Bess Kalb, NOBODY WILL TELL YOU THIS BUT ME
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[1:48]Best Call with the author of Nobody Will Tell You This But Me. Beth is an Emmy nominated writer
[1:52]for Jimmy Kimmel Live and actually wrote for the Emmy Awards in 2012 and 2016. And she wrote for
[1:58]the Academy Awards in 2017 and 2018. She regularly wrote for The New Yorker's Daily Shouts
[2:04]and received a WGA Award in 2016. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and baby.
[2:10]Welcome, Beth. Thanks so much for coming on momstone. Have time to read books.
[2:13]Thank you for having me on this wonderful show. I really appreciate it. No problem.
[2:18]So nobody will tell you this but me. Can you please tell listeners what it's about and what
[2:24]inspired you to write it? Sure. This book is about my beloved grandmother and I was inspired to write
[2:30]it because she started telling me her life story from the time I was a baby. And she passed away
[2:37]in 2017 and in an effort to feel close to her again and to bring her back, I decided to tell
[2:44]her life story in her own words and her voice. And so for me, it was partially a grief processing,
[2:50]exercise, and a cathartic way to reconnect to the woman that I loved so much.
[2:56]And tell me about, so Beth was recently on an Instagram Live. I just did for the coronavirus
[3:01]special basically. So I'm making her repeat this in case you miss this. This will come out later.
[3:07]But talk to me about the moment at your grandmother's funeral where you wrote a eulogy in her voice
[3:13]and then realized how well you could capture it. Yeah. I mean, the real moment when I
[3:18]when I realized that maybe I am able to channel her in a way that is meaningful to the people
[3:25]who really knew her best was right after she died. I was given the task of delivering eulogy
[3:32]at her funeral. And I tried several different versions of speeches and I remember feeling really
[3:39]frustrated that they were just sort of platitudes and the way that we talk about death can feel
[3:44]almost try sometimes because we stick to a script and we have a certain vocabulary and discussing
[3:52]the deceased. And I found the way to be most authentic about it and the way to really honor her
[3:57]and really be true to her was to deliver the eulogy. And so I spoke about what she would think of
[4:06]her funeral in her voice to my family. And it was such a sad day. The fact that she was a very,
[4:12]old woman at her passing doesn't at all. I think diminished the enormity of her loss and
[4:18]how very tragic it was. So everyone was upset. No one was coming in ready to laugh. Of course,
[4:23]this is a funeral. I skipped mascara. At the end of the eulogy, my family was wiping away
[4:30]laughter tears because I knew how my grandmother would have reacted to everybody coming out,
[4:37]having to get dressed, having to figure out what to wear, what to say. And so I just sort of
[4:41]wise cracked as her and through this sort of family roast, I brought her back to the people who
[4:47]needed her the most. And so I realized, wow, I do have her voice. I'm able to bring her back and maybe
[4:54]there's a bigger literary project here. And that's what the book is. Wow. And it's so funny too.
[5:00]I mean, your grandmother is such a like a spitfire. You know, you can, and you really did. She's
[5:06]so real, like jumps off the pages. I mean, I can't imagine she's actually different than how
[5:10]she seems. I mean, I went through a lot of her own voicemails. I saved every voice now. I still
[5:18]have more on Skype so I can show you. But in my voicemail, you'll see, oh, my son's pediatrician,
[5:24]and then ground the Florida grandma's guard. Grandma, grandma, grandma, grandma, grandma. It's,
[5:28]it's just, yeah, it's all great. I'm going to take a picture. I'm taking a picture of you doing
[5:34]just that. That's so amazing. Wow. It's just, it's just her voicemails. And I, I think I'm such a
[5:40]a technophobe that I know that even though they're on a cloud allegedly, the act of deleting
[5:45]them from my phone is something I can't do. So I, I have all of these voicemails. I have so many
[5:51]real artifacts of her voice and listen to them to try to bring her back. But also, this is a woman
[5:58]who I spoke to almost every day since I was born. That's not hyperbole. She, she really did come up
[6:04]and help phrase me when both my parents were working full time when I was a very, very new baby.
