J. Vanessa Lyon, LUSH LIVES
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[1:03]Javaness Allian is the author of Lush Lives.
[1:06]She teaches art history with a PhD from UC Berkeley at a New England Liberal Arts College.
[1:12]She discovered when starting to write fiction that whether she's teaching, reading, or telling
[1:17]a story, she thinks about the present and the future through the lens of the past.
[1:21]As a lesbian of color who turned into an academic, writing fiction and especially contemporary
[1:26]fiction, where queer and bi-pop live happily ever after, she found a way to create a world
[1:31]that doesn't always exist.
[1:33]It also helps her think about what is possible in the here and now.
[1:36]Generosity, openness, flirtation, warmth, intimacy, relation, making things, new genres of
[1:42]being.
[1:43]When she's not writing, she's writing, for that doesn't mean she doesn't have time
[1:46]for red wine, white cake, feminist poker games, a good driving range, looking at art
[1:52]and her two sweet cats.
[1:54]Welcome Vanessa.
[1:55]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss your
[1:58]novel, Lush Lives.
[2:00]Congratulations.
[2:01]Thank you.
[2:02]I've been excited to do this.
[2:03]So thanks for having me.
[2:04]Oh, my gosh, my pleasure.
[2:06]Okay.
[2:07]Can you please tell listeners what your book is about?
[2:09]So Lush Lives is about an emerging artist named Lori who's been living in Los Angeles.
[2:15]She inherits a brownstone in Harlem from a great aunt who shouldn't really know or
[2:21]like, actually.
[2:23]And Ghost in New York is faced with sort of this house full of about a century's worth
[2:28]of objects and life.
[2:30]And so she takes a few of the objects to an auction house on an appraisal day and meets
[2:37]parking.
[2:38]I think we're going to hear my cat.
[2:39]I'm sorry to say that she meets a young appraiser who's a little bit younger than she
[2:44]is named parking.
[2:46]And you know, they sort of appraise each other and romance ensues, but amidst at that
[2:52]point, and from that point forward, amidst the kind of pressures of extreme ambition that
[2:58]face so many women who are professional women, and particularly in their late twenties and
[3:03]early thirties.
[3:04]So it's it's a story about them meeting and then falling for each other and then trying
[3:09]to figure out how to work through their ideas of success together and separately, really.
[3:16]Yes.
[3:17]And you have a family scandal, like in the background, business scandal lurking behind the
[3:22]scenes.
[3:24]Yeah, I want to give too much away, but I think the intrigue, I'm just saying there's
[3:28]under I won't give anything away, but they're it's both corporate and individual and
[3:33]all of that.
[3:34]There's a lot going on, there's a lot going on.
[3:37]Yes.
[3:38]Well, I'll stick to non spoiler, anything, but when glory shows up in the auction house with
[3:44]Lucille's silver plated vase or plate or whatever it was, this is how good my memory
[3:49]is.
[3:50]I'm so sorry.
[3:51]There we go.
[3:52]Coffee pot.
[3:53]Coffee pot.
[3:54]I have the metal.
[3:55]I could see it.
[3:56]It was a big out of the bag, you know, she's she confirms through the attitude that is can
[4:04]be that can come out of some of these more established houses where I sometimes went to
[4:09]lunch at Sotheby's once and I was like nervous the whole time because everybody is like
[4:13]dressed so beautifully and like walking so authoritatively and like seems like and I'm
[4:19]like, can I just get like a salad and then I'll
[4:21]get out of your way.
[4:22]You know, it's like a whole thing.
[4:24]Do you feel that way?
[4:25]It is a whole thing.
[4:26]Yeah.
[4:27]I mean, my first one of my first jobs out of college was at an auction house and of course,
[4:30]this is this book is born, not of course, but it is the case that this book is born a little
[4:35]bit out of my kind of ambivalent nostalgia for that particular world that you're describing,
[4:40]which is so kind of seductive and because it's all these beautiful objects and fast
[4:47]paced because you have to just, I mean, the point is figure out what it's worth, turn
[4:50]around, sell it, find a buyer, but also there's a kind of, you know, there's a kind
[4:55]of academic vibe, of course, there's a kind of feeling of knowledge and how much knowledge
[4:59]people have about all these, what seem really obscure, you know, things, objects.
