Jeff Hoffmann, OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN: A Novel
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
[0:18]their book, their life, and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?
[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir,
[0:28]bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature, wherever books are sold starting July 1st,
[0:34]and my children's book prints is charming.
[0:36]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com, but really, you're here to learn more about the authors,
[0:41]and that is what we're going to do.
[0:43]Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the Zcast podcast network.
[0:48]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com, and definitely check out those shows as well.
[0:58]Hi, everybody. Happy Father's Day to everyone out there who celebrates.
[1:02]I hope you all have a wonderful day.
[1:04]We do have a new show coming soon called Dad's Don't Have Time To, but I'm not going to spoil any surprises about that now.
[1:10]I hope you all have a really great day.
[1:13]The episode for today is about Jeff Hoffman's book called Other People's Children, a novel.
[1:19]Jeff quit a perfectly good job in IT consulting at the age of 47 to return to school to get his MFA infection.
[1:26]He enrolled at Columbia College, Chicago, with a cohort comprised of students closer to his children's age than his own.
[1:31]Jeff had started turning one of his short stories into a novel when it won the Madison Review's 2018 Chris O'Malley Prize infection.
[1:38]A few weeks after he graduated, Simon and Schuster bought Other People's Children.
[1:43]Jeff lives in Elmhurst, Illinois, with his wife and two children, and I hope you enjoy our episode. Happy Father's Day.
[1:51]Welcome, Jeff. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time To Read books to discuss Other People's Children.
[1:56]Thank you, Zibi. It's very exciting to be here.
[1:59]And I know I was just mentioning to you I have your hardback, but I've seen your amazing paperback and the new design and it's very cool and I really want to talk to you about.
[2:08]I mean, I kind of love the idea that Paperbacks let you rebrand a book altogether.
[2:12]Right. I mean, how involved are you in the two different covers and then I want to talk about the book itself.
[2:17]You know, I was involved in both the paperback covers actually one of the choices that was considered for the hardback.
[2:24]And was the one that I lobbied for, you know, the Simon Schuster chose the cover that they chose.
[2:32]And I just love the paperback version of it because it really prepares the reader for what they're going to read as part of the story.
[2:42]You know, I feel that the hardback, you know, kind of presents that is a love story to some degree.
[2:48]And it really, for me, it's a story about, you know, busted expectations and the story of literary suspense and their domestic suspense.
[2:59]And so I think the paperback just, you know, presents that more better and allows the reader to expect things more accurate.
[3:07]And could you tell listeners now what, what the book is about and then I want to ask you another step.
[3:13]Sure. So Gail and John Durban, there are 30 somethings living in downtown Chicago and they, they move to the suburbs when Gail first becomes pregnant.
[3:21]And she miscarries three times before they, they turn to adoption to build a family.
[3:27]Carly Brennan is a, you know, struggling teenager. She's pregnant and she chooses to place her, her baby for adoption and chooses the servants.
[3:38]And she feels like she's made the right decision until her dominary mother, you know, embarks upon campaign to change the decision and the difference bring my home and fall in love with her and start to mend their fractured marriage.
[3:53]And they have her home for about four days when they learned that Carly's chosen to reclaim her baby, she is ever right to do.
[4:00]And the Durban's rather than giving the baby back to sight to run and they disappear.
[4:06]I love how in fiction you can just live out like, what if we just did this?
[4:11]What is, right?
[4:13]I'm not really going to do it, but if you know, how would I do it?
[4:20]I was in a book club and some, some of the people are saying, I'm not sure.
[4:24]I, I, I'm not sure buying that this family would run and one of the women in the book clubs said, well, I was in this exact same situation in California.
[4:32]You have a year to reclaim your baby in California and she said, we had talked.
[4:38]You know, there was, for a while was on the edge and we had talked about what we ended,
[4:43]and we were going to go.
[4:44]And so, you know, it's something that people do the face.
[4:49]Oh, people will do all sorts of things for their children.
[4:52]And I think the line of when it becomes your child or not is very blurry, which you call attention to.
[4:58]So one of the main things, you know, so on the, on the, the last thing about the covers on the hardback,
[5:05]it says RJ Hoffman and you made the decision on the paperback to say Jeff.
[5:09]And I know there was some controversy, but some people didn't appreciate the fact that you were a man writing from women's point of view, which is ridiculous.
