Anna Pitoniak, THE HELSINKI AFFAIR
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[1:03]Hannah Potoneac is back on momstone her time to read books the second time for her new
[1:07]novel, The Hilsen Key Affair.
[1:10]Anna is the author of The Futures, Necessary People, our American friend, and now The Hilsen
[1:14]Key Affair.
[1:15]She graduated from Yale, where she majored in English, and was an editor at the Yale Daily
[1:19]News.
[1:20]She worked for many years in book publishing, most recently as a senior editor at Random
[1:24]House.
[1:25]Anna grew up in Whistler, British Columbia, and now lives in New York City and East Hampton.
[1:29]Welcome, Anna.
[1:30]Thanks so much for coming back on momstone her time to read books to discuss The Hilsen
[1:34]Key Affair.
[1:35]Thank you for having me back, Zippy.
[1:37]I'm so happy to be here.
[1:38]Can you please tell us in a what your latest novel is about?
[1:41]Sure.
[1:42]So The Hilsen Key Affair is a female centric spy thriller in the tradition of great writers
[1:49]like John LeCurere.
[1:51]This is a story about an ambitious young CIA officer named Amanda Cole, who is given the
[1:56]opportunity of a lifetime when she's presented with this Russian conspiracy.
[2:02]And yet she discovers that her father, who was a CIA officer before her, has some mysterious
[2:08]link to this Russian conspiracy she's trying to untangle.
[2:11]So Amanda winds up having to ultimately choose between loyalty to her father and her family,
[2:18]or loyalty to her country and the CIA, as she pursues the truth about this.
[2:23]Wow.
[2:24]Amazing.
[2:25]You do such a good job of describing her father, who was like in the field and doing all
[2:29]the stuff.
[2:30]And then was to relegate his desk work.
[2:33]And you had some expression, which I won't remember, something about like how he had just
[2:36]like succumbed to mediocrity or something like the failure that he viewed as the rest of
[2:41]his career is having become was that he sort of winds up as a result of this terrible
[2:48]event that happens in the past and the Cold War, which gets revealed over the course
[2:52]of the book.
[2:53]He winds up just falling back on this notion of himself as a failure and sort of just
[2:59]gets comfortable with it in a way that I think can be quite, you know, damaging to
[3:04]one's ability to keep moving through life.
[3:06]But at least he has his three times a week tennis game going.
[3:10]I appreciate that.
[3:11]With routine, he claims very tightly to these things that sort of keep him grounded in
[3:16]saying despite these ghosts that continue to haunt him from the past.
[3:21]It was sort of a little sad, though.
[3:22]I mean, all his friends are retiring and the way he wrote him, he's like, well, you know,
[3:26]I do love to garden or something, I mean, he's like, I don't have grandchildren.
[3:32]And now what, like, what am I going to do?
[3:34]And I love to tell you also wrote about the difference between, you know, a job and a calling.
[3:39]Yes.
[3:40]Yeah.
[3:41]No, it was very important to me that I capture this sort of coinyency and this tenderness
[3:46]in the character of Charlie Cole, who as readers come to discover quite quickly, he's a very
[3:50]flawed person.
[3:51]He's made a lot of mistakes.
[3:53]But in my mind, that never made him 100% a villain.
[3:57]I think that people are never 100% villains or heroes.
[4:00]There's always a little bit of a mixture.
[4:02]And so Charlie has this great sadness to him because he realizes that he made mistakes
[4:09]in the past and he doesn't really know how to move forward with them.
[4:13]But he does the best he can to sort of retain his dignity in the present day.
[4:18]And I think that's such an interesting thing because part of the way he maintains his dignity
[4:23]is through his routines and his friendships and those little touchstones in life.
[4:27]But it also prevents him sometimes from really being honest and open and vulnerable with
[4:32]the people he loves the most, namely his daughter, Amanda Cole, who is the person he ought
[4:38]to be able to trust the most in the world.
[4:41]Amanda is so funny.
[4:42]Also, her relationship with Georgia, you have this little section where they're like
[4:47]debating Talbot's versus J Crew.
[4:50]So I'm wondering, which one do you prefer?
[4:52]I know.
[4:53]I know.
[4:54]It's so funny.
[4:55]There must be something in my subconscious and I apologize to the good people of Talbot's
[5:02]because I don't like single out Talbot's.
