Stalkers and Shameful Actors in the Book World with Jenna Blum

[1:19]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and, obviously, podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zippymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at zibby owens. Jenna Bloom is the author of murder your darlings, a novel. By the way, Jenna Bloom is one of our featured guests at the upcoming Palm Beach retreat. If you haven't gotten your tickets, there is still time. There is a lunch on the Saturday, January 31, and an all weekend event. Although, I think it's just about sold out. You can learn more at zibbymedia.com. Back to Jenna. Jenna Bloom is the New York Times bestselling author of The Stormchasers. She is of German and Jewish descent and spent four years working for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation interviewing Holocaust survivors. She teaches fiction for Grub Street writers. She is also the cofounder of A Mighty Blaze. Welcome, Jenna. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Bucked to talk about Murder Your Darlings, a novel. Congratulations. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and to see you again, Zebi. You too. I feel like this book is like an underhanded attempt to discourage anyone from being in the in the publishing world at all. It's like, if you wanna work in a bookstore, if you wanna be an author, go on tour. Like, goodbye. Don't even try it. You never know. Oh, I hope that's not true. Was supposed to be a love letter to the industry. No, no, I'm totally kidding. I'm totally kidding. I

[3:14]Jenna Blum: didn't pull any punches in this book. And one of the most fun things for me about writing it is I got to just, instead of opening a vein and bleeding, I just got to unpack my life, like unzip my life and tell everybody what being a writer is really like. And I basically told the truth within the rubric of fiction. So I hope it's not discouraging. Hope it actually No. No. I

[3:35]Zibby Owens: just meant because there were so many twists and turns, and you just never never knew what was coming next. Why don't you give a little synopsis of the book?

[3:43]Jenna Blum: Absolutely. Thank you. So Murder Your Darlings is about a mid career female writer whose sales are a little bit down, and she's kind of casting about for what to do next. She's on deadline for a fifth novel that she hates and she is a year divorced. And so she feels like her life is a little at a crossroads when she meets a stratospherically successful and extremely charming bestselling male author named William Corwin. And the two of them have a romance and then bodies start piling up around them. So Sam, the hero is forced to question, is it William? Is he too good to be true? Is it one of his multiple stalkers, including a very scary and persistent stalker named the rabbit who also narrates part of the story. So it really is kind of a look at how far people will go for their writing careers and also how far people will go for love. Very true. Okay. You wrote this from so many perspectives.

[4:35]Zibby Owens: Right? We start with Sam and we really get into her longing for say, you know, she has a something she says early on, which is she'd be happy to give it all up to not be alone anymore, which kind of broke my heart. And then conveniently, in walks the the leading man of of your of the book, William. And then you have it from his point of view. You intersperse it with the rabbit. Like, this is a lot there's a lot going on here. And you have an email exchange as well with her agent, with Sam's French agent, most of which is contains bad, discouraging news, but not all. Poor agent. Talk a little bit about that. You have a story to tell. Why tell it from all the perspectives? How hard was that?

[5:16]Jenna Blum: I really loved it actually, and I was a little surprised that I did. I haven't written in the first person since graduate school when I was roundly spanked for it. And anybody who went to an MFA or an MA program will recognize the graduate workshop in this book as well because there are chapters about that and how fun it can be. But I was starting to write it from only Sam's third person point of view, which is my lane usually. Do third person limited, that's it. And then one day I thought, what if there was another woman in this book who had been stalking William, the leading man, as you say, and she had a perspective that was very different from Sam's and could kind of like give us some background on who he really is because she went to his graduate program. And I got up and went to my laptop and put my hands on the keys. And it was like, I had stuck my hands into a socket. Like I wrote the prologue from the rabbit's point of view and it was so easy. It's in the book verbatim. I changed not a single word of that. And every time I sat down to write the rabbit, it was like that. And I thought, Oh, thank God I get to write the rabbit today Cause she's so easy and so fun in her really frightening way. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to do Sam the rabbit, Sam the rabbit, Sam the rabbit. And then about halfway through writing the book, William came in as well. And with his first person, very narcissistic voice, which I've found so much fun to write. Cause we all know these guys, like we all know the really charming, like self centered guys. And I called my editor and said, can I do William's point of view as well? And she said, I think that's a brilliant idea. And I feel as though he sort of grounds the book with this dark electricity and then you see the two women bracketing him on either side. And I thought it made hopefully for a really interesting lineup of voices.

