Susan Choi, FLASHLIGHT: A Novel
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[0:44]Welcome back to Totally Book to So Delighted to Have You Here, and so excited to be talking
[0:49]about Flashlight, the new book from Susan Joyce.
[0:53]Welcome, thank you for being here, thank you for having me.
[1:00]Last minute, self doubt, moment there.
[1:02]I'm going to read you all Susan's bio really quickly, and then we'll get into it.
[1:07]Susan is the author of Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for Fiction,
[1:12]as well as the novel's The Foreign Student, American Woman, a person of interest and my education.
[1:17]She is recipient of the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction, the Penn WGC Bald Award,
[1:23]a Lambda Literary Award, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from
[1:28]the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
[1:32]She teaches in the writing seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Brooklyn.
[1:36]They are co-consusants.
[1:38]So Flashlight, we were just talking, we lasted an interview during COVID, her book came out
[1:45]and paper in hardcover in 2019, Trust Exercise, and we talked about it for the paperback
[1:49]in 2020, and now here after five years is Flashlight.
[1:53]So what has happened in between?
[1:55]I know, it's like a blink of an eye and also like a thousand years.
[1:58]Yes.
[1:59]I've been this century when we first talked.
[2:03]That was 2020 when we talked.
[2:05]I think that at that time I was first wrestling with the idea for this book, I had been
[2:11]generating some material, as writers say, that was shapeless and formless and confused,
[2:18]but by the end of that summer of 2020, I was able to publish a short story called Flashlight,
[2:26]which is actually now the very first pages that you encounter in this novel.
[2:33]It was a short story that was in the New Yorker, and it came out of kind of in the course
[2:39]of that year starting to get like a slightly clearer sense of what the story would be.
[2:44]And can you share what the story is?
[2:46]Yeah, I don't want to share too much, but the book centers on a small, a small sad
[2:55]family.
[2:56]It's about, you're not selling it.
[2:59]You got to start again.
[3:01]Yeah, I know.
[3:02]But I mean, they're kind of riveting people.
[3:04]Louisa is at the center of the story.
[3:07]When we first made her, she's a young girl.
[3:08]She's 10.
[3:10]And in those very early pages, I'm spoiler alert, but this was in the short story.
[3:15]Her father has undergone some serious catastrophe and has just disappeared.
[3:21]He has just gone when we encounter her.
[3:23]She's 10.
[3:24]Her mother are sort of like left reeling by this disappearance.
[3:29]They don't really know what happened.
[3:31]He's presumed to be drowned.
[3:33]And we follow this family of now too as they kind of try to make their way forward.
[3:39]When this catastrophe strikes, they're in Japan, but they're Americans.
[3:42]And so they return home and try to put their lives together again.
[3:46]And the short story that I published in 2020 was a real like writer's hack.
[3:51]I have to say I knew the larger world of this story, but I could not quite bring myself
[3:57]to write the eerie and mysterious things.
[4:00]And so I skipped two afterwards.
[4:02]So in the story, you meet her after this bad thing has happened.
[4:07]In the book, you see all the things, all the things that happened.
[4:10]Do you mind if I just like read a paragraph to give them a sense of fear?
[4:13]I do not get that.
[4:14]To give everybody a sense of your writing style, which is absolutely gorgeous.
[4:18]Thank you.
[4:19]It's a treat for me to hear someone else read my work.
[4:21]So I'll just read this for a section to what people's appetites.
[4:25]OK, Louisa and her father are making their way down the breakwater.
[4:29]Each careful step on the heaved granite blocks one step farther from shore.
[4:33]Her mother is not even on the shore, for example, seated smiling on the sand.
[4:37]Her mother is shut inside to the small, almost waterfront house they are renting,
[4:41]most likely in bed.
[4:42]All summer, Louisa has played in the waves by herself because her mother isn't well,
[4:46]and her father is unvaryingly dressed in a jacket and slacks.
[4:50]But tonight, he has finally agreed to walk the breakwater with her.
[4:53]She has asked every day since they first arrived, spray from the waves,
[4:57]sometimes lands on the rocks.
[4:59]And so he has carefully rolled up the cuffs of his slacks.
[5:02]He still wears his hard polish shoes.
[5:05]In one hand, he holds a flashlight, which is not necessary.
