Jacqueline Friedland & David K. Israel at Zibby's Bookshop!

[0:00]But we've been friends for months.

[0:02]I was surprised we hadn't met in person, but I guess we haven't.

[0:05]Yeah.

[0:06]Jackie told me that she was coming to L.A. to do her reading here, and I said, oh.

[0:12]I haven't read it, Zibby's.

[0:13]Do you want me to be your conversation partner?

[0:15]So our books came out the exact same day.

[0:18]So it seemed like kismet.

[0:20]And we just decided it'd be fun to kind of interview each other about the process.

[0:24]We loved each other's books.

[0:26]I'm a swimmer.

[0:27]I don't think I ever even told you that.

[0:28]No, you did not.

[0:29]So that was really fun for me.

[0:32]Yeah, so should we just kick it off?

[0:34]How serious of a swimmer?

[0:35]Very serious, yes.

[0:37]Like so many third place and fourth place ribbons when I was a kid, yeah.

[0:42]We didn't know what to do with them all.

[0:44]Never a second or a first.

[0:47]So every author writes what they know.

[0:52]How much of these characters and the world is something that came from your lived experience?

[1:00]We should probably tell the audience a little bit about the books first.

[1:04]For those who don't know, my book is, I have distilled it to one sentence, what it's about, with great effort.

[1:09]It's the story of a Division I college swimmer who gets framed for something she didn't do, a teenage boy with autism who believes he is the only one who can clear her name, and the boy's mother who gets caught between the two of them.

[1:25]And the way it came about is that I happened to hear a statistic on the radio that 8% of American college students experience homelessness during their time in school.

[1:34]And as the mother of college-aged kids, I was like, how could that be possible?

[1:40]How are you doing college applications and studying for tests when you don't know where you're sleeping?

[1:44]And so I'm immediately on Google verifying.

[1:47]And it is true.

[1:49]And I was just sort of trying to imagine how that could happen to a person.

[1:54]Came up with an athlete who seems like she has everything going for her, gets into a situation at school where she suddenly loses everything and doesn't have enough of a support system to have a place to go.

[2:06]And while I was doing, I made her a swimmer because it's like the only sport I know anything about.

[2:13]And while I was researching some swimming things, I happened to see that kids with autism are 160 times as likely To die from drowning as the general pediatric population and I am the daughter of a woman who devoted her entire career to special education and helping kids with autism learn to thrive and grow and be independent and so it just really struck me and so that was when I was like I need to bring in just an autistic kid and just show like they can be taught to swim and just make that little bit of representation and slowly this character Leo Kind of took over the book as I was writing it and became very much a central character for me.

[2:54]And so in terms of characters based on people in my life, Leo is sort of like a conglomerate of all of the kids I've known through my mom over the years and the people who, you know, I grew up going into the schools with her and You know hearing about these families and she used to she'd keep in touch with the different families and she was always talking about her kids this and her kids that and I was like they're not your kids I'm your kid.

[3:19]But so Leo is very much based on different people I have known and Leo's mom is also sort of the every mom that I know of the person struggling with I don't want to be a helicopter mom but I also want to help my kid as best as I can.

[3:36]And then McKenna, my college swimmer, is nothing like me, and I had to invent her out of, you know, all of my hardest imagining because she's a very angry, very athletic young person, and I have none of those things.

[3:52]She was my favorite character, so you did a great job with her.

[3:54]Thank you.

[3:55]With all the characters.

[3:56]Thank you.

[3:57]Now I'm going to put that question back to you.

[3:59]Yeah.

[4:00]Mine is a comedy set in the 80s in Connecticut.

[4:05]It's about a college student who's about to graduate and is trying to prove his parents wrong and prove that music is a profession, not just a hobby.

[4:17]And he's struggling, doesn't know what he's going to do, and then suddenly he finds this unpublished, unknown Mozart manuscript and decides with the sort of gumption of youth to finish it and bring the world one more Amadeus premiere 200 smud years after the old man died.

[4:37]So in terms of lived experiences, Chapter one is very much me.

[4:44]Oh, no way.

[4:45]I actually, I don't know if this is-

[4:47]Chapter one is crazy,

[4:48]just saying.

