Pamela Redmond, YOUNGER

[1:52]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings. But this Here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. This is a special re release of Pamela Redmond's episode. Since I did this podcast years ago, I have now contracted with her to publish books for Zippy Books, which is so exciting. Pamela is the author of Younger and then Older, which I interviewed her about originally and getting a chance to get to know her and work with her on books has been such a dream. Her book, The Patriarch, will be coming out next year. Enjoy. Pamela Redmond is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Younger, now a television show created by Darren Star. Her new novel, Older, a sequel to Younger, is just coming out. The coauthor of a groundbreaking series of books on names, she's the creator of Nameberry, the world's largest baby name site. A former editor and columnist for Glamour, Pamela currently lives in Los Angeles. Welcome, Pamela. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Great to be here, Zibby. Thank you. Of course. Your novel Older. This is so funny as a sequel, of course, to Younger. Can you please tell listeners what Older is about? And the whole thing is like so meta. It's like the book about the show, which was a show of a book. It's like so crazy. So tell listeners what this book is about.

[4:09]Pamela Redmond: You know, for a long time it was difficult to even conceive of a sequel to Younger because the show takes the original novel so much further in the lives of all these characters and in the situations between them. Lies is lie has been revealed. Everybody knows that she's actually older. And the show is still going on. It should actually be going on this summer. So there is no real end to those characters' lives. So when I had the idea to write a sequel, I thought, it has to be set enough in the future from these characters' lives that whatever's gonna happen at the end of the show will have happened and they'll have moved a step or two beyond. And the book Younger ends with Alice, as she was called in the original book, becoming a writer, which is what she always wanted to do. And so it made sense that, of course, even though she's a novelist, she would write a romanic clef about this year she spent faking her identity as a millennial. So from there, it kind of was like, okay, so if she writes a book called Younger, then wouldn't Kelsey who kind of logically might have landed in Hollywood and have made the transition from book editor to TV producer option that and try to turn it into a TV show. So once I had that set up, the plot kind of unspooled from there. Josh was my character and he's on the scene, but Charles is not my character. So with really broken heart, I had to let go of Charles, but having a television show made from younger, I could create a character as an actor who is playing the character who is something like Charles.

[6:08]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. It must get confusing. Like, all the different you know, it's crazy. The different plot lines and what you made up and what you didn't. And Well, was it confusing to you reading it? No, but I have to say I have not watched every episode of Younger. What? I know. I'm sorry. I wish I had. I might go do that now. In fact, goodbye. I think I'm gonna take off and do it. So for me, it wasn't as confusing, but I would imagine if you watched every episode or I don't know, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's not confusing. No, I don't

[6:38]Pamela Redmond: think so. I mean, I have watched every episode in real time, you know, I don't write the show and sometimes Darren Star sends me scripts ahead of time, but I don't know what's going to be happening. And I don't think the actors know either. I've read interviews with Hilary Duff, for instance, who's like, I don't know what season seven is going to be about. So, you know, I was kind of trying to guess, but I think you can have read the original Younger, have watched the show

[7:11]Zibby Owens: and then read older and it makes sense. Totally. I didn't mean to imply your novel was confusing. I just meant sort of simultaneously following a TV show based on your book and then writing a new book and picking up the That's it. No, this novel was not at all confusing. It was hilarious and I loved it. And it was just it was perfect. And even just as a standalone novel, I mean, and Katie, Kelsey, you said there was a quote that I can't find, but you said she said something about how TV is like the new book, right? So tell me about that. And how, like, how has your whole mentality on books and the literary world shifted now that you're watching what's happened to it sort of on the other side of this journey?

[7:59]Pamela Redmond: Great question. I mean, books used to be sort of the ultimate kind of creative endeavor for anybody who was sort of interested in fictional worlds and characters. And that has really changed. I mean, television, as everyone knows, has just exploded so much. There's so many shows and so many amazing shows that bring all these incredible talents to bear on an idea and on characters And just take it so much further than any book author can. How can I do anything that comes close to what Darren Star and Sutton Foster and Hilary Duff and Debbie Mazer bring to this idea? But the thing you can do with books that you can't do on television obviously are get deep into your character's feelings and into their thoughts. And it's a way to explore a theme in a more concentrated way that maybe is easier to grasp in itself. I think that the word theme makes everybody think of high school English and just automatically boring, you know? I love talking about themes. I do this all day long. I love it.

