Karen Winn, OUR LITTLE WORLD: A Novel
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[1:28]Karen wind is the author of our little world a novel Karen received her MFA from Farley Dickinson University
[1:35]She also holds a doctoral degree in nursing born and raised in New Jersey
[1:38]Karen now lives in Boston with her husband and two children our little world is her first novel
[1:43]Welcome Karen. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss our little world
[1:48]Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I could not stop reading this book
[1:53]It was so immersive. I feel like this is such a good example of like what the type of book
[1:58]I'm trying to like produce myself the zivi books because there is such a strong sense of place and voice
[2:04]I didn't want to stop reading your like you created such real characters. I cared about all of them
[2:10]I wanted to know what was gonna happen next. Anyway, I just really really enjoyed it. It was really was good
[2:15]Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks. Okay, so tell listeners
[2:20]What your book is about please? So our little world. It's a coming-of-age story with a looming mystery
[2:26]It's set in the 1980s in a small idyllic New Jersey town
[2:31]And the story is about these two sisters
[2:34]Be in Audrina be's a rising seventh grader and really how their relationship fractures when a neighborhood girl goes missing
[2:43]Very interesting. Well, there is so much
[2:46]I mean even the front the point of view of the parents and the towns people and how this affected the whole community and
[2:54]Yeah, and then even I was really interested in and
[2:57]I don't know. I don't know
[2:58]I hope it's not giving anything away if so. I'll cut this part out
[3:00]But the diabetes storyline. Can I wait to talk about that or is that a secret?
[3:05]I mean, can we talk about it without talking without naming it? Sure. Yeah, yeah
[3:10]It was also really interesting how you had one of the sisters develop a medical issue
[3:15]And how that affects a family because when somebody is sick and suddenly all the attention is on one sibling
[3:23]What happens to the other sibling right? What happens then? So tell me about how this whole story came to be
[3:30]Especially the missing child angle was this like from a place of fear of your like where did this?
[3:37]What if come from for you and then go through with the siblings? So
[3:41]The story inspiration so the town of Hammond is a fictionalized
[3:47]It's a small 5,000 person town a very safe community where nobody ever goes missing and
[3:54]It is a fictionalized version and anagram of my hometown Menda, New Jersey. Oh
[4:01]I did grow up in this bubble in this idyllic neighborhood in town and I
[4:08]Has a writer and draw and reader and drawn to
[4:13]Exploring those darker elements those cracks and relationships and families and towns and so
[4:21]I really just wanted to almost insert a tragedy into the childhood that I knew and see what happens
[4:28]The actual starting point for this story. So what happens is there's this family from Boston that moves to Hammond across the street from
[4:37]B and her sister Aldrina and
[4:40]There's cute max baker and then his little four-year-old sister Sally and it's been a week of rain
[4:45]It's 1985 and these kids have been cooped up and finally they have this beautiful day
[4:50]And they decide to go swimming at the local lake and they go there
[4:54]So it's B and Aldrina and Max and Sally and Sally goes missing and that
[5:01]Specific incident. I also drew on from my own childhood. So there was this lake
[5:05]Sunrise lake, which is what deer chase lake in the book is based on an ice to go swimming there as a child
[5:12]And I used to love just some underwater my mom used to call me a fish and
[5:17]One time I was there and you know kept dipping underwater and coming back up and when I resurfaced
[5:23]I saw everybody exiting the lake and I wasn't sure why
[5:26]So I followed them out and there was mass confusion on
[5:30]It had this little sandy beach on the sandy beach and
[5:34]I hadn't even heard the lifeguard blow the whistle
[5:37]But he must have I was just underwater so I didn't hear it
[5:40]And I was trying to find my mom and finally I found her and
[5:46]She just had this like panic looked on her look on her face and the lifeguard
[5:51]Who was probably this really nervous high schooler lifeguard was literally grabbing girls and saying is this her?
