Amanda Bestor-Siegal, THE CARETAKERS: A Novel
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[0:58]Amanda Best or Siegel is the author of the caretakers a novel
[1:02]Which by the way was one of my favorite books that I read this spring
[1:05]I know this is taking forever for me to get this episode out
[1:08]And I'm sorry we have such a backlog, but don't let that influence you. This book was so wonderful and
[1:14]Really amazing so listen to our episode Amanda received her MFA from the Missioner Center for Writers
[1:20]You can receive Texas specializing in fiction and screenwriting her nonfiction work has been published in three penny review
[1:26]River teeth and salon
[1:27]Amanda lived in France for four years
[1:29]Before relocating to Austin, Texas. This is her first novel. Welcome Amanda. Thank you so much for coming on mom's
[1:36]Don't have time to read books to discuss the caretakers. Thank you for having me. It's nice to be here
[1:41]Okay, your book was so so good like really good
[1:47]Amazing writing. I care about these characters so much
[1:51]I didn't want it to end you created a whole entire world as a good novel should and I
[1:58]Was flipping paint while I was on online, but anyway flipping through as fast as I could to see
[2:05]What was happening, but then I but I didn't want to flip fast
[2:08]So I read every page like so carefully anyway. It was amazing
[2:12]Oh my god. Thank you for saying that. This is my first book
[2:15]So I'm still it's still really new when anybody has even read it at all let alone liked it
[2:19]So thank you. No, I really
[2:22]You know you never know what to expect like I read so many books and
[2:26]You just never know it can say it's sound it sounded good
[2:29]So you know I wanted to do it and I had read the first couple of pages, but I was so engrossed right away
[2:35]So I don't know bravo is really good
[2:38]Okay, well, let's back up
[2:39]Why don't you tell listeners what your book is about? Yeah, so the caretakers is a book about a community of Operes in a suburb of Paris
[2:48]And the book opens with
[2:50]The death of a child in the community who was reportedly alone at home with his own parent at the time
[2:55]And so she she is arrested and the book then goes back in time and it focuses on six women in the community and their points of view
[3:02]And their relationships with each other and it's three three French women in the town and then three Operes from the United States and
[3:10]It kind of explores how how them as communications between these women and and the ways that they're all sort of searching for things that they can't have
[3:19]the ways that those those desires
[3:21]Couldn't like run up against each other and ultimately have really tragic consequences
[3:26]So it's not it's really not a who done it at all
[3:29]It's more of a kind of how
[3:31]Done it or why done it rather so it's much more about the psychology of these women and and what it means to be a caretaker
[3:38]Especially when you're not being taken care of yourself
[3:41]Oh, so good
[3:42]I was particularly intrigued by Charlotte who has two kids from a prior marriage and then one child in question
[3:51]The second marriage also not a particularly lovely marriage and
[3:56]the rebellion of the teenage daughter the tragedy that happens to the older son
[4:02]How she handles everything which
[4:05]Blue blue my mind at every turn right? She doesn't have any of the reactions you would expect from a mother or a caretaker
[4:13]So to speak tell me about her character and how you developed it
[4:18]How like where we're supposed to be in her head all of that stuff. Yeah, so Charlotte
[4:24]It was actually the last character to make it into the book as a point of view character
[4:28]I think for a long time
[4:30]I was really afraid to be in her head because she's probably the character who's the most just different for me at
[4:35]psychologically
[4:36]materially all these ways and I
[4:39]I was I was scared to make that leap and I
[4:42]I'm really glad I did because I think it was a really it really pushed me as a writer
[4:46]But also just as a sort of human being to think about
[4:49]Yeah, as you said these kinds of reactions that are not necessarily and what you would expect from
[4:55]From a woman and specifically a mother and I think that really came for me from
[5:00]I think the book as a whole was inspired by I was working as a no pair in France
[5:04]So I didn't I didn't write this book while I was doing this
[5:08]But after I was finished and I was thinking a lot about just how even in myself
[5:13]I felt like my own reactions towards caretaking my own like
[5:18]Competences a caretaker wasn't necessarily what I always felt like was expected of me just innately like I don't I
[5:26]I felt really incompetent a lot of the time even though I really cared about my children
[5:30]I just felt like oh, I thought that this this kind of ability to take care of people and to
