Midlife Reinvention Mixed with ‘90s Princeton University—and Running

[1:32]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 zibbyowans. Ali Frank and Asha Youmans are coauthors of Run For Your Life, Kelly Kingman, which is a novel. We recorded this episode live at the Whitby Hotel. Ali and you might find their names familiar because they've been on this podcast several times. Also, Ali is one of the contributors to On Being Jewish Now, and she also contributed to My Moms Don't Have Time To anthology back in the day. Ali and Ash's debut Tiny Imperfections tackled desperate parents and ill fated misbehaviors followed by Never Meant to Meet You, which mined the comedic and underexplored common ground between black and Jewish experiences in America. Then came The Better Half, which was a Mindy Kaleig Mindy's book studio production. And their fourth book, Boss Lady, came after that. Now we have Run for Your Life, Callie Kangman. Enjoy. Welcome to Totally Booked Live here at the Whitby Hotel. I am so excited to be here with our first guest of the day, Ali Frank and Asha Humans, who are Thank amazing.

[3:20]Guest: You. Thank you. Yeah. You can clap now.

[3:25]Zibby Owens: For those listening, we are here in front of a packed room of eager book lovers on a Sunday morning and just excited to get into it. Okay. The two of you have co written several books together, and I my one another time. Run For Your Life, Callie Kingman is your newest book. Tell everybody what it's about, please. You wanna start? Sure. Okay.

[3:47]Guest: Run For Your Life, Callie Kingman is our love letter to our fellow Gen X women. It is a story of a young scholar who meets the love of her life in college. And they split and go their own separate ways. And she finds a new man who she follows across the country, starts a life with, has children with, all under the promise of, Well, we'll we'll return to New York where they come from. We'll return to New York in a couple of years. So just get started on my career and and then we'll be off and running. Turns into over twenty years of residency in Sacramento, which she feels is the dullest city in America. Over those years, she doesn't really develop her life, sort of gets a little soft around the edges, and after a health scare, joins a running club, finds her community, changes her life, rediscovers herself. And it's a beautiful story

[4:48]Zibby Owens: about her comeback. How do the people of Sacramento feel about this book?

[4:53]Guest: We have a few defensive readers I bet. On Amazon and Goodreads. It's true. We have been unwelcomed Yeah. To the entire state You are not of California.

[5:04]Zibby Owens: No tour stops in Sacramento. No. No. But although it becomes something that ends up uniting two people, unlikely relationships. I'm try I I have to not give things away. A reunion with

[5:21]Guest: someone who's been oh my you tell you tell me better. Well, I'll just I'll just share. The book is actually told in dual timeline between Princeton University in the nineties and modern day Sacramento. So we really wanted to create, yes, it's at Princeton, but it is a nostalgic feeling of the nineties on campus. You could insert really any campus, but there is a love between two people who, when you're in your twenties and it's first love, there may be great differences that you don't recognize because you're just too busy having sex all the time. But we have I mean, it's true. You fell in love in college. You know. I'm I did. I had one date in college, and he's still at home. But it was not only an interracial relationship, but the male was also from rural North Carolina. And we wanted to explore not just the differences between an interracial relationship in the nineties, which I would argue that today we don't always do it elegantly, but we're more comfortable talking about race. But something in America that we're still not really comfortable talking about is the differences between rural America and urban America, and that's also can be a very big divide. So in this relationship on the Princeton campus, we have a rural, black, wonderful intellectual athletic male love interest and Callie Keenan who is from New York City. And but the outside world is different than the world on a campus, and they end up separated only to ultimately, oddly, very oddly, refine themselves and each other in Sacramento,

[7:25]Zibby Owens: which is a very twisty turny story how they get See, wasn't gonna give that part away. Sorry. Okay. Well, anyway. Okay. Well, Porter is somebody I would very much like to meet. You describe him in in delicious terms. Let's just say that. There's a scene where Porter's mom has to come in. There's an accident, she's there, there is some love lost, let's just say that. She is not into having Callie anywhere near her boy. Talk a little bit about that because I'm sure a lot of people can relate to not loving like an in law or something like that, but there are many layers here that should get in the way between them. Oh, yeah.