[5:58]And then I realized that my mom couldn't find me so that was
[6:01]They had emptied the lake and it's one of those moments in childhood that are just one of those visceral memories and and it
[6:09]Oh, we stayed with me and from a writing standpoint
[6:13]I just thought you know you talked about the inciting incident right what sets into motion the story
[6:17]I just thought it was a great starting point for a story like what if I
[6:22]Or someone else had gone missing that day
[6:25]So but his fiction I you know never knew anyone who went miss me
[6:28]So I feel so bad for your mom
[6:30]So she went through that
[6:32]Yeah, and as I'm on now I told you kids I totally appreciate that so yeah
[6:36]I was on the beach once where somebody thought somebody was missing and everybody stood up to look and
[6:41]Parents were freaking out and the daughter the girl turned up. She had like walked down the beach
[6:46]But there is this collective like oh my you know everybody stands and is looking
[6:52]And I'm like who are we looking for like and there's just the the pant like just
[6:56]Object panic that are you really in the middle of this like horrific moment in someone's life or not
[7:03]So right. Yeah, you're just waiting. Yeah, right. You're just waiting
[7:07]And is it do you just keep waiting
[7:10]And then that's obviously the waiting just
[7:13]You know get stretched out and if the terrible happens, right
[7:16]Or is there some sort of more immediate resolution like the girl walking down the beach right
[7:21]This was in but was that maybe the lost daughter. Did you see that didn't it was with?
[7:27]British actress who I think was nominated for everything this year
[7:30]But there is a scene where she's in the speech and like a girl
[7:33]I mean, it's not that it's so but anyway, you might want to watch it
[7:37]I think that's what it's called
[7:38]Anyway, it doesn't matter. Yes, so tell me more
[7:42]Okay, so you have that tell me about the sister relationship
[7:44]But I know you have a sister who we're just chatting about
[7:47]Tell me about that and sort of introducing this illness component because I did find that piece very compelling to with
[7:54]One of them having more not mental, but you know
[7:57]Hair pulling like more mental challenges in the moment and one more physical challenges in the moment
[8:03]Yeah, so like you alluded to earlier
[8:06]I was really interested in so the story is is this girl goes missing
[8:11]But it's really about how her disappearance sets into motion
[8:15]All this other stuff that happens with the sisters with the with the family with the neighborhood with the town
[8:21]And I was just really interested in exploring those
[8:26]Cracks kind of beneath the surface and how they rise up when something like this can happen
[8:31]So with the sisters in particular, so I do have a sister. We're very close
[8:36]But you know, I was really interested in exploring those
[8:40]Those moments in
[8:43]Sisterhood that you know, aren't so wonderful and then kind of pushing on those and and making those more heightened
[8:52]And so I did that and then also with the relationship with the parents and other stuff
[9:00]I'm really interested in the kind of drama that can occur within relationships and then in terms of how
[9:07]This like this tragedy affected everyone involved
[9:10]So these two sisters. So one of them does develop more of a
[9:14]So I wanted her to basically to have some physical response to the trauma of this missing girl
[9:21]And there's also something that
[9:23]Be my protagonist does that day at the beach and we give away too much
[9:27]But essentially she takes something that maybe could be an evidence
[9:31]Crime evidence and she takes it because she wants it and then that's all I'm going to say about that
[9:36]But that guilt of that action is also weighing on her
[9:39]So we have the trauma of this four-year-old girl who's got missing and the guilt of this action and then
[9:45]There's a lot of sibling rivalry and tensions in this household
[9:50]And I wanted her to have some sort of physical manifestation of all of this
[9:55]And so I
[9:57]Thought what could I do and I was doing
[10:00]Some research and essentially, I guess we're not giving away
[10:03]too many spoilers, but she starts to lean her hair.
[10:06]So I dove deep into trick-to-tillomania,
[10:09]which is what that's called and all of that.
[10:11]And I've been nursing background.
[10:13]I've worked as a registered nurse and our practitioner.
[10:16]And I have my doctoral degree in nursing,
[10:18]so I have a lot of medical experience in order to,
[10:22]and also the research component I could carry out as well.
[10:26]I'm so kind of dove deep into what that would have been
[10:29]like in the 80s, and also there's this other,
[10:32]there's actually a chronic, very devastating illness
[10:35]that occurs with the other sister, Madrina.
[10:38]And I'm like a big boy, spoilers.
[10:39]There are some I'm going to talk about what it is,
[10:42]but I was interested in, so from the start,
[10:46]she always had this in my mind.
[10:48]It would only matter of it kind of coming out,
[10:51]the timing that it did.
[10:52]And I think as someone who's just been so entrenched
[10:57]in the medical field,
[10:59]I just feel like illness is kind of always there,
[11:02]either waiting to occur or part of somebody.