[5:36]Would be just like somehow like there must be some like feminine instinct
[5:40]It'll just come up and it kind of never did and I and so for me when I was writing about charlotte
[5:44]I was thinking a lot about okay, well
[5:46]I've had this experience as an au pair and I'm pushing it another step
[5:49]And I'm really exploring just in a lot of ways like what it would what it is to be a mother who
[5:55]Who loves her children in the way that I think like you can't not but also
[6:01]Is not necessarily a mother at her kind of core of who she is like she didn't plan to be a mother
[6:07]She
[6:08]Doesn't she's not particularly good at it in a lot of ways and she can't and she tries to compensate for it in the ways that she can
[6:15]So in charlotte's case, she's able to
[6:18]To offer this kind of material comfort for her children this security that that she didn't have growing up
[6:24]But then in a lot of ways that's not actually what her children need the most and that that conflict was something
[6:29]I was really interested in as I'm thinking about kind of different kinds of care, you know, there's there is material care
[6:36]And there's
[6:37]There's like love and acceptance like there's different ways that people take care of one another and I think a lot of the
[6:43]Characters in the book are are sort of receiving
[6:46]Some more than others and wanting some more than others and so
[6:49]Yeah, charlotte to me was really coming from a place of
[6:52]You know a caretaker who really feels lacking in certain areas and tries to compensate in others
[6:57]But but in her case, she's she's mother to children who are really
[7:02]Who are older who have really strong personalities really strong needs really strong desires
[7:07]They don't always line up with what charlotte
[7:09]Is feels able to give or is even able to really understand from them
[7:13]And so they're both kind of are just missing each other even though they you know
[7:17]Both daughter and mother want so badly to connect with each other
[7:21]Like I have to the image of the black skirt and the green underwear of
[7:26]That's in her party. Oh my gosh. It's like every parent's nightmare. It's like oh
[7:31]Like I've never thought my daughter another dress ever again
[7:34]Anyway, you know interestingly the au pair and I'm I'm so bad with names
[7:39]The au pair for the family who spends the weekend with
[7:42]Javez the teacher. Is that right? The teacher is one
[7:46]Blue oh, blue is open not Lou the other one the well
[7:50]Elena Elena. Sorry. Thank you
[7:52]So Elena when she is staying with the teacher says you know
[7:57]I I feel so bad
[7:59]For the families. I feel so bad for the kids. It's not fair
[8:02]It's not fair that I'm here
[8:04]That I'm a no pair that I'm gonna leave and then I have to leave the kids back to these crazy families essentially
[8:10]Right, it's like well, she is not sure if
[8:13]If there's even any value to her
[8:16]Care and caregiving if she's just going to leave and what do you do when you're inside of an ecosystem where ultimately
[8:23]You're just like you're plugging a leak because if for a second
[8:27]It's like your fingers on some sort of leak and you know
[8:29]You're about to like take it off and the water will come like flying out again
[8:32]Talk to me a little about that and her role in her assessment of the family essentially
[8:39]Yeah, I love that image of plugging the leak because it's it's not even just that it's a sort of temporary
[8:45]It's stoppage. It's also that next year like you'll be replaced with yes
[8:49]I think it's a different size cork like differently. It's like it's just always
[8:55]Yeah, I mean, I I think this was something I felt a lot while repairing
[8:58]It's it's such an intense experience to
[9:01]To really be the primary caretaker for somebody else's children
[9:05]Did you end up spending so much more time with them than their parents do and I think there's a kind of pressure that comes like I felt this kind of pressure
[9:13]Needing to to like make these kids into good people like I just felt like so responsible for them
[9:19]And at the same time I'm not their parent. I have one year with them
[9:22]And then you know they'll be raised by somebody else and and you know even
[9:28]Even that year. It's like I can't I'm just I'm not their mom
[9:32]And there's such a weird kind of gap there of
[9:35]Caring so much about them, but they're not yours and
[9:39]Ultimately, they are being formed by a family that you you live in and you're so close to but you don't have a say and like in the
[9:48]In so much about how they see the world and how they're being raised to kind of view people and
[9:54]And so it's just really complicated and I and I think I
[9:58]Yeah, Lena was a character who I
[10:00]I was definitely exploring that kind of feeling of,
[10:03]because she's somebody who I think for her own reasons
[10:06]is afraid to get too close to things.
[10:08]She's been very burned by family in the past.