[5:17]And especially because John has many chapters of his own in here.
[5:21]So he's just one of many.
[5:23]And then you wrote this amazing article that fiction be fiction about sort of the right to decide what you can write about and who should write it and what stories you can tell, which I just thought was amazing.
[5:35]So true, and so important.
[5:38]And yeah, so tell me, tell me about both coming out is like the mail author here on this book.
[5:45]And the decision and all of that.
[5:47]Yeah.
[5:48]So the decision to go with initials was Simon and she's yours along with the cover.
[5:53]So my, my mother still will angry about that.
[5:57]Happy happy to see how things turned out with the paperback.
[6:00]And, and, you know, they put my picture on the cover.
[6:03]So it wasn't, we didn't hide the fact that I was a man or, you know, the correct print pronouns were used in the bio and all that.
[6:11]But I think they chose not to lead with that because it is, it's a story of, it's a story of families.
[6:17]It's a story of mothers.
[6:19]I certainly didn't set out to write a story about mothers.
[6:23]Actually, the, the short story that's was based upon this from John John's point of view on the entire.
[6:30]And, but then, you know, when I, when I started telling Carly side of the story, and she was a, you know, a birth mother right, he came.
[6:38]The, the birth father was gone.
[6:40]The, it really became, it shifted from John Gail's story to Gail and Carly's story in a lot of ways.
[6:47]And so you, there is a more representation.
[6:50]You know, when I wrote that, that PWP say, you know, I should say that I mean, I was real careful.
[6:56]distinguished between cultural appropriation.
[6:59]Yes, you are.
[7:00]And writing from a different gender, right.
[7:02]And I value a lot of the ton of the books that have come from the unvoices movement.
[7:08]And I certainly don't mean to, to say you can write whatever he wants and say whatever he wants by yourself.
[7:13]But I, I love the, you know, I, you know, one of my favorite books from the last few years was placement is in trouble.
[7:21]So good.
[7:22]And, you know, that, that's written from a, a man's point of view kind of wrapped in a woman's point of view.
[7:31]But if it's a man, it's a man's point of view that's being told from written by woman.
[7:35]And I just, she nailed it.
[7:37]Right.
[7:38]She just killed it.
[7:39]And that made the book better for me.
[7:41]So I, you know, I think that it's a conversation that our, our cultural will continue to have.
[7:46]And have it to participate in it.
[7:48]And I'm just terribly excited that my book got published.
[7:51]There's another book.
[7:52]I don't know if you've read it called what is missing about infertility and.
[7:55]And you should read that.
[7:57]Okay.
[7:58]It raises some of the same questions and is written by a man.
[8:01]Okay.
[8:02]About from women's point of view.
[8:03]It's really beautiful.
[8:04]But anyway, same, same type of thing that also has like a little triangle situation.
[8:08]But anyway, but your article too.
[8:10]I mean, you shared a lot.
[8:11]And can I just like quote from your article if I can find it.
[8:14]I can even read it.
[8:15]Let me get my.
[8:17]My middle age tokens here.
[8:19]Okay.
[8:20]So let me just jump to this.
[8:21]You said, was it my story to tell?
[8:23]I could.
[8:24]Well, let me start.
[8:25]Let me back up and make it a little bit better.
[8:26]I'm probably not the first new writer of that was funny that you're reading all your
[8:30]reviews.
[8:31]Some of the most impactful characters in the book are women.
[8:33]And the assumption that I was also a woman suggested that I had succeeded at some level
[8:37]and writing those characters well.
[8:39]My favorite reviews remain those that refer to me with female pronouns.
[8:43]I was troubled though by the reviewers who found it problematic that a man wrote the book.
[8:47]Other people's children tells the story of a couple who after struggling with infertility
[8:51]adopted baby girl, the birth mother decides to reclaim her child after four days.
[8:55]And the adoptive parents choose to run rather than return the baby.
[8:58]Was it my story to tell?
[8:59]I could tell you about the moment I first laid eyes on my own adopted children.
[9:03]I could tell you about the fierce love that hit me like waking from a deep sleep into a bright
[9:08]light.
[9:09]I could tell you that the book for me is about shattered expectations and the pain of separation
[9:14]from a child.
[9:15]I could tell you that my daughter was living in a residential treatment center while
[9:18]I wrote it, struggling with mood disorders, layered to top autism.
[9:22]And I could tell you about all the expectations that experience shattered for me.