[11:06]And so I feel like illness just makes its way into my writing.
[11:11]And from the start, Adriana in my mind was this,
[11:14]she's the perfect sister, quote unquote,
[11:16]and he's very jealous of her
[11:18]because she's kind of the family favorite and beautiful one.
[11:21]But I wanted her, she was very vulnerable in my mind
[11:24]from the start.
[11:25]And this condition that she develops contributed
[11:29]to her vulnerability and really kind of made her very raw
[11:33]in so many different ways.
[11:35]So interesting.
[11:36]Wow.
[11:37]Wait, so tell me about the intersection of writing and nursing.
[11:40]Did you want to do both of those things your whole life?
[11:43]Or when did the writing piece,
[11:45]when did you find were you working full-time as a nurse
[11:47]and writing this book?
[11:48]Like tell me if the trajectory of those careers.
[11:51]Yeah, so I've always had these two loves,
[11:53]medicine, nursing, and writing.
[11:55]And I've always done both.
[11:57]And I mean, even in college,
[12:00]I took some extra writing classes.
[12:02]And then when I was working full-time
[12:04]as a registered nurse, I did a low residency MFA.
[12:08]I'm so I was always pursuing writing.
[12:10]And I had to focus more on like one
[12:13]versus the other different points in my life.
[12:16]And then I would say in 2016 was when I really got serious
[12:20]about this novel idea that I'd been kicking around
[12:23]for a while.
[12:24]But I've been in a writing group here in Boston since 2009.
[12:27]We're still going strong.
[12:28]We meet monthly.
[12:29]So I really have pursued these two interests from the start.
[12:33]But yeah, I was saying the last few years,
[12:35]I really was when I was like, okay,
[12:36]if I'm not going to do this, when am I going to do this?
[12:38]And I, at the time I was working as a nurse practitioner
[12:42]and I took some time off work to work on the novel.
[12:46]And I had my mom come up from New York.
[12:48]I love in Boston.
[12:49]She came up from New Jersey and watched,
[12:50]I have two kids watch the kids.
[12:53]And I actually, instead of going to work,
[12:56]I would go to work on my novel.
[12:58]And it was scary because I mean,
[13:01]I didn't know what was going to come of this.
[13:04]And I'm a new writer.
[13:05]And I always used to be like,
[13:07]we'd be able to be placed like, what do you do?
[13:09]And I'd be like, well, I'm a nurse.
[13:10]And I almost used to whisper, but I like to write, you know?
[13:13]I'm a writer.
[13:15]I'd be like, but I'd like to write.
[13:17]So it was a real commitment to myself
[13:20]to say, to put the time aside, dedicated time,
[13:25]to like speak the words even, to ask for help, and to do it.
[13:30]And you know, I think aspiring writers,
[13:32]I give them all the credit because you have no idea
[13:34]what's going to happen, right?
[13:35]You're doing this because you love writing.
[13:37]And yeah, but for so long,
[13:39]these characters be an Adriana.
[13:41]We're sitting, you know, in my head.
[13:44]And I just felt like I had to tell their story.
[13:47]Well, that's awesome.
[13:49]I love it.
[13:50]So did you end up finishing it all
[13:52]during your time off from work?
[13:54]Like that's, yeah, I mean,
[13:55]so I've been working on it for a long time.
[13:57]I would say 2016 was when I was said to myself,
[14:00]I want to have a finished good draft, right?
[14:03]And I, to be honest, Zibi, with the pandemic,
[14:06]I feel like my name is just shot.
[14:08]Yeah.
[14:09]I don't mean to put you, I don't even,
[14:11]I'm just making conversation here.
[14:12]You don't have to, you could make it all up.
[14:14]It doesn't matter.
[14:15]I don't know.
[14:16]I was like, it wasn't like a three month period
[14:18]where I wrote a first draft of my novel.
[14:19]No, you know, I've been working on this idea loosely
[14:23]for many years.
[14:25]That was probably me, when I finally was like,
[14:28]okay, I'm going to go through and have a good draft.
[14:31]And then I had an old writing teacher
[14:34]to a manuscript consult and I ended up,
[14:36]you know, rewriting the whole thing from the stars.
[14:38]So I mean, I took pieces of things that I had written
[14:43]in that draft, but you know, it was a process.
[14:46]I met my now agent at a writing conference
[14:49]here in Boston through Grump Street.