[6:10]And so it almost feel like I'm a AI bot that can generate my grandma because I've listened to her
[6:16]so much that I can almost have the algorithm for Bobby Bell and decide how she would react to a
[6:23]certain situation just because she was so close to me in her life that after her death,
[6:29]I feel like she's still here. And so yeah, I bring her back in the way that I think is most
[6:35]authentic to her, which is hilariously funny. She I'm a comedy writer. I hang out with comedian
[6:41]a hung out before the apocalypse. I hung out with comedians all the time. But my grandma's still
[6:46]one of the funniest people I've ever met. She is somebody who would deliver a line with this sort
[6:51]of arched eyebrow where she would know what she was saying, but just totally knocky flat on your
[6:55]back. She knew she was funny. And so I think that the fact that the book ends up being funny is
[7:01]very much true to who she was. So one of the things I found really interesting in
[7:05]the story was the role of your mother in all of this. So you'd go into detail about your grandmother's
[7:12]sort of difficult relationship with your mom when she was growing up. And then you talk about
[7:18]the closeness with your grandma. So what did your mom, how did your mom respond to this book?
[7:23]Has she like did she read the book? Like what? Yes. I mean, I'm sure she does. That's a great
[7:28]question. My mom was actually the primary source for the book. When I was writing it,
[7:34]I would call my mom at all hours being like, mom, tell me the story again about when you try to
[7:40]sue your school board. Tell me the story about when you left at age 16. Tell me the story about
[7:44]when you started sleepwalking. Tell me about grandma going away for three months to Europe and you were
[7:49]she was really on the other end of the phone through the writing of the book to give me facts
[7:54]when I needed fact checking. My mom was my best resource and a true primary source and witness to
[8:00]my grandma's play. So obviously she knew I was writing the book and would supply me with very
[8:05]personal details about her relationship with my grandma as I was writing, which isn't to say that
[8:11]when she picked up the manuscript for the first time and started reading it, it was easy for her.
[8:16]In fact, she made it through two pages before crying and putting it down and saying,
[8:22]that's grandma, I can't do this. Eventually, I just said, mom, this is a purely legal situation
[8:30]now. You need to read the book as you know it's about you, but she did. I know what she said to
[8:39]me, but my mom loved the book and I think she appreciated that the book was true to their relationship.
[8:46]And often, I think it speaks to something we were discussing earlier about how we talk about
[8:52]the dead. It's easy to lionize and to idealize the deceased, but my grandmother as fabulous
[9:00]and inspirational as she was was a real person and a flawed person. And I think the biggest regret
[9:06]and flaw for life was her relationship with her only daughter, my mom. And so, including that
[9:13]tough relationship in this love story about a grandmother and granddaughter, I think just adds a
[9:18]dimension to who she was that keeps her relatable, but also is just true to who she was as a person.
[9:26]Your book makes me want to try to do the same thing for my grandmother's voice.
[9:30]Like, totally. Like, should. No, no, I mean, I don't want to copy you, but it's just like,
[9:34]it's such a great way to give a tribute to somebody that you love, especially someone with such a
[9:39]distinctive voice. And it's also like, it wasn't just about your relationship with her. This is,
[9:45]this could have been written as like a family saga intergenerational, whatever, because you
[9:51]included so much background from Europe to the book, like riding the boat to America to like,
[9:57]the illnesses. And there's so much.
[10:00]at history in it, too.
[10:01]And it was literally like as I was reading it.
[10:03]I was like, oh my gosh, that's how this woman came to be.
[10:07]Like, you know, like without anyway.
[10:10]So, did you know?
[10:11]I think that's such a part of it.
[10:13]It is an immigrant story.
[10:15]It's a story about the full scope of the life.
[10:18]It's not just our relationship.
[10:19]It's her origin story.
[10:21]It's her superhero origin story.
[10:23]And I don't think it would be copying it at all if you want.
[10:26]I would be so thrilled if this book set off
[10:29]a chain reaction of people writing
[10:30]in the voices of the women who matter to them
[10:33]as a way to understand them better
[10:34]and a way to fully flesh out their relationship
[10:36]with that woman.
[10:38]I found it to be just as a writing exercise,
[10:40]really therapeutic.
[10:41]But I think it, you know,
[10:43]especially if we have all this time now,
[10:45]why not?
[10:46]Why not get into it and connect with the people
[10:49]who you can't see by writing as them?
[10:51]It sounds crazy, but it did make me feel very close
[10:53]to the person that I lost.
[10:55]No, I love them.
[10:56]Maybe it could be an interesting exercise.
[10:58]Totally. I'm up for it.
[10:59]I'll try it.
[11:02]There was also this line about your,
[11:04]so her love story with your grandfather
[11:07]also was so like vibrant and real.
[11:10]And she said something, well,
[11:11]you said something in her voice,
[11:12]but it's as if she said,
[11:14]if I could see one thing for the rest of eternity,
[11:16]it would be your grandfather laughing.
