EXPLICIT LANGUAGE: James Frey, Author of KATERINA, A MILLION LITTLE PIECES and more
[0:00]Welcome to mom's don't have time to read books, the podcast featuring interviews with writers of all types.
[0:16]Today's episode of mom's don't have time to read books has been sponsored by Nini's Treats.
[0:21]That's N-E-N-E-S Treats.com, a family owned and operated crumb cake business based in Charleston,
[0:28]South Carolina, which my in-laws have a little bit to do with. That's Nini's Treats.com,
[0:33]get your crumb cakes on Nini's Treats.com or gold belly and enjoy.
[0:40]I'm here today with James Frye, who's the international best-selling author of sensational books,
[0:45]a million little pieces, my friend Leonard Bright shiny morning, the final testament of the Holy Bible
[0:50]and many others. He's the CEO and founder of full-fathom five, a trans media company specializing in
[0:55]young adult fiction, which has produced the L'Oriane Legacy series and the endgame books. He's written
[1:01]and produced multiple movies since his first film Kissing a Fool produced in 1998.
[1:06]His latest novel and his first adult novel in a decade, Katarina was just released on September 11th,
[1:11]2018. James Frye has sold millions of copies of his books and in so doing has helped countless
[1:17]people through his stories of addiction and recovery. He currently lives in Connecticut with his wife
[1:21]and three children. So welcome James. Hi, how are you? Good, how are you? I'm good. Thanks for coming
[1:27]on mom's don't have time to read books. My pleasure. I love moms. So Katarina is your first adult
[1:34]novel in 10 years. Why this book and why now? First adult book in a long time. So I had written
[1:43]four other adult books and when I dreamed of becoming a writer as a 21-year-old,
[1:49]I dreamed of becoming a guy who wrote sort of controversial polarizing divisive books and
[1:59]in 2011 I was on a tour for the final testament of the Holy Bible in Europe.
[2:06]And I woke up in some city and I was just tired. I looked up at the ceiling and
[2:12]the books I'd written had sold a lot of copies through the four it hit number one.
[2:16]Every dream I'd had about being a writer had come true and I was staring at the ceiling and
[2:24]I just thought I don't want to do this anymore. And so I started a company. We published books,
[2:34]we make movies, intelligent shows, and video games. I left New York City and moved out to Connecticut.
[2:40]I just changed my life. And that was fun for a while but despite whatever successes that company
[2:49]had over time I just got depressed. And I woke up a couple of you probably two years ago,
[2:55]one morning. It wasn't an uncommon morning but I woke up and I just wanted to die. I just
[3:00]wanted to drive my car into a tree. And I would go to bed every night and just want to take a
[3:07]a bottle of time on OPM and now I wake up and have this therapist who's kind of a friend of mine now
[3:16]but I have a very odd relationship with him where I just call him when I feel like it which
[3:21]sometimes is once a year and sometimes is twice a month. And I told him this and he sort of laughed
[3:29]and he goes where are you right now man? I was like I'm in Connecticut so I can hit your big house.
[3:35]I was like yeah, he said are you wearing your earrings? And I said no, I have six earrings,
[3:41]I have three in each of my ears. He said what kind of clothes are you wearing? He said I'm wearing
[3:46]khakis in a polo shirt. He said I'd be listening to any music real loud lately. I was like no,
[3:53]he said I'd be gotten any fights lately. And I said no. And he sort of laughed and he goes man you want
[3:59]to drive into a tree because you've become a chump. You've become everything you use to hate.
[4:07]The version of you I know, the person I knew for a long time used to make fun of guys like you.
[4:14]I'm old soft washed up guys. He said you need to put in some earrings and put on a white t-shirt
[4:23]and go listen to some pug crock and write a book. He said whatever you're doing now isn't making
[4:30]you happy and it's not what you're supposed to be doing. You need to sit down and write a book
[4:34]and hung up the phone and I thought about it and he was right. I had sort of I had lost myself
[4:44]somehow not in any terrible way. I just I was doing things that while fun and cool want the things
[4:53]that made me happy. So I put in some earrings. I went to Claire set a little cheesy store at the mall,
[4:59]bought some fake diamond earrings and put on a white t-shirt and went to this little barn I have
[5:05]where I work and started writing a book. Just honestly to see how it felt and it felt good
[5:13]and so I kept going and and and catarina is the book I wrote. So on that theme you wrote in your book
[5:22]in one of the opening scenes in LA, how you were describing this whole lovely existence that you
[5:27]had. You were having the housekeeper, the gardeners, the pool, the cars. How you write all day and they
[5:32]you say they give me stupid amounts of money. I do what they want and give them what they pay me for
[5:36]and I hate myself. And when I stop long enough to think about what I'm doing and how I got where I am
[5:41]and how much I have and how much I've wasted. When I think about how lost I feel every second of
[5:45]every day how completely fucking lost I am and I feel I want to buy a gun and blow my fucking brains out
[5:50]but I'm not brave enough for that. So I walked through my grass and I stare at my trees and I
[5:54]listened to the birds and I look at the ocean and the skyscrapers and I smile for my children
[5:58]and I sleep next to my wife and I pay my bills and I do my work and I hate myself every single
[6:03]minute of every single day hate myself. Yeah that's pretty depressing right? So depressing. Oh my gosh.