[8:05]Guest: Delcee Beaumont. Oh, boy. Delcee Beaumont. You know, the relationship is is kept from her mostly. So when she meets the love interest of her, the son she loves so much, she's quite surprised. But she also greets this person with a kinda look like this. Up and down, side eye, a little bit like, You'll always be second. And I think that plenty of, partners have felt that way before meeting in laws in our lives. But we also discovered that the race you know, race is the very first thing they might notice where there's a difference between the two of them. But then when you speak to someone who is from a rural environment, you also notice that there may be a geographical or maybe an assumed socioeconomic difference. And Delsie Beaumont lets it be known that, you know, this is still my son. You you won't have him until unless he makes you a wife. And the look she kind of gives and the vibe she gives to Callie is that Callie will never occupy that spot. But really, it's Porter's fault. He has not brought his family together to meet this woman he loves, and he does love her. But there's a fear inside of him to introduce and have his two worlds clash

[9:29]Zibby Owens: and collide. Interesting. Well, speaking of interracial, I guess you could say, talk about how your partnership came to be. Who? Us? Our marriage? Your writing

[9:40]Guest: marriage. Alright. It is such a writing marriage. Asha and I feel like we can now say we're the longest standing black and white co authorship in publishing.

[9:51]Zibby Owens: But we met both There was some applause. Someone clap.

[9:57]Guest: She hasn't divorced me yet, but we actually met working at an independent school in Seattle, Washington, the Berchi School. And I was the assistant head of school and Asha was a pre k teacher and we worked on admissions together very intimately and having to take very seriously the job of evaluating four and five year olds, which behind closed doors we found absolutely hilarious. And from those stories and just decompressing after admissions visits, we ultimately came together to write our first book, Tiny Imperfections, of which I have to note came out in COVID, and we only got two public events with that book, and one was in your apartment when you were first starting Yeah. For your Yeah. I

[10:58]Zibby Owens: still have, like well, for a long time, had, I think, the hat or the t shirt. No. It was a t shirt. Yeah. Right? I have the Johnny imperfections t shirt. Thank you for that. That was one of my first swag items. It felt very important. And then talk about what happened after that with your careers.

[11:13]Guest: The first book came out. My god. I'm like, we're old. We're so old. But a very You're old. She's a year younger than me. That's right. I'll always be younger. But we went off I I left the school first and started a soul food catering company with my big sister and Allie went off to found a Quaker school, the International Friends School in Bellevue, Washington, and has since moved on to, living in Idaho, Sun Valley with her family. So we sort of had to pivot with every book. First, we wrote shoulder to shoulder with tiny imperfections. The next book, we were in COVID, Never Meant to Meet You. We had to figure out how to isolate ourselves just together and write this book. After that, Ali moved and Alaska Airlines flight between Seattle and Sun Valley became our commute. Lucky for me though, it's beautiful there. And have continued each with each book to figure out how do we do this with this in whatever age we're in, whatever time and issues we're facing as a country, as mothers, as wives, as writers, and still do this as a partnership. So I feel like we've grown and changed with every novel that we've written. I would agree except I would say Ash and I from the very beginning we started writing together in 2017. And then with the racial awakening in the spring of twenty twenty. The books that were coming forward to readers to learn about races, religions, whoever that were different than each of us were very heavy and trying and hard and heartbreaking. And Asha and I really believed that you can just as easily learn about people who are different than you through humor and comedy and laughter. And for the two of us, we'd rather laugh and learn than cry and learn. The wrinkles are tragic from all that crying. So in this very tenuous time, we made the commitment to each other and the commitment to readers that we are going to write stories that are challenging about race and religion and parenting and privilege and education and all those things, but we're going to do it through humor and behind closed doors, but we'll share with you. We dubbed ourselves the will and grace of race.

