David Baldacci, WALK THE WIRE
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:11]Moms Don't Have Time to Read books. Thanks so much for listening to my podcast.
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[0:29]I'm happy to be partnering today with this really cool company called Modern Majang,
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[1:15]Modern Majang and get this set. Why not? I had the best time interviewing David Baldachi at
[1:21]730 in the morning on the publication day for his latest novel Walk the Wire. David is a best
[1:27]selling author. His first novel was Absolute Power in 1996, the feature film adaptation that followed
[1:33]with Clint Eastwood as its director and star was just one of the many film adaptations of his
[1:40]40 novels that he's written for adults all have been national and international bestsellers,
[1:45]and as I mentioned several have been adapted for film and TV. His novels are published in over 45
[1:50]languages and more than 80 countries with over 130 million copies sold worldwide.
[1:57]Okay, that's not enough. David has also published seven novels for young readers. A native of Virginia,
[2:02]David received his bachelor's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and his law degree from
[2:06]the University of Virginia School of Law after which he practiced law in DC. He's also a devoted
[2:12]philanthropist and his greatest efforts are dedicated to his family's wishy well foundation,
[2:17]which he and his wife Michelle founded and give grants about reading. So listen to our episode,
[2:23]I had so much fun talking to him and I bet you'll have fun listening. Hi, David. How are you?
[2:28]I'm fine. How are you doing? I'm good. Congratulations on your pub date. So exciting.
[2:32]Thank you. He never gets old. I actually was wondering after writing so many books and having so many
[2:38]pub days. Do you even care anymore? Is it exciting or what? I definitely do. I definitely do care.
[2:47]So I'm sure every book to you has something special and meaningful and maybe there's a story attached
[2:53]to the writing or just something that you know you'll remember forever about it. What what happened
[2:57]when writing block the wire that that maybe stood out for you versus all the other books that you've
[3:02]written? Yeah, I guess I guess probably for me was going to such a very different geographic place
[3:08]when I'd never been before and maybe digging down more personally into Becker than I had before.
[3:14]And you know, also, even though it hadn't happened when I was writing the book,
[3:19]since it's pub day in the middle of the pandemic, you know, that one is pretty memorable too.
[3:23]So life definitely has changed over the last three or four months. That's true. I mean,
[3:27]how are you coping with that? I mean, how about your head around? Yeah, we're sheltering in
[3:32]place and sheltering in place and you know, kind of follow all the health experts advice and
[3:37]you're trying to do all the right things and you know, keep out of people's ways and have to
[3:42]you know, go to work and you know, I feel like I have it easy. I you know, the people who have
[3:47]no work in healthcare centers and first responders and hospitals and all that. I can only imagine
[3:52]those people are going through. It's just it's horrible. I agree. Oh my gosh. So walk the wire for
[3:57]listeners who might not know what this book is about. Would you mind explaining it? Just a brief synopsis?
[4:03]Yeah, so this is the sixth installment of the Amos Decker series. He's my memory man. He's
[4:07]his ex football player who had a brain trauma while he was playing and it changed his brain
[4:13]basically. It gave him an infallible memory. Now, he's his detective. He works with the FBI and he's
[4:19]been called to North Dakota along with his partner Alex Jamison. The body's been discovered and the
[4:24]interesting thing about the body is it's already been autopsied like you would have it.
