Tia Williams,SEVEN DAYS IN JUNE

[1:05]Zibby Owens: 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, a new 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. My website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Welcome to Pub Day Tuesday where I'm featuring a few episodes of authors who have books coming out today. I hope you enjoy this one. Tia Williams is the author of Seven Days in June, which by the way was already chosen as Reese's book pick for June. Tia has had a fifteen year career as a beauty editor for magazines including Elle, Glamour, and Essence. In 2004, she pioneered the beauty blog industry with Shake Your Beauty. She wrote the best selling novel, The Accidental Diva, and penned two You novels, It Chicks and 16 Candles. Her award winning novel, The Perfect Find, will be adapted into a Netflix film starring Gabriel Union. Tia is currently an editorial director at Estee Lauder Companies and lives with her daughter and husband in Brooklyn. Welcome, Tia. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss seven days in June. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I love your podcast. Oh, thank you. Moms don't have time to read books. Moms don't have time. I know. Barely had time for this one. No. I'm kidding. Why don't you start by telling listeners a little bit about what this book is about and what inspired you to write it, and then we can dive into some of the details. Doctor. Okay.

[2:53]Tia Williams: So this book, it's called Seven Days in June, and it's about two famous authors who randomly meet at a Brooklyn Museum literary function, and sparks immediately fly. But unbeknownst to everyone there, they're not strangers. They had a seven day romance, very torrid, very dramatic in high school, and then they went their separate ways and never spoke again. But over the past fifteen years, they've been secretly communicating with each other through their books. And I just love a second chance love trope. It's like one of my favorite things, and I've never written one. And I just love the idea of this sort of love that was so important to you that it's become mythological almost in your mind. And then, you know, to be confronted again, I think we all ask that question, like, you know, what would you do if the one who got away came back? So that that's really where it came from. Actually, to tell you the absolute truth, I was watching Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo and Claire Danes, and I just had this thought. What if Romeo and Juliet hadn't died? Like, what if they, went their separate ways and became totally well functioning adults with therapy and 401s and everything, met each other in their thirties. Would it still be there?

[4:24]Zibby Owens: Do soulmates have an expiration date? We don't know. Oh, I love that. I mean, I feel like there are some relationships you just can't shake, Right? They kind of get in there and I don't know. Exactly.

[4:37]Tia Williams: So anyway,

[4:40]Zibby Owens: well, I mean, why not explore this like age old question, right, that nobody quite knows the answer to? It's amazing. One of the things I really loved about this book was how to deal with pain, right? The migraines that the mom had and how you deal with pain while you are raising your child and how to function in a world where you don't want your pain to be acknowledged or known throughout and sort of having to hide. And you had this one quote, what was it like, this luxury, the luxury of not hurting? And I know you've written about migraines yourself. So I just wanted to talk to you about that plot line.

[5:18]Tia Williams: Yeah. So Eva, like you said, she's she lives with a chronic disability and it's an invisible disability, chronic migraines. And I too have had chronic migraines since I was nine years old. And mine are intractable, which basically means they're not curable. Like, I just they can't figure out why I have them and I just have to live with it. And yeah, it's something I've I've wanted to address in fiction for a while, but it's so painful to me. I I never felt brave brave enough to go there. I also, you know, like to keep a little bit of you know, I like to keep humor in my stories and a little bit of lightness with the darkness, and I didn't know how to make this funny Because, yeah, I've always wondered what it's like to be normal. I look at my friends. I look at, you know, strangers on the train, and I'm just like, oh, look at them just living their pain free lives. Of course, you can never know what's going on in people's minds. But, you know, just things that that other people take for granted, you know, running more than one block, laughing too loud, sneezing, coughing, you know, drinking, I can't have one drink of anything without landing in the ER the next morning. There's a lot. It was especially hard when I was a kid because I couldn't really play. So I was always inside reading and writing, which brings us here. But yeah, Eva feels like she's an alien. Like she's not, you know, like she's a dysfunctional human being, you know, like she sees the world upside down, everyone sees it right side up. Because when you're operating through this veil of pain, you have to get through an extra layer of struggle to get to the normal place where everyone else is. So in order to act like everyone else paying attention in a meeting at work, There's so much you have to get through to get there. There might be two rounds of pills the half hour before the meeting. You might be pinching your thigh during the meeting to stay awake because the pills have made you so zonked out. Someone may ask you a question and you pause for five mortifying seconds because you can't get your brain to work. Yeah, it sucks. I haven't read a lot of fiction, fun fiction, about a protagonist that suffers with a chronic

