Vanessa Lillie, LITTLE VOICES
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[1:10]Vanessa Lilly is the debut author of Thriller Little Voices,
[1:13]a former editor for an e-publisher with 15 years of marketing and communications experience.
[1:18]Vanessa currently lives in Rhode Island with her husband and son.
[1:21]She's originally from Oklahoma and actually won a poker tournament in St. Martin.
[1:26]Welcome, Vanessa.
[1:27]Thanks so much for coming on mom's no time to read books.
[1:29]Thank you so much.
[1:30]I'm a huge fan so I'm thrilled to be here.
[1:32]Ah, this is so fun for me too.
[1:34]I know you've been talking for so long.
[1:36]So little voices, debut Thriller, super exciting.
[1:42]Tell me what little voices is about and what inspired you to write it?
[1:46]Little Voices is the story of a woman postpartum who is both struggling as a new mom,
[1:55]but then also her friend was murdered actually on the night she went into labor.
[1:59]And so she very much wants to return to who she was before to be able to investigate,
[2:05]to be able to help find justice for her friend.
[2:07]And so it's the story of an investigation and it's also the story of motherhood,
[2:12]which is something I really wanted to read because I thought of this story and wrote a lot
[2:16]about as a new mom and I wanted to see a new mom at the heart of a Thriller,
[2:20]which is my favorite genre.
[2:21]The way you described new motherhood was so real, especially all the doubts and
[2:26]securities that come with it.
[2:27]And you had so many scenes and I'll just read a few examples.
[2:30]So Devon is your main character and she's like filled with the self-loathing at times.
[2:35]So much so that she has all these negative voices floating around her head telling her she's
[2:39]doing a bad job.
[2:39]And he wrote, this child hates the look of me.
[2:42]My smell, the taste of my breath, refused by her tiny perfect mouth.
[2:46]I want to be a good mother more than anything.
[2:48]I do not accept this failure.
[2:49]And then you say after two hours of failing to see the Esther,
[2:53]I am a possessed form.
[2:54]Thigh is burning tears in both our eyes as I obsessively bounce on the workout ball
[2:59]to exercise these whales from my child.
[3:01]And then in italics it says, you were never meant to be a mother.
[3:04]If she had a different mother, she'd never cry at all.
[3:07]So tell me about all this sort of negative self-talk.
[3:11]Is this how you talk to yourself?
[3:12]I want to like give you a hug or something.
[3:14]Well, that's so nice.
[3:15]I'll always take a hug.
[3:17]I think as a new mom, you are very susceptible because one, you don't know what you're doing.
[3:24]And two, the girl likes to tell you that you're doing things wrong.
[3:30]And never in your life have you been more vulnerable, at least for me, to that be back.
[3:34]And so while the voices in my head were not as severe or serious as my main characters,
[3:40]it wasn't that hard to take it there.
[3:42]Because I didn't worry that my experience was that there was usually something that was hard.
[3:48]And for my son, he didn't sleep much for two years.
[3:51]And that's a long time.
[3:52]And so I wonder when you're exhausted, if you're doing something wrong,
[3:56]if he had a different mother, would he be sleeping more?
[3:59]Or is it just him?
[4:00]But you have no answers.
[4:02]And so you just worry.
[4:03]So it was definitely a dark place, but it felt true to kind of my own experience as a mom
[4:11]who wanted to do things right, but just didn't know how to do them most of the time.
[4:15]That's the worst part.
[4:16]It's like the lack of control and the uncertainty.
[4:20]And nobody being able to tell you what you're doing.
[4:24]Or even when you start doing something right, they change.
[4:29]It's like, oh, wow, he's been napping so well this week.
[4:31]I must be the best mom in the world.
[4:33]And then he goes through a sleep progression.
[4:35]And you're like, oh, no, I'm not the best of all.
[4:37]It was just a good week.
[4:38]Yeah, totally.
[4:39]Oh my gosh.
[4:40]You actually start this whole anxiety train of thought in the book
[4:44]even when you're pregnant, which I completely relate to.
[4:47]You wrote, when I was in my first trimester,
[4:49]I made a list of probable complications that could occur during labor.
