Katie Bishop, THE GIRLS OF SUMMER
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[1:03]Katie Bishop is the author of the Girls of Summer, a novel.
[1:07]Katie is a writer and journalist based in Birmingham in the UK.
[1:10]She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian Vogue, The Independent, and other publications.
[1:14]The Girls of Summer is her first novel.
[1:16]Welcome, Katie.
[1:17]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[1:19]Don't have time to read books to discuss your novel, The Girls of Summer.
[1:23]Oh, thank you so much for having me.
[1:24]I love the podcast, so I'm really excited to be here.
[1:27]Thank you.
[1:28]Well, I love the book, and I've been shouting it for the rooftops.
[1:32]It's so good.
[1:33]It's so interesting and different and immersive, and I don't know.
[1:38]I relate to the two sides of everybody's life, when you're older and then you're younger,
[1:43]and looking back and reckoning with what you have and what you didn't have.
[1:47]I don't know.
[1:48]The way you write, too, and the suspense, it's great.
[1:52]It's just great.
[1:53]Oh, thank you so much.
[1:54]You said everything I wanted people to think about it last, so thank you so much.
[1:58]No problem.
[1:59]OK, why don't you tell the scenarios what the book is about?
[2:02]Yeah, so the way that I would probably describe The Girls of Summer is it's a kind of one
[2:06]that got away story with a bit of a me too twist to it.
[2:09]So it's about a woman called Rachel, and she's an emitter, and she's quite subtle.
[2:14]She's married.
[2:15]She's got a job that she likes, but she's also quite unhappy because she's never really
[2:19]been able to let go of the memories of this magical summer that she had back when she was
[2:24]17, backpacking around the Greek islands, and in particular, a relationship that she had
[2:29]at the time with a guy called Alister, who was about 15 years older than her.
[2:34]And when we first meet Rachel, she is going back to this beautiful, isolated Greek island
[2:38]where she spent that summer with her son Tom.
[2:41]And when she's there, she has a chance encounter with a woman that she snayed back then,
[2:45]and this really sends her spiraling back into all these incredible memories about summer
[2:50]when she was making friends and partying and drinking, and kind of most importantly to
[2:55]her having this relationship with this guy who she still really considers to be her first love.
[3:01]And she decides that she actually wants to track him down, and we really go along on that
[3:05]journey with Rachel as she kind of a circus Alister, but also reconnects with all of these
[3:10]people from her past, and as she does, she slowly starts to realize that maybe her memories
[3:15]of that summer weren't quite how she's always been remembering them, and actually maybe even
[3:20]how she perceived things, how they're actually going on at the time wasn't exactly what was
[3:23]actually happening.
[3:24]So interesting.
[3:25]I love it.
[3:26]The characters are so great.
[3:28]I think I'm particularly, I mean, her two relationships, which we as readers
[3:32]inhale simultaneously, right, Alister and Tom, and how that one is so full of passion and
[3:39]one is so full of comfort, and what both things give you.
[3:43]And it's like the two sides of every relationship, really.
[3:46]It's just these have been completely bifurcated in a way.
[3:50]Anyway, tell me about how you came up with this idea.
[3:54]Why are you writing this book?
[3:55]Tell me about you.
[3:56]Oh, tell me everything.
[3:57]I want to hear it up.
[3:59]Yeah, well, I actually started writing the book at the start of the first lockdown in the UK,
[4:03]which I think really comes through when you know that and you're reading it, because
[4:07]like everyone else, I was just stuck at home in my living room thinking,
[4:11]I really want to go on holiday, and I could have gone holiday.
[4:14]So I thought, okay, well, maybe I'll write a book about this kind of beautiful,
[4:18]beautiful location that feels kind of various scapers and just kind of felt quite freeing for me
[4:23]to write at that time.
[4:24]But also, I think, as you're reading this, you probably picked up on this.
[4:27]There is an enormous kind of sense of claustrophobia to that iron setting,
[4:31]which I think, again, when you know that I wrote it when I was stuck indoors,
[4:34]that all starts to make a little bit of sense.
[4:36]But the place that the idea for the book really came from, I've been working on another book
[4:41]that was not going so well.
[4:43]And I felt like I needed something that was just a bit lighter and a little bit more
[4:47]a scapist, which is quite funny, because if you read the book, that is not how the book turned out.
