Caroline Leavitt, DAYS OF WONDER
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
[0:14]I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company, reading retreats,
[0:20]a bookstore, and more. Learn more at ZippyMedia.com or follow me on social at Zippy Owens,
[0:26]or join the community at ZippyReaders.
[0:31]Caroline Lovett is the author of Days of Wonder, a novel.
[0:34]Caroline is the New York Times and USA Today Best-selling author of Days of Wonder,
[0:39]with or without you, cruel, beautiful world. Is this tomorrow?
[0:42]Pictures of you, girls in trouble, coming back to me, living other lives into thin air,
[0:47]family, jealousies, lifelines, meeting Rosie Halfway.
[0:51]FYI, her book Pictures of You, we have a book coming out from Zippy Books Publishing,
[0:56]and it's also called Pictures of You.
[0:58]And it was so nice I emailed Caroline and I was like, hey, Caroline,
[1:01]how do you feel about us using this title because your book came out so long ago and blah, blah, blah,
[1:05]and she was like, oh, anything you need.
[1:07]Anyway, she is the sweetest and most amazing gracious woman ever, and I adore her.
[1:12]Many of Caroline's titles were option for film, translated into different languages,
[1:16]and condensed in magazines. Many of her titles were best books of the year and indie next picks.
[1:21]A New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow.
[1:23]She was also shortlisted for the main readers prize,
[1:26]and was a Goldenberg fiction prize winner.
[1:28]She recently won an award for the Mid-Atlantic Arts for portions of her next novel, The Inseparables.
[1:33]With her without you was a good morning America pick online, a People Magazine and AARP Best Book,
[1:38]and a Public Library Association buzzed book.
[1:41]Caroline was the founder of the Nothing Is Cancelled Virtual Book Tour,
[1:44]an initiative she started when the pandemic began.
[1:47]It quickly grew, and she and novelist Jenna Bloom co-founded A Mighty Blaze,
[1:50]which promotes independent bookstores, authors who lost their tours, and helps readers.
[1:54]The Blaze' host did such luminaries as John Irving, George Saunders, Elizabeth Stroud,
[1:59]Lauren Graff, and more, like me, and now employs over 30 passionate volunteers.
[2:04]Caroline lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, New York's unofficial sixth borough,
[2:07]with her husband, the writer, Jeff Tamrickin, and has an acting student son, Max.
[2:11]Welcome, Caroline. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss days of wonder.
[2:18]Thank you so much.
[2:19]You so much. Most anticipated sticker that you fit on here.
[2:23]I love that.
[2:25]I'm going to tattoo that on my forehead.
[2:29]Okay. Can you please tell listeners what days of wonder is about?
[2:33]Okay.
[2:34]The front story is that days of wonder is about the afterlife's two, fifteen-year-old kids who were
[2:41]Malibu and love, who were trying to be separated by the boy's father,
[2:45]and they were both accused of an attempted murder.
[2:48]And the only problem is neither one of them remembers what really happened that night.
[2:53]So the boy goes free and the girl gets 25 years, and she's early released from a technicality.
[3:00]And when she's early released, she's desperate to find out what happened to her boyfriend who vanished.
[3:05]What happened to the child she had when she first got into prison and what really happened that night?
[3:10]So there's a kind of interesting backstory, which is I was sitting having lunch for the friend of mine.
[3:16]This woman that all my friends told me, oh, you have to know this woman.
[3:19]She's so great. She's so wonderful.
[3:21]I said, great. I love women friends.
[3:23]So I met this woman.
[3:24]And after we had known each other for two years, she said, I have to tell you something.
[3:28]And I said, okay, what?
[3:30]And I was hoping, oh, please don't be an illness.
[3:32]And she said, she committed a murder when she was fifteen.
[3:36]She actually did it.
[3:38]She knew it was wrong.
[3:40]She was sixteen. She was a car without breaks.
[3:43]And she went to prison for it.
[3:45]She was in prison for five years.
[3:47]And when she got out, she changed her identity.
[3:50]And she was determined to become a good person.
[3:53]And she did.
[3:54]She's like, she's so beloved.
[3:56]She got a job.
[3:57]She educated herself.
[3:59]She, the only thing she couldn't get over was that she felt she had this secret.
[4:04]And she couldn't tell people.
[4:05]She thought she couldn't be forgiven for it.