[11:18]Just made me want to cry.
[11:20]I mean, really I might cry now.
[11:21]It's just the sweetest.
[11:24]And he told you at the service that it sounded like
[11:26]she was actually there too.
[11:27]What has happened in your relationship with him since her loss?
[11:31]My grandfather is the person who has experienced
[11:35]her loss most profoundly and acutely.
[11:37]There's, I've seen various people grieve throughout my life.
[11:42]I've never seen anybody grieve with the sort of vehemence
[11:47]and presence of my grandpa.
[11:49]He misses her every day in a very real way
[11:51]and is built rituals around grieving her
[11:53]that are part of his personal story for him to tell.
[11:56]But I will say that the book for him is a way
[12:00]for him to connect with her.
[12:02]And a few days before it was released,
[12:04]I was walking with my son in a partner by our house
[12:08]and I got a call from my grandpa's cell phone,
[12:11]which is really an in case of emergency thing.
[12:14]And I remember sort of giving the baby
[12:17]to my husband a thing at and he called
[12:19]and he just said, thank you for doing this.
[12:21]Thank you for giving her to so many people.
[12:24]So even though the book was something that was personally
[12:29]healing, there's no way for him to heal from her loss.
[12:32]But it was a way to be closer to her in a way.
[12:36]He was so thankful that other people would fall in love
[12:39]with her.
[12:39]And that's something that I wasn't expecting
[12:42]but it was something that really blew me away
[12:44]because I think when you love somebody,
[12:47]you feel like the whole world should love them too.
[12:50]And for my grandpa, feeling this private,
[12:54]daily, lonely loss of this love of his life for 60 years,
[12:58]knowing that other people would love and grieve Bobby as well
[13:02]made him feel less alone.
[13:04]And so it almost feels like every person who reads the book
[13:06]is joining the club with my beloved grandpa
[13:10]and in solidarity is missing her with him,
[13:13]which makes me feel like I've finally done something to help.
[13:17]You've done a mitzvah.
[13:19]I mean, that's something you have.
[13:22]There's like what you should do now,
[13:23]you need to do like a little like Facebook group
[13:26]for your grandfather and like everybody who reads it
[13:29]should literally go in and like send him little notes
[13:31]and write something that you definitely do that.
[13:34]That's a great idea.
[13:35]Like I should, I was thinking about even putting a PO box
[13:39]for him that people could write letters saying that they,
[13:42]or maybe I would go through them first
[13:44]and then I could send him the pictures.
[13:46]Or he should be away.
[13:48]Even just do an email address.
[13:50]And as people to send him a note about what part,
[13:53]what quote of hers resonated within the most
[13:56]or what they fell in love with.
[13:57]And then he could just read those emails every day.
[14:00]That's a great idea.
[14:02]I'm gonna talk to my mom about this
[14:04]and then talk to my grandpa about it and see what he wants.
[14:06]But we're all isolated now and lonely.
[14:09]My grandpa has been living in essentially
[14:12]the isolation of the heart for three years.
[14:15]So anything that brings us all together,
[14:17]I feel like is what we need.
[14:19]Oh, that sounds like that.
[14:20]That's a great idea.
[14:20]Oh my gosh.
[14:21]Yeah, but it's also, but it also,
[14:23]I feel like writing and writing a book like this
[14:25]is an act of joy as much as it is at a brief.
[14:29]It's a way to feel connected to someone who's gone
[14:31]and bring them back.
[14:32]And so I feel like every time a reader picks this up
[14:37]and is able to delight in everything
[14:40]that my grandmother delighted in,
[14:41]is able to laugh at voicemails that she left,
[14:43]laugh at conversations that she had with me.
[14:45]That's bringing her back, that's celebrating her.
[14:49]Absolutely.
[14:50]So how did you get into writing to begin with?
[14:52]How did you end up, I mean, I followed your history
[14:56]through how you told it in these little clips.
[14:58]But how did you end up writing for Jimmy Kimmel
[15:00]on the Academy Awards and now this book?
[15:02]And yeah, I mean, I started writing,
[15:05]I was a writer from the time I was in kindergarten
[15:08]when I wrote my own version of a Madeline book.
[15:12]It was called Madeline at the Ballet,
[15:14]and it almost rhymed.
[15:16]But it was something that I was very serious about.
[15:19]I read the Madeline book and I said,
[15:21]I would like to contribute a Madeline book.
