Kate White, THE FIANCÉE: A Novel

[1:25]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 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, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast.

[2:01]Kate White: Listeners, if you enjoy this podcast, I promise you will love my new audiobook, For Moms Don't Have Time to: A Quarantine Anthology. It's not about the quarantine, but a lot of the essays were written during that time about other things that moms don't have time to do or other busy people, things like reading, eating, working out, breathing, having sex. And 60 bestselling and notable authors wrote essays. All those authors have been on this very podcast. So if you like to listen to my conversations, if you want to get to know these authors better, I read the audiobook myself. Check it out on Audible, Moms Don't Have Time A Quarantine Anthology. Again, Audible audiobook. Go listen to it. It's like sixty minutei podcasts. I hope you enjoy. Kate White is the author of The Fiancee. Kate is the former editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, and is the New York Times bestselling author of the standalone psychological thrillers Have You Seen Me? The Secrets You Keep, The Wrong Man, Eyes On You, The Sixes, and Hush, as well as eight Bailey Wagons mysteries, including most recently Such a Perfect Wife, which was nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award. Kate is also the author of several popular career books for women, including I shouldn't be telling you this, how to ask for the money, snag the promotion and create the career you deserve, and editor of the Anthony and Agatha award nominated, the mystery writers of America cookbook. She lives in New York City. Welcome, Kate. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss the fiance. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm just so familiar with what you're doing and love it. Aw, I'm familiar with what you're doing and love it too. You know, it was so great reading this book because so often, I feel like summer where, like, I'm trying to get a point across and nobody is believing me, and then I start questioning myself too. Like, am I you know, like, everything with, like, the kids and, like, every I don't know. I feel like I'm always having that same spiral where of, like, self doubt or something. I don't know. Anyway, tell listeners what this book is about and what inspired you to read it, please. Well, I had done a locked room mystery, a half a locked room mystery a few years ago and I always wanted to come back and do a full one where all the action takes place in one place. And this is about a family vacation, two parents in their 60s or 70s, four adult sons and their significant others. And it's all in this bucolic estate and it happens every year, but this year it goes horribly awry and somebody ends up dead. Summer, as you mentioned, she's a voiceover actress, a struggling actress, and she's got kind of a pretty intense inner critic. And so one of the other people in the setting is the youngest son's fiance, who's also an actress, but much more successful. As Summer says, Is everyone on the effing planet doing a Netflix pilot? Yes, that was so funny. I loved that line. She begins to think the fiance is a pivotal person in what's gone wrong and also really dangerous. But she can't, as you said, make people understand her. And part of the problem is that inner critic, that characteristic of her that makes her doubt herself in her career is making her doubt her ability to get this point across. I love it. I feel like the Keaton's compound reminds me of did you see Wedding Crashers? That movie? That's sort of how I have it in my head. I don't know what it would look like in your head, but that's the scenery I put. Well, we have a home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where it's set a weekend home. And I just blew out everything about our place into this imaginary spread, borrowing places I visited, those college roommates who you went to visit them for the weekend and discovered, woah, they're rich. Oh my gosh. Well, not only did you somehow paint a picture of this, like, amazing place, but you crafted so many different characters in a really short amount of time. Right? They're all the sons and all the fiances. And, like, you have one little detail for everybody, like Wendy who continually names drop Yale and, like, you know, everybody has, like, a thing about them that stands out. How do you think, especially in a in, like, a character drama like this, like, it's part clue, part I don't know. Like, the big chill or something like that with so many people in one spot. How do you like, what's the trick to getting people to remember all the different characters and and not relying on sort of like hacks to to craft their personalities on the page? Do you know what I mean? Like, how do you do that? Right. And I I actually wanted there to be four sons, three wives, and the fiance, and then the parents, because I felt if I got too much smaller than that, it was going to be easier to figure out who did it. And readers like a good whodunit. And they like to spend part of the book thinking it's this person, then, then, no, no, it's got to be