Virginia Evans, THE CORRESPONDENT: A Novel
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[0:44]Virginia Evans is the author of the correspondent, a novel.
[0:48]Virginia is from the Northeastern United States.
[0:51]She attended James Madison University for her bachelor's in English literature, as well as Trinity
[0:56]College in Dublin, Ireland for her master's of philosophy and creative writing.
[1:00]She lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband, two children, and her
[1:04]red Labrador.
[1:05]Welcome, Virginia.
[1:06]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about the correspondent.
[1:10]Thank you so much.
[1:11]Thanks for having me.
[1:13]And I know this episode will come out later, but we are talking just after your
[1:17]pub day, which is so exciting.
[1:18]So how did that feel getting the book into the world?
[1:21]It was honestly just defied, defied description for me.
[1:25]I waited so many years to have this happen.
[1:29]I don't think I ever maybe never really thought it would.
[1:32]And so all during pub day, I felt a little bit like I was floating above.
[1:38]I like observing it or something magical sort of doesn't even touch it, but that's the
[1:44]close.
[1:45]That's so amazing.
[1:46]OK, tell everybody about the book.
[1:48]And then I want to hear more about this journey to becoming a published author as well.
[1:52]Thanks.
[1:53]The book, The Correspondent, it's about a woman named Sible Van Antwerp.
[1:58]She's in her 70s when we start.
[2:00]The book is written entirely in her letters and emails, primarily handwritten letters,
[2:05]but some emails thrown in.
[2:07]And it starts off at the beginning, she's just turned 73, I believe.
[2:11]I was just thinking, was it 73 or 74, but I think she just turned 73.
[2:16]She sort of is, she's retired, she's divorced, she lives alone and her attitude and kind
[2:22]of her perspective is, this is the last kind of era, this is my last kind of movement
[2:28]of my life.
[2:30]And but at the beginning of the book, some things start to happen.
[2:34]One of them, you know, from right off the bat that she's starting to go blind.
[2:38]And then she starts to receive some, she's a big letter writer, she starts to receive
[2:43]some letters that she wasn't expecting, there's a little bit of a mystery of a connection
[2:48]from previously in her life.
[2:51]But I think, and so the book is really about this era of her life that she thought of
[2:55]as the end and sort of the den you want, but it turns out, I don't think it turns out
[3:00]to be that way.
[3:01]It turns out to be very full.
[3:03]And when I really went, what the book is to me, it's like a puzzle and every letter is
[3:08]a piece.
[3:09]And so as you're reading the letters, you're sort of taking a piece of information from
[3:13]her life and putting it in this puzzle.
[3:15]And I hope, and I think by the end, you have this full image of a person and the whole
[3:21]story of her life, and you get this, I guess, a portrait of this woman.
[3:25]It's amazing.
[3:26]When I first heard about the book, I assumed it would be set, you know, a hundred years
[3:31]ago when people wrote letters, maybe not a hundred years ago.
[3:35]I was literally just like cleaning out my desk and finding all these, you know, personalized
[3:39]no cards.
[3:40]And I was like, gosh, I haven't sent one of these in, like, years at this point.
[3:43]So bad.
[3:44]But no, it starts in, I think, 2012 and extends on to 2019, something like that.
[3:49]So it is contemporary.
[3:50]And then I also saw on the cover how Anne Patchit had blurved it.
[3:54]But then in the book, she writes a letter to Anne Patchit, like right off the bat.
[3:57]And I was like, whoa, this is like fiction marrying reality.
[4:00]What is going on here?
[4:02]Yeah, she, she does.
[4:05]She's very bold and Anne's blurb on the front has been such a, you know, that was such
[4:11]a kindness for her to read my book and to blurb it that way.
[4:14]But yeah, letter writing is sort of thought of as very passay, but I did want to kind
[4:19]of bring it into modern, you know, modern times.
[4:23]And you have a couple emails in there, but mostly letters.