[4:51]It's much dark when I read you planned it.
[4:53]But I was thinking, okay, I'd really like to write this kind of one that got away story.
[4:57]It's going to have this beautiful, escapist setting.
[5:00]And so that was kind of one of the ideas behind the book.
[5:03]But at the same time, it'd been a few years since the new team movement had really taken hold.
[5:07]And I'd just spent so much that time just having conversations with friends,
[5:11]just thinking about my own experiences.
[5:13]And it was almost like there was this kind of collective horror and this collective reckoning
[5:18]when women were looking back at their experiences, particular kind of formative,
[5:22]romantic and sexual experiences.
[5:24]And we were having all these conversations and people, it was almost like everyone's eyes
[5:27]were being opened to the way things actually were at the time and how we would have talked about
[5:32]things and maybe even laughed things off that had happened.
[5:34]But I'm now through this sharp lens of the new team movement.
[5:37]We were all thinking, wow, that was actually really bad.
[5:40]And that really wasn't how I perceived it at the time.
[5:43]But actually, now I'm looking at it as an adult and with this new way of looking at it,
[5:48]things are feeling just very different, I think.
[5:51]So I thought what is those two ideas came together and what if there was this amazing
[5:55]one that got away story and this great first love that had really shaped a lot of your life
[6:00]sense and really you'd base me things in your life around it since.
[6:03]What if that was the very answer you were then looking back on and thinking, wow,
[6:08]that actually wasn't what it seemed to me at the time.
[6:11]So that was really the core of the idea question about the house.
[6:15]Like the Henry Clark, is that his name Henry?
[6:17]Henry Taylor, sorry, sorry, Henry Taylor.
[6:20]His house and everything that happens and like walking through and like what footsteps and
[6:26]just all of it is so it's also real.
[6:28]Like everything on the island seems to me like crystal clear in my head having read the book.
[6:33]Did you find actual houses like is it all your imagination or did you see a house on
[6:39]Zillow or I don't even know like did you how did you craft to where everybody was living and the bar
[6:45]and like it was there's such a sense of scene.
[6:47]I feel like this is like a movie that I saw in my brain.
[6:50]Oh, I'm so glad you thought that.
[6:52]To be honest so much it was my imagination again just because it was locked down and we
[6:55]were so limited in how much we could travel.
[6:57]I would have loved to have done an amazing research shift degrees and gone and kind of
[7:01]looked at these beautiful villas and all these beaches and bars and stuff, but I just couldn't at
[7:05]the time. So a lot of it did come from my imagination and I had been to Greek islands a few times
[7:11]and in particular I did have a trip to a Greek island with a group of female friends when I was
[7:16]about I think probably about 1920 and definitely the bar was really drawn from that experience
[7:22]but I think also more than that more than the actual kind of settings or looking for particular
[7:25]buildings or facing it on a particular resort or anything like that.
[7:29]It was really more about capturing that feeling that I think I felt at the time and I think a
[7:33]a lot of people have felt where you know it's maybe your first time traveling your first time
[7:38]away from home without your parents your first trip with friends whatever it is.
[7:41]There's this kind of enormous sense of possibility and everything just feels kind of heightened
[7:46]and everything feels exciting. And I think the setting was really important to me in portraying that
[7:52]because it really did have to feel magical and it really did have to feel like Rachel was going
[7:56]to do things that she wouldn't necessarily do back home. Interesting. Tell me more about the marriage
[8:02]to Tom and all of those you talk a lot about all the unwritten things unwritten language or
[8:10]what the things that are not said but are so easily expressed between partners who have been together
[8:14]for a while and the looks across the dinner party table or you know that you can feel when things
[8:20]are sick at home and twist you know after you know 10th situations and all that. Talk to me about how
[8:27]you got so deep into that particular relationship.