that person. In the end, like to be surprised and sort of feel I should have gotten it and not cheated. So I wanted these 10 characters. And my editor actually had asked me about maybe having fewer. And I understood what she was saying. You can't make readers go away, which one is John and which one is Jim? Not that there's a John and Jim in the book. But I felt I just had to borrow from people I knew little bits here and there so that the characters seemed real enough. But I think you nailed it when you said that sometimes, and we even do this with people we know, there's one characteristic that just stands out about somebody. And it comes to mind when you think of them. We have a friend who is married to someone who you cannot go five minutes into a conversation with him without him mentioning that he went to Harvard. And so I borrowed that for Wendy where she drops Yale into everything because that's just one thing I tend to think about with this guy. So I think it's trying to make sure you don't make them cardboard like, give them backstories, even have details about them that you might not even use on the page, but you know to help create that person. I was just reading today that Kate Winslet did that with Mayor of Easttown. She created a lot of backstory. But then if you can give a couple of little details that the reader remembers, it helps. I found that very depressing. Did you watch that, Mare of Easttown? Yes, yes. But I actually did enjoy it. Though as a mystery author, I kind of knew what they might do with the twist and then another twist. I kind of saw it coming a little bit. I have to say I gave up pretty early. I don't know. I gave up too early because it just seemed so depressing. But there is also you know, you still make the characters really multidimensional. I mean, Summer has the loss of her older brother Leo to meningitis and that like informs she says like her family is often there's a sadness to her family because that happened before she was born. Tell me a little bit about that one. Yeah, that was just something I don't know how it came to me. I've known a few people who've had similar experiences. And I just began to think, okay, this is one of those things that you didn't bring the sadness on yourself or it wasn't something that you were integral, you know, in integrally. It just happened before she was born. And yet there was like this tarp of sadness on her family, even though her parents did their best not to let it influence her and her sister, it did. So she goes into her love of the Keaton family and her sort of obsession with being part of this family in small part because there was this sadness in her own family. The Keetons to her, even though it could be intimidating to some people, and it is to one of the wives, she just loves it. She embraces it. She says they had me from the moment they said, Summer, welcome. Please join us. She loved it. And so I think apart for her that she struggles with a little bit is she begins to see that there are some warts in the Keetons. And this family that she's been so enamored of for six or seven years since she met her husband have some issues, some secrets, and that unfolds for her in the book. Well, I feel like the whole thing was very cinematic. I feel like all this creeping around and looking at people through the bushes and like little little scenes and outside the windows. And I don't know. It's so it's like all these little moments. When you're writing, do you see it all in your head like that? Like, do you see it like, okay. Need to make this more like a scene or how do you approach the different parts of it? Well, I always know where the overall book is going right from the start. In fact, I'm starting a new book and I've got the new notebook. And then for the one I just finished, it sort of looks like this, but I'll know where I'm going and I'll know who the killer is and why they killed and what a little bit of the backstory is and how I'm going to try to disguise the killer but still play fair with the reader. And then I plot out four or five chapters at a time and I do it on a grid, on a page. From there, I just really create a bit as I'm writing and I start to get a sense of how scenes will play out. One great thing I heard the author Joe Finder say once that, and I try to do something like this myself, He keeps a little Post it on his computer with three words: surprise, reversal or reveal. And that every scene needs one of those things. So you never want to just have a scene where people are sitting down having coffee or a glass of rose. They tend to have a lot of rose in the fiance. It takes place in summer and they eat well. And then I try to not just have a scene be static that there's something that's going to happen that is a bit of maybe a surprise or a reversal or a reveal. And then I work some of that out when I do these kinds of grids. So you've had this really impressive career. You've run Cosmo. You've written many books, fiction, nonfiction, all this stuff. Like, what do you get out of writing psychological thrillers? Like, why do you think you do it? Gosh. You know, I don't totally understand that. I know like many author friends of mine, we were Nancy Drew fans and Nancy