[14:00]Zibby Owens: No Longer Behind Closed Doors. No Longer Behind Closed Now it's out in the open. Oh my gosh. Absolutely love it. And, Ali, you also contributed to I'm Being Jewish Now and one of my very first anthologies written in in COVID. Talk a little bit about that and how you felt, How you've been sharing. Your emotions in in lots of ways. Fiction, nonfiction.

[14:21]Guest: Well, can I I'm gonna just address on being Jewish now because it's actually a little bit of a funny story? So as you all know, Zippy is amazing at being reflective and putting it out into the world. I reflect personally like a squirrel. Like I really don't and it's very hard for me. You don't reflect or you don't reflect and put it out there? Looking internally and putting it out there is super hard for me. I love writing fiction. I love envisioning other people's worlds and putting emotions, that I may be feeling in at the time, but into other characters rather than myself. But Zibby put out the call for On Being Jewish Now pieces, essays, right at the time where I needed to write my speech for my daughter's bat mitzvah. And I was struggling, and I was putting it off and off. And I'm actually not a person, as Asha knows, I'm usually very regimented about a timeline, and I just wasn't doing it and wasn't doing it. And I felt like when the email came from you about On Being Jewish Now and the call for essays, I'm like, alright. This is the world telling me that I need to write this speech for my daughter's bat mitzvah, and I need to do it now. And it's going to have a bigger purpose to hopefully be in the On Being Jewish Now anthology or essays and anthologies. And it did, and I actually now love that this love letter that I wrote to my daughter, and hopefully in your book now, all daughters lives in the world.

[16:03]Zibby Owens: Amazing. I'm so glad you did it. I know. Me too. Even though it just helped you stop procrastinating. That's really that's really what it was. Because you had a tight deadline Yeah. Sorry about essays. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. 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/zibby for free shipping and three sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibby.

[19:00]Zibby Owens: Back to Run For Your Life. You mentioned it was for Gen X women. I'm always a little confused by that. What are the age ranges? Are we Gen X? Are we not Gen X? What what is anyone else confused? I well There's a list. I always have to look it up on Google to figure out what generation I am in. But I believe ours

[19:19]Guest: Gen X begins at 1965 and ends at 1980. Okay. So if you're born within those years, you're Gen X. Okay. But the truth is, I mean, it's a love letter to middle age. Yes. It's just we felt like plopping it in early nineties collegiate time, that was our time and those were our people. But we've had an expanse of women read it and say, well, you know, I'm only 40 but this felt like me, or, you know, I'm 65 and this felt like me. It was just our moment to be able to say to,

[19:56]Zibby Owens: our friends and women of our air, we love you and we see you. I felt like I was reading it thinking, I can hear these ladies just talking and laughing about all the indignities of getting older and how funny it really can be even though it's kind of not funny. But you made it funny,

[20:12]Guest: which is great. Well, indignities, but I also you know, we have lots of great conversations about Generation X as females, particularly on college campuses. We had mothers who really were champions of us, you know, going off and finding what we wanted to do because they didn't have those same opportunities. But at the same time, they wanted validation for how they had lived their lives so they also wanted to make sure that, you know, we found good marriages and we had nice houses and we were, the ones taking care of the children And And we stayed fit. And we stayed nice looking. Remember the Anjuli commercial? I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan. Well, no. I can do one or the other. I'm not doing both. Yeah. And exactly that. There was no one right ahead of us that was showing us truly, you can do all those things but not at the same time. I feel like we're in an era that now younger women can say, oh, I've seen my mothers, my aunts, older sisters, whoever, do all these things but in different eras of their life. And so we were really interested in that age group because of our experience of, okay, well, I have the great education. I know exactly what I want to be, but why is my husband's job and what he wants to do determining my whole life that I think is not as prevalent now?

[21:55]Zibby Owens: True. And when you write these scenes together and you're laughing or however you do it, how do you pull off a writing relationship like this? Do you Are you in one Google Doc? Like, what are the ins and outs of this? And do you ever have any conflicts about what you want included versus not? Yeah. We've never fought.