[5:08]In the other hand, he holds Louisa's hand, which is also not necessary.
[5:13]She tolerates this out of kindness.
[5:15]One thing I will always owe your mother is that she taught you to swim,
[5:18]because swimming is important to know how to do for your safety.
[5:22]But once she gave you lessons, I thought it was too dangerous.
[5:24]I was very unfair.
[5:26]I hate swimming.
[5:27]They both know the opposite is true.
[5:29]Perhaps her father recognizes her comment for what it partly is,
[5:32]a declaration of loyalty to him, as well as for what it mostly is,
[5:36]a declaration by a ten-year-old child who is contentious by reflex.
[5:41]Far over the water, far beyond where the breakwater joins with a thin spit of sand.
[5:46]The sunset has lost all its warmth and is only a paleness against the horizon.
[5:50]They'll turn back soon.
[5:53]See?
[5:54]Look at that.
[5:55]Can I ask?
[5:56]And the crowd goes wild.
[5:58]Yes, go ahead.
[5:59]A few paragraphs afterwards, if he stopped,
[6:02]Louisa's father says something, and then the narrative says,
[6:05]these are the last words he ever said to her, or something to that effect.
[6:09]Oh, should I have kept going?
[6:09]Do you want me to keep going?
[6:10]No, I think it's sufficient that they are the last words he speaks to her.
[6:16]Well, the way that you weave everything together,
[6:19]the trajectory that you take them on and the readers on
[6:24]and how everything loops throughout their lives
[6:27]and the significance of the flashlight itself
[6:29]and how everybody changes and learns and has to adapt and grow and rebel
[6:35]and grieve and be angry.
[6:38]Like, all the things are woven throughout the book.
[6:40]There is not an emotion that you do not touch on pretty much.
[6:44]Was that intentional?
[6:46]It's so good to hear.
[6:47]I think that the word weave that you used is actually incredibly appropriate
[6:52]because writing this book was so, it was a journey.
[6:57]I'll tell you, it was really a process.
[7:00]And I did have to do a lot of weaving, so to speak,
[7:04]because I wrote, I would just sort of find my way forward
[7:08]with these different characters that these different things had happened to.
[7:12]And then I would find myself at a point where I would think,
[7:15]we don't really know enough about them in this part of their life,
[7:17]or we haven't really seen them being this way,
[7:21]or we don't really understand how these two people are now
[7:25]in a relationship with each other.
[7:27]And so I'd kind of go back and I'd add more.
[7:29]And I'd actually weave it in.
[7:32]The book that you're holding is, the pages are obviously ordered
[7:38]from number one to whatever the last pages,
[7:40]but they weren't written in that order at all.
[7:42]And this is one of those books where, if I thought that I could write it
[7:46]in page order, which I've done with books, I've never been more wrong.
[7:49]This book was written completely out of page order,
[7:51]because I kept realizing I needed more of something, and then I would weave it in.
[7:56]So thank you for giving me like that image.
[7:59]So that's really how it happened.
[8:01]So it wasn't ever longer and you had to cut it back.
[8:04]This was like the more expanding.
[8:07]Oh, both.
[8:08]But if you can imagine a situation in which I both had to expand and contract.
[8:13]Like, yes, lots was cut out, lots was added, more cut, more added.
[8:18]It was very, well, it wasn't also only about a family.
[8:22]This is about cultures and history.
[8:24]And there's so much more here.
[8:27]How about the research?
[8:28]When did that come into it?
[8:29]Was there research?
[8:30]Did you know a lot of the stuff?
[8:32]Yeah.
[8:32]I mean, again, with the weaving.
[8:34]I'm going to stick with your advantage.
[8:35]You take it.
[8:36]You take it and run with it.
[8:37]Lots of weaving happened.
[8:38]Or maybe, like, also patchwork.
[8:40]We can have, like, weaving for Christmas.
[8:42]We can have quilting.
[8:43]I like textile arts.
[8:45]Like, I mean, all those metaphors.
[8:46]I feel the launch party is changing.
[8:49]There's going to be yarn.
[8:50]Yeah.
[8:53]Now, the research was also very, very quilted.
[8:59]I have to say, like, I started out with a certain amount
[9:01]of research.
[9:02]I would run with this story.
[9:04]I would end up in a place where I'd go, oh, my god,
[9:06]I have no idea what this was like.
