Stephanie Clifford, THE FAREWELL TOUR
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[1:03]Stephanie Clifford is the author of the farewell tour novel.
[1:07]Stephanie is an investigative journalist and a best-selling novelist.
[1:10]As a New York Times reporter for almost a decade, she covered courts, business, and media.
[1:14]She now writes long-form investigations about criminal justice and business for the times.
[1:18]The New Yorker, the economist, the Atlantic, Wired, L.S. choir, Bloomberg Businessweek, and
[1:23]other publications.
[1:24]Her accolades include the low award in investigative reporting, the Society of American Business
[1:29]editors and writers in explanatory reporting, and a New York Press Club award.
[1:33]Everybody writes her first book was a New York Times bestseller.
[1:37]And New York Times book review editor's choice.
[1:39]She grew up in Washington State, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, and lives in Brooklyn
[1:43]with her family.
[1:44]Welcome, Stephanie.
[1:45]Thanks so much for coming.
[1:46]I'm Momstone.
[1:47]I have time to read books to discuss the farewell tour novel.
[1:50]I'm so glad to be here.
[1:52]Oh, thanks for coming.
[1:53]Can you please tell listeners what your book is about?
[1:56]Yeah, it opens in 1980 when Lillian Waters, a sort of washed-up, hard-talking country music
[2:03]stars on her final tour.
[2:05]And you see her, she's been diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems.
[2:09]She knows this is her last shot to sing on the road to go home to Washington State, where
[2:14]she's from and hasn't been back to since she was a kid.
[2:17]Then alternating chapters, you see her growing up in Walla Walla, Washington.
[2:21]You see her in the country music scene in Tacoma, Washington in California, and in Golden
[2:27]Age, Nashville.
[2:28]So it's for people, obviously, who love music, but there's also so much about dealing
[2:32]with trauma and visiting your past and kind of thinking about how to make art as a woman
[2:38]and sometimes unforgiving world.
[2:41]So she had a really, I would say, not great relationship with her sister, Hen, who, along
[2:47]with her mom, would put her in this shed.
[2:50]The milkshay had this have it, it's called, milkshay, and she tried to get out and nobody
[2:56]heard her.
[2:57]I mean, this is literally like my worst nightmare.
[2:58]It's like your travel side, the dark, and this is why my son never locks the door to
[3:03]the bathroom.
[3:04]It's like, you never know.
[3:06]But that way of pre-depression era parenting, I don't know, how do you recover from something
[3:13]like that?
[3:14]And I'm not sure you do.
[3:15]And really, it was so, the story, not the specifics of it, but kind of that origin story
[3:22]where Lillian leads home at age 10 and moves into town to become a hired girl, was based
[3:27]on my own grandmother's story.
[3:29]She grew up on a depression era in Northwest Farm, and we never knew why she left, but
[3:35]she did leave, and from age 10 on, she was supporting herself.
[3:38]And she, I adored her, she was incredible, but you could also see there was just so many
[3:43]walls that she had built up in order to survive, and I feel like there are so many tales
[3:48]like that, especially a woman from that era that just had to get by in these really tough
[3:53]circumstances.
[3:54]And I wanted to look at what that does to a person when they, when they can't talk about
[3:58]their past, like we would now, when they can't go to therapy, the just wasn't done, and
[4:03]there wasn't medication, and how that affects how they interact with the world and kind
[4:07]of help.
[4:08]And then she goes through the world.
[4:09]So you see Lillian really grappling with that, especially as she is challenged and pushed
[4:15]on the floor by some of her colleagues.
[4:17]She thinks about how she has been interacting with the world, whether it's been the right
[4:21]way or whether there is a way to be a little more vulnerable, a little more open.
[4:25]And even her sort of PTSD is just driving up and coming back to the farm.
[4:31]Yeah.
[4:32]You know, you create this sort of tension with the reader right away where you're empathetic
[4:37]and yet curious all at the same time.
[4:39]So it's a good way to kick it out.
[4:41]Good.
[4:42]Thanks.
[4:43]And then polyps on the vocal cords.
[4:46]Yeah.
[4:47]You said in your acknowledgements how you talked to lots of doctors about that and what
[4:50]did you learn about it?
[4:51]And is it something that only happens, I mean, that sounds like a stupid question.
[4:54]Does it only happen to singers?
[4:56]I'm sure it doesn't only happen to singers, but is it more common in singers?