[7:49]Zibby Owens: disease. I'm so sorry that that's something you've had to deal with your whole life. You've seen like every doctor, right? Because now, of course, my instinct is to be like, let me try to find you a different doctor. Have you tried this? Have you tried that? I'm sure you've had everything. And

[8:02]Tia Williams: the funny thing well, it's not funny, but like, after a while, when they see that nothing they are doing is working, they get angry with me dump me. Oh, I've been dumped, like, in aggressive ways. Well, you're not responding to anything. I don't I I I you know, there's some issue that that isn't being addressed here, and I've I've run every test and, you know, you're just incorrigible. This pain just is just so frustrating. Like, you know, the doctors take it personally because they it stumps them. And then it's always, you know, I don't think we can treat you anymore. You have to find someone else. What?

[8:36]Zibby Owens: Yeah. Well well, if you ever wanna try again I am on the board of Mount Sinai Hospital. So if you want to try with a new team or something Oh, I've done Montefiore. Mount Mount Sinai. Oh, Sinai. Okay. Right. I don't know if I've been to my Mount Sinai. I might All right. Well, I'm sure there's nothing more, but I feel like I have to try to help you to, like, get out of this. I love that you put it in fiction and the way that you addressed it. And there was humor even throughout the pain. So I feel like that and that difficulty was achieved, you know, in the way that you were in bed and the laying over. And but the sad part was how Eva and I don't know if this happened to you or whatever, but how she felt like her pain made her feel so unattractive. Yes. How she didn't wanna open up to men because, like, who wants to date her? I think she there was some line like, well, who wants to date someone so ugly? And, like, her first guy left her and, like, how do you get over that? Tell me about about that. Well, yeah. I mean, it's come into it's like the third, you know, Princess Diana, it's like, well, there was three of us in the relationship.

[9:42]Tia Williams: Migraines are my Camilla. Like, is and it's the third person in all of my relationships because it's, we make plans, I may not be able to go, or I may have to go home early, I might have to disappoint your parents because I can't show up for that dinner, or if I have an episode and it changes your plans, it changes what you wanted to do for the day. And the way I in my diaries when I'm a teenager, I write about pain like it's a gargoyle sitting on my head or sitting on my shoulder all the time. And it's ugly, like feeling bad is ugly. It's hard to feel like attractive and sparkly when you're, you know, you didn't sleep the night before because you were having suicide dreams. Like it's that, I feel like I'm gonna cry. It's that tough. It's hard to feel attractive. I remember being on a on a first date once, and we were at some restaurant on the Lower East Side, and I remember focusing in on my California role, like, with everything I had, because if I hadn't, I knew I was going to throw up. I don't remember anything this idiot said. I'm just like staring at my California role, like hoping that it keeps me together, you know. And, yeah, that's one of those things where you're just like, god, I just wish I were normal. But no one's normal. Everyone has something. But, yeah, it's it's the things that people take for granted, you know, that that I have to and Eva has to fight through. It's hard.