[9:09]I'd go do more research.
[9:10]I'd kind of patch it in.
[9:13]I really wanted to, first of all, set this story in Japan.
[9:17]So I kept setting myself challenges
[9:18]that I wasn't totally prepared to deal with.
[9:21]I wanted to set this story in Japan
[9:22]because I spent time in Japan as a little girl.
[9:25]And it made a huge, huge impression on me,
[9:27]but I just did not know that much about the history
[9:29]of the country.
[9:31]So I had to go fill that in.
[9:32]I then wanted my father, character, Louisa's dad.
[9:36]I don't know if people could hear this.
[9:38]I hope you can hear this a little in the dialogue.
[9:40]But he's not a native English speaker.
[9:43]He's not American born.
[9:44]He is ethnic Korean, but he was born and raised in Japan.
[9:50]So his Korean parents immigrated to Japan
[9:54]in search of a better life, in search of economic opportunity
[9:58]in search of basically.
[10:00]They're like a way to put a roof over their heads.
[10:01]And that's all happening early in the 20th century.
[10:04]So their son is born in Japan, but he's an ethnic Korean.
[10:07]And that was a very specific situation,
[10:11]which I also really wanted to write about.
[10:13]But again, did not know enough.
[10:15]So I would write and then write myself
[10:17]into a corner where I had just no idea what the facts were.
[10:22]And I would have to kind of put on the breaks and do research.
[10:25]And then often go back and rewrite big sections
[10:27]because I would learn things that would make
[10:30]what I had written seem totally off.
[10:34]Oh, my gosh.
[10:35]And what about how you wrote about?
[10:37]It's not always so easy for people to put themselves
[10:39]in the shoes of younger characters
[10:42]and how exactly it feels when you're rebelling
[10:45]and your home life is a mess.
[10:46]And this is happening and that's happening.
[10:49]And how therapy itself can fail you and all of that
[10:53]and that level of anger.
[10:55]Like what did you tap into to write that?
[10:57]Well, that's a great question because I think
[11:00]I must have tapped into aspects of myself,
[11:02]although I can't happily.
[11:04]I mean, I'm so happy that these things did not happen to me.
[11:09]My father lived a great long life.
[11:10]These catastrophes are totally fictional.
[11:13]But there must be some source of childhood grief and anger
[11:17]that we all have, regardless of whether our childhood
[11:20]was ideal or really challenging.
[11:23]And I think I must have found that.
[11:25]The character of Louisa, I'm really fond of her,
[11:27]but she's difficult.
[11:28]My own mother has just finished reading this book
[11:31]for the second time, which I'm very moved by.
[11:35]But also my mother, after the second read,
[11:37]was like, how the hell Louisa, she's obnoxious.
[11:41]Yeah.
[11:42]And I was like, how?
[11:45]But I think that I don't know.
[11:48]I think that I was able to tap into those ordinary woes
[11:53]that we all have, but then try to use my imagination
[11:57]to get a little further in terms of what
[11:59]would it be like if your life was like this,
[12:02]if you lost your dad when you were only 10?
[12:04]Well, there's this whole debate of likable characters
[12:06]versus not likable characters.
[12:08]Obviously, Louisa is also charming and delightful to read.
[12:12]But in crafting her, is that something,
[12:15]how do you feel about likable versus unlikable characters
[12:19]when you read them and when you decide how to make a character
[12:21]scene?
[12:22]Oh, I am so glad you asked.
[12:23]I'm really on team unlikable character.
[12:26]I think, I mean, I don't want all characters to be unlikable.
[12:29]And I don't want my characters to be unlikable.
[12:32]I just don't want them to be like saintly or perfect.
[12:37]Why would we want to read about someone
[12:40]who's just completely flawless?
[12:42]Or at least personally as a reader,
[12:44]I love when characters are really flawed,
[12:46]because hopefully in the story, they grow and change.
[12:50]And often become better people.
[12:53]And that's so much more meaningful if you
[12:55]can see them in their imperfection, first of all.
[12:58]So that's my hope for Louisa.
[13:00]You'll all get to judge and decide.
[13:03]But I really wanted Louisa in the course
[13:05]of this book to grow and get outside of herself.
[13:08]And for that to be meaningful, she
[13:11]has to be kind of a tough one at the outset.