[4:52]17 of them seemed worth categorizing and diagramming and obsessing over.
[4:56]They're tucked away in a tiny spreadsheet on my computer.
[5:00]I can say we're late to that.
[5:01]Did you actually, you didn't actually have a list?
[5:03]Did you or did you joke about tell me?
[5:05]That was about two degrees further than I actually was.
[5:09]So it was a very small step, but I definitely read the books and I worried.
[5:13]What was a big help was I joined a pregnancy group.
[5:15]And so you can sit around with other new moms or moms who will be new moms all of us first time.
[5:21]And we really just talked about our anxiety and it felt good to know that I wasn't the only one
[5:26]worrying and obsessing.
[5:27]Because for a lot of us, you want this so bad and some people have been trying for a long time.
[5:32]And it's so close.
[5:33]I mean, it's just it's inside of you.
[5:35]And you can literally feel it growing.
[5:38]And so there's just nothing more kind of triggering for anxiety than when you're just so
[5:42]close, you can almost touch it.
[5:43]And it's something you want more than you've almost wanted anything in your whole life.
[5:47]So to me, it just pushed all those buttons and I needed to write about it and express it.
[5:54]I imagine that a lot of people felt the same way.
[5:56]It did, writing help you.
[5:58]Absolutely.
[5:59]That's that's how I process a lot of feelings.
[6:02]So if I can, even if it's just journaling or making a list, writing
[6:06]comes my mind and focuses it.
[6:08]And so you're almost naming emotions or you're naming a problem.
[6:13]And there's power to that.
[6:14]Or maybe it's that it takes the power away from the emotion.
[6:19]And you can take it back and get some sense of control.
[6:23]And writing about this postpartum time in my life helped me see it for what it was and explore
[6:30]the hard parts and the good parts, all with the hope that it would connect with other people.
[6:35]Because that's a lot of what I craved as a new parent was just to connect with others and be like,
[6:40]am I alone or do you kind of feel this way?
[6:42]You know?
[6:44]And do you now have people just like pouring out of the woodwork telling you that you felt
[6:47]that they felt the same way?
[6:49]Yes.
[6:49]And I love it.
[6:50]Like I've had many people like women, but at this point, I'm pretty new.
[6:55]So you know, maybe good friends who read it and they're just like, oh my gosh,
[6:59]I'm the same way.
[7:00]And I'm like, I know, I am too.
[7:02]You're not alone.
[7:03]Like it's hard for all of us and it's okay that it's hard.
[7:06]And even though this is a thriller and, you know, there's a lot of crazy things that happen,
[7:11]the heart of it truly is just a terrified new mom.
[7:16]And I put all of my terrified new mom experiences into that.
[7:20]Thank you for that.
[7:22]Oh my gosh.
[7:23]I remember even like before I had kids sitting on the couch with my giant belly and spending
[7:28]hours researching different strollers.
[7:30]So worried.
[7:31]I would like pick the wrong one and then once I had the kids, I was like, it's not like,
[7:36]it was a car.
[7:37]Do you know what I mean?
[7:38]Like if I bought the wrong stroller, I could return it.
[7:41]I could get a different stroller.
[7:42]Like these are such big deals.
[7:44]The wrong brand of bottle warmer.
[7:45]Do you know what I mean?
[7:46]Like, I don't know.
[7:46]Somehow everything is like amplified.
[7:50]Yes.
[7:50]And stuff is something you can control.
[7:54]You can control the stroller you buy.
[7:55]You can control the wallpaper in the babies room.
[8:00]Those are things that you actually have control of.
[8:02]Like 95% of it you don't.
[8:04]So it's nice to just hang on and think about and worry about things that you know.
[8:09]In the end, you will be the one buying it.
[8:12]And that was my experience.
[8:13]So I was like, why I've never thought about wallpaper this much in my entire life.
[8:19]What's going on here?
[8:20]Why am I so fixated on the baby's room?
[8:23]Even though he's not even in there for like the first, you know, three, four months.
[8:26]He's in my room.