[11:17]Zibby Owens: So, yeah, you feel ugly. I'm sorry. And it's so crazy because I'm looking at you. You're obviously, like, gorgeous. You know, your whole career has been in beauty. I mean, for a long time, which I don't know. Maybe Freud would have something to say about that. I think so. I mean, definitely, it's no accident. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sorry, and I I'm sure there are groups and stuff. Not I feel like I'm sorry. I feel like I I keep trying to take care of you like you're a like a a close friend or or somebody. Anyway, there are probably other people who are in your situation who There are. Because I hate the fact that you were embarrassed to even write about it. Yeah. When it's something that's such a part of you and there's no shame. You didn't do it to yourself. Like most people with chronic pain, like, this is nothing you did. Right. I know. It's just

[12:06]Tia Williams: most people don't understand it. And it's the other thing of like, everyone's had a headache here and there. Like if they haven't had their coffee yet or if they're hungover. So you tell people you have migraines and they're like, Oh yeah, I have had one before. Or, you know, Do you want a Tylenol? I have some Advil. And it's like, I have oxycodone in my bag. Granted, this is the early 2000s when that was happening. They're not allowed to prescribe it to me anymore. But it's like people don't get it. They just think you're tired or stressed or dramatic because you're not bleeding, you're not limping, you're not in a wheelchair, you don't have crutches, you don't have this outward facing disability or illness. It's really hard to believe. And I've had people close to me not believe it. And so I don't, you know, it's a hard thing to share. Also people look at me and they're like, what kind of problems could you have? And so I, yeah, I just I keep it to myself or I've always made up lies about why I have to skip out on something or go home early or not drink or, you know, can't go to a concert, things like that. Because it's just easier than saying, Oh, my head hurts. It also sounds like you're complaining.

[13:22]Zibby Owens: I mean, I do those things all the time too, and I don't even have an excuse. I go home early. I like

[13:29]Tia Williams: I'm out by what's called an an Irish goodbye where you just slip out without saying goodbye to anyone? Totally.

[13:36]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. Well, tell me then about your love of reading as a child. I love how you were saying you wrote somewhere that you wished that there had been some sort of black Scarlet O'Hara or that none of the characters you were reading felt like you, and yet you you were just diving into book after book, and that inspired you in part to wanna write fiction the way that you sort of see the world. Tell me about that. Yeah. So, yeah, I was a voracious,

[14:02]Tia Williams: voracious reader and always reading age inappropriate books. So, like, you know, I was in third grade, literally had had ingested the entire Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins canon.

[14:17]Zibby Owens: I was like that too. Like of Prince's Daisy. I was like Oh, miss Strauss' daughter. Oh my gosh. I, like, went into my mom's, like, section, and I was just like, do do do do do.

[14:28]Tia Williams: Absolutely. All those oh, so good. And, you know, then BC Andrews and all those you know? And I was also a massive film buff. My parents are. So we were always watching old Hollywood movies and, you know, obviously, unless you're looking for a maid or a slave, there aren't black people in any, thirties, forties movies. And so what I did when I would watch these movies and read the books that I was reading, I would recast it in my mind as black people. And, I mean, this is totally screwed up, but I would watch Gone With The Wind, which is one of the most racist movies ever put out by Hollywood, by the way. And I would recast them as black people, which is insane to think that Scarlet away like, what? It's just nuts. But, yeah, I wanted to read big dramatic love stories about glamorous women, you know, like Billy Icorn and Scruples, or Jude Deveraux heroine or Nora Roberts. There weren't any books starring me in any of those scenarios. And then when I moved to New York in 'ninety seven, right after college to work in fashion magazines, so I was a beauty editor and I worked at Elle and Glamour and Lucky and Teen People and Essence all over the place. And I saw Black women and men living those lives in these books that I would read that were cast completely with white people. I was like, why don't we write about the black gallery owner or the black artist, the black writer, you know, the Black financer, the financier, financer? Wall Street dude? Bro? Financier. You know, like we're everything, we're all things. Then we only see, you know, the media so often, when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, we were always symbols of oppression, which is so dehumanizing. It's also centering whiteness. It's like, what are black people in relation to white people? And we are so much more than the injustices put upon us by White people and White lawmakers. We are our own thing. And so I've always been driven to sort of write these big iconic stories and make blackness, you know, turn it into some sort of iconography because