[6:10]That's how I felt. A version of that is how I felt and I guess that's how the character in the
[6:15]book feels. And how how can you make sure now that you've gotten yourself out of that place not to
[6:21]return to it? Just to make sure that I don't just do things for money or I don't just do things
[6:29]because I get hired to do a job to make sure that I keep doing things that I love to do.
[6:34]Right? I wrote most of this book at night. I kept doing the company. The company's still
[6:40]growing and thriving and publishing books and making movies and television shows and video games
[6:46]but it's not my sole focus anymore. I take time to make sure that I'm doing things that make me
[6:52]happy that I'm working on things that have that I'm working on simply for the love of doing them
[6:58]not because it's a job or because somebody's hired me or the company to do it. A lot of this
[7:06]book I would go to work and work at the company during the day and then I would come home and
[7:10]have dinner with my wife and kids and then they all go to bed and I would write from 930 to 1230
[7:18]and even just having those three hours to myself to do something for the pure love of it
[7:24]made me really happy. And you say you don't edit or anything you just keep going you have
[7:28]one draft and that's it? Yeah, I write books kind of weird. I don't use outlines.
[7:32]I write from beginning to end so in a linear fashion. I don't read the books.
[7:42]I only write one draft so when I'm done we send it to the publisher. We copy edit it and it comes
[7:46]out. The app try to be as clean and precise and deliberate as possible the first time through.
[7:54]Awesome and you also have a different take on even the language that you choose and how you use
[8:03]traditional punctuation and grammar in your books which is obvious from anybody who's ever picked
[8:07]up a book of yours. But you say instead of trying to write the right way I started trying to write
[8:12]the wrong way. Grammar how I felt like using it punctuation and how I felt like using it words and
[8:17]whatever way I please putting them on the page however I fucking pleased. I had never lived my life
[8:21]according to rules and expectations. Why should I write according to them? Fuck them all.
[8:26]Yeah. When I was trying to learn how to write a book right when I was 21 I decided I wanted to be
[8:32]a writer and it took me to 32 to publish a book so there were a lot of years when I was writing
[8:40]and I didn't like what I was writing. It didn't feel right. It's one of these things. During those
[8:47]years I said I don't know how I'm trying to learn how to write but I'll know it when I see it
[8:51]and I'll know it when I feel it. And for a long time I was trying to write using traditional systems
[8:58]traditional systems of punctuation and grammar traditional systems of page layout
[9:05]following the rules and I started not using them trying to get to some place where
[9:14]the words were set down in a way that they made me feel things and that's ultimately the goal
[9:22]like to string words together to make a reader feel something. And when I was doing it I found that
[9:28]if I just ignored rules, if I put things down in a way that did make me feel the way I wanted
[9:36]to make a reader feel it was more effective and so I just rejected all of it that I don't think
[9:44]you know I've always been more influenced by art than other books and art there is a tradition
[9:51]of breaking rules. It's almost part of it that the progression of art.
[10:00]is due to artists rejecting what is coming before them
[10:05]and finding new ways to express themselves,
[10:07]whether it's through paint or some sculptural material
[10:12]or now video, whereas in writing,
[10:17]you're taught, well, you need to do all of these certain things.
[10:20]And so I just said, fuck that.
[10:22]And I wrote the way it felt right to me.
[10:29]And once I started doing that,
[10:30]I realized, like, yeah, this is what you're trying to do.
[10:34]That you don't have to do what people tell you to do
[10:37]just because they tell you to do it.
[10:39]Like, why do I have to use commas the way
[10:41]some guy tells me I have to fuck that.
[10:45]And that I think is consistent in all the adult books ever,
[10:49]and they are what they are, they feel right,
[10:54]or they felt right when I was writing them.