[5:06]But I think that I'm more of a J Crew person, admittedly, than a Talbot's person.
[5:11]I think I just associated it in my mind with those early years getting started in my
[5:15]own career of like when you have to buy your first grown-up clothes for work and you
[5:20]go get like a skirt, suit, or a very appropriate shift dress, that kind of thing, that sort
[5:26]of corporate attire I just associate with Talbot's.
[5:29]So I probably had a couple laughs at the expense of that for Amanda who doesn't and she admits
[5:37]it's about herself.
[5:38]Doesn't have much of a sense of style.
[5:40]She's not a fashion plate.
[5:41]She's too busy with work to pay attention to that.
[5:43]I love writing her best friend, Georgia, who never pulls her punches and feels no
[5:49]compunction about telling Amanda exactly what she thinks of the way she passes.
[5:54]We all need a friend like that, right?
[5:56]Someone has to say something.
[5:57]Yeah.
[5:58]I need a friend to tell you, like, girl, you got to step it up a little bit.
[6:01]Even the CIA officers in the world need friends like that to nudge them in that direction.
[6:06]I feel like my 10-year-old daughter has taken over all of my fashion issues, you know?
[6:10]Like if I'm wearing something and she doesn't think it matches or looks good, she'll
[6:13]just be like, no, no, no, you got to go change.
[6:15]Let me come up and help you.
[6:16]Yeah.
[6:17]Oh my God.
[6:18]The unbridled honesty of a tween or an adolescent is that's tough.
[6:23]I don't envy that.
[6:26]I will say, even I think it was like, was it last year or the year before?
[6:30]My mother did send me a care package from Talbot's with a skirt suit with matching blazer,
[6:35]which I did end up wearing to a sales conference.
[6:37]Okay.
[6:38]There you go.
[6:40]Maybe I need to change my tune.
[6:41]Maybe I need to go.
[6:42]I was like, oh, Talbot's has cute stuff.
[6:44]I had a blazer that she sent me.
[6:46]I don't know.
[6:47]Every so often, I have to dress corporate and I guess it's still a good, good, too,
[6:50]please.
[6:51]Exactly.
[6:52]Exactly.
[6:53]Talk a little bit more about your fascination with CIA and Langley and spying and all of it.
[7:01]Like, how did you get into this?
[7:02]I know this isn't a big area for you.
[7:05]It is.
[7:06]So this is a genre that I really got into in my 20s when I worked in publishing and shortly
[7:12]after I graduated from college and it's interesting.
[7:14]I think that a lot of people read a lot of books for college for their courses, whatever
[7:20]classes they might be taking in college and they don't necessarily have the time or the
[7:25]bandwidth to develop their own taste and preferences.
[7:28]And this is what's so nice about emerging into the real world and having time to read
[7:32]for fun again.
[7:33]You realize what it is you really love to read, whether it's romance or mystery, thriller,
[7:38]sci-fi, whatever it might be.
[7:40]And I discovered somewhat to my surprise that I really loved spy fiction.
[7:44]So I used to work as an editor at Random House and one of the authors I worked with there
[7:49]was Alan first, who's a terrific writer of spy fiction.
[7:54]And I had the chance to work on one of his books and as I was reading the manuscript,
[7:58]I thought, wow, I love this.
[8:00]Like, I want to read 100 more books like this.
[8:03]So I read all of his back catalog, I then went down the rabbit hole.
[8:07]I started reading John LaCure and Graham Green, Daniel Silva, these other great masters
[8:12]of the genre.
[8:13]And I think what I loved so much about spy fiction, what I still love about it is that
[8:18]when it's done right, it combines this incredible depiction of just these very human situations
[8:26]we all find ourselves in, whether it's feeling caught between competing loyalties, whether
[8:32]it's withholding the truth about something from a person you love and trust, whether
[8:38]it's asking yourself the question, what do I really believe in?
[8:41]What do I really care about?
[8:43]But it's all elevated to this place where the stakes are incredibly high.
[8:48]It's not just a question of, oh, if I say this thing, it might hurt my friend's feelings.
[8:52]It's like, no, there might be geopolitical consequences to this.
[8:55]It might be that America gains an advantage over her enemy or war breaks out or there's
[9:02]some kind of conflict here.
