Christina Clancy, THE SECOND HOME
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[1:06]if you actually go somewhere or just give it to yourself. Everybody needs a treat. We've had a long
[1:11]spring page one books.com. Welcome to the third day of my July book blast. This is Be Treats Wednesday,
[1:19]and I'll be releasing lots of episodes this week and next to get all these great
[1:25]Be Treats out and also books that have come out during the quarantine or books that I think you just
[1:29]need to read at this time. And I just don't want you to miss these authors for any longer. So anyway,
[1:35]here are some great Be Treats. Each episode this week will have a book that I think you should
[1:40]curl up with and read if you ever find the time. Christina Clancy is the author of the second
[1:45]home. She's actually a debut author. So she fits into my Monday, my debut Tuesday or my
[1:50]My Be Treat Wednesday. So double travel this week. Anyway, she loves Cape Cod. She enjoys living
[1:56]in the Midwest and grew up in Milwaukee. She now lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband
[2:01]and her two grown kids. She's a certified spin instructor and serves on the board of the Wisconsin
[2:07]Conservation Voters. She received her PhD in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin,
[2:12]Milwaukee, and previously taught creative writing at the Lloyd College. She recently completed
[2:17]her second novel and that will be out in 2021. Enjoy our episode. I'm truly so excited to be on
[2:23]your show. I heard about your show from Karen to Cass when she was on last year and I started becoming
[2:30]the most avid listener. And then when my book was coming out, I was like, you know, my bucket list
[2:35]for my book is the Beyonce podcast. So I was so excited when I heard that I was going to be on it.
[2:42]So you've made my day. Oh, that is so sweet. That's so sweet. Your book was so good. It was
[2:48]really, really good. It kept me up two nights in a row past my husband, which almost never happens.
[2:54]But I was like, I can't. I can't stop reading. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. I don't know how
[2:58]you read as much as you do. I'd like to turn the tables and just turn the poll interview. I interview
[3:02]you. It's amazing to me. What you do with this podcast and all of your time. Oh, thanks. I mean,
[3:08]I can't finish every single book. I just can't. And I'm usually up front with the author and say,
[3:13]like, you know what? I just, I, or on Instagram lives, I blatantly, I'm like, I didn't even open your
[3:19]book. So I do my best. But no, I tried. I mean, I love to read and I do it all the time. And I'll,
[3:25]you know, I don't know. I don't know how I do. I don't know. I just every day is different.
[3:29]Yeah. But anyway, that's really nice of you to say. And yeah, so let's talk about your book.
[3:34]Yeah, the second home. So for listeners who don't know what it's about, can you tell everybody
[3:40]what the second home is about? And then also what inspired you to write it? Sure. Well, the book is about
[3:45]a family from Milwaukee. And they're a very middle class family. The parents are teachers. And they
[3:51]own a house and Cape Cod oddly enough, which sounds very fancy except it's been in their family for
[3:55]generations. And the reason that the parents are teachers is so that they can spend their summers in Cape
[4:01]Cod. And the house is kind of run down, you know, it's from the late 1800s. And actually it's
[4:07]from, it's older than that. It's from the 1700s. The house I've been talking about a lot is my grandparents
[4:12]house, which is next door, which is from late 1890s. But the house is in disrepair. And they
[4:18]go to the, to the Cape each summer. And when summer with their two daughters,
[4:21]Poppy and Ann, they also bring along an adopted child named Michael, who is new to the family
[4:28]and new to Cape Cod. And he also has feelings for Ann and Ann has feelings for him,
[4:33]which is you can imagine, create some trouble. And they get involved with another family. And when
[4:38]they do things go very badly. And the family does not stay in touch. The siblings become estranged.