[15:24]And I wrote it and it ended with the page.
[15:26]And then one day she was a star
[15:28]and then she owned a salad bar.
[15:30]And I've ever said,
[15:33]and that's a line that my mom and I repeat to each other
[15:36]whenever I'm like, oh, I have a deadline.
[15:38]I don't know if I can do this, you go.
[15:39]And then one day she was a star and then she owned a salad bar,
[15:41]which is to say you are always a writer.
[15:43]You were always a writer who was at first unintentionally
[15:47]very funny and then by profession,
[15:50]required to be funny.
[15:51]But I think having that sort of bug in me
[15:54]from a very young age and that drive in me
[15:57]from a very young age is what kept me
[15:59]in this thankless and crushing profession
[16:03]that I mean, knowing that there's something in me
[16:06]that is just saying, sure, but you are a writer.
[16:09]Is something that I think a lot of writers can relate to.
[16:12]I got my professional started writing just basically
[16:16]the only way I could whoever would hire me
[16:18]is who I wrote for.
[16:20]And when I graduated college,
[16:22]I got an internship at GQ Magazine.
[16:25]I don't know anything about men's still don't,
[16:28]but I certainly was excited to be paid a dollar award to write.
[16:34]And so I ended up profiling comedians
[16:37]and actors for GQ and doing little interviews with them
[16:41]and little write-ups about very small things
[16:44]for GQ's culture blog and in interviewing comedians
[16:48]and interviewing filmmakers, I remember thinking,
[16:51]okay, I would like to be one of those people one day.
[16:54]But for the meantime, I am a journalist.
[16:56]I will interview.
[16:57]And so I kept taking journalism gigs.
[17:00]I ended up writing for Wired Magazine in San Francisco.
[17:04]I wrote freelance for a whole host of places
[17:07]while just basically making rent.
[17:09]And I basically never said no to a job.
[17:13]I would write for anything.
[17:14]I even did reviews of VRBOs for a job.
[17:18]I would do, I would take any gig.
[17:19]I believe that to be a good writer,
[17:21]you really just have to write all the time.
[17:23]It's a muscle, you just have to keep doing it.
[17:25]And so I did.
[17:26]Eventually, when I was at Wired,
[17:28]I was a fact checker,
[17:29]which is a really creatively antithetical job.
[17:33]You're basically a stick in the mud,
[17:35]replying to real writers going,
[17:36]but fortunately, according to the abstract of this paper,
[17:39]or I understand you have notes on this,
[17:42]I would love to see some verification.
[17:44]It was crushing.
[17:45]So as a side project, I started tweeting.
[17:49]I started this sort of comedy Twitter account
[17:51]that was just for my friends.
[17:53]It was just my observations, my voice, a fun side thing,
[17:58]no big deal.
[17:59]One tweet blew up, got noticed by this comedian,
[18:02]Rob Delaney, who has a fabulous show
[18:04]on Amazon called Catastrophe, which everybody should see.
[18:07]And what did you do?
[18:09]They tweeted it.
[18:10]Wait, what did the tweet say?
[18:11]You know what, this is awful.
[18:12]I don't even remember.
[18:14]It was just one of the funny,
[18:16]I would write like two tweets a day.
[18:17]And this was one of them.
[18:19]And he favored it, which was before,
[18:22]I don't just start it, harden it, I don't know.
[18:24]And then gave me a follow Friday,
[18:26]which is something that happened on Twitter
[18:28]a long time ago.
[18:29]It's a super funny personal art best bell,
[18:32]which is and was my Twitter handle.
[18:34]And overnight, I started getting hundreds of followers.
[18:37]I think I had like 500 followers
[18:39]from my like 30 college friend.
[18:41]And then all of these SNL and Letterman
[18:43]and Family Guy people started following me.
[18:45]And so I had this secret life as fact checker by day,
[18:49]like good studio journalism girl,
[18:52]and then secret comedy person on the internet.
[18:55]And this went on for a couple of years
[18:58]and eventually one of the people who followed me
[19:01]is this incredible journalist and comedian,
[19:04]her name's Nelsko Bell.
[19:05]She's a right contributor to Vanity Fair
[19:08]and also had been a Letterman writer and a Simpsons writer.
[19:12]And she said, come to LA, stay on my couch,
[19:15]I wanna introduce you to a bunch of people.
[19:17]And so I did and I met these Family Guy and Simpsons writers.
[19:21]And when, oh my God, this could be my life,
[19:23]I could be a real TV writer.