[9:04]So I love the idea of really just getting the chance to put human beings in these, put
[9:11]characters really in these situations of great pressure, see how they react, see what happens,
[9:17]but have it hairy enormous consequences.
[9:20]I think that just makes for a really riveting and exciting story.
[9:23]We always talk about this as writers, like, what are the stakes?
[9:26]And the stories are always very high in spy fiction.
[9:29]So I discovered that that's what I loved so much about the genre, but even as I was reading
[9:34]all of these books and discovering these authors, I couldn't help but notice that most
[9:38]of the writers in this sort of international spy thriller space tend to be men.
[9:44]Most of the characters at the center of the books tend to be men as well.
[9:48]And I always thought to myself, I want a book like this, a book like a genre, or an
[9:53]Alan first, but where the women are completely in charge, where they're not the love interest,
[9:59]where they're not the...
[10:00]secondary character, but where they're really the main thing.
[10:03]And so when I was at random house,
[10:04]I always said to literary agents to people I was meeting with,
[10:08]this is the kind of book I wanna require.
[10:10]Please send me war writers like this.
[10:13]And I never found quite the perfect book to scratch that itch.
[10:18]There was always something I was still looking for it.
[10:21]And so eventually I decided to just give it a shot myself.
[10:25]And I'm four books into this writing career now.
[10:28]I think just now I'm really starting to find that groove that I want to stay in.
[10:33]That's amazing. Talk about your other books.
[10:36]So my other books have all jumped around a little bit.
[10:40]And what's interesting, looking back,
[10:42]I can see how my first three novels all blurred genres or
[10:47]spanned different genres or didn't fit as neatly into a category
[10:51]the way that the Helsinki affair fits into spy fiction.
[10:54]And so my first novel, The Futures is a coming of age story,
[10:59]which meets a financial thriller taking place in New York City in 2008,
[11:04]right around the time of the great financial crisis.
[11:08]And it's really a story about being young in New York,
[11:11]about being in love, about falling out of love,
[11:14]about trying to figure out what you wanna do with your life.
[11:17]You know, those very small questions.
[11:20]My second novel is called Necessary People.
[11:22]That's more psychological suspense, a kind of frenemy thriller
[11:27]about two very ambitious young women who are best friends,
[11:32]but then become workplace rivals when they both go work in TV news.
[11:36]And it's a very dark book.
[11:39]It's a fast book.
[11:40]It's a real like, it's a real sort of suspense book.
[11:43]And then my third book, my most recent book before this, Our American Friend,
[11:47]was kind of my on-ramp into this genre.
[11:50]So Our American Friend, I always like to say, was maybe 50% spy thriller.
[11:54]And then it was 50% historical fiction,
[11:57]a little bit of political thriller thrown in there too for good measure,
[12:01]a story about a first lady of the United States who was born in Russia,
[12:05]who has this dark secret in her past that comes out in present day.
[12:10]And I found with Our American Friends that I really loved writing the scenes
[12:15]that were more spy-centric.
[12:19]Those parts of the book that really felt like a spy thriller.
[12:21]And I thought, I just want to do more of this.
[12:23]Like, this is what I want to lean into for my next book.
[12:26]And that was maybe the nudge from the universe or from the creative uses that I needed
[12:31]to know that, okay, maybe it's time to tackle this spy thriller thing.
[12:36]So cool.
[12:36]I love it.
[12:37]It's like sometimes you just need to chip away at it.
[12:40]Like a sculpture.
[12:41]I feel like you're just getting closer and closer.
[12:44]Exactly.
[12:44]Some writers, they know exactly what genre they want to pursue from the get-go.
[12:49]And I think that's amazing.
[12:50]And in many ways, I envy that.
[12:52]But for me, I had to sort of take my time and edge up to it from different directions.
[12:57]And they get useful because I've also, you know,
[12:59]strengthened in certain ways as a writer along the way.
[13:02]So I felt ready.
[13:03]Do you know the author Lee Carpenter?
[13:06]I know her name.
[13:07]I don't know her personally.
[13:09]I want to introduce you because she also has just written a spy
[13:13]title thriller with a woman protagonist.
[13:15]And I'm having an event for her.
[13:16]I feel like you two should be in conversation if you have any.
[13:18]I love that.
[13:19]I would love that.
[13:20]I will have to say, I think that there were probably so many other female writers out there
[13:27]who have been feeling the same way as me.