[4:59]Is it caused by the excess of use or unrelated?
[5:02]Yeah.
[5:03]It's caused by excess of use for mac, vocal cord and training.
[5:06]So you could get it if you're a regular person, but I spoke to a doctor at NYU who
[5:12]have a special vocal center that specializes in opera singers and stage performers who
[5:17]are always kind of speaking to crowds and speaking a ton.
[5:22]And most of them now have really good training on how to preserve their vocal cords.
[5:26]Lily and herthman about access to that in growing up.
[5:29]So she's just belting out on stage and she starts to get this raspy tone in her voice.
[5:35]And she knows immediately what it was because she's seen it happen to other singers.
[5:39]And then back then, the doctor I talked to was fabulous.
[5:42]He was taking it through like 1980s era of vocal cords, just how it was.
[5:48]Back then, now they have incredible techniques for restoring vocal cords.
[5:53]Back then it was a little bit more risky.
[5:55]A million is really afraid of actually losing her voice if she goes through the surgery.
[5:59]So she's when the vocal opens, she doesn't want to touch the surgery.
[6:03]She just wants to sing one more time and then kind of head out of the spotlight.
[6:08]I was reading this morning about how Nadal might be at the end of his tennis career.
[6:12]I don't know if you follow tennis, but it feels like the same thing.
[6:15]It's like he's in all this pain and before he like does one last thing to make him,
[6:21]you know, basically not even walk anymore, it's so hard on your, I mean, it's obviously
[6:27]hard on a very different part of your body, but it's also like how hard can you push
[6:31]it and when is the moment to leave so that your legacy is still sort of shining brightly,
[6:35]you know, and you're not just like, bubbling or reaching, reaching to him at all, you know?
[6:42]Yeah, I feel like both of them, they said this morning how he can't even enjoy the success
[6:48]because of all the physical pain. And I feel like as Lily and is going around holding her
[6:53]throat and all of that, you know, at what cost do we achieve greatness?
[6:58]Right. Yeah. And she's, she's just trying to make it back to Washington,
[7:02]but the tour ends up in Washington. So she's dying to go back and perform in front of her family
[7:06]and like show them when she's become that sort of her, her driving course at first, to Ellie.
[7:11]And tell me more about all the research that you did.
[7:15]Yeah. And I am also a journalist and so I love love love research. So I started in the Wall
[7:21]Library, which is, it's like a small sort of mostly farming town, wine town now in Washington.
[7:27]And the college there has this incredible archive in part because it's a small town, like it's not
[7:32]like the New York Public Library, they're only collecting like really storied people's papers.
[7:37]Like everybody from town just donates their papers to the library. So you had like,
[7:42]made a farmer's journal from 1910 where he's like writing day by day at what he's planting,
[7:48]what he's, what the problems on the farm are and that really helped me with like,
[7:51]what Lillian's parents would have been doing on the farm. What, what time of year you plant
[7:56]weed when you harvest it, what goes wrong with the harvest. There were fabulous fire maps of
[8:02]all of all of us. So I could see exactly what the stores were and think about what would have
[8:05]appealed the Lillian. Of course, the music store versus like the hat store.
[8:11]So that was huge fun. And then the Tacoma part of the book,
[8:17]I actually had to sort of backfill. I had to read most of that during COVID. And so I didn't actually
[8:21]get to visit Tacoma until the book was almost done. And it was so nerve-wracking because I
[8:28]Lillian loves Tacoma. She, her career starts there. It's like a honky tonk working man's town. It
[8:34]totally fits her style. But I hadn't been to Tacoma in years. And I had like at this moment when I was
[8:41]I was like in the taxi from the airport going into Tacoma where I was about to throw up or I was like,
[8:46]what if it's like super nice and quiet and Lillian would
[8:51]but it turned out it was it was bad. It's still gritty and the court's still there. Like she would have
[8:56]totally loved it. It was also it was funny. I am like two kids. I have a husband. We have like a thousand
[9:03]animals. And I was in Tacoma for a few days by myself. And everybody was like, oh, like this is a great
[9:07]bay by yourself in Tacoma. And I was like, yeah, like Lillian was there the whole time with me like
[9:13]chatting away in my ear did so much to say about every like should be like, oh yeah, I couldn't
[9:19]afford that littler. Like yeah, I love that. So it's like, it's actually super fun to sort of spend
[9:26]the time with, you know, the voices that talk to us in our heads. It's like the literal putting
[9:31]yourself in someone else's shoes. Yes. Walking the walk. Okay, a thousand animals or
[9:39]okay. What do you have? We have two giant rescue dogs that are like bigger than me and then two cats.