[4:27]And I have to say by the end, especially like the last few, let missives and whatever.
[4:32]Anyway, you just ended it on such a, it was just very emotional and just so great.
[4:38]You know, anyway, I won't give things away, but thank you.
[4:40]And it was such a great way to sort of wrap it up, wrap up this chapter, really, of our
[4:45]reading chapter of this book.
[4:48]Anyway, why this format, like there are obviously, there's a whole epistolary genre,
[4:55]but I feel like aside from Kim FaZe recent books, I don't know if you've read those,
[4:59]but I keep hearing about them and now I've added them to my note pad of what I need to
[5:04]read.
[5:05]I mean, they're different, you know, and also they're smaller and, you know, just, I mean,
[5:09]that shouldn't be it, but you know, different in terms of like those are two sides of
[5:14]a friendship.
[5:15]So it's, that's, it's a different, but it's a similar device.
[5:18]But anyway, why go back to this epistolary form?
[5:22]Like 84 cheering crossroad, wasn't that?
[5:24]Okay.
[5:25]Okay.
[5:26]I'm so glad you said that because I read that book with my book club and I loved it.
[5:32]And I was, I was so moved by it.
[5:34]And that book is very short and those letters are, you know, those letters are so brief
[5:39]and, and the book is so brief, but the letters span, I think 20 years or 25 years.
[5:46]But it, it was so moving and I love that.
[5:49]And I think, you know, sometimes when I pick up and I, and I have always been a reader,
[5:53]I feel I read pretty widely, but sometimes you pick up a book and you sort of feel like
[5:58]you have to take a deep breath and, and dive in and say like, okay, I'm going to commit.
[6:02]I remember when I read Anna Corinna for the first time, I had to force myself to read
[6:07]like 35 pages a day.
[6:09]It was sort of like, you have to read 35 pages a day or you will never finish this book.
[6:13]And so that is one kind of, you know, one kind of important book.
[6:17]But then I remember reading 84 cheering crossroad and it was such a delight.
[6:22]It just felt so easy to read the book.
[6:24]It felt, you know, you would read the page.
[6:27]There's a sincerely, you know, and it's done and you can, and there's always a nice stopping
[6:32]point.
[6:33]You finish a letter.
[6:34]You can put the book mark in.
[6:35]You can put it down.
[6:36]So what I found is that I'd never really wanted to put the book mark in.
[6:39]You know, I never wanted to, you know, sometimes when you're taking a, eating a book
[6:44]that's like a steak, you sort of are like waiting for the moment.
[6:48]You can put the book mark in to like, breathe and come up for air when books are so dense.
[6:54]And I love those sometimes.
[6:56]But with a book of letters and I felt this way, there was that book, the Guernsey literary
[7:02]potato peel pie society, that's a long title, but I think everybody knows what I'm talking
[7:07]about.
[7:08]And that was one too that, you know, you just kind of feel like, oh, this is kind, I'll just
[7:12]read one more.
[7:13]It's just one more page.
[7:14]I'll just read one more, it's one more page.
[7:15]And then you get to the end.
[7:17]And I love the lightness of that.
[7:19]There was like a sort of just an airiness about that book that I loved.
[7:23]And when I finished it, I thought, I can do that, this is sort of this like madness that
[7:29]has pushed me through throughout my writing life is reading something.
[7:33]Like I remember the first time was in high school, I read the grapes of wrath.
[7:37]And I thought I can do this, which is like so insane, but I did think that.
[7:42]And I always kind of have that thought I could do this.
[7:44]And so I thought I want to try to write a book in letters.
[7:48]And that, so that was really the, that was really the catalyst was I want to write a book
[7:52]in letters and see if I can do it.
[7:54]And then the story kind of started to grow after that.
[7:58]The letters were my, were my opening kind of incision.
[8:01]Oh my gosh, I love that.
[8:03]And then am I making this up?