[13:28]And I didn't need to be starting to turn because I've noticed just in the last few years,
[13:32]more and more of these types of spy thrillers with women at the center are starting to crop up.
[13:38]I know that IS Barry's novel, The Peacock and the Sparrow,
[13:42]is a thriller that's gotten a lot of great acclaim.
[13:44]Alma Katsu is another writer whose name has been mentioned to me many times.
[13:49]So I love this.
[13:50]It's like we're all finally storming the barricades.
[13:55]I feel like it's the post-homeland women, right?
[13:59]Like people who are obsessed with homeland and I could not stop watching that show.
[14:03]Like that was one of my favorite shows of all time.
[14:05]And I feel like it just like renewed my interest and like,
[14:08]well, could I do that job?
[14:09]Thanks, but I don't know, you're just like drawn to it.
[14:12]I think it's so riveting and they do such a good job in homeland of making Carrie Matheson,
[14:18]this very real, very flawed person, also is a sister and a mother and a daughter and has all
[14:25]these dimensions to her that wind up intruding in her life as a spy, but she is first and foremost,
[14:34]this really strong badass woman.
[14:36]And I just love that.
[14:38]Like I can't get enough of it.
[14:39]Yeah.
[14:40]You're like, we write maybe who we want to be or maybe you are a spy and I just don't even know.
[14:44]But you know, people people ask me tongue and cheek sometimes like,
[14:48]are you really working for the CIA and God, I wish I wish they would let me work for them
[14:53]because I feel like that would be, I mean, that would be great research, wouldn't it?
[14:57]But I'm just, I'm just imagining my way into it and all of that.
[15:03]Oh my gosh.
[15:04]So what are you working on now?
[15:06]I am actually working on the follow-up to the Helsinki affair.
[15:11]Or so for the first time, the characters in this book, especially Amanda Cole and her sort
[15:18]of mentor colleague, Kath Ross, who's that she's a very strong and strong, well, the older woman.
[15:28]Amanda and Kath, I had so much fun writing them.
[15:31]I had so much fun writing the dynamic between the two of them.
[15:35]And by the time I got to the end of the Helsinki affair, I thought, I have more
[15:39]that I want to say with these characters, which is new.
[15:42]I've never finished a book before and thought, oh, I want to keep going with these characters.
[15:46]It's always felt like an ending.
[15:48]But at the end of Helsinki, I thought, no, there's there's more to do here.
[15:51]So I'm writing the next book, which will be my plan is to write it as a book that can be
[15:57]read on its own.
[15:58]It's not have to read it in order.
[16:00]It's not contingent on that, but it will continue the same characters.
[16:06]And some of the same threads as the Helsinki affair.
[16:09]So that's been a really fun undertaking.
[16:12]I love that.
[16:14]I know there's debate in the publishing world about do you continue on with your characters?
[16:19]Or not?
[16:19]Do you gain more markets?
[16:21]I know there's all these things.
[16:23]But I personally as a reader, I love when I fall in love with the character.
[16:26]And I get to continue on with them, right?
[16:28]It's the best feeling.
[16:30]Yeah.
[16:30]And I think I heard an interesting statistic from, I think it was a writer friend of mine who
[16:35]cited this to me, who said that sometimes it takes a couple books in a series for characters
[16:42]to really or really for the series to take off for people who are really deeply invested in the
[16:48]characters.
[16:49]So it may not be that the first book out of the gate is the one that sort of captures everyone's
[16:56]imagination, but if you keep building and building over time, people get really attached and
[17:00]invested in these characters.
[17:02]And I love that idea.
[17:04]I think that it's so true.
[17:07]And if you as a writer find characters who you want to keep spending time with, chances are
[17:13]if that's really like an authentic feeling that's coming out of you, there are going to be
[17:16]other people out there who also connect with those characters who also want to keep spending time
[17:20]with them.
[17:21]And for me, I realized that I was as I turned in the final draft of the Helsinki affair
[17:26]last year and started thinking about the next thing, it was sort of not even a question for me
[17:32]that I would continue with these women.
[17:34]The idea of trying to start a whole new novel from scratch, it was like everything I made an
[17:41]attempt at just felt very flat and lifeless because I knew that the book I wanted to write and
[17:47]needed to write was more in this world.
