Vendela Vida, WE RUN THE TIDES: A NOVEL
[0:01]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[2:06]Then de la vida is the award-winning author of six books, including Let the Northern Lights erase your name, the lovers, and the divers clothes lie empty.
[2:14]Her novel We Run the Tides is just out from Echo.
[2:17]She is a founding editor of the believer and co-editor of the believer book of writers talking to writers, and confidence, or the appearance of confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians.
[2:28]She was a founding board member of 826 Valencia, the San Francisco Writing Center for Youth, and lives in the Bay Area with her family.
[2:35]Welcome, fenderla. Thank you so much for coming on momstone of time to read books.
[2:39]Thank you so much for having me, Zuri.
[2:41]It's such a pleasure.
[2:42]I am so excited to talk to you about We Run the Tides, which is amazing and made me feel like I was back to being a girl again.
[2:49]I actually went to an all-girl school where we wore uniforms.
[2:53]We just felt like I was back in it, although I was in New York growing up.
[2:57]So can you tell listeners first what this latest novel of yours is about and what inspired you to write it?
[3:03]Okay, so I will start kind of, I'm going to switch order and talk first about what inspired me to write the book and then what it's about.
[3:09]Perfect. You can do whatever you want. This is your half an hour. You just, we don't even have to talk about the book.
[3:15]So We Run the Tides started actually four years ago the day after Trump was elected in 2016 in a different form.
[3:23]It started as a nonfiction book about lies and the nature of lying and what causes people to lie and the pollution that lies can cause.
[3:32]And so I became very obsessed with the election and with the work of a Swedish American philosopher named Cecilia Bach.
[3:37]And I wrote a whole, it's going to be your about about a year researching a book that was about lies, a nonfiction book.
[3:43]Slowly that morphed into a fictional book about young girls growing up in San Francisco because that might seem like a very, you know, far end of the spectrum.
[3:53]But basically I felt like creating teenage protagonists made sense when talking about lying because I feel like teenagers just by the very nature are shape shifters and they're trying on different personalities and lying a lot.
[4:06]The lies can be contagious and pass along from one person to another. And the trick for us is just eventually learning not to lie and that kind of makes people become grown up.
[4:18]People's asking that sometimes like kids ask me like how do you know when you're adult and you know, some people give answers like, well, when you start making dental appointments on your own that's how you know, you know, you're an adult actually.
[4:30]I just made a dental appointment for my husband so I didn't know about that.
[4:34]I was wondering what that means.
[4:36]Yeah, it's like, oh, we were literally the other and like talking about the dentist, but anyway.
[4:40]But I think it's okay, but here's that's a simple say.
[4:43]So the good news is that I actually think it's when you stop lying to yourself and other people that's my definition of when you become an adult.
[4:50]This book is about to young women, you'll be in Rhea Fabiola who are growing up in San Francisco and they go up to an inaugural school and they witness something on a way to school one day.
[5:01]That might be a horrific act, it might not be one of the things that is a horrific act and Rhea Fabiola, you'll be does not see anything.
[5:08]But she's encouraged to lie about what she saw.
[5:11]And when she does and she's ostracized from the group of friends.
[5:14]And that's where the book starts taking off from there.
[5:17]That horrific act, by the way, was seen all the time in New York growing up.
[5:21]That was like par for the course.
[5:23]I mean, this did that happen to you.
[5:24]It must have happened to me exactly, but it seemed like something happened a lot.
[5:29]And you know, what it is is they see something man in a car and some, you know, I won't go into it was.
[5:35]Yeah, we don't have to give anything away.
[5:37]But I think that men in cars, especially vintage cars had this sort of like threat to or promised, depending on how you saw it or how many times you'd watch grease or whatever.
[5:48]So I wanted that to be the catalyst for these lies and for the unraveling of these girls relationships.
[5:54]And I read this piece where you were interviewed in the Guardian and it said that the part about pretending your family had adopted a friend was actually something that you had done, which is in the book.
[6:05]So it's funny that you mentioned that because I wanted Maria Fabiola in the book is the main liar, but I wanted something story that shows that you will be was actually a liar as well.