[4:50]I was a spy working for ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in college and they would send me into nudie bars to record, surreptitiously record all the music so that they can then sue them because these nudie bars were not, for a college kid getting paid $25 an hour in the late 80s was pretty amazing and they would give you Reimbursements on everything, your travel, your hotels, the dollar bills that you put in the you-know-what.

[5:25]But then, from chapter two on, none of it is really based on my life.

[5:31]My protagonist is named Noah Weidman.

[5:35]I wish I had found a Mozart manuscript.

[5:37]I wish I had the kind of friends that he has.

[5:41]He's much more talented than I ever was at that age or now.

[5:47]And he's just much more charismatic.

[5:49]But at the end of the day, it's a comedy.

[5:51]And all of this is sort of a vehicle to get my take on comedy out in the world.

[5:57]I'm going to push you a little, though.

[5:59]Even if the characters are not based on your life, how about all of the music background and knowledge?

[6:04]Yeah, well, I mean, he wants to be a classical composer.

[6:09]I wanted to be a classical composer.

[6:11]I wound up working as a classical composer.

[6:15]And I know the world very well, having worked for most of my life The symphony or the ballet or musical theater or for Leonard Bernstein.

[6:26]And so a lot of the things that he goes through, studying college, orchestration, instrumentation, these kinds of things where a lot of the humor is mined from were actually things that I studied and know about.

[6:39]So yes.

[6:40]Well, I can say the musical knowledge comes through on every page in the book for anyone who's.

[6:45]And I mean, ACDC, Beastie Boys, it's all in there.

[6:49]It's not just Mozart.

[6:52]Okay, so what new challenges did you encounter with this book versus other books that you've published in the past?

[6:59]Yeah.

[7:01]I think the challenge with this one was I wanted to write also kind of a mystery.

[7:06]There are mystery elements in the novel.

[7:10]And so the challenge was how to do that and so there's this engine that's pushing the story forward but also make it funny at the same time.

[7:22]The struggle for me, because I usually just write straight up comedy, and that's all that sort of carries, the characters are just there to make jokes.

[7:33]But with this one, I wanted there to be that kind of mystery element, driving the whole thing forward, and they go on these Wild hijinks to Leipzig, and they're looking for the rest of the Mozart manuscript.

[7:47]And so the challenge and the struggle was really how to balance that with making people laugh.

[7:52]I hope making people laugh, at least smiling through it as well.

[7:57]I think you do balance it beautifully.

[8:00]And so I'll flip that back to you.

[8:02]What challenges?

[8:03]You've written many books now.

[8:05]Yes, this is my sixth novel.

[8:07]But it's the only one I've ever written on deadline.

[8:11]This is the second book in a two-book deal, which I thought when I got a two-book deal for the first time that I was living the dream.

[8:17]A word of caution, do not do this.

[8:20]It was, you know, I'm the type of person, you give me a deadline, I'm gonna meet my deadline, but oh my god.

[8:27]I sat down, I was working on something, I had no idea what I wanted to write, and I'm working, working, working, I was not excited about it.

[8:36]Wait, wait, wait, just take a step back.

[8:37]When you sold the two-boat deal, they didn't ask you what the second, you just had complete carte blanche, whatever.

[8:44]Women's fiction was my parameter.

[8:48]So I was working on something and it was not grabbing me.

[8:51]I was not excited.

[8:54]And then I happened to hear that statistic I mentioned and I slowly started to think, oh wait, that could be a much more interesting story.

[9:02]And that's, so I flipped it at that point, but I had like six months where I, and I had to get the book done and it was, at least I was passionate about it at that point and excited.

[9:12]But, wow.

[9:13]And although I will say now, I don't have a deadline for my next book, and that's also bad.

[9:18]So, because now I'm like, well, I'll get to it when I get to it.

[9:21]Exactly.

[9:22]But the other thing that I would say is challenging about this book is I really wanted to make it a very human story.

[9:28]I think all of my other books have these big, grand social issues, kind of, or social justice issues that they're attacking.

[9:36]And this one, I just...

[9:38]I just wanted to like get deep into some characters and as Leo became a more important character in the book I struggled with writing an autistic character and not speaking from his point of view but also at no point did I actually think I should be writing from his point of view because it's like you want to match the at least you know write what you know and I've never been inside the brain of an autistic person so Take

[10:04]it from a dad who has an autistic son, you did that perfectly.