[10:12]And so for her, it's this sort of dance of being
[10:16]really, really intimate with these people
[10:19]and wanting to do that job,
[10:24]like be there for those kids,
[10:25]be there in a way that I think
[10:27]she's noticing in this particular family
[10:30]that the parents are not, but also recognizing
[10:34]that there's only so, so much she can do
[10:36]and that it will be temporary.
[10:38]And I think as somebody who has been abandoned in the past
[10:42]for her, that's very painful for her to know
[10:44]that she's going to do that to somebody else.
[10:47]And I think that that's something
[10:48]that a lot of the au pairs in the book really struggle with,
[10:51]because I think for all of them for various reasons,
[10:53]part of the reason they're in France
[10:55]is because they're searching for some kind of belonging
[10:57]or family or acceptance that ultimately is,
[11:01]even if they can find it, it's going to be short-term.
[11:04]Like it's going to be limited.
[11:05]They're still an employee.
[11:06]Like there's so many kind of boundaries
[11:09]around what they actually, you know,
[11:12]how much they're actually able to get
[11:14]what they want from that experience.
[11:16]And so yeah, I think it's this dual,
[11:19]it's this duality of both the au pair kind of being a child
[11:22]and wanting to be accepted
[11:23]and then also recognizing that in a lot of ways,
[11:25]they're about to do to the children,
[11:27]what they maybe have experienced before of, you know,
[11:30]they're going to leave.
[11:31]And like, what is it to really leave an impact on a child
[11:35]to try to help raise a child be there for them,
[11:37]especially if their parents are kind of absent and then,
[11:40]and then to, you know, in June.
[11:43]That was my job, bye.
[11:44]Yeah.
[11:45]It's a really, yeah, it's a complicated thing
[11:48]to grapple with, especially when you're still
[11:50]really young yourself.
[11:52]I've never been in au pair
[11:54]and I've never hired an au pair
[11:56]or worked with an au pair as a mother,
[11:58]but I was a mother's helper for a summer, for a family.
[12:02]I didn't live with them, but I was there, you know,
[12:04]every day and I babysat a lot growing up
[12:07]because I love, I mean, I still love kids,
[12:08]but I gravitated to those types of jobs
[12:11]before I was old enough to have regular jobs.
[12:13]And I'm still like, they're still,
[12:16]you know, there's that thing where the more you care
[12:19]for something, the more you love it.
[12:21]Like sometimes it is the act of caring for something.
[12:24]This is, it even happens with animals, right?
[12:26]Like you form these bonds and attachments.
[12:29]Sometimes just for the sake of caring.
[12:31]Now I have in the love of the girl I took care of
[12:33]and I'm still in touch with her
[12:34]and she's wonderful and I'm in touch with the family,
[12:36]but you never quite get over that feeling,
[12:40]that like, and the, you know, how you describe it
[12:43]as almost like an interloper, right?
[12:44]Like it's not your family, but yet you have
[12:48]a critical role of a sudden, I don't know.
[12:50]It's just, and now as a mom, when I have to hire people
[12:54]to help with my kids, not as no parents, like,
[12:57]I don't know.
[12:58]And then I'm so worried, like what if somebody
[13:00]hears from now, like writes about, like, I was like,
[13:03]I don't know, I mean, I think I've been pretty nice,
[13:06]but, you know, just like, you know, everybody's family
[13:09]is a little bit nuts, right?
[13:11]Like everyone has their idiosyncrasies,
[13:13]not like these families in your book.
[13:14]I mean, my family is not like these families were pretty nice,
[13:17]but just anybody coming in from the outside
[13:20]to see the particularities of a family
[13:23]is just, I don't know, very interesting
[13:25]and makes me very nervous.
[13:28]No.
[13:28]Yeah, I mean, I think it's also,
[13:30]it's sort of doubly complicated in this case
[13:33]because it's in another country.
[13:34]So it's like, you're, you know, yeah,
[13:36]you are an interloper in this family,
[13:37]but also in this culture.
[13:39]Like, there's so much about the way that, you know,
[13:42]in my host family, my host family was not,
[13:44]like, the families in the book.
[13:45]I had a really lovely family, but, you know,
[13:48]they were French, and it was fascinating to see
[13:51]even just some of the more subtle ways
[13:53]that children are sort of reared and disciplined
[13:56]and all is so different from culture to culture.
[13:59]And so, yeah, you really, it is really strange
[14:02]to kind of be in the inside,
[14:03]but also, yeah, this kind of objective observer
[14:07]in some ways.
