Paula McLain, WHEN THE STARS GO DARK
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[1:36]PolymaClane is the author of When the Stars Go Dark and Novel.
[1:40]She's the New York Times best-selling author, also, of the novel's Love and Ruin, Circling
[1:45]the Sun, the Paris wife, and a ticket to ride.
[1:48]The memoir, like family, growing up in other people's houses, and two collections of poetry.
[1:53]Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, O The Oprah Magazine
[1:57]Town and Country, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere.
[2:01]She currently lives in Ohio with her family.
[2:05]Welcome, Paula.
[2:06]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss when
[2:09]the Stars Go Dark and everything else in your amazing collection of work.
[2:13]Thank you.
[2:14]I'm super excited to be here.
[2:17]So I just want to thank you for being such an advocate for books and authors, an ambassador,
[2:23]an ambassador dress.
[2:24]If that's your ticket.
[2:25]I'm super excited.
[2:26]I just want you to know that it really matters to have real people out there who look
[2:32]books and community.
[2:35]And anyway, I believe books connect us, I believe all that stuff, and so thank you.
[2:41]That made my day.
[2:42]Thank you so much.
[2:43]I believe books connect us, and I feel like stories are so important.
[2:47]And I mean, look at the way that you took this book, right?
[2:51]Like, I was on the edge of my seat reading this book to the way where my husband's like,
[2:56]what's going on over there?
[2:57]You know what I'm like?
[2:58]I'm like, we don't talk to me right.
[3:01]We can't have dinner.
[3:02]Hold on.
[3:03]We're like, you know, in this big crime scene and whatever.
[3:05]And I take that as the highest possible compliment.
[3:09]I mean, that's why we read, right?
[3:11]I mean, when I was a kid, that's totally why I read to get lost in the world, right?
[3:17]We think of escape as something with negative connotations.
[3:22]And yet it has such powerful positive connotations as well if we give it half a minute, right?
[3:30]Like this year, for instance, haven't we needed books to escape and also to just give
[3:39]us a connection to something else, something bigger than ourselves, right?
[3:43]Stories that inspire us, stories that feed our soul.
[3:47]I mean, sometimes even entertainment to distract us for that hour or two, for instance,
[3:54]from things that are heavy or stressful is I find it meditative.
[3:59]I mean, it's sort of like yoga, right?
[4:02]It's the only way to literally get somebody else's voice in your head and displace all
[4:08]of your own sort of conscious thoughts for a minute and delve completely.
[4:12]Even when I watch a movie, it's not exactly the same thing, right?
[4:15]Because I'm like, where's my popcorn?
[4:17]And like, you know, I can still like do other things or like attend to something.
[4:22]But in a book, it's my book, no, it just grabs you and pulls you in and I always think
[4:30]too, that is what meditation does, right?
[4:33]And mindfulness or even yoga, like if you're in a yoga classroom, you get super sweaty and
[4:38]suddenly you realize the reason you feel relaxed is because it's turned off the loop where
[4:45]you're reminding yourself of the million things you need to do or all the anxiety you've
[4:50]been feeling about your parents or your kids or your lists and the lists with the lists
[4:57]and the addendums.
[4:59]Yeah, list.
[5:01]List that email to myself, list I keep on the side, yes, totally get it back or exactly
[5:07]hearing a lot and we're doing a lot and I believe that we have every right to need a great
[5:12]story every once in a while, so it's a treat.
[5:15]And by the way, yoga does not do that for me.
[5:17]So I'm kind of jealous.
[5:19]Yoga is like, I'm so self conscious.
[5:22]I can't even do yoga by myself without having my interior monologue going like nonstop.
[5:28]So yeah, yeah, I don't think you're alone.
[5:31]I think it's like in moments, like in little moments, I can't even do meditation without
[5:37]having the.
[5:38]I can't even do meditation end of sentence period, but books I can read book after book after
[5:45]book.
[5:46]Yeah.
[5:47]I know where you go.
[5:48]Like the person sitting next to you doesn't know that like all of a sudden I'm in the
[5:51]woods or like I'm in this, you know, the eggs are being burned on the stove and now
[5:55]like my heart is pounding and the dog barking and the police coming in and I'm like,
[6:00]I am going through all this right now, except I'm not, except I'm sitting on my bed.