[8:30]Yeah that was a relationship that I really enjoyed writing which is interesting because it's not
[8:35]I think if people were thinking about the book it's not necessarily the correlation that the people
[8:38]think of obviously this relationship between Rachel and Alice to feel so much bigger and so much
[8:43]more romantic to her at the time whereas the relationship with her and Tom is really such a contrast
[8:47]to that and she meets him when she is kind of in her mid-twenters he's a little bit older than her
[8:53]but not much just a few you know three or four years something like that and yeah he's a really safe
[8:59]place for her I guess she kind of falls into this relationship without really meaning too there's
[9:02]no kind of enormous grand gesture or really you know beautiful falling in love period she really
[9:08]does just feel like she falls into her relationship and even though she does love Tom and she's happy
[9:13]with them and kind of as you said they've got that that really beautiful kind of unspoken
[9:17]language that couples have where you know you can look at someone across the remote party and they're
[9:20]like you can tell in their eyes they're like mmm she'll leave and you're like yes she will leave
[9:25]and you've had that whole conversation without actually saying anything so they've got all of
[9:28]that stuff but I think for Rachel and the point in in her life that she's at that relationship to
[9:34]her has kind of started to represent something different and that safety has started to feel a little
[9:38]bit suffocating and even though she is really in love with Tom she's so drawn back to this time in
[9:45]her life where again everything just felt really really possible and I think that's something a
[9:49]lot of women experience in the novel Rachel is she's in her mid 30s I was a bit younger when I
[9:54]was writing it actually I was kind of in my late 20s when I started writing the book
[9:58]but I think it's something a lot of women in that
[10:00]20s and 30s experience where you've gone from this place
[10:02]where you're in your late teens or early 20s,
[10:05]where the world just feels so open to you.
[10:07]And it feels like every avenue is open to you.
[10:10]And you know, that could be maybe,
[10:11]do you want to get married and have children
[10:13]or maybe you want to go and live abroad?
[10:15]Maybe you want to live in a big city like New York
[10:17]or London or maybe, you know,
[10:18]it's almost like every option is open to you.
[10:21]You could still do all of those things.
[10:23]And as you get older,
[10:24]you just slowly start to feel like your possibilities
[10:27]are narrowing down to you
[10:28]because you have to make choices.
[10:30]And those might be choices that you're really happy with.
[10:32]In Rachel's particular case,
[10:34]she's actually not very happy with her choices.
[10:36]But even if you're happy with your choices
[10:37]and you're happy with your life,
[10:38]by default, you have still ruled things out, right?
[10:42]And I think for Rachel,
[10:43]that's something that she's really struggling with.
[10:45]And that relationship with Tom for her
[10:47]really represents the choice that she's made,
[10:50]which means that all of those other avenues
[10:51]and kind of the person that she found
[10:52]like she was when she had all those possibilities
[10:54]just doesn't really exist to her anymore.
[10:56]Yes.
[10:57]I wrote about that so well.
[10:58]I feel like you also captured sort of aging in general, right?
[11:02]Like not just that the paths have been set a little bit more,
[11:06]but just what it means to grapple with life
[11:10]when you are, when you're not looking or feeling as good
[11:13]as you are, you know, when Rachel thinks back,
[11:17]you know, was it longing for her youthful body
[11:19]and her skin, you know, even Alistair?
[11:21]Like what he was like, like everybody ages, right?
[11:23]So I don't know.
[11:24]I feel like the reflections on aging were so profound
[11:27]and yet you're so young, you know?
[11:28]Oh, thank you, y'all.
[11:32]And like, these are really good.
[11:33]How are she doing this?
[11:34]Like, she's really my mind in some of these areas.
[11:37]And yet she's like, very, very young.
[11:40]Oh, and I'm glad that you like those paths.
[11:43]Yeah, it was something I really wanted to draw on
[11:45]because I think that something that was really important
[11:47]in kind of getting across the dynamics of that relationship
[11:49]with Alistair is that she gets older and Rachel feels like,
[11:53]you know, the body that she had when she was 17
[11:55]in the way that she looked and that kind of,
[11:57]yeah, that kind of disaster life was a really powerful thing.
[12:00]And I think she feels like there was enormous power
[12:03]and youth in that sense that she's lost as she's got older.
[12:05]But then of course, so the novel is a course
[12:07]for it in a dual-time line.
[12:08]So we see Rachel's thoughts as an adult.
[12:10]And then we also see Rachel's thoughts as a teenager.
[12:12]And we kind of switch between them.
[12:14]So we can really see the contrast between them.