[6:56]Zibby Owens: 100%. Absolutely. There is so much, and I joked at the beginning, of course, but there's so much about the industry that I feel like I have learned since becoming an author that I didn't know that you have in your book here. You know, you you take apart myths like getting having your advance be taken back. You talk about, you know, the feeling of walking into a a book event that's not exactly with line around the corner. You talk about the pressure to meet the sales exceed the sales from a previous book and the expectations of the industry. You talk about industry consolidation. Like, you really go through it and put this author really at exactly where a lot of people are right at this moment

[7:37]Jenna Blum: in the current climate. Talk a little bit about that. Absolutely. Thank you. As you're talking, I realized that one of the things I forgot to put in or just didn't put in because there wasn't really room for it in a plot where you're trying to kick the struts out from under your protagonist. But the joy of the creative process, think is why we do this. And everything that you're talking about and everything that's in the book is that uneasy intersection between art and commerce. Like when we're writing and we're plugged in, that is the best feeling in the world. What I just said about feeling like I plugged my hands in a socket and you're downloading somebody else's point of view. That is pure sheer magic. And then you roll it out into the world as a product. And I think that's where a lot of the unease comes in and dismay and despair that Sam who is looking at a sort of declination in her career potentially is feeling. And that William is never ever feeling because he basically is at Stephen King level and can't understand why anybody would be like grieving over how difficult a writing career is. So they're kind of different portraits of writing in this book, but I think the most important thing for anybody out there who will relate to how difficult the career path is, is that really when the chips are down, like you always have the chance to go back to the desk and start over. And if it's something you love, it will get out there and find an audience. And I 100% believe that.

[8:58]Zibby Owens: Interesting. Because you also talk about where ideas come from and how sometimes they can be from real life, maybe not even from your life, and you take them and make them fiction. Is that okay? Is that not okay? Where is it permissible? Like, where is where are the IP rules essentially from life and fiction? Like, it's a little bit of a blurry line.

[9:20]Jenna Blum: It's a great way to put it where are the IP rules. If only we just got issued those when we sat down at our desks. Like, here's the place, the line that you should not cross in borrowing material from somebody else's life or even from your own life. I mean, writers tend to write autobiographically. We write what we know, we write what we love, but that said, I like you, I'm blessed to know so many writers and their sources of inspiration are as numerous as the writers themselves. Like some people write from headlines, they write from an idea or they write from something that happened to them. And I tend to write from questions that for me have been really difficult to answer. So the question that Murder Your Darlings doesn't necessarily answer but poses is why would a woman who is fairly stable in her life, who has a career that she has worked her whole life for, who has a great community of teaching students and friends and writers and a great home. Why would she go down the rabbit hole for love? Why would she chase this guy who may or may not be too good to be true? And the more opaque he grows, the more she kind of goes after him. And I thought, I know women like this. I have been this woman. We all know women like this or have been this woman and it's not gender specific. It could be anybody who's kind of throwing their selves out the window to chase this one goal. And I was really fascinated by that. That's really the heart of the book for me. You want to share what your story was with the person you were chasing? I think it's more of a lifelong pattern for me. I have always thought, and I don't know why I might just be built this way, but I have always wanted two things in my life. And one was to be a writer, which I've wanted it to be since I was four. And the other is to find love and have this lasting partnership. And the writing part has not eluded me. Thank God. It's like my favorite thing, but I'm still looking for the partnership. Like I'm still out there swiping and unswiping. And I think when I look back over the sort of checkerboard of my romantic career, there are men who were unavailable and then men who were more available. And I chased the unavailable ones more than the available ones. And it was very painful because I would give myself away in the process like, oh, I I would never set aside a book tour, but I can set aside this event to come and see you if this is the only time you have, or I moved to Kansas at one point for a man I was in love with, I mean, Kansas. That dedication to love right there. And I hope that what I'm learning and this could be maybe a sequel to this book is how to be a little more discerning in my romantic choices and say, like, I am the one who is doing the choosing here and I choose people who choose me back. It's

