Christine Mangan, PALACE OF THE DROWNED

[1:24]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, moms don't have time to read books. I'm also the host of moms don't have time to lose weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to: A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Today's sponsor is the Baby Trend Cover Me four in one convertible car seat. This car seat is so unique. It addresses the number one complaint by experienced mothers, which I believe I am, which is sun in your kid's eyes, which is something that of course drives them nuts and you're not going to want to put like what baby sunglasses on. That's never really worked for me. Along with the canopy, the Cover has a usage rating from four to 100 pounds, so you can use it for a long time, and can be used infant rear facing, toddler rear facing, forward facing, and belt positioning booster. The Cover Me also has a very convenient recline system, which includes a zero radio base and integrated recline flip foot. I don't exactly know what that means, but that's okay. The system allows the children to find a position comfortable to them and also limits the amount space taken up by the seat when in rear facing position. Basically, it's just an amazing car seat, and I wish I had had this when my kids were little enough to fit into car seats. It makes parents' and kids' life much easier. It's just amazing, and it has a UPF 50 plus on the canopy so your kids don't get a sunburn either. So your kids will love sitting in it, they can interact with everybody in the car, and it protects you both rear and forward facing. There is a special 20% off code which is CoverMe20 if you go to babytrend.com/ossa,ossa. That's httpsdouble/babytrend.com/ossa and put in the code COVERME20. Capital C, Cover, capital M, Me, the number 20. Also, I'm giving away one of these car seats. So if you or anyone you know is having a baby soon and would like a new car seat, which is something that you have to get when you as soon as you're pregnant, I am giving one away. To win the giveaway, just write a review and give a rating to my podcast, preferably a five star rating and a really nice review if you don't mind. Extra credit if you do the same thing for my moms don't have time to lose weight podcast and my moms don't have time to have sex podcast. If you could do five star ratings and reviews for all of those podcasts, oh my gosh, you will definitely be at the top of the list for entering this giveaway. And then we will pick at random. So enter the giveaway. Use the code if you just want to get the percent off and order it right away. And again, baby trend cover me four in one convertible car seat. Go for it. It's June. Happy June 1, everybody. Welcome to my June Book Blast where I'll be releasing multiple podcast episodes a day, all based around a certain theme. And today's theme is happy pub day. This is the pub day release for four books that are all coming out today, June 1. Christine Mangan, Rebecca Stafford, Nikola Yoon, and Zakaya Harris. So enjoy today's June 1 book blast. Christine Mangan is author of Palace of the Drowned. She's also author of the national bestseller Tangerine. She has her PhD in English from the University College Dublin with a focus on eighteenth century Gothic literature and holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Southern Maine. Welcome, Christine. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Palace of the Drowned, a novel. Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure. It's so funny. When I first read the pitch for this book, even over email, I was like, oh, I thought you just spend some time in Venice. That sounds great. I think everyone's thinking that right about now. Right? Oh my gosh. Well, for listeners who aren't familiar with Palace of the Drowned quite yet, can you tell them a little bit about what this book is about? And also what inspired you to write it? Sure. I'm always so bad at it. I'm sorry. I always put people on. I don't always do this. And as I was asking this question, was like, oh, boy. I'm putting her on the spot here. I'm really sorry about that. It's always how much do you reveal? How much do you not give away? But, basically,

[5:53]Christine Mangan: it follows a main character, Frankie, who is a writer, and she has just kind of where we meet her, has just published her most recent novel, which has not been very well received. The numbers are kind of down. She gets a review that she considers to be quite savage and quite upsetting, and she wants to get away from it all, essentially. And she leaves her home in London and travels to Venice to kind of try to start something new, try to kind of distance herself from from what's happened. And, ultimately, this kind of silence that she's able to find is interrupted and broken by someone who is also from London and claims that they know each other, that they've met, and Frankie doesn't quite remember this, and she kind of questions whether this woman is telling the truth, and then it kind of just

[6:53]Zibby Owens: evolves from there without giving too much away. -I know. I love that scene. She's like, Wait, I thought that daughter was blonde, but, okay, fine. You know, maybe it's her.