[14:08]And I don't know.
[14:10]I don't think you should be worried.
[14:11]I think I'm not.
[14:12]I'm thinking a little part of what I know.
[14:16]I actually, when I was a teenager,
[14:18]I lived with a French family for a summer
[14:21]back when I could speak French very well.
[14:22]And, you know, now I can barely even, like, form a sentence.
[14:27]But that was another way of seeing, you know,
[14:29]this girl who was about my age,
[14:31]but she was living in this house in the South of France.
[14:34]And like, what her life was like,
[14:36]and I took French classes in the neighborhood.
[14:37]I don't know.
[14:38]So I feel like I relate it to sort of,
[14:39]like, it's some bits and pieces as, I don't know,
[14:42]which just like made the book even more sort of relevant, I guess.
[14:45]You know, I was also interested in your depiction
[14:48]of the men in this story,
[14:49]because in some ways they're supporting characters,
[14:52]but they all have their own issues too,
[14:54]particularly the two neighbors
[14:55]and their relationship with their wives.
[14:57]And also how like dissatisfied they are.
[15:01]You know, as a, like, tell me about the men
[15:03]and how you crafted their characters.
[15:06]And did you think about having a perspective
[15:10]of one of them at all?
[15:11]Because men, of course, are caretakers.
[15:13]And their own right or was it only that women?
[15:15]And actually, maybe you should just go back for a second
[15:18]and you said that that character came last,
[15:19]which I found shocking.
[15:21]Who did you start with?
[15:22]How did this whole thing come about?
[15:24]Like, when you began writing,
[15:25]was it always multiple point of view by chapters?
[15:27]Was there ever one narrator talk about that for a minute?
[15:31]And then lead up to the met.
[15:33]Yeah, for sure.
[15:34]Yeah. So when I started,
[15:35]I started with Lou,
[15:36]who is the first or the air perspective that we hear from.
[15:39]And I did know at the beginning
[15:41]that I was writing something
[15:44]that would have a lot of different points of view.
[15:46]I think when I first started,
[15:47]I was really focused on the au pairs.
[15:49]So I never, at that time,
[15:51]I didn't necessarily think I was gonna have
[15:53]non-au pair points of view.
[15:54]And so that was one of the big changes
[15:57]as the book grew was realizing that this wasn't
[16:01]because the book is so much about miscommunication
[16:03]and people missing each other.
[16:04]It was actually really important to me
[16:05]to have kind of both sides of it,
[16:07]both like the family perspectives as well as the au pairs,
[16:11]both American and French.
[16:12]And so, and I wanted,
[16:14]and that I wanted a balance of those points of view.
[16:16]So that was kind of how I landed on these six women
[16:19]in particular.
[16:20]I, the only male character who I ever even considered
[16:26]writing a point of view from,
[16:28]but honestly, even the consideration was pretty brief,
[16:30]was Victor.
[16:32]Yeah, as the older brother in the main family were with.
[16:34]And I love Victor.
[16:35]He's one of my favorite characters.
[16:37]I just think he's really complicated
[16:39]and tragic in a lot of ways.
[16:41]But yeah, I think for me,
[16:42]I just made the decision that I did,
[16:47]at least in this particular book,
[16:49]I think there's a version of this book
[16:50]that has points of view of the fathers as well.
[16:52]I think that would be fascinating.
[16:54]I think for me, I really was interested in,
[16:58]in the way that caretaking falls on women specifically.
[17:01]And then, and particularly what that looks like
[17:04]when it falls on women who for various reasons
[17:06]are not actually, again, good at it
[17:08]or even know how to do it,
[17:10]whether because of their age
[17:11]or because of their background or their own upbringing,
[17:14]there's, you know, none of the women in this book
[17:17]are great at caretaking and all for kind of different reasons.
[17:22]And that's something that,
[17:23]like that is the thing that I wanted to explore in them.
[17:25]And so as a result of that,
[17:26]I think the male characters are,
[17:28]they are really sidelined,
[17:29]but part of that is because at least in this world,
[17:32]in this particular community,
[17:35]I think that those caretaking roles are quite gendered.
[17:38]It was something that I really observed
[17:40]when I was, when I was in France,
[17:42]I think it, you know, it depends on where you are.
[17:44]It's also really class based,
[17:46]but especially in that, that kind of upper,
[17:50]like upper middle class high class society
[17:52]in the suburbs of Paris,
[17:53]like it's, I was kind of shocked by how,
[17:56]how staunch those, those gender roles were.