[4:45]And about 15 years later, the parents die. And they have to come back to figure out what to do
[4:50]with the house. And everybody wants it. And Michael, the boy that they adopted, has a legitimate
[4:55]claim to the third of the estate. And he also wants to set the record straight. So that's the
[5:00]book and a nutshell. And yeah, it's important to write it, I think, because I, I mean, a lot of
[5:05]times when people ask me this question, I think I know how to answer it. Because usually I'll say
[5:10]that Poppy, the character who's the surfer, was the inspiration. Because I did meet a surfer
[5:15]when I was in Panama with my mom about a decade ago. And she told me that she never went home.
[5:21]And it bothered me so much, I wanted to bring Poppy home and figure out what could get her there.
[5:27]But then I think really the book is about when my own grandparents passed away. And I think a
[5:32]lot of people with second homes feel this way that us and everyone has so many memories of and cares
[5:37]so much about become very fragile. Because for a while, we didn't know if we'd be able to keep it
[5:42]in the family. They made no sense for us. My mom and her sisters are spread all across the country
[5:47]like Jackson. They couldn't really agree on or not that they couldn't agree. My mom had the
[5:54]first right of refusal, but like who was going to take it? You know, my mom was a single parent.
[5:58]We couldn't have a house on the cape. And then my aunt lived in Michigan and then she wasn't sure
[6:02]what to do with the cape. And then my other aunt already lived on the cape. So my mom was driving
[6:06]around one day with me and she said, you know, it's just really hard when your parents pass away
[6:11]and you become the next generation and you have to figure out how to keep your family together
[6:16]or whether you will or what that family's going to look like. And I was so struck by that
[6:20]comment and thinking about how that house kept our family together. And the fear of losing it wasn't
[6:26]just the house that we cared about. It was about keeping the history of the family in one place.
[6:31]You know, I think these houses can really just become touch points for every person in the family.
[6:37]So I think that's actually what the inspiration was. Is that feeling that fear that the house could
[6:43]pass out of our family. We might lose our way. We might not have a reason to have our union
[6:47]to stay together or look through the old photo albums and then, you know, what you did so well in
[6:54]the book was create such a sense of place and character both that I felt like not only was I
[7:01]could like see this house, right? I could see Poppy and Ann and the parents in their house,
[7:06]but I could also see, you know, Anthony and Maureen's house. I could just see it all of it and feel it
[7:11]and all the sensory things you put in and all of it just made it so real. And then with the
[7:18]parents and what ended up happening to them, I felt like such a sense of loss myself. How do you
[7:24]think you did it? Like it was and I know you teach creative writing and all that. But like,
[7:28]what do you think it was like that made these things just come alive so much?
[7:33]Well, first of all, the place I know very well. And so it was nice to write about two places I know
[7:39]well, which is Milwaukee and then also Cape Cod. And, you know, it was funny. It took me a while
[7:44]to realize that I could write about a place I know to give myself permission to do that. And
[7:50]I don't know why it felt like there was permission needed to write about Milwaukee. And originally
[7:55]actually the story was started started out where the characters were in Evanston, Illinois,
[8:00]which seemed kind of like the nearest side of Milwaukee to me. And then I kept thinking, well,
[8:05]I should go spend more time there so I can figure it out. And a friend of mine, it was a writing
[8:10]instructor said, why don't you just set it in Milwaukee? And it was such a revelation. You know,
[8:16]I was like, oh, I can write about a place I know. And then even writing about businesses that I
[8:21]know are places that I know well, felt a little bit like like kind of like I was doing something wrong.