[10:56]It's almost more like looking at a book of poetry,
[10:59]in Kettering and not all the chapters,
[11:00]but some of them, even like the Facebook exchanges,
[11:03]it looks much more like, I mean, I can't read it.
[11:06]But if you could see it, it's like very poetic
[11:09]the way you lay the words out on the page.
[11:11]Yeah, and I can't say I'm even trying to make poetry.
[11:14]It's just, it's how it makes the way I lay it out,
[11:17]makes sense to me.
[11:18]It makes sense the way the story's being told the way,
[11:21]you know, what you're referring to is there are long exchanges
[11:24]between two characters in the book, be a Facebook.
[11:27]They haven't seen each other in 25 years.
[11:30]They live on the other side of the world from each other.
[11:36]But they have these long conversations via Facebook.
[11:40]And so how do you express that in a book
[11:43]and as efficient and clean and simple a way as possible?
[11:52]And those things all mean things to me,
[11:54]like as a writer being clean, being efficient,
[11:57]being simple, making sure the book moves,
[11:59]making sure a reader doesn't get bogged down
[12:03]in grammar and punctuation or structures, right?
[12:10]I want a reader once they start reading my book
[12:12]to be compulsively driven forward, to not want to stop.
[12:18]I want to keep them up.
[12:20]I say I want to turn in pages as fast as I can go.
[12:23]And a lot of that is the books that I love the most
[12:26]had return in pages as fast as I could go.
[12:30]I mean, Tropic of Cancer on the road.
[12:35]I love old French books.
[12:38]They miss Arabla and the kind of Monte Cristo.
[12:44]Breddy Snellis.
[12:46]I can't say they do any of the things I do
[12:48]in terms of grammar punctuation and page layout,
[12:51]but the books move fast.
[12:54]Once you start reading them, you just keep going.
[12:56]Or at least I did.
[12:58]I think it's great how in Caterina,
[13:00]at the beginning, reading Tropic of Cancer is really what
[13:02]Propel do to move to Paris and the rest of the story
[13:04]kind of moved on from there.
[13:06]And then when you're there, when you look at minis,
[13:08]let be a for instance, and you have all these art references
[13:11]throughout the book, I feel like it's like,
[13:13]did you do that on purpose?
[13:14]Is it your way of saying like, this is my art?
[13:16]And here's art, it's like a...
[13:18]I mean, the Caterina's kind of a book
[13:20]about becoming a writer, right?
[13:21]Like there's one, it has two timelines.
[13:24]One is 1992, France, and the other is 2017 Los Angeles.
[13:29]And the jump's back and forth.
[13:32]And the 1992 Paris part is the character
[13:37]moves to France to become a famous writer and falls in love.
[13:43]But a lot of it is about the process of becoming a writer
[13:46]and what his dreams are and how he wants to make them come true.
[13:52]The character in 2017 Los Angeles
[13:54]has had all those dreams come true
[13:56]and is looking back and trying to figure out
[14:00]whether or any of it was worth it or not.
[14:02]What did it cost?
[14:03]How much did it hurt?
[14:07]How great was it?
[14:09]And so you're jumping back and forth between somebody
[14:12]who wants to do something and the person who did it.
[14:16]And yeah, part of it was I like books about art
[14:21]and books and writing.
[14:24]There used to be sort of a hole.
[14:27]I don't know if I'd call it genre,
[14:29]but there were a lot of books about that.
[14:33]I mean, why did it care why I did it?
[14:35]Charles Bikowski did it.
[14:40]You've said you enjoy writing in the gray area
[14:43]between memoir and fiction.
[14:45]And when I picked up this book and it said a novel,
[14:48]it didn't even, this is probably my fault.
[14:50]At first, it didn't even occurred to me
[14:51]that it was about you.
[14:52]Okay, this is totally a novel this time.
[14:55]And I'm not asking for percentages.
[14:57]Like, but you know, you've said that your obligation
[15:02]more is to tell the truth as a writer.
[15:05]And like you're to be truthful to the art
[15:09]you're producing, not necessarily truthful
[15:11]to the history of what came before it.
[15:14]And that Katarina's labeled as a novel,
[15:16]but I wouldn't have known necessarily, except for the book,
[15:20]Shaki gave last night at Pixu.
[15:22]But what went into this, deciding whether or not
[15:25]you've labeled this fiction or memoir?
[15:28]So when I sit down to write a book,
[15:29]I don't think about that.
[15:30]I don't sit down and say, okay, it's memoir time,
[15:34]or it's novel time, or it's not Dutch.