[10:07]It really spoke to me.

[10:09]Thank you.

[10:10]Well, what I tried to do instead was to just give what I do know, which is the experience of meeting a person, like being a neurotypical person and meeting people who are autistic and, you know, and just kind of like what that's like.

[10:22]And so, but I very much did not want to give the impression of like this is what an autistic person is, you know, and so I was, that was challenging for me too.

[10:30]I wanted to just kind of make him very much his own fully realized character.

[10:36]You want to read a little bit?

[10:38]Is there a little short excerpt that you left?

[10:41]Yes, but I'm going to have to put on these glasses, which is

[10:44]unfortunate.

[10:45]Okay, so I am going to read just a little bit from Barry, who is Leo's mom.

[10:55]And at this point, she and her husband are arguing about sort of what services their son needs versus doesn't need and they're just really not getting along and they've been at a wedding and they're fighting the whole wedding.

[11:06]But like pretending not to fight and you know.

[11:09]So, okay, we're in the car.

[11:12]Once we're back in the car, the act is over.

[11:14]We spend the entire ride home repeating the same tired arguments.

[11:18]Phil thinks Leo is ready to stand on his own two feet, that he should go to college, yes, But not a specialized program for kids with ASD.

[11:26]He should just apply as a regular student, Phil says.

[11:29]If we keep hiring coaches and therapists, he thinks we'll stunt Leo's development.

[11:34]Then in the next breath, he suggests sending Leo to a school close to home so he can visit him all the time.

[11:40]So are we trying to help him stand on his own or aren't we?

[11:43]This is the third time I've asked the same question.

[11:46]Leo has come so far, sure, but he has much to learn before he can ever make a real life for himself.

[11:52]A supervised college program would provide the perfect safety net for him while he practiced spreading his wings.

[11:57]And we only have two more years to prepare him.

[11:59]Now is the time to get him those additional supports.

[12:03]While he's still in high school, under our roof, and about to start a new school year without a single friend his age.

[12:09]Our son ran away from a girl who asked him on a date for crying out loud.

[12:12]I twist my whole body toward the driver's seat as I explode.

[12:15]But he got asked.

[12:16]That's proof enough of the progress he made.

[12:19]Phil's voice is filled with exasperation as he looks over at me and then returns his attention to the highway.

[12:24]You know as well as I do that he's going to regress without Sebastian as a buffer.

[12:28]Around and around we go, neither of us bending.

[12:31]When we finally reach the house, Phil parks in the driveway instead of the garage, which means he'll be going back out.

[12:37]We're home, I call as I walk inside.

[12:40]Leo's been at the house by himself for a couple of hours now.

[12:43]One thing the kid is great at is being alone.

[12:45]That's the problem.

[12:46]He was busy at the Y for most of the day, doing audio-visual work for one of their theater productions.

[12:51]He loves all that tinkering, so I don't feel too bad that Phil and I were otherwise engaged, but I do wish he'd find some activities that are a little more interactive.

[13:00]I'm hungry, Leo says as he appears at the top of the staircase.

[13:03]His noise-canceling headphones are hanging loosely around his neck and he's shoving a small plastic airplane the size of a matchbox car into the pocket of his jeans.

[13:12]I take a split second to admire my handsome boy.

[13:14]With those butterscotch waves and a strong Roman nose like his father's, of course a girl would want him in her prom pictures.

[13:21]Mac and cheese, I ask.

[13:22]Okay, he says, making his way down the stairs and marching directly to the kitchen.

[13:26]Kicking off my espadrilles, I follow him to the kitchen.

[13:29]Phil heads upstairs like I had been hoping to do.

[13:32]It would have been nice to change out of my dress before standing at the stove over a pot of Wacky Mac, but the look on Leo's face tells me he's got something on his mind.

[13:39]I'm going to stop there.

[13:46]I'm going to read from Chapter 2.

[13:48]So the book opens with Noah...

[13:51]Sitting in the computer lab at school, it's 1988, and he's typing up his resume for this job app that he has, this opportunity at a radio station, a classical music radio station in Hartford, Connecticut.

[14:07]And he's trying to decide whether or not to put the nudie bar job.