[7:03]Christine Mangan: -A woman where you don't want to say, I don't remember you, but, yeah. So she's got kind of questions in her mind. And I came to the story I think Frankie was the first thing that kind of solidified for me. She was kind of what I started with, and I knew right away that kind of who she was gonna be and what her character was gonna be like. And I knew that I wanted to essentially use her to explore, basically, the relationship between a writer and their work. And at that point where it's kind of not just yours anymore, you know, it's gone through the editing process. So you have kind of all these different voices helping to shape and define what the final product is gonna be. And then it's also gone into the public. So you have people who have not just read it, but critiqued it. And that's where we meet Frankie, know, when she's dealing kind of with with all of this and kind of how does she move past what's happened and go on to the next. And so that was something that I really wanted to explore. And I knew that I wanted to put her somewhere other than London. I wanted her to go somewhere that was kind of isolated. But I actually, I wasn't sure where at first. With my first book, it was very much Tangier kind of came first, and then everything followed. Whereas this, I had the idea for the story and the characters, but I didn't really know where I wanted her to be. I tried out a few different places. They didn't seem right. And then I was thinking a couple years ago, I was living in Dubai. I was working there at a university. And my friend who she's an academic, she specializes in Italian art history, and she was telling me we were sitting outside under the sweltering sun of Dubai in the humidity, just kind of like she wears a sweater. She's fine. I was, like, bred drinking a sweat, like, to drink my hot tea, hoping it would, like, cool me down. And she started telling me about Venice in the winter. And she started telling me how, you know, cold and dark and rainy and very gothic it is and that I would love it and I should go. And up until that point, I'd only been to Venice once and just briefly. My partner and I were we were in Slovenia, and we drove over for a day trip, kind of parked the car, took the train in, spent a day it was June, so it was very touristy. Kinda spent a day walking around. We sat down, had two beers. We paid, like, $30.

[9:29]Zibby Owens: You know, we paid for the musicians

[9:31]Christine Mangan: and everything outside. And I was like, okay. I'm done. Like, I've seen enough, and we left. But I just started thinking about what she told me, and then also the idea that you can't really know a place, you know, in an afternoon, even a week. And so I was kind of intrigued to go back because it was a place that I necessarily, you know, didn't want to go back to, but I was like, okay. Let's do it. Let's go see. And my friend, who has spent a lot of time there, she wrote up this, like, really intensive essentially, like, a tour book for me, you know, all these kind of little things that you wouldn't necessarily get anywhere else. And I think just all of that, you know, I got there and I was like, This is it. This is the perfect place for where I want to set the novel. It's strangely isolated and kind of like its own little bubble. You know, you're away from the mainland. You feel very, like, remote. And I think this takes place in the nineteen sixties as well. So you gotta figure that's even you know, the feeling of remoteness would be even more so.

[10:27]Zibby Owens: And so I spent some time there, and that just kind of the rest of the novel evolves from that. Wow. Well, I love that you made the rest of us reading it feel like we were now sort of local Venetians. Like, love when you talked about, you know, the real Venetian women sort of coming out of hiding when all the tourists left and, like, creeping out and how glamorous they actually were in their own right. And, you know, how you're supposed to go in the back and never sit in the front of cafes and like go to some bar in the back to get coffee or something. And I don't know, all these little tidbits. Was like, oh, if I ever go back to Venice, like, now I'm gonna have all these all these secrets. Well, you really made Venice I mean, this sounds so trite, but you really made Venice such a character in this book, but it's true. I mean, the streets and getting lost and the dead ends that Frankie would arrive at and the places she visits and even where she lives, like the castle, not castle, what do you always call it?

[11:19]Christine Mangan: Yeah, The very

[11:21]Zibby Owens: similar. I mean, just felt so real and so vivid. So I just loved it as like an escapist, whatever. But then mixed with the literary was so great. While I was reading it, I was like, I wonder if Christine got a really bad review one day and was like, what if?