[9:26]I could tell you that although other people's children is not my family story, our story
[9:30]litters, the margins of the book.
[9:33]Oh, that's really beautiful.
[9:35]Well, thank you.
[9:36]You talked to me about sharing your own feelings, but channeling it through other people
[9:40]and how fiction serves is such a great receptacle of that.
[9:44]And maybe touch on your own experience if you don't mind.
[9:47]Yeah, sure.
[9:48]You know, my daughter will talk about it as much as I will.
[9:51]I'm careful when I talk about that experience to try to talk about what I went through.
[9:58]And so that's part of it that I am.
[10:00]right that um there's part of it that my daughter owns that um it's her story to tell when
[10:05]she chooses to tell it. The uh when she when she was 13 or 12 or 13 when you know kind of puberty
[10:12]hit uh she has always had autism and uh bipolar disorder got later upon uh upon that which is uh
[10:20]can be a tough combination and it was a violent year for our family where a lot of a lot of
[10:27]things happened before you know with multiple hospitalizations and self-harmal violence and
[10:32]and you know before we made the heart wrenching choice and she was part of that choice enrolling her
[10:39]in the residential treatment center. So when uh and it was the toughest decision that the toughest
[10:46]time I've ever been through right and as I was going to I quit my job at 47 to go get an MFA
[10:54]and that was during the time that my daughter was gone and so I my first semester I wrote
[11:02]I wrote a bunch of short stories and I went there knowing I wanted right a novel right that was
[11:06]the thing and I wrote a bunch of short stories and and gosh I looked at him at the end of the
[11:11]semester to choose a novel out of from one of them and lo and behold every single one of them had
[11:17]this distance between a parent and a child right and I said well I guess that's I guess that's the
[11:22]theme that we're going to attack here and then I chose the one that that drew me the most again
[11:28]my children are adopted but they we didn't go through this adoption story and for me this is about
[11:34]you know you go into life you go into adulthood I should say thinking with all kinds of expectations
[11:41]everybody does about what what's going to be available to you what's going to be available to your
[11:46]children you know with happiness and opportunities and and being free from struggle and then
[11:52]you know it happens to all of us at some point and at some level that those expectations are
[11:59]are not met and this is for me the book was about what how do people react and how do people react
[12:08]when they're met with the shattered expectations and what do they what do they do about it
[12:13]and how do they treat others when when that happens have you found that a lot of people are
[12:19]reaching out to you as a result of your story to share their own experience I have and you know
[12:25]I hope that's what comes out of it right that you know people are able to you know see that what they
[12:30]what they see on Facebook every day is and what everybody experiences and unless last summer I
[12:36]my daughter had a rough year last year and she's doing much for it she's been home for since
[12:40]beginning a COVID so there there's you know if you ended right now there's a heavy ending
[12:45]um so how you friend the ending right she is but she had a rough year last year and we were going
[12:50]through a bunch of med changes and we were we were out at our lake house and I took a picture of
[12:55]a beautiful sunset and I posted it to Facebook I said it's really ideal it isn't it I said you
[13:00]my daughter and I are at the lake you know trying to survive some some medication changes after
[13:06]a hospitalization for for mental illness and I hope that helps somebody else out there that
[13:12]is a little scrolling through everybody's graduation pictures and prom pictures and understanding that
[13:18]you know it's not like that for everybody you know a lot of people responded to that and because
[13:23]everybody goes through stuff right and it's it's you know it's so easy to to you know present that
[13:31]beautiful side of things rather than the true side of things but then you miss out on all human
[13:37]connections then you're like completely as you know on the surface of the water is if you know
[13:43]there was nothing down below so yeah you could do it but what a loss that would be I mean there's
[13:48]also when you have a child with a future that's not as you predicted you also have that sense of loss
[13:56]like you are grieving something that you thought was happening something that you had assumed
[14:01]would be the case and then you have to not only confront the challenge of the every day
[14:06]but let go of what you thought yeah and that's a loss I mean that's also like I feel like
[14:12]people go through a lot of the grief response in addition but they don't know that and they
[14:16]so they beat themselves up or they're like why am I why am I denying it or blah blah blah
[14:20]yeah I think there was some application of that and everybody deals with it in different ways
[14:25]I know my daughter was younger you know when it was just autism we were dealing with those
[14:29]were like those were the days right but my wife would you know she would align all the therapies