[9:18]Zibby Owens: Let's back up a little bit to writing Younger because I feel like it provides the context of older. When you wrote that book, like what made you originally come up with that idea and write that book, which then of course spawned to this book eventually? You know, the first time I met Sutton Foster, she asked me that question. And when I told her,

[9:38]Pamela Redmond: all I can think of is this horrified look she got in her face because I think she expected to hear a nice story like, Oh, I looked younger and people would mistake me for 26. And so I thought that would be a great story. But the truth is I was reading Vogue when I should have been writing and I read a story about extreme plastic surgery. And apparently you could go to Uruguay or somewhere and get such extreme plastic surgery that you would look like a totally different person. And as a fiction writer, that was very provocative. And I thought, well, who would do that? Why would you do that? Why would I do that? And I guess what I thought is, well, you could look 25 again or 28 and go back and just start over. Leave your life and just go back and start over. So then I thought, well, what would I do if I started over? And I've never looked younger than I am, substantially younger than I am. I've never not been a working mom. So it wasn't like I wanted to recapture a career, but it was that I thought I would go back and take my career more seriously as a younger person. To be 25 or 28, I think when I was really that age, I was wanting to get married, wanting to have kids, which makes a lot of sense. The clock is really ticking. You don't have very much time to get all that together. But I was a 50 year old novelist trying to start, and I thought, wow, it'd be much easier to do this as a young, beautiful, energetic person.

[11:29]Zibby Owens: But then you wouldn't have had this great idea. Mean, you know, you might be young and beautiful and you might look really great writing it, but maybe you wouldn't have as much to say. I love that idea. Look really great writing it. Right? I can just like, you know, a perfect, you know, coffee shop sort of visual, but you know, the words are pretty blank or it's like the same word over and over again.

[11:51]Pamela Redmond: I know. And probably if you look that great, you don't want to spend your time alone in a room writing a novel.

[11:56]Zibby Owens: You probably wouldn't be alone for very long in that coffee shop. But anyway, I'm getting like totally off track here. So you started writing it. You had this idea. By the way, if you could go back, like, what would you have changed yourself aside from, like, in your personal life? Not necessarily, like, career wise, but is there one little thing? Is there one relationship? Is there one friendship? Is there one, like, some party you didn't go to you've always regretted? Like, is there just like a little thing

[12:28]Pamela Redmond: from your past that you would like to do a get a redo on? A redo. You know, I think like a lot of women, I would say I'd be more confident. I'd be more ambitious. I would have fewer self doubts, which is something that I see in a lot of younger women now. It took me all these years to get confident enough to say, this is what I want to do and I'm going to do it. And it doesn't matter if X or Y doesn't like it or doesn't want me to do it. I would start writing a novel show it to a friend, be excited and show it to a friend. And they would say like, I don't really love this. And I would be like, you're right, it sucks. I'm stopping. That's the end. And now I think about that and it's like, that is terrible. It just seems terrible that I had not enough confidence on my own inner desires or compass to follow that no matter what someone else thought. Interesting.

[13:29]Zibby Owens: I do love the whole makeover element though. This whole not only can you go back in time, but you know, when Liza comes out of the cabin in Maine and has to, like, horrifies her friends and takes, like, five hours to whip her into shape again and, like, you know, and she's like, no, my hair is fine. And they're like, no, no, no. It's not fine. I feel like that is like complete, like, pandemic. It's like how everybody is now exiting their homes. You, like, captured it here perfectly. It's true. It's true. We've all although your hair looks great, but we've all been like sort of camped out, I feel like in that way. I risked my life for my hair to look like this It's for totally worth it. Okay. I have to find this funny part. This is when Kelsey and Liza go meet Stella Power at her house, and she's like having total hair envy speaking of hair. And you and you're right. How do you get your hair to look like that? I blurted. She laughed exactly like Barbie might laugh if she could. Easy compared with sitting around all day being a creative genius. And then you say, I think the hair is harder, I said, utterly fascinated. And then you talk about like Liza's thinning hair and all of this. And then she says, Oh, well, some of it's extensions. She said, reaching up and fiddling around as if she were trying to tease out a knit and removed a huge hank of hair. I nearly screamed. And then you go on, And then I had stem cells injected into my scalp to stimulate hair growth. It's amazing. I told Stella I'd never heard of such a thing. It's still experimental. Oh my gosh, so funny. It's just like such a Hollywood, you know, parody, the whole thing. It's like, it was just great. And it of course goes on and on. So was your experience in Hollywood anything like this? Like tell me about, like did you have an initial intro meeting with the star that was anything like this or can you not say?

[15:20]Pamela Redmond: No. I mean, had no. Every star I've met has been very nice. But I think Stella Power kind of oscillates a lot of things that really are true about LA or Hollywood life, which is somebody who's very nice on the outside, very beautiful, sweet, down to earth, and yet they have a will of steel. And something like I did meet someone who had those injections in her scalp and said, Oh, you have to do it. It's the best. And I'm from New Jersey. And New Jersey is basically the opposite of LA. Doesn't look good. People are very harsh, but they're warm and they're real. And in LA, people are super nice. When I first came here, I thought like, God, everybody loves me here. It's great. And then I found out, okay, maybe they love me and maybe they didn't, but the way they acted and the way they felt were not necessarily

[16:30]Zibby Owens: the same things. Yes. There's a lot to be said for some authenticity.