[13:14]Well, and there's so much in the book
[13:15]that if I were to discuss would be a reveal,
[13:19]because things keep twisting and turning.
[13:20]So I'll leave some of the plot heavy stuff out.
[13:24]But want to talk to you more about how
[13:26]you even got to the point where you could write
[13:28]a big sort of masterpiece-like novel at the stage of your life.
[13:33]Like, did you like to write as a kid?
[13:34]What were you like when you were Louisa's age?
[13:36]And when you were 10 and all of that,
[13:38]and how did you get to hear?
[13:40]That's such an interesting question,
[13:41]especially bringing Louisa into it.
[13:43]Because I did draw on myself for Louisa,
[13:46]I was surprised when my mother pronounced her obnoxious.
[13:49]I was like, you know, I'm thinking of certain ways
[13:52]that I was.
[13:52]And of course, being my mom, she was like,
[13:54]you weren't like that at all, which is sweet.
[13:58]But that's what moms are for.
[14:03]I feel like I had a little bit of Louisa-ness
[14:06]when I was a kid.
[14:07]I was one of those kids who did not want to ever go outside.
[14:13]I had my nose in a book all the time.
[14:15]I was definitely chosen last for dodgeball.
[14:18]Always, I was not athletic.
[14:22]I finally joined a soccer team when I was probably
[14:25]in my early adolescence and was one of the many, many, many,
[14:29]many defenders.
[14:30]Because you just sort of run around in the back
[14:33]of everybody else.
[14:34]You're never going to throw people.
[14:36]I swear, even.
[14:37]I thought that was such an important solution.
[14:39]Some of the defenders were really important.
[14:40]It's fine.
[14:41]You were probably an important defender.
[14:43]I was not.
[14:43]Have you ever noticed that there were a lot of extra defenders,
[14:46]though, just kind of running up and down?
[14:48]I was one of the extras.
[14:50]I'm now going down like a very dark path
[14:53]on my whole childhood athletic career.
[14:55]But that's OK.
[14:56]Go ahead.
[14:57]Oh, my gosh.
[14:58]People would be like, how did the interview go?
[14:59]And I'll say, well, I just had caused
[15:01]Zibi to totally question everything about my childhood.
[15:03]So we left she was out there with cleats on,
[15:06]and, you know, look, cleats are
[15:08]dropping on make-shin guards and getting back into it pretty
[15:12]much.
[15:12]Like, I felt good as a soccer player.
[15:14]But having perspective, I was not, you know,
[15:17]I was not the most graceful child.
[15:21]And I think that I definitely went through like a big ugly
[15:24]duckling to, I wouldn't say swan exactly,
[15:27]but like at least to getting the braces off
[15:30]and getting contact lenses, like I went through that.
[15:33]So I think that I spent a lot of time
[15:34]as a kid reading and writing little stories
[15:39]and sort of in my own world.
[15:40]And banding together with other awesome nerd girls,
[15:45]where we would play Charlie's angels
[15:47]and leave reality behind.
[15:51]And I think that, it's funny, I loved writing really early,
[15:55]and I wrote really early, like I wrote weird stories.
[15:59]I didn't even know what I was doing,
[16:01]but because I like books so much,
[16:03]I would like make little books.
[16:05]And then I lost that in high school and college,
[16:08]I think I became very self-conscious about,
[16:10]like what do we do with our lives?
[16:11]What's my, what's my path?
[16:13]And it didn't occur to me that this could be a path
[16:17]like what gave me, but at that time I thought,
[16:19]oh, I have to, you know, I don't know.
[16:22]Like do something professional.
[16:24]Like it didn't occur to me
[16:25]that I could do this professionally.
[16:27]So there was a big gap.
[16:28]And it wasn't until I left college,
[16:31]kind of in a state of total confusion
[16:32]that I went back to writing
[16:33]and really started thinking about whether it could be the thing.
[16:38]You know, not just a thing I'd always enjoyed
[16:40]or a thing I could do on the side,
[16:41]but like could it actually be the thing that I would do.
[16:44]And then what happened?
[16:45]And then I, I, I did what everyone with a dream does.
[16:50]I went to graduate school.
[16:51]And I went to graduate school
[16:54]and it realized that it was gonna take a lot
[16:59]to really make it as a writer.