[9:47]Wow. And two kids. And two kids. Yeah. The second rescue dog was like maybe not our best videos.
[9:55]Oh my gosh, how old are your kids? There were six and nine. I have a nine year old as well.
[10:00]It's fun, nine-year-olds.
[10:02]I feel like it's soon going to go into middle school craziness,
[10:06]but it's still a little kid sandwich is great.
[10:10]Yeah, I don't know.
[10:10]I feel like my daughter is a little bit,
[10:12]I have an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old
[10:14]and the nine-year-old is like, very much like already 30.
[10:17]You know, he like picks out Mike Lowe's for me.
[10:19]The other day I went out and I like,
[10:21]she wasn't here.
[10:22]And I was like, you weren't here.
[10:23]And so I weren't, she was, it didn't look good.
[10:25]But anyway, my son is definitely still in the suite
[10:29]young boy face, so I went back and read your piece
[10:34]about swell water bottles in Martha Brown Medium
[10:38]because I actually went to business school with Sarah.
[10:40]And yeah, and I hadn't, I mean, I obviously hadn't read that
[10:43]piece before I found an absolutely fascinating
[10:45]and I knew anecdotally, of course,
[10:47]that there are many copycats to the swell water bottles,
[10:50]but your deep dive into all of that
[10:52]was absolutely fascinating.
[10:53]Tell me more about that.
[10:55]Thank you, yeah, it was a really interesting story.
[10:57]Sarah, who had been the CEO of swell was really outspoken
[11:01]about the problem in especially consumer products,
[11:04]mostly Chinese copycats.
[11:05]And she decided to be quite aggressive about
[11:08]going after these copycats.
[11:10]The swell retails for 20, $25.
[11:13]Like it matters for something like that,
[11:16]but it's also fairly easy to copy in a not so good way.
[11:21]So she just talked about how difficult it actually is
[11:25]to go after these copycats.
[11:26]A lot of them are fly by night companies.
[11:28]You shut down one and it's in like some industrial park
[11:32]and then it pops up two weeks later or something else.
[11:35]Consumers, I think consumers are becoming more aware,
[11:38]but consumers are sort of unaware.
[11:41]Like if you look on Amazon or search dupes for swell,
[11:44]you'll get this like just so many products.
[11:47]You don't know where they came from.
[11:48]You don't know how they are manufactured.
[11:49]You certainly don't know the labor practices involved.
[11:52]So there's so many downsides to it,
[11:53]but it's really, it's flooding the market.
[11:56]I just wrote a story for consumer reports on e-bike buyers,
[12:00]which have been increasing at a really alarming pace,
[12:03]especially here in New York City.
[12:05]And that's actually a similar problem
[12:07]if you've got responsible manufacturers paying for testing,
[12:11]paying for safety.
[12:12]And then you've got fly by night companies using cheap,
[12:16]untested batteries and sending them overseas.
[12:19]And again, consumers are mostly just looking
[12:22]for the cheapest product and they're not that aware
[12:24]that they're taking a risk when they're buying these things.
[12:27]So where does this fascination or interest
[12:30]in like diving really deep into things?
[12:33]Like where does this come from?
[12:34]And is it mostly consumer focused?
[12:36]No, I do a lot of criminal justice too.
[12:38]So I was at the New York Times for about a decade
[12:40]that I did business to start their recovery business
[12:43]and then I covered criminal justice.
[12:45]So I love these long deep stories
[12:49]where you're really grappling with an issue
[12:51]that you don't understand at first.
[12:53]And it's one of those things where you start
[12:55]and you're like, I don't even know who to call.
[12:57]Like I don't know, like e-bikes.
[12:58]I don't know if they didn't know anything about.
[13:00]And so you're just sitting there
[13:02]with like a list of possibilities
[13:04]of people you could call, reports you could look at,
[13:06]research you could do.
[13:08]And it's so fun when you finally start to get your head around it.
[13:11]And you finally, as you're interviewing people,
[13:14]I mean, you may always sound like an idiot,
[13:15]that's fine.
[13:16]But you said that.
