Amy Koppelman, A MOUTHFUL OF AIR
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[0:38]Amy Koppelman is the author of a Mouthful of Air.
[0:41]She received her undergraduate degree from University of Pennsylvania
[0:44]and got her MFA in fiction from Columbia University.
[0:48]She is the author of the critically acclaimed novels,
[0:50]a Mouthful of Air, which I am going to talk to her about
[0:53]in this Instagram life.
[0:55]I smile back and hesitation months.
[0:57]She co-adapted I smile back for the screen,
[0:59]which starred Sarah Silverman and premiered at the 2015 Sundance,
[1:03]Toronto, and Doville Film Festivals to Hayek Lame.
[1:06]A Mouthful of Air is coming out in October as a movie
[1:10]with Amanda Safereid starring.
[1:12]And we talk all about that.
[1:13]Anyway, we did this as an Instagram Live.
[1:16]And I hope you enjoy our discussion.
[1:18]I know I did.
[1:19]All right, welcome, Amy.
[1:20]Thanks for coming on Momstone Have Time to read books.
[1:23]Also on Instagram Live today to discuss a mouthful of air.
[1:27]at your beautiful sort of hunting and dark,
[1:30]but not provoking novel.
[1:33]Thank you.
[1:34]They're my first interview.
[1:36]Really?
[1:36]Yes, the novel originally came out,
[1:40]I guess like 18 years ago or almost 18 years ago.
[1:44]And I'm really lucky because $2 radio is republishing it.
[1:49]And I think people understand it more now
[1:52]and understand that it's a real thing.
[1:53]At the time, people never use the word postpartum depression.
[1:58]And I didn't even know that it existed until after I wrote
[2:02]the novel.
[2:03]And there was one scene.
[2:04]And I was like, and I was like, can a mother even do this?
[2:08]And I didn't Google it.
[2:11]I went to ask Jeez because there was a meeting.
[2:14]Can you ask Jeez?
[2:15]Yeah.
[2:16]And because I didn't know if it was physically even possible
[2:19]to obviously I don't want to ruin the novel.
[2:22]To hurt your child in any way.
[2:24]And I was trying to figure that out.
[2:27]I didn't even know, like of course,
[2:28]if you think about the Bible, of course it is.
[2:30]But at the time, I didn't know.
[2:33]So I was I'm glad.
[2:34]I think people understand now that the things
[2:38]I was trying to talk more about, you know,
[2:40]the mixed feelings that you can have at different times,
[2:44]the confusion, the fears, and how so much of your own childhood
[2:48]trauma comes up when you have children,
[2:50]how you're kind of forced to recognize it.
[2:53]So you're my first interview after 18 years.
[2:55]Oh my gosh.
[2:57]Well, I'm honored.
[2:58]Thank you so much.
[3:00]Wait.
[3:00]So then how did this become a movie now?
[3:03]And tell me about the movie and how was this all happening now?
[3:06]Well, I just keep doing my own thing.
[3:09]I just keep writing about I never know what I'm sitting out
[3:14]to write.
[3:14]So I just write about an emotion that I'm feeling.
[3:18]in a mouthful of air.
[3:19]I remember I knew I was writing about shame.
[3:22]And, you know, the shame, actual shame that we have for the
[3:26]things that we did wrong and the shame that people put on us
[3:29]and then what we allow for ourselves within the confines of
[3:33]that shame, if that makes sense.
[3:35]Speaking English is not my strong faith.
[3:38]That's why I don't know.
[3:39]And right because I can retype the sentences for clarity.
[3:42]But so I think in retrospect, after nearly 20 years of 20
[3:47]years being a writer, I think in this book, I was writing
[3:51]through the pain of what if I had to make it the help that I
[3:53]needed.
[3:54]And my second book, which was also published by the great $2
[3:57]radio, I smiled back.
[3:59]I wrote the screenplay for that.
[4:01]It starts our Silverman.
[4:02]And I think that was about, you know, what if I worked so
[4:06]hard to build this happy little family and inside of me, you
[4:09]know, we're demons that we're going to inherited that I was
[4:12]going to, you know, destroy it all.