[11:57]Zibby Owens: so easy to say these things, but our emotions don't exactly listen. Like, I know that's so cliche, matters of the heart and the head or whatever, but we can say, like, okay, this is how I'm gonna prioritize, and I'm gonna I'm gonna make this decision based on these factors. But then, like, it's it's doesn't it just sometimes feel, like, out of your control, like the universe is, like, just doing its thing and you just have to like go with it?

[12:20]Jenna Blum: Oh, it's super hard. It's like the hard fun. Right? And I think that we who've been raised on stories and happy ending stories and rom coms, I mean, I will devour any rom every Netflix rom com that comes on. I'm like there with my popcorn, you know. I think, Oh, this is how it is supposed to be. You're supposed to like have a few little red flags and ignore them. And then you live happily ever after. I think the discernment comes in from saying, this is not like a little red flag. Like as my friend, Jenna Paon says of Hallmark movies, a minor communication issue. Like this is somebody who really is unavailable and this sounds super Instagram Mimi but you have to choose yourself first. I think you have to really enjoy who you are and know who you are almost as if you were looking at yourself outside yourself if And that makes then say, why would you want her to be treated in that way? Like she deserves better. And I think that's kind of where that discernment comes in. I don't know. I will let you know. Yeah. It actually works. But that's what I'm working on. And I think a lot of my writing of Murder Your Darlings was kind of working out those yeah yeahs. Interesting.

[13:28]Zibby Owens: I mean, writing in general, isn't that just a way we process all all of our feelings in some ways while trying to entertain other people, right, and connect over some of those things that are deep inside? Anyway, oversimplification, but there you go. In the book, though, there are a range of characters who continue getting into some trouble. There are I I don't like giving anything away, but just all these plot twists and wrong turns that people are taking. And at times, you don't know who we should be trusting. Like, is Sam really who we're rooting for? Did she do anything wrong? What about William? Is he really a good guy? You know, just in the way that all the best kind of thriller psychological dramas do, you have to, like, keep a, like, a skepticism about literally everyone and everything, you know, knowing that you're you're there. How did you create that sense of suspense in that way and figuring out all the twists? Like, I know even in the book, you talk about plotting and pantsing, and I love your, like, little rapid fire repartee between William and Sam about all the the writing things. But how do you do it? Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns.quince.com/zibby.

[17:06]Jenna Blum: I am a plotter. Nobody here is surprised. And I am just so thrilled to hear you say this because this is my first thriller. And when I ventured into this territory, thought, I don't know if I have what it takes to write a thriller, how dare I write a thriller? You know, I've been known for historical fiction and quote, literary fiction unquote, which is often character driven or language driven. And I know thrillers rely so much on plot and not only that on twists. And I don't, I read a ton of thrillers but I don't read mysteries because I can't the clues straight in my head. So by about two thirds of the way through, I'm thinking, okay, if that's what you say, it's fine and whatever, but I'm still reading for like the pleasure of the writing. So I thought, okay, girl, if you're going to write a thriller, you need to sit down and really game this out. And so I had on the whiteboard in my study, a whole very elaborate outline of how the plot should go. And the plot itself didn't change much. What changed as we discussed before were the points of view and who was narrating that plot. So originally the whole second act of the book was narrated from Sam and the rabbit's points of view. And I had just sort of leveled up the stalking and the cat and mouse game there because the rabbit is stalking Sam and she's stalking William and Sam is getting more and more unhinged and all of that is still in there. It's just from William's point of view. So I guess that's my answer as I outlined. And I also, you you are a writer community. I relied on my writer community quite a bit. And I have a dear friend named Mark Cecil who does the Thoughtful Bro show on the Mighty Blaze podcast. He was talking me through my thriller plot points like way at the beginning. And when I came up with a couple of the twists, we were on the phone and he was like, I have never heard anybody make a noise like that. Because I was so excited. And yeah, he was very helpful in saying, he's the story master and the structure master. And he's like, don't forget, you need red herrings. You need a twist in every act, etcetera. So hopefully, it all works. Hopefully, it is wicked surprising.

