Holly Goldberg Sloan, PIECES OF BLUE
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[1:04]Holly Goldberg Sloan is the author of Pieces of Blue.
[1:07]She is also the author of seven books for young readers, which have been translated into
[1:11]27 languages.
[1:12]Her novel, Counting by Sevens, was an e.b. white honor book and sold over a million copies.
[1:18]Also a noted feature film writer, Holly wrote the Disney Blockbuster Angels in the Outfield.
[1:24]And she was the first woman to direct a live-action film for Disney, which she wrote and
[1:28]directed, The Big Green.
[1:30]The mother of two sons, Holly lives with her husband and Santa Monica, California.
[1:34]Pieces of Blue is her debut novel for adults.
[1:37]Welcome Holly.
[1:38]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read Books to discuss Pieces of Blue,
[1:41]your latest novel and everything else about you.
[1:44]Thank you.
[1:45]Thanks so much for having me.
[1:46]I have watched your explosion.
[1:50]There's no other way to say it onto the book scene.
[1:53]And the first thing I want to say that calling it moms don't have time to read is brilliant.
[2:00]And if there's anything as a mom, and I have two adult sons that you must do when
[2:06]you're raising them, you must find time to read.
[2:10]Even if it's 20 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, you have to escape.
[2:14]And I think television isn't escape.
[2:17]It's wonderful.
[2:18]I write television, but there's something about reading where it activates your imagination.
[2:22]You get to be the cast and director.
[2:24]You get to imagine what this that looks like.
[2:26]I mean, it's a more on you.
[2:28]And when you're a mom, you need to do that too.
[2:30]You can't just read, give a mouse a cookie.
[2:32]I mean, that's beautiful, but it's nice to make something that nurtures yourself as well.
[2:38]Lauren or Nuref is just in my store actually.
[2:41]But anyway, yes, that is good advice.
[2:45]I have found reading to be a sanity check for myself, you know, something that grounds
[2:49]me and can change my mood faster than anything else.
[2:52]So yeah, I'm with you.
[2:53]In your case, I'm going to say that, be careful what you wish for because now you probably
[2:57]have stacks of books around you at all time that you either have to read or read this
[3:02]synopsis for and the probably only vacation for you would be to go somewhere for a week
[3:07]and not read.
[3:08]But anyway, a vacation would be like having a week to read a book would be really nice.
[3:15]Yes, that would be really nice.
[3:17]It would be a half hour a night thing.
[3:19]Yeah.
[3:20]Okay.
[3:21]Well, listen, there's about year back here, ladies and gentlemen, but yes, we're recording
[3:25]it is a podcast, but we're also a current video.
[3:28]So I'm holding it up is called pieces of blue and it is my first novel intended for adult
[3:37]readers.
[3:38]I have a lot of adult readers.
[3:39]I have seven or eight other novels, but they were written primarily for young adults
[3:45]or a younger audience.
[3:48]My book Counting by Sevens has a very, very large adult readership.
[3:52]And so I never, I didn't, I don't understand even to this day why a book is put in a certain
[3:59]category.
[4:00]I guess I understand it a little bit more, but because I also write film and television,
[4:05]you don't do that with film and television.
[4:06]You wouldn't release a movie, for example, and say, you should go see this movie if you're
[4:12]in third grade and sixth grade and I don't know about the movie.
[4:17]It's because it cost you much money.
[4:19]And so everything has to have a broad appeal and I think I wrote Angels in the Outfield
[4:24]and I wrote a movie called Made in America and I wrote a movie called The Big Green and
[4:28]I just try to get a wide audience.
[4:30]That's what we're sort of taught and told to do.
[4:33]So I think that about my books, I even think kids in high school would like pieces of
[4:37]blue, but what do I know about the intended audience and I used to read all my mom's
[4:42]books growing up.
[4:43]I mean, who cares what the labels are, right?
[4:45]So did I.
[4:46]And my dad gave me hideously inappropriate books as a child.
[4:51]That says something about how he was picturing me.
[4:55]He always saw me even when I was very tiny as just an adult in a very shrunken body.
[5:00]I couldn't understand many of the things, but he was a professor.
[5:05]He is pretty still.
[5:06]And I wanted so much to connect to him and that was the way we could connect.
[5:11]So I've been catch 22.
[5:12]I don't know.
[5:13]I was eight.
[5:15]Yes, I was reading Judith Krantz like romance novels and all this stuff.