[12:16]And of course, as the novel goes on,
[12:17]you sort of slowly start to realize
[12:19]that that power that Rachel felt like she had
[12:21]was partly an illusion at the time.
[12:24]And also partly something that she's really applied
[12:27]to the situation in hindsight.
[12:29]And actually the lack of power that you actually have
[12:31]when you're about young was really something
[12:32]that people were able to take advantage of at the time.
[12:36]So take me back to your life a little bit.
[12:39]Like, where did you come from?
[12:40]When did you get into writing?
[12:42]Where does this book fit within the whole trajectory
[12:44]of your career?
[12:45]Give me a little more insight.
[12:47]Yeah, so, well, I'm from the UK.
[12:50]You can probably tell from my accent.
[12:52]So I am someone who I've always always
[12:54]loved to read and write.
[12:56]I was, you know, I kind of don't remember a time
[12:59]when I didn't write.
[13:00]And it's quite funny when you get my parents' house now.
[13:02]There's, they've still got boxes and boxes
[13:04]and just exercise books.
[13:05]I filled up when I was a kid of all these stories
[13:08]that I was writing and all of these things.
[13:09]But I feel like a lot of people,
[13:12]it kind of falls away a little bit when you get older.
[13:14]And I still really knew that I loved reading
[13:17]and I loved writing.
[13:17]But I just never, it didn't feel like a career
[13:20]that was really open to me.
[13:22]It was just, I didn't really think I was good enough, I think.
[13:24]So I went and I studied English literature at university
[13:28]and then graduated and kind of didn't really know
[13:30]what I wanted to do with my life.
[13:32]I think like many people do.
[13:34]So I worked in a seed market for a year
[13:36]and then allowed to save me to go backpacking essentially,
[13:40]which again, you can see as of the inspiration,
[13:42]the book kind of comes from my many travels I had
[13:44]in my early 20s.
[13:46]So I went backpacking for a while,
[13:47]came back kind of still didn't really know
[13:49]what I wanted to do, decided that I wanted
[13:51]to get into publishing and ended up working
[13:53]in academic publishing, which wasn't really exactly
[13:56]what I wanted to do.
[13:57]I wanted to be working on the fun books, working on fiction.
[14:00]But I did that for a few years,
[14:02]wasn't kind of particularly happy doing it.
[14:05]So I started just kind of playing around with writing
[14:08]and it was kind of unlocking this skill
[14:10]that I really hadn't used for such a long time
[14:12]because yes, since I was a kid really,
[14:14]I hadn't really tried writing very much stuff.
[14:16]So I started working on a novel
[14:18]and I also at the same time started doing
[14:19]a little bit of freelance journalism,
[14:21]which again was just kind of,
[14:23]just a way of kind of flexing those writing muscles, I guess.
[14:26]That kind of took off a little bit.
[14:28]So I decided to go part-time at my job,
[14:30]which I timed absolutely, because I'm a part-time
[14:32]and that was on the pandemic kit
[14:33]and all of a sudden I didn't have any journalism work.
[14:35]Yeah, it was a total nightmare.
[14:36]And I've been gearing up to doing,
[14:38]kind of talking myself and doing it for such a long time
[14:40]and then literally as soon as I did at pandemic.
[14:43]So I decided to, I've been writing this in the novel,
[14:46]I've been trying to get an agent,
[14:47]it wasn't working out.
[14:49]So I thought, right, I've got this kind of extra day
[14:51]a week now that I was going to spend in journalism,
[14:54]I'm not going to be doing that anymore.
[14:56]So I thought, you know what,
[14:58]I need to try and make the best of this time
[15:00]and that was on a start writing the girls a summer.
[15:02]And then what was the process like of getting the agent
[15:06]and getting it sold and getting to this point?
[15:09]Well, it was a bit of a dream process of writing,
[15:12]which is, yeah, it was, I was really lucky with it
[15:15]because with that first book I tried to write,
[15:16]it had been a real real struggle.
[15:17]It took me about four years to write
[15:20]and about 12 drafts, which I hate redrafting.
[15:22]So it was a total nightmare for me.
[15:24]But with the girls a summer,
[15:25]I just kind of sat down and wrote it really quickly.
[15:28]I wrote it in probably about eight or nine months.
[15:30]And I finished it and I thought, okay, right.