[13:18]So you're also like you start to be like,
[13:20]oh yeah, I know I heard of that before, right?
[13:22]What about this issue?
[13:23]You start to really be able to shape
[13:26]what your story's gonna be and what's happening here.
[13:29]And then of course you're always looking for
[13:32]the human part of it.
[13:34]Like the e-bikes story really came together
[13:37]when I spoke to this woman whose house had been,
[13:41]she was an apartment building
[13:42]but her apartment had been affected by e-bikes fire
[13:45]and the basement that had killed a child.
[13:48]And she then, she's been basically jumping from,
[13:52]sofa to sofa with her small children's sense.
[13:54]She was like, I just can't believe that like a bike
[13:56]could do this to my life.
[13:58]So that kind of reporting.
[13:59]And that, especially the stuff that affects people
[14:01]who maybe don't have as much of a voice
[14:04]who maybe don't have as much access to media.
[14:08]And tell me about the training you got
[14:10]and how you got really get it all this reporting.
[14:13]And when you knew this is what you wanted to do,
[14:16]like is this what you wanted to do as a kid?
[14:18]And it was.
[14:20]Yeah.
[14:21]Yeah.
[14:22]And all the writing came later,
[14:23]I was really scared of that.
[14:24]And I never, I was like, I don't think I can be in all of this.
[14:27]But journalism seemed a little more accessible
[14:30]like at the high school date for it
[14:31]at the college paper and just loved it.
[14:33]Like it's this, my dad always told me
[14:35]to find something you love to do
[14:37]and then find somebody who will pay you to do it.
[14:39]Yeah.
[14:40]And this idea that you can just go out
[14:42]and talk to strangers and talk to smart people
[14:44]and see something that's a mess in the world
[14:47]and write about it and maybe leave the world
[14:50]a little bit better was really appealing.
[14:53]So I started as a fact checker at the magazine.
[14:56]Those a new economy magazine in San Francisco
[14:58]called E Company Now at Glamation Point is very, very 2000.
[15:03]That is a job that's like,
[15:05]they still have them at like the Atlanta
[15:06]and that has fact checkers, New Yorker as fact checkers.
[15:08]There aren't as many of those jobs,
[15:10]which is a pity because it's actually fabulous
[15:12]for learning how a reporter sources each piece of information
[15:16]you're going through at the pencil, double checking everything
[15:19]they do.
[15:20]That's this sort of, it's paid obviously, it's a job,
[15:23]but it's like an apprenticeship almost in that way.
[15:26]And I went from there to a business magazine in New York
[15:29]and then to the times.
[15:31]Amazing.
[15:32]And so then why the novel?
[15:33]Well, I was at the times and my,
[15:36]I love reading, I always have a book,
[15:38]like I'm a physical book person,
[15:40]so I always have a book in my bag.
[15:42]I don't have any small purses.
[15:44]And this idea for my first novel just kept gnawing at me
[15:49]and finally I was like, okay,
[15:51]like let me just put it down on screen
[15:54]and start working on it slowly and finally
[15:56]without any pressure and see what happens.
[15:59]So I worked on that before work at the times
[16:02]and it took eight years, but I would go five
[16:04]and do an hour of work and then go to the times newsroom.
[16:09]And I think because the literary crowd like in college
[16:13]or in New York seem can be very,
[16:17]it seems quite exclusive and very like these people
[16:19]who've known since birth
[16:21]that they're going to be an novelist.
[16:22]And they've been working in seminars
[16:26]or fellowships or whatnot.
[16:28]They can feel a little bit like
[16:29]if you're not part of that or not,
[16:31]but they're not room for you at the table.
[16:33]So I was, even after my first novel came out
[16:38]I was still quite hesitant to say that I was involved.
[16:42]Like sort of apart from that scene.
[16:45]But I love the fictional world.
[16:48]It's an interesting structural challenge.
[16:51]It's an interesting writing challenge
[16:54]in as much as you're sitting at a computer.
[16:56]It's similar to the journalism in that way.
[16:59]But you're thinking about things
[17:01]and processing them and they change so much
[17:03]over the course of several years
[17:04]as you're writing like some of the characters
[17:07]in Farewell Tour, K. Ory is a young woman.
[17:10]The young really talented fiddler
[17:12]who's on his own melons, Farewell Tour band.
[17:16]Like she was just a tiny character to start with.