[22:16]Guest: And if we ever did, I would win every time. I'm an only child. I don't know how to fight. I'm a middle child. Check out these guns. We do disagree. But Allie and I have made a commitment to this work that says the work is more important than either one of us as individuals, our egos, what we need to earn, what we're doing. If we keep that at the forefront of our time together, it does go more smoothly. If I have to put myself second and put the work first? It makes it a little bit easier. But I you know, it's Allie often says it's luck that we met each other and we're such great a great partnership with our writing. But I think it's more than that. I think it's that we have curated beautiful communities of women around us. I hang out with strong women, smart women, funny women, fun women. And to have that crowd to pick from as a partnership is you're gonna do alright. But the question was how do we actually do what we do? So now I'm jumping in. I had a two it was a two part. Yeah. Okay. I write longhand. She does. Can you believe that? And Ali pencil or a pen in your hand. Yeah. See, people don't even remember what that is. Of notes. I have notebooks everywhere surrounding me and Allie's a lot more tech savvy than I am. But she's super patient. That's the way my brain works. And that's where my best material is create how it's created is me sitting there with that yellow pad and and a big pen. So and I've gotten a little better. We've we've edit we now edit Yeah. On on But let know what it's called. We're the we're the oh my god. You you people have no idea how much she lives in 1994. Was a very good year. We will say so we do first, we do a really literary leapfrog. So I'm the keeper of, like, the big whole story, and I get done the first couple chapters, ton of questions. I send it off to Asha. She goes to work. I do the next chapters. And that's just to get the work down, to get the story down. But, really, the beauty comes, and this is where I think we're so lucky is that it is slow and it's laborious, but we probably spend six to eight times reading the book out loud. Wow. So Asha's an unbelievable actor. And so she is the reader, and I as I we say she's the diva. I'm the accountant. You can tell by her outfits. But she is acting out every word, every everything, and I'm at the computer and we're listening. And we have to make sure we agree on every comma, every adjective, everything we put in there. And particularly the spicier stuff, not meaning spicy sexy, but spicy controversial. Because as long as we can defend it when it goes out in the world, great. But we don't ever have a time where Asha says, Well, that's a black character. I'm the black person. That should be this way. I have to be comfortable with that. Same with our Jewish characters and the characters who are not who we are. We have to feel good together and then we can go forward. But I really think our magic is in those moments of acting it out. And I would also say that's resulted in we've had two options of film to television, and then we had one option that in the eleventh hour we actually walked away from. But I believe that reading out loud makes it feel we can hear the cinematic part as well as the story part. Why did you walk away? We walked away because we had everything negotiated, but they did not want to give us a title card which means credit on the screen for our work. And we wrote it. How are you not going to give us credit? Yeah. We have we got everything else we wanted, but that one thing that did not cost a dime, they were not bend on. That's crazy. I know. I know. You walked away.

[27:05]Zibby Owens: So you're just going to have to do another one and just show them.

[27:09]Guest: Yeah. Are you ready? We keep trying. We keep one day something will make it to a screen. Hopefully. Hopefully.

[27:16]Zibby Owens: What's your Next project together. I'm sure you're already writing something else.

[27:21]Guest: Well, we you know, it's interesting. You know this as well as anyone. That it is every book is up and down, and we really are the book just before Run for Your Life, Callie Kingman, Boss Lady, which we absolutely loved, and it is our best rated book and best reviewed book, but it didn't do as well in sales as our previous book, and you're only as good as your last sales. So there's a lot of pressure no pressure on you all, but kind of pressure to buy the book. But, you know, our advice with this book is to, like, really go out and try to make a huge splash, which is sort of funny for two kind of homebodies.

[28:08]Zibby Owens: That's a lot of pressure. Yeah. It's not very nice. I know.