[5:05]And so, but yeah, exactly what you're describing this, this, I mean, I was a young, you
[5:10]know, I was what in my very early 20s and I came in as a junior specialist and suddenly
[5:15]it was, I realized it was quite a bit about what you wore, you know, it was quite a bit
[5:21]about conveying that you fit in with this very wasp, very, you know, I was coming out of
[5:27]a liberal arts college where I had gone to school with a lot of these people and that's
[5:30]why I was there, but still, you know, a very white, very wasp, really very particular
[5:35]kind of idea about self-presentation, it's part of the scene.
[5:40]So I wanted to kind of get back into that now, and even her name, like parking van,
[5:45]whatever.
[5:46]It's like so perfect.
[5:47]To grow.
[5:48]Yeah, exactly.
[5:49]To grow it.
[5:50]Yes, of course.
[5:51]Amazing.
[5:52]Here's like a secret, you know, I mean, to grow it, I'm a, my specialty is another landish
[5:57]art, not Dutch so much, but flamish, but she's of Dutch extraction, which is important
[6:01]because New York and she's coming out of old New York, but her name means parking
[6:06]the great.
[6:08]I took a whole class from Christopher Wood, you know, he has, of course, I took art history
[6:12]every subject, every semester in college, I loved it.
[6:15]Well, that was one of my favorite classes ever, but anyway, yeah, my advisor was from Yale,
[6:21]so you might have been across town before, who was your advisor?
[6:25]Elizabeth Honek.
[6:26]Okay, amazing.
[6:27]She wasn't my teacher, yeah, taking history, that's great.
[6:32]I love it.
[6:33]Oh, I love art history.
[6:34]I love it.
[6:35]I almost majored in it, but then I had to take a bunch of classes I didn't want to take.
[6:39]That happened with English too, by the way, it's like a miracle.
[6:43]I ever got out of college, but I'm entering in psychology.
[6:46]Well, I went to a school with now requirements, so really all I did take was art history,
[6:52]so I took to the opposite.
[6:53]I should have taken more other things probably, but I didn't win.
[6:58]Did you, because I had never taken art history or even thought too much about art, I mean,
[7:03]recreationally, museums, blah, blah, blah, but not in depth until college.
[7:08]And then once I took a class, I was like, totally turned on to the whole field.
[7:11]Like, how about you?
[7:12]Where did your art, love art come from and when did it really get, you know?
[7:16]Well, I mean, it's almost hard to figure out an answer to that in a way.
[7:20]My mother's an artist, and so I grew up watching her draw and paint.
[7:26]And I think I thought of that as sort of a normal thing for people to do,
[7:30]but it also attuned my eye to just analyzing, thinking about images.
[7:36]And then later, my mother, when she met my stepdad, they were in grad school for English,
[7:41]actually, but they started on the side dealing in antiques.
[7:45]And that became ultimately sort of their business.
[7:48]And so then I grew up with just objects, you know?
[7:51]And so it was kind of a natural, it was a natural sort of major for me,
[7:56]although I had thought that I would become an opera singer at some point in my high school years.
[8:02]I was mostly just somebody who did musicals, but I took voice lessons and had an idea of that,
[8:07]which I was just saying in another context.
[8:10]Like, I had everything that was required to be a diva, except the voice.
[8:14]So I actually actually give up that dream.
[8:18]And again, I went into the history of art, you know, instead.
[8:23]Oh, that's where the pretty girls were.
[8:26]So that was part of it.
[8:27]Oh, okay.
[8:29]What was your favorite play that you were in ever?
[8:31]Oh, Oklahoma.
[8:33]And who were you?
[8:34]I was Ann Miller.
[8:35]Oh, okay.
[8:36]So yeah, I was, I was Ann Miller.
[8:38]But pajama game, which nobody does anymore.
[8:40]I mean, yes, my school did that.
[8:42]Oh, love love that show too.
[8:43]Oh, my kids, baby.
[8:45]Yeah, I was Anne Frank in the diary of Anne Frank.
[8:47]Oh, wow.
[8:48]Yes.
[8:48]I can't.
[8:48]I can't perform it.
[8:50]And not that I was like an amazing actor, but then my mom was like, well, maybe they thought
[8:55]you were the only one who was like smart enough to be able to memorize the lines.
[8:59]I mean, memorizing lines is no small task, you know, and then being able to actually perform them.
[9:04]That's impressive.
[9:06]Not so much for my acting ability, but that's a kind of heavy rule for camp too, you know.
[9:12]It actually, yeah, now that I think about it, I'm like, why were we doing that play?
[9:15]I know, I was in like seventh grade or something.
[9:19]I'm like, yeah, the whole camp gathered around and we had to wear out.
[9:22]Yeah, anyway, I don't even know what I'm talking about this.
