Emily Henry, BEACH READ
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[1:04]And I'm a huge fan. I interviewed Emily Henry via Skype during the quarantine and I was
[1:09]a little bit late getting to this and she was very nice about it. Emily wrote a book called
[1:14]Beach Read, which has been on every most anticipated summary list there is. Emily writes stories
[1:20]about love and family for both teens and adults. She studied creative writing at Hope College
[1:25]and the New York Center for Art and Media Studies and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati
[1:29]and the part of Kentucky just beneath it. So get out your maps if that doesn't make sense to you
[1:34]and enjoy listening to our conversation. Welcome, Emily. Thanks so much for coming on
[1:38]Mom's. Don't have time to read books. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[1:42]I'm excited to talk about your book called Beach Read when it is not yet beach read time.
[1:48]Will it ever be again? Will it ever be again? I know we're doing this in April and yeah,
[1:54]I'm looking forward to your cover as seriously. Away of life.
[2:00]Could you please tell us what Beach Read is about? Yeah, so I'll do my best. You might have noticed
[2:05]my book is rather long. I'm not sure when did. So the elevator pitch is always tricky for me.
[2:10]But the basic premise is that an author, a romance author who has recently lost her father
[2:17]and found out some pretty damning secrets about him and her parents' marriage sort of loses
[2:23]her belief and love. And this is obviously hugely problematic when that is how she supports herself
[2:28]is writing love stories. So she's really, really late in turning in her next book. She hasn't been
[2:34]able to write basically a single word. She doesn't know what to say. She and her boyfriend break up.
[2:39]She's broke because she doesn't have income from her next book. And so she's forced into a
[2:44]situation where she has to actually go stay at her father's secret second home, which is a beach
[2:49]house on the shore of Lake Michigan, which I have gotten some reviews where people are like,
[2:54]I didn't realize this was going to be like a lake book, which if you haven't seen like
[2:59]Michigan, you do need to go with it right now probably to know that it looks like the ocean.
[3:05]So it's a very similar beach town vibe, at least in the summer. Winter is a whole different
[3:10]ballgame. But she's living this little beach side town in this house that has all of these
[3:15]traumatizing, triggering pseudo memories for her. And she realizes that next door, her college
[3:22]rival from her creative writing program has been living. He's become a very successful literary
[3:27]fiction writer. He's sort of a darling of the industry. He's done everything quote unquote right
[3:32]has his MFA. I honestly can't remember if he has his doctorate. He might have his doctorate.
[3:37]And they've always had sort of a contentious relationship where she's felt that he looked down on
[3:41]her and she's found him sort of arrogant and annoying. But because she's sort of there without
[3:46]any friends, anything to do and really needs to write a book, the two of them had to plan to swap
[3:52]genres and see who can write in each other's genre and sell it first. He's sort of in a rep too.
[3:58]So they take each other on field trips to kind of teach each other about what it is they do
[4:03]and how they research for their books. And then I don't know they may or may not fall in love.
[4:07]It's hard to say with a book categorizes romance. But yeah, so that's the basic pitch. It is to me
[4:16]it's like very much a warm hug. There are some darker themes too. I truly cannot write a book without
[4:22]talking about grief and death for some reason. But I really wanted to do that in like a safe
[4:28]confined, like just make it feel like you can handle these harder heavier things in this very
[4:35]safe environment, which I think is what romance and women's fiction, you know, the lighter end of
[4:38]women's fiction are really great for. I think that was a great elevator fish. It's just a very
[4:43]long ride is the problem. It's a very, you're going to the top floor. I'm in a skyscraper. I was
[4:50]struck by the theme of loss and how the main character had lost her dad and and like her mother
[4:57]having battled cancer. And there was a lot of there was, as you say, a lot of serious stuff mixed
[5:01]in with the flirtatiousness and all the rest. And it made me wonder if something in your life
[5:07]had led you to write about that. If you had lost somebody close to you or if it's just a literary
[5:12]device that you like to use, tell me where I'm at that. It's kind of interesting because my second
[5:17]YA novel also was about a girl who'd lost her father. And I'm very, I feel very, very lucky that my
[5:23]father, both my parents are still living. I have lost people, but no one has integral to my
[5:28]sense of self so far. But it is obviously one of my greatest fears and it's something as soon as I
[5:33]could really comprehend death, it's something that I started worrying about because I'm extremely
[5:37]close with my parents. They're, you know, they're very, very young and fit in my eyes, but they're
[5:43]also, you know, they're in their 60s now. Don't, don't tell them I said that. And yeah, I'm super close
[5:51]with them. And I've, I've lived in fear of that sort of. And it's kind of strange, but I think I
[5:56]started really writing about death when I lost my childhood dog was when I started really thinking
[6:00]about that. It's kind of strange, but for someone who's fairly introverted, a dog is such an easy
[6:05]best friend because there's so much silence. There's so much just complete understanding without
[6:11]socialization, which is kind of funny, but that really stirred up a lot of the fears that I think
[6:16]I had been suppressing. And so it's something I spent a lot of time thinking about and trying to not
[6:20]think about, but writing has definitely been my way of coping with the things that I'm afraid of.