[5:22]That's like how I learned everything throughout these like multi-generational sagas.
[5:27]The family is in crisis.
[5:29]I can tell you if you can say everything I know about life.
[5:32]I know from Judith Krantz.
[5:33]Yeah.
[5:34]I know.
[5:35]I probably somebody's written that book already, but yeah, but yeah, I mean, I think reading
[5:42]what our parents read or having them recommend things, you know, books are all about
[5:46]connection.
[5:47]Anyway, and I think that's one early way that big readers try to foster that same connection
[5:51]with your kids.
[5:52]If that's the way you know to connect to other people, it's like a shorthand even if
[5:54]it might be the wrong book.
[5:55]Right.
[5:56]Right.
[5:57]Right.
[5:58]Exactly.
[5:59]Because it's sort of saying this is what we do at night in the dark or in the case of a kid
[6:02]that's kind of proposes in the day when they're yelling at you, go outside and you
[6:06]nod and then just take your book and go back and sit on the couch and read it.
[6:10]What was that?
[6:11]Are you that freakish is kid?
[6:12]Was that you?
[6:13]Well, I did love to read.
[6:14]I did like the outside too.
[6:16]So, but I grew up in Oregon primarily in Eugene, Oregon, and there's a lot of rain there.
[6:22]And it's funny the way we saw rain.
[6:24]We saw the rain the way us the most sees snow, which is there are 100 ways to say it's
[6:30]raining outside.
[6:31]Oh, it's only drifting.
[6:32]Oh, it's fitting.
[6:33]We used to say, and my mom would always say, oh, that's a vegetable mist.
[6:37]We used to have those prayers, and at night the weather person would be standing in front
[6:43]of the map saying so many different things.
[6:46]We will have showers in the morning followed by rain in the afternoon drizzle in the
[6:52]nighttime.
[6:53]I mean, it was raining, but nobody could just say that in the morning, so you had to parse
[6:58]it.
[6:59]But I think cold climates, climates with bad weather, I'm going to say it's a generalization
[7:04]of foster readers.
[7:06]Interesting.
[7:07]Well, in your book, it starts off in the rain and in Oregon.
[7:11]And then off you go to, well, actually, I guess it starts as they just get to Hawaii.
[7:16]And it rains.
[7:17]And it rains.
[7:18]Yeah.
[7:19]Hawaii has so much rain, has so much sun as well.
[7:21]But yes, I guess I am very, it's funny how we don't really know the things that are our
[7:27]emotional connections, or maybe it takes some years of living, which I have, who realize
[7:33]what they are, but a very, very attuned to the weather, and I live in Southern California
[7:39]now, and it rained 28 inches this year, and the regular rainfall is 13 inches.
[7:45]And so it actually was an incredible gift to all of us because we were in such extreme
[7:52]drought.
[7:53]But the modern condition is that no matter what happens, you complain.
[7:56]So pretty much everyone, we need to rain so much.
[8:00]And then we got the rain and that we should be complaining about the rain.
[8:04]And the LA times every day, the headline, I pick it up every day, it's all about the
[8:10]rain in some form of catastrophe, the flood coming, the dams have broken, who weeks have
[8:17]appeared that were never there before.
[8:19]It's all about not to say that journalism is alarmism, but maybe that sells, I don't
[8:24]know.
[8:25]In a podcast, is it alarmism, should I think of something alarming?
[8:28]I mean, I mean, that's better track of my book.
[8:33]I wrote a book.
[8:34]It's called Pieces of Blue.
[8:35]It starts in Portland, Oregon, and it's about a woman who has lost her husband and fell
[8:41]on pretty hard times and finally got her insurance money.
[8:45]And she took this money very capriciously, wasn't really thinking it through, didn't visit
[8:50]the place.
[8:51]She went online.
[8:52]She saw a piece of property, slightly used to the North Shore of Oahu, and she buys
[8:57]a rundown motel and takes her three children and moves there.
[9:01]And where did that idea come from?
[9:03]Well, I have no imagination at all.
[9:06]So everything, I find that very hard to believe.
[9:09]Well, yes, I mean, yes and no.
[9:12]I can take any fact that's happened and embellish it and make it into fiction, which is
[9:18]alarming for people in my life.
[9:21]I had a friend, we were doing a movie together in Australia, where in the van, when you're
[9:25]in the van, you sort of drive forever, it was a pre-production, I guess.
[9:29]And we're driving in the van and we're all talking.