[15:36]I just sit down to write the book.
[15:39]I'd say I have books inside me and my job is to get them out.
[15:44]The process of writing is figuring out
[15:46]how to get what I feel is inside me onto pages.
[15:52]And when I do that, I don't know,
[15:53]think about fiction versus nonfiction versus memoir
[15:58]versus whatever.
[16:00]I just write the book.
[16:01]And I do work in a gray area that's not really fiction
[16:06]and it's not really nonfiction.
[16:08]It's again, it's an area.
[16:10]Plenty of people have worked on, worked in from Rambo
[16:13]and Baudelaire to Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Henry Miller
[16:18]to Jack Kerouac and Charles Pecalski.
[16:26]As I wrote this book, I didn't think about it either.
[16:28]I just wanted to tell the story.
[16:33]Given the history I have with memoir,
[16:38]I didn't wanna do that again.
[16:40]And I liked the idea that with a million little pieces,
[16:44]people read it and all anybody wanted to try to do
[16:46]is figure out what in it wasn't true.
[16:48]And with this, it's clearly the same character.
[16:51]It's clearly the same story.
[16:54]It's clearly part of the same character's life.
[16:58]But publishing it as fiction, everyone would read it
[17:00]and try to figure out what was true.
[17:02]And the point is that it doesn't really make a difference.
[17:05]But yeah, I don't feel that I have any obligation
[17:11]or responsibility to fact when I'm making art.
[17:15]And as pretentious as it may sound,
[17:18]I say I try to make art with words.
[17:22]And in that my obligation is to the book,
[17:25]to making the book the best experience possible
[17:31]for the reader, to move them,
[17:34]to tell them the story, to entertain them,
[17:36]to make them feel love and pain and sorrow and elation.
[17:43]And that in the process of that,
[17:44]those things, those feelings, that experience,
[17:47]that's truth to me in a book.
[17:52]That truth is what I can make you feel.
[17:56]That fact is something else.
[17:58]And my obligation is to truth.
[18:01]And in the process of trying to achieve it,
[18:04]I will manipulate all of her change,
[18:07]enhance, diminish, do whatever I need to do
[18:10]without guilt, remorse and apology.
[18:15]So in Katarina, I found it so interesting
[18:17]that you tell through the character
[18:21]about what happened with the million little pieces
[18:24]controversy and your side of the story
[18:26]and how it ended up that you submitted it as fiction.
[18:29]They had you changed it to memoir,
[18:32]all the self-hatred you had surrounding that period of time.
[18:34]Can you tell listeners who might not have read that part
[18:37]of Katarina yet about your side of the story
[18:40]for what happened back then?
[18:43]I don't even know if it's my side of the story, right?
[18:46]I mean, a million little pieces was a book.
[18:48]I wrote the same way I wrote this.
[18:50]I didn't really think about whether it should be memoir
[18:55]or fiction.
[18:57]The goal was to write the best book.
[19:00]I could write a book that moved you and changed you
[19:04]and made you feel things deeply.
[19:07]When I was done and we're submitting a publisher,
[19:11]as we submitted to publishers as a novel.
[19:13]And I thought of it in the same tradition
[19:16]of all the people I just mentioned.
[19:19]Who wrote similar books or books that were similarly
[19:22]based upon their own lives.
[19:26]When we sold it, there was a discussion
[19:27]about whether it should be a memoir or a novel.
[19:30]We decided to release it as a memoir when it came out.
[19:36]It was, OK, how do we publicize it?
[19:38]And it was just, say, it's all true.
[19:40]Everybody does that.
[19:43]The book sold millions and millions of copies
[19:45]and got investigated and sort of picked apart.
[19:51]And it wasn't all true.
[19:53]And I got hammered for that.
[19:56]And that's fine.
[19:58]I made the mistake of going out and.
[20:00]the public insane it was true and that was wrong and I did it and in many ways it was a great
[20:09]gift and a great joy because it did make the dream come true. I became the most controversial,
[20:14]most notorious writer in the world and in other ways it hurt. It was it's not fun to have
[20:24]you know 500 news articles a day calling you nasty names and when you're asking about
[20:32]Katarina looking back on it like that's what you don't think about when you have this dream,
[20:38]like I dreamed of being the most controversial writer in the world and as I had the dream I
[20:43]just imagined it would be fun. You don't imagine the cost of it and that it does hurt and that it is
[20:52]and that if you want to keep doing it you have to be willing to pay that price. I decided I was
[20:58]so I did keep doing it. I kept working in that gray area between fact and fiction. Every book
[21:05]I've written is in that area whether it was you know a million little pieces my friend Leonard and
[21:11]Katarina which are all sort of part of the greatest a greater narrative that are tied together
[21:18]right shiny morning or the final testament of the holy Bible they all sit in that world.