[8:27]So it's easier also intellectually, not easier, but emotionally saying like I'm worried about
[8:33]you know, do I need a white performer versus what if something happens with this pregnancy?
[8:39]Because that's really what we're all worrying about the whole time.
[8:42]I feel like I held my breath that twin pregnancy the whole time.
[8:46]And I still hold my breath for my kids.
[8:48]Like I never really exhaled that breath.
[8:51]And your book also really touches on loss in so many ways and, you know, gets to the heart of
[8:58]the true fear that really unites all of us mothers and parents, not just mothers.
[9:04]Absolutely.
[9:05]And I think it's maybe a cliche, but this idea of your heart is now outside your body.
[9:11]It's just the truest statement to me because you imagine what it's like,
[9:16]but you do not know until you hold that child and you see it and you think,
[9:20]wow, you're mine.
[9:22]And I'm connected to you on the cellular fundamental level.
[9:28]And with that comes fears that, you know, it's one thing to worry about
[9:33]yourself getting hit by a bus or something.
[9:35]That feels completely different as a parent thinking about something happening to your child.
[9:39]I mean, it's just, and I imagined it, but experiencing it for me was just so much bigger.
[9:46]And it can be a daily worry if you let it.
[9:48]Yeah, because as soon as you create a life, you're creating a loss, right?
[9:53]In that at one time, it happens.
[9:55]So it's terrifying.
[9:58]I mean, it's just terrifying.
[10:00]Right, rewarding and amazing, but also, anyway, sorry to.
[10:04]Well, I guess, but I think that with, you know,
[10:07]with books or movies or anything, like,
[10:09]we, like, wow, there's like two current obsessions and things.
[10:13]I mean, we want to explore the dark parts.
[10:15]Maybe it's to help prepare us for them.
[10:17]Maybe it's just our own worries.
[10:18]But with little voices, I did want to take it as far as I could
[10:22]because I was worrying about things.
[10:24]But also, there is some sense of being seen
[10:28]and understood even if it's a story that goes so far
[10:33]beyond your own experience.
[10:35]If you can connect with it, for me, it kind of,
[10:37]it brought me back to a more normal place,
[10:41]even though it's going to an extreme.
[10:42]I don't know if that made sense,
[10:43]but that's definitely how I felt when I was writing it.
[10:46]And your book is not just about being a new mother.
[10:48]It's about losing a friend.
[10:50]So there's this murder that happens right away.
[10:52]And then the investigation behind that.
[10:54]And after a while, I was like, did she work at the FBI?
[10:57]Did you intern there?
[10:58]So I think there was so much detail with the investigation
[11:01]and the agents and the protocol and all of it.
[11:04]So that was also very engrossing
[11:07]because you were like, in it with these people, right?
[11:10]But thank you.
[11:11]So a great way to procrastinate writing
[11:13]is by researching, I assume.
[11:15]So I loved going down rabbit holes online.
[11:18]And you can find crazy stuff.
[11:20]People talking about their experiences
[11:22]being investigated by the FBI.
[11:24]I don't know if it's true, but it's not true enough.
[11:26]And it just has to be believable if you're writing.
[11:29]So I loved looking into it.
[11:32]And there's also so much good TV.
[11:34]I mean, you just watch the wire or scandals, a great fixer
[11:38]show.
[11:38]I mean, there's just a lot of inspiration out there.
[11:41]And so I enjoyed the research and trying
[11:43]to create something that I really had no experience with.
[11:46]So I'm glad you liked it.
[11:47]That was fun for me.
[11:48]I wanted as a new mom who felt like I had a mushy brain,
[11:52]I wanted this story to have a pretty complex mystery
[11:54]at the center of it.
[11:56]Just that was something I was craving as a reader and a writer.
[11:59]And so there were a lot of twists and turns
[12:01]and that behind the police because that's
[12:03]just something I was in the mood to try to create.
[12:06]That had nothing to do with diapers
[12:09]and how many poops and peas there were that day
[12:11]or whatever the daily struggle was.
[12:14]So take me through your writing career.
[12:17]So to speak, how did you end up at this point
[12:20]where you could craft a thriller like this?
[12:22]Thank you.