[17:59]And so it made sense to me that, you know,
[18:02]focusing on caretaking specifically, you know,
[18:05]I'm really looking at how that affects the women
[18:08]at this kind of, it just automatically falls to.
[18:13]But yeah, now Victor, Victor was the closest I got.
[18:15]And that was something I'm most slightly pathetic, right?
[18:19]About, like I feel like the image of the man
[18:23]in that, in that gold plaza at today room,
[18:26]you know, as she's running off,
[18:27]it's just so, it's like, it's kind of pathetic.
[18:30]You just want to be like, oh my gosh.
[18:32]Anyway, I don't know.
[18:34]He would be really neat if you wrote a sequel
[18:36]that was all the men.
[18:38]I don't know, that would be interesting.
[18:39]Really.
[18:40]You never thought about doing it
[18:42]until you just asked me this.
[18:43]And I'm like, whoa, that would be fascinating.
[18:46]Wouldn't that be really cool?
[18:47]That would be really neat.
[18:48]Wait, so I feel like I don't know enough about you.
[18:50]So I know you're an Austin now
[18:52]and I know you were a French au pair,
[18:54]fill in the rest of your life.
[18:57]Yeah, well, so I moved to France in my early 20s
[19:01]and then I ended up waiting back up.
[19:02]Where did you grow up?
[19:03]Oh, okay, I grew up in DC, Washington DC
[19:06]and my parents actually met in Paris.
[19:10]So they both lived in Paris when they were teenagers
[19:12]and spent many years there.
[19:13]That's where they met.
[19:14]So I kind of grew up with like,
[19:16]they both spoke French and I sort of had this,
[19:18]even though I'm not, you know, French,
[19:21]successfully or anything.
[19:22]I think I grew up very much like thinking of Paris
[19:26]as sort of my like constant birthplace in a way.
[19:28]And so yeah, when I, when I was in college,
[19:32]my mom actually passed away right before I graduated
[19:35]and that, yeah, but it's weird looking back
[19:40]because I did not think that was connected
[19:41]to me moving to France and, you know,
[19:43]later realized that was a very big part of it.
[19:45]But I think that really was a sort of before and after
[19:48]for me in my life where it just completely changed
[19:51]the course of everything that I was doing.
[19:54]And I moved to France to au pair originally,
[19:57]I think because I was just, you know,
[19:59]I was.
[20:00]just so I was not processing my grief at all.
[20:02]And I just needed to kind of reset.
[20:04]I'd always wanted to live in France.
[20:05]I spoke French.
[20:06]I'd never, you know, really spent time there.
[20:09]And so that was where the move came from
[20:12]and the o' pairing.
[20:13]When I asked what happened to your mom,
[20:15]you don't have to talk about it.
[20:16]Oh, yeah, she was sexually hepatitis.
[20:20]She was like very chronically ill.
[20:21]And it had been a kind of on and off throughout my life.
[20:24]But when I was 21, it was a pretty quick,
[20:27]like diagnosed in June, passed away in August.
[20:30]And then I went back to school for my final year.
[20:32]So it was traumatic.
[20:34]And I really like, I kind of got through college
[20:38]because I felt like I had to.
[20:40]But when I graduated, I was pretty lost.
[20:42]And I think again, like this all ties in with the book,
[20:44]like I really, I was someone who I think
[20:47]went to France not totally understanding
[20:49]what I was looking for.
[20:50]And I didn't realize until I was there,
[20:51]like how much I needed for other people
[20:56]and how strange it was to be in this caretaking role
[20:58]when I had just lost my own caretaker
[21:01]and to live in a family when I felt like I no longer
[21:04]had my own, if that was so fraught.
[21:06]And so yeah, I mean, I didn't know how long I was gonna be
[21:10]there when I lived there.
[21:11]It was very much everything is bad.
[21:13]I just need to reset.
[21:15]I need to figure out what I'm doing.
[21:16]I need to get away.
[21:17]And then I ended up staying for most of my 20s.
[21:19]So yeah, I lived in France for almost, yeah,
[21:24]about four and a half years.
[21:26]And then I moved to Austin
[21:27]because I did an MFA program.
[21:29]Like I just, I wanted to have some more time
[21:32]to focus on writing.
[21:33]So I came back to the States.