[9:24]The floor on the roof, you know, nonsense for camp.
[9:28]Oh my gosh.
[9:29]Okay, tell me more about writing this love story and all of that and where
[9:35]how you thought of your characters, how you develop that, the, you know, just go into that
[9:40]whole part of it because it was so important.
[9:42]Yeah, well, it's easy to just talk.
[9:47]But, you know, this is one of those books that was that that's a COVID book.
[9:51]I mean, I started writing with the onset of COVID.
[9:53]I teach, you know, in rural Vermont and I was in my house and I knew I was going to
[10:00]be there for a while and, you know, it was
[10:02]politically a really hot, difficult moment.
[10:04]And I was also, I happened to be in kind of
[10:07]the, the last throws of a romantic relationship,
[10:10]but we were stuck together in the house.
[10:12]So, oh no.
[10:13]Yeah, for like two years, you know, as people.
[10:16]But I thought, I've got to,
[10:17]I'm going to write my way out of this somehow.
[10:19]So I had never written fiction before
[10:23]and I just thought, I've got to do with my,
[10:27]so-called spare time, but I had more of it.
[10:28]Because we all, you know, we just rotated from room to room,
[10:31]teaching online, both of us.
[10:32]And it's like in between there, there had to be something.
[10:34]So I started writing romance really because I was so sad.
[10:39]Oh, I was, I really was.
[10:41]I was just so sad about everything.
[10:43]And I thought, I've got to imagine a world where, you know,
[10:48]these different kinds of women in particular,
[10:50]these queer women are finding happiness and where it ends
[10:53]happily. And it's not about like, you know, burying your gaze.
[10:57]It's not about tragedy when people are different.
[11:01]It's about, you know, resolving those differences
[11:04]and figuring out ways that you compliment each other.
[11:06]And I just started writing that world.
[11:08]And so by the time I got to a road under a pseudonym,
[11:13]a romance, my first one was called Meet Me a Madrid.
[11:16]And then I wrote a novel called The Groves
[11:19]and audible produced that with a really fun cast
[11:22]as an original.
[11:23]It's got like seven amazing actors.
[11:25]And then from that, I was just like, you know,
[11:27]now what do I want to do?
[11:29]And I thought I want to do something more historical.
[11:31]So I've been teaching Nell of Larson's passing for many years
[11:36]and thinking about it.
[11:37]So her background is so similar to my own.
[11:39]And I wanted to kind of, in this case, create a world where,
[11:44]where the past and the present were the Harlem Renaissance
[11:47]and now could sort of move between the characters
[11:51]and their stories.
[11:53]But without doing a historical novel.
[11:55]So it's not, none of it, as you know,
[11:57]is set in the 20s or 30s.
[11:58]But through literature, through the idea of love letters,
[12:02]I mean, I like to think of it as it's a love letter
[12:04]to love letters in a way.
[12:05]It's kind of my way of expressing my affection
[12:09]for this kind of language between women over time.
[12:13]So that, you know, that's kind of how the book started
[12:16]and then the characters really, I mean,
[12:19]it's so funny that you opened with talking
[12:21]about Sathbées, the auction house I worked for was regional
[12:24]at the time, but it did become Sathbées
[12:26]for a time now.
[12:27]It's back to doing its own thing.
[12:28]But I had so many characters to think about from that world.
[12:31]You know, I mean, Parchy is like,
[12:33]Parchy is a combination of so many women that I've known
[12:37]and glory too.
[12:38]You know, glory is, I direct a visual arts lecture series
[12:43]of my school and I bring in 10 to 12 contemporary artists
[12:48]underrepresented typically contemporary artists every year.
[12:50]And so I've been doing that for this is my seventh year.
[12:53]So I've met a lot of contemporary artists,
[12:55]which is weird for Barocas, which is what I am.
[12:57]I'm really a 17th centuryist,
[12:59]but my world opened up when I started meeting mostly
[13:02]but not entirely young contemporary artists.
[13:05]And I just thought I want to write about them too.
[13:09]So glory is very much, you know,
[13:12]based on a lot of these really exciting,
[13:15]young, driven contemporary artists that I've gotten to know
[13:19]and whose names are sort of dropped in
[13:21]to the book at various places.
[13:23]I love that.
[13:24]That's awesome.
[13:26]You're saying that made me think how interesting it would be
[13:28]to have some sort of essay writing class or assignment
[13:32]where everybody had to write or not essay,
[13:34]but short story, like something about all the past workplaces
[13:37]in their lives, right?