[6:25]And I did, I think around the time that I wrote this, I did have a family friend who had been
[6:29]diagnosed with cancer and, you know, she's doing really well now that's been a few years actually
[6:34]since I wrote this book. But yeah, I mean, it's, it does kind of feel like when something happens,
[6:40]it all happens at once. And I kind of wanted to investigate that because that's a really hard
[6:46]place to come out of when three or four things go very, very wrong in life. Instead of just one
[6:52]and you just feel like it's really, it's really hard to feel hope at that point because if just one
[6:57]thing really falls off kilter in your life and this out of whack, you can still have hope. But
[7:03]when you just start seeing thing after thing hitting you while you're down, it's really hard to
[7:09]start thinking forward to a time when you won't feel like that. And I think also like, you know,
[7:14]I'm a fairly anxious person and I think the main trick of anxiety is it keeps you living in the past
[7:21]in the future. And I think for this book, it's like, you know, the message I think that I really
[7:26]would want people to take away is to find ways to grab full of happiness in the dark because it's
[7:32]really easy to worry. It's really easy to think forward or think back to the things that you have
[7:36]been through and not that that's bad. You have to reflect and you have to face your emotions. But
[7:41]I also think it can feel my phone thinks I haven't said Siri for some reason. No Siri, you're not
[7:48]welcome here. Yeah, I think it's just it can be so easy to to not allow yourself any little
[7:54]scrap of happiness or to feel almost guilty feeling any happiness when you're in the middle of that.
[7:58]So yeah, I think it's something that I have been wrestling forward with in a way. It's like
[8:04]not my present. Like I said, I have I have lost people and I've lost pets. But I think the
[8:12]people who I am most fearful, I know, you know, it's inevitable someday. We all have to live
[8:17]without our person who has shaped us the most. And yeah, I just I want I'm always looking for ways
[8:24]to find beauty and meaning and the things that are the very hardest, I guess.
[8:28]I worked on this piece of fiction a little while ago and I was talking to my husband about it.
[8:33]All right, well, I think I'm going to have the main character's mom die. And he was like,
[8:38]you can't do that to your mother. And I was like, well, it's not about me or my mother. And he's like,
[8:43]it doesn't matter. She's going to take she would take it that way. Like, you can't do it. So I was
[8:47]thinking that is I was like listening to you talk, you know, how in two books you've lost your
[8:52]father and what he must think reading those and you know, you know, I think I were so similar. I
[9:00]think he actually probably exactly understands what's happening. I think it's probably a little
[9:06]bit it's a little bit funnier because I do think I've written a couple of bad mom characters and
[9:10]my mom's wonderful. So I think that's and she's also like, we have a lot in common, but she's
[9:15]more different. I think from me than my dad is. So I think that's probably the funnier thing is
[9:21]when she's reading a bad mom. And usually in my acknowledgements, I always try to give them a
[9:26]little shout out to nobody thinks that I'm writing about my parents. Yeah. So I mean, I think that's
[9:32]a really good point that your husband made. I have I guess put them through the ringer. I also just
[9:38]they also they haven't read B's read yet. They just know it's a romantic comedy basically. They
[9:41]know the pitch. They know everything that's on the internet. But it's kind of funny because when I
[9:46]told my mom that I'd sold the book, I like actually never tell them what I'm working on until it's
[9:49]sold. But when I told her I'd sold the book, she was sort of like, oh, I'm so happy you're
[9:54]finally writing like a comedy. And you know, I'm really excited because you're so good at the
[9:59]humor.
[10:00]stuff in your books, but I, you know, just kind of like looking forward to something that's not quite as
[10:05]heavy. And so they're they're in for a rude awakening. That's what I'm saying really.