[8:05]Did you say that you had a family friend who lost a son or am I confusing this?
[8:10]You did, right?
[8:11]Yeah, that's right.
[8:12]And it's in the acknowledgements, which I had their permission to put in the acknowledgements.
[8:15]Obviously that's very sensitive to them, but yes, some really dear friends of mine.
[8:20]I had written the first, I think draft or two of this novel.
[8:25]And their son got sick suddenly and was hospitalized and over a really terrible three months.
[8:36]He grew sicker and sicker.
[8:38]And there was a lot of hope at the beginning that they would figure out what it was.
[8:42]And there was, I mean, hundreds of ideas of what it maybe, maybe what was going on.
[8:48]And finally, after a couple of months, it became evident that it was a matter that was
[8:55]not solvable.
[8:56]And he passed away on December 2nd about year, he went into the hospital at the end of September.
[9:00]And so that whole era, I had been working on this book and that element, that element
[9:07]of grief and losing a child was already in the book.
[9:10]And then I walked through this very closely with these friends.
[9:14]I mean, my husband and I spent many days with them in the hospital, out of the hospital,
[9:19]you know, my husband brought coffee to them like, you know, every morning for weeks on
[9:26]his way to work.
[9:27]And, you know, during that time, that really shut down my brain to everything else.
[9:34]And, you know, the books over here and my life's here and that became sort of like the
[9:38]only thing.
[9:39]And it was so strange because I had been writing this book.
[9:44]And then I was actually dealing with that situation.
[9:50]And it changed, I mean, it changed me, I mean, it certainly changed me and it changed
[9:57]my husband and our family.
[10:00]Also changed the book and I went back into it
[10:03]when I finally kind of emerged from the pit
[10:06]later kind of the following year in the spring.
[10:10]I went back to the book with this new frame of reference
[10:14]of what that is for someone and what happens.
[10:18]And then I sort of went back and changed things
[10:21]and added things and took things out and realized
[10:25]and still I haven't had that lived experience.
[10:28]Although I think I originally wrote that aspect
[10:31]of the book out of my sort of primary primal fear
[10:35]as a mother of losing a child.
[10:38]But then, you know, we went through that
[10:40]and it really did, it really did change the book.
[10:44]And I'm so thankful that you asked
[10:46]because that's a huge part of that story.
[10:49]And it's something that I want to say.
[10:52]And I want to say his name was Wade.
[10:54]His name was Wade, so I want to say that.
[10:55]Thanks for asking.
[10:56]I'm so sorry for Wade's family for all of you.
[11:01]I mean, it doesn't matter.
[11:03]Sometimes like, you know, what the relation is.
[11:06]Is it a nephew?
[11:07]Is it a close friendly?
[11:08]It doesn't, the labels don't matter.
[11:10]It's your emotional connection to somebody
[11:12]and the closeness and just that image of the coffee.
[11:15]I mean, how could it not change you?
[11:18]Oh, it's not.
[11:18]It's of course it's everybody's worst nightmare.
[11:20]Yeah, right.
[11:21]Oh, yes.
[11:23]Oh my gosh.
[11:24]I'm glad, you know, selfishly for the readers
[11:27]that you didn't give up on the project.
[11:29]You know, because I would imagine at times
[11:31]you were just like, what does it matter?
[11:34]I feel like I feel like I get that way.
[11:35]Like, whenever I think really bad happens
[11:37]at anything else, I'm just like, what does it even matter?
[11:39]Why am I doing this?
[11:41]Yes, I definitely did.
[11:43]I definitely did have that.
[11:44]And I think, you know, there's a lot in this book
[11:48]that comes out of my own life experience.
[11:51]I, this book, I had written a different book
[11:54]that my agent had been trying to sell for a while
[11:57]and it didn't sell.
[11:58]But she did this sort of beautiful dance of always saying,
[12:02]it's not selling yet, but maybe you should work
[12:04]on something else.