[14:13]Working for ASCAP as a spy on his resume, it's the closest he's been to the classical music world, because it has the word classical, American Society of Composers, rather, has the word composers in it.

[14:26]But on the other hand, he knows that when he does this interview, he's going to have to talk about what he actually did for them.

[14:32]I'm not going to read that part.

[14:34]That's just the setup for what I am going to read, which is his job interview at the classical music station, chapter two.

[14:43]Bertram's audience is dying and our numbers are headed for the toilet, the chief marketing officer Robert said with the kind of grim authority usually reserved for orthodontists discussing headgear.

[14:55]I was sitting in a conference room at Allegro FM wearing the only suit I owned, a stiff gray number that made me look like I'd just lost a mock trial in middle school and doing my best to appear concerned.

[15:07]And I was concerned, deeply.

[15:10]Not just because the station seemed to be circling the drain, but because Robert was telling me this.

[15:16]Me, a college student who used a microwave oven as a nightstand.

[15:21]It felt less like an internship interview and more like a classified briefing, the kind you received just before being shoved into a helicopter and told, good luck out there.

[15:32]Robert's colleague, the chief revenue officer, also named Robert, took the floor at this point and started explaining the station's recent rebranding.

[15:42]That's why Robert and I decided to change the station name to Allegro FM last year.

[15:48]WQKR was weighing us down.

[15:50]We need to go after younger, more vibrant listeners if we want to grow our subscriber base and increase ad revenue.

[15:58]I bobbed my head along, excitedly, sure, who wouldn't want to grow a subscriber base or increase revenue?

[16:04]These both sounded like positive things, though again, it struck me as strange that C-levels were getting into such details, let alone interviewing me in the first place.

[16:15]It suddenly dawned on me that maybe there were other open positions at the station they were simultaneously interviewing for.

[16:24]Seeing as Robert and Robert were newish to the station themselves and tasked with the unenviable job of saving a sinking ship, as they kept mentioning over the course of the interview, maybe they weren't entirely sure which position I was interviewing for, or more alarmingly, who I was.

[16:44]They asked almost nothing, no questions, no follow-ups.

[16:47]There was just polite nodding as though we were all at a funeral for someone none of us had liked.

[16:53]So I did what any panicked, over-prepared college student would do.

[16:57]I nodded back emphatically.

[16:59]At one point I said absolutely three times in a row.

[17:02]Then I saw it.

[17:03]The resume sitting in front of them angled just enough for me to read upside down.

[17:08]It wasn't mine.

[17:10]Unless I had changed my name to Gunther Finhart sometime that morning.

[17:15]I was bombing an interview meant for someone else.

[17:17]And frankly, Gunther sounded much more qualified.

[17:29]So our books came out on the same day, as you said.

[17:32]It was August 4th, so it's been, you know, a couple months.

[17:37]Are there any fun or cute stories, things that have happened to you, said events, or anything?

[17:43]Yeah, you know, we obviously exchanged the questions before this.

[17:48]So I was like thinking, because every event has had some quirky thing, but I think the quirkiest or the most interesting for me was I was scheduled to do one in Santa Barbara, Chaucer's Bookstore, which is a great indie bookshop up there.

[18:04]And I didn't have a conversation partner.

[18:06]It's the only gig I had where I had nobody to talk to.

[18:10]And when my first novel came out in 2005, there weren't conversation partners.

[18:16]You just spoke.

[18:17]I think you were at the first one where I actually had a computer version of me to talk to me.

[18:24]I'm a Superman.

[18:29]And so I was kind of like, well, I'll just do it old school.

[18:33]I'll just do it by myself.

[18:35]And then I get this note on Instagram from a name I recognize, Duff Murphy.

[18:41]I'm like, how do I know that name?

[18:42]And then it dawned on me, I know the voice.

[18:45]He was the voice of KUSC, the opera show, for over 20 years, and I would hear him every Sunday.

[18:54]And so I recognized that it was high praise, like this amazing compliment about he found the novel and he loved it and he saw so much of his world because he does get the job at the radio station.

[19:05]And so a lot of the early part of the book is set in the radio station, classical music station.

[19:13]And so that's Duff's job.

[19:15]And so how perfect.

[19:16]And so I said, would you maybe think about driving all the way to Santa Barbara to interview me and talk to me?