[4:27]Of course, more of them. And they don't know why they're being called in for local murder and
[4:31]FBI usually is not. But when they get up to this town called London, North Dakota, it's a fracking
[4:36]town. So it really has just, you know, been built up overnight. All these people coming in to their
[4:41]oil and they make all this money fairly fast. It's an interesting place. There's much from the
[4:45]right about this town as it was, you know, sort of delving to the plot and into what Decker was
[4:50]doing there. So the whole town is sort of full of dark secrets and a lot of things are going on that
[4:56]are readily apparent. It's really driven me to this place to create a couple of things. One was the
[5:01]fracking component. Two was this military installation that's there that has some secret mission going
[5:06]on. And three is this religious organization that's there that has, you know, something interesting
[5:11]to do with the plot too. So that sort of triumphor of plot elements made pretty, pretty cool to
[5:17]right. I think it's great that you can use the word try on for it when describing plot. That's pretty
[5:21]awesome. You don't often throw that word in. I don't hear that. That's awesome. And by the way,
[5:29]in the beginning, when you have one of the characters basically vomit from the site, from a
[5:34]a dead body, that's very gripping way to get the reader in immediately. I feel like I was trying to
[5:41]like turn my head and not read, which of course is hard in a book, right? It's one thing in a movie,
[5:46]but I'm like, oh gosh, what's next? Yeah. You had you had a sympathetic character with
[5:51]you in the opening chapter. Yes. Thank you for that. And what is it about the fracking element of
[5:57]this book that you found so interesting? Like why why fracking? Why did you want that town? How'd
[6:01]you pick it? Like, how'd you come up with it? I like the environment, the idea that
[6:06]I am in sort of like a wall wall West, where the rules just to civilize rules didn't apply as
[6:11]much as they do in other places. And this idea of people just rushing to this area to make a bunch
[6:16]of money sort of roll them to the ice, because you know, as it was going to last. And if you look at
[6:20]today with oil prices dropping to basically zero, I'm not sure how many of these where I can
[6:23]companies you're going to make it. But there's an idea of the whole wall wall wall wall. So I
[6:26]guess one of the things that surprised me was that, you know, across this whole,
[6:30]you know, the great plane, you see these flares everywhere, because they can't make it up money
[6:35]to be selling the natural gas that you find along with the oil everywhere. So they just burn it.
[6:40]You know, so you have these flares sticking up out of these oil wells. And this methane is just
[6:44]going right up to the atmosphere, you know, billions of cubic feet of natural gas just being
[6:49]burned off or nothing. And that really shows you, you know, how the cow capitalism works if you
[6:54]you can't make money off something, you just dump it.
[6:59]Ruthless. Also, so in this book, you had characters enter who had been part of your other
[7:05]series of books, kind of like a the Jefferson's making an appearance in all in the family type of,
[7:10]you know, cross-pollination of characters. What made you decide to do that?
[7:15]Well, I'm making a, you know, so much sort of response from people. Can you bring back this character,
[7:21]bring back this series? And I was thinking about this book and how the plot was going to
[7:26]develop and did it provide an opportunity or our way for me to bring in another character that
[7:32]was plausible. And so the way I constructed the plot that made it sort of high stakes or maybe
[7:37]national security interest involved allowed me to bring these characters back in. Because otherwise,
[7:42]you know, why would they show up in a murder investigation in the middle of North Dakota?
[7:46]So it was a fun way sort of, I guess, just to a tip of the hat to other characters. And to my
[7:51]fans say, okay, you know, you're asked for them. You got them. You go around one.
[7:56]Do you have like good relationships with fans? Like, do you do try to incorporate elements
[8:01]that they suggest or how do you communicate with fans? Is it mostly through email or
[8:06]tell me about that? Yeah. Yeah, a lot of it is email, a lot of it is on, you know,
[8:10]the social media platforms will go, you know, tweet and Instagram and Facebook. And a lot of it too
[8:15]is just going to book about, you know, you have signings and if they crowd onto people come out
[8:20]to make, you know, lose the next, you know, can you bring the camera call back and bring
[8:23]can you Maxwell back and you bring, you know, ex-character back. So I get a lot of feedback,
[8:28]you know, on social media, but I get a lot of feedback face to face at bookabouts as well.
[8:32]I miss being face to face with people. That was nice when you could do that.
[8:38]Yes, I know. Can you remember those days? I know, barely.
[8:41]How do you keep up? I mean, you've written a bazillion books and you have so many fans
[8:47]around the globe. How do you, how can you keep up with your social media feeds and your emails?
[8:54]I mean, I find it hard to keep up and I'm like, nobody. I mean, how do you, how do you do it?
[8:59]How do you stay on top of things and does it stress you out or not?
[9:02]No, it doesn't. I mean, I have, you know, people who do that, who work with me, who handle
[9:08]almost all of that. I rarely tweet on my own. I just tweet, a couple of years ago that had
[9:13]pictures of my two dogs sitting in chairs looking very crumply out at the camera and
[9:17]I said my, my dogs haven't hidden their leashes because we've been walking them too much.
[9:26]So that was an example of one of my tweets, but more, you know, most of the time,
[9:30]I have a person who does all that, the social media. And I, the emails and the question
[9:35]all that comes through the site and then we'll sit down each week and go through all the stuff.