[28:12]Guest: We've been doing our own PR, so traveling this country on our on our own dime, but it's our work. And we believe in it more than anybody else. So we took up the challenge and we've been doing that. Yeah. And so we're thinking and growing and deciding what the next step will be. But really taking the opportunity to love this book because I do think with all our other books, I mean, we've written five novels in eight years, so it's been this like on to the next, on to the next. So I think we're taking a beat and enjoying this book. This is the first time we've really just been able to sit with the book for a while and really appreciate it and give it its time. Yep. Because I'm a little bit of a pressure cooker as a partner. Oh, my goodness. Yes. We probably get my new schedule as soon as I go back to the hotel.

[29:07]Zibby Owens: And which of you or both of you or neither are runners?

[29:12]Guest: Let me tell you, I will run if there's a large dog chasing me. But that's it. So if there and Allie is a tremendous, not only runner and an athlete, but outdoors woman. She was a junior national ski champion. That was a long time ago. Horse see, a barrel horse do you say it? Horse barrel racing? I was a rodeo queen. Yes. That Jewish rodeo queen. So if you hear see read any, complaints about running and how much it sucks and it hurts and why are you doing I wrote all those parts. And the parts where our character learns from, pushing herself through the tough that's Allie. I'm not doing that.

[30:04]Zibby Owens: Too funny. Okay. Well, what advice do you have for aspiring authors? Especially people who are thinking of teaming up with a friend or colleague to write a book.

[30:15]Guest: Well, I'll go first, then you go. We'll see if our advice is the same or different. You know, we've actually never been asked that question, which is super interesting. So, on the teaming up with another author, I'm gonna be completely honest. This was sheer dumb luck. I asked Asha to go to coffee with me, and I said, I have this story in my head about three generations of black women working in a private school in San Francisco. Do you want to write it with me? We were not English majors. We had never taken a creative writing course. I'd only read her narrative report cards she'd written. She'd only read my emails as an administrator. Pages of emails. I was very thorough. And Asha said, Sure. And fourteen months later we had our first book sold to Penguin Random House. And it just happened that my strengths are Asha's weaknesses and her strengths are my weaknesses. So we like to say bad math, one plus one equals one good author. But how to do it is I think it's so unique to the people that are coming together. So that we don't want to say there's, or at least I don't want to say there's one right or wrong way. But I will say to any author who's out there, my advice is very similar to people who ask me about running, because I am a runner, is that whether running or writing, people are like, Oh, I did all the research, you know, and like, Yeah, I figured out the right shoes to buy and I've got the new Garmin watch. And, you know, I've been watching these YouTube videos on how to write and I joined a, you know, class for writing seminar. And with both runners and writers I'm like, that's awesome. Have you sat your ass in the seat and started writing? Because those all those things are great, but they don't actually move the ball forward. They don't get you out the door to run. They don't get you in the seat to write. So just start doing it. Whether it's running, whether it's Cali and the first five minutes that she runs as she calls, like, the most unimpressive feat in sport ever. But, you know, the first five minutes of running, the first five minutes of writing, just do it. All those other things are just the accoutrement. You have to be very close to the person you're writing with. I mean, this is I put my heart on those pages and I have to trust Allie to treat my heart gently. Even though when she sends me a lot of her stuff, it has red lines through it. She tolerates that. You have to be willing to maybe lose a friendship. And if you're not willing to lose a friendship, don't write with a close friend. It can be tough. But I have become you were talking about writing for On Being Jewish Now, I've become part of her family over these years. I spoke at her daughter's bat mitzvah after she wrote that. Oh, wait. I just have to not only did she speak, I just I sorry. I have to tell the story. She closed down the bat mitzvah with getting up and reciting Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman. It was awesome. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt, but it was awesome. And figure out why you're doing it. If you write for yourself, for the love of writing, great. If you write because you're going to change careers, make sure that you have a little savings under your belt. It is a privilege that I recognize that I can write full time. Most of my fellow writers have a nine to five job. And, decide what you want to do with what you've written. If If you want to chase a publishing contract, if you want to publish it on your own and just have a bound book that you can be proud of, if it's a story you want to just share with your family, but choose your reason why and stick with it.

[34:38]Zibby Owens: Thank you, ladies. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Sibby. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Sibby, 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 Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.

[35:35]Zibby Owens: This