[4:13]And in my last book, hesitation once, it was about giving
[4:17]myself permission, I guess, to be happy that I'm not such a
[4:21]bad person.
[4:21]So it all circled back to the shame.
[4:24]And I never thought out of any of the bolts that I have in
[4:28]the air, you know, you always have to keep a lot of balls in
[4:30]the air because it's just rejection after rejection after
[4:32]rejection.
[4:33]So a short story novel screenplay, you know, because that this
[4:37]would be the thing because this is such a hard subject.
[4:40]And I wrote Amanda Seifried and I met with her and I said,
[4:45]you know, would you read this book?
[4:46]And she read the book.
[4:47]And then I wrote the screen play for it.
[4:50]And that all sounds very like easy, but all these, you know,
[4:53]all these things took so much time.
[4:55]Of course, now in retrospect, it all just happened, but we
[4:58]had a really hard time.
[5:00]Amanda and I raising the money.
[5:01]We lost the money a couple of times and then we were really
[5:04]lucky and made them pictures financed the film.
[5:07]And there were two things that Amanda asked for.
[5:10]One was that Julie has a career.
[5:12]So she's a children's book author in the film.
[5:15]The other is that I don't direct the film, but then
[5:19]ultimately I got to direct it.
[5:21]So no way.
[5:22]So you directed it and wrote the screenplay.
[5:24]Yes.
[5:25]Wow.
[5:26]And I drew the illustrations.
[5:27]But this novel was the hardest for me because I didn't know
[5:33]what I was doing.
[5:34]And I think I was doing it more for myself to find a place
[5:38]to put the sadness inside of me because I didn't understand
[5:42]when I loved my little babies so much.
[5:44]And I loved my kids so much how I could also be so sad.
[5:49]And I thought it was important even though it's not an
[5:52]autobiographical book.
[5:53]And now when is the movie?
[5:55]When did like what are the dates and what is the, you know,
[5:58]where the movie comes out at the end of October.
[6:02]Sony Pictures is releasing it.
[6:05]Oh, I learned the term auto fiction this week.
[6:07]Oh, and I guess it's a debate now is, you know,
[6:11]conviction be auto fiction.
[6:12]And this book isn't an auto bad with your auto fiction,
[6:16]but the feelings in it are my own.
[6:19]So I think a lot of women feel those feelings.
[6:23]So I'm glad that the book is there because the book is more
[6:26]internal.
[6:27]So you can understand her in the different light than in the
[6:30]movie.
[6:31]Yeah, that's why I was sort of wondering as I read it,
[6:34]knowing that it's going to be a movie.
[6:37]How this like, I can see all the scenes unfolding,
[6:39]but so much of it is what's going on with her and like the
[6:42]private, you know, those moments and the thoughts and her
[6:47]instincts and her questioning herself and all of it is so
[6:50]common right with mothers, you know, I'm really curious
[6:52]to see how that is how you tackle that on the screen.
[6:56]It's all Amanda's performance.
[6:58]She does it all with her eyes and it's incredible.
[7:01]And it's like when you watch her, it's like she understands
[7:06]the collective fear and joy that all of us have and is,
[7:10]you know, able to project that onto the screen and there are
[7:15]moments where the baby's crying and we all understand
[7:18]that fear of like the baby crying, you're looking at the baby
[7:20]and you just don't know what to do and you have another kid
[7:22]and the other kids running and what happens is something
[7:25]happens to that, you know, it's no one tells you how
[7:28]scary it is to become a mom and how ill-equipped you are
[7:34]in many ways to you're responsible for a whole other life.
[7:38]And that can be very scary, please out all on her face.
[7:43]She's, she actually I'm very excited for people to see her
[7:47]performance.
[7:48]It's, it's a heartbreaking performance.
[7:50]It's really good.
[7:52]I can't wait.
[7:52]I'm so excited to see it and I thought maybe I could read
[7:55]like a couple of passages that really caught my attention
[7:58]that's okay.