[14:36]and do all the buy all the toys and get out the books and and and she dealt with it differently
[14:43]I said just stop and enjoy the moment right and then live in the moment she said I hate your
[14:49]optimism and I said it's not optimism is pessimism it's gonna get a lot worse
[14:54]but I said we got enjoy right now but I say that to speak to you know different ways of dealing
[15:01]but it's also you know they're with my I have great empathy for the struggles that my daughter
[15:07]goes through but she brings something to our family that no one else brings and you know she
[15:14]brings a very very different way of looking at the world that makes me laugh twice a day and
[15:19]three times a day and and so that that diversity and a very specific and metaphorical ways
[15:26]is you definitely made our family richer can you go back for a second to the decision to quit
[15:31]your job at 47 and get kind of like light and ride past that so what were you doing before
[15:39]how long did you want to be a writer and didn't do it professionally were you doing it on the side
[15:44]like give me that story yeah so I I was born I my parent my my father was a high school teacher
[15:53]and my mom was a dental hygienist so you know when when I was growing up and and the funny thing is a
[15:59]our TV broke when I was like second grade and they didn't replace it until we all hit the
[16:03]honor roll in the same quarter and that's it like two years and so back then there's nothing
[16:09]to do but read right so I read and this for kind of when I fell in love with it and but when I
[16:14]went to college I got a finance degree because I went to a mediocre college I went into IT because
[16:21]you couldn't get a finance job and so so I I started a company with borrowed two grand from my
[16:28]parents and started a company with a friend from college and we worked hard enough and we're lucky
[16:36]enough to be successful with them sold it and me you know four years later we bought another one
[16:41]do that sold it and so I you know I kind of I would say it kind of earned you know I was lucky
[16:48]say have the opportunity to do that but you know at the same time earned it and the I had written
[16:54]between those two companies for about a year and a half I wrote you know two books that will never
[16:59]see the right at the light of day for a very good reason and I'm decided hey if I'm going to do
[17:04]this I'm almost 50 you know always doesn't last forever I've always wanted to do this so I'm going
[17:09]to go I'm gonna go back to school and it was funny I told everybody work of course because they
[17:15]stopped showing up but but I I didn't tell any of my friends back at home the novel said in
[17:23]home her sets where I live and I my rule was that I went line like when somebody asked me how's
[17:28]work I would say well actually I'm going back to school and they say oh MBA and I'm like well
[17:32]hang on really though and then they after I told them what I was doing they just kind of stare at me
[17:37]for a long moment and then walk away or you know I was telling me about the novel that they were
[17:42]planning to write something so then I went back to school with a bunch of 23 year olds there was
[17:46]actually a retired woman who helped me you know feel part of the senior cohort but it was it was
[17:54]great I went and went through undergrad I did the bare minimum to get A's and B's and didn't learn
[18:02]much other than how to deal with people and which was a really important thing in the end and
[18:08]but when I went back to M from a MFA I knew how valuable this time was and I knew you know I
[18:15]have to work in so hard over the last three decades I I knew that this was my shot to do this
[18:20]thing that was really important to me so I spent 60 hours a week either right in the novel or working
[18:26]on schoolwork so I really treated it as a job and got way more out of it than I would if I did it
[18:34]when I was 24 and it was just trying to get my MFA I didn't really care if I got an MFA I wanted
[18:39]to novel out of the deal. Wow so how soon after you graduated did you write the novel and sell it?
[18:46]So the novel I started writing my the end of my first semester so I finished it it took five
[18:53]semesters to finish and I finished it at the beginning of my last semester and started submitting it
[18:59]and the Harvey Klinger my agent he I got about seven folks to read it and I did the cool the
[19:07]cool thing for me the thing that might maybe exciting for other writers is I kind of went through
[19:11]the front door I just sent things to people in New York I knew zero people in New York and sent it
[19:17]out to 45 agents and Harvey was one that replied and he said hey I really like it but you need to
[19:24]change all these things and so I spent two months rewriting it as I was you know hoping another agent
[19:29]would make me not rewrite it. They all rejected it and I resented to Harvey and we signed me up the
[19:37]first week of January and by the second week of January it sold at the time in Houston. Oh my gosh
[19:42]I was like what that was like my daughter was in she was still in the RTC at the time I was driving
[19:49]her home for a weekend visit and when Harvey called and I reacted in a way that you can only imagine
[19:56]and as you said this this is the happiest I've ever seen you.