[17:18]And then she just kept growing and having more to say
[17:21]and like this whole other plot line involving her
[17:23]and her family's history came out of just K. Ory
[17:28]pushing for more air and space in my head.
[17:31]So it's just, it's so interesting.
[17:34]Yeah, it's like this crazy application
[17:37]of the subconscious that we all just accept.
[17:40]You're like, okay.
[17:42]No, and you're like, right.
[17:43]Like you wake up from dreams
[17:44]and you're like, oh, that's how to solve that scene.
[17:46]Yeah.
[17:47]You'll be like, what is my mind doing?
[17:49]Yeah, crazy.
[17:50]But great.
[17:51]One person's imagination is like another person's
[17:53]whole afternoon.
[17:54]Right.
[17:55]So it's a working out really well.
[17:57]Exactly.
[17:59]So then your second novel, how did you approach that?
[18:02]You didn't have to do it at five in the morning
[18:03]or did you just do it?
[18:04]No, I left the times because I realized I couldn't do it.
[18:09]And then I had two little kids and you don't have the five
[18:11]I am slot anymore.
[18:13]Yeah, I was wondering.
[18:14]I was like, wow, do they just leave?
[18:16]And then she worked from five to six
[18:17]and then she made breakfast.
[18:21]So I realized I couldn't do the time
[18:26]struggle, which is incredibly demanding of it should be.
[18:28]But it just takes up like all hours of the day
[18:32]and write another novel.
[18:33]So I left the times and I'm writing now journalism pieces
[18:37]for the times for the New Yorker.
[18:40]So I do that about half time and half time
[18:42]and working on the novel.
[18:44]So this came from that kernel about my grandmother
[18:47]that I mentioned.
[18:48]But it came from, I grew up in Seattle, Washington.
[18:52]And as I read like classic Westerns,
[18:55]a Steinbeck or Owen Worcester, I noticed two things.
[18:59]One was that they didn't represent the part of the West.
[19:03]I'm from.
[19:03]They're all in these air and dry landscapes.
[19:06]And I wanted to write about what it's like for somebody
[19:08]like Lilley and who doesn't quite fit in in the Northwest.
[19:12]But who recognized the beauty of the land
[19:14]and how lush and forgiving land can be.
[19:19]So she's really grappling with this idea of like
[19:21]where do I fit in in this stunning place?
[19:24]And she idealizes the history of the West really
[19:28]until the farewell tour.
[19:29]But it also came from when I read those books.
[19:32]They never let the women out of the house.
[19:35]And the men got to go out in adventure
[19:37]and they got to go fight or farm or whatever it was
[19:42]they were doing.
[19:43]And the women were like at home baking.
[19:47]It was like, have you met Western women?
[19:50]Like they were like knocked down that door
[19:52]and like being galloping on a horse after you.
[19:55]So I wanted to write about a really fierce Western woman.
[20:00]was out in the world, out in this pretty difficult man's business.
[20:05]And then the country music part of it actually came last,
[20:08]because I was trying to figure out what Lilian's job should be.
[20:10]And like for a minute, I had her working at Boeing,
[20:12]which was like, I can't put together Ikea furniture
[20:16]and I'm trying to save airline and airplane engineering.
[20:20]So I was happy to drop off that.
[20:22]But I found out I always read the Times obituary.
[20:26]So I love reading the Times obituary.
[20:28]Oh, interesting love.
[20:30]I know I'm always thinking like if I ever teach a class,
[20:33]this is what I would do as an assignment,
[20:35]just like read the obituaries and write a story.
[20:37]Yes.
[20:38]No, everything you're like, oh, that's so bad.
[20:40]That's cool.
[20:40]That's awesome.
[20:41]Yeah.
[20:42]A hundred hundred.
[20:42]And I mentioned that there was this country music producer
[20:45]out of Washington state that had died.
[20:47]And I was like, I grew up in Washington.
[20:49]I love country music.
[20:50]And I had no idea there was any connection between the two.
[20:53]So I started the look into it and found out
[20:55]that there was this wonderful historical moment
[20:57]when country was really thriving in Washington.
[21:01]The honky talk scene was there.
[21:02]Loretta Lynn was out there.
[21:04]And oh, and who's this great California country player
[21:06]was up there.
[21:07]So I was like, that's it.
[21:08]If I can get little to to come during the 50s,
[21:11]then like some issues grappling with her stage presence
[21:15]and her music and how to how to survive
[21:18]will be an artist and all these things.