[21:24]And for me the only goal is to change readers life. Any book I write I want them to open it and read
[21:34]it and be different when they're done with it be irrevocably different. You say in the book
[21:43]that your character or you when you're in Paris that starts with that and goes through
[21:47]you want to write books that burn the world down and you go on to say which is what you're
[21:51]basically saying right now. You want to write books that change people how they think and feel and
[21:55]live how they view the world how they view themselves books that confront books that confront them
[22:01]books that scare them that make them either love the book or hate it books that force people to
[22:06]take a position that inspire people to either burn them or ban them or love them and defend them
[22:10]books to divide books that make the world irrevocably different than it was before they were written
[22:14]books that make history because they changed the world. So do you do you feel that you've
[22:19]accomplished this? I don't know. Do you feel like I accomplished that? I think you did a great job.
[22:25]Do you think I accomplished that? I think you woke the world up for sure. I think you caused
[22:30]the entire world to talk about you and your and your work. I think you changed parts about the genre
[22:38]of fiction and nonfiction and the way you can tell the story, the way it looks, the way it stands.
[22:46]Yeah I mean I think history will decide if I did it right. I did it in the moment. I did it multiple times
[22:55]when books came out. I forced people to take positions on them. I do think I changed
[23:04]how books are written and published. History will decide if what I did was good or bad. For me what
[23:15]matters is in 50 years are the books still read? Will somebody still? I don't know what bookstores
[23:20]or reading culture will look like in 50 years but are they still read? It was fun. It was cool. It's
[23:30]still fun and cool. I don't want to write boring books. I don't want to write books that people
[23:36]can read and say oh that was okay. I want them to love it or I want them to hate it and I don't
[23:44]I'm happy with either reaction. Fun career. It's been cool. I'm on the back end of it but
[23:54]it's been fun and cool and all my dreams came true which has been amazing and all the best in
[24:01]all the worst ways. You've also really reached a lot of people with all of your writing about
[24:06]addiction and recovery. You told this beautiful story last night at the blick reading about
[24:11]a couple of they came up to you and named their child Lily James after the characters.
[24:16]Are you in your girlfriend? In this book you talk a lot about alcohol addiction with really
[24:24]vivid amazing detail. At one point you talked about in many points you were talking about during
[24:30]the drinking and also the desire you had, the conflicting desire to stop but not be able to
[24:37]and you said every drink I take will move me closer to black out to loss to the hell or walking
[24:42]unconsciousness to the bliss of it. Every drink will further blur the edges until everything blurs
[24:46]will make the world spin more and more and more make every sound explode. Every drink I take
[24:51]will hasten the darkness the loss of memory and control. The loss of humanity every drink will further
[24:55]reduce me to a grunting screaming madman every drink I take will hasten hasten hasten the loss.
[25:00]I reach this point every night have this choice every night I am aware that I make this choice
[25:04]every night I am aware and I know and every single fucking night I go there. Oblivion,
[25:09]desolation, rage, violence, idiocy, the unknown darkness, the darkest darkness, black. I know and
[25:15]I'm aware and I choose and I go oblivion and desolation and blackness I go. It's pretty powerful.
[25:22]Yeah I mean that's the life of an active alcoholic, right? Every night you go to that place and
[25:29]you decide do I want to go all the way or not? And for a while I guess not for a long time but
[25:35]certainly for a period of time in my life I went there every night and that's how it felt to me.
[25:40]I would go different days I would start drinking at different times but certainly always when the
[25:46]sun was up and sometimes I would get to that place quickly and sometimes I would get there a little
[25:53]less so but every night it was okay. I know what I'm doing. I know what's going to happen if I
[26:01]keep doing it. Am I going to? And I consistently said yeah I mean that part of part of of addiction
[26:10]I think to anything is your conscious of it and your conscious of the damage it's doing to yourself
[26:17]and you are compelled to go there. Even though it's awful and even though you hate yourself
[26:24]there's part of you that needs it to be awful and needs it. You need to hate yourself or you
[26:30]can't stop it. I read what you wrote but it's pretty good I think. What have you read? I've read
[26:41]what you just read. I think it's pretty good. It feels true to me. It feels true to what
[26:45]addiction was like to me. I was a fucking drunk right? But then you later you say I tried to stop
[26:53]drinking. I'm tired and my body hurts and I'm throwing up constantly sometimes with blood. I know
[26:57]I need a break. After 18 hours I'm sweating and shaking and seeing shit I know isn't there and
[27:02]hearing shit I know isn't there and my heart feels like it's exploding. How did you eventually
[27:08]tame your alcoholism if you feel like it has been tamed or if it can ever truly be tamed?