[14:52]And I had signed up to meet with her
[14:54]and I had submitted the first, I think 20 pages
[14:58]and she said to me, send me this when you're done.
[15:01]And I think it was 18 months later that I sent it to her.
[15:04]So I, you know, I took my time with it.
[15:06]And who's your agent?
[15:07]It was so long that when I had the call with my agent,
[15:11]my sister actually said to me,
[15:13]don't tell her how long it took you to write something.
[15:16]Well, it all seems to have worked out.
[15:20]So there you go.
[15:21]Yeah, that's really exciting.
[15:23]So how do you feel?
[15:25]So are you now back in, are you still nursing?
[15:28]Is that still your day job or what's the day job?
[15:30]So I do clinical consultant work now.
[15:33]I'm still doing that.
[15:34]I'm took some time off with the launch,
[15:37]but I'll get back to that.
[15:38]I have some project leading for me and how old are your kids?
[15:41]My daughter is six and my son just turned 10,
[15:45]which makes me sad.
[15:47]Oh, no, it's just gonna keep getting better.
[15:51]Maybe.
[15:52]Amazing.
[15:53]So are you working on a new project now?
[15:54]I am.
[15:55]Yeah, I'm working on a project,
[15:57]which I'm really excited about.
[15:58]It takes place in Boston.
[16:01]And it's about a group of women friends
[16:04]and actually a secret society.
[16:07]Mm-hmm.
[16:08]Essentially, it's going to be similar
[16:10]to our little world in that there's gonna be
[16:13]relationships that unravel and secrets
[16:17]that come to light.
[16:19]And there's going to be a tragedy.
[16:22]Wow.
[16:23]Yeah, so I'm very excited.
[16:24]I called my agent yesterday about it.
[16:25]So I'm very excited.
[16:26]Oh, that's awesome, congrats.
[16:28]What were there any alternate titles
[16:30]just wondering for this book?
[16:32]Or did you know from the start answer?
[16:34]No, I'm the worst.
[16:35]And it's funny because after my agent
[16:37]and I got off the call yesterday
[16:39]that my book that I'm working on, she sent me a text
[16:43]and she's like, oh, I forgot to tell you.
[16:44]I don't want to say with the name of that current.
[16:47]Yeah.
[16:48]But I don't love that title.
[16:49]Like we did, and I said, oh no, my response was,
[16:52]oh no, we're like a laughing emoji.
[16:54]Here we go again.
[16:55]Oh my gosh.
[16:57]But I agree with her.
[16:58]So this book initially was called
[17:01]and I have to give the background info for it
[17:04]because otherwise it sounds so random.
[17:05]But it was initially called Secret Walking Sally.
[17:09]So Sally's the name of the girl
[17:10]that goes missing.
[17:12]And Adriana, this sister,
[17:15]was we mentioned she has a health condition
[17:17]and that made her kind of get up in the middle of the night
[17:19]like potentially like almost like sleepwalking
[17:22]and there are a lot of secrets in our little world.
[17:25]So at one point, my protagonist was thinking about
[17:28]all the stuff going on in her life
[17:30]and like thinking almost like a pinwheel going around
[17:32]and around and everything was getting jumbled together
[17:36]and eventually it like shortened in her mind
[17:38]and these three things, Secret Walking Sally.
[17:40]That scene has since been cut because it's not bad.
[17:43]But actually my agent said to me,
[17:45]when I said to her 18 months later,
[17:47]as she said, you know, when I first saw this,
[17:50]Secret Walking Sally reminded me of a country song.
[17:53]So she had to do that because we need to work on that title.
[17:57]And then it became our little world war
[18:00]because very much about these kind of trouble,
[18:04]troubling relationships between the sisters
[18:06]and the family.
[18:08]But my editor thought it sounded a little bit
[18:10]like a historical historic fiction novel,
[18:13]which I get wore.
[18:15]So she said, what about just our little world?
[18:17]And I had to kind of come around.
[18:19]I mean, I think it's the perfect title now,
[18:21]but I did have to come around to that
[18:23]because I wasn't sure that it was encapsulating
[18:27]the kind of darkness in the book.
[18:29]But I think with the cover art,
[18:31]which they just nailed,
[18:32]they do, it's the most beautiful cover ever.
[18:35]Totally.
[18:36]It's just crack that goes down the middle.