[19:22]And he was like, fuck yeah.

[19:25]And it just was, I mean, no offense, but it was the best event I did.

[19:32]And it came out of nowhere.

[19:35]We hadn't ever known each other.

[19:37]And he just wrote to me.

[19:38]Yeah.

[19:39]And he just, the character Bertram is so much him.

[19:44]He's a man of a certain age too.

[19:46]And he has a side hustle.

[19:49]He's kind of retired from the classical music world now, the classical radio music world now.

[19:55]He has a side hustle and he sells rare and antique books and the name of his company is Mozart

[20:02]LTD.

[20:03]So it seemed like his name.

[20:06]How about you?

[20:09]Sort of exciting is that?

[20:11]Yeah, no stalkers.

[20:12]No stalkers.

[20:15]My first event that I did when the book came out was in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

[20:19]And the bookstore that I went to, they have all of their authors, all the visiting authors sign the wall in the store, which that in and of itself, just signing a wall is cool.

[20:27]And so I got to sign right near Pat Conroy's name.

[20:30]And I was like, I have arrived.

[20:32]This is amazing.

[20:33]And then I did an event in Toledo at their public library.

[20:36]And they have this book.

[20:38]That looks like something out of Harry Potter, you know, it's like this big, and like the woman is showing it to me, and I'm like, shouldn't you have gloves on?

[20:44]She's like, no, it's fine, but they've had it since 1943, and every author who visits the library signs the book.

[20:49]And so she showed me Harry Truman signed the book, signed it, Mississippi, retired farmer, Independence, Mississippi, and like just signed his name, or Missouri, regardless.

[21:04]Barack Obama signed the book, Joe Biden signed the book, just one after another.

[21:08]And then there's me trying to keep my penmanship really perfect so that when people flip through, they can be like, oh, yeah, look at her.

[21:15]And the one other thing that I would say is not an event so much, but something really cool that's been happening since the book came out is that I read all of my reviews online, which you're not supposed to do, but I can't help myself.

[21:27]I need to know what the people are saying.

[21:29]And so a couple of weeks into when the book was out, I saw a review on Amazon from a mom that wrote that her child is autistic and that she saw so much of herself in the book and that it was so meaningful to have this representation and how she felt seen.

[21:45]And it just was so appreciative of this book being out there.

[21:50]And that more than anything, and I've been getting other reviews like that.

[21:54]And those reviews, it's like, those are the moments where I'm like, this is why I write.

[21:58]So that's been very cool.

[22:02]I guess last question.

[22:04]What do you hope in the end people take away from reading your book?

[22:10]So I would say that this is meant to be a feel-good story and I think it is one.

[22:14]I think it's uplifting.

[22:16]But really it's all there in the title, which is that, you know, Breathing Underwater is about the fact that life is going to throw challenges at all of us and I believe that our goal should not be learning how to remove those challenges so much as learning how to exist with them and to thrive anyway.

[22:36]So the book is very much a celebration of neurodivergence, but it's also sort of like a celebration of like, look, you know, life's not easy and you're going to have an aging grandmother and you're going to have a business, you know, snafu.

[22:49]And we have to figure out how to like just keep going and live happily and well in light of all of that.

[22:56]So that's what I hope is the takeaway.

[22:58]Now tell me yours.

[23:01]I keep stressing the comedy of the book.

[23:05]I find that if I can offer anything to the literary world, it's, I think, a smile or a wink or a chuckle.

[23:13]In some cases, a laugh out loud, a guffaw maybe.

[23:18]You know, we live in such dark times.

[23:20]And I hope that my books provide an escape.

[23:24]And there's pathos in the book, too.

[23:26]And there's a wonderful age gap story and a love story, of course.

[23:30]But at the end of the day, I hope that after you, while you're reading the book, but certainly when you're done reading the book, you're like,

[23:37]that guy's funny.

[23:40]I thought it while I was.

[23:43]So we open it up to questions.

[23:53]You first.

[23:56]I am weird.

[23:57]I get up at five in the morning and I work for like two or three hours straight.

[24:04]And then I'm kind of done for the day.

[24:06]And right before I go to bed, I'll like read what I wrote.

[24:09]And decide whether it's shit, and usually it is, and throw it out and start again the next morning.