[4:07]So she was fine.
[4:08]And so she was forty years old when somebody found out.
[4:11]And they outed her.
[4:13]And she lost friends.
[4:15]She lost jobs.
[4:16]She lost just the actual woman.
[4:18]The actual woman.
[4:19]The actual woman.
[4:20]They outed all my gaps.
[4:21]Yeah.
[4:22]Okay.
[4:23]So she was just like devastating.
[4:24]And she said, okay.
[4:25]I'm going to have to do this again.
[4:26]And then she did it again.
[4:28]She took on a new identity.
[4:29]Moved.
[4:30]She took on a new identity.
[4:31]Moved.
[4:32]She took on a new persona or whatever.
[4:35]And she was just very guarded.
[4:37]She never had a close relationship after that with, you know, a sexual partner.
[4:41]And she just kept her women friends close.
[4:44]And after she told me, I just said, you know, I love who you are now.
[4:48]And who you were is not who you are now.
[4:51]And she was, you could see like the relief was.
[4:54]And so I wanted to write about that.
[4:56]But I wanted to keep her privacy.
[4:58]So I thought that I would never mention her name.
[5:00]And I never have.
[5:01]And then I would change the story.
[5:03]So I took her story.
[5:05]And first I made an attempt in murder instead of a murder.
[5:08]Then I made it.
[5:09]I still had like two young kids, but I made it more of a Romeo and Juliet story.
[5:13]Because I'm a sap for those kinds of things.
[5:17]And as I was writing it, I started like putting in other stuff.
[5:21]You know, my mother's stories started coming up.
[5:24]And I just by the time I was done, it had almost.
[5:27]The only thing that it had of my friend was, you know, that longing to be forgiven.
[5:33]And that attempt to try to live a different life.
[5:37]And what was it?
[5:39]Oh my gosh, amazing.
[5:41]Well, there's so much in the story.
[5:43]Not only when you say the Romeo and Juliet thing, you have this great scene where
[5:49]Jude meets red as we'll call her.
[5:52]Yes, her nickname before Ella changes her hair.
[5:55]And all of that after prison is, you know, to change her identity.
[5:58]But as a native upry side or myself, I found this quite amusing.
[6:03]So can I just read like little sections from, you know, the Dalton party.
[6:08]You know, I did not get it.
[6:10]Yeah.
[6:11]I had a Dalton boyfriend.
[6:13]You did.
[6:14]Oh my gosh.
[6:15]Okay.
[6:16]I'll just start from the beginning of the chapter.
[6:19]So this is, you have a dual timeline here.
[6:22]And this is what actually happens from in the back.
[6:24]Ella held her breath tugged up her skirt to shorten it.
[6:27]And then along with her two best friends, Sue's and Christina walked
[6:30]toward the high rise on East 76.
[6:32]She looked up at the ornate carvings on the limestone building and felt dizzy.
[6:36]Everything in the upry side seemed so clean and empty compared to other areas of
[6:40]the city, particularly queens.
[6:42]The sidewalks looked bleached.
[6:44]Every tree was surrounded with bright flowers and gated with wrought iron.
[6:48]People here were so dressed up.
[6:50]They looked polished wearing fancy fabrics and walking fancy dogs.
[6:54]Who sometimes had jeweled collars and even little rubber boots over their paws.
[6:58]But I had no idea what to think of all this.
[7:01]And then the next paragraph.
[7:02]She had no idea what to think of this event either.
[7:04]Billy, Sue's cousin, had told Sue's and his parents were into heaty all weekend.
[7:09]He was throwing a party, putting it on his dad's card.
[7:11]And he wanted her to come bring your friends, he said.
[7:14]I don't want to say that the upper worst side is pretty gentrified too.
[7:21]A lot of New York is like that now.
[7:23]But I just had to sort of boost it up a little.
[7:26]Yeah.
[7:27]It's also not that clean right now.
[7:28]But that's okay.
[7:29]There's like garbage in it.
[7:30]It is fine.
[7:31]No, but this whole lifestyle and someone sort of from the outside looking in and her feeling like so out of place.
[7:38]And of course, we've all felt so out of place.
[7:41]Yeah.
[7:42]I can't imagine anyone who hasn't had that feeling.
[7:44]I know I have where you go into an environment and you feel like the odd one out.
[7:48]And then all of a sudden she gets like recognized by the sky.