[6:14]And she kind of starts this chain of lines.
[6:16]Like I said, do you think that lying is kind of like, you know, it's like when you are younger and you know,
[6:21]the only example I didn't think right now is like when you see your friend and hook their bra without looking like I'm either t-shirt.
[6:27]And then, you know, they pass on that knowledge of somebody else and gets passed around and pretty soon the next summer party, everyone just acting like they've been doing it their whole lives, right?
[6:35]Even though they're just gotten bras.
[6:37]So I feel like lying is passed around the same way that someone tells a lie about something and gets attention for it when you're a young girl and then the next person passes along.
[6:45]So yes, I am basically stole a story for myself, my own life, which I don't really think counts as plagiarism.
[6:52]I self-laid on this story about how when I was growing up, I did pretend that there was a girl.
[6:58]She was a girl from like this really cool hippie.
[7:02]I got hippieish family.
[7:03]We go to our house and her mom and her boyfriend would have us eat fondie like, while sitting on pillows on the floor.
[7:08]And I just thought the whole, I thought the whole scene was very cool, you know, for lack of a better word.
[7:13]And she was there for my house one time.
[7:15]We decided to pretend that she was my newly adopted sister.
[7:19]And so we ran around the block telling everyone that my family had adopted her.
[7:23]And that seemed really fun for about an hour and we kind of forgot about it.
[7:27]Then all the neighbors had not forgotten about it and they started calling my parents congratulating them.
[7:32]And that was my first exposure to really getting trouble for a lie and having to go back around the block and explain myself to everybody.
[7:40]And I also learned something important in that, in that lie or in that period, which was that, you know, as a liar, you're going to a lot of trouble that if you write something called fiction, you actually don't get in trouble.
[7:53]So I think that's actually when I started turning to fiction as a writer more and more.
[7:58]And I will say these days, you have to be careful of what you write in fiction in order to make sure you're at, you know, you have to write about something that you have enough knowledge about in some way that you can write as if you know about it.
[8:13]You can't like appropriate somebody else's culture or race or something. I mean, there are rules still in fiction.
[8:19]I think you're plagiarizing yourself.
[8:23]No rules. All the rules are off.
[8:25]Yeah, all bets are off after present.
[8:28]Oh my gosh.
[8:29]Well, for Maria Fabiola, another thing that was interesting in the book is like what happens with so many groups of friends. She develops earlier than other people. She becomes this great beauty.
[8:39]And you have this great, you know, this great passage where the mom, like one of the moms, I think Jill's mom, one of the moms takes a picture of the three of them on the doorstep.
[8:47]And says like, my you guys are getting beautiful. And, and she's like, well, she, you look like she didn't even look at me.
[8:53]She was obviously not even talking about me. And it's also like, so what happens to a friend group as you start the same way and then time takes you off in different directions.
[9:03]It's like the beginning of the splintering of so many reasons. So I love how you captured that. So I don't know. Tell me a little about that and how like friendships tend to fracture.
[9:13]Yeah, that was kind of, it happens to say it's that was a fun character to invent Maria Fabiola doesn't exist in my life and doesn't exist in my childhood.
[9:21]But I feel like we've all had Maria Fabiola's in our lives. You know, people who just somehow become like fabulous.
[9:27]One of our eyes, we're watching them through someone else's eyes and we're like, oh my gosh, this person is fabulous. And so she was someone I had a lot of fun creating.
[9:36]And I just liked the idea too because when you are, you know, everyone goes to an awkward parent.
[9:41]Right. Obviously, you're younger, but when you see someone actually emerge from the awkwardness before everyone else does it's kind of incredible to witness, right.
[9:49]And I think that obviously I have a teenager now, a teenage daughter and just seeing her see her friends go through that too is also really interesting.
[9:56]And even as a mother, seeing these girls who've grown up, seeing which ones are.