[6:04]I don't know.
[6:05]Yes.
[6:06]So I constantly marveling at this all of that.
[6:10]So Paula, you have an author's letter at the beginning where you talk about the fact that
[6:14]you've sort of switched genres, right, that you wrote the Paris way, which was amazing,
[6:19]obviously.
[6:20]And now you've sort of moved into this more haunting thriller esque, although it's not
[6:24]really like a thriller.
[6:25]It's more like a mystery.
[6:26]Yeah, like literary suspense, it's better one, Marie.
[6:31]I guess is what it is, but none of that was premeditated.
[6:35]I got hijacked.
[6:36]I was in the middle of writing my third historical, which is called Love and Ruin.
[6:41]It's another Hemingway novel, but the character at the center is really like the
[6:44]galhorn who is a journalist who is his third wife.
[6:48]She's a work correspondence and a utter badass.
[6:50]So I'm in that world.
[6:51]I'm in Madrid, right, Franco's army, they're in the trenches, like all this crazy stuff.
[6:57]And I went for a walk with my dog, which I do every day, twice a day because I'm a really
[7:01]good dog mom.
[7:02]And I need that too for that thing we were talking about about getting out of your, getting
[7:06]out of your head and putting things down for a bit, but I'm on a walk with my dog and
[7:10]suddenly this character flares up, this detective character.
[7:15]And it happens sometimes, sometimes particular dog walks are like, you know, in the shower
[7:21]or in a long car ride or something, I believe that, I don't know, whatever pulls that
[7:27]some rhythmic quality to the movement or that invites inspiration.
[7:34]That's what I think it is.
[7:35]I don't know.
[7:36]It's mysterious.
[7:37]Did you ever read Liz Gilbert's Big Magic?
[7:40]About creativity and what it is and where it comes from, but it's mysterious.
[7:45]So here was this character that just came out of the sky and I pictured this missing
[7:51]persons detective who is troubled, who has, who's carrying a lot.
[7:56]And this girl who vanishes in thin air and the connection that they have.
[8:03]And I knew that it had to be set in Mendo Cino because it's a place that really matters
[8:07]to me from my connection to California, I'm a California native.
[8:12]And by the time I got home with the dog, I could see the whole thing.
[8:15]I could see the whole thing.
[8:17]It was like this shimmering, electrical, magical thing.
[8:26]But what do I know about suspense, right?
[8:29]So I'm just like crazy idea, crazy idea.
[8:32]I put it down, but it came back, then I put it down, but it came back.
[8:36]So I flooded it to my agent and she's like, oh, my God, yes, 100% yes, 900% yes, maybe
[8:45]it has to be a series.
[8:46]And so I decided I would try, it's not easy, right?
[8:51]It's not easy because I was afraid, you know, it was great to have my agent on board.
[8:56]She's my number one reader.
[8:58]She's the person who sort of reads all my drafts and stuff.
[9:02]But the publishing company, Random House, right, my editor, all those people who actually
[9:07]pay me.
[9:10]I was afraid to tell them because I had carved out a successful career for myself.
[9:16]And so my agent said, and this was scary too, don't let's not sell them on an idea.
[9:23]Let's not say, Paul McLean is going to try to write a mystery now and there's a detective
[9:27]to see and a missing girl, and she's like, write it, write it the way it is in your
[9:33]mind, write that hell out of it.
[9:36]And then we'll show them that book when that book is done.
[9:40]And so that's what we did.
[9:43]But for a year and a half, as I was drafting, it's like jump just jumping over a cliff.
[9:49]I was terrified.
[9:50]Can't I really do this?
[9:51]You know, all the voices, right, the broadings I had either, right, what am I taking
[9:57]on, am I completely out of my mind?
[10:00]over my head, out of my depth.
[10:03]But along the way, it was so exciting.
[10:06]It was so exciting because I was learning something new.
[10:11]Like my brain was firing on all cylinders
[10:14]the way it does when we learn something new.
[10:18]And so I had challenged myself, right?
[10:21]I had challenged myself and I had taken the ceiling away.
[10:25]It had been 10 years since I had allowed myself
[10:29]to spin out a tale about an entirely imaginary character.