[19:19]Zibby Owens: So what was it like? And I don't mean to keep talking about this transition, but I feel like having such a big show is like a really big deal. And I talk to so many authors who are dying to be in your seat. So this is like, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel, I feel like for so many people. So when you found out your book was going to be a show, like what was that like for you? And how did your life change from what it was before to then now, essentially? You

[19:46]Pamela Redmond: know, it was kind of unbelievable. I found out I was actually staying at a friend's house in Upstate New York and I was working on another novel. And it was the day that I finished the other novel, I guess it was 2013. It was the same day. And I found out by reading it on page six. So nobody called me. It turned out my agent was away on vacation. Yes. And I just sat there reading it like, what? Is this true? And then of course, I know it's crazy, right? And then the way TV happens, things happen in increments. So the first thing is there is a pilot order. So that's what I read on page six. The pilot had been ordered, I guess. And then it was six months until they shot the pilot. And I think it was the night before they shot the pilot, Darren Starry's assistant texted me and said, Okay, so we're shooting tomorrow. Can you come to this spot? And of course I just said, Yes. I think it was three hour drive from my house. I will be there. And it was just, I do remember this moment of standing in this room and it's the first episode of the show. Liza's selling her suburban house. And so the scene is that there's a real estate agent showing people her house, which I don't think was actually even in the book. And I was standing in the corner of the room and there are like 150 people in this suburban living room standing around watching the actors. And it was just so surreal because I also remembered the moment that I had the idea. It was a very discreet moment. Not like, well, some ideas kind of morph over time. This idea kind of landed in my head like from outer space, but that was incredible that all these people were making the show. And then the fact that it it got picked up for a season and then it got ordered for a second season was just, that was pretty surreal. So it has changed my life in the sense that people know who I am, which they might not. Most people say to authors like, Oh, would I have read anything you've written? And usually unless you're John Grisham or something, the answer is no, you have no idea. People don't notice the names on books or on magazine articles. I've written over 20 books. I've written hundreds, if not thousands of magazine articles. And I think I've met one person in my entire life who's recognized my name. But people know the show. And so it's great to sort of get that moment of recognition or credibility.

[22:35]Zibby Owens: That's been good. It's such a shame. I mean, people might know the names of your books, but for people all over, could be like, I think about this all the time when I'm like wandering around the city or I'm like sitting in a restaurant. I'm like, that person could have like written the book I this is before I did what I do now. But like, who knows? Like, that could be like the biggest person ever, and I just wouldn't even recognize them. Like, a friend and I joked that we should start a magazine that was like celebrity pics of authors. Like, who are they wearing? And, you know, like because really what authors do is so I mean, it's no less of an accomplishment than what the writers for TV do. I mean, no offense to writers on TV, but like everybody should be equally sort of allotted, but they're it's so disproportional. So I don't know. I'll get off my soapbox, but Well, it's a pretty

[23:23]Pamela Redmond: anonymous profession, you know. Maybe some people become authors because they want to be famous, but that would be a very misguided

[23:31]Zibby Owens: reason. Yes, that's true. In fact, maybe people like the anonymity. So maybe I should, you know, I've kicked my soapbox to the side now altogether. Forget it. How has this experience changed your writing if at all? Has it changed what you want to write about? How you write?

[23:48]Pamela Redmond: Well, that's a really interesting idea. I mean, think it's been really helpful and useful to be this exposed to to and become this familiar with how a television show is put together. I love taking writing classes. And so I always take a lot of writing classes of all kinds. I find them just you know, stimulating and ending. And so I've taken a few TV writing classes and those have really influenced me to plan a lot more, you know, create a much more detailed outline and really think through the story in terms of plausibility and causality in a way that a lot of writers or novelists are not trained to do or used to doing. So that's been very helpful.

[24:30]Zibby Owens: Yeah. And are you done with this set of characters now with this book or do you foresee more books about them or totally different types of things?

[24:41]Pamela Redmond: You know, I'm writing a new novel now and I'm in the middle of that. It's totally different characters. But the theme of age is one that, you know, I realized at some point that I've written about in several different ways. I had a blog at one point called How Not to Act Old, and that became a book, and that was a Times bestselling book. And that came at it from a totally different angle, which was a humor book. I was for a long time a columnist for Glamour magazine, and I wrote a column called 30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She's 30, and that was very age related. And that became this sort of viral internet list. So it's something that even like long before I was actually an old person myself, I was thinking about age and how age influenced your life, your perception of yourself. For women, I think it's obviously so different than for men. And how you plan your life and how you fulfill your dreams as a woman is so connected to age. You have this very short window in which if you want to get married and have children or just have children, you really can fight. You have to do it in this really tight timeframe. And as you know, and I'm assuming a lot of people who are watching know being a mother is extremely time consuming. When I had my first child, I was an editor at Glamour. I was working on a novel at night when I was pregnant, and then the baby was born. And it was like, okay, so I have a full time job and I have a baby, that's the end. And it wasn't until I had three children that eleven years apart, and it wasn't until my third child started kindergarten that I started writing fiction seriously.