Drew was such a good role model particularly for baby boomers who didn't have many female role models in the workforce. Though my mother and grandmother had careers, so that kind of worked for me. But I always loved the idea of writing. I wrote from the time I was little. I put out little newspapers and magazines and I always wanted to write fiction too. I realized in college I had to kind of pick a lane and I won this fabulous contest, the Glamour Magazine Top ten College Women Contest. And that kind of picked the lane for me. But I just knew I wanted to get back to that other lane that I'd had in my mind to write suspense fiction. Once when I was interviewing a potential horoscope columnist, she read my palm and she looked at it and she said, Kate, you love this office, you love being here, but there's a part of you that likes to be in a little dark room. She didn't say with barn sighting, but she could have. And be with just yourself. So I think part of it for me isn't just writing the suspense fiction, which I really enjoy. I enjoy the whole puzzle whodunit aspect. But I like being on my own and I like the solitude of writing too as much as I loved running Cosmo. I feel like with so many characters in the book though, it probably doesn't even feel like you're alone. Right? Like you're always right? You're like surrounded by people. There's one right here and there's one right here. Wait, what's the next book you're working absolutely love this one. It's about a woman who her first husband has been murdered and she remarries fairly soon afterwards. And she begins to worry for good reason, little clues that her second husband knew her and had intersected with her before her first husband was killed. And then she begins to worry that he might have developed some obsession with her and might be responsible. So it's this kind of slow burn psychological suspense where she starts to see clues and talks herself out of them because she knows this guy. But was fun to write, I have to say. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. 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[18:12]Kate White: Wow. That's another thing I enjoyed about this book is that Summer is a stepmother, and there aren't often stepmother protagonists, I feel like. I mean, I guess sometimes. But especially in a family like this where she knows that she's not like the first actress to come down the pike for this role. Yeah. Right? And that like, what was it like? I mean, I'm divorced and remarried. I don't know. There's always something about like, well, who came for like, what was it before? And I don't know. And then with the step kids and she's such a nice relationship with Henry too, which is so nice. I was like, wow, she's so patient. I have a stepson and I have a great relationship with him. And he sent me the Obama biography. He knows my interests, he knows things that I like. He was a dream kid, but I didn't come into his life until he was seven. And so I wasn't very involved in the raising of him. So in some sense, I borrowed a bit about my relationship with Seth, which I've just been so fortunate. He's a great kid who just never was bothered by my presence. His own mother remarried very quickly after the divorce. So I think he didn't have any real angst about his father having a new wife. And I then just kind of made up these early years almost as if I had met Seth when he was younger. And that was kind of fun for me to do just to imagine what it would be like if you were a stepmother and you lucked out like I did, but the kid was younger and just okay charmed by you to a certain degree. And Summer, because she is an actress, she uses some of her background to entertain him, to act out Peter Pan for him as she reads Peter Pan to him. And so it was an interesting experiment to do. Thank you for asking that. Sure. Yeah. You were so funny too about the first wife. You had like all these little things. I don't know what your relationship is like with Seth's mom, but I don't know. You were just so funny. I made all that up you too. For revealing this and thanking Ms. Seth. Like, that's amazing. Of course your mom did that. I don't was very funny. That's part of the fun of writing because I actually didn't have much contact with her because she lived in Boston and Seth flew in every other weekend and I rarely got to interact with her. So this I just made up. And that's part of the fun of writing where you do borrow a little bit from your real life, but then you just make stuff up and it can feel kind of magical at times. So do you miss the magazine world? I think what I miss are some of the great people that I work with. So my former brand director, managing editor, and executive editor, and my two entertainment editors, I'm still very close to. I consider them really close friends. I Zoom with them. I have dinner with them. That's, I think, helped me to a certain degree. And I work for a great company and I still have contact with some of the top people there, including the former number two at Hearst who I just had lunch with, who I adore. So I can at least stay connected with the people. The day to day stuff was so much fun, particularly at Cosmo, but the magazine world was beginning