[10:09]No, it is funny though. I mean, it's a little of everything. It's like life. I mean, this is
[10:14]you can have a great sense of humor and have bad things happen. And yeah, that's probably one of
[10:19]the best tools you can have to get to. It's a really tricky time, I think humor-wise,
[10:25]because with people who already know me and are very close with me, you know, I can go to a fairly
[10:33]dark place. I think with my sense of humor as a coping mechanism. But so many times, you know,
[10:36]I'm just like on Instagram and I'm like, should I share something? And I think of like a joke,
[10:41]I want to share. And then I just think like it's really hard to know. You don't want people to feel like
[10:45]you're not taking anything seriously or you don't understand the fear that they're living in
[10:49]because you're finding this really mundane, stupid way to joke about what's going on. But I think
[10:56]yeah, for a lot of people, humor is kind of the greatest coping mechanism. I loved how in your book,
[11:03]you are almost like poking fun also at the inner publishing world sort of snobbery between
[11:12]people who write literary fiction and people who write betreeds or women's fiction or rom-coms,
[11:20]chicklet, there's so many different names for everything. And it's such a crapshoot where your book
[11:25]even falls and what it even means and why these genres even exist, which some people take issues
[11:31]with to begin with. But you have your main characters sort of embody these two different genres.
[11:35]And that's like the whole thing of your book, which is hilarious. So tell me about, I know the
[11:40]comment. Well, tell everybody the comment that really got you on this track and how you came up
[11:44]with this. Oh my gosh. Okay. There are so many different threads. I feel like for every book that
[11:49]I write, there are so many different threads that suddenly in a moment just tie into a knot. I'm like,
[11:53]this is a book. But I have a friend of a friend who I was talking to. I think it was like after I
[12:00]sold my first young adult novel, I think I was telling someone I hadn't seen in a while,
[12:06]basically. Like, oh, I sold my first book and this is what it is. And he said something like,
[12:14]yeah, I mean, whatever pays the bills. And it was such a strange moment because I think
[12:20]you know, and I can be such a pleaser that I'm not even sure I was like pulled up. That's not
[12:25]what this is. But I definitely felt my stomach sort of bottom out thinking people think I'm
[12:31]doing this for some sort of cash grab, which is I think a really common misconception with
[12:36]young adult novels because there were a few huge blockbusters. People think that there's like a ton
[12:42]of money in it. And if you anybody can do that, and if you do that, then you're going to be rich.
[12:46]So yeah, it was kind of a strange moment to realize someone thought that I was not doing what I
[12:52]wanted to do and that I was just making a play for money and, you know, dumbing myself down in some
[12:58]way to speak to the masses. And that was not at all what was happening. I was really excited about
[13:04]what I was writing. I have always loved young adult fiction because it gives space to emotion and
[13:10]sentiment. And I think I love literary fiction too. There's, I love books and truly every single
[13:15]genre. But I think when you're in a creative writing program, you're reading mostly male voices,
[13:21]mostly older white male voices, at least until you get into more specialized classes. And in general,
[13:28]you're reading a more traditionally masculine, I don't know, approach to writing something that kind
[13:33]of strips away emotion. I guess I guess you just think of Hemingway. All of his sentences are
[13:37]super sparse and brief and concise. And, you know, he's like, he's not going to tell you what his
[13:43]characters are feeling and probably thinks like, I'm not doing my job if you can't figure it out.
[13:48]I'm not sure. I don't know what he thinks. But yeah, I think, you know, I've been drawn to fiction
[13:52]that really leaves room for emotion. And that doesn't say like this isn't art if people are
[13:56]feeling things. Or this isn't art if there is drama, if there is romance, anything like that.
[14:02]So yeah, I think that comment to me was like, you don't understand like that this is something I
[14:09]really love and respect and believe and have thought through. It's not just me making a cash grab.
[14:15]And frankly, I don't think that's even possible. I don't think you can hate Twilight and then
[14:21]be like, oh, but I could do that. And then sit down and write Twilight. I don't think that's
[14:25]possible. I think you're only capable of writing what you are capable of writing. And, you know,
[14:30]you can parody something. But that's it. I also think most writers do not go into this field for the
[14:35]money. No. Or if they do, they need to like turn around and walk out again. I mean, it's like
[14:41]winning the lottery. If you have a book that is like really financially successful, people do it,
[14:46]I think. And I'm sure you agree. They do it for the love of what they're doing and the craft and
[14:51]that need to, I don't connect or share their stories or whatever. So I don't know. I kind of want
[14:56]to, I'm not happy with the person who said that to you. I feel a little bit of violence in your
[15:00]face to be. No, I'm sorry. I know. It's annoying. I mean, it's really in a huge accomplishment
[15:05]to sell any work of fiction or any book and to spend that long and work on it and see it published.