[7:52]And they feel this connection.
[7:54]And she can't even really believe it.
[7:56]So tell me about that.
[7:57]And was that what it was like with your Dalton boyfriend?
[8:00]It was like that for me.
[8:02]We actually, I was a little older than Ella.
[8:05]And we actually moved into this fabulous apartment.
[8:09]It was a lot of the upper worst side though.
[8:11]He did go to he had gone to Dalton.
[8:13]And it was had, you know, I was living in a crummy little one bedroom.
[8:18]Not one bedroom was just a studio that has sloping floor and mice and stuff.
[8:23]And almost then I was living in a four bedroom apartment overlooking the park at night.
[8:29]And we had two dorm and they knew me by name.
[8:32]And I was just sort of astonished.
[8:34]And his parents were extremely wealthy.
[8:37]And my parents were not.
[8:39]I was sort of a working class girl growing up.
[8:42]And I was kind of, I was kind of dazzled.
[8:44]And I didn't know exactly how to act a lot of times.
[8:49]And I remember his mother took me aside once and said,
[8:52]I have to take you shopping.
[8:54]You're not dressing well.
[8:57]And I mean, that my friend, like, I don't want to make up like a statement.
[9:00]There's like all people who went to Dalton.
[9:02]But it was like that specific moment.
[9:05]And I just, I just never forgot I was strange.
[9:08]And when we broke up, I was really sad to leave the apartment.
[9:13]Not because it was so big and beautiful.
[9:15]And it was like right by the park, which certainly mattered.
[9:18]But because I really liked the doormat.
[9:20]I mean, they were my friends.
[9:22]They would, you know,
[9:23]I would come and cry from a fire or something.
[9:26]And they would be really nice and sit down.
[9:28]I won't open the doors until they've calmed yourself down.
[9:31]And I thought that was really lonely.
[9:33]And I missed that.
[9:34]I missed that.
[9:35]So funny because two other books that I am interviewing authors for this week.
[9:40]There's one book called Welcome Home Caroline Klein.
[9:43]And in it is a scene which almost could have been from your life
[9:46]where she's dating the wealthy young guy from New York
[9:50]and envisioning these like amazing vacations in this lifestyle.
[9:54]And he breaks up with her.
[9:55]And she's like, okay.
[9:57]Like now I'm on my friend's couch in Queens.
[10:00]and like this is not exactly what I thought my life was going to be.
[10:05]So no, it's it's very weird. I'll tell you, I just got also he was on
[10:10]he wanted to finance and so he had a whole lot of money. He used to say, you know, you're a writer
[10:15]and I'm going to be a writer when I have enough money and I said, well, you work on Wall Street
[10:20]with enough money and he said, well, I have to have like five million dollars in the bank and I
[10:27]we had $2,000 in the bank at the time thought, oh, okay. And the funny thing was that I
[10:33]I met my husband Jeff Apture him and I really, really like Jeff are in the spot when I told him
[10:39]that I met somebody. He said, well, what does he do? And I said, well, he's a rock and roll journalist
[10:44]and there was this look on this guy's face and he said, you're leaving me for a rock and roll
[10:50]journalist. I said, yeah, I think I am. And I think I ended up fixing up with a little friend of mine
[10:57]and you know, they were happy and they were flying. But he never could be. He kept bringing that up
[11:02]like you left me. Do you know what you could have had? And I said, well, yeah, and I do think
[11:08]about it sometimes, but it's not everything. It's not everything. What happened to that guy now?
[11:14]Do you have any idea? Yes, I actually got an email from a few years ago and he said,
[11:20]he said, why don't we meet for a drink? I know the mixologist, that was the word he used.
[11:24]I know the mixologist at the, I forget what hotel it was with some fancy hotel and we can talk.
[11:30]And I just, I thought about it. And then I thought, you know what, I didn't really want to meet you.
[11:35]So I told him no and he was fine about it. He's married to a socialite. No, I think and he has a bunch
[11:41]of kids and you know, he's an interesting guy because he actually came from no money
[11:47]and he built himself up. So that's why those kinds of things were so important to him, I think.
[11:54]Wow. The good sort. Just not my sort. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Wow. Well, this is like the movie version
[12:00]of your teenage years here coming back. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, Ella takes a totally different
[12:08]turn in life and does not, you know, just happily wander off with a rock and roll journalist.