[19:25]And I went back to San Francisco for a year
[19:27]and forgot about it.
[19:29]Until one day Nels sent me an email saying,
[19:32]Kimmel is looking to hire a writer, submit a packet.
[19:36]And so I watched 10 episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
[19:39]I hadn't really seen much of the show.
[19:41]I knew Jimmy Kimmel Live was a TV personality.
[19:45]I was a fan, but I watched a bunch of shows.
[19:47]And then I wrote a show in Jimmy's voice
[19:49]from top to bottom, the whole monologue in paragraph form,
[19:53]which is not what a packet is.
[19:55]A packet is a bunch of pages of jokes.
[19:57]But I did basically what I did in the book.
[20:00]to Jimmy. It was like, okay, I will just write in the character of Jimmy Kimmel and do jokes about the news back.
[20:08]They called me in the view. I left the interview. I called my mom from the Zara and Hollywood Boulevard and said, I think I just got a job.
[20:16]And then I, it's eight years later.
[20:18]Oh my gosh.
[20:20]Yeah, so that's the long-winded. Sorry, that was a very long-winded.
[20:24]I loved it. I was confident.
[20:25]I think you're a great storyteller.
[20:27]So that's, that's how then that led to Oscars and Emmys and things like that.
[20:31]Oh my gosh. So when you write for Jimmy Kimmel, is it one of, is it like a writer's room situation where you all get together?
[20:37]So it's a very solitary practice writing for late night.
[20:40]You write alone on your computer and submit jokes to a writer's assistant and then Jimmy goes through and picks the jokes and sketches that will work for that day.
[20:50]And then we all come together and punch up and work collaboratively.
[20:53]But the beginning of the day and the bulk of our work is done individually.
[20:57]What if you're just not feeling funny? What if you're in like a really bad mood?
[21:01]You know what? I would say 99% of the days, that's how you wake up and feel.
[21:06]And by the end, you just have that cursor blinking on your Microsoft Word document and by the time the joke deadline hits, you somehow have filled up a page.
[21:16]I can't explain it.
[21:18]You just, it's just a muscle and you have to do it.
[21:21]You know, it's, you just sort of punch in, write your jokes, send it and live to tell the tale.
[21:28]Oh my gosh. So then when did you write this book at night or when did you do this?
[21:32]No, so I wrote it only during, I couldn't write, well, I couldn't do it.
[21:36]I write for a living and then had to write this book, wanted to write this book.
[21:40]And so I couldn't do it at night. I did it only over our hiatus when the show wasn't filming.
[21:45]So I could completely turn off my TV writer brain and just be my author self.
[21:51]And so I wrote it in these discrete chunks of two weeks at a time.
[21:55]We have eight weeks off the year I took two years and would do the bulk of the writing during those hiatus and then editing and conceptualizing and thinking about structure during the work here.
[22:07]But the real pure writing would happen during hiatus.
[22:10]So you didn't really get a break. No. And then I got pregnant.
[22:16]I mean, you were married. I didn't come out of the way.
[22:19]I married to the married to my college boyfriend who I moved to San Francisco for.
[22:25]And so it all paid off ladies.
[22:29]And that story is also in the book.
[22:32]But I, I,
[22:34]the only side question did your grandmother end up coming around.
[22:37]Because I feel like she was so negative about your husband in the beginning.
[22:40]You were so funny about it.
[22:42]Well, you know, she was just mystifying us about anyone who married and on due or date and on due.
[22:46]But in her, my date and Mary went hand in hand and she was absolutely right.
[22:50]The only person who's a bigger fan of my husband than myself and my baby was my grandma.
[22:56]I loved him so much.
[22:59]Would take his side routinely.
[23:02]Would ask to talk to him.
[23:05]She loved them and he loved her and they would often,
[23:08]they were on the same wavelength about a lot.
[23:10]My grandmother has been a huge fan of my husband and then we had lunch the other day.
[23:14]She's 95 and she's starting to get very confused.
[23:17]And he got up at our lunch to go to the bathroom and she goes,
[23:20]have you two been going together for long?
[23:23]Oh, I know.
[23:24]It was so sad.
[23:25]I was like, yeah, you know what, Goggy were,
[23:27]we're married and she's like, oh, you are not.
[23:29]And I said, yes, we are.
[23:31]And she said, if you were married, I would have been at the wedding.
[23:34]And I said, you were at the wedding.
[23:36]And she's like, well, I'm very confused because I see you wearing a wedding ring,
[23:39]but there's no way you married him.