[15:11]It's amazing. So I don't know. I feel like it's, it's like how the Oscars celebrate like small indie
[15:20]films a lot of the time or very artsy or things that maybe the most people haven't gone to see.
[15:25]And then the movies that everybody has seen don't even get a second look at for the Oscars.
[15:30]So, you know, it's like the court of popular opinion and then the award. So I don't know.
[15:36]I think there's room for everything is all I'm saying.
[15:39]Exactly. And I think it's a really funny idea that for a lot of people to like something,
[15:44]it must be kind of bad because I think what people are missing is for a lot of people to like
[15:49]something. There's something there. Yeah. There's a there there, you know? Because yes, a lot of
[15:53]times the thing that everyone loves is not the thing that speaks the most to me or the thing that I
[15:59]will carry with me for the rest of my life. It's like when you find that little thing that other
[16:03]people aren't talking about but is so specific to you, that's a really magical feeling. But for
[16:08]everybody, for so many people to love something, there's something that has to be acknowledged there.
[16:13]Someone is doing something right. And yeah, I mean, I wasn't even writing big YA fiction. I was
[16:18]writing like genre, slanted books that were, I don't know. They aren't huge. And I'm fine with
[16:24]that. I wrote books I love. Beatrice is probably the first thing I've written that's as accessible
[16:29]as it is. And again, I did it because I wanted to do it. I didn't think I was going to
[16:34]get rich from that. But Beatrice is not YA, is it? No, it is not. Okay. I'm like, did I miss
[16:40]I'm like looking at it again? No, no, no. No, no, it is not. Yeah. So exactly. I mean, but I think
[16:47]romance is the same thing like romance. So that comment, I'll jump back because I'm really moved
[16:52]far off course. So that comment had always sort of been in the back of my brain since then. And then
[17:00]a couple years later, I, you know, I was just kind of having a hard time. The world seemed really
[17:05]bleak and dark as no one can imagine right now. And I just felt like I needed to play and be somewhere
[17:13]that was sort of just like a secret for myself. And so I started on this book that was about
[17:18]writers block because I also had no ideas. And I was like, well, I'll just write a book about writers
[17:23]block. But I'll set it in this world that I want to be in right now, which is a warm beach town
[17:29]with like a lovable cast. I'll just kind of throw in the ingredients that I'm really craving,
[17:33]even though I don't have an idea. And the idea really was just writers block. That was the
[17:38]prompt for this book. And yeah, I mean, it was the first, I believe, yeah, it's the first book I've
[17:42]ever written for adults and then fully about adults. But I was just writing it for myself. And
[17:48]that's always the best policy when you can do that. I don't think you can always do that.
[17:52]Sometimes you owe someone a specific book, you know, but it was a really wonderful experience
[17:58]because it was something I didn't even tell my husband when I was working on every day. It would
[18:01]just go into my office and work on it for a few hours. And it came together really quickly.
[18:07]And I just said to this side afterward, because I wasn't working in the adult space. And I
[18:11]didn't know if it could be anything. And I think it was maybe at least a full year,
[18:15]possibly longer before I showed my agent was like, is this anything? And she didn't really even
[18:20]represent a ton of adult fiction. She has actually since retired from agenting. So I have a new agent
[18:24]who is perfect for this project and the things I want to do moving forward. But she was really
[18:29]encouraging. And she's actually also a writer who's represented by my current agent. So when
[18:34]the time came to find a new agent, she was like, this would be such a good fit.
[18:37]But yeah, so I moved into adult kind of just because it was what I wanted to write the same
[18:41]way that I was writing a young adult because it was what I wanted to write. It's not about anything
[18:46]other than the story that I had in me at that time. And how did you tell me the story of selling
[18:51]your first book and your YA book? And yeah. So my first book, basically, okay, a couple years before
[18:59]that I had queried for, which I people listened to this podcast, so they basically know
[19:05]the beats of things. But if anybody is tuning in for the first time, querying is basically
[19:09]you pitch your book to agents in an email. So I had queried for a book probably a year before I
[19:14]actually ended up getting an agent and didn't really get any good responses. And then I kind of went
[19:18]back to editing the book and editing the query because I think the query was kind of the biggest
[19:23]problem there. And I sent out kind of on a whim. I was like, okay, I'm going to send out one
[19:29]query just to see if my letter is any better because I think I was having a really hard time
[19:34]pitching the book. And so I sent out one to an agent who seemed very cool, but I didn't know a ton
[19:40]about. She just seemed great. And within, you know, usually the response time is pretty slow in this
[19:46]industry because there's a lot of reading involved. But she responded in like an hour and was like,
[19:52]I want to see the full manuscript, please. And then I went back to her like query tracker profile where
[19:59]you can kind of read about this.