[12:05]I mean, she was very good at like not crushing my spirit
[12:08]but saying you should probably start working on something else.
[12:12]And so when I started writing this book,
[12:15]I was, it was during COVID
[12:17]and we had been living abroad
[12:19]and we had moved back sort of before we wanted to
[12:22]and had maybe started discussing,
[12:24]maybe we didn't want to move back
[12:25]and we had had to move back.
[12:28]And so I was writing it during that era
[12:31]of just a lot of sadness and a lot of grief
[12:34]and a lot of aspects of this book are pulled out of things
[12:39]that I was either dealing with then
[12:42]or had been dealing with or people that I knew.
[12:45]And so I was writing this book
[12:48]because I was exhausted from the failure
[12:52]and I've written several books before this
[12:55]and none of them have ever gotten through the finish line
[12:58]of publication.
[12:59]And so I think I had so much grief and so much,
[13:03]I mean, really being crushed.
[13:05]I just was crushed and I started writing this book
[13:07]as an exercise I think for myself
[13:10]which is probably why the book has such audacious moves
[13:14]like writing in the voice of Joan Dydian
[13:16]or I mean, it was things I just wasn't planning
[13:19]to show anyone.
[13:20]I was just writing it.
[13:21]I wrote it inside my closet.
[13:23]We didn't have a space in our rental at the time.
[13:26]I shoved a desk in a closet.
[13:28]I mean, it's very, it was just low.
[13:30]It all came out of this very low kind of sad time.
[13:35]And then I'm trying and I still can't quite remember
[13:37]how it happened but my agent ended up,
[13:41]I gave it to her.
[13:42]She asked me for it or however
[13:43]and she said, I think we could keep going with this
[13:46]if you want to.
[13:47]I mean, she was very open-handed with me
[13:49]but she sort of said, I think maybe it has what it takes,
[13:52]what it would take to get through the gate.
[13:55]So thank God, I think I actually did it.
[13:59]Because I told people I had just started to think
[14:03]I'm going to law school.
[14:04]I'm just gonna go to law school.
[14:05]I'm gonna do something else.
[14:06]I can't do the same more.
[14:08]It was crazy.
[14:10]Did you, like from what age did you wanna write
[14:13]a novel?
[14:14]Like, yeah, I wrote my first novel
[14:17]and I was started when I was 19.
[14:19]And I think this is my ninth.
[14:22]And I was just yesterday counting them on my fingers.
[14:26]I was like naming the titles and kind of going through.
[14:29]And then I realized there was one I had forgotten about.
[14:31]I think this is my ninth novel.
[14:34]And obviously like some of the really early ones,
[14:36]that's all you're young.
[14:38]And maybe I wrote one and I started 19
[14:40]and then maybe I'm 22 and then maybe I'm 25.
[14:43]And getting, but all those through all that,
[14:46]that's me, that's my life.
[14:47]That's me growing up.
[14:49]That's me coming into my, you know, knowledge of,
[14:53]I don't know, I'm thankful.
[14:56]I'm thankful that maybe that this is the first one.
[14:59]And it shows a little more of that I'm a weather beading
[15:04]sort of person and not so like fresh waste.
[15:07]I might have been my first, my first eight novels.
[15:11]But yeah, I think I know the whole thing
[15:13]has been a huge learning experience.
[15:15]And I'm grateful, but it was grueling.
[15:17]I mean, it was, it'll be 20 years this fall.
[15:20]I'll be, I'll be 39.
[15:22]So 20 years.
[15:24]I had the same thing, by the way.
[15:26]I really tried to sell my first novel when I was 27.
[15:30]And it went out in submission and it was rejected everywhere.
[15:33]And I was so crushed, like you said,
[15:35]that I'd like didn't even try fiction again for over a decade.
[15:38]I was just like, I can't, it wasn't meant to be.
[15:40]I can't believe it.