[8:26]Like, oh, I'm just going to name Shahirazad, this restaurant I like, or I'm going to name the
[8:30]Urban Ecology Center because I was on their board, you know. And so it was fun to do that. And then
[8:35]I gave myself the same liberty to write about all the places that I know and love there. And the
[8:40]only risk of doing that with place is that if you get one thing wrong, people will go crazy. So you
[8:48]have to, you know, like they won't be able to get out of their mind, the whole rest of the book,
[8:52]a bookseller friend of mine was saying that somebody wrote about a car and they used the wrong
[8:57]horsepower for it. Like within the first 10 pages of the book, and the whole rest of the book,
[9:01]he couldn't even focus. So I was very careful to try to get everything right. And the copy editors
[9:07]were amazing too. Like it was fun to see how they would, if I named a restaurant, they would actually
[9:12]pull up the sign for the restaurant and the menu for the restaurant to see if like they put a
[9:17]pee or a period after each initial like for PJs or so it was fantastic to have them, you know, go
[9:24]through that level of detail also. But so the place really spoke to me. And I kind of think I live
[9:29]on my skin anyway. You can probably tell that from the writing. Like I just feel like I'm always
[9:33]like almost more there than there, you know. So that helped. And then the characters, once I had them
[9:40]in my head and I went through my first draft and I started redrafting, they became so alive to me.
[9:47]And one of the most fun things I did with the book where after I sold it, my editor said,
[9:52]why don't you go through the last third and just add a few more surprises, just sprinkle them in
[9:57]so that it doesn't read like where you're going to expect.
[10:00]what's going to happen. And that was so much fun, because then I thought, oh, I know what
[10:06]Maureen would say here, or Ed could do this. And Connie could, you know, and so I just started
[10:11]thinking about how the characters would surprise me. And I think those are the magic moments
[10:16]in writing when you get so immersed. You just like, you let the story wash over you. And I just
[10:22]had that happen again with my second book, where for a long time I was just building a building
[10:26]it, struggling with it. And all of a sudden my head was so deep in it that I would wake up
[10:32]with these characters talking in my head. And I just couldn't wait to write about it. So as hard as
[10:37]it is to get to that point, it's amazing when it happens. Well, wait, what's your next book about?
[10:43]Well, it's a little, it sounds different in the book that I just wrote. But my editor assures me it sounds
[10:48]like a Christina Clancy novel. But in 1981, and actually in the 70s, mostly in a town called
[10:56]like Geneva, Wisconsin, which is near Chicago, oddly enough, there used to be a Playboy resort
[11:00]there. And the women who work there were the daughters of dairy farmers and slaughterhouse workers
[11:07]and factory workers. And they had no experience being anything like a bunny. And suddenly,
[11:13]they were bunny. So I follow a woman who's from a neighboring town who gets a job. She's a very
[11:19]unlikely bunny. And it kind of follows her coming of age and her experiences with recognizing
[11:26]what it's like to inhabit a woman's body and be looked at and be the object and sometimes
[11:32]limbed by a male gaze. So I had the best time writing it. It was so much fun. And I think it
[11:37]came out next year. That's really exciting. I read your essay about your son leaving the Washington
[11:43]Post essay about yourself. Like, oh, you just school. And is it okay that maybe you're not going to
[11:47]miss in that much? Or I know that's not exactly what you said. But there were all these support
[11:53]for the parents. And you're like, well, you know, he's ready to go. And I'm ready for him to go. And
[11:57]it's okay. So that was great. Yeah, I mean, I wrote that. And then afterwards, I started feeling
[12:03]really sad. And I was like, am I just a hypocrite? But in general, I mean, and now he's back home.
[12:10]He's, you know, he's at USC. And because of the COVID situation, he was in grief studying and he had
[12:16]to come back home. And now we don't know if he'll be there on the fall. And the emotions are totally
[12:20]different. You know, I want him to go back. I want him to be able to resume his fun life
[12:25]as a student. So it's tough. I also read your essay in the sun. I think it was,
[12:31]that was your life, right? It was a personal essay. Yeah. I was like reading and reading. I was like,
[12:35]this is a book. Like, this is like another book. You should write that as a, I mean, not that your
[12:40]fiction isn't fantastic. It's amazing. But your life story reads like fiction. Really, it's,
[12:45]it was like hard to believe in the relationship with your dad and oh my gosh, I can believe
[12:49]how to end it. And that was a hard essay to write. I bet, you know, it was funny because when I
[12:53]worked on that essay, it was originally about the preppy movement and the preppy handbook,
[12:58]because I don't know if you remember the preppy idea of not much like the preppy handbook
[13:02]particularly. But I never knew it was a joke. I always thought it was totally serious. Like,
[13:09]you must be a prep. And I lived in kind of a preppy community, you know, as I write about.