[10:00]suddenly now like six feet tall. And it's really kind of amazing for black
[10:05]with better word. It just makes you feel really old, but it's also kind of
[10:08]incredible. So that is how I come up with Maria Fabiola's character. And and I
[10:14]do think there's something about her beauty that I wanted to think about
[10:17]too. And just especially as they're going to all girls school. And I
[10:20]wanted to talk about the male gaze a lot in terms of both what they're
[10:24]taught in school. They're taught a lot of books about how to
[10:28]look themselves through a man's eyes, whatever way that might be, even in
[10:33]more subconscious ways, by the texts that they're assigned and the way
[10:37]they're graded on the books that they're assigned. And I made up a character
[10:41]called Mr. London, who's a young teacher. He's really too young to be
[10:44]teaching at the school because there's not enough of an age difference. And so
[10:47]all the girls secretly kind of are, you know, confused, confused about him.
[10:51]And he assigns books by Jack London to kind of make people think that maybe
[10:55]there's a connection there and he's related to Jack London. And he also
[10:58]assigns books like Sondra and Fanon Zoe. And he actually gives a girl and gives
[11:03]you a little bit of bad grade because it doesn't think that she understands
[11:05]teenage girls. And so that was something I was playing around with too. Just
[11:08]the way that these girls are watching Maria Fabiola develop into this beauty
[11:13]at the same time. They're being taught how to how to view that through literature.
[11:17]I love that whole scene where the teacher is like, well, you're in trouble. You have to
[11:20]like, Fanon Zoe. It's like a work to master piece. You have to like,
[11:24]you know, kind of lost interest wasn't my thing. He's like, you can't say that.
[11:30]Anyway, that was pretty funny. So tell me about how you you've been writing forever.
[11:36]You've got an MFA. You have been writing multiple novels,
[11:40]keep like all different life stages. A lot about women from widows to young girls. Tell me
[11:46]about how you come up with all of your ideas or like how you maybe more how you
[11:50]approach projects. Like when do you know and new one is coming? How often do you write new
[11:55]books? Like what is your schedule? Like how do you think about books as they as they go along
[12:00]your life with you? Such great questions to be. I wish I I wish I had a format or a formula
[12:06]to do the more pretty books more often. But you know, this one took me about four years in part
[12:10]because I started with this being nonfiction book about lies. But I also feel like with every book,
[12:14]I write there's a book that I didn't write or they started off at a construction. They had to
[12:18]abandon it and it gave birth to the current to the new one. So I probably published write a book
[12:24]every three or four years. But it doesn't mean I just been working on that book. I probably
[12:28]been working on the early incarnation that got very long the way. And it all starts with just
[12:33]when you know you have an idea you can't get rid of. You know, I feel like you have to really
[12:37]be in love with something before you start writing it because there depends so much more time
[12:41]with that idea than you ever thought possible. Like more than you're just going to, it's like
[12:45]you can't just be like, you can't just have a crush on something you have to be in love with
[12:49]this idea and want to explore every facet of it. And so for example, I have a new idea for a book
[12:55]now. I'm starting to research it by reading books that are, you know, I want to take place over
[12:59]the course of a weekend. So I'm reading a lot of books that take place over the course of a night,
[13:03]like Hurricane Murakami, a book by Hurricane Murakami, or books that take place over a weekend,
[13:08]like Peter Cameron's weekend, which was a book I've read 20 years ago and really, really
[13:13]remember enjoying. And I also have Virginia Woolf novels that take place takes place in the day
[13:18]to the lighthouse. No, sorry, Mr. Dallas. It takes place in the course of a day. And so I'm
[13:23]circling this idea whether it will actually end up happening. I don't know, but that's what I'm doing
[13:27]right now is I'm working on this idea of a book that takes place in a condensed period of time
[13:30]because I've never done that before. And there's something fun about trying something new with
[13:35]every book. Joanna Hirschon wrote a book called Saint Eva, and that takes place over a weekend.
[13:39]Oh, I love Joanna Hirschon. I have to, I'll have to read that book. I saw that came out.
[13:42]Yeah, it's really good. I love it when you work. Yeah, thank you.
[13:49]Let me know what your next book idea is. I'll give you some research.
[13:52]Please search and let me use this knowledge for something. It's like,
[13:55]he's a knowledge in my hand. I'm all these books. No, not you, so it's what I'm kidding.