[15:33]You know, I've been here before,
[15:34]I know how this works and part of, you know,
[15:36]I've gotten a lesson just to go now for a week.
[15:38]But I sat down, I read it and I was actually quite happy
[15:41]with it, how it was done.
[15:42]So I did do a few edits,
[15:44]probably spent two or three months editing.
[15:47]And then I was kind of ready to send out to agents
[15:50]and I did a little shortlist of, you know,
[15:52]my top seven agents sent it out to them again,
[15:56]because I've been through the process
[15:57]before I tried to get an agent.
[15:58]I thought, okay, here we go.
[16:00]We'll be, you know, months several rounds of submission.
[16:03]But pretty quickly, almost every agent got back to me
[16:06]and said they wanted to see the full manuscript.
[16:08]So I was quite quickly feeling like, okay,
[16:09]this is getting better than the last time.
[16:13]And had enough offers for few agents decided to go
[16:16]with my agent who is Ariella Finer, United agents,
[16:19]who just really stood out to me right from the start.
[16:21]She's brilliant, very lucky to be working with her.
[16:23]And then the process of getting a publishing deal
[16:25]was kind of equally fast and equally as much to the world
[16:28]and as well.
[16:29]So she sent me over some notes to work on.
[16:32]So now it's kind of nothing major,
[16:34]but a fair bit of work.
[16:35]And I was working two jobs at the time.
[16:37]So it was quite busy.
[16:38]She kind of said, you know, take a few months to do it.
[16:40]And then a few days later, she called me and she said,
[16:42]it's kind of occurred to me that publishing
[16:45]is gonna be shutting down quite soon,
[16:46]because it kind of shuts down a little bit over summer.
[16:49]And because the book is so topical,
[16:51]I'm worried that someone else is going to come along,
[16:53]who's maybe done something similar.
[16:54]And I think she had anyone specific in mind,
[16:56]but I just think she thought, you know,
[16:58]it was tied to the meeting movement,
[16:59]very, very topical, that it was kind of bound to happen.
[17:03]So she said, I think we should get it out
[17:04]before publishing shuts down
[17:06]and it shuts down at the end of this week.
[17:08]So she said, right, do you think you can edit this entire book
[17:11]in a week?
[17:12]And I was like, I will give it a go.
[17:15]So I just had this crazy, crazy, almost.
[17:18]I mean, it feels like a fever dream now this week
[17:20]when I was just having no sleep and just writing
[17:23]and trying to fix it and on the phone to my agent constantly.
[17:26]And yeah, I somehow managed it.
[17:30]And we sent it out to publishers at the end of that week.
[17:33]And within a few days, we had multiple pre-amps in the UK.
[17:37]And yeah, I got my US deal again
[17:40]within a few days, which I've got a fantastic editor
[17:44]in the US, which is Sarah Canton
[17:45]and it's a modest price and she's brilliant.
[17:46]So it was all just such a dream experience.
[17:49]I was, I still can't, it was two years ago
[17:51]and I still can't quite believe how lucky I was.
[17:54]That's amazing.
[17:55]I love hearing success stories
[17:56]because they do inspire everybody to just keep going
[18:00]because you never know.
[18:01]You know, sometimes those first books,
[18:04]it's not a waste of time.
[18:05]Like you would never have gotten to the second book
[18:07]without that first book, 12 drafts.
[18:09]You know, like, yeah, the girls or someone wouldn't
[18:12]definitely wouldn't have been the book
[18:13]that it turned out being.
[18:14]If it wasn't for that first book.
[18:16]And I'm just so glad that both that I decided
[18:19]to scrap that first book in the first place
[18:21]and didn't kind of keep on trying with it
[18:23]when it wasn't really going anywhere.
[18:24]And also just really glad that I didn't give up
[18:26]after that first book as well.
[18:27]It's so funny because, you know, I do this podcast.
[18:29]I get 10 to books and, you know, it looked really good.
[18:32]And I was like, okay, I'll put it in the read pile
[18:34]and I read a little bit.
[18:35]And I was like, yes, this is in there.
[18:37]I want to have a podcast with her pile.
[18:38]And then I forget, like, when I start reading,
[18:42]I forget the plots.
[18:43]Like I don't look at the back.