[20:00]Is this the happiest day of your life?
[20:01]And I said, I said, yes.
[20:03]And then I had the common sense, yeah.
[20:05]It's a fact.
[20:06]It did it except for the day I married your mother
[20:09]and the day that I adopted you and your brother.
[20:12]Oh my gosh.
[20:14]Wow.
[20:16]That is a great.
[20:17]I love that story.
[20:18]That's such a wonderful success story.
[20:20]I love it.
[20:20]Actually, my, when I graduated from Business School,
[20:23]I tried to write a novel.
[20:25]I mean, I did write, I wrote a memoir that made it a novel
[20:28]and I worked at it for whatever.
[20:30]Anyway, that was my agent.
[20:31]My agent was Sarah Graham, but she worked
[20:33]without me clinger.
[20:33]Oh, really?
[20:34]Yeah.
[20:35]But they didn't sell my book, which they should, which
[20:38]I understand now.
[20:39]I understand.
[20:40]I understand on my first two as well.
[20:42]Yeah.
[20:43]I never should have.
[20:44]If there's one piece of advice, I feel like everybody
[20:47]needs to hear.
[20:47]It's like you must have two finished novels tucked away
[20:52]somewhere in your house.
[20:53]When you were saying that, I was like, I should design
[20:54]like a three novel storage file cabinet so that people know
[21:00]they need to fill up the first and second one
[21:02]before they have the third one.
[21:03]They can submit, you know, it's OK.
[21:05]It's not supposed to sell the first one.
[21:07]It takes more than 85,000 words.
[21:09]It takes about, you know, 750,000 words to get the word.
[21:13]That sounds, no, don't say that.
[21:14]I'm literally like so overwhelming.
[21:18]It makes me want to never type again.
[21:20]Oh, my goodness.
[21:21]Seven or 50, that's words.
[21:23]Oh, my gosh.
[21:24]Well, it shows that it can happen when you're ready.
[21:27]You know, that's the fun thing.
[21:29]And I was old enough.
[21:31]I was 51 or 50, I think, when I sold it.
[21:34]And I was just giddy.
[21:37]I couldn't sleep for it.
[21:38]Like I slept for like three hours a week
[21:40]to, because I would wake up and say, I have a novel.
[21:43]I'm going to have a novel.
[21:44]Oh, so big.
[21:45]I told my wife at the time.
[21:46]I'm like, you know, I'm old enough to realize
[21:49]that now is the best part, right?
[21:52]It's unsullied by whatever everybody else thinks
[21:55]and, you know, sales numbers and reviews and all that stuff.
[21:59]It's like I've done that thing.
[22:01]And the rest will be fun in its own way.
[22:05]I've had goosebumps like four times,
[22:06]as you've been telling me.
[22:08]I just keep like all I have to dance and it's so exciting.
[22:11]And yeah, what do you think it is?
[22:14]I mean, I feel the same way as you.
[22:16]I know every, like, so many authors do.
[22:18]Like I feel like there is no greater thing
[22:21]than like selling something you've been working on, right?
[22:23]Like getting that is at the valid day.
[22:25]Like, I mean, I literally can't explain as you,
[22:28]I mean, as you felt like there is nothing better.
[22:30]But why?
[22:31]Like, I don't know.
[22:33]Why is it such a big deal for writers?
[22:35]Like why do we get so excited?
[22:38]Is it that we need the validation so badly?
[22:41]Or is it that, do you know what I mean?
[22:43]Like, yeah, I hear you.
[22:44]Because I mean, I spent the rest of my career selling stuff,
[22:47]right?
[22:48]Right.
[22:49]I see services, right?
[22:50]Yeah.
[22:50]And those weren't nearly as fun.
[22:53]Sully companies was kind of fun.
[22:54]But for me, it was the lottery ticket idea, right?
[23:01]I was old enough to know that I was probably
[23:05]going to come out of my MFA with a book that would get rejected.
[23:08]And then I'd go back to do the next thing, right?
[23:11]And I knew going in, I was not going to be successful,
[23:15]but I was going to take the shot.
[23:16]And I'm saying it's part of it.
[23:19]And part of it is that things move so slowly
[23:24]in publishing from short stories all the way through
[23:27]to agents to novels, that this was one of those times
[23:32]where we're lightning struck.