[23:41]Anyway, it was very sad.
[23:43]That's sweet.
[23:44]I know it's sad.
[23:45]Anyway.
[23:46]It is so sweet.
[23:47]What a tough thing.
[23:48]Yeah.
[23:49]I'm glad I'm glad she, the two of them are big fans despite, you know,
[23:53]yeah, the religion road book in the beginning.
[23:56]Yeah.
[23:57]Well, I bring up the pregnancy because I finished the final draft while four months pregnant with my son.
[24:03]And so I was, I would write and barf.
[24:06]This is the first trimester of a pregnancy.
[24:10]And I had this deadline.
[24:11]And so I would write and just like eat playing pasta and crackers and made it through.
[24:17]Wow.
[24:18]So the book is dedicated to both my grandmother and my son because I wrote it for and containing both of them in an odd way.
[24:27]Wow.
[24:28]Are you like over writing books or do you think you'll write another one or are you already writing another one?
[24:33]Yeah.
[24:34]I'm already writing another one.
[24:35]I love writing books.
[24:36]It ended up being something that floats this book for naturally and readily from me just because I'm so close to this character and this voice.
[24:45]And so I realized, well, look, I'm a fraud.
[24:48]I'm not a real writer.
[24:49]I just write invoices.
[24:50]Why don't I just pick some more characters to write from this.
[24:52]So that's what I'm doing in my next book.
[24:54]Oh, I love it.
[24:55]Can you share who the character is?
[24:57]I would always say too much about it just because it's still changing, but I'm writing right now from the perspective of a nine-year-old girl.
[25:03]And it's the most fun I've had writing.
[25:06]And I have a stack of camp letters that I wrote my parents when I was nine.
[25:11]I wrote a ton of letters every day.
[25:13]My parents recently gave them to me.
[25:15]And I am working backwards from those.
[25:18]Best.
[25:19]I have a big, like, not type where it was called, container full of my camp letters from when I was nine.
[25:25]So if you need any additional information, my mother also recently was like, I'm cleaning out my, that I'm cleaning out your old room.
[25:31]Take all your letters.
[25:32]So I have them all.
[25:33]And yeah, I'm glad you're doing that.
[25:35]We should talk about that at some point.
[25:36]If I write out a material.
[25:37]Yeah.
[25:38]I use my camp traumas to enlighten you.
[25:43]Well, I know you've already included a lot of great advice for aspiring authors, but do you have any last minute words of wisdom as opposed to, in addition to, you know, building up the muscle and dealing with the blinking cursor and all the rest?
[25:56]Yeah.
[25:57]Yeah, I don't.
[25:58]I mean, I think I don't have the answers.
[26:01]I just know what's worked for me.
[26:03]And what's worked for me is to write all the time and write every day in some form.
[26:09]We don't all have the luxury of being able to do that, especially juggling so many things with motherhood.
[26:16]And, you know, moms don't have time to read, moms don't have time to write.
[26:20]Yet we do all of it.
[26:21]We do read and we do write.
[26:23]And I think the way to do it is just to set aside a little bit of time every day, even if it's five minutes to see what comes out.
[26:29]Some days there'll be nothing.
[26:30]Some days there'll be four times as much as what you had.
[26:33]I think setting aside that time for yourself is so crucial because maybe your next book will come out of that.
[26:38]I love that.
[26:39]Well, thank you so much for coming on mom's time to read books.
[26:42]And thank you for doing that Instagram live and being the first person I'm doing an online book club with and all the rest.
[26:48]And I hope that we get to meet in person sometime because I feel like we could trade camp stories and lots of other stories.
[26:56]Thank you so much, Debbie.
[26:58]Thank you so much for your shout out on Good Morning America as well.
[27:01]I screamed.
[27:02]I was so exciting.
[27:04]Thank you to all of your listeners for supporting women who write and being in this together with us.
[27:10]And it's just great to be here and talk to you.
[27:12]You too.
[27:13]All right.
[27:14]Thanks.
[27:15]Thank you.
[27:16]Bye, Beth.
[27:17]Of course.
[27:18]No problem.
[27:19]You've been listening to moms don't have time to read books with Zibi Owens.
[27:23]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com to get more updates about episodes like these and also lots of live events.
[27:31]Thanks again to Good Pods for sponsoring this episode of moms don't have time to read books.
[27:35]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time to read books.
[27:39]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[27:43]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[27:48]Thanks for listening.
[27:49]You could always email me at zibiatzibiowans.com.