[10:35]So my whole creative process suddenly was re-energized.
[10:40]So what did you tell your, the random-house people
[10:43]when you were secretly writing another book?
[10:45]They think you were just like, you know,
[10:47]whileing away the time?
[10:49]Yes, they thought they knew I was working on something new
[10:52]and that I wasn't talking about it.
[10:55]And I wasn't talking about it.
[10:57]She's not ready, basically, is what my agent kept telling them.
[11:00]She's working, it's exciting.
[11:02]We can't wait to show you, but she's not quite ready.
[11:05]And so it was just thrilling when we finally did show them
[11:09]and they were convinced and on board and persuaded
[11:14]and no one, not any way up the line,
[11:16]not publicity, not marketing, not my publisher,
[11:21]no one along the way said, what is she doing?
[11:24]I only said, yes, this book.
[11:28]So felt amazing, felt amazing when you take a risk, right?
[11:32]When you take a risk and they pay off comes, you know,
[11:37]just with this, yes.
[11:38]Well, it was meant to be.
[11:39]I mean, you had, it was a story you had to tell.
[11:41]It was like, it was yours to tell.
[11:43]You could not tell it.
[11:45]I think so.
[11:46]Thank you for putting that language to it
[11:49]because it did start to feel that way, the deeper I got.
[11:54]I didn't know on the dog walk that I was going to give
[11:57]Anna Hart, my detective, my experiences in foster care.
[12:03]That was like the third draft.
[12:04]I didn't know, but the seed was there.
[12:08]The seed was there to write a character
[12:10]who maybe I had more in common with, right?
[12:14]Then Hadley Richardson, Hemingway's wife,
[12:16]then Beryl Markham, this kickass aviator
[12:21]from Colonial Kenya, right?
[12:23]Suddenly, the stitches can come more naturally
[12:27]or imagining a character in there,
[12:30]but they're wrestling with, right?
[12:33]Like we all are wrestling with the past, our regrets,
[12:38]trying to make sense of our choices and our lives,
[12:41]trying to move forward and understanding what keeps us
[12:44]from moving forward.
[12:46]You know, wow.
[12:48]I wonder if people outside of sort of the literary community
[12:52]would view what you did as big a risk
[12:54]as you felt like it was.
[12:56]Do you know what I mean?
[12:57]I understand that when you're so firmly entrenched
[12:59]in a genre that it feels like life-changing,
[13:03]more dramatic, like much more dramatic to me.
[13:07]Like some people might think like, well, yeah,
[13:09]she's an amazing author, she can write whatever she wants.
[13:11]She can write whatever she wants, right?
[13:14]I mean, I guess I would say, I don't think writers feel
[13:18]that level of just utter freedom all the time,
[13:23]particularly if you have a franchise, right?
[13:26]So let's say Lisa Scott-Alini has just written a historical.
[13:31]Yep, right?
[13:32]She's made her name doing something entirely different.
[13:35]What will her fans think?
[13:37]Will they be able to have the creative, you know,
[13:40]the imagination and to follow her into that realm?
[13:44]Or would they say, this is not who she is,
[13:46]this is not what she does, right?
[13:49]But this is like, you know,
[13:50]watching your favorite actress,
[13:52]all of a sudden, go from comedy to drama.
[13:54]Like that's okay.
[13:55]I'm gonna watch her, no matter where she goes.
[13:57]And she's probably really good at both.
[14:00]Yeah, I think you're onto something though.
[14:02]I think we as writers might have our own limitations
[14:09]more than the ones that exist.
[14:11]They might be in our head.
[14:12]I'm not saying it's all in your head.
[14:14]I'm just saying, I think that readers are more flexible.
[14:18]Like, they love how you write.
[14:20]They don't love what, maybe they're not even
[14:23]that into historical fiction.
[14:26]But you're sitting right right there.
[14:27]Oh, right, maybe it's right.
[14:29]So that's super interesting.
[14:32]At one point, I remember having crisis of confidence
[14:35]like this big, it was like the first draft still.
[14:39]And I'm like, okay, so now I have FBI guys.
[14:42]And I don't know how to write FBI guys.