[27:13]I mean I went to treatment. I got son way to rehab in Minnesota probably a year or so after the
[27:24]events of Katarina and I was just confronted with the fact that if I kept drinking I would die
[27:31]and I decided I didn't want to die. Who sent you away? My parents I come back to America and
[27:42]I was smoking crack and drinking every day and I hadn't accident and I busted up my face
[27:51]and I don't remember any of it and my parents took me to hazelton and dropped me off
[27:58]and I'm lucky that I had parents who loved me enough and had the means to be able to do that.
[28:07]Until I stayed at hazelton for a while and when I got out it was okay you can go back and
[28:13]if you go back you'll probably die or you can try to have a life and I decided to try to have a life.
[28:19]How did I stay sober? I don't know. I just didn't drink. I would reach out to friends. I would
[28:29]find ways to just not drink. You're compelled to drink and you can find ways to arrest that
[28:39]convulsion and I did sometimes I would go for a walk and sometimes I would read bugs and
[28:43]sometimes I would go sit in a church sometimes I would call a friend. There was no single
[28:49]method that was consistently effective so whenever something stopped being effective I would just try
[28:53]to find something else. But I've been sober for 25 years. I haven't had to drink in 25 years.
[28:58]I haven't done cocaine in 25 years. That's amazing. I know there are organizations like
[29:07]you know my husband's friend Murphy Jensen has this thing called We Connect where you have
[29:11]people all recovering from any addictions can have sort of a support system similar to an
[29:18]AA model. Did you find any organizations like that that were particularly helpful for you that
[29:22]might help listeners who might be going through something like that? I mean I think AA is a beautiful
[29:28]thing. It wasn't effective method for me but it has saved millions of lives. I was never part of
[29:39]an organization. I'm a solitary guy. You know we were talking earlier about breaking rules and not
[29:46]living or writing or existing within traditional structures and I don't do that as a sober guy either.
[29:53]I don't function well within a system of rules and I'm supposed to follow.
[30:00]I'm convinced when I'm just figuring out shit myself.
[30:04]Certainly, I think AA is great,
[30:06]you know, churches can provide great comfort
[30:09]to people's souls, which is great.
[30:12]Organizations like the one you just mentioned.
[30:15]I always say to people,
[30:16]like it doesn't fucking matter how you do it.
[30:17]I don't give a fuck how you get sober or stay sober.
[30:20]It doesn't matter.
[30:21]All that matters is that you figure out a way, right?
[30:24]All that matters is that you get through the day
[30:26]without drinking or doing or consuming
[30:29]whatever chemicals you're addicted to.
[30:35]It doesn't matter how you do it.
[30:37]It just matters that you figure out some way to do it.
[30:41]I've sort of changed things over the years.
[30:44]Like I said a minute ago,
[30:45]when one thing proved to not put my soul
[30:50]in a way I would seek out others.
[30:54]You know, suicide outlines are a good thing,
[30:56]therapist are a good thing, doesn't matter.
[30:58]Whatever works, just find a fucking way.
[31:02]So your kids are growing up now.
[31:04]You said your daughter's about 14 or...
[31:06]My oldest child is 14.
[31:08]You'll just show this 14.
[31:09]I'm sure your kids are gonna have to confront
[31:12]all sorts of substances and parties with alcohol
[31:14]and like have you shared your whole story with them?
[31:17]How are you gonna counsel them on how to approach all these things?
[31:21]I haven't shared sort of the exact details.
[31:25]I mean, my children certainly just from observation
[31:28]you can see that at parties,
[31:31]most of the other adults consume alcohol and I don't.
[31:36]That's definitely been brought up.
[31:38]Why don't you drink daddy?
[31:39]And I just say, well drinking isn't good for me.
[31:41]I don't, it doesn't make me feel good
[31:44]and I don't handle it well.
[31:46]As our oldest kid has gotten older,
[31:48]the questions have become more specific.
[31:51]And I just say, well, I had a problem
[31:52]where once I start drinking, I can't stop.
[31:57]So I don't do it anymore.
[31:59]And I had to go to a hospital for a while
[32:02]to learn how to stop and, you know,
[32:05]she's old enough where I said, you know,
[32:07]you will start to have people offer you things.