[15:42]It's so hard.
[15:43]I mean, it's so hard.
[15:44]Here's your fragile, you know?
[15:46]You can, on the one hand, thank you,
[15:47]can outdo John Steinbeck, right?
[15:49]And then on the other, I feel like I can't even write a email.
[15:54]I know, and that's so true.
[15:56]And it's, you know, that whole experience.
[15:59]It's now, you know, now I have this experience of being
[16:03]published and having this really exciting start
[16:06]with a, with a cool publisher and with a great team
[16:09]and all of that.
[16:11]And I think I do appreciate it more.
[16:14]I feel like I appreciate it more than anyone appreciates it.
[16:17]Like every time someone writes me an email,
[16:19]hello, you have a, you have a publicity call.
[16:21]I'm like, thank you so much.
[16:23]I just feel so grateful.
[16:25]I'm like, thanks, I'll go anywhere, anytime, whatever.
[16:28]You know, my agent's like, you can demand a little more.
[16:31]I'm like, no, I'm just so happy to be here.
[16:33]But I think that sometimes now people will say, you know,
[16:39]what it was all worth it.
[16:40]Like it was worth that.
[16:41]And I, and there is one part of that, that's true.
[16:44]And I, and what I do it again, yes.
[16:46]But it doesn't delete like the agony of being alone,
[16:53]rejected thousands of times.
[16:55]I mean, hundreds of, hundreds of, to board,
[16:59]like hundreds of queries to agents, you know,
[17:02]putting essays out on submission,
[17:03]putting short stories on some, you know, just this,
[17:06]I mean, if I had a bucket of failure points
[17:09]and then this like one sort of beacon of, okay,
[17:13]we did it.
[17:14]It doesn't, this doesn't delete that,
[17:16]but I'm not sorry for it, but it's still there.
[17:19]It's still part of like who I am, I think, all that.
[17:22]So it was tough with yours.
[17:25]Maybe there is hope that one of the older ideas,
[17:30]now with your new vantage point,
[17:31]and now you have like a platform and such a big deal,
[17:34]but coming out and all of, you know,
[17:36]you could maybe resurrect.
[17:38]Yes, I have thought that and I, and I do wonder.
[17:42]So we'll see.
[17:43]I feel open-handed.
[17:44]If it does, great.
[17:45]If it doesn't, we'll just keep writing some new things.
[17:48]Well, I really appreciate you sharing all that vulnerability,
[17:52]which so many people can relate to
[17:54]and doesn't often get really adequately shared.
[17:58]So, you know, I think it, people are afraid
[18:00]it makes them seem like, well, if I've had more rejections
[18:03]and I must not be as good a writer
[18:05]as someone who just had their first thing, right?
[18:07]They must have just been better,
[18:09]but that's totally not it.
[18:11]Yeah.
[18:11]But still, it's hard to get past that.
[18:14]Yes, it is.
[18:14]And if I had, if I wasn't here now,
[18:17]I would still be in the pit.
[18:18]So I just want to, I just never want to forget that.
[18:20]I don't want to forget that and I want to say that.
[18:22]I will say it.
[18:23]I'll stand on every roof and scream it
[18:26]because I needed people to say that along the way.
[18:30]I'll never forget reading an interview
[18:31]with Elizabeth Stroud and she talked about her journey
[18:34]and how many, like, job jobs she had, you know,
[18:39]writing on the sides, writing in the wings,
[18:42]how many rejections, how many failures
[18:44]and getting to an older age and finally kind of breaking through.
[18:48]I always call, I always felt like I feel like I'm
[18:50]like rocking up like in Willy Wonka
[18:52]and then you slam your head into that glass ceiling.
[18:54]And that's how it felt for so long.
[18:56]And then finally it like shatters and you get through.
[18:59]And I needed to hear that.
[19:01]I needed to hear someone else say, this was my story.