[12:14]But instead does try to, you know, get a new identity and a new job as a writer,
[12:19]but doing the advice column, which is really interesting. How did you think of that, by the way,
[12:24]as a lot of ways? Well, you know, I knew that job as someone could do the couldn't do anything else.
[12:31]And I have a lot. I know a lot of people who do advice columns. And they're wonderful.
[12:35]I mean, I'm friendly with Eugene Carroll. And she's just hilarious. And Rick Moody does these
[12:42]wonderful advice columns where he used to throw a magazine. And I thought, this will be really
[12:48]fun to write. And so I wrote a few of them. And actually my editor hated the ones I originally
[12:55]wrote. He said, these are very good. This isn't very good advice. Can't you do better? And I
[13:00]have a card. So I went back and I tried to do better. And I had to rewrite them a couple times
[13:07]because it's hard to give good advice because you have to sound smart. And you have to do this.
[13:13]And I thought that was the perfect odd thing for someone who had been in prison to give advice.
[13:19]And she ended up giving decent advice.
[13:23]I found her relationship with her mom to be just very poignant, right? The mom, obviously,
[13:27]has been her crusader while she was in prison just patiently waiting and doing what she could.
[13:32]And then finally, she gets out of prison. And she's ready to start their lives together. But meanwhile,
[13:39]Ella is an adult. And is like, okay, bye. Right. It's different. Oh my gosh. And that scene you
[13:44]have her mom crying at night in the other room. It broke my heart. Oh my gosh. Oh, just, you know,
[13:52]my son is 27. And when he left for college, I just, you want them to go out in the world. You
[13:58]want them to be happy. But you also want them to always be cuddling with you. And it's absolutely
[14:04]a heartbreaking thing because it's like you knew them when they were kids. And now they're adults.
[14:12]And you don't know them that much. And I wanted to write about that in a sympathetic way because,
[14:19]you know, that's what it is to be a mother. Your kids are all still home, right?
[14:23]Well, I have two who go to boarding school. So I know it's not the same, but it's not this,
[14:28]yeah, but it's still like, you know, it's hard. It's hard because when they're young,
[14:32]they're with you all the time. Yeah. All the time. And also, Ella's mother was really my mom.
[14:37]And, you know, all my mom's stories and my mother was like that. She was incredibly loving.
[14:43]But she always thought I was too independent, which I wasn't. I wasn't independent at all.
[14:49]And it hurt. She wanted her daughters, you know, to be girlfriends, you know, to be with her all the
[14:54]the time. And I just, I just couldn't do that. So even it's hard when you love somebody,
[15:00]like, I let my mom and you couldn't give them what they wanted. But that's for her life.
[15:06]How did you make that? Okay. Like, how did you not feel the guilt or did you feel the guilt or
[15:11]like how much therapy did this take? I felt really guilty, of course. But what I did is, you know,
[15:16]we, I always talked to my mom and I sat her down and I said, look, you know, I really love
[15:22]you, you're a wonderful mother. I said, but I don't really need a mother right now. And we can,
[15:29]we can have a close relationship. And I'd really like you to be my friend. And she said, I'm not
[15:35]your friend and your mother, which was really difficult. So I had to sort of set boundaries. I mean,
[15:43]because she was, she was like calling 50 times a day. And I used to, I just would preface things
[15:50]I really love you, but I can't talk that. I had to run out and do an interview or I have to,
[15:54]I have a meeting here. I have to do something else. And after a while, she kind of rudgingly
[15:59]accepted it though she never liked it. She never liked it. So I wanted, I wanted Ella's mom
[16:05]to accept a little bit more in hopes that that relationship would not expand. And I think it will.
[16:13]So when you're writing, do you for this like for saying that Helen is really your mom?
[16:20]Did you know that going into this book that you were going to have a character who is similar to
[16:24]your mom or did your subconscious just kind of take over and you're like, Oh, I just wrote my mom
[16:27]as a character in this book. That subconscious took over and it was so surprising because I thought
[16:33]I'm kind of revving about my mom. And I write about her a lot. And it's always my subconscious
[16:39]and I think it's because my mom died a few years ago. And this is my way of having her still alive.
[16:45]I mean, I just keep thinking, she would love this if she were alive. She would be so proud and
[16:51]she would tell everybody and say like, that's me and I just feel it's like an homage to her.