[9:41]So I don't really have to focus on that very much. I, my, my focus really on the writing.
[9:45]And how, how long does it take for you to write each of your books? Or does it vary?
[9:52]It varies, but I've had to give an estimate of the average you were probably using a six to seven
[9:56]months to write each book. That's pretty, that's focused work.
[10:00]at times. Have you ever, and maybe this is an inappropriate question, but have you ever figured
[10:04]out how many words, like how much you're basically getting paid per word? How many words you
[10:12]write per year and then back solving for like, and then I would just, I know that's a random
[10:17]question. I was just wondering. You know, I'll have to go back and calculate that. I've never,
[10:22]I've never done that. I would probably too much pay too much more. You know, when I was a lawyer
[10:27]for almost years, I was paid by the hours. So I, I, every time I would sit down, do my time
[10:32]sheets, I would like, I'm selling my life at one hour at a time. This is pathetic.
[10:38]I've never understood really getting paid by the hour because the incentive is just to do
[10:42]a work slowly. Right? I mean, I don't know. I feel like if I was being paid by the hour, I would just
[10:46]like, dilly, dally versus like getting paid for what I produce and then I would speed it up.
[10:52]Yeah. There you go. That you just summed up the lawyers work.
[10:56]The longer you take, the more they get paid. And I think a lot of clients these days have sort
[11:01]of gotten a window that may ask for like, you know, contract fees. So here's the assignment. Give
[11:06]me the price of what it's going to be. You're not paying by the hours. That's what I do when I,
[11:10]when I retain lawyers now. Yeah, it's smart. I know the game is played. Yeah, exactly. This has
[11:16]been on the other side. And tell me more about the Wishy Well Foundation that you established with
[11:22]your wife. I was reading through and seeing some of the different places from all over who you've
[11:27]given grants to, which is really amazing. How do you how do you pick who you choose to give grants to?
[11:33]So we get probably about 5,000 grant applications a year, which is a lot for private foundation.
[11:39]And we go through them all and we have a staff that handles that. And then we have
[11:43]board of directors meeting four times a year to review the applications are sort of made
[11:48]into the vetting process. The biggest vetting is that they have to meet our mission goal,
[11:51]which is to eradicate, you know, adult illiteracy in the U.S. So whatever the application is and has
[11:57]to fall within those parameters. And then we look at, you know, how many people they're servicing,
[12:01]how wisely they're spending their money. Do they have widespread community support? And do we
[12:06]feel like they're doing their mission well? And it's an important mission. So all those criteria
[12:11]go into, you know, making decisions in which ones to fund. And for a lot of great programs out there,
[12:16]we try to support as many of them as you pass the kind. And we had a banner year last year,
[12:21]I think we ended up giving our grants over 35 or 40 different programs across the country in a
[12:26]single year. So there was a lot for us. That's great. That's so wonderful that you do that.
[12:31]It's really awesome. Do you think eradication is possible? I mean, it's one thing to say you want to
[12:37]like improve literacy, but to get rid of it. I mean, that's that's a big goal. It is a big goal. If we were,
[12:43]if we got serious about funding education the way we structured education and the way we have,
[12:48]you know, right now you look at, you know, kids in rural areas, you can't go to school because
[12:52]it's been canceled. You know, kids in metropolitan areas, they can just get online and do all their
[12:57]work and kids in rural and a lot of rural areas that don't have broadband availability or they
[13:01]may not even have a computer at all, you know, falling through the cracks. So the time much,
[13:06]you know, have serious, you want to be about it. And also, how much money will you want to put
[13:10]into it? People say, oh, my God, we spent so much money on education. That's, you know, well,
[13:14]we spent its fraction of the money on education that we spend on, you know, the fence budget
[13:19]in this country. So, you know, the money that we spent now on this pandemic pay off, you know,
[13:26]trains and dollars, that could, that could eradicate literacy and poverty in the US alone.
[13:31]So it's all about how much money they want to spend on it and how many people you want to have
[13:35]working on it. And, you know, clear strategy, clear goals, and you can really reach out to everyone
[13:41]with enough resources. Yes, you can do it, but I don't think we're there yet. It's uncomfortable.
[13:46]I mean, there's a balance between like survival and things that make your life better,
[13:50]right? I mean, I feel like the payouts now are to try to help people just get through and eat.