[14:44]And like, do I have them all in a room,
[14:46]but I don't wanna write that book.
[14:47]And this is a conversation I was having with my agent.
[14:50]And she's like, sweetheart,
[14:51]you're not writing a procedural.
[14:53]You're writing about people.
[14:55]That's what you do.
[14:57]You're right about people.
[14:58]So just do that.
[15:00]And you can't go like that.
[15:02]And that's what we do.
[15:04]In the end, when you boil it down,
[15:06]we're telling stories about-
[15:08]And you're asking all sorts of questions.
[15:10]I mean, I think that's a large part of this book
[15:12]is like, Anna sort of sitting on the floor
[15:15]with, now I'm not gonna remember the friend
[15:17]who's the, what's the name of the friend?
[15:18]And he's like in the bean bag in his room.
[15:20]And she's like, there's like-
[15:22]Oh, great, Ben.
[15:23]Yeah, right, great, Ben.
[15:24]Great, Ben.
[15:24]Sorry.
[15:25]And you can just see that like,
[15:27]so she's down there.
[15:28]And she's like, you know, she's getting it out of him.
[15:30]She's like, I'm listening.
[15:31]I hear your story.
[15:32]And that's what the whole thing was.
[15:34]It's like, she can put herself in that,
[15:36]in the, any missing persons shoes
[15:39]because she has things that she can relate to.
[15:41]And it's all about like different moments of empathy
[15:43]and listening.
[15:45]And that's just like the human experience.
[15:47]That's why I was like, it's not really a thriller per se
[15:49]because it's this quest for answers,
[15:51]which at its core, we're all sort of looking for
[15:54]in some way, shape or form, right?
[15:55]Yeah, yeah.
[15:56]So not a mystery, but about-
[15:58]Yeah, the mystery of being human.
[16:01]And thanks for the insight and sort of getting
[16:04]that moment between Anna and Gray,
[16:06]which is one of my favorite moments in the book
[16:09]because it shows what her gifts are, right?
[16:13]And that he, he needs to unburden himself,
[16:18]like he actually needs to put it down
[16:21]and maybe no one's really listened to him
[16:24]in that exact way before, right?
[16:27]She connects and she connects
[16:29]and one of the reasons that she connects
[16:30]is because she's experienced childhood trauma.
[16:34]And this is something I haven't come out with my character.
[16:38]I experienced childhood trauma too.
[16:40]And I believe it has everything to do with my empathy
[16:44]and the empathetic imagination.
[16:46]And why I'm interested so much in people
[16:49]and what they do and why they do those things, right?
[16:53]The good and the bad, the good and the bad, you know?
[16:57]There's no such thing as a 100% hero.
[17:00]There's no such thing as a 100% victim
[17:03]or or or a villain or any of it, right?
[17:06]That we're all shades of gray.
[17:08]There's always complexity in the human story.
[17:11]That's what I'm interested in.
[17:13]And I think you show that a lot with your character,
[17:15]Hap, how he's always sort of trying to show the darkness
[17:20]and, you know, point out the risks,
[17:22]but doing so in a moment, doing so out of love, right?
[17:26]Like it's all leading the way
[17:29]can also be just shining the light on the dark.
[17:31]Mm, that was very poetically said.
[17:35]Yeah.
[17:36]Yeah, so Hap is one of the characters
[17:38]that came to me immediately when I, I know why.
[17:42]Like who is this guy?
[17:44]You know, I write her sometimes say,
[17:46]they, my characters just started talking to me
[17:48]and that usually doesn't happen.
[17:50]But here it kind of did.
[17:52]I'm like, okay.
[17:54]And I think Hap might be the father I wish I had had
[17:59]when I was a kid, right?
[18:01]Who understood me and who understood that I needed
[18:05]not pity, right?
[18:07]But space to trust myself.
[18:11]Space to trust myself to become competent, right?
[18:14]At one point, Anna says about Hap,
[18:17]he was a wise man.
[18:18]He'd already learned how to talk to me,
[18:19]a survivor to survive.
[18:22]That scene in the car was insane.
[18:24]Yeah.
[18:25]Oh, thank you.
[18:26]Yes, he's teaching her skills
[18:29]for how to survive in the woods
[18:31]and she's a kid who's been really,
[18:34]she's gone through the wringer emotionally.