[20:00]agents and realized that she was like the number one most responsive agent at that time.
[20:05]She was very young and hungry. So I was like, oh no, I sent this to one agent. And now I can't,
[20:11]you know, send it out to a million more and find out like what's going to happen. I don't know.
[20:16]It was just like kind of a tricky situation. So I sent it to like five more agents. But by the next
[20:21]day, she offered on that book, which was a very different book. I did not end up selling it. So
[20:25]We worked on, she offered, I accepted. She was the best. She was perfect for me. We worked on that
[20:30]book for a few months, just kind of cleaning it up. She was a really great editor as well.
[20:35]And we took it out. It was a YA novel. And we took it out and got good responses about the writing,
[20:41]but not really about the genre. It was sort of a contemporary fantasy, which was sort of
[20:45]oversold at the time. So while it was out on submission with publishers, I had an idea for another
[20:51]book. And I just wrote that without again, telling anyone that's sort of my MO. So I wrote that
[20:56]pretty quickly kind of in the fervor that I love so much. And then I sent it to my agent and was like,
[21:06]I don't know. Should we work on this? Well, the other book is on submission. She was like, oh,
[21:11]we need to try and sell this instead. Like this is fresh. This is new. No one's done this. So we
[21:17]took that out. And actually one of the editors who really liked the other book ended up
[21:21]buying it within a month. That was really wonderful. And it all happened like a lot faster than I
[21:27]expected it to. Yeah. And it was it was super exciting. I was living with my parents at the time.
[21:32]I like graduated college and moved home to try and save money while I was paying off student loan
[21:37]debt. And my boyfriend who's now my husband was also like living with my parents basically.
[21:44]And we wanted to get married. But we just had no money and like no prospects. And suddenly
[21:50]things just sort of came together in a really great way where like, he got a new job. I sold my book.
[21:55]We found the perfect little apartment. And it was like just the best, just the best month.
[21:59]That's awesome. I like hearing stories that end happily like that. Yeah. And you know, it's obviously
[22:05]not just a smooth road after that. It's, you know, my career has been all over the map already. And
[22:11]I feel like it's just starting. And you're so young. I mean, I mean, I'm not going to ask how
[22:16]we'll do. I feel like that's rude. But I probably a little bit older. Are you under 30?
[22:22]Just barely. Not for very long. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's still so impressive. I mean,
[22:29]oh my gosh. Well, thank you. It's it is funny because I definitely had mentors who were like,
[22:35]do not publish before your 40. You'll regret it. And I was like, thanks love you by.
[22:38]Well, I'll do that anyway. Yeah. So I don't know. It's it's been really great. But I also feel kind
[22:44]of grateful that you treat is really picking up steam. I mean, the book's not even out yet. And
[22:49]people are being so positive and so lovely about it. But I'm really grateful that it wasn't my
[22:53]first book because I think it's kind of to my benefit that I have had a rockier road so far
[23:00]as far as like success and sales and all that. I feel like it's given me a more realistic viewpoint
[23:05]on publishing. So I can really, really, really appreciate this, but not expect it to necessarily ever
[23:10]happen again, which I think is a really good place to be in all aspects of life. True. Very true.
[23:16]Have you started working on the next one yet? Yes. Yes. I'm not sure how much I can share. I mean,
[23:21]we don't have a hard pub date, but it should be next summer for Berkeley again. Similar vein.
[23:26]I'm really excited to start talking about it. I'm actually finishing, well, I don't know if I'm
[23:29]finishing up at it. I think I'm finishing up at it. We'll find out, but I'm doing edits right
[23:35]now on the follow-up. And it's similar. You know, it's another love story. The the comp that I'm
[23:43]thinking of is when Harry Met Sally. And I'm very, very, very excited to talk about it more soon.
[23:47]It's kind of funny being on the schedule where this book's about to come out. And I'm already
[23:53]sort of working on the next thing and really excited about that and eager to share that.