[16:58]And but it was totally self-conscious on my part. And then it was like an intro I thought,
[17:03]okay, I might as well like dive in and make it even more so. So I did. Wow. So funny what
[17:11]our brains do, right? Yeah. And you're like, does that happen to you? Well, I was literally just I
[17:16]did an event with Danny Shapiro earlier today and she was saying the same thing that you know,
[17:21]it's just the characters just take over and that's how it's supposed to be though. That means
[17:24]you're doing you're doing it right. Right. So another element of the story, which is also heartbreaking,
[17:32]is that Ella gave up her, we learned this early. I don't think this is a spoiler, but that Ella
[17:37]has not a spoiler. Right. Ella gave up her, her daughter and didn't somehow the press, by the way,
[17:43]does did not get a hold of this while she was in prison, which is a remarkable feed. But then
[17:48]and she, you know, searches and finds out the adoption agency and they will not tell her, but she
[17:53]you know, sneaks a peek and realizes they're in an arbor. And so off she goes.
[17:57]But yet, even though she wanted, it's like, you can't really believe in your reading the book
[18:03]that a decision like that for some piece of your flesh and blood that you could sign any sort of
[18:09]paper to prevent you from seeing them for the rest of your lives. I mean, it's almost, it's, it's
[18:15]almost in because I know that's a convention. I know adoption is a thing, you know, I'm not silly,
[18:19]but, but it's crazy, really, right? When you think about how life is horrible, it's horrible.
[18:25]I mean, after, after we had my son, I couldn't have any more kids and we wanted more kids. So we
[18:30]were going to, we tried to adopt and we tried open adoption, domestic, and we tried international
[18:36]adoption. And the international adoption just didn't work out. So we decided to do domestic.
[18:42]And what happened that just made me crazy is I'm going to talk to all of the birth mothers.
[18:48]And they were really upset. They said, well, you're never going to love my child as much as
[18:52]your biological child. And I kept saying, but that's not true. If I thought that was true,
[18:58]I wouldn't be attempting to do that. And I remember we finally got in badge with this wonderful
[19:05]woman in Montana. She was a nurse. She was educated. She really liked me. She really liked
[19:10]child. We had all these conversations. And she said, you know what, I think you're going to be
[19:14]parents of my daughter. And as sort of she said that I started loving that child. And we were waiting
[19:22]a week because we were supposed to fly out. And when you're, when you're working through an adoption
[19:27]agency, you can't, they contact you through an 800 number. You cannot contact them. She never called
[19:33]us. She just never never called us. And I called the adoption agency and said, what happened to her?
[19:39]And they said, they said, we don't know. Sometimes this happens. It happens a lot. And I said,
[19:44]well, why does it happen? Did she change her mind? Can I talk to her? Did she? And the adoption
[19:50]agency said, sometimes it's a scam. And sometimes it's not. And I was so upset. And I was
[19:57]mourning that child so much.
[20:00]And I didn't even know that I thought was going to be mine
[20:02]that I just said to Jeff, I can't do this.
[20:05]Let's just counter blessings.
[20:06]We have one gorgeous sun and we'll be fine.
[20:09]And I never looked back.
[20:11]And still to the state, I think about that kid.
[20:13]And I can't, you know, I never saw the baby.
[20:18]But so I wanted to write about them.
[20:20]That was another thing.
[20:21]I didn't realize it was writing about it
[20:22]until I got into it, because I was thinking,
[20:24]well, how do you deal with why she feels
[20:26]and how the biological and how the adoptive mom would feel?
[20:30]And all those feelings just rush back.
[20:32]And I thought, oh, you know, when you think
[20:36]that the baby is going to be yours, no matter who's it is,
[20:39]it's yours, only it isn't.
[20:42]So that was tough.
[20:44]That was tough for me to write.
[20:46]Do you feel like you've made some sort of piece of it
[20:49]having written it?
[20:50]Yeah, I have, I have.
[20:52]And I also, you know, there's a lot of things.
[20:54]I mean, I, I lost a child four months into our pregnancy,
[20:58]also, which was just, you know, they always tell you
[21:03]like at three months, that's the safe mark, right?
[21:06]Where you can go and tell everybody.
[21:08]So I was so happy and I told everybody
[21:10]and I bought all these clothes.
[21:12]And I went in for my fourth month, fourth month, checkup.
[21:15]And the doctor said, I'm really sorry.