[11:40]Christine Mangan: Yeah. I will say some of that kind of, I think I love writing. It's the only thing I've ever really wanted to do, but the whole part that happens after you turn in the book, I'm not great with. And it makes me very anxious and very nervous. Definitely that helped kind of shape this novel and just everything that, you know, that happened when Tangerine came out. I mean, was very everyone knows I don't want to see reviews. I don't want to even know that they exist. I did have some sent to me, And it was just kind of like it's it's terrible. It's a terrible feeling. And, like, I don't know oh, it's hard to explain, but it's just it's the worst because it's public and it's out there, and it's like everyone can see that. And it's just the worst feeling in the world. There were there were a couple of nights spent, like, hysterically crying in the shower. -Aw. -I mean, so all of that, you know, I kind of wanted to to put into this. And so I think Frankie is probably a lot tougher than I am. Well, in different ways, maybe. But yeah, that definitely went into

[12:51]Zibby Owens: shaping the book. In this scene, I just wanted to read this one little passage from when she found out about the review. And you said at first, Frankie tried to forget about the review, tried to push it out of her mind, but she always but she had always had a tendency to fixate, to obsess. That day, she had cleaned her entire flat from top to bottom. When the house was spotless and she could find nothing more to spray or polish, she decided to contact her editor. And then you went on in the next page. He had said, go home and get a good night's sleep and don't worry about it. And you say, Frankie had smirked at the idea and upon arriving home, done the very opposite of what her editor proposed by not sleeping at all that night. Instead, she had sat up reading and rereading the review until she knew it by heart, smoking the entire pack of players navy cut that she had palm when leaving his office, hating the slim counterparts that were marketed now towards women. In the morning, eyes red and puffy, she threw the review into the rubbish bin outside, shut the door behind her, and made herself that suggested cup of tea. I read that. Was like, I wonder if this happened in some way, she reported. This is feeling very real to me, this little message. I mean, the thing about reviews is like people just feel that they're not hurting anyone's feelings or they don't care. Right? It's like people I don't know. I got this review for my anthology. Assembled this anthology with essays from people from the podcast, and I hadn't checked out my Amazon reviews until like last week. There's this there's this one review, and it was like, the best thing about this is that it's a cold day in spring and I'm out of Duraflames. So I can use this as, like, the kindling for the fire I'm about to build. And I was like, what?

[14:27]Christine Mangan: No.

[14:28]Zibby Owens: Anyway, I don't know. I'm just like, I what do people even with these reviews? I don't know. But anyway, for Frankie, of course, it set her off on this path of sort of no turning back.

[14:38]Christine Mangan: Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting kind of in my former life when I was in academia, I spent a lot of time looking at the relationship between authors and reviewers. And, I mean, it's always it's not like it's new. It's just I mean, it's always existed, and it's always something that that has influenced writers that they've been aware of. I mean, I looked at certain authors in the eighteenth century who actually put in authors' notes kind of meant to win their favor with reviewers. I mean so it's always kind of in the back of everyone's mind whether they wanna, you know, admit it or not. I think it's always something that, you know, you don't wanna be writing for them, but, I mean, everyone's always aware and always thinking about it. Wait. So you've had this completely international

[15:25]Zibby Owens: existence. Like, how did you end up teaching in Dubai? Like, where did you grow up? Like, take me through your sort of the short version of your life story. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibby.

[18:46]Christine Mangan: I grew up mainly in Metro Detroit. I lived in Long Island, North Carolina for a bit as well. And then I went to Bennington for a year for college, which I wrote about in Tangerine. And then I ended up in Chicago. And I was teaching at a university, but just kind of part time, and I realized I needed a PhD to ever be full time because I had done for my BA and my MFA, I did creative writing, but I think I thought that, well, that's not really ever going to happen, so I need an actual job. So I went to Dublin for my PhD, and I was there for four years. And then Dubai was just, it was honestly the best offer that I got. They're quite generous in what they offer. And so I it was just it was good timing. It was bad timing. It was I had submitted my book to my agent, and she had, you know, said, I love this. Let's, you know, work on it. Let's get it sent out. And it was literally as I was going to Dubai. And so everything happened when we sold the tangerine. It was within, like, the first couple weeks of of working in Dubai. So I was kind of juggling both of those, and it was it was intense. And the time difference and everything, it was a strange time. Wow. Yeah. And then how long were you there? Then where did you go? I was in Dubai for just for the year, and then I came back, and I was in New York for in Brooklyn for two years. And then my partner and I, we put all our stuff in storage, and we went to Asia in 2019 at the end of two thousand nineteen. So we got a couple of good months in before COVID started popping up. And then we because we were in I think we were in Hong Kong when we first read about it, and it was before it was COVID. It was just kind of a strange flu thing happening in China. And we were supposed to go through China, and we were like, oh, think we're supposed to go through Wuhan, actually. And we were yeah. And so we're like, okay. We're gonna change the plan a little bit. And then we around the time things started kind of it started to filter out of Asia, we jumped over to Australia, and we ended up getting stuck there for nine months. So we just got back in November, and now I'm in Detroit. Wow. That's really cool. Yeah. So it was an interesting last

[21:09]Zibby Owens: couple of months. Yeah. And were you working on so when did you write this book? Where were you? So a little bit of everywhere.