[13:38]We've all had so many jobs, or, I mean,
[13:40]I've had a lot of jobs over the years.
[13:41]Not everybody, but yeah, I do have, you know, most people.
[13:44]I mean, most people have,
[13:47]I don't know, over lifetime,
[13:49]even starting with like high school.
[13:50]I don't know, people have had lots of jobs.
[13:52]It's so rare for somebody to have one job
[13:54]and stay with it.
[13:55]I have like one friend who has that.
[13:57]But anyway, I feel like each job had so many funny people.
[14:00]You know, I've worked with Vanity Fair one summer.
[14:02]I don't know.
[14:03]I've worked in advertising.
[14:04]I don't know.
[14:05]Maybe I'll just go and write my own exact thing.
[14:07]This is a book I would read.
[14:08]I think, I mean, it's to do a subculture a little bit, right?
[14:12]I'm fascinated by subcultures
[14:14]and that seems like kind of a vapid thing to say,
[14:17]but it's, but I love food.
[14:19]You know, well, I don't love all food,
[14:21]but I like, I don't love all subcultures,
[14:23]but I think, you know, a lot of them are so interesting.
[14:26]I have a friend who is an animator,
[14:28]but she goes every year to Montreal
[14:31]for Formula One racing.
[14:33]And like, what is that about?
[14:35]You know, and she was just telling me all about,
[14:37]you know, all the people I thought that would be a book.
[14:38]You know, so I agree.
[14:40]I love it.
[14:41]I love thinking about work cultures, especially in these,
[14:45]like glamorous things, like your characters,
[14:48]glamorous places where you're like,
[14:51]how is that happening?
[14:52]You know, like that's not what my hair looks like today.
[14:54]Do you know what I mean?
[14:55]I'm not wearing a vintage Chanel every day.
[14:58]That's it, sure.
[14:59]But working is part of it too.
[15:02]I like thinking about, you know,
[15:04]I like thinking about fashion quite a bit.
[15:06]Comes into everything I write.
[15:07]Do you like thinking about it?
[15:08]Or you like find like,
[15:10]how, where are we on the fashion thing?
[15:12]Because I am not a particularly fashion forward person.
[15:16]No, I mean, you know, I see,
[15:18]I see you in your dresses on your posts.
[15:20]Oh, you got your look going for sure.
[15:24]I mean, I think it's kind of traditional Italian,
[15:29]Fergamo, vintage Fergamo, and you know,
[15:32]Ziele Banks just has a song that just came out
[15:35]that's like, lists all the things that I like.
[15:37]You know, like, I do, I do.
[15:39]You might not know it to look at me,
[15:41]but I'm very interested in, especially vintage,
[15:43]but, and especially like, you know, old school Gucci
[15:46]and those kinds of designers.
[15:48]And I, I, I followed in my own way
[15:50]and I perform it in my own way,
[15:52]but not in the way of, you know,
[15:54]selling sunset, not in the way of the gown.
[15:58]I think that's,
[16:01]when we're down, you can't order to write in.
[16:03]That's for sure.
[16:06]My latest dress I was in was from Zara, FYI
[16:08]in my Instagram.
[16:09]And you're prompted, I'm sure.
[16:12]Oh my gosh.
[16:14]Wait, so tell me about your publishing journey
[16:16]and why you picked your imprint?
[16:18]I mean, you ask like, how did I pick them?
[16:20]Well, goodness, you know,
[16:22]Roxanne Gay picked this book and what a day
[16:26]in my life that was, you know,
[16:27]this is her first, this is her new imprint
[16:30]for with Grove Atlantic.
[16:32]And these are the first three books.
[16:34]And the first one just came out a little while ago
[16:37]on a coyote's, and then he sang a lullaby,
[16:39]which is a beautiful book.
[16:41]And then there's me, and then there's Lindsey Hunter
[16:44]coming after me.
[16:45]And so we're like this little team.
[16:46]We're really, it's really fun
[16:49]because we're like a little tiny cohort
[16:51]and we love each other, I think, you know.
[16:53]But three very different writers, three very different books.
[16:56]But, you know, yeah,
[16:58]honey, coyote was unagented.
[17:00]I had an agent and we thought,
[17:02]let's see if maybe this would interest Roxanne
[17:05]and she came back and wanted it.
[17:07]And, you know, what a life changing experience.
[17:10]I've admired her writing.
[17:12]I've admired her as a public figure,
[17:15]as a public intellectual,
[17:18]as a person who says the hard things
[17:20]and, you know, has the courage for commitments.
