Jennifer Herrera, THE HUNTER
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Jennifer Herrera is the author of The Hunter.
[1:06]Jennifer is a former philosophy grad student, turned literary agent, who is fascinated by
[1:10]the stories we tell ourselves to live and the lies we cling to that sabotage our chances
[1:15]at a good family.
[1:16]She grew up in Northwest Ohio and now resides in Philadelphia with her family.
[1:21]Jennifer recently did an event with Anna Reyes at Zippy's Bookshop.
[1:25]And you should check out those pictures on the Zippy's Bookshop Instagram at Zippy's
[1:29]Bookshop for more.
[1:30]Welcome, Jennifer.
[1:31]Thanks so much for coming.
[1:32]On mom's don't have time to read books, you discuss The Hunter.
[1:35]Thank you for having me.
[1:36]Of course.
[1:37]I love your tagline.
[1:38]Small towns hold big secrets.
[1:43]It's true.
[1:44]Can you please tell us in there is what your book is about?
[1:47]Absolutely.
[1:49]So the story follows a detective Lee O'Donnell, who makes a really big mistake.
[1:54]She points her side arm at a suspect and lets him get away.
[1:59]When she does this, it just destroys her whole life.
[2:01]So her husband leaves her.
[2:03]She loses her job with the NYPD and she feels like she's completely adrift.
[2:08]And she doesn't even know why she did it.
[2:10]And then she gets this call from her brother in her hometown in, you know, small town
[2:15]Ohio.
[2:16]And he says there are these three suspicious deaths.
[2:19]Can she come and investigate?
[2:21]Now she gets it in her head that if she does this, then her husband will come back to
[2:25]her.
[2:26]That her job back with the NYPD and this crumbling life that she has will just suddenly
[2:31]reconstitute itself.
[2:34]But of course, you know, it's not so easy.
[2:36]When going home, she has to deal with all of this emotional baggage.
[2:40]She's been avoiding for forever.
[2:42]But as it turns out once she deals with this baggage, she's going to be able to gain
[2:47]an insight into the case as well as invite into why she made that really big mistake.
[2:52]Very interesting.
[2:54]Well, I have to say I had to read to the end to figure out all the different threads
[2:58]and what had happened.
[2:59]And I was definitely not expecting what happened.
[3:02]So there you go.
[3:03]Good, good, good.
[3:04]Yeah, nobody has guessed it so far, which makes me really proud.
[3:08]Well, I have to say one of the many themes in the book that really resonated with me as
[3:13]a mom who's divorced and who has to share custody.
[3:16]I feel like having to share her daughter with Eric, her spouse and the difficulty they were
[3:22]going through with the marriage and even passing her in the lobby and trying to just
[3:28]discuss on the side all these things.
[3:30]Like, wait, you're what?
[3:31]You're going on vacation?
[3:32]Like, what's that about?
[3:33]And even just saying, like, the way you wrote it to, like, I don't know if something like
[3:38]they were going up and like, my family was going up and they couldn't hear me and I was
[3:42]going somewhere else.
[3:43]It's just like heartbreaking the way you wrote that to tell me a little bit more about
[3:46]the that piece of the puzzle.
[3:48]Oh, so I loved this idea of, you know, somebody who loves some, you know, her family
[3:54]so passionately, but she has the separation from them.
[3:58]Like they have these different realities and she has to cross that bridge to get to them
[4:03]and she doesn't know how to do it.
[4:05]And I feel like anybody who's been in a relationship feels that way.
[4:09]Like you and your spouse or you wouldn't, your partner have these different life experiences.
[4:14]And because we don't always have the language to describe why we are the way we are,
[4:20]that means, you know, sometimes, you know, your family rides to an elevator to a different
[4:24]plane one where you can't access them.
[4:27]And you feel like, how do I get to them?
[4:29]How do I get to them?
[4:30]And that I think is the journey of this book for her.
[4:33]It's like, how does she get to her family?