[13:13]So the whole essay I reread the preppy handbook from beginning to end. And it's, I mean,
[13:18]actually, if you haven't read it for a while, it's so interesting to go back and look at.
[13:21]But the whole essay was about my experience being a prep. And then I kind of just had a
[13:25]little bit of my dad in there. And I sent it to the editors of the sun, which, you know, most
[13:29]writers would give their IT's to be in the sun. They have such a devoted readership. And when I
[13:34]got feedback from them, they said, you know, we love your essay, but we think your dad's really
[13:39]the story. And I was kind of offended. I was like, no, I wouldn't write about the preppy handbook.
[13:44]But then I went back later on. I thought they'd rejected it. And then later on, they were like,
[13:49]didn't you get our email? Like, do you want to write? And I was like, oh my gosh, like, you're
[13:52]you guys still like it. So I worked on it. And it was very cathartic to publish it to have like
[13:57]people from my high school read it and get back to me. And, and so many said, I had, I had a bad
[14:03]high school year or two and nobody knew. I never, you know, like people didn't know about my dad.
[14:07]Or, you know, I was really struggling. And I didn't know how to say anything. So they felt so grateful
[14:14]for that essay. Do you think that part of what you do in fiction is to like put together
[14:19]the family like the way that you wanted it to be growing up that you never had? Or maybe that's
[14:23]too simplistic or, you know, armchair therapist. But like, what do you think the role of fiction
[14:28]is in helping you with your own issues? Yeah. Well, one of my friends said that I waste my best
[14:33]nonfiction on, all right, I waste my fiction. I'm sorry. I need to raise this.
[14:39]You said everything I put in nonfiction, I should put in fiction. He's like, all your best
[14:43]material you're wasting on nonfiction. So I thought that was really interesting. But I do think
[14:48]it's a way to kind of, it's almost like a way to write a diary. You know, like the things you're
[14:53]anxious about tend to be what you write about. And even though you're turning it into a story about
[14:57]other people, you know, maybe I was working on this book and never thought about this until now.
[15:02]But the second home, you know, my kids were getting older and our family was about to change.
[15:07]And maybe that was just a way for me to hold on to us. And what our life was like before
[15:13]everyone would go. And so of course, it's actually not a home that makes the family, right?
[15:18]I mean, I'm sure it's like the home is just, I mean, not that it doesn't have a lot of soul,
[15:22]but, you know, a family can transcend a physical place, right? It can't be destroyed by one,
[15:29]you know, demo truck or whatever else. So yeah, it's more just the memories, I think.
[15:34]Yeah. But it can, it feels painful. I mean, losing a place that's important to you like in the second
[15:39]home. I mean, it's, you know, it's a loss. You know, it's something that you should, you can
[15:43]grieve in and of itself. I mean, it seems silly to say in the context of the craziness of the
[15:47]world right now, like sitting around being sad about your family home. But I think it's, it's a,
[15:52]it's a, it's a physical loss that you feel when a touchdown of your life disappears. It's a,
[15:57]a rootlessness almost. Yeah. And a place you go back to again and again and again,
[16:02]there's a certain like cadence to your life, a certain rhythm. Like we have a summer cottage,
[16:06]it's very simple. It's in fact, it, I think it has the first toilet ever invented. We have to
[16:11]close it every winter. But my life seems to make some sense when I go back every year and I go
[16:16]through all the routines of opening it up and, you know, having the well pumped turn back on and
[16:20]and then thinking about who's going to be there, you know, all the people that populated over
[16:24]the course of the summer and with the memories that we have of like playing part cheesy and so on. So
[16:29]I think it just makes your life make sense sometimes to have one place you go back to again and
[16:34]instead of always going somewhere different. Okay. My mom and stepdad sold like the house that we
[16:39]had gone to my whole life and had to like, you know, all the books that I had even as a kid. Now
[16:44]I have here with me and in my house. It just was like, it was almost as if I had finally grown up
[16:49]more because of that house. Oh, interesting. Kind of our family that I had getting married, getting
[16:55]divorced, getting remarried, having kids. Like it was that the cleaning out of that particular
[16:59]room of mine that was like, you know, at a year at age, I mean, it happened a couple years ago.