[14:00]And what is it like? So you're married to a fellow author who, by the way, he's going to be
[14:04]a day of anger. It's going to be on my podcast like in two weeks. I don't know what I've
[14:07]talked about that or not, but anyway, for his children's book. But when you are both writing or
[14:12]when you're in a marriage and the two of you even have the same profession, whether you're like
[14:15]bankers or doctors or whatever, like, how do you divide sort of the work and talk and the
[14:22]home talk and how does that interplay with your family life, if at all, if not, then it doesn't.
[14:27]You know, it's when I get asked a question, everyone's well, I don't know how to answer it to
[14:32]be honest because it's only thing I know, you know, we've been working for maybe, we've been
[14:37]together for almost 20 years and I don't know any other way of being. And the only way I can
[14:43]really explain is I feel like there's just a shorthand where we know when the other person's going
[14:47]through something. So for example, if he's working really hard on something, I know just not
[14:52]just over schedule that time period or to expect, I don't know, just I think the same goes for
[14:59]him. Like he knows right. He knew when I was finishing, we run the tides, gave me a lot, a lot of
[15:04]space to just, you know, finish it. Like I didn't have to do anything around the house for
[15:09]for a long time. And I didn't have to ask. This was like, it was just an unspoken
[15:14]agreement that I would be able to stay at an office where I was working and it just, it's just
[15:20]unspoken, I guess. So that's why I'm having a hard time articulating how that agreement works because
[15:25]I think a lot of it comes from just understanding and having empathy for what the other person's
[15:28]going through and not having to talk to talk through. That's great. I mean, there are like many
[15:36]books. I could recommend some of those too. Like fair play by Ewrowski and like many others that
[15:40]are all about like the division of labor inside the household and how to get people to the stage
[15:45]that you're at with how to sort of seamlessly pick up and put down when other people are
[15:51]just sense. Anyway, I don't know. That's very interesting. And tell me about your non-profit.
[15:56]Valencia. Oh, H26. Yeah. So that is a learning and writing center. It's mostly a writing center
[16:02]for kids ages 8 through 18, although something start younger in San Francisco. So I was a founding board
[16:08]member of H26 Valencia and it's named after the street that it's on Valencia Street, which is
[16:13]also exciting for me to be personally because my father grew up in that neighborhood in the
[16:16]Mission District. And he actually pronounces at the old way, which is in terms of Valencia,
[16:21]which is always fun for me to hear. And so he knew a lot about the neighborhood. And my family
[16:27]actually used to have, I think, like a vacuum cleaner store on that street that could cost the street
[16:31]something like that. And so I'm really tied to that neighborhood into the place about 20 years
[16:36]ago. We started inviting students into be tutored by people who just had a lot of free time on
[16:41]their hands. People who were writers who maybe, you know, it's really hard as a writer to work from
[16:45]like nine to seven PM straight or you know, even if you're doing that, you're probably lying to somebody
[16:50]yourself. If you act, you're saying that you're lying to. If you're not, if you're taking a
[16:54]flies, go in the light. Yeah. I was kind of a way to get people who had extra time or really wanted
[17:00]to work with words involved with helping kids on a one on basis. So we help support the teachers
[17:06]and their classrooms and oftentimes the teachers ask the tutors for their help. And just say,
[17:11]I have teacher say, I have so many students. I can't give them the one on help that they need.