[32:10]And if you have questions about it,
[32:13]I'll always talk to you about it.
[32:14]I won't get mad at you, you won't be in trouble,
[32:16]but we should talk about it.
[32:17]That drug and alcohol,
[32:21]I'm not somebody who thinks drugs and alcohol are all bad.
[32:24]Like that they're terrible.
[32:26]Like plenty of people find fun in reasonable
[32:33]and responsible use of chemicals.
[32:39]But plenty of people don't.
[32:40]So I just tell my daughter,
[32:42]and I'll tell my other children when they're old enough,
[32:44]like if you have questions,
[32:46]please come talk to me, you won't be in trouble.
[32:51]And we'll say, I don't have any great answer or plan
[32:56]that's, you know, like everything you figured out as you go.
[33:00]So this book had a lot of very graphically sexual scenes.
[33:06]I was reading this on the airplane.
[33:08]I was like, oh my God, I'm like blushing.
[33:09]Like I hope people aren't looking at my children,
[33:11]looking at all these words.
[33:12]I feel, was this part of your,
[33:16]I want to shock the reader,
[33:17]I want to keep them turning the pages that whole theory
[33:20]of sort of this intensity, like, you know,
[33:24]50 shades of gray on steroids type of thing.
[33:27]So graphic sex in the book, no.
[33:31]Again, I was just trying to tell the story, right?
[33:34]When I moved to Paris at 21, I love sex
[33:39]and I sought it out a lot.
[33:43]And the particular relationship I write about
[33:46]happened to be very sexual.
[33:50]The two characters fuck and they enjoy it.
[33:55]And so I wrote about it and I wrote about it again
[33:58]and in a way that felt like it was direct
[34:02]and efficient and effective in telling the story
[34:09]of what was happening between these two people.
[34:12]I mean, I'm glad it made you blush.
[34:14]I mean, it's been interesting.
[34:19]Some people think I did a terrible job at it.
[34:21]Some people think it's great.
[34:23]But again, like that's what I want.
[34:28]I want you to either be glued to the page
[34:30]or I want you to have to look away.
[34:33]But sex is part of life, right?
[34:35]Especially in you when you're young
[34:39]and certainly I guess maybe not everybody is this way.
[34:44]But when I was young, I moved to Paris
[34:47]to have every experience I could,
[34:50]every feeling I could.
[34:54]Sex was a big part of that experience.
[34:59]Last night at your reading,
[35:02]you were so, you've seemed so openly, honestly grateful
[35:06]to all the readers for coming out, supporting you
[35:09]enabling you to live your lifestyle, reading your books.
[35:12]And you just said it in such a,
[35:13]I hadn't heard another, I go to a lot of readings
[35:15]and I love listening to authors talk.
[35:17]And I haven't heard that openness and gratitude
[35:20]that felt very heartfelt to me.
[35:24]Do you always tell people that,
[35:26]do you tell me more about how you feel about your relationships?
[35:30]I'm old now, right?
[35:31]I'm four.
[35:32]I'm not old.
[35:33]48 years old.
[35:34]Stuff it.
[35:34]I feel old.
[35:35]I've had a long, full life.
[35:40]And touring is hard.
[35:42]I don't, this is 11th city in the last 12 days.
[35:47]I've been in it hard.
[35:49]It's grueling, it's exhausting,
[35:51]being on a plane, it's a old guy.
[35:53]You're not a woman.
[35:54]You're not a woman.
[35:55]You're not a her.
[35:56]But I thank readers at readings.
[36:00]And I thank readers all the time on social media
[36:02]or in the world because readers have given me this great gift,
[36:09]right?
[36:12]People don't read and buy my books.
[36:16]Having people read and buy my books was always my dream.
[36:19]And it has come true because of readers.
[36:22]The lifestyle I live, yes, the fact that I always say
[36:25]to readers, you literally pay my bills.
[36:27]I get paid to be a writer because people buy my books.
[36:33]It's real gratitude for sure.
[36:35]I think the part of touring that I feel,
[36:38]I feel like I have to tour because there are people
[36:42]who show up, right?
[36:43]We had a big crowd of books and those people come
[36:48]because they spend their time and money
[36:50]with the work I produce.
[36:52]And as I feel a responsibility to go out into the world
[36:57]and say thank you for that.
[36:59]It's not bullshit.
[37:00]It's very real and I love the readers.
[37:04]I always say I don't write for the readers
[37:08]after myself, all that really matters to me
[37:11]is how readers react to what I do.