[12:24]In my early 20s, I had a nice PR job and nonprofits.
[12:27]I was living in DC, I have a great boyfriend,
[12:30]who's now my husband, I was living in DuPont Circle,
[12:33]which is a really cool place to live.
[12:35]And I just felt really restless and unsatisfied.
[12:40]And I knew that all the other pieces of my life
[12:43]were going pretty well.
[12:44]And I finally narrowed it down to the fact
[12:46]that I wasn't being creative anymore.
[12:48]And so I just started writing.
[12:51]And at the time, I was reading women's fiction
[12:55]and some romance novels, I love romance.
[12:57]And I joined romance writers of America,
[12:59]which is an awesome organization, a woman
[13:01]who care a lot about craft.
[13:04]And so I just jumped in.
[13:06]And I mean, I wrote a really bad women's fiction.
[13:09]It was basically an adult princess diaries,
[13:11]but you know what?
[13:13]I wrote it and it was a good experience.
[13:15]And I just kept working.
[13:16]I wrote another book that I ended up
[13:17]querying probably well over 100 agents
[13:21]and had a lot of good feedback
[13:23]and went round around for really 10 years
[13:25]of just conferences and pitching and reading craft books
[13:31]and connecting with other writers.
[13:33]And there's a lot of ways to kind of go about it.
[13:36]And I didn't get my MFA,
[13:38]I mean, I did study English and college,
[13:39]but I think if you just love the craft of writing
[13:42]and you enjoy it, there are a lot of organizations
[13:45]that can really help you get there.
[13:46]And so any credit to this book and my debut
[13:50]is really just because there are a lot of people out there
[13:52]who have either written books
[13:53]or held sessions at conferences
[13:56]and just making yourself get out there and get in the mix.
[13:59]You can learn so much.
[14:01]And I've heard that there's sort of formula elements
[14:03]to a thriller.
[14:04]How did you do it?
[14:05]Did you have an outline?
[14:06]Did you have a checklist?
[14:07]How did you go about it?
[14:09]Yeah, so there's sort of two schools of thought
[14:11]about writing style.
[14:13]So there's writing by the city of your pants,
[14:15]the pantsters, kind of the funny term,
[14:17]or there's Outliners, right?
[14:19]And it feels like this very like your either A or your B.
[14:22]And for the 10 years I was writing,
[14:24]I was sort of a pants star.
[14:25]I was really writing by the seat of my pants.
[14:27]And for me, that felt creative and it felt exciting
[14:31]and you didn't know what was gonna happen next.
[14:33]But also at the end of it,
[14:35]the books were kind of a mess
[14:36]because as you're saying, there wasn't a structure.
[14:38]I mean, there was in that,
[14:40]like when you watch a movie,
[14:41]you know there should be a turning point here.
[14:43]You know, there's twists that you kind of instinctively know,
[14:47]but there's still more structure than that.
[14:48]So after I had my son and I started little voices,
[14:51]I told myself, look, you cannot write two books over 10 years
[14:55]and make this a career.
[14:57]So I studied structure very seriously
[15:00]ended up entering the national novel writing contest,
[15:02]Nana Raimo.
[15:03]So you write a really bad book basically in a month,
[15:07]which is a little bit scary, but it's fun
[15:09]and there are thousands of people all over the world doing it.
[15:13]And so I sat down and I outlined it as best I could.
[15:18]And there were still lots of discovery in that process.
[15:21]But now structure is my first thought.
[15:24]And because I know that the creation
[15:27]and the creativity is something that comes.
[15:30]But if the structure isn't there,
[15:32]particularly as you said for a thriller,
[15:34]you're gonna be in some trouble at the end.
[15:35]So I do love structure.
[15:37]I'm a reformed panster.
[15:38]And that's what works for me for now.
[15:42]But it can change, like probably with kids.
[15:44]Every book is different.
[15:46]I feel like it's like when you're trying to build a house,
[15:50]like this part I like is decorating
[15:53]or like picking a fabric or finding a cool pillow or something.
[15:56]But you have to get the floor plan
[15:58]or else you have nothing to really decorate.
[16:00]That's right.
