restaurant and just like hang out there and greet everybody and very neat. Okay, from both of you,
[23:32]what advice you have for aspiring authors? My first piece of advice would be to read
[23:37]a lot of great books because I feel like reading authors, you know, Judy Blum, Roll Dowl as a child
[23:44]and, you know, write on up to Jane Austen and Kazoo. She grew out to name two of my favorites.
[23:50]I don't see how you can become a writer without doing a lot of reading. I mean, just and reading
[23:55]good stuff, you know, too. So that's, that's kind of my number one piece of advice. And the second
[24:01]thing that I always tell people is to read your stuff out loud, because your ear will pick up
[24:08]wrongnesses that your eye will not catch on the page. So those are my two big ones.
[24:15]I would second the both of those, you know, definitely read a lot. I read a lot as a kid. My
[24:19]family had to pull their library cards to get the maximum amount each week just for me. And also
[24:25]the reading aloud thing, particularly because my first book, I write in Singapore, we speak a kind
[24:30]of patois that's a mix of Chinese English and Malay. And so for me, I've always, I sometimes
[24:35]write read aloud as I'm writing just because I need to hear it. But also, you know, I think the
[24:40]main thing is I just be listen, be a great observer of life. And I think that's why a lot of
[24:46]journalists make really good novelists because that's what we have to do. We have to bring a scene
[24:50]to life on the page. And, you know, for me, like, when I read a book and I'm like, something's not
[24:55]quite right. Like this character, it's because this person hasn't understood the character or
[25:00]doesn't understand the environment or doesn't understand the community that they're writing about.
[25:04]And they're just sort of inserting themselves into it or their beliefs into it. And so to me,
[25:09]I always enter a thing going, I don't understand what this world is. So I have to know everything.
[25:14]I have to know what the wallpaper is, what it smells like, you know, what this woman likes for
[25:18]breakfast. What's her favorite ice cream? You know, before I can really like, you know, what you see
[25:23]on the page has to be the tip of the iceberg because you have to really understand that world.
[25:28]You have to listen to your characters in order to actually bring them to life. Otherwise,
[25:31]they're not going to come across as false. And the other thing I would say that off of what
[25:37]Cheryl just said is that I always start novels with a question, you know, as opposed to an answer.
[25:45]I mean, the process of writing a book is a process of asking questions. What would it be like
[25:51]if you're this educated woman and with two little tiny children and your husband just moves you
[25:57]out into the middle of, you know, B.F., Mississippi. I don't even have running water. Like, what
[26:03]would that be like? So I feel like going into a book as Cheryl said with curiosity and not knowing
[26:11]and being determined to know and to make discoveries allows your reader to do that eventually as well.
[26:18]And that feels really exciting when it's really happened. When I'm sensing that in a novel
[26:23]that the author went through that, that's always really exciting to me.
[26:28]And if you live anywhere with the public transportation system, that's one of my favorite places
[26:33]to get ideas for either images or facial tics or whatever or dialogue. Because I always look,
[26:40]I'm only one subway and I look at people who are like, you know, not looking around them or have
[26:44]their earbuds in or they're talking to each other. And I go, you're missing out and there's like
[26:47]grand pageant, this pageantry of life around you. It's like, you know, like you listen, like,
[26:52]you know, you're going to hear dialogue. You're going to see people. You're going to see outfits
[26:56]and everything on the subway that you'll never see anywhere else. Like, you wouldn't have to make
[27:00]it up. Just write it down. Et cetera. There's a lot to be learned just from watching and listening,
[27:05]paying attention, serving secret weapon. Maybe not for erotica, but I don't know. I'll just leave that
[27:14]floating out there. Now I want to go back and try to now that I feel like I know you too a little bit
[27:18]figure out which essays you wrote. But anyway, good luck. Yeah, I'm probably you'll never be able
[27:22]to tell, which is probably good. I mean, whatever. Anyway, great to meet you. I hope to meet you both
[27:27]in real life since we're all in the city. And I'm sorry you weren't here and I have to start
[27:31]booking in person interviews again. And who knows, I'll probably just show up at the restaurant.
[27:35]Yeah, it's lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you too. Hi, I'm city Owens and you're listening to
[27:41]the award-winning podcast. Moms don't have time to read books. If you like this podcast,
[27:46]you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids. Check it out.
[27:51]And you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things. Moms don't have time to do. All
[27:56]the authors have been on this podcast. Also, check out my TikTok at with Zibi and Tracy. My
[28:01]other podcast, Sex Talk with Zibi and Tracy. Check out Moms Don't Have Time to Write on Medium.
[28:06]And of course, my new publishing company called Zibi Buggs. And now back to our daily author
[28:12]interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids. Hi, hello. Enjoy the show.