[17:04]It's still in my 40s. I don't know. It's emotional and I don't know. Yeah, it's, and it's a kind
[17:11]of a new era when you let go of those places, you know, you realize you're jumping into something
[17:16]new, which I think right now, given all the turbulence in our lives, it's maybe those second
[17:22]homes are going to be even more meaningful to people. You know, just having one constant within
[17:27]a world that's in complete flux right now. Yeah, I keep wondering how the second home market is
[17:31]going to work this summer. I think most people are renting places for longer periods of time,
[17:36]which actually I like because when I was a kid, we'd go to Cape Cod and we would get to know
[17:41]all the kids. You know, we were there long enough. We'd go to the ponds and we'd want to be there
[17:44]at the same time the next day because maybe that cute guy from Connecticut was going to be there
[17:49]or whatever. So we, you know, I like that kind of repetitive visit and longer visit.
[17:53]So how did you end up writing a debut novel now, like at this time in your life? Like, how did
[17:58]this happen now? Tell me about it. You know, I think a lot of it was I was writing a lot before,
[18:03]you know, a PhD in creative writing and I've written essays like, you know, in the New York Times
[18:07]or Washington Post with a son and I have published a fair amount of short fiction and I love
[18:11]short fiction. Like for a long time, I'm a complete short story addict. I read them all the time and I
[18:17]I'm, you know, like I kind of want to be buried with my short story collection. So I think that
[18:22]the craft of a short story, I just appreciated so much and that's all I worked on with short stories.
[18:28]And then people would say, well, you're not really an author until you have a book and I
[18:34]I'd kind of bristle it that a little bit, you know, thinking that no, I'm still a productive writer
[18:41]but I have to say there's something super satisfying about writing something as big as a novel
[18:46]and tracking the characters and putting it all together in a way that there's an arc from beginning
[18:52]to middle to end that I don't know now that I'll be able to go back to short stories. But it just
[18:57]took me a really long time to learn how to do that. One thing I tell people is, you know, I've
[19:03]gotten through multiple drafts of this book and then also another book that I worked on for my PhD
[19:08]thesis that just never really quite had a plot. But it takes a long time because the first time you
[19:14]write a novel, you're you have to recognize one thing that you're doing, which is you're telling
[19:19]the story to yourself the first time. You're just creating this landscape, you're inhabiting it
[19:24]with characters, and you're just kind of populating things. And then when you go back and you revise,
[19:31]that's when you start telling a story for your reader. And so I think a lot of people who are
[19:36]who try to write novels and think that they failed or who give up, it's because they get frustrated
[19:41]one of those points along the way when they're writing. So it's just a sticking with it and getting
[19:46]back into it and trying to make that transition from telling the story to yourself, to your reader,
[19:53]which I think makes a book, that's where the magic kind of takes place. That's really, really
[19:57]interesting advice. I've never heard anything like...
[20:00]that for you did something, huh?
[20:03]I also loved, by the way, your modern love essay about your friend and her ex, like
[20:10]your ex, your friend's ex has been in his new girlfriend being in your spin class.
[20:14]That would have been priceless.
[20:16]You need to like send these around again, like, because that you wrote that in what like
[20:19]2014 or something, like a long time ago, like you need to like, I don't know, it needs
[20:23]to breathe through life, because that's like such a good, such a good essay.
[20:27]I'll put it in the show notes when I do this.
[20:28]At least I can do that.