[24:15]Or if it feels like, oh, this could really stay in, then I'll keep it and pick up there where I left off the next day.

[24:22]But I write quickly.

[24:23]So three hours from 5 to 7 or 5 to 8, I can do sometimes a whole chapter and then throw it away.

[24:35]So I totally don't do that.

[24:38]If you woke me up at five o'clock in the morning to do anything, I would not be good.

[24:43]And also right before bed, when there's sleep involved on either end of the day, I'm not good.

[24:49]I'm much more a midday writer, but I am a mess.

[24:54]I don't think it gets easier.

[24:57]The process evolves in any sort of logical way.

[25:00]When I first started writing, I wanted to outline and have everything laid out exactly how I was going to write the book.

[25:06]And so I did that.

[25:07]And five minutes into when I finally started writing, I'm veering off into something I hadn't put on the outline.

[25:13]So I redo the outline, spend two days fixing the outline, start writing again.

[25:18]And after this happened three or four times, I said, forget it.

[25:21]No outline.

[25:22]I'm just going to know from the beginning what the question is or the challenge or whatever and then a couple of important plot points along the way and I kind of have an ending in mind.

[25:33]But how we're getting from the beginning to the end is anybody's guess, which is cool because I'm figuring that out along with the characters as they are having their trial and error.

[25:43]I am having trial and error with them.

[25:46]But it's still, I mean, I have 250 pages sitting on my computer right now of something new that I'm thinking about scrapping the entire thing.

[25:55]Like today, I sort of hit a wall with it.

[25:58]So, you know, Key and Peele, the comedians, one of them, I can't remember which one, said that when he's writing a draft, he thinks about it as putting sand in the sandbox, and you have to fill up the sandbox before you can build your castles.

[26:14]And so that's what I try to tell myself as I'm going through my draft.

[26:19]But I think you hit a point where there's too much sand, and you need to kind of take a step back and say, like, oh, is this still fitting in the box?

[26:26]So it's sort of a process.

[26:29]It's sort of spiraling.

[26:32]Did that help?

[26:33]Absolutely.

[26:34]Well, that's good.

[26:34]That's what I'm doing.

[26:36]OK, perfect.

[26:37]Don't do my version.

[26:41]I love the book, and I love the characters, and I feel like it's really setting itself up for a sequel, so are you going to write one?

[26:49]Sequel.

[26:50]You know, Jews don't really like the second book.

[26:53]We kind of like, we've said it all with the first book, and these, oh, big laugh in the back.

[26:59]Took me a second.

[27:02]Payoff was bigger that way, though.

[27:04]Yeah, but I, you know, all through the novel, as you know, Brittany, Eos and Noah are talking about Maria Anna.

[27:14]Maria Anna Mozart is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's sister and she was the top talent in the family when they were little kids and she got top billing and all the fuss was about her and then when she became of marrying age, which back then was like nine, Her father, Leopold, kind of shut her down.

[27:39]She was no longer allowed to write music.

[27:40]She was no longer allowed to tour.

[27:43]And he kind of forces her to marry a man who already has five kids.

[27:47]It's quite tragic.

[27:50]And I want to tell that, I mean, they're talking about telling her story and raising her profile and making an opera out of that story.

[27:56]And I think she would be the perfect lost Mozart for the second book.

[28:02]Would you buy that?

[28:03]Sounds good.

[28:04]Absolutely.

[28:05]How many copies?

[28:07]All of them.

[28:09]Just one.

[28:11]More questions?

[28:14]I mean, what made you both want to write?

[28:17]Since I know from Jennifer's case, she wasn't a writer originally.

[28:23]It sounds like you two were not originally a writer.

[28:25]Maybe you always wanted to write her, but what was like, I'm going to do this

[28:30]with her?

[28:30]Yeah.

[28:33]I actually was writing starting in high school.

[28:37]I was very much into musical theater and I wanted to write the music, the lyrics, and the books.

[28:45]It's called a book but a libretto, the story.

[28:48]So I wrote a really bad couple musicals in high school and that was sort of the very earliest training wheels that never came off.

[28:58]And then I was writing in college.

[29:00]I never took a writing class, per se.

[29:02]That's what you're supposed to say.

[29:04]It shows.

[29:06]It does not show.