[4:35]You know, and that felt really real to me because I think, you know, to be in a relationship
[4:39]for a really long time is really, really hard.
[4:42]I've been with my husband since I've been 19, you know, we've certainly been through
[4:46]some ups and downs, you know, because it's so hard, I wanted to represent a book that
[4:52]captured not just the lustful stages of a relationship, but the stages where like it could
[4:57]break.
[4:58]And like if you're not careful, it will break and maybe it is breaking.
[5:02]And then to ask yourself the question of, you know, do we really want this?
[5:05]And if we do really want this, how do we, how do we mend these gaps?
[5:10]Tiffany, I just did this retreat over the weekend, like if you're someone retreat or whatever.
[5:15]And one of the women at the end was saying something about, oh, well, my husband gave
[5:19]me this great advice.
[5:20]And then she was like, I have a really good husband.
[5:22]She's like, I've tried to divorce him like three times, but he just won't let me.
[5:25]And she wasn't really kidding about it either.
[5:29]You know, she's like, you know, he just won't let me leave him.
[5:32]But I feel like you need somebody like that, right?
[5:35]Because at some point, you know, it gets really hard and you have to like, somebody
[5:39]has to come into you.
[5:40]Okay.
[5:41]Like, we can do this.
[5:42]Yeah.
[5:43]And it's worth it to do this.
[5:44]And it feels great to do this.
[5:45]Well, I don't know.
[5:46]I got divorced.
[5:47]So I can't really speak well.
[5:48]And I was, you know, not with every relationship.
[5:50]No, I know.
[5:51]I'm kidding.
[5:52]I'm kidding.
[5:53]Well, I feel like that doesn't just apply to marriage either.
[5:56]It's like friendships go through all those kinds of twists and turns as well.
[5:59]And like, it's really anything you're relationship with your family.
[6:01]And that's another theme in your book too with the sibling relationship, which adult
[6:05]sibling relationships are not written about enough.
[6:08]I feel like, I mean, sometimes, right?
[6:09]But this ecosystem of her and her brothers, and what it means to go back to the place
[6:15]where you were when you had another identity, right?
[6:17]All of us have our own family of origin identities.
[6:20]And then we like to think we're so different in the world than then we go back and
[6:24]like, just the same as we were before.
[6:27]And it's really her brothers like, you know, especially Ronan, who's, you know, determination
[6:32]to get her back pays off, right?
[6:35]And the way he entices her and then how he is there with her through the whole narrative
[6:40]and like really wanting her to succeed.
[6:42]And I don't know.
[6:43]It's really neat to see that depiction, particularly sister brother relationships too.
[6:48]So tell me about deciding to do that.
[6:50]Yeah.
[6:51]It's something I think a lot about too, because I, you know, have a small baby at home and
[6:54]I have a three year old.
[6:55]So I have siblings, like future siblings, I guess, because right now they're not really
[6:59]aware of each other outside of like, this is the big one who screams, and this is the little
[7:04]one who's like, my toy, but eventually, you know, they'll develop a relationship.
[7:10]And I think sibling relationships are so tricky, right?
[7:14]Because you grow up and sometimes you're in competition with each other.
[7:18]Sometimes, you know, you feel like they have your back, like they're your whole world.
[7:22]And it just goes like, did both extremes constantly.
[7:25]But at the same time, like they're your blood and they're always going to be around.
[7:29]And so I really wanted to depict a person who has a tricky relationship with her siblings.
[7:36]And it's not because, you know, either of them is like, quote unquote, a bad person.
[7:41]It's just, again, that's like, when they were young, they had these gaps in experience
[7:46]where it's like, they saw the world in completely different ways.
[7:49]They were becoming people in their own rights.
[7:53]And they didn't necessarily like check in with the other person, right, because they were kids.
[7:57]And so it's like, how do you, as adults, go back and revisit those times and to say,
[8:02]oh, you know, this is where it went wrong.
[8:05]And this is how we can grow and like have a real adult relationship from this.
[8:10]Because I think, you know, my mom has three brothers just like Lee's mom in the hunter.