[21:20]But I think are really interesting and very hard for her
[21:23]and something like this.
[21:24]Wow.
[21:25]OK, so you wrote that book.
[21:27]Now, what are you writing another book?
[21:29]Are you doing mostly reporting or are you hooked on fiction?
[21:32]I'm still trying to balance the two.
[21:34]So I'm working on some assignments for different magazines,
[21:37]both all of us all in criminal justice stuff.
[21:40]And then I'm starting to think about, I
[21:43]like, wish I was one of those people who
[21:44]had the next novel going.
[21:47]Oh, I saw the curve one, but I don't know.
[21:50]I couldn't do it.
[21:51]So I'm starting to play with some different ideas
[21:54]about my next book.
[21:55]I just threw out like, I don't know, 100 pages of a novel.
[22:01]Oh, no, I'm so sorry.
[22:04]And it's good, actually.
[22:06]That's one of the nice things about novels, right?
[22:09]It was sort of miserable writing.
[22:11]And I was starting to hate all the people.
[22:13]And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
[22:15]I don't know.
[22:16]Nobody's forcing me to keep slogging through.
[22:20]I can just get rid of it and start fresh.
[22:22]So it actually felt a little bit freeing.
[22:25]That's true.
[22:26]I guess you get like good that way.
[22:27]I have a novel coming out in March.
[22:29]And I just finished like my last round of edits.
[22:31]And my editor was like, we really don't need this whole scene.
[22:34]I'm like, I know we don't need it, but I really like it.
[22:38]I'm like, I think it's really funny.
[22:40]And I want people to know.
[22:41]And they're like, she's like, why don't you summarize it
[22:43]in a sentence?
[22:44]And then just like, I was like, what if we have bonus reading?
[22:50]Anyway, of course we don't need it.
[22:51]And of course they took it out.
[22:52]But it was so emotionally hard to like part with any words.
[22:56]It's especially like, especially when you're getting close
[22:58]to the end when you're like, no, no, no, I've already
[23:01]cut so much.
[23:02]Yeah, exactly.
[23:03]Please, no, no, no, no, that's long.
[23:05]I know.
[23:05]Like, it felt so perfectly tied up.
[23:09]But I guess that was a problem.
[23:10]So anyway.
[23:11]I like the bonus reading idea.
[23:13]Yeah.
[23:14]Like, this is what it was like.
[23:15]Let's put it on lines somewhere, whatever.
[23:17]I'm like, yeah, sorry.
[23:18]So maybe I'll do something with 100 pages.
[23:21]That's true.
[23:23]Maybe we should have like, it would be
[23:25]need to produce some sort of like wrapping paper
[23:28]where everybody's words discarded words
[23:31]go into like one big sort of that.
[23:33]Did I mean, and then like we just went wrapping paper
[23:36]from discarded pages?
[23:38]I think kind of cool, actually.
[23:40]I don't know.
[23:41]So maybe if you got into the store,
[23:43]then you'd be like, wait, worth just a bit.
[23:47]Maybe, I don't know.
[23:48]Just it's like the land of lost words, right?
[23:51]I know.
[23:52]I know.
[23:53]Like are they out there suffering?
[23:54]Are they happy to be confused?
[23:55]Yeah, what about those characters that we're knowing you?
[23:58]Where'd they go?
[23:59]Turns out they'll show up on your next trip.
[24:05]And I know you said you read all the time and all of that.
[24:08]And I also love to read like hard copies.
[24:11]I have to say much more.
[24:12]What are some of your go-to books or what are you reading now
[24:15]or authors you are obsessed with?
[24:18]I love Tana French.
[24:20]The, I guess she's a thriller writer, you'd say.
[24:23]But she, she's one of those people who I like track her,
[24:26]her every release.
[24:28]She, she's an Irish writer who, you know,
[24:30]mysteries set in Ireland.
[24:31]She's just a fabulous kind of scene setter.
[24:35]I just, come on, Irish, if I just read the Louise Kennedy
[24:38]class passes, I thought was really fabulous.
[24:41]And I read it at this, I was at the same time,
[24:44]more or less at the reading TV,
[24:45]Tana Jonathan's brotherless night.
[24:47]And both of those are, are set in 1970s, 1980s, cities,
[24:52]kind of overrun by domestic terrorism.