[9:32]It's crazy how many intimate things you find out in a movie van.
[9:36]And this producer is the UPN as well.
[9:38]He told us that his father died very unexpectedly when he was young.
[9:42]It's funny in my mind, I think that he was, when he was telling the story, I imagined him
[9:47]10 or 11.
[9:49]And that's always what I thought he said.
[9:51]But recently I saw him and I think he said I was 15 and so every fact of his story, apparently
[9:58]I have not.
[10:00]remember in the right way. But anyway, we're in the van and he says father died and his mom got
[10:07]some life insurance and she had two choices or in her mind she had two choices. She could buy a boat
[10:15]and try to do charter salmon fishing or she found a property in Hawaii and it was an old rundown
[10:21]hotel. And when we're in the van he says my mom took the boat and was we did salmon fishing
[10:26]and we didn't know how to salmon fish. We didn't even have to drive the boat. We smashed
[10:30]the boat all the time. I know. She tells the story and in my mind and then he says I believe he says
[10:37]he now denies saying this. What if we had had the motel in Hawaii? The property think about what
[10:42]that would be worth today. She made the wrong choice and I said, but why did she do that? And he
[10:47]said, well, her family, everyone thought that the Hawaii choice was the risky choice. Salmon fishing,
[10:55]they were from the Pacific Northwest. They knew about salmon, I guess. I'm from the Pacific
[11:00]Northwest. So I heard that story and all I could imagine was get the motel, get the motel.
[11:06]I then couldn't stop thinking about it. And I wrote about a woman whose husband dies unexpectedly
[11:14]and she takes her children and moves to a place she knows nothing about. Now here's the other part
[11:19]about that. We moved every three years when I was growing up and my father's a professor. As I
[11:25]said, my mom is an architect, but my dad, he was a consultant at the Peace Corps and then my dad
[11:31]was two times a Fulbright professor. So I went to high school in Istanbul and I went to grade
[11:36]school in Holland and we moved. My dad taught at Berkeley and we always went back. We had a home
[11:43]so that was Eugene Oregon, but we always went back. And so I think that I like the idea of what
[11:51]it means to be a new kid in school, what it means to be an adult in a really unfamiliar situation.
[11:58]So I think again, I have no imagination. I'm just tapping into everything that I can either relate
[12:03]to or conjure. There are no dragons or vampires or mermaids in the book because I've never met
[12:13]met those people. But maybe, therefore, I can only write contemporary realistic fiction.
[12:20]That's what I write. Okay. Well, I think that I'd like to think that takes imagination.
[12:24]Peanut. Hello. Just a smit. Maybe. I like how in the book you really have the kids who
[12:31]would typically be fighting and all of that. There's this one's reporting moment where
[12:35]they think about how much their dad would have loved where they arrived in Hawaii and how
[12:39]two of the kids sort of hold each other's hands in that moment. And you say something like the
[12:44]son normally would have pulled away, but instead they like sat there holding hands and thinking about
[12:48]their dad. It was so sad. I mean, beautiful. But so poignant. Tell me more about just this feeling
[12:55]of loss of young people and just loss in general and writing about it. Well, certainly that's
[13:02]somewhat of a theme in my work. In counting my sevens, a young girl, much younger, in this case,
[13:08]she's in grade school. She loses both of her parents in a car accident. And I'm exploring
[13:15]how we get over grief, how we get over loss. But I believe that loss is fundamental as anything
[13:25]that we experience in life. And all of us will have loss. And you can't prepare for it, but
[13:33]you can work through it. And I think laughing and crying are so close. So I try to make my books
[13:40]funny. But then when I tell them, oh, it's about somebody who's parents, that's kid who lost
[13:46]her parents. It's very funny. Then people, I'm somehow deemed inappropriate. A piece of blue is
[13:54]about loss. But it's also about found because life has so much balance to it. And it also starts
[14:02]out to be somewhat one kind of story. And it turns into a different kind of story. And that's a metaphor
[14:09]for me, which is life starts out as one thing. And it can take a turn into something else. And we don't
[14:17]if we think that we know where it's all going, we're wrong. So the more we can not necessarily
[14:24]prepare for change, but at least embrace change, understand, change, accept change. I'm not sure.