[8:19]And those three brothers are the closest people in her whole world.
[8:23]And I was always fascinated growing up.
[8:25]It's like, how do you get to that point?
[8:27]You're, you know, your brothers are your best friends.
[8:30]And I think that for me, I wanted to show that point as being possible for Lee
[8:35]that she can get to that point where even if she's been estranged from her family for so long,
[8:40]she can have that closeness.
[8:43]So your mom has three brothers. Do you have brothers?
[8:46]I have a brother and a sister.
[8:48]The brother and a sister.
[8:49]Awesome. Very cool.
[8:51]Yeah, I have a brother too.
[8:52]It's really awesome.
[8:54]I don't know how to encapsulate that home relationship in a sentence, but there you go.
[8:58]Okay. So you used to be a literary agent.
[9:01]And now you are a novelist.
[9:02]Tell me what that transition has been like and what even made you want to write in all?
[9:07]Yeah. So I'm actually still a literary agent.
[9:09]Oh, you are. I'm sorry.
[9:11]I know. It's so confusing with my bio when I am still a literary agent.
[9:15]And I started off working and publishing when I was in grad school.
[9:21]I was in grad school for philosophy in California in Orange County.
[9:24]And I really hated it.
[9:27]I love California. I hated grad school.
[9:30]It just was not in the not a place where I really wanted to thrive.
[9:34]I think or I felt capable of thriving.
[9:36]So I had a professor who was working on a book.
[9:40]He wanted some help with it.
[9:41]I started doing that.
[9:43]Somebody asked me to go write their book, which was fun.
[9:46]And I was like, oh, this is a job.
[9:48]So we moved to New York City. My poor husband, I was like picking him up from LA X one day.
[9:54]And I was like, I think we need to move to New York so I can work in publishing.
[9:57]And he said maybe. And I was like, okay.
[10:00]We're doing it.
[10:01]I just started making plans.
[10:03]It hits the marital terrain that we have to navigate.
[10:06]I see the beginnings of the cracks here,
[10:09]but I'll just say yes, there are many cracks
[10:13]that went away.
[10:14]And I steamrolled my husband into New York dot, dot, dot.
[10:19]And it wasn't the first time I moved to Missouri.
[10:24]I moved to California, and then I moved to it's New York.
[10:27]So poor man, the poor man.
[10:29]But he's still here.
[10:32]So we get to New York.
[10:33]I start working in publishing.
[10:35]And I just really love it.
[10:36]I found that a lot of my curiosity
[10:39]that I had about ideas that really drew me
[10:41]to grad school in the first place
[10:43]can be exercised in publishing.
[10:45]I work in mostly nonfiction.
[10:47]So I get to explore ideas that I've never heard about before
[10:51]or things that I want to know about things
[10:53]that I think my mom would want to read about,
[10:56]or my dad would want to read about, or my friends would.
[10:58]And so I do all of that nonfiction stuff,
[11:00]and it's really exciting.
[11:02]But I still had this creative side of me
[11:05]that really wanted to do something else.
[11:08]And for me, I think a crime novel
[11:10]felt like the really natural extension of that
[11:13]because I've always loved my books.
[11:16]I think that maybe there's something very comforting
[11:18]about, you know, you start off with this like ghastly murder
[11:22]and then a plucky detective arrives on the scene
[11:25]and you get this clean resolution
[11:27]that gives you this very, like, real psychological benefit
[11:31]feeling as though the world is under control again.
[11:34]All is right.
[11:35]And for me though, I felt like a lot of the detective novels
[11:39]I read really centered is very masculine in the world
[11:43]where you had either a male detective
[11:45]or you had a female detective who felt very male.
[11:48]And so what I wanted to do was to create a detective
[11:52]who felt very female to me.
[11:54]And I had just started writing this right after I had
[11:56]my first child and I was very aware of the, you know,
[12:01]the things about me that were very, very female
[12:04]and that were very, very powerful.