[21:17]There's no, there's no heartbeat.
[21:19]And I kept saying, it's four months, it's four months.
[21:23]And I remember from that loss, like people say all sorts
[21:26]of things, because they don't know what to say.
[21:27]I mean, some people would say, well, at least you
[21:29]can get pregnant, you can get pregnant again,
[21:32]or people would say, well, you know,
[21:33]you didn't really know the baby, or all kinds of things
[21:36]that they're trying to be nice.
[21:37]And the only person who got it was my friend,
[21:41]Joe Fisher, who I've known for eight million years,
[21:43]and she said, look, I knew you're always going to consider
[21:46]that baby, your first child.
[21:48]And when she said that, I thought, that's exactly right.
[21:53]I do consider that baby, my first child.
[21:56]And I always think about that child.
[21:59]And, you know, wish it well.
[22:01]And it's just sort of something you deal with.
[22:05]And then, you know, Max was born a year after that.
[22:07]And that helped a lot.
[22:09]But it's sort of like I always felt, well, he had a sibling.
[22:13]They just never got to meet.
[22:15]Oh, my gosh.
[22:17]Well, I'm sorry.
[22:18]And I know last time on the podcast, or was it just
[22:21]when we were talking, I don't know,
[22:23]you've shared your story of the trauma of the childbirth
[22:27]and all of the, oh my gosh, you've been through a lot.
[22:30]Caroline, oh my gosh.
[22:31]But I stay happy.
[22:33]I know it's good.
[22:35]It's just, you know, you have to, you have to.
[22:38]I mean, that's what life is.
[22:39]It's, you know, you can take two directions
[22:42]when something all will happens.
[22:44]You can get bitter and lock yourself away,
[22:47]or you can say, okay, how can I proceed from this?
[22:51]And I prefer to do the, how can I proceed from this fruit?
[22:55]Wow.
[22:57]They're only way, what is it?
[22:58]The only way through is through, I don't know.
[23:00]The only way out there is through is through.
[23:02]Yeah, yeah.
[23:04]Talk for two minutes about your work with the mighty plays
[23:07]and founding that and all your author advocacy
[23:10]and helping and expansion and you know,
[23:13]tell everybody about that.
[23:15]Well, the day the pandemic hit,
[23:17]I was supposed to fly on the start of a new tour
[23:19]for whether without you to talk to a hundred librarians
[23:22]and I'll come and call them and say,
[23:23]no, your whole tour is canceled.
[23:25]Everything is canceled, it's locked down.
[23:27]And when I got off the phone, I said, nothing is canceled.
[23:30]Not this canceled.
[23:31]And I had practiced this speech with hand movements.
[23:34]So I made a video of it and sent it out,
[23:36]gone when they said, this is really good.
[23:38]We're gonna send it to the libraries.
[23:40]And I thought, okay, what can I do to help my friends?
[23:42]Cause everybody was freaking out.
[23:44]So I posted on Facebook, look,
[23:46]I'm starting the nothing just canceled book tour.
[23:49]If you're an author and you went from a YouTube book,
[23:52]all you have to do is make me a short video,
[23:54]call out another author and show their book
[23:58]and call out an indie bookstore.
[24:00]And I thought I would have like four
[24:02]and I had 200 after three days.
[24:05]So all I was doing was like processing these videos
[24:09]and posting about them.
[24:12]And then Ron Charles from The Washington Post called me
[24:15]and said, Caroline, what are you doing?
[24:17]And I said, I have no idea.
[24:19]And he said, well, keep doing it.
[24:21]So I kept doing it.
[24:22]And the next week it got worse
[24:23]than it was like 400 people.
[24:25]And then Jenna Blum, oh, I sort of knew,
[24:28]called me up and said, do you need help?
[24:30]Cause I'm really good at this kind of stuff.
[24:33]And I said, oh my God, yes, please, please.
[24:36]So we band it together.
[24:37]And Jenna was right, Jenna was,
[24:41]she's really, really great at scheduling stuff
[24:44]and managing stuff.
[24:46]And so we put together a mighty blaze
[24:48]and it was her name.
[24:50]And we made her the CEO and I was the co-founder
[24:53]and we started reaching out to authors saying,
[24:57]would you like to come on?
[24:57]We're starting a mighty blaze and blah, blah, blah.