[14:29]Even the title pieces of blue that when you are looking out on the sky, sometimes there's
[14:36]clouds, but there is blue behind that. And you can see it sometimes when it's not even there,
[14:43]if you're talking about, you know, big life shifts and periods of change and all that. Which
[14:50]parts of your life did you not see coming? Like what was something that sort of fundamentally
[14:54]shifted the course for you? Well, I was in the first thing is my parents' divorce was a really
[15:02]big thing in my life. I was 18, but it was still very impactful. And then my own subsequent divorce
[15:10]after 10 years of marriage when I had young children. And in both, well, my own divorce, I
[15:17]had a sense of failure. And I'm someone who's felt that they've not necessarily succeeded,
[15:23]but that I've done what was expected. I held up my end and I got divorced. And my first husband,
[15:33]I'm remarried, very, very happily remarried. And for, I think, 27 years now. So my first husband,
[15:40]my two for 10 years, but we had a very successful divorce. That's the part I want to stress
[15:47]to myself to anyone who wants to listen. My parents had a very unsuccessful divorce. I had a
[15:53]successful one. And my first husband ended up even at one point living across the street. So
[15:59]because we, the kids went back and forth. And we really were there together for them, I think,
[16:07]and a fundamental way. But my first husband, he had heart failure swimming in the ocean. And he
[16:13]died very suddenly in the ocean. Now, I don't think it's giving anything away to say that
[16:20]the main character, Lindsay's husband, Paul, he dies swimming in the ocean. So once again,
[16:28]my lack of imagination. But my first husband was on an island. He was in the British Virgin Islands.
[16:37]And he went out snorkeling and he had heart failure and died in the water. So I certainly
[16:44]understand what it means to have someone be alive one day and not alive the next. When I was in
[16:52]college, my boyfriend and I had dinner with his father in New York. And then we got in the car and
[16:59]we drove back. He was going to Dartmouth. And we got in the car. We drove to Dartmouth. And we,
[17:05]we left really early in the morning. Now, I'm not sure why, but we had a rental car and we left at
[17:10]six in the morning. And when we got to Dartmouth, the film professor, we both were in the film program.
[17:18]I went to Wellesley, but I'd gone to Dartmouth for one year. And the head of the film program
[17:22]was sitting on the stairs in front. And he wanted to talk to us. And he took my boyfriend at the time
[17:30]inside and told him that his father had died of a heart attack at 51 after running around the
[17:34]the reservoir in New York. So that was, that was actually the first real time that I understood
[17:42]that there can be life changing moments that there is no preparation for. And there's only
[17:48]the before and the after. And there was the life before and the life after. And what we do with
[17:54]that, how we still are able to find joy before and after in our lives. And so maybe those
[18:04]kind of things have led me to write about it. I particularly think that we get emotions out
[18:12]by writing and by reading. So I write and then people read. But I look for the positive in all
[18:22]my stories. I want there to be, maybe it's not saying happy endings because I want people
[18:31]to be bigger and better and find resolution and find ways to get by. And so I write about that.
[18:39]Well, thank you for sharing all of that. I want to say I'm sorry for your loss, but you say
[18:44]not to say you're sorry for the loss in the book. So I'm not gonna say that. But I am, I don't know
[18:50]my heart goes out to you. And you know, I talk at schools a lot and I sometimes in the end,
[18:57]if I'm asked questions, sometimes a kid will say, why did you write about that? Is anything
[19:04]happened like that in your own life? And then I will start to answer. I will answer. I was, yes,
[19:10]I've had some loss on expected loss. My first husband, we were divorced, but he died so
[19:15]many in the ocean. And I'll be talking. And then I look up and I realize I'm slightly crying.
[19:22]And can I tell you this? There's nothing worse than doing that in front of kids. So then
[19:27]I have to do this weird smile kind of like Terry in succession after she sees what's happened
[19:35]where you've got this smile. You know, you look like an absolute crazy person because we are
[19:43]conditioned to have certain emotions and certain reactions. So one of the things when people say
[19:50]they're sorry for my loss, which I know is whatever my, whatever that they're talking about,
[19:54]when I say to someone else, I know it's that sincere and genuine, but it makes
[20:00]So the other person were all characters in a play in a way,
[20:03]and they then can't just go on for their,
[20:06]they have to at least for one second step back and say,
[20:09]and become their serious self and say,
[20:10]thank you so much, and because inappropriate
[20:13]for them to say, yeah, high five, you know,
[20:15]I mean, you have to, we're all role-playing at all times.
[20:19]And the more maybe we understand that,
[20:25]maybe the more we don't just do stylized roles,
[20:29]we find authenticity in it.