[12:06]And one of those being like this very deep intuition,
[12:09]you know, like you know when something's wrong with your kid,
[12:12]even if they're not showing any symptoms,
[12:14]like they don't have a fever,
[12:15]they don't have any of the signs,
[12:17]you're like something is wrong.
[12:18]And you're right, like almost always you're right.
[12:21]And so I wanted to create a detective
[12:23]who has that same intuitive sense of the world
[12:26]that very female sense of the world.
[12:28]And I wanted to have her use that as a way to solve crimes.
[12:34]And interestingly, and by the way,
[12:36]I often think there's something wrong with my kid.
[12:39]Unless you, let's just say a caveat,
[12:41]if you have like immense anxiety
[12:43]and you think that every little thing
[12:44]is something worth calling the doctor about
[12:46]maybe you won't always know.
[12:48]But one of the things you did that's really interesting too
[12:52]is in most crime novels the victims are women.
[12:57]I read like a Q&A that you did about how you know,
[13:00]muscle mess and there's a reason why
[13:01]but when you're perceived as easier to kill
[13:03]and blah, blah, blah, can't fight back, whatever.
[13:05]But you here have three men who are dead
[13:08]and the crime is to figure out who killed them by a woman.
[13:11]So talk about like flipping that gender stereotype
[13:14]a little bit.
[13:15]That has been one of the fun pieces of writing this book
[13:20]because I think when I sat down to write a crime novel
[13:23]where I had this idea of that I wanted to create
[13:25]this very intuitive detective who's very female
[13:29]and then I closed my eyes and I thought, who should die?
[13:32]And I immediately pictured like this young, beautiful woman
[13:35]and I thought, why did I do that?
[13:38]And so I really went back and I started reading,
[13:42]are women more likely to die from homicide than men?
[13:45]And it turns out they're not.
[13:47]Men are the victims in 80% of the homicides
[13:50]and yet from my admittedly very imperfect analysis
[13:54]of the top selling crime books,
[13:57]women are the victims or three times
[13:59]the rate of male victims.
[14:01]And so the question becomes why do we do this?
[14:04]And there are lots of reasons we can give to that question.
[14:07]I don't necessarily have the answer
[14:09]but I knew that I wanted to correct that
[14:11]in the book that I was writing.
[14:13]So I wanted to have the victims be male
[14:16]to be able bodied to be very sort of strapping
[14:20]and strong and young.
[14:22]So the question becomes how could somebody kill
[14:25]like three big dudes?
[14:27]And I thought that that really created this deep sense
[14:30]of tension because it feels like an impossible act
[14:34]and yet someone did it.
[14:35]Interesting, I love it.
[14:37]Wait, can you go back for two seconds
[14:38]when you're a Larry agent for nonfiction?
[14:40]What are some of the books you've worked in?
[14:42]Oh, some really exciting ones.
[14:44]I did a book that came out this past summer
[14:47]called What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us.
[14:50]So that's a book about how we change in the wake
[14:52]of catastrophic events where we have a before and an after
[14:56]so that the person we used to be is no longer
[15:00]the person that we later become.
[15:02]I think that has been really exciting.
[15:04]The writer wrote for the New Yorker
[15:05]for the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, a really skilled writer.
[15:09]I also represent her name is Gail Jessup White.
[15:12]She is related to both Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings
[15:17]and she works at Jefferson's Monticello.
[15:20]And her book is about trying to gain legitimacy
[15:23]for both sides of her life,
[15:26]both sides of her lineage and how she was able to use that
[15:29]to help bring Sally Hemmings story more into the light.
[15:34]So things like that, like a lot of books
[15:36]that I have a bunch of ones that are upcoming,
[15:38]but books that tackle these really big ideas
[15:40]about identity, I think are really fascinating,
[15:43]especially as we're trying to make sense of ourselves,
[15:46]like as a culture, as a world.
[15:49]Getting a little concerned about all the murder
[15:51]in your fiction and things you're acquiring,
[15:56]I don't know.