[24:56]So they actually, and they both feature female characters
[24:59]trying to navigate their work through.
[25:01]And so the Tana Jonathan's is set in Sri Lanka.
[25:04]But they were actually perfect pairings.
[25:06]There was so much, they're very different books,
[25:08]but there were so many similar themes running through them.
[25:11]So I loved reading both of those together.
[25:13]And then I somehow not read Cersei by Madeline Miller.
[25:16]So I'm treating myself to that this weekend,
[25:19]which I'm very excited about.
[25:21]Awesome.
[25:22]I saw her speak like years ago,
[25:25]like right when her book came out.
[25:27]And I was like, okay, cool, Greeks, like mythology,
[25:30]whatever.
[25:31]All right.
[25:31]And then it like exploded.
[25:33]That was like, it's like, no, anyway,
[25:35]should have paid more attention.
[25:36]So I had a song of Achilles when it came out,
[25:39]which was just, a song of Achilles, right?
[25:41]Yeah.
[25:42]And just blown away by it.
[25:43]So I don't know how I've not gotten around to this,
[25:46]but I'm very excited to read it.
[25:47]You seem like just so smart.
[25:50]Like you're so articulate and bright and everything.
[25:52]And I know you have to interview for investigative journalism,
[25:56]like just so many types of people, right?
[25:58]Like from all different walks of life and education levels
[26:01]and everything.
[26:01]And how do you feel about like talking to all different types
[26:05]or using your brain to, you know,
[26:08]connect across everything, do you know what I mean?
[26:12]Yeah.
[26:13]That's actually one of the best parts of it for me
[26:15]is you get to talk to people and see places
[26:18]that you just wouldn't see in your,
[26:20]and if you were a banker or a, I don't know, lawyer,
[26:24]what was my, but so it walked with people
[26:27]as they've come out of prison after 29 years.
[26:29]And it's just unbelievable to be able to be there,
[26:32]to like, to feel like you have their trust enough
[26:35]that they're letting you in at this moment.
[26:38]And I usually just try to be quiet and let them talk.
[26:42]And I think, you know, you see reporters in movies
[26:46]that I was like talking over whoever they're interviewing
[26:49]and be like, no, no, no, no, I know the truth is this.
[26:52]And I think the better tactic is just to sort of be quiet,
[26:57]let the person open up, push them, obviously.
[27:01]And you would have different approaches
[27:03]with the senior statesman versus somebody who's leaving
[27:07]prison, but mostly I'm just trying to understand their story
[27:12]and in their emotions, if they're talking about something
[27:16]that happened in the past, really bring them back to it
[27:18]and try to understand what they were going through then,
[27:21]what they were seeing, what they were hearing,
[27:22]what they were feeling, so I can try to recreate that scene
[27:27]as I write about it.
[27:29]Amazing. Do your kids like to read?
[27:32]They'll love it, yeah.
[27:33]They do.
[27:34]Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[27:35]I'm reading her singing part because my kids
[27:38]are on a Greek mythology kick and so they know everything
[27:41]about every Greek god-made reminder in between.
[27:45]And I feel like I need to catch up because they keep being like,
[27:47]who is the third fury?
[27:53]No, I love when my like sixth grade information
[27:57]doesn't, isn't at the ready in my kid's name.
[27:59]No, everything.
[28:00]Yeah, it's humbling, I have to say humbling.
[28:04]And I forgot to ask, are both your books going to be movies?
[28:08]Or what is the film, book to film status on these both?
[28:12]The first one was option and there's
[28:15]like a script floating around, we'll see.
[28:20]We'll see.
[28:21]The second one is out for film right now.
[28:23]So we're getting interest and talking to people
[28:26]and seeing where it goes.
[28:28]Really exciting.
[28:29]Well, amazing.
[28:30]I mean, I'm so impressed with your whole career
[28:33]and pivot to fiction and it's really awesome.
[28:36]So thank you.
[28:37]Great to talk to you.
[28:38]You too.
[28:39]All right, I'll take care.
[28:40]Maybe I'll see you.
[28:41]Hi, you in New York.
[28:43]So like, thanks for listening to this episode
[28:46]of moms don't have time to read books.
[28:48]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[28:51]at ZB Owens and at moms don't have time to read books.
[28:54]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com
[28:56]and sign up for my virtual book club
[28:58]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:00]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[29:02]Like, texture sound for the sound editing.
[29:04]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:06]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.