[20:32]Part of the book, pieces of blue,
[20:35]that I am maybe the most proud of
[20:38]is I'm interested in the inner lives of families and children.
[20:43]And so I try to explore three different views of loss
[20:49]from a child's point of view,
[20:51]and three different views of found,
[20:53]how we recover from it, and how personal it is.
[20:57]Because what one person,
[21:00]everyone has a unique relationship with a parent,
[21:03]with a sibling, with a friend,
[21:05]and to think that we're all seeing it in the same way.
[21:08]I have two brothers, and the way they see our childhood
[21:13]isn't even the same.
[21:15]It has commonality, but I'm not sure even the headlines
[21:20]are the same, but I don't know that they should be
[21:22]because you treat every child differently
[21:27]and as a parent, you think you're doing it the same,
[21:30]but part of that is just because every kid isn't the same.
[21:33]So you're not reacting to the same things.
[21:36]Very true.
[21:37]Some things are easier to accept than others.
[21:41]It's also about parenting.
[21:42]So what's a good parent?
[21:44]What's a bad parent?
[21:45]Is there such a thing?
[21:46]I don't know.
[21:47]My brother and I recently had to talk about
[21:49]like some interpretation of something that happened,
[21:52]and we had like completely opposite.
[21:55]And I'm like, and I'm like, no, no, no,
[21:56]this is what happened.
[21:57]And this is what it was like.
[22:00]And he's like, no, no, no, this is what happened.
[22:02]And ultimately, who knows?
[22:03]I mean, I don't know, I guess it doesn't really matter,
[22:06]but yeah, I guess we all take,
[22:08]what we take out of every situation, I don't know.
[22:11]Just-
[22:12]I think it's interesting when I talk to my friends growing up,
[22:19]we remember very different things.
[22:21]So recently, I was with sort of my best friend Amy
[22:25]from childhood and she brought up a couple of things.
[22:28]I have no memory of them at all.
[22:30]And they were very big.
[22:31]She thought they were interesting fundamental things we did.
[22:35]And I was embarrassed to say, wait, when was that?
[22:39]But then things I remember,
[22:41]they weren't important to her.
[22:43]So maybe that's the key to memory is that
[22:47]you can only remember something
[22:50]if you continue to access it and remember it.
[22:54]Every memory is a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory.
[22:58]And if it's something either that made you uncomfortable
[23:01]or that you chose to not remember again,
[23:06]you somewhat forget it.
[23:08]And so when someone brings it up,
[23:10]you can remember it.
[23:12]But what happens in remembering and remembering
[23:14]and remembering the photocopy of the memory,
[23:17]which happens over and over again,
[23:19]that like any kind of copy,
[23:21]it becomes disintegrated every time it's copied.
[23:24]And it becomes, in a disintegration, changed.
[23:29]And it becomes changed to fit how you are today, usually
[23:34]because we're all the hero of our own lives.
[23:36]And we all want to believe, I think,
[23:40]that we've been making good choices and the right decisions.
[23:44]And so you take your memories
[23:47]and you conform them to be what is your evidence
[23:54]of your life, I think.
[23:57]So part of the book is about Lindsay,
[24:02]the main character in pieces of blue.
[24:04]Looking back, how did she marry the person?
[24:07]She married, why did she marry him?
[24:11]What happened in their marriage?
[24:13]There were some things that went wrong, more rain.
[24:17]And who's responsible for that?
[24:19]Were they both responsible?
[24:21]Is he more to blame?
[24:22]Is there what is blame?
[24:24]Is that just a way to make you feel better?
[24:27]Probably, but then what's shame?
[24:30]Is that when you look back and you know
[24:34]that you did something that perhaps was not
[24:37]what you should have done or the right thing to do?
[24:39]And so those are things that I'm very interested
[24:44]in the idea of shame from an adult perspective
[24:46]because as adults, it's something children feel a lot of
[24:51]and children, because they are learning boundaries,
[24:55]they will feel ashamed.
[24:57]But it's not something you hear adults say.
[25:00]If they do, they always preface it.
[25:01]So I'm ashamed to admit, and then something comes out of that
[25:08]in the same way that if someone says,
[25:12]I have to be truthful.
[25:14]You wonder, well, what were you doing before that?
[25:18]Is that right?
[25:19]Who are you up until the point in the conversation?
[25:22]Because I have to be truthful
[25:25]is usually when you deliver the punch.