[13:56]But, I mean, not so good. So it absolutely is. And we definitely need to do it.
[14:01]I think that after this is over, you know, we're interest rates are so low, so much that,
[14:05]you know, governments can borrow money for almost free. Some countries that, you know, the
[14:10]interest rates are negative, mean that, you know, they're paying you to take their money,
[14:16]which is kind of crazy. But, you know, we may want to get more serious of education in this country
[14:21]and for a lot of different reasons. You see, there's just enormous just, you know, widespread
[14:26]disinformation campaign coming from all over the place. And a lot of people, you know, buy into it
[14:31]for various reasons. And that's, you know, and because of that, you know, we have a lot of problems
[14:36]and issues in this country. Education and a lot of people to have the wherewithal to
[14:40]provide with their own decisions and conclusions and being able to read a live variety of sources,
[14:46]you know, can help combat that. Otherwise, we sort of go on down about that.
[14:50]My dad has been trying to campaign for teachers to not have to pay income tax as a way to
[14:55]incentivize more people to become teachers. Yeah, I think people now, I've seen so many,
[15:00]you know, tweets from people who are having to homeschool their kids saying, okay, every teacher
[15:05]should $10 million a year. Because this is really hard work. It's true. I have four kids at home.
[15:13]And I mean, I forgot to even like have one of my kids get on Zoom at the right time for the right
[15:18]class and like, how hard can this be? Like, why can I not get this right? Oh my gosh, it's like,
[15:23]I finally had to like set a recurring alarm on my phone and apologize to the teachers.
[15:27]It was like in tears. But yeah, it's no joke. It's it's stuff.
[15:33]So did you always know you wanted to be a writer? How did you become who you are today?
[15:38]How did this happen? I was a sort of kid of love tell, tell tales and stories all the time.
[15:43]But I think really the thing for me was I love to read the kid. I love adventure tales and mysteries
[15:49]fantasy. And I love being able to just read through words and they put pictures in my head
[15:54]and take out of the point where I wanted to be able to do that as well. I just fell in love
[15:59]with using words as sort of the tools of the trade. And I started writing short stories
[16:04]and I was a kid and my mom gave me a blank page journal. I actually gave it to me. It just shut
[16:08]me up because I'm writing something down. I'm not talking. And I never really looked back from
[16:13]that. Although I, you know, I'd spent 10 years as a trial lawyer because I could make a living
[16:17]as a writer back then. So I did what most writers do. I worked in one job while I, you know,
[16:22]tried to hone my craft and my office hours. And I don't know if I was meant to be a writer,
[16:28]but I certainly had that desire to be my older brother as an artist and he's wanted
[16:32]he knew you wanted to be an artist and she was a little kid. And I always sort of envy him
[16:35]knowing what you wanted to do with this life. But I think that came close to that was sort of my
[16:40]obsession with writing. And how do you say motivated or is it just out of love? Like for each new
[16:46]project, do you get a new excitement? Like how do you just stay in it? Does it ever feel like
[16:52]work to you versus the joy of just writing? I think you can. You hit on one element of it as well.
[16:57]But it's just this desire of wanting to do this over and over again. And if you aren't doing it,
[17:04]there's a huge hole in your life. And I think the other component is sort of fear. You know,
[17:09]want to get so edgy and, you know, cocky that you think, you know, what you're doing is a writer,
[17:13]so you can just kind of knock him, knock each book out without, not a lot of work. I think that's
[17:19]when you lost your edges writer. You might as well go hang it out. Then you then you can become
[17:23]complacent and formulaic and every book is going to read like the book prior. So I approach every
[17:28]project, but you know, my same sort of obsession of wanting to do this, but also with this terror
[17:34]that, you know, I had no idea what I'm doing. And I'm going to film this reply. And fear is a great
[17:39]day in a boat to complacency here to tell you this. So funny. I mean, I think if there's one thing
[17:45]that unites all writers, it's like some sort of deep city insecurity. I mean, the fact that you
[17:51]could worry that you're not going to write a good book at this point is so it's almost like
[17:55]comical. But yet you feel that and it motivates you. It's really unbelievable how each book brings up
[18:00]all of these feelings. Yeah, it's like when you're putting, you know, this thing together that has
[18:05]a million different moving parts. And for me, it's like how in the world that I put this all
[18:11]together. I mean, I know in one sense how I did, it was some, you know, some creativity and a lot
[18:17]of hard work. But it's such an unwieldy thing. You look back on it. And then you think, oh my god,
[18:22]no, I have to do it again. I have to put a million little pieces together again. How in the world
[18:26]I'm going to accomplish that. So that's all part of it. How do you do outline a lot? Do you have
[18:33]like little index cards everywhere or sticky notes? How do you do it? I have these big notebooks.