[21:35]And yeah, that's kind of where I am now.
[21:38]I just graduated last year and feel really lucky.
[21:41]I happened to fall in love with Austin.
[21:43]But yeah, for a long time, I thought I might just stay
[21:45]in France.
[21:46]I really, I mean, I loved it there.
[21:48]But it's complicated.
[21:50]I think it's complicated when you move to a place
[21:53]to kind of run from or process grief.
[21:56]It becomes, in a lot of ways, Paris is home to me,
[21:59]but it's also a very painful home, if that makes sense.
[22:03]Yeah.
[22:04]It's almost like Lou when she, and the teacher asks,
[22:07]like, don't you have anybody you need to call?
[22:10]And she was like, no.
[22:12]I feel like it's like that moment.
[22:14]Like who am I supposed to call when I'm lost?
[22:16]And I'm, you know, I don't know.
[22:19]When you're, there's a way that same feeling,
[22:23]I feel like she had maybe, maybe not.
[22:26]But it's like the irony of, I'm here
[22:28]because I have no one to call, like, I've come all this
[22:32]distance because there's nobody.
[22:34]Yeah.
[22:35]And that I think that was, I mean, so many repairs
[22:38]do not have stories like that.
[22:40]Like there's plenty of people who are just, you know,
[22:43]taking a gap year, like want to learn a language,
[22:45]want to, you know, be exposed to another culture.
[22:48]But I think for me and a lot of the people
[22:50]that I was drawn to, a lot of the other young women
[22:53]I was drawn to, it was, there are quite a few of us
[22:56]who had these kind of really before and after sort of crisis
[23:00]moments that led us to do this thing.
[23:02]And, and that we hadn't really processed.
[23:06]And that's kind of why we were there.
[23:07]And I think when you add in the degree, you know,
[23:10]that element of like, Andrew also supposed
[23:13]to be this authority figure and taking care of someone
[23:15]when you're basically a child and you're still
[23:18]grappling with your own kind of lack of care.
[23:20]It's like, it just gets so complicated
[23:23]and, and especially for a place like Paris,
[23:25]which is so idealized, I think there's just a lot,
[23:28]this big idea that like you'll, you know,
[23:30]you'll find yourself, you'll become someone different.
[23:33]I think even with my family history with Paris,
[23:35]I still had this very idealized view
[23:38]of what would happen to me there.
[23:39]And it ended up changing my life, but not,
[23:43]because it, not in the ways I expected it,
[23:45]like really forced me to actually deal with grief
[23:48]in a way that I was trying to run for emultimately.
[23:50]So yeah, I think that's where a lot of the
[23:53]au pair characters came for me.
[23:56]So did you write this as part of your MFA?
[23:59]So I actually mostly wrote it while I was in France.
[24:01]The, I was, I was, I worked as an au pair that first year.
[24:04]I didn't write at all.
[24:05]I was just living it.
[24:06]And then I started to write it after I finished that job.
[24:11]And then I, I had almost finished by the time I,
[24:14]I started my MFA, but the MFA really, my program was,
[24:19]it's almost more like a fellowship at UT Austin.
[24:22]They, they, we end up only having nine hours of class a week.
[24:25]We don't have to teach.
[24:26]We're honest on a big fellowship every year.
[24:28]So it really, it gave me the chance to just finish the book
[24:31]in a way that I did not have time in France.
[24:34]I think, I think also like while I was living in France,
[24:37]I was constantly, I was getting so many ideas all the time.
[24:40]Like it was so stimulating and the book just kept growing and growing.
[24:43]And in some ways, I think being back in the States and kind of cutting off
[24:46]the inspiration pipeline also allowed me to finish.
[24:50]Like it just forced me to sort of time capsule it and let it be, you know,
[24:55]let it just be done.
[24:56]So I, I finished it during the MFA.
[24:59]And then you just, and then you did the MFA help you like get an agent and sell it
[25:02]and everything to give me like the one minute version of that story.
[25:05]Yeah, kind of, well, yeah, so my, my program was three years.
[25:09]And I actually, I finished the book the summer between my second and third year
[25:14]and ended up, I had a really fairytale experience.
[25:16]This is not like the gold standard, like a standard of what to expect.
[25:20]I think I queried agents in September and ended up signing and selling the book
[25:24]within a month.
[25:25]It was a ridiculously like fairy tale.
[25:28]And that was my, you know, my final year at school.