[17:01]And I did not really show much evidence of having that
[17:05]in graduate school.
[17:06]And I wrote a lot of things that never got finished.
[17:09]I wrote many, many more things that thankfully never got published.
[17:13]And it wasn't, it wasn't again
[17:15]until I left grad school.
[17:16]That it was like, it was like getting serious part too,
[17:20]where I realized that I didn't just have to go to grad school,
[17:23]but I had to actually figure out how to do it on my own.
[17:25]Like how do you get a job in New York
[17:29]and actually earn enough money to pay your rent
[17:31]and go home every night and try to like write.
[17:36]So that was, that was hard.
[17:38]But it was also a great time of life.
[17:40]I'm really nostalgic for it.
[17:43]And how did you achieve your first biggest
[17:46]or professional success?
[17:48]With a lot of help, honestly,
[17:49]I was working as a fact checker
[17:51]at the New Yorker magazine,
[17:53]which is like the, just the best job ever,
[17:56]I was so lucky to have gotten that job.
[17:58]I had gone to the New Yorker,
[17:59]wanted to work in the fiction department
[18:01]because I wanted to be a fiction writer
[18:03]and that seemed logical.
[18:04]I was like, obviously like that's a first step.
[18:07]This was, you know, grad school was in the past.
[18:09]And I got an interview and I went in
[18:14]to meet the fiction editor
[18:15]and, you know, I was wearing like whatever my impressive outfit was.
[18:20]I think, does anybody remember a country road?
[18:23]Yes, does some people remember it?
[18:25]Okay, that really dates us.
[18:27]So country road was like my first like office wear
[18:30]or like nice clothing.
[18:32]So I was wearing my country road outfit.
[18:34]They've gone out of business, sadly.
[18:35]But I didn't get hired.
[18:38]And I was like devastated.
[18:40]I sort of thought, well, that's it for me as a fiction writer.
[18:43]If I can't get a job in the fiction department of the New Yorker,
[18:45]I guess I can't get fiction writer.
[18:47]I was not connecting the dots accurately.
[18:51]Like that was the way to become a fiction editor.
[18:53]I was trying to become a fiction writer
[18:55]and a friend of mine said, you know,
[18:56]why don't you try for a different department
[18:59]if you were a fact checker like that wouldn't interfere as much
[19:02]with your fiction writing,
[19:03]which had not occurred to me
[19:05]that working in the fiction department would interfere
[19:08]because you're putting all of your effort into sort of editorial support
[19:13]for other writers.
[19:13]So I went and got a job in the fact checking department
[19:16]and started working on my book nights and weekends.
[19:19]And by the time I had a manuscript,
[19:21]I also had like amazing people at the New Yorker who,
[19:25]I mean, how many times did they hear this every day
[19:27]down the halls of the New Yorker?
[19:29]So I just wrote my first novel, you know.
[19:32]I'm sure like every day five people said that
[19:35]but no one ever lost patience.
[19:37]And when it was my turn to say there were people there who said,
[19:40]you know, I think you should try sending it here,
[19:42]try sending it there,
[19:43]try sending it to this person
[19:44]and eventually after doing a lot of that,
[19:47]I found an agent, you know,
[19:48]and that person helped me get published.
[19:51]It is amazing actually.
[19:52]I was really lucky.
[19:54]I was lucky to be here in New York.
[19:56]I worked, I wanted to be a writer
[19:58]and so I got a summer internship advantage.
[20:00]Fair thinking the same thing like I started a magazine to work my way up and after like a day
[20:05]I was like oh no, no, no, there was like literally no path here like I was filing the the contracts of all the big deal authors
[20:11]Yes, and all the slots and I was like alone in this room like pushing the file cabinets in and thinking
[20:16]I'm not gonna get in contract by working here by working your filing other people's contracts. Yeah, yeah
[20:22]It's I completely relate to obviously we made the same
[20:25]Misjudgment because it's hard to figure out how publishing although I have yet to get a contract with very fair
[20:32]So maybe maybe plan B was also bad, but anyway, I think plan B is
[20:38]Well, if there is no great path to being a writer is really the thing
[20:41]There is no the truth is there is no
[20:43]I mean that was a great path that I ended up stumbling down, but it was so much like luck
[20:50]Really I was really really lucky. I didn't really come to New York thinking
[20:54]I have to be here to become a writer. I came because I dropped out of grad school and New York was like
[21:00]You know at the other end of the bus ride that I'd already been taking every weekend
[21:04]So so miserable in grad school that I was constantly leaving to go to New York, so I ended up here
[21:09]not
[21:10]Understanding I mean great writers can become great writers from anywhere, but there really is it has to be acknowledged a
[21:19]Complicated powerful thing to like being in this city full of people who are really interested in writing and publishing who are constantly like frothing around
[21:28]You know talking to each other. It definitely helped me
[21:32]So a flashlight obviously is something that sheds light on something that was there all along
[21:37]But that you couldn't see without it. What do you think this book does in the same way?