[19:03]Tia Williams: And I was missing that. And God knows I don't want any other little girls, first of all, to watch Gone with the Wind, but second of all, to try to to cast in their mind a black woman in Atlanta running a plantation and owning enslaved black people. So, I mean, that is the most insane thing ever. And then also growing up thinking that, you know, black people are, or wanting Black people to inhabit a space where it's like, this is the Black version of this white thing. This is the Black version of a Jackie Collins book. No, we're not the Black versions of anything, we're ourselves. And we're funny, and we have sex, and we're dorky. We're boring. We're, you know, we're scientists. We're architects. We're, you know, construction workers. We're everything. I'm tired of seeing us just one way.

[19:58]Zibby Owens: Wow. Well, you have this quote in the book about Eva not wanting to be on this panel because she said she's woke recreationally, not professionally. And she thought that she was in, you know, in too deep with the panel she was assigned to. Yes. Oh, I feel like that sometimes because I have friends that write,

[20:17]Tia Williams: you know, books about that are, like, deconstructing race in America or, like, you know, these, like, really intense racial, you know, discourse. I write fun books about love and sex, and sometimes I'm asked to comment on these things and I'm like, Ask my friend, I don't know. Yes, I feel all these things very deeply, but around my dinner table. It's a whole different skill set to get up in front of people and articulate these things in a way that it's a true skill because you also can't, if you come out the gate offending people, they're not going to learn anything. So like there's a delicate nest that you have to have. You have to be succinct and get the point across quickly because if you belabor it, you might make the audience feel bad, you know, and then they turn on you. It's a whole thing. Hats off to my friends that that sort of, yeah, are awoke professionally while I get to stand in the shadows and applaud applaud them, you know, silently.

[21:21]Zibby Owens: Although it's funny, I'm interviewing Naima Coster, like literally right after this. And she wrote in one essay that she feels bad because in her work, she doesn't celebrate like what you do. Like, she's like, I don't have enough like Black joy and love and, you know, mine is maybe mine is too dark. And so I just feel like there's almost no there's no prescribed path. Like, everyone's just trying to help. It's so true. And honestly, they're two different sides of the same coin because what

[21:51]Tia Williams: what I'm doing is just as revolutionary as what she's doing because no one believed in Black joy ten years ago. You know, when I was selling books at the beginning of my career, it was like, okay, but can we talk more about how your main character is struggling being a black woman in the fashion industry? Or like, there was always, they wanted some angle about oppression. It's like trauma porn. You couldn't just exist in a fun story for the sake of being there. So yeah, I think spotlighting our humanity in this way is just as important and just as eye opening as the other side of it.

[22:28]Zibby Owens: How has your so you've written several novels already. How have you have you like well, first of all, how did you how have you seen your sort of the topics of the novels evolve? And do you share any of Eve's sort of self doubt and all of that about her products and topics and the time between books and all of that?

[22:48]Tia Williams: Absolutely. I mean, I I don't know any writer who, after they're finished writing a book is like, you know what, this is going to change lives. This is beautiful. No one has ever said this this way. Think it's the opposite. Like, I am hackneyed, I'm a cliche, this has been done a million times and so much better. I don't think you ever feel secure about what you're doing. But I published my first novel when I was 25, I'm 45 now. And the difference is the difference between then and now, it's so insane. I mean, I was so insecure about every word. And I also really weighed everything I said. You know, it was like, are people going to get this? Like, is everyone going to understand this reference? Maybe not. I should rewrite it to make it more palatable or, you know, less niche of a reference or, you know, maybe I shouldn't when I was writing dialogue, my first instinct is to write exactly how Black people would speak to each other. And then I'd be like, but not everyone's going to know that word. So let me just dial that back a little bit, which is ridiculous, but it also the vibe in the early 2000s. It's like, you better appeal to everybody or else you're completely ghettoized. And we're only going to market your book to certain demos and we're only going to sell it to certain bookstores. It was even a thing when we were talking about book covers. Like how quote unquote black do you want to be with your book cover? It's nuts, it's nuts. But then you fast forward to today, and I think that the industry is more open and interested in Black voices and what we have to say, which is an interesting moment to be a part of. I have never in my life seen such a hunger from book publishers to get black voices, to land the new black author. I mean, it's almost like a race to get the new happening Black author, which is something I never thought I would see. But anyway, back to being insecure at 25 versus now, I think, I don't know, something happens when you get over 40, you're just like, I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks. Honestly, if you don't get it, then Google is available to you. And I just write whatever I feel like writing. I write to tickle myself and that's about it. I'm not trying to please anyone anymore. And I think any woman over 40 knows what I'm talking about. Honestly, it's like you hit that birthday and you're like, you know, liberation, freedom.