[18:36]She's had too way, too much laws
[18:38]and people have given up on her.
[18:40]And so he and he and too it's really.
[18:43]And she needs, he doesn't tell her, you know,
[18:46]that she should trust him.
[18:48]He doesn't think that she should immediately
[18:50]sort of give up all her secrets.
[18:52]And, right, people have layers
[18:56]and they become this,
[19:00]he becomes her north star, essentially, right?
[19:04]And then interestingly, you have his wife
[19:05]who also has these visions
[19:07]and you have a medium who's also, you know,
[19:10]you're tuning into so often.
[19:12]And I like totally believe in that.
[19:14]I don't know if I should admit that,
[19:15]but like I'm to, I've talked to a medium of all in.
[19:19]This is a safe place.
[19:22]I mean, I'm not sure I could have put a medium in the book
[19:26]if I hadn't also.
[19:28]And whether I believe or not,
[19:31]I have had experiences that I can't explain nationally, right?
[19:36]So if happens her connection to the natural world,
[19:40]Eden, her foster mother, who is sort of like a modern day
[19:44]mystic, is her connection to the ineffable.
[19:48]Everything that's bigger, right?
[19:51]And I think they really provide this interesting balance.
[19:56]Also, Eden does this remarkable thing,
[19:59]which is that she...
[20:00]He forgives Anna for all her mistakes
[20:04]because she knows that humans are infinitely complicated.
[20:10]So basically she invites Anna to give herself
[20:14]kind of more of a break and to kind of forgive herself
[20:17]for the things that she's carrying around
[20:19]the pieces of her past and her regrets.
[20:23]Yeah, I love these people.
[20:24]I mean, you can tell, right?
[20:25]I mean, they feel incredibly real to me.
[20:30]Well, you made them very real.
[20:32]I feel like I don't know.
[20:33]I feel like there's this alternate world
[20:35]where all the characters of all these books live.
[20:38]And I'm like just spending the years
[20:39]like getting to know all the characters.
[20:41]I'm like, what, what planet am I living on?
[20:44]But I could actually like have can eat and could walk in
[20:47]and maybe it's like the good place, right?
[20:50]Eleanor in the good place.
[20:52]Maybe that's heaven.
[20:53]Like we go to heaven and all our favorite characters.
[20:55]Oh my gosh.
[20:56]I'm gonna be cool.
[20:57]You get to choose the film of like such book,
[20:58]you go into and you know, anyway.
[21:01]Wow. Well, I know you've referenced your own past
[21:04]and your modern love article.
[21:05]I was like, oh my gosh.
[21:07]Like this piece that you just wrote was so,
[21:10]I mean, I was like holding my heart reading it the whole time.
[21:13]I can't believe what you've gone through as a child.
[21:16]I can't believe how amazingly you could write about it
[21:21]in just like the way you can evoke feeling in the reader
[21:24]and like put yourself right there.
[21:26]And then also turn it into this book
[21:29]and all the things you're doing and having gone through that.
[21:32]Like my heart just broke for you as a child.
[21:35]I mean, and it's so brave of me to like put it up brave.
[21:38]That's such a cliche word.
[21:39]But just, it's so tough what it is.
[21:41]I mean, it does take courage to be vulnerable.
[21:46]I mean, Brene Brown, right?
[21:48]Can I get a witness?
[21:49]It takes personal courage to sort of stand up and say,
[21:52]these are my, this is what I'm dealing with, right?
[21:57]These are, we all have something.
[21:59]There's nobody that gets through life
[22:02]without being wounded, without suffering.
[22:05]We all suffer, right?
[22:07]We just don't talk about it.
[22:10]And so, you know, childhood trauma, sexual violence,
[22:15]it's all around us.
[22:16]It's everywhere, it permeates every level
[22:20]of our culture, society across cultures
[22:25]in every part of the world, to every age group.
[22:29]It's everywhere.
[22:30]And so, but we never talk about it.
[22:32]We're terrified, I think, of how dark it is
[22:35]but what you were saying about half, right?
[22:39]Sometimes all we can do is shine a light
[22:42]on the dark places to give voice
[22:46]to these things that are all around us.