[25:00]And we reached out to newspapers
[25:02]and nobody was doing anything back then.
[25:05]So they were except for you.
[25:06]And they were, you know, The Washington Post,
[25:09]New York Times, Polishes Weekly,
[25:11]all these other places wanted to interview us
[25:13]and promote the stuff.
[25:14]And I was just overwhelmed because I'm really a shy person.
[25:21]And it was hard for me to get out and do this.
[25:24]But I started contacting every writer I had ever
[25:28]done something for.
[25:29]I mean, I had, I once wrote a letter to John Irving
[25:32]six years ago where I asked him for nothing.
[25:35]It just saying how much he meant to me.
[25:37]And he actually wrote me back saying,
[25:39]you know, I read you a letter three times.
[25:41]You didn't ask for anything.
[25:42]So I'm writing you back.
[25:43]And I wrote him back and I wrote him and said,
[25:46]look, now I'm asking him for something.
[25:48]Please wait and come on a mighty blaze.
[25:50]And he said, yes.
[25:51]So, you know, I got to talk to my hero.
[25:55]And once I did that, it was easier to reach out to people.
[25:59]And I just aimed high and said, look,
[26:02]we're doing this because of the pandemic.
[26:04]We're just, we don't know how long it's gonna last.
[26:06]And it started to grow.
[26:08]And all of a sudden we had 30 volunteers working for us.
[26:13]And then all of a sudden we had all these different shows.
[26:15]And then Jenna started doing these book festivals.
[26:20]And now we're doing a book review show.
[26:22]And it's like, it's our fourth year now.
[26:26]And I don't go down to anything meetings anymore,
[26:28]do any of the strategy anymore.
[26:30]Cause I was so great about this job is Jenna said,
[26:33]well, what do you want to do?
[26:34]Where are your strengths?
[26:35]I said, I just want to talk to writers.
[26:37]And she said, okay, that's all you have to do.
[26:39]So that's all I have to do.
[26:40]And it's worked out great.
[26:43]And there's something as you know,
[26:45]because I call you the North Star of all writers,
[26:48]which you are.
[26:50]When you do stuff like this other people,
[26:52]it always somehow comes back to you
[26:54]and makes you feel good.
[26:56]It's like you get this golden hail around you.
[27:00]I love being part of the writers community.
[27:02]I love talking to writers.
[27:04]And I like helping them.
[27:06]And, you know, I've actually used you as a model.
[27:10]A lot of times.
[27:11]Because no, because you're so generous.
[27:16]And also, I don't know if you realize this or not.
[27:18]If you could be,
[27:21]you could be the most, you know,
[27:24]and seated person on the planet.
[27:26]And you're so real.
[27:28]You are so real.
[27:29]I love it when I talk to you and you will say,
[27:31]I'm really exhausted or I'm worried about that.
[27:35]And I think that's totally genuine.
[27:38]And also, I just want to say that the people around you
[27:41]are that way too.
[27:43]When I went to your new year, new chapter,
[27:46]it was astonishing.
[27:48]It was like, there must have been like 300 foreign people there.
[27:52]And the vibe was like, everyone was radiant in joy.
[27:56]Everyone.
[27:57]And it was not funny.
[27:58]It was not that weird competitiveness.
[28:01]There was none of that.
[28:02]And I thought, that's a kind of community.
[28:06]I want to be a part of.
[28:07]And I want to promote.
[28:08]So thank you.
[28:09]No, that's a lovely thing to say.
[28:11]My insecurity, I'm like, why would I be conceited?
[28:14]But okay, thanks.
[28:16]You know, but anyway, I appreciate you.
[28:19]Look, we all have different ways that life could go.
[28:22]We all take different paths in life with what we're given.
[28:26]And I think you and I share the same love of,
[28:29]I mean, I know that you and I share the same love of authors
[28:32]and literature and book and helping others.
[28:34]And it is for other people, but it feels good to us to help.
[28:38]So it's hard to trust to help.
[28:40]Thank you so much, Debbie.
[28:41]This is just wonderful.
[28:43]And I really appreciate it.
[28:44]And anything I can do for you, you just give a holler.
[28:47]Same here.
[28:48]Okay.
[28:49]Bye.
[28:50]Bye.
[28:52]Thanks for listening.
[28:53]Two moms don't have time to read books.
[28:55]If you love it, please leave a review.
[28:56]And follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.