[19:03]Zibby Owens: Yes. For sure. And you brought up A Mighty Blaze, which is how we first met back in the day in COVID. And you and Carolyn Lovett were starting up a Mighty Blaze, and I was trying to do my Instagram live show and and all of that. And you two built this whole infrastructure with different, like, channels and people like you are a whole big of author support on, you know, YouTube and Instagram, everywhere. Talk a little bit about building that and maybe what are some of the things you've taken in away into your own work and life after produce after turning this engine on for authors?

[19:44]Jenna Blum: Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like, you know how people got pandemic puppies and now the dogs are all the same age. I feel like your empire and then our boys are like the pandemic puppies of the literary world. I love that. It's been such a joy to watch your puppy grow into like this beautiful creature who has bought so much inspiration and so much help to so many authors and so much visibility. You too. Oh, thank you. I do love the blaze. It's true. And I kind of have these twin engines that when I'm not working on a book, I always have to be doing something creative and the Blaze happened to be that project. It's still going because they have this team of volunteers who works tirelessly to put it on. But we do shows every week still. Do a Frontliner show and the Thoughtful Bro and Crime Time. It's a different genres for anybody who wants to get their next great read from authors. We'll see probably the same authors on both your and my shows maybe saying slightly different things. What I carry from it honestly is what we were talking about in the beginning which is like the real purity of writing because a lot of the writer's career is about marketing. But you are about to see me do disgustingly, relentlessly obnoxiously like tomorrow is one month from my on sale date. So I'm going to be like pounding the drum all the time. And then you're always wondering how is my book going to do out there and what of events am I gonna do? And how are readers gonna receive what I've made? And what's great about talking to writers every week is you remember what it's like to be a writer. And when I'm interviewing for Blaze or when I'm working on Blaze, it helps me sink a tap root down into that pure creativity. Like the space when you're in your study, in your yoga pants, working on pulling down the imaginary people from the cloud and putting them onto the page where they become real. And that is just such a joy and a privilege to do every week. Oh, I love that. And what are your plans going forward with the Blaze?

[21:33]Zibby Owens: Do you have any exciting things and your own plans with writing? Like, how are these dovetailing?

[21:39]Jenna Blum: Well, I probably would be stepping back from interviewing a little bit while I'm on tour because because my tour is gonna be a little bit crazy. And I am not Hank Phillipe Ryan who, like, does interviews on tour and on her own pub day for other people. Like, she's a paragon. I am not a paragon. So I'm gonna be watching the Blazers carry on while I am out and about in the world, but we're gonna have our sixth birthday And March we're gonna be going therefore into our seventh year. I wanna introduce some new shows including a coming of rage show for like women, which will hopefully roll out in the summer of twenty six. It's a great title. Thank you, yeah. People are like, I don't want to see rage, but I feel like there is a space for like young feminist voices doing interesting things. And so I'm gonna put that out and you never know, like you never know with Blaise. I was just talking about doing a podcast called Eight Minute where we thought that we could get writers talking about writing for eight minutes and kind of throw that spaghetti at the wall and see what happens if you only have an eight minute dog walk, that's something you could listen to, right? So one of the great things, and tell me if you feel the same way, is that this sort of machine allows you to spin off these ideas and some of them work and some of them don't, but it's so much fun to generate things that might help or interest other people. Totally. Oh my gosh. That's exciting.