[29:08]But I continued to practice my craft, and then I wrote novels that didn't sell, and I just kept at it until an agent came along and said, you know, we see something there.

[29:19]Keep doing that.

[29:20]And I wrote maybe another novel, and then finally one that sold.

[29:25]So I was a lawyer before I was a writer,

[29:29]although I would say I was always a writer in my heart.

[29:32]And I never wanted to be a lawyer.

[29:34]I just didn't know what to do with myself after college.

[29:38]And so I said, fine, I'll go to law school, because my mother told me I would be qualified to do anything if I went to law school.

[29:45]But I said, but I'm never going to be a lawyer.

[29:47]And I graduated law school, and it turned out the thing I was qualified to do was be a lawyer.

[29:50]So I went off and I did that.

[29:53]And I got a job at a firm that I should have felt really excited in New York City.

[29:59]I should have been very excited to be at this lovely firm.

[30:03]But it was never my dream.

[30:06]And then add to that that the first case that I spent a year and a half of my life on, think about a can of vegetables, the kind with the soda pop top.

[30:16]The people who make the body of the can are different than the people who make the top.

[30:20]And a large quantity of canned vegetables had gone bad.

[30:24]And these two companies were suing each other, blaming each other.

[30:27]And this was, you know, this was my everyday hours late into the night life dealing with these vegetables.

[30:34]But you're writing briefs, right?

[30:35]You're writing.

[30:36]No.

[30:36]Like I was, you know, a first year associate sifting through documents looking for the smoking gun about who was at fault.

[30:42]And all it is is, like, receipts of, you know, the aluminum.

[30:45]I mean, it was soul-crushing, to say the least.

[30:48]John Grisham would get a whole novel out of

[30:50]that.

[30:51]Yeah, well, not me.

[30:52]And, you know, I got sent to these, like, remote cities in Wisconsin for depositions.

[30:59]Like, there was one thing after another that I just did not want to be dealing with.

[31:02]And I just felt like here I was helping companies who were fighting over money.

[31:06]No actual humans, like, involved in any of this.

[31:09]Nothing real at stake.

[31:12]And I had grown up in a house with a mom who spent her day actually making people's lives better.

[31:17]And I wanted to do something that mattered.

[31:19]And the only other thing I know how to do is write.

[31:22]And so while writing is not the same as being in a classroom with children, I do think that books or the creation of books is for the betterment of society as a whole.

[31:33]I think that reading fiction and stepping into other people's shoes spreads empathy and kindness and awareness of all sorts of important things.

[31:41]And so I hope that I'm doing something a little bit that matters.

[31:45]That's why I write.

[31:49]More questions?

[31:49]My editor is here tonight from Regalo, Adriana Sr. Hi.

[32:05]Ask a question, I'll say more about it.

[32:21]Yeah, but now you're diluting it.

[32:23]You just say it's a comedy.

[32:25]People know what they're getting in for.

[32:27]It is all those things.

[32:30]It's a coming of age story.

[32:31]There's an age gap story.

[32:32]It has that kind of Harold and Maude wonderfulness without them falling in love.

[32:38]And there's a love story nestled in there as well.

[32:43]Because you need all those things.

[32:45]You need all those things in any great comedy.

[32:49]But, yeah, I don't know.

[32:51]Even if the Mozart historical

[32:55]piece has all surged, it's all

[32:57]Yeah, so if you know nothing about Mozart, you're actually going to get the real biography, unlike Amadeus, which is the complete made-up story.

[33:06]Noah is doing a bunch of research about Mozart and already knows a lot about him when the story begins.

[33:12]So he learns things, and you learn things through his eyes about Mozart, and I hope you learned a few things.

[33:19]I mean, I started with very limited knowledge about Mozart, so I learned a ton.

[33:22]Yeah, I learned a ton too because I didn't know that much about him.

[33:27]And his life is really crazy.

[33:28]I mean, he wrote over 600 pieces in 35 years and was writing his first pieces at the age of four.

[33:38]And music is one of those arts where you can really start young.

[33:41]You don't hear about novelists making that first opus at the age of five.

[33:46]You really need to live to write a novel, right?

[33:49]That's right, yeah.

[33:49]You need to suffer in a law firm in New York City for a while.