[21:41]What is it shed light on?
[21:42]I mean it shed light on what it was about for me to be totally honest like that flashlight that
[21:49]appears in the very early pages that
[21:51]Louise's dad is caring it because he's very very cautious and Louise is sort of scornful like you read that she's like
[21:56]We don't need a flashlight like how you know how baby ish. I think often I end up writing scenes that I don't fully understand
[22:05]I mean there's some there's definitely some mysterious quality here where and I write a lot of stuff that you never see
[22:12]That never works. It's just bad
[22:15]The stuff that I write that for some reason it does work
[22:18]Often has these qualities that I didn't plan and like the flashlight was definitely one of those things
[22:23]I didn't
[22:24]Premeditate that and think like oh it'll be symbolic or oh it's going to tell readers about these two characters about this man
[22:33]Who loves his daughter more than anything on earth, but has had to keep a bunch of secrets and
[22:39]So that idea of like concealing things revealing things being cautious like all of the layers of that character
[22:45]I didn't even know them yet when I wrote that scene, but I think
[22:49]The flashlight was something that I don't know. I often with my students refer to like our writing brain
[22:55]My writing brain knew
[22:57]Something about that flashlight before I did and later as I was muddling my way through this book
[23:03]like I would experience
[23:05]Flashes of understanding, you know, we're like I would look back at a scene and go. Oh
[23:11]This is about this. That's why this scene works and should stand the book and this other scene
[23:17]isn't telling me anything and
[23:20]Well, I do feel there is a message to this book too that in a way love not love conquers all that sounds so
[23:27]like cliche, but that
[23:30]You can never the things that matter most you just never give up and usually that is someone or something you love and no matter what gets in the way
[23:39]You can find a way back. Yeah, I mean, I you know said earlier that
[23:45]Lucky me the catastrophe that befall sleuisa did not befall me
[23:49]But one of the ways that I feel like I was able to write about it is
[23:54]this book like does have a
[23:57]Lot of my feeling for my own dad in it, you know, look I I I'm so lucky
[24:03]I lost my dad finally a few years ago. He lived to be 91
[24:07]he was the most amazing person and I
[24:10]Think that you know it was an active imagination and also kind of like staving off fears to like think about well
[24:15]What would it have been like if he and I had been
[24:19]torn apart by these forces and so I think that helped me write it even though
[24:25]You know, you know, it was all an imagination
[24:27]Thankfully as we write into our fear
[24:29]I think that's the worst thing that can happen. What's the worst thing that can happen? I'm like how would I respond? Not gracefully. No
[24:37]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? Oh so much advice
[24:42]Boy, I have so much advice that I never take but I always I always dole it out because it's so good
[24:48]My greatest advice which I have been given multiple times is if you really want
[24:55]To be a writer write every day
[24:58]Right every day. It does not matter what it is. It can be an entry in a journal
[25:04]It can just be disconnected observations
[25:07]You know, you don't have to be sitting down working on your novel or even working on a story in essay anything like that just write like
[25:15]sit down and put your thoughts into sentences and
[25:19]See see where that leads I
[25:21]Tell my students this every single semester when I get a new batch of students and every once in a while the student will say do you write every day?
[25:30]And then the excuses start
[25:32]No, cuz I'm teaching this class. No. Yeah
[25:35]You young people but it really does make such a difference when I manage to do that in my own writing life
[25:43]That's when it happens
[25:46]Susan, thank you so much. I'm so excited. Thank you
[25:49]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi formerly momstone after I'm to read books if you loved the show
[25:56]Telefriend leave a review follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh and bye the books