[17:23]And then she wanted this book.
[17:26]So it was astounding and it is astounding.
[17:30]And I think one thing that people sometimes think
[17:33]when someone like that famous doesn't imprint
[17:36]is that other, you know,
[17:37]minions are gonna come in and actually do the editing.
[17:39]But Roxanne is the editor of this book.
[17:42]And she was, you know, you get your document back
[17:48]and you know how it is.
[17:48]It's like you get revisions, you get suggestions.
[17:50]And you're thinking like, here's Roxanne Gay saying,
[17:54]oh, that's not working or oh, this is good.
[17:57]Do more of that.
[17:58]You know, and she was completely handsome.
[18:00]And so it was really exciting.
[18:02]And she helped me become a better writer.
[18:04]And I think, as, you know, you always hope your editor
[18:07]is gonna do that.
[18:08]Make your book better, but also make you better
[18:11]for the next one.
[18:12]You know, and I learned a lot in working with her.
[18:16]So I could go on.
[18:18]But, you know, it's like suddenly,
[18:20]suddenly life changes when Roxanne Gay is your editor, for sure.
[18:24]I'm sure.
[18:25]Are you working with her on another book now?
[18:28]No, we don't have a current plan to do that.
[18:30]I don't know what her, you know,
[18:31]I would never wanna speak for anything Roxanne Gay.
[18:34]I don't know what her intentions are with the imprint,
[18:36]but I'm kind of going off in a different direction right now,
[18:40]which is a memoir that I just finished a draft of.
[18:43]That's kind of an art historical memoir.
[18:45]So it's my life, my race, my gender, my sexuality sort of
[18:49]told through works of art and my interactions with them
[18:53]from Rembrandt to now.
[18:54]So that's kind of my current thing,
[18:56]which is different, you know,
[18:58]but of course I would love to work with her again.
[19:01]That sounds really interesting.
[19:02]Oh, really?
[19:03]Thank you.
[19:04]That's really good.
[19:06]What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[19:08]Yes.
[19:09]Well, I mean, my cat is encroaching.
[19:12]I have a couple of different thoughts on that.
[19:15]And I think on the one hand,
[19:17]I've been listening to a lot of your podcasts
[19:19]and just I always, you know,
[19:20]do listen to book podcasts and general author podcasts.
[19:24]And I hear people saying a lot,
[19:25]especially younger people,
[19:27]I feel so old when I say that, but, you know,
[19:29]you ask people like who are younger than me
[19:31]and they do exist and there are people in their 30s saying
[19:34]things like, you know,
[19:36]community is the main thing.
[19:37]You need a writer community.
[19:38]You need people to read read your stuff.
[19:40]And yes, I mean, that seems great.
[19:43]If that's what you feel like you need.
[19:44]But I was thinking about how, you know,
[19:48]as an academic actually,
[19:50]we're like the anti community, you know,
[19:52]professors just are cutthroat and mean to each other.
[19:55]And all we do is, you know,
[19:56]scathing reviews of each other.
[19:58]And there's really not.
[20:00]the sense of like the friendly community.
[20:03]So it was really different for me
[20:04]to realize that that existed for a lot of writers
[20:07]who were not academics.
[20:08]But the first writer thing that I got into
[20:11]that once I realized, oh, I can apply for other things.
[20:14]Now I'm an author.
[20:15]So I don't have to go to conferences
[20:17]where I wanna die, you know, the whole time.
[20:20]So I got into Breadlow Floss Summer,
[20:22]which was as a contributor in nonfiction,
[20:25]which was super exciting for me.
[20:26]And I got to work with Melissa Phibos,
[20:28]who is my absolute, you know, one of the writers,
[20:30]I most respect.
[20:32]But Carl Phillips was there, who's a poet.
[20:34]And he hadn't won the Pulitzer yet,
[20:36]but he did won the Pulitzer recently.
[20:39]But he gave this amazing talk where he's sort of,
[20:41]you know, in a nutshell, it was like Tony its community.
[20:44]And it was so funny because it's like,
[20:46]we're there kind of to develop community ostensibly.
[20:50]And he was giving this talk about like,
[20:51]you know, maybe you need it, maybe you don't.
[20:53]So I guess I was really moved by that
[20:54]because I thought, yeah, you know, like,
[20:57]what if you have access to that,
[20:59]which so many writers don't, you know,
[21:01]you have your job, you have maybe your family,
[21:03]your animals, you have your extended family.
[21:05]What is this thing?