[25:31]So that final year was kind of weird.
[25:34]I don't really know what I'm doing anymore.
[25:35]I'm kind of, I did it.
[25:37]I did the thing.
[25:38]But I think for me, it was actually, it was mostly really COVID, like kind of lit this
[25:43]fire under my butt because it was COVID hit my second year.
[25:46]And it really was this, like, oh God, I'm going to work while I'm going to graduate
[25:50]into this.
[25:51]Like there's no jobs.
[25:52]There's no, like we basically were forced to graduate early mentally, I think.
[25:57]And so I hadn't planned on sending my book out that early.
[26:01]and I did because I, I kind of panicked, just like, I have to, I have to start doing
[26:06]something before I graduate.
[26:08]So yeah, I mean, the MFA doesn't, it doesn't literally give you an agent or anything like that.
[26:14]But it was, it was, yeah, I mean, I even being able to just have that community to talk
[26:19]to and get recommendations for, you know, who to query and how to query.
[26:24]That was really, it was really helpful.
[26:27]But yeah, my agent who's wonderful is somebody who I just, I queried because she represented
[26:32]another author I love.
[26:33]And I just, who is your agent?
[26:35]Suzanne Gluck at WME.
[26:38]So she, I really, really love Julia Phillips, a disappearing earth, I think another book
[26:43]that's sort of like.
[26:44]Yeah.
[26:45]Yeah.
[26:46]Yeah.
[26:47]Yeah.
[26:48]It's kind of interested in similar.
[26:49]Yeah.
[26:50]Just just themes.
[26:51]And so I just looked up your agent wasn't queried her agent.
[26:53]And amazing.
[26:54]That worked out amazingly well.
[26:56]But by the way, I still, I mean, I like your cover a lot.
[27:01]But I feel like you, did you ever think about doing like the singed flower from the
[27:07]flowerbed?
[27:08]Yes.
[27:09]That's hilarious.
[27:10]You're saying that.
[27:11]Yeah.
[27:12]When I was, we actually talked about that and the, my editor, the marketing team, you
[27:16]know, fairly were like, there's a lot of flowers on covers.
[27:19]Like, there's just a lot of them, like, we should, but yeah, I, I, as far as images
[27:24]go, I think that I, I do like, you know, obviously the book's about taking
[27:28]care of children.
[27:29]But I think there's a lot of imagery in there about plants as well.
[27:33]And just like other, other ways we mess up living, living things, there's definitely
[27:38]some violence against flowers in the world.
[27:40]Yeah.
[27:41]Do you have another book in the works?
[27:43]I do.
[27:44]Yeah.
[27:45]I can't say too much about it.
[27:46]Yeah.
[27:47]I'm working on it.
[27:48]And what about film adaptation, is that in the works of this one?
[27:52]Yes.
[27:53]Yeah.
[27:54]So I also, that it's still like very, very early stages, but, but yeah, there is, there
[28:02]is a, a team working on that.
[28:04]And I think that idea is a kind of limited mini series sort of thing where, you know, it,
[28:10]it's almost sort of like kind of like big little lies where it's kind of, yeah, it's like
[28:15]it contains story, but there is sort of, I think space, if it ever wanted to extend, you
[28:20]know, that world, all the au pairs, the fact they change over every year kind of lends
[28:23]itself to future stories.
[28:25]So my gosh, I'm so excited, I'm really excited.
[28:27]I am so glad I read this book.
[28:31]I am very excited to recommend it.
[28:33]Far and wide, you're such a great talent and you're so young and I can't wait to see what
[28:37]you do.
[28:38]Like it's really cool and it's just very inspiring.
[28:42]It's great to, to just like open a book and see all this great talent and intrigue and,
[28:48]I don't know.
[28:49]It was just really cool.
[28:50]It was great.
[28:51]I'm really excited for you.
[28:52]Thank you.
[28:53]And for having me on the podcast too, this wonderful, I'm really happy, it was great.
[28:58]Really great.
[28:59]Okay.
[29:00]Thank you.
[29:01]Wonderful rest of your day.
[29:02]Okay, you too.
[29:03]Thanks for the early morning podcast.
[29:05]The course.
[29:06]Okay, take care.
[29:08]Has to play.
[29:09]Bye bye.
[29:10]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:15]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to
[29:19]Read Books.
[29:20]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my website.
[29:23]My virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:26]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[29:31]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.