[19:06]It done, and now I did it.
[19:09]I just kept doing it and I did it.
[19:10]And that, I can't tell you how many times
[19:13]I would read those little things
[19:16]or hear those little things along the years.
[19:18]You know, every couple of years here
[19:19]an interview like that and think, okay, okay,
[19:21]I guess I can, I guess I'll try again, roll it back,
[19:24]start over, you know, do something else.
[19:27]I'm thankful, I'm really thankful for that,
[19:29]for her specifically, but other people too.
[19:32]That's amazing, I love it.
[19:34]Okay, so what should we learn from Sybil?
[19:37]Like what is, what do you want us to take away
[19:40]from her story, her life, her point of view?
[19:43]We put the book down and you want people to feel or think what?
[19:47]Yeah, I don't know that I would say I had,
[19:50]you know, a goal like that when I was writing.
[19:54]I was just writing the story about a person.
[19:56]I was just, I think what I thought was,
[20:00]I just want to tell some very normal person's story
[20:05]and show that every person's story is interesting.
[20:10]Every single person, no matter how sort of normal
[20:13]or boring or simple on the outside,
[20:15]they seem to be that everybody has this story.
[20:19]I mean, I think about how I see my own life
[20:22]and what I think about, I think, look at my life,
[20:26]look what has happened in my life,
[20:28]but maybe someone else would be like,
[20:29]oh, she just laid it that lives on the street, whatever.
[20:34]But you know that inside, you know,
[20:37]I have had this big life.
[20:39]And I think when I started writing,
[20:41]that was what I was wanting,
[20:43]that was what I was wanting,
[20:44]was to take a simple kind of distant view of a person
[20:49]and then open the door, climb inside and tell the story
[20:53]of what had happened and what was happening.
[20:56]And so at the end of the book, I think now
[21:00]in hindsight looking at it
[21:02]and kind of I haven't really fully reread the whole book
[21:05]in its entirety again and maybe I never will,
[21:07]but I've sort of flipped through
[21:08]and you know, reread some things
[21:10]and I know what I know the story.
[21:12]I think I hope people will feel the freedom
[21:18]to forgive themselves and to say,
[21:22]we all make huge mistakes.
[21:26]All of us make huge mistakes.
[21:27]I've made huge mistakes and small mistakes
[21:30]and I've messed up and hurt people,
[21:34]but also I'm a human being with dignity.
[21:39]And this is my life and I can be forgiven.
[21:42]Like I can have forgiveness.
[21:43]I can forgive myself.
[21:44]I can like, that's what I hope at the end of the book,
[21:49]that's the feeling is that she can be at peace.
[21:55]And I think as you read the book, it is her story,
[21:58]but it's also all these other stories of the lives
[22:01]of people that are in her life
[22:03]and everyone with their own massive portion of heartache
[22:07]and joy, like joy and sorrow in the same hand
[22:11]and every character's life.
[22:13]And I want, I hope that the book shows
[22:18]how every person, people in this book,
[22:21]there's people all over the world
[22:22]in lots of different families and backgrounds
[22:26]and socioeconomic levels and political backgrounds
[22:30]and faith backgrounds and that everybody in some way
[22:34]is the same, that they have joy and success and hope
[22:39]and they also have sorrow and loss.
[22:41]And that's true for me and I think that's true for everyone.
[22:45]And I hope that's like the book seems to resonate
[22:49]with readers from what the feedback I've received personally.
[22:54]And when I think about why, I think that's why
[22:58]because everybody can read the book and say,
[23:02]yeah, that's me or yes, that's my mother
[23:05]or that's somebody I know or something.
[23:09]And so I hope when I hope the feeling
[23:11]when you close the book is satisfaction and like fullness
[23:15]and warmth or something of, I don't know,
[23:18]just that it's okay, it's okay, you're just a person
[23:22]and you did your best, you're doing your best.