[22:52]Zibby Owens: Well, I have to say, I think about you a lot because literally on my desktop computer here, I had your Woodrow on the Bench sticker, like, right here. So you can still see part of your dog here. Part of it, I don't even know how has been ripped away, but it's one of those things that, like, I look at often and, you know, I have a black lab well, on the floor,

[23:12]Jenna Blum: Naya. So anyway, I I look at it, I think of you and that great book that you wrote about your dog, Woodrow on the Bench. Oh, I'm so honored by that to be thank you because that keeps him alive. I also have a new black lab, new, you know, five year old black lab named Henry Higgins who is asleep in the other room, totally bored like Naya is. Like, why are they in flat a box? Like who cares? But I will say today, one of the dog moms who I wrote about in that memoir, which is about the last seven months of my old dog's life and how we had a community grow up around his bench where we sat every day. Today, one of the dog moms who's mentioned in the book wrote to me and she's like, my dog has a mass on her spleen and has a year left. I was like, Oh God, why must life be so hard? Like why must we lose our creatures who do nothing but bring us love? And so I was kind of sitting on my window seat before this interview, looking at this text and thinking, what can I do? You know, what can I do to help make that dog's next year and maybe last year of life, the best year ever? Like what can I do about that? And so I just think the community is ongoing. So thank you for having that little Woodrow symbol of community on your laptop. I love that.

[24:20]Zibby Owens: Course. Of course.

[24:23]Jenna Blum: What is your main hope that people get out of your book? I just want people to love it. Like, I will confess that. I'm not supposed to say kids or your books, but like, I love this book. I love it so much. And I think it's because I laughed every single day when I wrote it. Like I sat down to write and I would snort laugh my way through every scene. I think it is hilarious. Like I think William is so awful that he's really funny. The rabbit kinda speaks truth to power like she's funny. I hope people laugh when they read it. I hope they find it a quote, delicious read. One of my reviewers called it a delicious read and somebody else said it was wickedly twisted, which I'm literally making into a temporary tattoo that I'm gonna wear to my launch. Maybe give out at your retreat, you know, all these little temporary tattoos, but I hope people like have a lot of fun reading it. And like all of my books, even if it's a fun read or a delicious read or a wickedly twisted read, I hope they read it and feel less alone. So in recognizing

[25:18]Zibby Owens: maybe your own behavior and the behavior of one of the characters, like, that you feel seen. And that's why I write anything really. I love that. Well, I'm not surprised you laughed writing it because there were so many things that I was, like, chuckling at myself. I loved, by the way, that you called it postpartum tour syndrome. That was so how you the letdown after after the tour where you have to get back in the chair. I don't know. Just some of your turns of phrase were so funny. So very clever. Thank

[25:43]Jenna Blum: you. I love hearing that. My agent who, by the way, is French and who knows that I have written her as Mireille, my editor Sarah Nelson is also in the book as Patricia. And I didn't try to disguise them in any way whatsoever. To squabble about who's more important in the book, the agent or the editor. And they call each other by those names now, which I think is so funny. But Mireille was saying, you know, I'll try to do the Mireille accent, although she really hates it when I do this. But she was like, No, Jenna, I think it is very smart what you have done because for you, Ango, you'd be writing historical fiction so you hide your voice behind petticoat, behind 1940s clothing. And she's right because historical fiction, especially writing about World War II, is usually my lane, you have to have a sort of controlled voice, like a controlled narration that is a little austere or hopefully elegant. Know, it's not that much that's funny about that time period. But with this one, she was like, now you are everything in your true voice and you are publishing no punches. And I do feel like I just was able to be so bouncy in this book. And if I wanted to say somebody was sketchy AF, I could just say he was sketchy AF and write in this very contemporary way. And I feel like it just gave everything this big booster shot of energy. Love it. Well, Jenna, I know we will be talking even more about the book along your tour, and I'm very excited you're coming to our Palm Beach retreat in

[27:02]Zibby Owens: January, February. So yay, that'll be awesome. And I'm just excited to watch and I wanna see how you handle the machinery of lunch. I'm looking forward to watching you wrestle with it. So congratulations.

[27:14]Jenna Blum: Thank you. Expect a lot of photos of adults wearing rabbit ears.

[27:19]Zibby Owens: I was not expecting that and now I am. So thank you.

[27:24]Jenna Blum: Thank you. So it's going to be such good good see you in Florida and again in in May at your bookstore in Los Angeles. So thank you for all the support you're giving my new baby. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Yay. Congratulations.

[27:36]Zibby Owens: Alright. See you soon. Bye. Bye, Jenna. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.