[18:38]And I was just like, oh my gosh, that's just so perfect.
[18:40]And honestly, now I can't think of any other title for it.
[18:43]I just think it's the most perfect title.
[18:45]So it really is.
[18:46]It's a great cover.
[18:48]Awesome.
[18:49]Yeah, sometimes those are the hardest things, you know?
[18:51]Yeah.
[18:52]And I've had so many of your blurbers on my podcast.
[18:56]It's my feet, the biggest percent blurb overlap.
[18:59]Oh, I mean, I just got so many amazing blurbs.
[19:04]I felt so incredibly grateful to all the writers
[19:07]who worked with me.
[19:09]Well, when you're not writing and nursing
[19:11]and dealing with the kids,
[19:12]like if you had a guilty pleasure,
[19:14]like what would it be?
[19:15]What would you do if you had like a day of free time?
[19:17]Oh my gosh, I love Southern charm
[19:20]that reality shows Southern charm.
[19:22]That's really love reality TV, but I love that one.
[19:26]So I could binge on that or re-watch that.
[19:28]And yeah, I have a dog.
[19:30]He's right next to me here.
[19:32]85 pound Bernadoodle.
[19:34]He's not little, but he's my big companion.
[19:39]So I would go for it with him on a walk.
[19:41]I love the beach.
[19:42]I would probably go to the beach,
[19:44]lay in the sun for a little bit, if it's sunny out.
[19:47]Yeah, take some breath on the course.
[19:49]I'm always wanting to read more.
[19:52]And I'd love to be able to have like a few uninterrupted hours
[19:56]just like dive into the book.
[19:57]That'd be nice.
[19:58]Are you reading anything good now?
[19:59]I just...
[20:00]So I'm in a Facebook group for debut authors.
[20:02]So I'm lucky that I'm able to read a lot of advanced copies
[20:07]of these books.
[20:08]So just finished one called Groupies by Sarah Priscus
[20:11]that's coming out, I think in July,
[20:14]which I highly recommend about the group
[20:16]you've seen in the 70s, musical groupies.
[20:19]Yes, groupies are always music bands, right?
[20:23]Maybe not, maybe not.
[20:24]And I'm about to start another one, the secret,
[20:27]sorry, the candid life of Mina Dave.
[20:30]And it's by Namarata Patel, the candid life of Mina Dave.
[20:34]And she is a fellow Boston writer.
[20:36]We actually, we both belong to this organization
[20:39]called the Raiders Room of Boston.
[20:41]And we both, at one point, we're on the board together there.
[20:44]So I'm just got her book so I'm really excited to dive into that.
[20:48]Well, wait, how do you get into the Facebook group
[20:50]of debut authors?
[20:53]Anyone can join, anyone who has a book
[20:55]can be a fiction novel coming out in 20s.
[20:58]So I think there's been one every year, actually.
[21:00]It's so cool.
[21:01]Yeah, so there's a, it's nice.
[21:04]How many people are in your group?
[21:06]Like, like 200 or so?
[21:09]Yeah, yeah, that's so cool.
[21:11]That's really neat.
[21:12]Yeah, I was in the one for 2020,
[21:15]because my book originally was slated to come out in February
[21:19]instead of May, and then they bumped it to May.
[21:21]So originally I was in the 2021 Facebook group,
[21:26]because it kind of covers both that year
[21:28]and then, you know, the first few months,
[21:30]because you're really doing a lot of your marketing
[21:32]and stuff, obviously, in the months beforehand.
[21:34]But then I'm in the 2022 group.
[21:37]So yeah, I think that's an unexpected benefit.
[21:39]Anyone wants to join that hasn't joined yet?
[21:41]Just request, just find us.
[21:43]Awesome.
[21:45]Karen, thank you so much.
[21:47]Again, I really, really enjoyed this book.
[21:49]And you did a really great job.
[21:51]And it's really been a nice chatting with you.
[21:53]Thank you so much, Libby.
[21:54]Thanks for having me.
[21:55]It's been a pleasure.
[21:55]Pleasure.
[21:56]OK, bye-bye.
[21:57]Bye-bye.
[21:59]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[22:01]Don't have time to read books.
[22:03]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Libby Owens,
[22:06]and at Moms.
[22:07]Don't have time to read books.
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[22:15]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[22:16]in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[22:19]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[22:21]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.