[18:38]And in them, I will put, you know, I'll do my research. I will do like interviews. And I do
[18:43]with people in various fields that I need to know about. I do mini out miniature outlines,
[18:48]you know, chapter by chapter. I do, I call them momentum outlines where I have the big sweeping
[18:54]movements that I want to have. The big plot points that might have, you know, a thousand different
[18:58]plot points to tag to them. But I'm going to accomplish through a series of chapters.
[19:03]It's not all plot allows not all outline. I live a lot of it just to, you know, I may have
[19:08]like I'm right today after satellite tours over. And I've got some things that I want to accomplish.
[19:14]I know what the movements are. But I have that I have to come up with the words and the
[19:18]characterizations and the elements to implement those. And I'll be thinking those, I'm sitting down
[19:24]and writing. I mean, that tends to work best for me. I think if you immerse yourself the material,
[19:30]the activities come really fast and steady because you're part of it. You're in the moment.
[19:34]Do you give yourself like a word count goal per day or do you set hours where you are writing
[19:40]or how do you structure your time and your output?
[19:43]No, I usually, I usually get up in the morning. I'm writing in the morning, but I will write
[19:48]throughout the day if I have something that I want to write. If I'm really into it and the
[19:53]plot is moving and things are occurring to me, then I just keep writing. I don't have a page
[19:58]limit or I don't count.
[20:00]words. So every day is a little bit different. You know, it could be a lot of words.
[20:03]It could be there if you were depending on where I was at that moment. But I tend to,
[20:08]you know, like when it really hits me, but I go, you know, where if I am, I have my laptop and
[20:13]I open it and I work on it. And that will be me hours a day at the varies some days. It's a few hours
[20:18]some days. It's quite, quite more than that. Do you have like a favorite place to write? Do you
[20:23]usually write at home or do you go to an office or or do you like to write? I have it. Yeah,
[20:28]when I'm in at home home, I'm in Florida now, but I have an office here. But when I'm in,
[20:34]not in Virginia, had an office outside the house. And that's where my staff is and all that.
[20:38]And so if I'm in town, I go there every day. But I always felt the perfect place to write is on
[20:42]the physical space. It's in your head. If you're in the zone, you can write anywhere. There's
[20:47]a little Greek deli that I like to go to up in the Virginia. And that little table on the back
[20:51]in my laptop. And I just sit in the right in the middle of 150 people eating. And I feel like I'm
[20:55]in a cocoon. I don't know why, but I've written a lot of book about a lot of good stuff that I
[21:00]Greek deli. Well, I recently interviewed an author who wrote most of her book hiding in the back
[21:06]of her minivan. So I guess you can do it anywhere. You can do it anywhere. You know, it's whatever
[21:12]works for you. Yeah, exactly. Having written all these books, do you must have like a lot of advice,
[21:19]but do you have any key pieces of advice on how to keep the material fresh and how to stay motivated
[21:26]and how to write really gripping books the way that you do? I think, you know, you really need to find
[21:32]such a matter that you have a lot of interest in, not necessarily that you know a lot about,
[21:36]but that you like to know about. Because the biggest thing I think that's inspiring writers when
[21:40]they fall down is they think of something you want to write about for the long reasons. Maybe
[21:44]because they feel like if the hot trend, everybody's really interested in it, you know, a code book,
[21:48]or dinosaurs, you know, whatever. And they go off and write it and they run a gas,
[21:54]they spend a hundred pages writing and they're like, I'm not really interested in this. And I
[21:57]don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where I'm going. I have no passion. So they just stop and
[22:02]they waste it all that time and all those pages. So if you can find something that you really
[22:06]a lot of interest in, it will sell through gas tank, your creative gas tank, your chances are much
[22:10]better than you'll be able to get through this long process of writing, whatever you would as
[22:14]you're writing and not running out of gas. So picking the right reason and the right
[22:18]story for valid reasons that you have that interest in them that can go a long way for you to
[22:23]wear that sort of failure of writing out of gas. I feel like some writers get hung up like
[22:29]as if they're at a gas station, but you know how they have the three different levels of gas,
[22:32]like 89, 91, 93. Like you can stand there debating like which gas do you need to fill up the
[22:38]tank this time, right? Is it worth going for the 93 year? Well, the car run well enough on 89,
[22:44]it's a debate. I feel like writers have that with the material. Like maybe this will fill
[22:49]out my tank, but can it last a whole book? I don't know.