[25:27]It's the round out.
[25:29]It's the, I have to be truthful.
[25:32]But you're not back and you're getting ready to hit.
[25:35]I don't know what that has to do with my book.
[25:37]Probably nothing, but.
[25:42]Well, it's just awesome.
[25:43]I love how you think all the things
[25:46]through your hilarious sense of humor.
[25:48]I could listen to just like talk about stuff
[25:51]and watch your mind go.
[25:53]It's really fun, really super fun.
[25:55]Okay, well, I want to tell you this funny thing.
[25:57]So I wrote this book called Short
[25:59]and it's sort of a lot of my book.
[26:00]I saw that.
[26:01]I'm going to get it for my daughter
[26:02]because I'm 5-2 and all my kids are short
[26:05]and so they all annoyed at me about it.
[26:07]So I was very short.
[26:10]And from kindergarten to seventh grade,
[26:12]I was a shortest girl in the class.
[26:15]And I was the shortest of anyone in the class.
[26:17]And I was so short.
[26:18]I looked two years younger than I was
[26:21]and I have a brother, younger brother.
[26:23]He was my size.
[26:24]People thought we were twins.
[26:25]Nothing worse, by the way.
[26:27]And I get to hear my parents talk about it
[26:29]because my parents aren't short,
[26:30]but I have a grandmother's very short.
[26:32]So they were saying she's like her and everything.
[26:35]But the main character, Julia, who is short,
[26:39]she has a ton of personality
[26:41]because she has to make up for the fact
[26:44]that she might be the smallest one.
[26:46]So she has a big voice.
[26:47]And that's something sometimes what happens.
[26:50]And the book is in her point of view
[26:54]and you listen to the ramblings of Julia,
[26:56]which are basically the ramblings of me.
[26:58]And one of the things she says,
[27:01]she loves to read obituaries.
[27:03]And she says, even when you die,
[27:06]you're still looking for praise.
[27:07]Everyone wants applause.
[27:09]She says, even when in the afterlife,
[27:14]all you want is to someone to tell you,
[27:16]you've done a good job.
[27:18]And that's a child's perspective,
[27:20]but it's really my idea of the universe,
[27:23]which is we all want validation.
[27:25]We all want to be told we're doing something right,
[27:29]maybe even when we're doing something wrong.
[27:31]But maybe except for Vladimir Putin.
[27:34]Maybe he's the only one that doesn't lead all the praise.
[27:37]He can deal with the negative attention.
[27:39]Oh my goodness.
[27:41]Holly, this has been so fun.
[27:42]I can't believe that it's been half an hour.
[27:44]We have to keep this up in person another time
[27:48]and in the store and in LA.
[27:50]Actually, I should ask you,
[27:51]I'm doing a screening of are you there?
[27:54]God, it's me Margaret this Sunday in Santa Monica,
[27:56]if you have any interest in coming.
[27:58]I do.
[27:59]At five o'clock.
[28:00]Maybe you can send me the details on that.
[28:02]And I do want to say,
[28:04]but I won't be traveling for pieces of blue.
[28:06]So in Cambridge,
[28:08]I will be at Porter Square Books
[28:09]with Professor Henry Lewis Gates.
[28:12]Wow.
[28:13]In New York, I will be at Barnes and Noble Tribeca
[28:16]with the actor Richard Kime.
[28:18]I will be in Seattle, Washington with Maria Semple,
[28:22]the novelist of George Brown's Act.
[28:24]I'll be with the poet Ed Skogg in Portland, Oregon.
[28:27]I'll be with the novelist Gigi Lavonci in Nashville
[28:31]at Parnas.
[28:32]And I'll be in Houston at Blue Willow Books
[28:36]and a little shop of stories in Decatur, Georgia.
[28:40]I'll be everywhere.
[28:41]You'll be everywhere.
[28:42]Maybe people want to have a book store
[28:47]and hear me talk about pieces of blue,
[28:50]which publishes on May 9th.
[28:52]Yay.
[28:53]Congratulations.
[28:55]Thank you so much for having me today.
[28:57]All right.
[28:58]Bye, thank you.
[29:01]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[29:02]Don't have time to read books.
[29:04]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebiowens
[29:07]and at Moms.
[29:08]Don't have time to read books.
[29:09]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[29:12]and sign up for my virtual book club
[29:13]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:16]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[29:19]for the Sound Editing.
[29:20]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:22]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.