[15:57]And I just like taking a couple of steps back.
[16:00]I know.
[16:01]I know.
[16:03]Fair, fair.
[16:04]I think, you know, I've heard writers of detective
[16:07]fiction say that they are the calmest, chillest people
[16:10]because it's like they've exercised all their demons
[16:13]on the page.
[16:14]Like they have no, you know, they have no baggage
[16:16]with the world.
[16:17]I love that.
[16:18]Are you the type of person who's always looking
[16:20]for like under story?
[16:22]Because I'm not the under story.
[16:23]That's not even a real word.
[16:24]But I don't know.
[16:25]To be a detective and to be always searching
[16:28]for other answers and like really reading people
[16:30]and figuring out things that other people aren't seeing.
[16:33]And of course, you need to do a little of that
[16:35]to write an all to begin with.
[16:36]Like, you know, where do you think that comes from?
[16:39]I think it's part of, you know, part of my personality
[16:42]first off.
[16:42]I think I'm always very fascinated
[16:44]with who people are underneath.
[16:46]You know, I think I had read somewhere that we, you know,
[16:49]we have three ways of experiencing the world
[16:51]are actual experiences, how we describe those experiences
[16:56]to other people.
[16:57]And then like the story we tell ourselves.
[16:59]And so, you know, each of these things we think
[17:02]would line up with the thing itself,
[17:03]but it doesn't always.
[17:05]And so for me, I think that, you know,
[17:08]one of the things I'm really interested in is figuring out
[17:10]why people do the things that we do.
[17:13]Not just other people, but myself.
[17:15]You know, sometimes you, you know, you yell at your spouse
[17:19]or your kid or something.
[17:20]And you're like, what was that really about?
[17:22]And I think we're part of this very, you know,
[17:25]this therapy generation who we've all been taught
[17:28]to see the world in terms of who we used to be
[17:31]and to be on nodding terms with that person.
[17:34]And so as a result of that, that way of thinking,
[17:38]then it means that we always have those layers
[17:40]to our experience.
[17:41]And maybe that's generational.
[17:43]Maybe, you know, two generations from now,
[17:44]nobody will go to therapy anymore.
[17:46]And they, you know, they will have a different way
[17:48]of seeing the world.
[17:49]But right now, I think, you know, we're in this moment
[17:52]where we're always trying to uncover past versions
[17:55]of ourselves to figure out who we are now
[17:57]and who we want to be in the future.
[18:00]It's a great answer.
[18:01]It's amazing.
[18:03]So tell me how you get stuff done with two little kids
[18:07]at home and you wrote this book
[18:08]and now you're doing all the publicity.
[18:09]Are you writing another book?
[18:10]How are you getting like, how is life happening for you?
[18:14]Oh my God, that's an amazing question.
[18:16]I don't know in a constant state of panic.
[18:19]I think a constant state of panic.
[18:23]You know, I have a full-time job.
[18:25]I have these two little kids who are amazing
[18:28]and so much fun and just ridiculous
[18:30]in all the ways the little kids are ridiculous.
[18:33]And I have a house that I guess has to get cleaned once
[18:38]in a while or something.
[18:42]But for me, I think that I am so much better
[18:45]at every other aspect of my life
[18:48]if I can take some time during my day to write
[18:51]and to be inside of my own head for a little bit.
[18:54]You know, I think there are a lot of people
[18:56]who do yoga or meditation
[18:57]and I would love to be one of those people.
[19:00]I'm just not.
[19:01]This is what I do to take care of myself.
[19:03]And I am working on another book
[19:07]and it is under contract with my publisher.
[19:10]So the protagonist of this book, Leo Donald,
[19:13]will get another installment.
[19:15]And that has been really fun to write as well
[19:17]because when I worked on the first book,
[19:20]I didn't know there would be a second one.
[19:21]In fact, I hadn't even planned on it.
[19:24]I thought here is the most important part of her story,
[19:28]this singular moment where, you know,
[19:30]once she gets through this really tough time,
[19:33]then she's not gonna have any hard times
[19:34]for the rest of her life.