[26:41]Zibby Owens: It's so funny. This fall, or, you know, my littlest guy of I have four kids. He's supposed to start kindergarten. And, like, in my head for the last five years, I've been like, I just have to get him to kindergarten, and I'll have all this time. And now it's like a joke because like no one's gonna be at school at all. And anyway yeah. Guess my novel will have to wait. No. I'm kidding. But it's like yeah. The ability to stop getting interrupted so much cannot be underrated. The, you know, being able to just focus and get stuff done and oh my gosh. Yeah. To feel literally and figuratively free. I think when they actually go to kindergarten,

[27:17]Pamela Redmond: feel free in a way you don't if they're just with the babysitter. Yes,

[27:21]Zibby Owens: totally. Now that has been taken away from me and I am in mourning.

[27:26]Pamela Redmond: I really would beside myself. I remember that last week of August every year, that was the worst, just like waiting, waiting, waiting.

[27:39]Zibby Owens: Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

[27:43]Pamela Redmond: Well, one advice I'd give along these lines, especially to women is it's not too late. I think you look forward to that day when your youngest is in kindergarten thinking it will be easy then, but then you're in your 40s maybe, or in your 50s as I was, I guess I was in my 40s. And it's scary. It's scary to start something new at that age. And you can kind of talk yourself out of it and think like, oh, everybody's young. They're so far ahead of me. Remember I signed up for a class in novel writing. And I'd taken one twenty, twenty five years before in college. And I remember sitting in the parking lot about to go. I was so nervous. I was really almost sick. I thought to put myself out there as a beginner again, after a career as a journalist, I didn't know what I was doing. I thought, they're all going to know how bad I am. I'm going to know how bad am. I'm gonna find out how bad I am. And I think that fear is enough to stop you, but obviously I don't think you should give into that. I think you should power through it. And I went to the class and there were a lot of people my age actually, as well as younger people. So yeah, don't let that stop. Don't let the age thing stop you is one piece of advice I'd give. And it is rare, it is a marathon, it's not a sprint. I see people who are trying to write something new and they're like, Well, I've been writing this thing for three months and I don't know, is it ready to publish yet? And I think and I used to think about that too. You kind of have your eye on the product and it really should be on the process, on getting better, on getting used to it, on learning how to write fiction in a way or whatever it is you wanna write

[29:42]Zibby Owens: in a way that will truly be both satisfying to you and commercially viable. Interesting. I just did an interview with Fiona Davis for her new book about the New York Public Library and the story there, and I was joking around and I was like, they should produce greeting cards that say like, happy fortieth birthday, welcome to your forties, now you can write a novel. Because I really feel like yes, of course, people of all ages write novels, but I feel like there's something about getting a little bit older that that just changes everything and makes for much better fiction. So I actually think this is such a great thing for women as we all get older to know that it's there. Like, there's no rush. And I don't know, sometimes time, you know, can feel overwhelming if it seems like there's too much of it. Right? It's like so in demand, and then it's like too much. But knowing you can fill it all with writing and it's like, this is your time. Like, I think there should be a public service announcement about it. Like, now it's time, you go. So

[30:41]Pamela Redmond: anyway. Yeah, I've been thinking recently that I'd like to do a class specifically for women over 40 on starting your first novel or your first book, because I think it is a special thing in terms of your self image, in terms of just being a beginner at something that's really hard. It's like trying to become the intellectual equivalent of a ballet dancer or an Olympic athlete. It's really hard to write a novel,

[31:11]Zibby Owens: but it's so rewarding and so much fun and anyone can do it. Yeah. And a lot of those other things. I mean, think my ballet days have passed. So many things are now off the table. It's nice to know that something has been added in that maybe you didn't have the spotlight shining on before, but that can be really rewarding and also help other people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books, to talk about Older. Thank you also for just making me laugh. I really needed that. Your book was really funny and clever and smart and just I just needed that laugh. So thank you. That was great. Well, thank you. Thanks for reading it and

[31:52]Pamela Redmond: great to be here. I love what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you.

[31:56]Zibby Owens: Okay.

[31:57]Pamela Redmond: Bye. Thanks

[32:00]Zibby Owens: for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks. Also sign up for my at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.