[17:51]This is actually personally very helpful because I'm trying to work on my next novel, which I have
[17:57]to hand in as a proposal soon.
[17:59]And I really wanted to continue with my character PIPA from my last book.
[18:03]So I wrote like I've written 6,000 words of another one.
[18:07]And I met with my editor who's like, wow, they're pros and cons, but I don't know.
[18:11]I think she was not as excited about that, but I just want to like keep following her along.
[18:16]like what happens a couple years later and what happens to the kids and so I don't know.
[18:20]But now I feel like maybe I should just do it and I could always change it later.
[18:24]I mean, God, this is, I feel like I'm always telling writers that they need to do what they
[18:29]need to do.
[18:30]And this is probably not the advice that a more strategically minded agent or editor might give you.
[18:37]But I do think that you can tell when you are writing something from that place of genuine
[18:42]authentic drive versus writing something because you feel like, okay, well, that wasn't a good
[18:47]idea. So let me set it aside and do something else, then it really shows up on the page
[18:52]what your heart is in it. And I know that for me, I'm finding it a unique and somewhat surprising
[19:00]challenge to keep writing Amanda and Kath in this next book in a way that allows them still to have
[19:06]room to breathe and grow and evolve. Like, it's an interesting thing when you've spent an entire
[19:12]novel with a character or characters. You think you know them. You think you sort of pop them under
[19:17]your control. But then you set them loose in a new storyline and it's like, oh, no, there's still
[19:22]things about a man to call and Kath Ross that I don't fully understand yet. And so I'm having to
[19:28]approach this next book with a good degree of humility to still take their twists and turns and
[19:35]surprise me along the way. So how do you know how much backstory to include? That is really
[19:42]tricky. And I think it's going to be something that takes many drafts and a lot of
[19:48]an error to get right. At this point, I'm probably including more backstory than I need. I can
[19:54]feel myself almost as I'm writing a paragraph like, and this happened and that happens. Well,
[19:58]I'm this whole thing about a man to call.
[20:00]And I'm looking at these words on the page and like this is definitely more than I need.
[20:05]But for now, I just need to sort of put it all down to see if I can go back and prune it out and cut.
[20:12]And I will probably rely somewhat on my agents and my editor to tell me when it's too much and I'm going overboard, but I sort of have to put it all down in order to later know what to cut from it.
[20:26]So yeah, this has been fantastic for coaching. Thank you.
[20:31]Oh my god, I'm letting you be kidding.
[20:34]I think I rather foolishly thought it was going to be sort of easier to continue with characters who I are, you know, and it's a whole new, it's a whole new challenge.
[20:45]I've never encountered this before in my writing career, but I embrace a new challenge.
[20:52]Did I make up that there's some sort of film something with one of your books or I don't there is an option and they're doing some development on my second novel necessary people.
[21:02]So this has been a long road, which I'm sure you know all about and probably a lot of your listeners and I know other writers in your orbit now about which is that
[21:14]Hollywood moves on its own schedule and often which has been the case for necessary people a production company will option the rights and then renew the option and renew the option and various players will come in and out of the equation.
[21:29]And then, of course, you know, this past year we've got the strike in Hollywood, which really caused everything to slow down, but as of now they have written a pilot.
[21:38]There's a writer who's working on the next episode, they have a couple actors attached so I'm being cautiously optimistic that something could happen.
[21:47]You never know and I certainly don't count on anything, but it's been really interesting and really fun to see.
[21:54]I would say, especially the experience of reading the pilot and realizing that someone else this other writer had taken these characters who I created and necessary people and sort of run with them and pushed them in her own way and injected her own creativity into the story was really cool.
[22:13]And just a very like flattering idea that I wrote a story that someone else was interested in enough that they wanted to try and do something else with it, you know, push it into a different medium.
[22:30]It's pretty cool, but we'll say, you know, you don't count on anything in this job.
[22:35]That sounds fairly far along, though.
[22:37]That's pretty encouraging.
[22:38]So I see why you're cautiously optimistic.
[22:41]I feel like the fact that any projects ever get produced and made on to the screen is like a complete miracle with everybody's schedules and all the actors and competing projects and points of view.
[22:53]I don't even know.
[22:55]Yeah, and it feels like one of those things where often it either happens really fast or it kind of doesn't happen at all.
[23:03]And that's not always true.