[16:01]And the two by fours have to fit with other two by fours.
[16:05]Like some of that is not that exciting.
[16:08]But you will appreciate it when your roof doesn't fall in.
[16:10]Exactly.
[16:13]That's so funny.
[16:14]So tell me about book two.
[16:16]You already have book two launching in February, is that true?
[16:18]I do, you know, I actually just got.
[16:20]So this is the first time that I wrote a book
[16:22]and I knew someone was gonna read it.
[16:24]Cause my debut, I had no idea.
[16:26]And so that was a new experience.
[16:28]And I do think with the process of this,
[16:30]when I did a better job in terms of writing,
[16:33]like there were some craft things that were clicking,
[16:35]just through this experience of the first book.
[16:37]But it is a little scary thinking,
[16:39]okay, people are gonna read this.
[16:41]It was definitely kind of a sophomore experience.
[16:44]So I just got a bunch of notes back from my editor
[16:48]and I'm jumping into those.
[16:50]At this point, it's still set on the east side of Providence,
[16:53]Phillip, who's a character in Little Voices
[16:55]and Detective Ramos, who's also a character
[16:57]are gonna be in this book.
[16:58]But the main character, she is very different.
[17:00]And she's probably what people would consider
[17:02]an unlikable female character.
[17:04]So I certainly liked her or I liked writing about her.
[17:08]And she's a non-profit CEO who has a pretty serious
[17:12]drinking problem and she's accused of a murder
[17:15]and she's the only suspect.
[17:16]So she investigates the smarter of her as the main suspect
[17:20]through a vlog, which is something I discovered with my son,
[17:24]which are sort of a video diary of her looking into the crime.
[17:30]And that's both the crime, but then also an exploration
[17:33]of kind of who she is in her past.
[17:35]I'll probably need to work on that pitch a little bit,
[17:36]but that's generally what it sounds good.
[17:40]Do you have a title yet or can you not say?
[17:42]For right now, it's for the best.
[17:44]Like it.
[17:45]And you have lots of other titles for Little Voices.
[17:47]Yeah, this was the fourth, Little Voices was the fourth one.
[17:50]So that, I was very open to titles,
[17:54]but it's such a very particular, it's like a child's name.
[17:57]I mean, it just hits people a certain way
[18:00]and where we ended up, I was really happy with
[18:02]because the voices are kind of,
[18:04]I think a lot of the conflict in the central part
[18:06]of my main character's story.
[18:08]Tell me the other three again.
[18:10]I read it.
[18:11]Okay. So the first title I had was just like a focusing title,
[18:17]just to keep me focused.
[18:18]And it's dark is the road, like R-H-O-D-E, like Rhode Island.
[18:22]So obviously that's not going anywhere.
[18:25]But it helped me think about the darkness
[18:27]and a lack of clarity and then Rhode Island is also,
[18:30]I've only looked here eight years
[18:31]and I'm obsessed with this state.
[18:33]I think it's the most interesting quirky, cool place.
[18:36]So a lot of Little Voices has a lot of Rhode Island in it
[18:39]because that's where I am and I'm very fascinated by this place.
[18:43]Then the next one was Blood in the Water, which is a lot.
[18:48]And the feedback I got was it was maybe just a little too genre,
[18:54]which I guess means there's a little more women's fiction
[18:56]elements in this.
[18:57]And so it was a little too hard.
[18:58]So then this is the funny one.
[19:00]So I sent my agent a list of spread,
[19:02]like a spreadsheet list going back to your question earlier
[19:05]of title ideas.
[19:07]And the one that we landed on is the Afterbirth,
[19:11]which makes everyone kind of sit up and so that got quickly
[19:15]mixed by my editor.
[19:17]And I sent her a little voice and she came back
[19:21]with Little Voices and I was like, oh, that's it.
[19:25]So titles, yeah, titles, covers.
[19:28]It is marketing, but it's important because it hits you
[19:30]with certain why and it's supposed to communicate
[19:33]what those 100,000 words are about in a second.
[19:36]It's really wild.
[19:38]I mean, it's a wild that it even works at all
[19:41]to attract the right people.