[19:36]Like that was the, you know, the story I had told myself
[19:39]about my character.
[19:40]But then I started thinking more
[19:42]about how women's stories work.
[19:44]You know, in women's stories,
[19:46]I think work in cycles a lot of times.
[19:49]Like, you know, our bodies work in cycles
[19:52]are our way of seeing our way of growing
[19:54]is like a cycle for, you know,
[19:56]for growing into ourselves,
[19:58]for being a mother, for being in.
[20:00]you know, beyond that. And so I wanted to create another cycle for Lee's story. So, okay, so now she's healed.
[20:07]There's one thing about herself. What's the next way in which she has to grow? And that being the impetus for the next story.
[20:15]And for this next crime that she gets to uncover. And there's a dead body, I will say, at least one.
[20:21]Are we going to stay in Ohio or go back to New York? Anywhere? We are going to go to Pennsylvania actually.
[20:28]Okay. And I've been really having a great time. So, I live in Philadelphia right now. And I've
[20:36]been having a really fun time researching history in Philadelphia. Yes, but in different parts of
[20:42]Pennsylvania. Because I'm from Ohio originally too. So, Pennsylvania has always felt like
[20:47]very close to me. You know, researching, for instance, like, slate mining in Pennsylvania has been
[20:53]really fun. And there are a lot of like geographical features that you can really bring into a story
[20:58]if you're, you know, looking at a new place. My mom's family's from Ohio by the way. They're from
[21:04]Oh, where are they in Ohio? I'm dating. Oh, that's amazing. I've watched the poor city like go from
[21:13]being so glamorous. Well, at least maybe it's because I was a kid. But anyway, and then now it's
[21:20]it's just sad to see cities waiting. You know, it's it's been hard. But what part of Ohio are you
[21:26]from? Yeah. No, I mean, the same, the same sort of situation. So my parents are from Cleveland.
[21:32]Okay. And I think for them, you know, their families came through a chain migration through,
[21:37]you know, working in the car factories. So one person would get a job at a car factory and then
[21:42]would bring over the rest of their family. And so they were really entrenched in that world. And
[21:47]then, you know, the factories haven't maybe been employing people at the same rates as they used
[21:53]to. And so it has been a very declining city. And so my parents when I was young moved to a small
[22:00]town in rural Ohio, which has a different sort of decline. So it's not, you know, it has similarities
[22:06]to the town copper falls in my book. But there are a lot of ways in it should be different.
[22:11]And one of those is that the town I grew up in is a very farm-centric town. And then I think
[22:16]it's been interesting in a different way because it's a bunch of family farms. And they've been
[22:22]they've been fighting corporations coming in and wanting to turn their family farms until like a
[22:27]giant dairy farm and all of the ways in which that destroys the legacy. And you see these people
[22:32]really like hanging on to this to this old world. And you have to you have to like respect that.
[22:38]You have to respect the ways in which they want to keep things small and keep things,
[22:43]you know, family and keep things private. Interesting. My brother produced this movie like maybe 10 years
[22:49]ago with Dennis Quaid and Zach Efron. If you need a movie, you should watch it. But it's about
[22:54]family farms and what happens when someone comes in. Oh, that's fantastic. If you need a dose of
[22:59]home and you want to watch that. I would love that because, you know, when I first started writing
[23:05]this in Ohio, I thought, oh, maybe I should incorporate farming. And I was like, I know nothing
[23:09]about farming. My parents were like city slickers who moved to the small town. I was like, hey,
[23:15]I can tell you that like people, you know, road tractors to schools and like what kind of genes
[23:20]people wore. But outside of that, like I don't have any information here. Oh, that's the great
[23:26]thing about writing notes. You can choose to learn about anything you want or any books really.
[23:31]Yeah, exactly. I have deep into that. And what are you reading now?