[17:15]Can you please help? And that's what the tutors do. And so obviously that's been a little
[17:20]different now during the pandemic. There's been a lot of Zoom tutoring and I'm really proud of
[17:24]the organization and just love all the people involved. And that's that's a two six
[17:29]Valencia. That's amazing. So what kind of books do you like to read when you're not researching
[17:33]other books? I'm not researching other books. Well, it's funny you asked that so I was thinking how
[17:37]much my reading how it's changed in the last year with the pandemic. I used to almost always
[17:43]exclusively gravitate towards books set in other countries. I mean, I love you. I used to love
[17:47]writing books. I used to. I still love writing books in other countries. But this last one we'd
[17:50]run the ties is when the first books are written that set exclusively in the United States. But
[17:56]during the pandemic, I turned a lot to mysteries and thrillers, for example. I think in part
[18:02]because I just wanted an answer. I wanted to get to the end and have a solution and have a big
[18:07]finale at the end and know that the mystery had been solved and the book was over. And so I
[18:13]read a lot of books that were who recommended my Sarah Lyle in New York Times. I basically
[18:17]hadn't timeshed at a column. I would just buy all the books on her prime and thriller list and
[18:21]read them all. And the best ones I read was a beautiful crime by Christopher Boland. I really love
[18:27]that book. I'm set in Venice. And I, what else have you been reading lately? I am obsessed with
[18:34]Edith Wharton. I love Edith Wharton novels. So I've been rereading a lot of her work. And we had a
[18:40]lot of contemporary novels that came out. One of my other favorite books that came out in the past
[18:44]year was Lily Kings book writers and lovers. And that was probably the first book I read in the
[18:48]pandemic. Did you? I loved that book so much. That is the book I stayed up until two in the morning
[18:54]to finish. Love. Did I head around my podcast and she came to my book club. And I love her. Yeah,
[18:59]she's writing for my next anthology. But yes, like one of my best of the year, I would say,
[19:03]one of the best books that came out this year. I loved it. I read it in March, right, when the
[19:07]pandemic was hitting it really kind of, I feel like it was a catharsis from YouTube. I laughed a lot.
[19:12]I cried a lot. I emailed her a fan letter and I had this big plan. I said, okay, during the pandemic,
[19:17]I was going to start writing fan letters to every author whose books moved me. And then many
[19:21]that I had to stop after. That's so nice. Well, there are enough people not taking the time to do
[19:29]that. I'm sure it means a lot. I mean, do you get fan letters? You must get. How do you feel about
[19:33]people reaching out to you? That's always really nice. You know, it's really, that's why in some
[19:38]ways with this book coming out and not being able to do readings and bookstores, it's, you know,
[19:42]little sad. You'll hear writers talk about that. It's sad to not do a book tour. And I think
[19:46]this, the thing that I will miss is that just that's the one time as a writer that you connect
[19:50]with your reader one on one. Like obviously now we're connecting, but that's not something you do
[19:55]with like every reader. And so I will miss that opportunity.
[20:00]to actually get to meet people.
[20:02]And it's obviously different from being an actress
[20:05]where you are on stage and you see people responding
[20:07]to your play or it's unlike a lot of other professions
[20:12]where there's immediate feedback or response.
[20:14]And so that's something that I miss.
[20:16]And so you have an upright and a letter
[20:17]I'm really, really happy and I try to write back when I can.
[20:21]So nice.
[20:21]I think that's one of the things I realized
[20:23]that I had no idea of before I did this podcast or anything
[20:26]was that authors are actually just people
[20:28]who will be replying to DMs.
[20:31]And they're like authors are somehow now so accessible in a way.
[20:36]Not all the time.
[20:36]I don't mean to breach privacy or anything, but when I was
[20:41]going up, I used to literally write fan letters
[20:43]and mail them and maybe I would hear back.
[20:46]And now it's like, oh, did you do?
[20:48]Like, who would you write family?
[20:51]My first fan letter was to an author.
[20:52]Her name was Zibi O'Neill.
[20:54]So she had the same first name.
[20:55]And I was like, oh my gosh, my name on a book.
[20:57]This is what I've always wanted.
[20:59]At least my first name.
[21:00]And I think I was 10 or something.
[21:02]And I remember my mom helped me and we called the publisher
[21:06]and got her address in Michigan.
[21:08]And we were pen pals for three years.
[21:10]And then she came to New York and took me to Tith,
[21:11]the Plaza.
[21:12]Awesome.
[21:13]That's a great story.
[21:14]I love that.
[21:15]It was much more sophisticated than my first fan letters
[21:17]were to Robert Downey Jr.
[21:19]So that was my literary fan letters.
[21:22]I also wrote her Cameron fan letters growing things.
[21:26]Yeah, I think maybe even Ricky Schroeder at one point.
[21:29]I don't know.
[21:30]I'm probably much older than you.
[21:31]But anyway, that was my, those are my fan letters.