[23:34]And I think the other part of it is
[23:37]that you put so much of your self into that novel,
[23:40]that I mean, I stared at that, I'd move those words
[23:45]around for $2,000, right?
[23:47]And on top of the four or 5,000 that I had already invested
[23:52]in trying to write.
[23:53]And with four people reading it and the five people reading it
[23:58]and nobody else caring.
[24:01]And so that there's a lot of, there's
[24:06]a lot of, it's kind of emotional risk when you set aside
[24:11]time in the middle of your life to tell people
[24:13]that you're going to go right in the novel and tell yourself
[24:15]that you can go right in the novel.
[24:17]I love reducing it to, I moved words around.
[24:21]I moved words around, when you said I moved words around
[24:24]for 2,000 hours, like that's it.
[24:26]Just writing is just moving the words around.
[24:28]Yeah, it's all it is, it's just moving the words around.
[24:30]It just words, the words and the word back.
[24:32]Little forklash just like we came up and putting it somewhere
[24:36]else, it's like in the sand.
[24:38]And so I heard you have a second novel coming out.
[24:41]What is that?
[24:42]I actually, it's with my agent right now.
[24:43]Oh, it's with your agent, okay.
[24:45]Second novel written.
[24:46]Yeah, so I started on my third.
[24:48]It's about four boys who 18-year-old
[24:51]who getting a fight in a Burger King parking lot is 18-year-old
[24:55]boys do and they kill one of the other boys
[24:58]in the second.
[25:00]And that is not what 18-year-old boys usually do.
[25:04]But that's it.
[25:05]I would say in my experience where I grew up,
[25:08]I felt like every other weekend it was kind of on the edge
[25:11]of that, right?
[25:12]And you know, everybody's seen that almost happened.
[25:15]I think most 18-year-olds boys have seen that almost happened.
[25:18]And so they're French or fell apart.
[25:21]They don't see each other until they're 15-year-old dies
[25:24]and they see each other at the funeral.
[25:26]And the dead man's wife happens to be a journalist
[25:30]and seems to know a few things.
[25:32]And all of them have, you know, kind of wrapped around
[25:35]that center is our stories in each of their lives
[25:39]about kind of the rots that happen with the lies
[25:45]that they told and withholding that they've done.
[25:47]And one of them is buried himself in corporate law
[25:51]and another ignored his family.
[25:53]Now there is becoming a broker of torsos
[25:57]for medical device companies and has a flawed relationship
[26:03]of his wife.
[26:03]And a third is a wonderful relationship
[26:05]of his wife and he's going to the trades.
[26:07]But he, his wife happens to be the prosecutor
[26:11]in the county that they killed that boy.
[26:14]So things are complicated.
[26:16]Wow, I'm just sick.
[26:17]So I like it.
[26:19]And you're working on a third, that's awesome.
[26:21]Yeah, yeah, so that's what I,
[26:23]that's what I've been doing right now.
[26:24]So I better get up at 7 a.m. and start writing.
[26:27]So that's why you were up early for the symphony.
[26:29]That's right.
[26:30]I have to understand now.
[26:32]I have to give my thousand words in.
[26:34]I have to give my thousand words in.
[26:36]I get it.
[26:37]Well, Jeff, thank you so much for chatting today.
[26:39]This was so fun.
[26:40]Thank you.
[26:41]I feel like this sense of pride in your work now, not
[26:44]perhaps, like I'm like, you've vested in it.
[26:46]I like want to hear about the success.
[26:48]And it's, it's very exciting when you know more
[26:51]of the backstory to, to enjoy them.
[26:54]Anyway, you know what I mean.
[26:55]Thank you for being excited about it.
[26:57]I'm, I still get goosebumps, so I tell that story.
[27:00]And that's what, you know, keeps me coming back
[27:02]to the desk every morning.
[27:03]Thank you so much for spending the time.
[27:05]Thank you.
[27:06]Thank you.
[27:07]All right.
[27:08]OK.
[27:09]Have a great day.
[27:10]OK.
[27:11]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[27:13]Don't have time to read books.
[27:15]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zebioans
[27:18]and at Moms.
[27:19]Don't have time to read books.
[27:20]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[27:23]and sign up for my virtual book club
[27:24]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:27]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[27:28]Heck, texture sound for the sound editing.
[27:31]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:33]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.