[22:48]And well, back to Brene Brown really quickly,
[22:51]she says, you know, shame cannot survive the light, right?
[22:55]So that's empowerment, talking about it is empowerment.
[22:59]Even if those conversations aren't, you know,
[23:02]I wrote her an essay, millions of people read, right?
[23:04]But sometimes it's just conversations between women.
[23:07]It's telling your best friend, or your sister,
[23:10]or right, each, your daughter, so that she understands
[23:15]this as part of your story.
[23:18]And that telling that story and giving voice to it
[23:21]is a way of taking up some power, right?
[23:25]And shining a light on that.
[23:26]So I don't know.
[23:28]I think it's positive.
[23:29]It's positive to talk about it.
[23:31]It makes this super uncomfortable.
[23:33]But you know what?
[23:34]We're already uncomfortable right now, right?
[23:36]I mean, everything we've been through this year,
[23:39]all of the uncertainty and fear of the tensions
[23:44]around race.
[23:45]And, you know, we're being invited.
[23:47]We're basically being bitched-lapped to you
[23:49]by the universe, like it's time, the environmental stuff, right?
[23:52]It's time to have these hard conversations
[23:55]because it's already here.
[23:57]We're not being in denial, it's not going to help us.
[24:01]It's not that's not the way to move forward.
[24:03]How about taking someone like you,
[24:05]who already has such an audience, you know,
[24:07]as you feel as for your, for your,
[24:10]or now as I think it's just for your writing.
[24:12]But to have someone like you be a leader in that
[24:15]and saying like, okay, well, here's another way.
[24:16]I'm going to open up like, what do you have?
[24:19]Like, what's, what's going to be, you know?
[24:21]Yeah.
[24:22]You know, it's your turn, right?
[24:22]Imagine what would all come out.
[24:24]Yeah.
[24:25]Yeah, it is a little more,
[24:27]it's definitely more exposing
[24:29]because what I've done is connect the dots.
[24:31]I've clearly connected the dots
[24:33]between my own personal story
[24:35]and what I'm writing about.
[24:37]And I've never really done that before.
[24:39]So for instance, friends of mine,
[24:41]who read the Paris wife,
[24:43]find it incredibly emotional
[24:45]because they know that I was going through a divorce
[24:49]at the time that I was reading.
[24:51]But nobody else is going to know that, right?
[24:54]Or Beryl Markham lost her mother when she was four.
[24:58]I lost my mother when I was four.
[25:00]People who know that about me know
[25:02]that that was my emotional connection to that character.
[25:05]But the world at large isn't going to know that.
[25:08]So here it's like all the veils are kind of,
[25:12]all the veils are falling away
[25:14]and I'm just being more open about it.
[25:16]Because I think it's a conversation we need to have
[25:22]and because it's the same way to be,
[25:24]I don't like to make small talk.
[25:27]You know, at a cocktail party to me that's just like death.
[25:30]Like I want to have a deep rich conversation
[25:34]about all this stuff.
[25:36]Me too.
[25:37]I'm in.
[25:38]Let's talk about this stuff.
[25:39]Let's talk about this stuff.
[25:40]I love it.
[25:42]Wow.
[25:43]Thank you so much.
[25:43]Best with this, if you wonder with this kombucha.
[25:47]That's what I'm drinking.
[25:48]That's my little treat right now.
[25:50]I'm having this conversation with you
[25:52]and I'm drinking ginger, blood orange.
[25:56]Come with me.
[25:57]I'm drinking blackberry infused hint water.
[25:59]FYI actually looks like I'm done.
[26:01]So that's good.
[26:02]That's my water for the day.
[26:04]You know, I've seen that around
[26:05]and I've seen all the boxes
[26:07]that I've seen that around.
[26:08]It's good.
[26:09]I feel like actually the founder was on this podcast.
[26:10]Her name is Cara Golden.
[26:11]And she wrote a book called Undaunted, which is good.
[26:13]And actually speaking of other books,
[26:15]have you read Renee Denfeld's The Butterfly Effect?
[26:17]And do you know Renee?
[26:19]Oh, yes.
[26:20]Isn't sharing exactly.