[21:17]Christine Mangan: I had written a lot of it while we were in New York, and then I was doing kind of final edits in Japan, actually, in Osaka, I think we were at the time. I spent a lot of time there kind of polishing it up before before sending it out. So Wow. Yeah. So it's it's traveled with me along the way. So I've worked on it a little bit everywhere, but Did you know writing it the whole story? Like, how did it I know you had the idea for Frankie and everything in the you know? But, like, all the twists and, like, everything that happened, you know, with the friends and, you know, the and I don't know. I had some of it. I tend to change a lot. I tend to, like, write a thing and then go back and kind of edit and change things along the way. I think the ending is probably one of the only things like, the beginning and the ending is what stayed the same. And then there were little kind of things that that I tweaked a bit, like, throughout it all. But, yeah, that ending was there from the start. Wow.

[22:17]Zibby Owens: I wonder now, aren't like, I feel like now all the reviews are gonna have to make this feel so meta. Right? Like, you know, like, I'm writing a review about a book that's centered, you know, that not that the review is such a huge part, but just that it set off the trajectory of the story and how she ended up there. I also loved this idea of like an independent woman sort of living on her own and dealing with everything, whether it was directions or, you know, the stomping feet next door or what and the crazy housekeeper and like all this stuff. It was just so neat to see, especially during that time. I just loved that. I loved that element of it. Yeah. Frankie

[22:58]Christine Mangan: I love Frankie, I think. She's she's one of my favorite characters that I've written, and she is I mean, she's dealing with a lot, but she's also incredibly strong. And she's got Jack, who also another incredibly strong female character. So I quite I I like that about both of them. That's kind of what drew me to their characters, what I wanted to kind of, like, instill in both of them to make them very different, probably for that time. But, you know, there are women like that. So it's like, that's that's what I wanna see. That's what I wanna read. That's awesome. If you were casting Frankie, who would it be? Oh, gosh. I'm so terrible at this stuff.

[23:38]Zibby Owens: I am too. But I was like about to say, Oh yeah, she reminds me of someone, then I couldn't think of anyone. So I was like, Well, I'll just ask her.

[23:44]Christine Mangan: I really don't know. I really do not know, honestly. I've people asked me that for tangerine, I was like, I have no idea. I don't think of I didn't have anybody in mind when I wrote it, I have no idea. Yeah.

[23:58]Zibby Owens: Well, I feel like you need to find a palazzo where people can come and, like, have this experience. You know? Because, like, especially now, I mean, maybe there'll be more than one phone in a closet or something than there was back then. But just the idea like, oh gosh, if I could just go to Venice and hide in this old fashioned kind of spooky kind of cool place and just, like, wend my way around canals. I don't know. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but that sounds so good. Yeah.

[24:29]Christine Mangan: It's very appealing, especially now just being you don't know when that will be able to happen. So I think it makes it even more Yeah. Yeah. Appetite. Because I I look back and like, I start to think about my time there, and I'm looking at photos and everything, and it's just like, oh, I think it makes it even more bittersweet just not knowing when that will be possible again. And did you have any trouble

[24:52]Zibby Owens: either writing this or coming up with an idea after the success of your first book? I've heard that sort of the sophomore novel can sometimes

[24:59]Christine Mangan: I didn't. You know, I actually my agent is very nice and very patient with me. I wrote another novel before this one, and we had gone through it and we had done the edits. I was like, no. It just doesn't seem right. I don't wanna continue with this. And so I kind of set that one aside, and then I started on this. And this just kind of felt right. This felt good, like, right from the start. Not that the other one I might still go back to it, but it just it didn't feel like the right book for book number two, maybe. Interesting. Oh, how great. Now you have number three already ready. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's one of those ones I keep going back to, and my agent's like, what about that one? I'm like, yeah. I don't know. I I I don't know what it is. There's something. I think I need to there's something I need to work out with it. But I tend to do that. I kind of write a lot of one thing, and then I change my mind and start something else. So I have a lot of unfinished

[25:54]Zibby Owens: novels. Is there anything you're doing, like, right now? Like, after this, you're gonna go, like, back into some sort of story and keep going? I have

[26:02]Christine Mangan: something that I've just started. And so I'm hoping that this will be, this kind of feels like book number three, I think. So I'm hoping.