[23:58]That's it's always kind of a funny schedule. But yeah. And do you have any advice to aspiring
[24:03]authors? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure I mostly don't have anything fresh or new, but
[24:11]my main advice really would be to fail hard and fast. And I mean, you pointed out, I am very,
[24:17]I'm fairly young for this industry to be doing this already. I feel very lucky. But I think part
[24:21]of that is you have to be comfortable with failure and know you're going to fail. There's no way
[24:26]around it. The only way to get over those hurdles is to run into them first. I think not to just
[24:32]start start speaking in track and field metaphors that I know nothing about. But yeah, I think that
[24:39]sometimes when you fail, it takes a really long time to work up the courage to try again. And that
[24:46]is sometimes a big mistake because everybody you're seeing who looks like an overnight success
[24:51]has failed plenty of times. And they're going to keep failing. And you kind of just have to trust
[24:56]that the failure is part of the process. And the more you can fail, the faster you can
[25:00]fail, the faster you're going to get where you want to go. I mean, that's that's how I feel about it.
[25:03]I see you nodding. So I think maybe you agree. Yes, I agree. I think that's great advice. I think
[25:08]sometimes it's hard to believe when you see all the books in a bookstore and you think, wow,
[25:13]I mean, this must be so easy for everybody. Look how many books just came out, right? This must be a
[25:17]piece of cake. But literally every single person I've spoken to talks about some struggle or the
[25:24]years it took for the failures. And I have to keep reminding myself that for every book on the
[25:30]shelf, that author has like many others that didn't make it there have been times when all the
[25:35]authors have been sitting there being like, I'm never going to sell a book. So it happens. It's just
[25:40]like, I don't know, out of not in the way that maybe people want it to happen all the time.
[25:44]No, hardly ever in the way that you think it will happen. That's for sure. But I think the other
[25:51]this is a little bit more of a cosmic answer to your question. What I did want to share it
[25:57]because I think the biggest revelation for me as far as advice I want to give to creators and
[26:03]artists out there now, I think it's so important to make the thing that only you can make.
[26:08]And I've been thinking about this a lot because I was watching the show, the OA on Netflix.
[26:15]I'll do a little shout out. It's pretty dark intense. Probably not the treaters ideal viewer.
[26:20]But I loved it so much. And it was so strange and so surprising. And it was canceled after two
[26:27]seasons. And people were really devastated who were watching it because it was just like,
[26:31]like nothing else out there. And it was this weird like revelation for me to see something I
[26:38]love that much that felt so brave and new and strained and just like not like anything else.
[26:43]And to see it be canceled. Like I mean, it's sad. I wish I could see the rest of the show. But
[26:49]it kind of made me realize like just because this got canceled doesn't mean that it didn't have
[26:55]value in getting made in the first place. And it'd be so sad if you were making something that you
[27:00]thought like nobody's going to want this, but you really want it and you really believe in it.
[27:04]And it feels like important to you. And like the thing that's like what your heart desires
[27:10]to just cast that aside because you don't see it anywhere else. I think it's a huge mistake.
[27:15]And that doesn't mean you're necessarily going to sell that thing that speaks so specifically to you.
[27:20]But I just, I think that that's kind of been my biggest revelation that I kind of want to
[27:26]imprint on everyone who's making art of any kind to just say like the thing that you want to make
[27:33]is worthy of being made. And you're the only person who can make it. If somebody else does it,
[27:38]it's going to be different. And that's great too. But you're the only person who can do it your way.
[27:43]And that's special. And that's meaningful. And I think it's like almost a sort of alchemy that's like
[27:48]you're putting something into the world that only you could make. And who knows how that changes
[27:52]things? Who knows what ramifications that could have? What that can mean to someone?
[27:56]So true. I love that. Well, Emily, thank you so much for coming on mom's. Don't have time to read
[28:01]books. Thanks for this beat read, which I am looking forward to seeing scattered all of her beaches
[28:06]this summer. If hopefully, beaches open again and everything is back to, you know, you know. So
[28:11]anyway, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. Thanks again for listening
[28:16]to my podcast. Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on
[28:21]Instagram at zibi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list
[28:27]at zibi Owens.com so you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to. Thanks a lot.
[28:32]Today's episode has been sponsored by Minnie Rose. Check it out at MinnieRose.com and get 10% off
[28:38]with code zibi 10, ZI-B-B-Y, 10, and it goes shopping for some sweaters. Thanks so much to Steve and
[28:44]Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for
[28:49]providing this fantastic intro and now trim music. Thanks for listening. You could always email me
[28:53]at zibiatzibi Owens.com.