[19:43]I mean, I guess they've got it down to a science,
[19:45]but I feel like even I've noticed as I've been going through
[19:48]like more piles by genre, like even the font.
[19:51]I feel like the font, the capitalist versus lowercase,
[19:55]like the colors, like this is a thriller versus this
[19:58]is not a thriller, you know, it's it.
[20:00]Yeah, easy to get dumped into a category,
[20:02]so maybe it's more helpful to be very clear
[20:05]about what type of book you're writing.
[20:07]Yes, I mean, the font, I think, you know,
[20:09]is it literary fiction?
[20:10]What's trendy and literary fiction?
[20:13]It's really interesting.
[20:15]I'm a little geeky about fonts and book covers it,
[20:17]and I love to just kind of see what's coming out,
[20:21]because it tells you a lot about
[20:23]how the publisher sees this book in the market,
[20:25]and, you know, when it works, it works.
[20:28]And it's exciting to kind of see trends,
[20:30]and yeah, I love it too.
[20:32]I think it goes back to what we were saying
[20:33]before we started recording about
[20:35]how we enjoy Instagram, because it's an opportunity
[20:37]for people to be creative, right?
[20:39]And it gives everybody a glimpse
[20:41]into someone else's point of view on something,
[20:43]which in and of itself is interesting.
[20:45]And that's sort of like the book cover thing.
[20:47]It's like somebody else's take on something,
[20:49]and that creative output is also super interesting.
[20:52]And interpretation, which is all writing a book is,
[20:56]that's the kind of crazy part of it is,
[20:57]you just write it, and then everyone else
[21:00]will reflect it back in their own experiences.
[21:02]And the same with the book cover,
[21:03]often it's a great artist who does book covers.
[21:06]The woman who did my book cover
[21:08]does all sorts of really cool visual art projects,
[21:11]and then she also does book covers.
[21:12]And so you get another person's interpretation
[21:15]of your story based on their own artistic experience.
[21:19]I ended up really enjoying it even more than I expected,
[21:22]because it's just interesting to see
[21:24]a creative person's interpretation of a book.
[21:27]Right, so interesting.
[21:28]Well, awesome.
[21:30]We were also talking earlier about some of your advice
[21:33]to aspiring authors.
[21:35]You were giving me advice, but talk to me about following
[21:39]momentum and when life sort of throws things at you,
[21:43]your advice on what to do with it.
[21:44]And any other advice you have for aspiring authors.
[21:47]There's something about a creative momentum,
[21:49]and whether it's the universe or the world,
[21:51]I think there's a lot of writers who've also written
[21:54]about this, but when something happens to you,
[21:56]that really strikes a chord, and you feel passion about it,
[21:59]and you feel energy for it, and you want to pursue it.
[22:02]I think you have to kind of honor it,
[22:05]and you have to follow it, and see what happens.
[22:08]And hopefully it connects with other people.
[22:11]Hopefully there's opportunities to share it,
[22:13]but I do think there is a creative power
[22:15]in following the momentum.
[22:17]And when you're open to what's happening around you,
[22:20]I mean, for me, I never even considered writing
[22:23]a thriller about a new mom,
[22:24]but because that was my experience,
[22:26]and my heart was kind of longing to be connected
[22:28]to people in that way, I just went for it.
[22:31]And had to work really hard to get it to a place
[22:33]that it was publishable, but I think if you are drawn
[22:37]to a topic, if you're connected particularly,
[22:40]and have experiences that come from true emotional places,
[22:45]particularly for a debut, when it's really hard
[22:47]to get a debut novel published, and you're improving,
[22:50]and that's just how it is.
[22:51]And so if you can write, I think from those true experiences
[22:55]that really follow them through,
[22:58]I think there's a lot of power in that, and truth really,
[23:00]and people will feel that connection.
[23:02]I mean, the rawness of new motherhood is in my book
[23:06]because I was in it.
[23:07]And I think that's almost like a form of shorthand,
[23:10]and it takes you to those important creative places
[23:13]that can be harder to find as a newer author,
[23:16]because they're true to you and your experiences.