[21:06]Or suddenly you just have all these writers, you know,
[21:09]it's not possible for so many people.
[21:11]So I guess my advice at the end of all that
[21:13]is like, don't feel pressured to have a community
[21:16]if it's not something that feels right or is easy
[21:19]for you to access, trust that, you know,
[21:22]you can still be doing your thing.
[21:23]Now I have a writer community, or at least I have friends,
[21:26]but I still don't want them reading what I'm writing.
[21:28]Like, it's just not, that's just not how I work, you know?
[21:32]It's like, I write what I write, my agent gets it,
[21:33]we go from there, you know,
[21:35]but it's still good to talk to people.
[21:37]And I do think, you know, most of us can benefit from that.
[21:39]But if not, then just do you,
[21:42]do you every day by yourself?
[21:44]Just do your writing, don't feel guilty,
[21:46]don't feel like you have to connect
[21:48]with other networks, just do it, you know?
[21:50]I think that's the main thing.
[21:52]And the second thing I guess would just be the like,
[21:55]I started writing fiction at 50.
[21:57]Why not, you know, writing has been a love of mine,
[22:01]language has been a love of mine,
[22:02]craft has been a love of mine for a really long time,
[22:05]but I had never written fiction.
[22:07]And just write it, you know?
[22:11]I mean, that sounds so easy,
[22:13]but I think that's kind of it, you know?
[22:15]I mean, we all have to do it in our own way,
[22:17]but don't be, I think, you know,
[22:19]a lot of younger people, I hear them also say like,
[22:22]I didn't write my first short story till I was 30,
[22:23]and I just want to be like, oh my God.
[22:25]I know, on the one hand, I've got feeling
[22:30]is sort of like, what do you know at 30,
[22:31]but I know a lot of people know things at 30,
[22:34]but also like a lot of, you know a lot
[22:36]as I would imagine you would agree at 40,
[22:39]you know a lot, you will know a lot more at 50.
[22:42]It's a good time to start, why not?
[22:45]Yep, why not?
[22:46]I agree, never too late.
[22:48]No, I think your 40s are a great time.
[22:50]I don't know, people need to say that.
[22:52]I think like there should be some sort of,
[22:54]there may be, maybe I'll Google this later,
[22:56]but I bet you there's some statistic
[22:58]on how many in contemporary literature right now,
[23:01]how many people writing are in their 40s
[23:03]versus 50s versus 30s,
[23:05]and I bet the bulk of that bell curve is in the 40s,
[23:08]if I add to it.
[23:09]I'd be super curious because it feels like to me
[23:12]in the publishing industry, it feels like it's run
[23:14]and it is, I mean, I do think this is true.
[23:16]It is largely run at the agent, at the agent
[23:20]and editor level by women, white women in their 30s.
[23:23]And so it can feel very,
[23:25]I've had some really great editors and agents in that pocket
[23:28]or editors, because my agent wasn't, but it can feel very
[23:33]like, oh wow, you know, like I seem like an elder to you
[23:37]and you have no idea, you know, really what my deal is,
[23:42]you know, so it can seem like that,
[23:43]but I wonder about the author thing.
[23:44]I'd be really curious about that,
[23:46]but I just want a second you on, I think 40s for me,
[23:49]it's like 40s or when you're kind of like, okay,
[23:52]I'm 40, like I'm gonna do what I, like it has happened.
[23:56]I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to do now what I kind of wanna do,
[23:59]but 50s, you're just like, fuck it, you know,
[24:01]I think at 50s, you can just be like, oh, it's on now, you know,
[24:05]no one can tell me when the way that they did when I was 40,
[24:08]so I can really do whatever I want.
[24:10]So I love that, that is great advice.
[24:14]The anti community stay home, be alone, it's all good.
[24:17]Great, you do you, by yourself.
[24:22]Yeah, you do you by yourself, and don't call Vanessa.
[24:25]You can call me, you can call me, you can call me, you can call me.
[24:29]Nobody else can.
[24:30]Oh my God, too, buddy.
[24:33]Well, thank you so much, congratulations on lash lives.
[24:36]This was so much fun to chat with you.
[24:38]And thank you, congratulations.
[24:41]Thank you for being in this conversation.
[24:43]Thanks so much, David.
[24:44]Thank you.
[24:45]Bye.
[24:47]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[24:50]to Read Books.
[24:51]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at zebi Owens,
[24:54]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:56]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[24:59]and sign up for my virtual book club
[25:00]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[25:03]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[25:06]for the Sound Editing.
[25:07]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[25:09]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.