[33:53]You don't hear about great painters who came on the scene at the age of five.

[33:58]It's another form of art where you need to have lived.

[34:02]But yeah, music is something that you could, like math, you can just do it and do it early.

[34:08]And boy, did he, and his sister.

[34:10]I hope you got a lot of the sister's importance in the book, too.

[34:15]Yeah, it comes across very clearly.

[34:20]Any other questions?

[34:21]Yes.

[34:23]So considering the current climate, you guys are both Jewish authors, and there are Jewish characters.

[34:30]Well, it's not the entire book, but I haven't read your book.

[34:35]Not yet, but I haven't.

[34:36]We'll wait.

[34:40]Now, while it's not the focal point, it's beautiful to see that this touch of representation.

[34:47]As you guys are published authors and had a couple of books, have you felt any pushback in the last couple of years when you are having that inclusion of Jewish characters or Jewish themes?

[34:58]And have you seen that change over the years at all?

[35:03]You know, with the last name Israel, it's already kind of a trigger for a lot of people to see my name on a spine.

[35:11]But fortunately, either the book's not selling at all or I'm just not getting any hate or, you know, on Instagram, I'll get like, you know, you Jewish pig occasionally or, you know, Free Palestine from the River, the usual stuff, but nothing.

[35:32]I have talked to some of our colleagues from On Being Jewish Now.

[35:38]We both contributed to that essay collection, which is right behind you and also on sale.

[35:45]And some of our colleagues have really, you know, they've been canceled and all kinds of, you know, book reads, negative reviews and stuff just because they're Jewish and we've heard horror stories.

[35:57]But I don't know, have you?

[35:58]I haven't experienced it.

[35:59]No, I have not, thankfully, had horror stories.

[36:02]I have had, again, read all of my reviews.

[36:04]I have had things on Goodreads and Amazon, like, no stars, the author is a Zionist, you know, and...

[36:10]I don't even know, I don't know who's, like, they're stalking my Instagram to find, I have no idea.

[36:15]But I very much write with an agenda when I write, like, again, trying to write books that matter.

[36:22]And I feel a responsibility as a Jewish author to include Jewish characters.

[36:25]But also, like, so many Jewish books, people think, oh, it's going to be a Holocaust book or it's going to be somebody grappling with their faith.

[36:31]And I don't want to, that's not what I write.

[36:34]I just feel like, you know, because I'm Jewish and I know that my books are going to all sorts of places in the country where people have never met a Jewish person and they may have an impression of this is what being Jewish is, I like to just sort of show, like, here are some Jewish people who are just living life and then some drama happens to them.

[36:51]You know, like, they get in a fight with their fiance, but then they have to stop at a shiva.

[36:56]Or, you know, like, you know, it's Saturday and they're having challah French toast because the challah's left over from Shabbat the night before.

[37:03]So I try to put them in that way and I have thankfully because I tread lightly I think that's part of why I've not gotten pushback but I am like a little bit afraid to do it because I don't want to I feel that if I put in too much I will have trouble getting those books out there and in fact I had An author friend, another contributor to On Being Jewish Now, who lives in Israel, called me and said, also never met her in person, and called me and said that the first historical fiction about October 7th is starting to come out in Israel.

[37:39]And it's great that there is a record of it, but it's all in Hebrew.

[37:43]And so she said, would I be willing to try and write some for American audiences?

[37:49]And While I think it's so important and a very good idea, I also feel that if I do that, nobody's going to publish it.

[37:56]So it's a little bit chilling and sad, but so

[38:03]that's a convoluted way of answering your question.

[38:06]There's good, the bad, and the ugly.

[38:10]But how sad that we have to have that discussion.

[38:16]But thank you for being brave enough to still include

[38:25]By the way you know what I included in here that I actually this was me being like really brave Leo's grandma who is who is deceased gave him a rock from like a Jerusalem stone that she brought home from Israel and he has a rock collection and so it's on his shelf with his other rocks and it's his favorite one and And I really felt like people could pounce on this, because he took a piece of the land.

[38:52]But so far, nobody has said anything.

[38:59]Any other questions?

[39:01]Thank you.

[39:02]Thank you, everyone, for coming.

[39:03]Thank you for coming, guys.

[39:08]If you haven't bought the books, please do.