[25:44]Zibby Owens: I'm 44, and I literally like, half the time, I'm like, why do I do this? I don't know. Like, it makes me laugh. Like, I'm cracking myself or, like, I'm writing this and it's, like, cracking me up and, like, maybe nobody else is gonna find this remotely funny. But I'm like, I don't know. I'm chuckling myself. So whatever. Yes. And that's good enough, honestly. And that's good enough. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you can't entertain yourself.

[26:04]Tia Williams: Then what are we even doing? Especially during a pandemic, you have to be you know, find yourself entertaining. What else are we doing? So are you working on a new novel now? I am. What is that about it? You say? But but I haven't even told my editor, so I don't know if I can say. But this one is going to be a historical fiction. Oh. Very loosely related to a character in seven days in June. Oh, wonder which one. Yes. I'm nominating Cece. I liked her.

[26:35]Zibby Owens: She's so fun. She's really fun.

[26:38]Tia Williams: Yeah. That was she was a really fun character to write. I love to make the supporting characters. I always feel like they're the star in their own book, and they just wandered over to this one to give us some one liners. I had a writing professor once tell me that supporting characters don't know that they're not the protagonists, and villains don't know that they're evil. So you have to give all of them, like, a fully fleshed out backstory. No matter how many pages, you know, they inhabit, they have to come on into your book fully fleshed out.

[27:13]Zibby Owens: I love that. It reminds me of, like, nineteen eighties sitcoms, you know, when, like, someone from all in the family would head over to the set of the Jeffersons or something, and you'd be like, wow. How did that happen?

[27:24]Tia Williams: Those are always my favorites. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Those crossover episodes? I looked for them. Yeah. Those were so good.

[27:32]Zibby Owens: Well, you've just given, like, so much advice. But what is your final advice for aspiring authors? Like what do you think is most important for especially for people starting out? Wow. First of all, they're lucky because the landscape today is so much different than it used to be. And there's so many

[27:48]Tia Williams: different platforms, where you can express yourself. I was coming up, it was like either you're published in a magazine or you get your book published. Now you can self publish, you can write on Medium, you can have a blog, there's so many ways to get your work out there. I think my biggest piece of advice is, honestly, it's so boring, but you've got to carve out time every day to do it because there's always, always something more fun to do than right. There will always be something you would rather be doing every single time. So if you make it a part of your schedule, if you make it as crucial as eating lunch or finishing that project at work, just because it's something that you're doing for yourself doesn't mean that it should take less precedent over work that you're doing for other people. You just have to approach it like a non negotiable.

[28:51]Zibby Owens: I love that. Excellent. Well, Tia, thank you. Thanks for chatting. I wish we had, like, more time to hang and talk and whatever, but and to talk more about this book. But thank you so much for coming on mom's no time to read books, and I can't wait for your next novel. And now I have to go back and read the other one. So anyway, congratulations.

[29:10]Tia Williams: Thank you so much, Tivy. Thank you for having me on. It was so fun. And if you change your mind and wanna try a different doctor or something, just email me. Not even kidding. I will reach out. Okay. Okay.

[29:21]Zibby Owens: All right. All right. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to part of my June Book Blast. I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow

[29:43]Zibby Owens: and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.