[23:19]And do you feel like you read a lot of thrillers
[23:21]to get a sense of it, or did you just jump?
[23:24]I mean, I know you had already referenced the groups
[23:26]that you're a part of and meeting other authors,
[23:28]but was reading an essential part for you
[23:31]in crafting your own thriller?
[23:33]Yeah, so it was kind of two-fold.
[23:35]So the one hand, this would have been 2015.
[23:38]There weren't quite as many thrillers with new moms
[23:40]at the center of that.
[23:41]And so part of it was just wanting to see a new mom
[23:44]at the center of a thriller,
[23:45]which is my favorite genre.
[23:46]I read lots of thrillers.
[23:47]But it is often a detective,
[23:49]the domestic thriller kind of boom was just happening,
[23:54]but it was much more kind of gone girl.
[23:56]Versus the perfect mother by Amy Maloy
[23:58]is a wonderful book with new moms at the center.
[24:01]The couple next door by Sheryla Pena
[24:02]is another great host-partum thriller,
[24:05]but that was just starting to come out.
[24:07]And so I just had a longing to see something
[24:09]in the marker place, which I think is a good sign.
[24:12]If you are a reader in your genre,
[24:15]and you have a feeling that you wanna see something else,
[24:18]I think that's a good instinct, maybe follow that
[24:21]and see what you can create.
[24:23]And then as other books started coming out,
[24:25]that gave me some confidence that, okay,
[24:27]I'm not the only one, people do wanna see new moms
[24:31]at the heart of these thrillers like I did.
[24:33]And so it kind of gave me some extra confidence too.
[24:35]And are you thinking you might ever write a book
[24:38]about the insecurity of being like a teenage mom,
[24:42]or eventually like an eight year,
[24:45]I mean, how old are your kids now?
[24:46]I'm not sure.
[24:47]He's four and a half.
[24:48]He's four and a half.
[24:49]So are you like going to kindergarten?
[24:51]Like maybe now you'll just have to follow your life, right?
[24:53]That sounds great.
[24:55]I think I've really enjoyed exploring new motherhood.
[24:59]I think if I tried to write this book now
[25:01]with a four and a half year old,
[25:02]there's so much I don't remember.
[25:04]I, you know, like kind of flipping back
[25:06]through this book, I was like, oh yeah.
[25:08]I think when you're in the moment
[25:09]to capture it either through journals
[25:11]or diary, you know, just it's just so easy to forget it.
[25:14]And not only to forget the particular experiences,
[25:17]but to forget the emotions
[25:19]and what you really felt and what really made you cry
[25:23]and what was really hard.
[25:24]Like, you know, I think I probably would have forgotten
[25:27]how difficult showering was if you're a nursing mother
[25:30]because it hurts.
[25:32]That's just something you want to forget.
[25:33]But if you're writing and creating around these moments,
[25:36]I do think it captures it.
[25:37]So, and you know, my four and a half year old's pretty nutty.
[25:40]So, there's a lot to capture and a lot to follow.
[25:43]They're very entertaining.
[25:46]Well, I look forward to following the progression
[25:49]of your mothering as well as your writing.
[25:51]And hopefully it's not quite as mired and anxiety
[25:55]as it was in the beginning.
[25:56]So, well, no promises.
[25:58]Well, thank you so much for sharing your experience
[26:02]and coming on my podcast.
[26:04]Thank you.
[26:05]And it's really wonderful.
[26:06]And like I said, I'm such a fan
[26:07]and it's incredible to hear writers talk about their experiences
[26:12]and what goes on behind them.
[26:13]So, thank you very much for all that you do.
[26:15]No problem.
[26:16]It's my pleasure.
[26:17]Thanks.
[26:19]Thanks again for my new partnership with Book of the Month Club.
[26:22]Book of the Month.com.
[26:24]Use code ZIBZIBY to get your first book for just $5
[26:29]and sign up for this really fantastic subscription
[26:31]box service.
[26:32]Thanks for listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:35]You can follow me on Instagram at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:39]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[26:43]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[26:45]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[26:47]Thanks for listening.
[26:48]You can always email me at ZIBY at ZIBY Owens.com.