[26:10]Zibby Owens: That's great. And did you always know, I mean, you mentioned earlier that you've always known that writing is your thing. Is it from the time you were a kid?

[26:17]Christine Mangan: Yes. Yeah, I just always loved it. And that was what I wanted to do. I think, I mean, that's what I went to school for, but I just don't think when I graduated from my BA and then my MFA, it just never occurred to me. I was like, that's not going happen. I can't sit down and write a novel and get it published. It's just never going to happen. And I would still write, but not with any kind of clear motivation to get it done. And I finished my PhD, and I was having a really hard time finding a job there. It's very difficult to find a job in academia. It's just so competitive, and I was starting to really panic. And I was like, well, what else can I do? I I don't have anything else to do. And I had a year between when I graduated and when I got that job in Dubai where I was just I mean, I probably applied to, like, an upwards of, like, a 100 jobs. Oh my gosh. And just nothing. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna sit down. I'm gonna write the novel because I don't know what else to do. I had this idea because I had gone to Tangier recently, and I think I always say, like, doing the PhD was probably the best thing I could have done because it taught me, like, how to complete something. Because I think before, I would always get kind of halfway there, like, you know, three quarters of the way there and just, like, stop. But having had to complete an actual work, I knew kind of what I needed to do to sit down, write it all, and and get it done. So I just kind of I that year, I just finished it, and it was just I mean, it was, like, months before I left for Dubai. Was like, I don't know what else I can do. I'm just gonna send it out to agents. We'll see what happens. And and then I heard from my agent, like, two weeks later or something. So, I mean, it was just, like it was it was pure luck. It was kind of meant to be because I think her assistant was, like, out for the week. And so she was going through the pile, and she never usually does with the submissions, and then she happened to find mine and was, like, oh. So Wow. And then it happened really fast from there. So, yeah, it was just like it was like perfect timing. That's great. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

[28:26]Zibby Owens: So what advice would you have both as, like, a full on professor and as an accomplished author? What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

[28:35]Christine Mangan: Oh, just finish it. Like, do do the work and finish it. Because I think that was my number one thing was just, like, not not thinking that it could ever happen. And you won't know, I guess, until you send it out. I mean, because that's the thing. Like, I never sent anything out. I never actually submitted anything. And I'm glad that I had all the the academic background. I do think that helps me actually, like, learn how to finish and and edit, like, revisions. Like, I know how to revise now from that. But I think the biggest thing is just, like, getting the work done, just sitting down, getting the work done and sending it out. Because you hear like, I know a lot of people, they're like, oh, I really wanna do it and but they're just not sitting down and doing the work. That's that's the only thing you can do is just plow through it and get it done. I

[29:20]Zibby Owens: think it's just that it takes so much time. It's hard to commit to something that's going to take so much time with no certainty of outcome. I think that's

[29:27]Christine Mangan: the biggest thing that probably prevented me from doing it before. It was like, well, how do I know this will go anywhere? And, like, you you you spend so much time. Like, you sit there from, like, morning till night, like, going through it. And I guess just, like, believing that it could happen. I mean, I it's a really tricky thing because I know I think that's what stopped me from really finishing it, like not thinking it could ever happen.

[29:49]Zibby Owens: And yet here you go. If you don't write it, you'll never know. You gotta try, I guess. You gotta try. You definitely won't sell what you don't write. Anyway. Wow. Well, Christine, thank you. This was so great. It was so nice to get to know you and thanks for taking me on my little journey through Venice. Thank you for believing. Yeah. It was so great and really immersive and beautifully written and a real joy to consume. Thank you. Alright. Well, take care. And I hope that all your reviews are really positive. Yes. I'll be crossing my fingers and, like, reading them eagerly and being, you know, hoping, hoping. Ignoring them. But Okay. I won't send you any. I promise. Okay. Alright. Thank you so Bye bye. Thanks. Thanks again to today's sponsor, the Baby Trend Cover Me four in one convertible car seat. Don't forget to enter my giveaway,

[31:05]Zibby Owens: and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.