[37:13]And the people who love it, I want to say thank you to them.
[37:18]And I want them to really, truly know
[37:20]that it does mean something to me,
[37:22]that I do deeply appreciate it,
[37:25]that I am grateful for it,
[37:27]that I do understand it's a gift.
[37:29]Like I get to sit in a room alone and write stuff
[37:33]because of them.
[37:36]And it is, I think, the responsibility of an author
[37:40]to make sure the fans and the readers know that.
[37:47]Yeah, I remember when I was a young writer,
[37:49]not published, I would go to readings
[37:51]and when the writers weren't,
[37:55]didn't understand that it made me not like them.
[37:59]And it's not even about making people like me,
[38:01]but I was like, I'm never gonna read a book
[38:05]by that dude again.
[38:06]Like he was a dick.
[38:08]Like does he not understand that I scheduled
[38:10]my whole day around coming here to see him?
[38:13]And if people are gonna schedule their whole day
[38:15]around coming to see me,
[38:17]I'm gonna try to make sure that it was worth it for them,
[38:20]that they have a fun experience,
[38:21]that they have a cool experience
[38:22]and that they know how deeply I appreciate the fact
[38:25]that they showed up and that they read my shit
[38:27]and that they pay money for it.
[38:29]And that I have a cool life because they're willing to do that.
[38:32]I did a great job last night.
[38:33]Thanks.
[38:34]Check, check, check that up.
[38:36]What's, my last question is,
[38:38]do you have any advice to aspiring writers
[38:42]or I even wanna say aspiring artists
[38:43]because I feel like you're, you're both at this point?
[38:48]I mean, I always say to young writers,
[38:52]or artists that don't be afraid to fail,
[38:54]I failed so much.
[38:57]I failed so much of my life.
[38:59]People don't know that and don't think about it.
[39:02]I always see the example of a million little pieces,
[39:05]right?
[39:06]It came out when I was 32 and it sold a lot of copies.
[39:11]And people are like, oh my God, you're an overnight success.
[39:13]What's that like?
[39:14]It must be amazing.
[39:15]And I'm like, I wrote six books that I threw away.
[39:19]It took me 11 years to get here.
[39:22]It was not overnight.
[39:24]You don't know how many times I failed.
[39:26]You don't know how many days I had
[39:28]where I did not get anything done,
[39:31]where I sat in front of the machine frozen,
[39:33]where I sat in front of the machine
[39:35]and wrote stuff that was bad.
[39:38]And I knew it was bad.
[39:40]Don't be afraid of failing
[39:42]and don't let failure stop you.
[39:45]Don't be afraid of taking risks, right?
[39:48]Like, I remember when I sent about 100 pages
[39:52]of a million little pieces to a friend of mine
[39:54]who had a MFA and creative writing from NYU.
[39:58]And I was just curious.
[40:00]What he thought of it, and he read it and he called me. He was like, dude, what is this?
[40:08]And I was like, it's my book
[40:11]And he said no grammar and no punctuation like this would get shredded in a workshop
[40:17]And I was like good
[40:21]Good, then I'm doing it right
[40:23]You know, don't be afraid to take those risks. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to have people not like you
[40:30]Right, I think I think especially in today's world even more so than the old world
[40:38]People care deeply about the opinions of people they don't know on social media and in the media and it doesn't matter
[40:46]Like first be true to yourself and whatever it is
[40:49]You're trying to achieve and do whether it's right a book or make a painting or do a podcast or
[40:56]Whatever your medium is be true to what you're trying to do
[40:58]And to don't give a fuck
[41:04]If people don't like it or understand it or don't believe in it
[41:11]Yeah, just keep going if anything in my life if I have one thing I've learned in my life
[41:17]It's just keep going whether it's in the process of trying to stay sober whether it's in the process of trying to make art or books
[41:25]Whether it's in the process of dealing with
[41:29]You know
[41:30]difficult
[41:32]Situations public or private just keep going. Thank you. That was amazing. Thanks for being on the show. My pleasure
[41:45]I love that you love books. I love that you're keeping the culture of books live. Thank you
[41:49]I love that you read books and you're interested in books and thank you very much for having me
[41:52]It's corny as it sounds like I said readers. Thank you
[41:55]Like you pay my bills and put me something to me. Thank you. Thank you
[42:00]Today's episode of mom's don't have time to read books. It's been sponsored by Nini's treats
[42:05]N-E-N-E-S
[42:07]Treats Nini's treats.com. You won't leave a comment