[18:44]I just like go in cold kind of
[18:46]and know that I, there was something about it
[18:48]that I was interested in.
[18:50]Anyway, I started reading it.
[18:51]I was like, oh, wait, this is so, this is really good.
[18:54]You know, and now that you're saying this whole thing,
[18:56]I'm like, oh my gosh, there was like preams
[18:58]and auctions and all this stuff.
[19:00]And usually like, that's a tip off of like,
[19:02]it's gonna be really great.
[19:03]But I feel like I discovered this on my own
[19:05]because I didn't know that, of course I didn't.
[19:07]But I was like, okay.
[19:09]Anyway, sometimes it's just such a great feeling
[19:12]to find yourself in the midst of a great book.
[19:14]But it just doesn't get old.
[19:16]I don't know why.
[19:17]It's like ridiculous.
[19:17]It just doesn't get old.
[19:18]But what I'm so glad that you felt like
[19:19]that a lot of other girls are summer.
[19:21]Anyway, what are you working on now?
[19:24]I'm working on a second book, but it is going silly.
[19:27]So this is saying I have a dream dream experience
[19:28]right in the girls of summer.
[19:30]Yeah, thought I would go in and start writing
[19:31]the second book and I'd feel the same.
[19:33]But the experience of writing the second book
[19:35]so far has been much more akin to that first book.
[19:37]But I've actually now written and scrapped
[19:40]a couple of drafts.
[19:41]I say a couple of drafts, I say a couple of books really.
[19:43]So I'm now kind of onto my third idea,
[19:46]which it feels a bit crazy.
[19:48]But again, because I have had that experience
[19:50]of writing a book and scrapping it
[19:52]before I do feel kind of quite comfortable
[19:54]with keeping on going.
[19:55]And you know, you've got to find that right idea
[19:57]and you've got to have the thinking time, I think.
[19:59]So I think.
[20:00]I like I'm in a good place now, I've got an idea that I'm really excited about and I'm working on it and I'm really enjoying working on it.
[20:05]I think that's that's another good thing. You can tell when people are.
[20:09]I think you can tell in the books when the writers are having fun writing the books.
[20:14]I feel like it comes through versus like really struggling and this was a journey.
[20:19]I don't know. I think you can you can feel it.
[20:21]It's like when you go to a restaurant and like, you know, or somebody cooks a meal for you and you know, they love you and so it tastes different.
[20:28]You know, it's so true. I love that comparison. That's so nice.
[20:32]Anyway, I think you can tell the little bit of what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[20:37]So I have a couple of bits of advice. I tell people who are aspiring authors.
[20:42]My first one is probably really obvious, but it's just to read as much as you possibly can.
[20:46]I don't have any kind of formal writing education. You know, I haven't done a masters or a workshop or anything like that.
[20:52]And I just think the best way to learn how to write is just read as much as you can.
[20:56]And even if you're reading things that you don't like, you're still kind of learning the kind of writer that you want to be.
[21:01]So I think that's really important.
[21:02]And then my second bit of advice, which is a bit more of an unconventional one.
[21:06]And it's one that I know someone told me when I was in the spine writer, I would have hated it, but I think it's true.
[21:12]I think you need to treat your first manuscript that you write as a practice manuscript, which is really hard to take your head around because I think when you're writing your first manuscript, you love it so much and you're kind of pouring your heart into it.
[21:24]But I think that it just takes so much of the pressure off to just think this is a practice run.
[21:29]It's all about learning actually how to write a novel in the first place, because the biggest thing that kills off creativity is that pressure of being like, right, this is my one shot of writing a novel.
[21:38]This is the one that I'm going to try and get a book deal with kind of all of that stuff.
[21:42]And I also think we have a really weird way of looking at novels as well, where we think the first one that people write that is going to be the one that gets them an amazing book deal that, you know, becomes about salad, whatever.
[21:52]Whereas I think you really, you need to actually learn how to write a novel first, you never expect like Leonardo adventures first painting to be the main Alicia, you know, so I just that you need to treat as a practice run and then, you know, you finish it and you're happy with it and you want to send out to agents and you get a book deal with it and all of that good stuff amazing.
[22:09]But if you don't, it's already achieved exactly what you set out to do, which is just to teach you something about a kind of writing to you are on the kind of book that you want to write and just how to write a book in the first place.