[21:34]So what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[21:37]I think my advice never changes on teaching either age to six
[21:41]or when teaching students for older.
[21:43]Just you have to put in the time every day to write.
[21:46]I think like, even if you are expressing that you're lying
[21:49]to yourself about how it's getting done,
[21:50]I think just blocking out those three hours a day,
[21:52]especially if you're just putting an idea three hours
[21:54]plenty of time to sit by yourself and write anything.
[21:58]A paragraph, write a page.
[21:59]It doesn't mean it doesn't matter if you're going to use it
[22:02]ultimately or not.
[22:03]It's just about it keeping yourself in training.
[22:05]And it's the same thing people say that you wouldn't just
[22:08]go out and run a marathon without training for it.
[22:12]And I don't think the same thing is true of books.
[22:13]Like you in some ways just have to be writing every day
[22:17]and put it in the time because you never know
[22:18]when you're going to catch on to something.
[22:21]I think about the beginning of we were on the ties.
[22:23]And I started writing it.
[22:23]I didn't know that that day was me different from any other day.
[22:25]I just sitting my office thinking, oh, my God,
[22:27]do I have writer's block?
[22:28]What's happening?
[22:29]Why is my book not coming to me?
[22:32]And I wrote the first sentence, which is,
[22:35]I don't want to just quote myself, but the first sentence,
[22:38]who I was writing my hands, I was right by hand
[22:40]until I figure out the rhythm of the book.
[22:42]And the first sentence is we are 13, almost 14,
[22:45]and these streets of sea cliff are ours.
[22:47]And I wrote that sentence.
[22:49]And it just, the rhythm of it made sense to me.
[22:51]And then I just catch going.
[22:53]Because I didn't want, as afraid if I stopped,
[22:55]somehow I would lose the idea for the book.
[22:57]But that's what it took in a just a normal day.
[23:00]I canceled all my plans that afternoon.
[23:01]So I said, OK, I need to actually make space now
[23:03]for this idea to take root.
[23:05]And that's what I would say.
[23:06]So writing every day.
[23:07]And you always write by hand when I'm starting a book.
[23:11]You know, I'm not that superstitious,
[23:13]but I have all these things that I do.
[23:14]Like I'm starting a book I write by hand
[23:15]until I figure out the rhythm and the voice.
[23:18]And then once I figure out the first few pages
[23:20]and feel they're locked into it, then I switched to,
[23:23]do you really want to hear this?
[23:24]I do.
[23:24]I actually am really wanting to hear this.
[23:26]When I switch to the laptop and I start top typing up
[23:28]what I've written by hand so that I can kind of get into the rhythm
[23:33]and then I keep going.
[23:34]And then so for the first week, I try to write 1,000 words a day.
[23:38]So and then once I'm anyway, that's
[23:42]no, tell me, tell me once you're going to five in a word
[23:44]a day.
[23:44]And then if I as I get further into my 1,000 words a day.
[23:47]And again, it doesn't mean that those words are going to stay
[23:49]because clearly my books are not, if I kept,
[23:51]or not that long, if I kept all the words I written,
[23:54]my books would be a lot longer.
[23:55]But I'm a big sculptor afterwards.
[23:58]I just go through and take out all the extra words.
[24:01]Wow.
[24:02]It's really interesting.
[24:03]And see, I almost missed that little tidbit.
[24:05]That was great.
[24:07]Awesome.
[24:08]Well, thank you so much.
[24:09]Thanks for coming on this podcast.
[24:11]It was so nice talking with you.
[24:13]It was so nice talking to you, too.
[24:15]Thank you.
[24:16]OK, bye-bye.
[24:19]Thanks so much to beekeepers' naturals
[24:21]for helping me through a sick day with the amazing cough syrup
[24:24]and cough spray, throat spray that you have.
[24:27]And thanks for helping all my listeners
[24:30]beekeepers' naturals.com slash no-time promo code no-time.
[24:35]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't
[24:37]Have Time to Read Books.
[24:38]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens
[24:41]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:43]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[24:46]and sign up for my virtual book club
[24:47]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:50]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[24:53]for the Sound Editing.
[24:54]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[24:56]for providing this fantastic intro and natural music.