[23:04]Of course, sometimes things just take time, but I've been so amazed in recent years.
[23:09]We've seen that the sort of mini boom of, you know, actresses in Hollywood, optioning things, whether it's where there's food or carry Washington, whoever it might be and getting those movies or those TV shows made in like a year.
[23:24]It's like amazing what these women are able to pull together.
[23:28]So that keeps going.
[23:29]I know it's a, it's a sort of different time in the Hollywood landscape.
[23:34]I love that for books.
[23:36]So tell me a little more about the process, like when you are sitting there debating and trying to figure out the back story and all that like paint me a picture of like where you're sitting and what that looks like.
[23:47]Yes.
[23:48]So I am a very routine driven person.
[23:51]I think a lot of writers are because it's the only way you manage to get a certain amount of words written each day.
[23:58]So I tend to write between the same hours every day.
[24:02]I get a sort of slower start in the morning.
[24:04]I'll take care of a few things.
[24:06]I'll get some exercise, whatever.
[24:09]And then clear out emails from my inbox.
[24:11]And then around 11 a.m.
[24:13]Let's say I'm really starting to focus in on my writing for the day.
[24:17]And I tend to write between the hours of roughly 11 to 230 and I might take like a short break in there somewhere.
[24:25]But I know that those are the hours when my mind is sharpest and clearest.
[24:29]And I'm most focused.
[24:31]And one of the places I really love to write is the New York society library at 7 9th and Madison on the Upper East side.
[24:39]I discovered the society library about five years ago when I left my job at random house and switched to writing full time and needed a way to get out of the apartment.
[24:49]And I just think it's one of the best hidden gems in New York City.
[24:55]It's such a great place to work.
[24:58]There's just this incredible sort of literary atmosphere to the place.
[25:02]And they have these little desks that are tucked away in the stacks in the library.
[25:07]And you can just sort of retreat from the world for a few hours and totally immerse yourself.
[25:12]So I love working there. I find that I do some of my best writing there.
[25:17]But often, you know, one or two days a week I'll need a change of pace.
[25:21]So I'll go to a coffee shop in the neighborhood, something like that.
[25:24]And that's usually, you know, if I'm having a day where I'm feeling a little more lethargic having the energy of other people around me is really helpful.
[25:34]But I'm pretty good about like to get an 80 gritty about it when I'm sitting down at my computer, I will put my phone in my computer and do not disturb mode.
[25:44]I'll go close out my email.
[25:46]I'll like make sure there are no distractions.
[25:49]And I really just force myself to be there and be focused on whatever draft it is I'm working on.
[25:57]And I don't set myself a word count goal or a page count goal because I think that that can sometimes be a recipe for feeling frustrated with yourself at the end of the day.
[26:09]If you didn't hit your goal and to me, there are certain parts of the book where you might be able to write two or three pages in like an hour and it's totally effortless and it just flows.
[26:20]There are other parts of the book where you might be laboring over the same paragraph for multiple days in a row because it's a really important paragraph because you're at a hinge point in the story because you're trying to articulate something very subtle and delicate between two characters.
[26:36]And so I never feel bad about spending an entire writing session on one very short little passage and it'd be interesting. I don't really know what I look like from the outside.
[26:47]I think a lot of my time writing is I'm sort of almost like muttering to myself under my breath a little bit like as I'm trying out different phraseings or different words.
[26:58]Seeing how they sound. And then at other points when I'm not quite sure what's going to happen next and I'm letting myself marinate on it. I'll just like stare off into space very vaguely and probably the other people in the coffee shop grow a little alarm because they're like, that woman's just been staring at a wall for 10 minutes and we don't know what's happening.
[27:17]But you kind of have to get comfortable with the fact that your, your job as a writer requires you to look a little whacky.
[27:25]He does.
[27:27]Oh, I love it.
[27:29]Well, congratulations. Fabulous book. You're a really great writer. I feel like you're going to have a wall full of these by thrillers eventually.
[27:37]It's really exciting. Anyway, I just love watching your career like take off. It's very fun from the outside.
[27:43]Thank you so much, Debbie. I really love chatting to you today. You too. All right. Thanks. Take care. Okay. Bye Anna. Bye. Have a good Thanksgiving. You too. Bye bye.
[27:54]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books.
[28:03]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week.
[28:10]Thank you so much to Steve and Ryan, back texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.