[7:59]Well, first there's this hole.
[8:00]Let's see if this is it.
[8:02]How Julie is sort of doubting herself and how she won't feel
[8:05]attractive anymore, right?
[8:07]That which is also of course so common and how she's,
[8:11]this is in the beginning though.
[8:12]I'll read a better passage later, but not better.
[8:14]You're writing is beautiful, but that she's in the elevator
[8:16]with Phillip Roth who by way, I was just chatting with somebody
[8:19]who was like, yeah, Phillip Roth, you're up around my parents
[8:21]and I was like, oh my gosh, have you run a mental there
[8:23]because there's a whole scene of it's Phillip Roth and the
[8:26]elevator and actually anyway.
[8:27]And you say, but he won't find me attractive.
[8:29]Not now, not as a mother.
[8:31]Julie feels herself begin to sweat and loosenst her scarf.
[8:34]This scrap and for self so vain and ugly is what wraps itself
[8:37]around her shoulders at night.
[8:38]Here it is again waving a finger.
[8:40]It's for voting voice warns you're going to fail.
[8:43]You can't help but fail off this poor girl.
[8:47]And then let me read this other passage.
[8:50]Oh, this one was so moving.
[8:52]Oh my gosh.
[8:53]So Julie, this is when Teddy's been born and is nursing
[8:56]and everything.
[8:57]Julie's four finger traces the lines of his lips.
[8:59]He was so beautiful, her boy.
[9:01]She moved her finger into his mouth.
[9:03]He bit down his gums hard, how they aches for teeth.
[9:06]What do you want, little guy?
[9:08]The boy reached for his mother's face and she responded
[9:10]curling toward him, pressing her lips against his.
[9:13]They were so soft, so minute, so easy to swallow.
[9:16]She slid her tongue into his milky tasting mouth.
[9:19]Just for a second or two, just long enough to know that she
[9:21]liked it.
[9:22]She couldn't deny it.
[9:23]She was in love with her own son.
[9:25]She was a pervert.
[9:26]Tell me about that passage.
[9:28]You didn't remember writing all this?
[9:32]Yeah, I remember writing it.
[9:34]Well, I think that when we all have kids, we come to terms
[9:39]with different, I think Julie's coming to terms with feelings
[9:42]and emotions that she subjugated from her own childhood.
[9:46]And she's confused about the innocent thing of kissing her son
[9:51]versus her fear of what that means.
[9:54]And is she going to be, you know, a person who steals it?
[10:00]in a sense and I think that that's a breaking point for her
[10:03]because the fear of that of hurting him in any way.
[10:07]She can't kind of let that exist in her head.
[10:11]Wow, it's super powerful.
[10:13]Then you go on to, I mean, there's a whole sort of theme
[10:17]in this book is, you know, what's okay?
[10:20]Like is medication for depression?
[10:21]Okay, can you do it as a mom?
[10:23]Can you do it when you're nursing?
[10:24]Can you do it when you're pregnant?
[10:25]Like what are the effects of medication?
[10:27]What does it mean?
[10:28]Should you take it, should you not?
[10:29]And then there's this one scene where you say,
[10:31]there are two doctors, Dr. Saltman,
[10:33]the gynecologist who says it's okay, the medicine.
[10:36]And he's had many patients who took antidepressants
[10:38]throughout their pregnancy, their babies are normal,
[10:40]normal birth weight, normal development.
[10:42]I have at least eight expectant women
[10:44]on antidepressants as we speak.
[10:45]Dr. Saltman talks to Ethan, man to men.
[10:48]One out of every seven women experience
[10:50]some degree of depression after they get birth.
[10:52]Those kinds of statistics are mixed in with,
[10:55]how about those nicks?
[10:56]But then there's Dr. Edelman who says she's not sure,
[10:59]that there haven't been long enough studies
[11:01]on the newer antidepressants,
[11:03]that they still, that they are still not even sure
[11:05]what Zolaf does to the brain tissue
[11:06]of the person taking the medication, let alone a fetus.