[23:26]And if you messed up, it's okay,
[23:28]there's people that love you, you're loved, you can,
[23:30]I don't know, I just, I hope there's something in that
[23:33]in the book, which was probably what I was needing
[23:35]to hear when I was writing it.
[23:37]It was probably what I was needing to feel
[23:39]when I was writing it.
[23:41]He must be such a good friend.
[23:44]No, really, I bet your friends are so lucky
[23:46]that you're a close friend because you're so like empathetic
[23:49]and present and have that like old soul wisdom to you
[23:54]and all that.
[23:55]So you can just tell.
[23:56]Thanks, anyways.
[23:58]Are you making cards with this?
[24:01]Like, are there going to be the corresponding cards
[24:03]with these little birds and everything?
[24:04]I love that.
[24:05]Thank you for asking.
[24:06]I'm kind of taught.
[24:07]So have you seen the German book cover that is
[24:10]and I haven't seen it.
[24:11]I'll go look.
[24:12]Sorry.
[24:13]No, it's great, but it just kind of came out,
[24:15]but I have a dear friend who I grew up with
[24:17]and she's a painter in Charleston, South Carolina.
[24:20]And she's rather well known and has, you know,
[24:24]is already has her own big thing going,
[24:27]but she designed a cover and I sort of pitched it raw
[24:32]to crown and they didn't want to use it
[24:34]and then I pitched it to Michael Joseph,
[24:36]which is my publisher in the UK
[24:37]and they were doing their own thing.
[24:39]And so when Germany was looking for their cover,
[24:41]I sort of said that they were like, you know,
[24:43]I said, my friend designed this, she's a painter
[24:46]and they took the cover.
[24:48]And so the cover is her design of this painting
[24:51]of the writing desk.
[24:53]And so she and I have been talking about maybe she
[24:55]would design some stationery or some,
[24:58]some like letter writing paper,
[25:00]but I do think it would be,
[25:01]I think it would be perfect.
[25:03]I know that they were talking a rifle paper company
[25:05]about doing something, but I think it was like a giveaway.
[25:08]I'm not sure, but it would be,
[25:10]I do think that would be a perfect kind of one.
[25:12]I have this like collab stationery thing
[25:15]with a company called Felix Do Little.
[25:17]They paint too though, so I don't know.
[25:19]But I feel like I should introduce you
[25:21]and maybe you could do something.
[25:22]Yes, I would love that.
[25:24]It's only even for myself and for you,
[25:26]we just have a set for the letters that I don't write,
[25:30]but I wish I were writing every day.
[25:32]It's like aspirational stationery.
[25:34]Yes, I think that's, I think that's good.
[25:36]I think you could leave this out.
[25:38]It's like people who say, I want to be a reader,
[25:40]but I'm not a reader.
[25:40]I'm like, it's okay.
[25:41]Give us stack of books.
[25:42]Look at it.
[25:43]It's really fun.
[25:44]I'm practicing reader.
[25:45]That's right.
[25:46]I'm not practicing letter writer.
[25:48]That's right.
[25:49]It's so perfect.
[25:50]Well, Virginia, congratulations.
[25:52]I'm so excited for you.
[25:54]And now I'll just be watching as you launch into this world
[25:59]and live vicariously with all of your enthusiasm,
[26:02]which is so wonderful and something
[26:06]that I think people who sometimes stay in the industry
[26:09]too long, get jaded and forget.
[26:11]And this is at the heart of why people write
[26:13]and why people read.
[26:14]And it's so wonderful to see.
[26:17]Thank you so much.
[26:18]What a treat to talk to you, you too.
[26:20]Okay, take care.
[26:21]Bye-bye.
[26:22]Bye-bye.
[26:22]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi.
[26:25]Formerly, mom's don't have time to read books.
[26:28]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave her a view,
[26:31]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[26:34]and spread the word.
[26:35]Thanks so much.
[26:36]Oh, and bye the books.