[26:21]I could read the first book,
[26:23]The Child Funder and The Child Funder,
[26:25]but I read The Butterfly Effect.
[26:27]Okay, I put that on your list.
[26:28]Yes, it's on my list.
[26:30]Exactly.
[26:31]So one of the reasons that I really admire
[26:34]and I thank her in my acknowledgement.
[26:36]No, I need to, I'm sorry.
[26:38]I know you can read them first.
[26:39]No, you know what?
[26:40]This is why acknowledgements to come in my...
[26:43]Okay, okay, there we go.
[26:45]Okay.
[26:46]Yeah.
[26:47]So because she talks about the stuff,
[26:51]her characters are empathetic.
[26:53]They're flawed, they have wounds.
[26:56]And their wounds connect them to everyone around them.
[27:03]Right?
[27:04]So she has a missing persons,
[27:05]it's not a detective, a child finder, essentially.
[27:09]And the reason that she's a child finder
[27:12]is because she herself was taken as a child
[27:17]and escaped but has no memory of the past.
[27:20]And so it's that same thing, right?
[27:23]It's the thread that connects us.
[27:29]So what advice do you have?
[27:30]She was firing authors.
[27:31]I don't wanna take all of your time
[27:33]although I could talk to you about this all day.
[27:35]No, this is really fun.
[27:36]Yeah, we'll have to have SQL some time.
[27:38]I love it.
[27:39]Advice to aspiring writers is always follow your obsessions
[27:43]because they will lead you some place rich.
[27:46]Never think about other people's stories
[27:48]and what they're doing, never try to chase the marketplace.
[27:52]Never say, oh, I'm gonna write a historical
[27:54]because that sign or I'm gonna write a domestic thriller
[27:57]because that will get you in trouble every time.
[28:00]Like what's calling you, right?
[28:03]What's the thing?
[28:04]What are the stories that's been over and over in your head?
[28:06]What are the characters even from your past
[28:08]that you can't quite, that girl, right?
[28:10]In high school or that whatever, a childhood friend
[28:15]or some conversation you had that is continuing
[28:19]to speak to you, like write about those things
[28:22]and then read your face off.
[28:24]Read your damn face off.
[28:26]I mean, a young writer who doesn't read is dimmed.
[28:31]Nothing's gonna happen.
[28:32]You can't write in a vacuum.
[28:33]You have to know it's possible.
[28:34]And I always have my council of elders, you know,
[28:36]the books that I have around me that are my dearest friends
[28:40]and of course they terrify me because I could never
[28:43]write at that level, right?
[28:44]You have these things, these books that are just so beautiful.
[28:47]Like Michael Cunningham's The Hours for instance,
[28:50]which is a book I love or just trying to think of another.
[28:52]It doesn't really matter.
[28:53]Whatever those books are have Marilyn Robinson's housekeeping.
[28:58]It's a perfect book.
[28:59]I have it around me.
[29:01]And I pick it up and Elizabeth struts.
[29:05]My name is Lucy Bart.
[29:06]That was great.
[29:08]Talk about a book that's talking about the stuff, right?
[29:12]Not just entertaining, not just telling a story,
[29:15]but then doing that too, right?
[29:18]I believe the balance has to be there.
[29:20]You don't wanna lecture people.
[29:22]You don't want to proselytize or get on a soap box
[29:27]if you can tell page turning story
[29:30]and get people thinking about, for instance,
[29:35]their life's purpose.
[29:37]Like, would you want to maybe have that conversation too?
[29:42]Because books can do that.
[29:43]Books feed our soul, right?
[29:45]They're the deep stuff.
[29:47]I completely agree.
[29:49]And I feel like your book, and I'm not just saying this,
[29:51]like what you did those things with this book
[29:54]when the stars go dark, who is masterfully written
[29:57]and really beautiful and memorable.
[29:59]And.
[30:00]I'm glad you went there. So thank you so much. Your support means everything and your
[30:06]a delightful person. Thank you. So so onward, keep reading, right? Keep reading your face off.
[30:14]I will keep reading my face off. All right, I'm great. I'll see you. I'll take a good
[30:20]camera. Love I know. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[30:26]Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibbowens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[30:31]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[30:37]lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[30:42]for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and