to unravel and that's part of why I wanted to leave. And unfortunately, the person who took over right after me, the numbers really ran into the ground after I left, but that would have happened anyway. I think she just accelerated it because of bad choices. And then there was nothing they can do. And I think a lot of the Hearst magazine brands are thriving now as websites, but certainly not at print. I mean, Cosmo, when I was there, we were selling over 2,000,000 copies on the newsstand. I think it sells 30,000 now. So I could see that coming because of Gen X and Gen Y, and I just didn't wanna be around for the end. Wow. That makes me very sad. I used to I mean, I loved magazines. I wish they were still I don't know. You can't even find them. I was like trying to find a certain I went to like five stores to find, I don't know, woman's day or something. It's like impossible. Right. You know, as the field failed, supermarkets move magazines away from the front of the store so you don't see them as much anymore. And everything I read now, read online. The thing is though about magazines is like when you read online, it's often stuff you search for that you are clicking on. Like when you used when you read, like, you you get viewpoints and you flip through and you could see all sorts of things and ads and even like the ads were fun. I don't know. I still read magazines when I can. Well, you bring up such a good point. It's a little bit like the argument of should we work remotely. When you read a magazine, you discovered things that you hadn't necessarily thought you would in an advertisement, for instance. And when you're reading online, you don't have that same experience. I feel the same way about working remotely that people who think it's such a good thing are going to miss that experience of interacting with other people and ideas sparking that way and romance is sparking that way. It's true. I think in the quest for efficiency, something intangible gets lost. Right. Right. I don't know. That's why I still like paw through newspapers, the actual like sheets even though it's a pain, you know. You just see things that you might not have I don't know. Also, think it's so much more time efficient than clicking through. I mean it takes a little bit to click through to get your news and all that stuff, but that's just me. It did. Like today when I was reading the Times, there were a few stories that were in the most popular section. And then when I went back to look for them, they had already moved out of that and then I couldn't find them. And it was so chaotic where if I'd had the paper in my hands, it would have all been right there. Yes. Sometimes though I wait a few days. Yesterday, my husband's like, What are you up to? I was like, I'm reading Thursday's newspapers right now. I'm like, Did you know this happened? He's like, Yeah, I knew that happened. Did you spend a lot of time in this fabulous study office library of yours? I do. I spend all day here. Yes. I spend a lot of time in here. Well done. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. So what advice do you have to aspiring authors? I would say that ignore the people who say, if you really wanted to write, you would just be doing it. Because that was me in my 20s. And I just felt, I think I want to write fiction, but I'm not doing it. And I really feel some of it is the timing that's right for you, figuring out the writer's cocktail that's right for you. Like what's the best time of day for you? For me, my mistake was writing at night after my husband and kids were in bed. And when I finally discovered I really am a morning writer and need to get up early and do it before they get up, that was the answer. And also for me, a great time management trick made it all possible because I would tell myself I'm going to write this Saturday and then I wouldn't do it. And the trick was from a guy who said that you got a slice of salami. That part of what makes projects we want to do projects we procrastinate against with is that we make them too daunting. And then if you slice them down into really manageable slices, they will be less daunting. And so once I figured out I'm a morning person, I like a really plain flat desk, nothing fancy. I like to be in a small womb like setting. I wrote in the beginning for just fifteen minutes a day. So those would be my tips for aspiring authors. If you're not doing it, it doesn't necessarily mean you don't really want to. It might just mean you haven't figured out your writer's cocktail yet. I like that, the writer's cocktail. Do you ever have cocktails while you're writing? No. Unlike certain authors, I guess F. Scott Fitzgerald, that was part of what led to his demise. I just drink a lot of tea and espresso when I write. Nice. Well, Katie, it was so nice getting to know you this morning. Thank you for coming on my podcast. For inviting me into your lovely place and thanks for all that you do for authors. It's been great to see. Oh, thank you. I really love it. And readers too. Readers too. Good. Right. Well, I'll be on the lookout for your next book. All right. Great. All right. Take care. Bye bye.

[27:56]Kate White: and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.