[11:10]It is possible that antidepressants can mess
[11:12]with the fetus's synapses and that baby can,
[11:14]what does this mean, Ethan interrupts?
[11:15]Anyway, it keeps going on and on,
[11:17]that the doctor is debating.
[11:18]And still, I feel like people are not even so sure, right?
[11:22]I feel like, you know, I had my first kids 14 years ago
[11:25]and people were like, I don't know,
[11:28]I mean, there's a lot of conclusive evidence now
[11:33]that you can take certain antidepressants when pregnant
[11:36]and that there is actually ramifications
[11:40]if you don't on the baby's development in the fetus.
[11:44]So I do think it's better,
[11:46]I am a very strong proponent of medication.
[11:49]I think it saves lives and I think,
[11:52]there's a lot of New York magazines
[11:54]or articles about how things are over-prescribed.
[11:56]I think for most people and most of the country,
[11:59]they're most women are suffering in silence
[12:01]and don't really talk about it.
[12:03]They're too scared of, you know,
[12:06]what their parents might think,
[12:07]what their husband might think,
[12:08]what their, you know, church or temple,
[12:11]the people there might think, you know,
[12:12]there's nowhere to go to say,
[12:14]I'm home alone with my child
[12:16]or I'm at the park with my child
[12:18]and I'm scared all the time.
[12:20]It's like get a grip and, you know, this is your job.
[12:24]You can't, you know, you can't go work at a bank
[12:27]and be like, I have to leave, I'm anxious.
[12:29]You know, go to the park and stop worrying that,
[12:33]you know, he's gonna fall off the slide and die.
[12:38]But, you know, when you get very depressed
[12:40]and especially if you have bad postpartum depression,
[12:44]you know, those fears become as real to you as what's real.
[12:48]It's like just very hard to decipher
[12:50]between those two things.
[12:52]So I think taking medication and being able to be
[12:54]in the present and being able to be there for your children
[12:58]is much more important than, you know,
[13:02]than not taking it because you're worried
[13:03]that a tiny bit is gonna pass through the brain tissues.
[13:07]And we do have more conclusive evidence 18 years ago
[13:11]or 20 years ago, I had never been on antidepressants
[13:15]and then I had my son and I had bad depression
[13:19]but I thought it was just like more or less a version
[13:21]of the same theme.
[13:24]And then I went on antidepressants and everything changed
[13:26]and like all the cliches happened, everything went
[13:29]from black and white to color and, you know,
[13:32]I could feel feelings without being crippled by them.
[13:35]I could cry without being scared
[13:37]that if I started to cry, I would never be able to stop.
[13:40]And then I got pregnant with my daughter
[13:42]and I went off the antidepressant medication
[13:45]and it was excruciatingly hard
[13:48]because I was able to see the difference.
[13:50]And I felt so sick.
[13:52]I don't remember like she has crossed eyes.
[13:55]I mean, she doesn't anymore.
[13:56]She had surgery to fix them,
[13:59]but my brother has crossed eyes
[14:00]and she would have had crossed eyes.
[14:03]It wouldn't have been from the antidepressants
[14:04]but I've ever thinking like thank God,
[14:06]I didn't take the antidepressants.
[14:07]I would have thought that it was proof that I crossed her eyes.
[14:10]But, you know, we all wanna protect our kids
[14:13]and we do so many things to try to protect them.
[14:16]But I think the thing that's most important is
[14:18]for the kids to have their mother.
[14:19]So yes, I do think there's still a debate about medication.
[14:23]But I think overall, you know,
[14:25]there's enough statistics to say, this is better.
[14:29]And I've worked for a long time with Dr. Lee Cohen
[14:33]who runs maternal mental health at Mass General.
[14:37]And, you know, there's a lot of places
[14:39]postpartum support international that you can call
[14:42]and they'll help you and they'll find you somebody,
[14:45]you know, to talk to.
[14:47]So you don't have to be alone.
[14:49]And I remember when writing it
[14:51]and when writing those scenes thinking,
[14:54]if I can somehow figure out
[14:56]put this all together into a book,
[14:57]if I can somehow figure out how to get the sentences to link.