[20:29]Wow.
[20:30]I mean, go you.
[20:31]You know, the modern love essay, one thing that I love about that essay is I'm sure a lot of
[20:37]writers can recognize that sometimes you just know a story.
[20:40]The minute they walked into my classroom, I was talking about like, okay, we're going to climb
[20:44]a four minute hill and it's going to be really hard and whatever, but that's what I was
[20:48]saying.
[20:49]But in my head, I was like, I've got a story here.
[20:50]I came to Apple League.
[20:51]He's in my class.
[20:52]So the funny thing about that essay is that the couple, they're really good friends now
[20:58]and I think that it, you know, really maybe in a way wasn't my place to enter that situation.
[21:04]But at the same time, I think it kind of made it funny in a way.
[21:08]You know, it was meant to be funny.
[21:09]And I think a lot of us can relate to that feeling of, you know, when your friends get
[21:14]divorced, you take it really personally.
[21:16]Like you want people that you can tell this from my book.
[21:18]I'm super nostalgic about things.
[21:20]I just want things to stay the same.
[21:21]And even though they both ended up in a really good place and they're totally a piece
[21:25]of what happened, I wasn't.
[21:27]And that was, it was really the editor at Dan Jones of Modern Love.
[21:31]The day before I was published, he called me and we were talking about it.
[21:34]And he said, you know, I love about this essay.
[21:37]And then this is right after he said about three million people read it.
[21:40]And I was like, what?
[21:42]And he said, you just make such an ass out of yourself.
[21:44]And that's like, oh, yeah, I guess I think it was really fantastic.
[21:51]Do you still teach spinning?
[21:52]I do.
[21:53]I mean, because of COVID, I haven't had my classes, but I love teaching spinning.
[21:57]It's like the best money I ever spent was getting certified.
[22:00]It's just, you meet the nicest people.
[22:03]And you know, I never draw at a class, never ever.
[22:06]I never wake up and think, oh, I have to teach a spin class.
[22:09]There's just this wonderful energy when you walk into a spin room.
[22:12]So I hope, I don't know what the future of spinning is right now.
[22:15]I know.
[22:16]The future of anything.
[22:17]No.
[22:18]Well, Christina, thank you so much.
[22:21]Your book, as I said at the beginning, I could not put it down and it kept me up and that
[22:26]doesn't happen that often.
[22:28]And I just really, really enjoyed it.
[22:30]So it's really a pleasure talking to you.
[22:32]And I share that same appreciation of all nostalgic elements and not
[22:36]wanting things to change.
[22:38]And so I get it.
[22:39]And it was just really great.
[22:41]So congratulations on your update and everything.
[22:45]And really, thank you for having me on the show.
[22:46]I truly listen all the time.
[22:49]And it's just a total thrill to be on it.
[22:51]Thanks for all you do for writers, especially a debut writer like me.
[22:55]You know, to get my name out there through you means so much.
[22:58]Aww.
[22:59]Well, it's my pleasure.
[23:02]All right, well, hopefully I'll meet you in person one of these days.
[23:04]Oh, great.
[23:05]Thanks a lot to me.
[23:05]OK, bye-bye.
[23:07]Thanks for listening to a Beach Reads Wednesday episode from my big July book blast.
[23:13]I hope you've enjoyed it.
[23:14]And I hope you've enjoyed getting to know some of these amazing authors.
[23:18]Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[23:20]Moms don't have time to read books.
[23:22]If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram at zippyowans and at moms don't
[23:28]have time to read books.
[23:29]And sign up for my mailing list at zippyowans.com so you can always hear about the latest
[23:33]things I'm up to you.
[23:34]Thanks a lot.
[23:35]Thanks so much to Page One Books for sponsoring today's episode.
[23:38]I hope you'll all check out my summer Beach Bundle at page one books dot com.
[23:42]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[23:47]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.
[23:51]Thanks for listening.
[23:52]You could always email me at zippyowans.com.