[22:52]Hi, it is. It can be tricky. But I've always felt that people were destined to become writers
[22:59]if that's the right word, that the sort of this maniacal obsession with words and writing
[23:05]and doing it will carry them through all the obstacles to get can people's way when they're
[23:10]trying to afford to create a creative endeavor. Because there are lots of them, you know, you could
[23:14]just get tired of it, bored, you don't want to do it, you don't have the discipline to do it,
[23:20]you don't really like playing with the words that much. And then those people sort of fall on
[23:24]a wayside and that's okay because you know, if I want to be a musician, I would never be a musician,
[23:29]I just don't know the talent for it or the discipline or anything else. So it's almost like this
[23:33]you know, evolutionary process where the people are meant to do it, probably we'll do it just
[23:37]because they have the tools inside of them to get through all their obstacles in the
[23:41]gobble, you have to run. And that's the way it is for a lot of occupation. It's certainly
[23:45]a thing more so when they're creative endeavor just because it really had you really have to spark
[23:51]a lot of something inside of you. And every day to create something that didn't exist,
[23:56]please set down a note about it, which is a little bit different from other occupations.
[24:01]So it's just that ended drive and luckily I had some of that because I can't imagine my life
[24:08]not going out there knowing that every time I was a kid and which is something that really speaks to
[24:12]me. And I think for most of us I'll tell you the same thing. I would argue that you have more
[24:17]than just some drive at this point. It seems to me, I mean you must have bookshelms just,
[24:24]I mean you need like all room just to have a copy of each of your books. I would argue that would
[24:30]pretty powerful drive. But anyway. So what's your next book? I'm buying the premium gift.
[24:36]Yeah exactly. You definitely went for the 93. What is your next book? What are you working on now?
[24:42]It's not the next one. I'm doing something different. I usually never work on two books at the
[24:46]same time, but I'm working on two books now. One is a sequel to a series with a FBI agent named
[24:51]Natalie Pine. So one week I'm in contemporary times 2020 and then the next week I'm working on a
[24:59]sequel to a book that came out last summer, summer of the last year, one good deed and that book is
[25:05]at 1949. So one week I'm in 2020 and another week I'm in 1949. It's kind of, I have my own personal
[25:11]time machine. It's kind of weird, but it's working. Wow. That's impressive. And you have more. I
[25:19]know you've had a lot of of your books become films. Do you have any Hollywood projects going on
[25:23]at the moment? Or obviously not right now, but any coming up for it? Are we excited about? Yeah,
[25:28]we are. We too. One is the aim is Decker. I sold the film lights and television rights aim is Decker
[25:34]Tippler-Dreds. Yo, they're a really big production company that's done a slew of terrific movies and
[25:39]won a lot of Academy Awards for. So they're very excited about turning back. I believe until
[25:44]like a television series and then I have another television series in development that's not based
[25:49]on my books based on the idea and the character that came up with that is moving slowly but surely
[25:54]forward towards starting production. So most of you know, it's I know this over the years it's a
[26:00]crapshoot. Most of the projects don't get done after a lot of work, but you know, the ones that come
[26:05]through, you know, hope it will be good ones. Excellent. Well, thank you, David, for taking so much
[26:11]time on your pub day for talking to me and congratulations and walk the wire and all of your
[26:17]supercharged output. And thanks for thanks for chatting with me. Yeah, I enjoyed it very much.
[26:22]I love talking to people about books. It's great. Me too. So that worked out well.
[26:29]Have a great day. Okay, thanks. Bye bye. Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[26:34]Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram
[26:39]at zippyowens and at moms don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list
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[27:00]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing and thank you to
[27:05]Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[27:08]Thanks for listening. You could always email me at zippyatzippyowens.com.