[15:01]So there's, you know, some kind of narrative.
[15:04]Maybe it could be a cautionary tale and help people.
[15:08]That was my goal.
[15:09]I mean, nothing ruins fiction
[15:11]but having an agenda, but that was my goal.
[15:15]I think it's like a great goal.
[15:17]I mean, I feel like wanting to help other people
[15:20]and connecting and using your experience
[15:22]and your emotions to make other people feel less alone
[15:26]isn't that why so many people write
[15:27]and why we talk and why we help each other.
[15:31]I mean, that's the basis of our connections anyway.
[15:34]So I don't think that's gonna ruin fiction.
[15:36]I mean, I think that's not what I'm saying.
[15:38]Like, you know, then you become very didactic in the writing,
[15:42]you know, where you're being prescriptive
[15:45]and that's all I meant by that.
[15:48]You know, you're not supposed to have
[15:50]like a bigger agenda, but my agenda always
[15:53]and the writing is to try to say
[15:56]to get as close to the truth as possible,
[15:58]even if it's ugly so that somebody else knows
[16:02]that other people are having those feelings.
[16:04]Cause for me, when you read and you're able to read a sentence
[16:07]where somebody wrote something that you've been feeling
[16:10]or thinking or wondering about,
[16:12]but never even knew to put into a question
[16:14]and they solve it for you on the page
[16:16]and you have that connection, it changes everything.
[16:19]It makes you know that you're not alone
[16:21]and you're not crazy.
[16:23]I just wrote this piece.
[16:24]My kids just left for two weeks to spend with their dad.
[16:26]I'm divorced and remarried and it like literally knocked me
[16:29]off my face.
[16:30]I had to spend the whole day like in bed crying.
[16:32]I couldn't even open my eyes.
[16:33]I was so depressed and upset
[16:34]and I couldn't get it together again.
[16:36]Now it's two days later and I'm like, you know,
[16:39]back doing work and I'm okay, but like,
[16:41]I felt like nobody really understood that pain
[16:44]and quite enough, right?
[16:45]And you know, oh, you know, nobody's sick.
[16:47]You know, your kids are fine.
[16:48]Like they'll be home soon.
[16:50]Anyway, I just wrote about like this very painful
[16:52]sort of essay about it.
[16:54]Cause I was like, let's just name it.
[16:55]Let's name divorce pain.
[16:56]Let's just get it out there
[16:57]and like help your friends are going through it
[16:59]if they don't understand.
[17:00]Anyway, that's a really brilliant thing.
[17:02]That is a specific kind of pain that isn't.
[17:06]And you know, I have a close friend
[17:08]who went through a terrible divorce
[17:10]and yeah, you're getting punished.
[17:13]It just feels like a giant punishment
[17:15]and that time that should be your time
[17:18]is getting stolen from you.
[17:19]And it just doesn't, it's devastating.
[17:24]I'm sorry that that happened to you.
[17:26]No, no, it's been like,
[17:27]it's been almost six years that I can't believe it's just,
[17:30]it's okay.
[17:31]It's just I knew that like other people I'm just,
[17:33]you know, after all this time and talking to 70 people
[17:36]I've decided there's nothing I can feel
[17:37]that other people out there aren't going through.
[17:39]Like, yeah, I'm feeling it.
[17:41]It just means that like hundreds of other people
[17:44]are feeling the same thing.
[17:45]But like my task is just to get down on paper
[17:48]so that people who might not know what their feelings
[17:51]sort of have it in front of them and can be like,
[17:53]oh right.
[17:53]And I feel like that's like what you're doing with this book.
[17:55]And you know, obviously much better than my one
[17:57]little article.
[17:58]But like that there are things that women,
[18:01]and it doesn't have to be out of,
[18:02]it doesn't have to be memoir essay, right?
[18:04]Fiction is the most powerful.
[18:06]You immerse yourself in this poor woman, Julie, you know.
[18:09]And even by the way, I felt so bad for her husband.