[23:35]Oh, so, you know, this is one of those questions where because I work in publishing,
[23:41]it's such a big part of my job to read, you know, the best seller's list constantly to ask
[23:46]myself the question of like, why are people, you know, why are people reading this book? What are
[23:51]people expecting out of the future books that they're going to read? And how can I sell books
[23:57]into that marketplace? So that's like my work brain. But I also have like my fun brain. And so
[24:03]my fun brain gets really excited about reading books that aren't new because it means that I don't
[24:10]like I can turn off that piece of myself that's constantly working. And so in this case,
[24:15]I'm rereading a book that I've read many times, but that I feel still feel like I'm gaining
[24:20]insight from. And that's this older book, Women Who Run with the Wolves. And that is just a book
[24:26]about women's stories and how they're different, maybe from men's stories. And how, you know,
[24:31]we've all been taught, or at least I was taught, that you have this thing called the Heroes
[24:36]Journey. And that is, you know, representative of everybody's story. That's how we think about the
[24:41]world. That's how we experience it. But, you know, she really breaks down the different
[24:46]structures of stories that exist. And especially for women, what each of those story structures
[24:52]does for us at different places in our lives. So that, I think has been really exciting for me
[24:57]to just go back to that and to keep mining it for information.
[25:03]Got the wolves. You've got the hunter. I mean, you know, there's definitely something primal about all
[25:10]these things. The mergers. Yeah, there is. And I think that that is really exciting. Like,
[25:16]how do you tap into that primal piece of yourself? Because I don't know about you, but for me,
[25:22]it's like my life is so removed from any of that. And I want to know, like, would I feel
[25:29]more connected? Or would I feel, you know, more enlightened? If I were able to access that part
[25:35]of me that everybody has, but that we've been taught to suppress in order to be a part of, you know,
[25:41]of a world. Or maybe it's because that primal piece of view has actually come up so much more
[25:46]after having kids. Oh, you know, I think that's probably true. So one of the things that the
[25:52]protagonist Lee has that she has a very heightened sense of smell. She can smell sweat. Like,
[25:59]that's crazy. Like, what is sweat even smell like? Oh, my God. Like, you know, when I was pregnant,
[26:08]like, I could smell sweat. Like, it's really like, oh, my gosh. And so that's how it felt for me,
[26:15]like, giving her this very, this very strong sense of smell felt very primal to me. And it felt
[26:21]very connected to the parts of my life when I associated most closely with being woman. And so like,
[26:27]being pregnant and being, you know, breastfeeding and having, you know, that just like that intensity
[26:33]of emotion and that, you know, that strong sense of smell. Love it. Any parting advice for aspiring
[26:41]authors, parting advice for aspiring authors, you know, one of the things that I think that I
[26:48]learned because I wanted to be a writer for much longer than I've been a writer and it took a very
[26:53]long time for my taste to line up with my skills or my skills to line up with my tastes, I guess.
[27:00]And I think that the, you know, the most important advice I can give anybody is just to be really
[27:04]patient and to just like fall in love with the thing that you do so that you're less tied to
[27:09]with the outcome is. And if you can be really patient with yourself and you can, you know,
[27:16]treat each thing that you write as a way for you to grow, not just as a way for your reader to,
[27:22]you know, something for your reader to enjoy, then you're never going to feel like you wasted your time
[27:27]regardless of the outcome. And eventually people will connect to the thing that you say about your
[27:34]life about other people's lives that's true. Like just write something that's true and people
[27:39]will find it. Love it. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much. I'm so excited you're doing an event.
[27:45]It's a bespoke job. And I'm sorry, I won't be there myself. And by the time this airs, it will have
[27:49]happened. So people can just go look at pictures of you at the store, whatever. But really excited.
[27:55]And thanks for drawing on this sort of primal fear synergy. We all, all we all kind of have under
[28:01]there. So you know, thanks. Thank you. This is so much fun. Oh, good. Okay. Take care. Bye. Bye.
[28:10]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't
[28:14]forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:19]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[28:24]lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[28:28]for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[28:32]fantastic intro and outro music.