[22:19]And I'm just curious, like what is your relationship like with your parents, because I feel like Rachel's relationship with her parents was another essential feature that like a through line, tell me about that if you don't mind.
[22:31]Yeah, so I mean, my parents are great, they're really supportive of obviously, you know, because I was a teenager probably the agent Rachel was as most people cluster their parents.
[22:40]But yeah, they're great, they're both teachers and they both love reading so they really, really inspire that love of reading in me.
[22:47]And as you can imagine, as people who love reading, they're just absolutely thrilled about this whole book deal and the book coming out, they're so excited.
[22:54]But yeah, I think for Rachel, it was really important that she had that really distant relationship with her parents, because again, that means that she she has that desire to kind of put as much distance between her home life, which, you know, her parents live in a suburb, she just views it as very kind of stayed very boring.
[23:08]And it means that she wants more and it means that she kind of wants to put as much distance between them and herself as possible.
[23:14]And I think some of what she does and some of the situation that she gets into and the relationships that she builds with people is about that, just backlash against her parents, I think many of us feel at that age.
[23:23]Yep, that makes sense.
[23:25]Amazing. And just what do you like to do when you're not writing when you are a freedom not being your apartment all the time.
[23:32]I mean, I do I do a lot of reading as you might expect.
[23:35]I also do a lot of yoga, I love yoga and kind of exercise classes things like that.
[23:41]I think sometimes when your job is so in your head, you need just things that are in your body just for that contrast.
[23:46]And also I really love cooking and baking, which I think is kind of it's a creative outlet in a way, but it's such a different creative outlet to writing and it's so low pressure.
[23:55]So if you've done whatever you're making, no one really cares, because you can just sort of take away.
[24:00]So having that just like pressure creative outlet as well.
[24:03]Excellent.
[24:04]Amazing. And final thing, are you reading anything right now or do you have a favorite book to recommend?
[24:09]Say the book that I have read recently that I've enjoyed the most is the school for good mothers by Jasmine Chan.
[24:15]I just think it had such a good hit to it. And it's just really beautiful writing at the same time is being just really
[24:22]positive, which I think is quite a difficult balance to achieve.
[24:25]And then the book that I've just been recommending to you absolutely everyone since I read it is the PayPalist by Miranda.
[24:30]I love that book.
[24:32]Isn't it amazing.
[24:33]It's so great.
[24:34]That was another book I shouted for the rooftops two years ago when it came out.
[24:38]Was it two years?
[24:39]Yeah, it's so good.
[24:40]So it's absolutely beautiful. And it plays a lot of things that I really understand that I, you know, wants to do the goals of summer in terms of thinking about memory and kind of a big event that changed your life and looking back on that.
[24:50]And the big thing for me as well is setting is such a huge, huge thing with books.
[24:54]It's a book that's already kind of beautiful of octave setting.
[24:57]I mean, I could probably just read a book in the description of a setting and I would be happy.
[25:01]So this setting for that is just incredible. And it's so powerful. And you just play so perfect in some of the novel.
[25:07]Yeah.
[25:08]Let's just jettison plot all together.
[25:10]Who needs characters?
[25:13]People would buy that.
[25:14]That is all I would write.
[25:17]Is this going to be a movie?
[25:18]Have you still the right?
[25:19]No, we haven't sold the rights yet, but I mean, a lot of people have said that they can really imagine it as a film.
[25:24]So obviously, I'm hopeful if there's any film producers listening, you know, I would love to hear from you.
[25:29]And seeing it's been compared to a lot is the white lotus, which I can't think of a high compliment. I love the white lotus.
[25:34]So yeah, I could definitely imagine it as a film or TV series, but yeah, nothing yet. So.
[25:39]Okay.
[25:40]Amazing.
[25:41]Awesome. Katie, thank you so much. Thanks for the great book.
[25:44]And in the great chat.
[25:46]So good luck.
[25:47]I'll be following along.
[25:48]Oh, thank you so much.
[25:49]Thank you for making the time to speak to me. And thank you for being such a brilliant sports book.
[25:53]No problem.
[25:54]All right. Take care.
[25:55]Bye.
[25:56]Bye.
[25:57]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:00]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[26:12]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan Beck, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[26:16]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.