[18:11]Ethan, you know, I mean, I feel like he was trying.
[18:13]And like, I don't know.
[18:14]Well, the collateral damage I did think a lot about that.
[18:18]I mean, I tried to make it where money wasn't an issue
[18:21]for her because I wanted to give her every resource possible
[18:25]and not have her have a mean husband.
[18:28]And she's still couldn't figure it out.
[18:31]But for people who are living with depressed people
[18:33]or people who've tried to kill themselves,
[18:35]you are put in kind of an emotional jail.
[18:38]And I actually have that more in the movie,
[18:42]I really think about that.
[18:43]I try to show that how he's kind of trapped
[18:47]because he doesn't know what to do.
[18:50]And I think, I mean, not to be gender specific,
[18:53]but I do think that men do have a hard time anyway
[18:58]when a newborn comes along.
[19:00]Like, you know, a lot of times figuring out,
[19:05]you know, where their place is, what their role is
[19:08]and stuff.
[19:09]Maybe not the young men now
[19:10]because like my son's age or daughters,
[19:13]they all seem like millennial men seem very comfortable
[19:16]with the idea of, oh, you know, but for me,
[19:20]I think that at least in my generation,
[19:24]I think it was hard for men to figure out
[19:26]what their place was.
[19:27]And for Ethan in particular,
[19:29]he has no idea where he fits into any of it.
[19:32]And there's nothing he can do to help her.
[19:35]It's a really hard feeling to manage
[19:37]being with anybody who's depressed for any reason.
[19:39]You know, I mean, it's tough to know how to handle it
[19:42]the best way and to support the people you love.
[19:44]And then you're not allowed to get angry.
[19:47]And like, and that's not fair.
[19:49]Like, you have to subjugate all your own emotions
[19:52]and desires.
[19:52]And I do try to show that more in the movie
[19:55]because it's not fair to do that to another person.
[19:59]And I think that you.
[20:00]feels guilty about it and both in the book and the movie but nevertheless like the collateral
[20:06]damage that you create by staying depressed or by trying to kill yourself or by killing
[20:11]yourself you know it it trickles down for generations. So my little one I have four kids in my
[20:18]year old I don't even know where she heard about suicide but all of a sudden she she's like
[20:23]you know she must have heard on YouTube or something but she thinks it's called commit to suicide
[20:28]you know and she's like oh well do you think that's going to want to make that woman commit to
[20:32]suicide and it's like that the sweetest most heartbreaking way to say it because you are actually
[20:38]committing to it and you're committing it right it's like anyway I don't know it's just made me
[20:43]think about the whole thing I like are you committing to the idea of it or anyway. So yeah that's
[20:48]very kids that's a very profound tiny change of rights or words or fascinating words they're
[20:56]well Amy what are you are you working on anything new now I'm like loving your writing style
[21:01]and now I'm like such a fan what are you doing next. I'm working on a new novel called sex with
[21:07]kings and it's about a family in the South Bronx it's a different kind of novel for me I'm trying
[21:14]to do a novel where I know certain things that are happening and it's not all internal but you know
[21:20]it'll take me around eight to ten years to write and it'll stop being I think I'm writing about
[21:25]you know this family moving from the South Bronx and moving back it'll end up being about like
[21:30]menopause and you know then I'm gonna have to go to Eric and Eliza at $2 radio and be like look
[21:37]I know that I said I was writing this amazing sweeping saga about a family it's really a lot
[21:44]about menopause but and you know hopefully they'll publish it but that's what I'm working on
[21:53]and figuring out how to get my last novel made into a movie so I'm banging on doors which is
[22:00]knocking on doors banging on them yeah it's like the door in your you know the store in
[22:07]terms of it maybe it's a sign you know it's perfect yeah well do you have any advice for aspiring
[22:11]authors oh I'm happy to answer questions yes I have lots of advice I think that there's a big
[22:19]misnomer that there are writers and not writers and I think if you can speak and you can tell
[22:24]a story you know as you do like with your friend you know on the phone or when you go to
[22:30]Starbucks and you're having coffee you're telling a story and that's what writing is it's just
[22:36]telling a story and so I don't like this idea of you know you have to be school dinner you have
[22:43]to read books about it I think the best thing to do if you want to write is just write and
[22:49]write for yourself especially because no you will have to curse on Instagram no let's not okay
[22:54]no one reads fiction really anyway right like it there's a it's a small amount of people that are
[23:02]looking to read literary fiction so you have time and you only have your first book once and so
[23:10]just write the story you want to tell us truthfully as you can and it will find its readers
[23:16]and write it first and foremost for yourself and if you're able to write it for yourself
[23:21]and and well this sounds weird but write it for the characters so that you can make their truth
[23:26]real there's a lot of satisfaction in that and it makes you be able to feel more whole
[23:33]and it makes you be able to withstand the rejection after rejection I mean this book had to
[23:38]been rejected this book was rejected by every single agent in New York City I finally got an agent
[23:44]in San Francisco at the time and you know there was no email so everything was a self-adjustant
[23:50]envelope and like you know every time they would just come back and you know that the
[23:54]non-rejection isn't going to come back in an envelope they're going to you know call you
[23:58]but the rejections don't matter all that matters is that there will be somebody out there that
[24:03]will understand and will publish it and now you can self-publish things and that's an amazing
[24:11]thing because I read in a book that blew me away that was a self-published book I was I was going
[24:18]through Amazon looking for a subject and I saw this book and I ordered it and I was like wow that's
[24:24]incredible and you know she she had been rejected by everybody you can't be dissuaded by the gate
[24:31]okay last question came in from the chat and then I'll let you go but someone is wondering
[24:35]if you could describe this space in which you wrote this book the physical space like was it a
[24:39]desk where where were you oh I wrote this book mostly in a closet because I you know
[24:46]living in the apartment I had kids if they were sleeping you know and so there was a closet like
[24:52]right by the front door when you walked in and if I went into the closet it was it was easy
[24:58]there was no distraction and I could hear if the baby was crying I could hear if somebody was
[25:03]trying to get in through the front door so that's that's where I wrote it I wrote a lot of it by
[25:09]hand and then I got a laptop I had type right or first oh sorry last question what's the name of
[25:16]the book that you just said blew you away that was self-published you remember yeah it was called
[25:21]The Dragon's Daughter and it's about a girl who grows up in the KKK with a father who's like
[25:29]a leader of the KKK and it's a great book and she's a great writer Sharon honeycut is from the
[25:35]excellent okay Julie is asking who are your favorite or what are your favorite books or who are some
[25:41]of your favorite authors uh oh my favorite author is per peterson he's a Norwegian author he has this
[25:48]book called A Coach the River of Time that stupid book made it impossible for me to finish my
[25:54]last novel because I was like if I could just write a book one 20th as good as per peterson's
[26:00]book and so you know I kept starting over because I couldn't touch per peterson as a writer
[26:04]I actually got to meet him at the public library he came and he spoke and my husband took a picture
[26:11]of it but I told him I said you know I mean at a certain point I thought like maybe if I just
[26:16]started eating the pages of the book like one by one I'd be able to somehow you know by you know
[26:22]as Moses be able to write like you and my husband said his whole body just like went like that
[26:27]like what a freak but I was crying and I thanked him because he writes a lot about death and losing
[26:33]the people that we love and he just he is my favorite writer favorite living writer and his books
[26:42]aren't hard either like he doesn't have a lot of affect or pretense he doesn't make you feel
[26:47]inferior or he just writes very simply the truth and then it's like you have you have you get to make
[26:53]a friend yeah I love that person well Amy thank you so much thanks for coming on discuss a mouthful
[27:00]of air we'll all be looking to watch your movie in October I can't wait for that and thanks for
[27:06]coming on and I hope your first interview and A2M wasn't too bad I was like shoot I did not answer
[27:13]that first question yes you did you did it all great there's no right answer this is your story
[27:17]so thank you someone saying you realize how many women you're inspiring right now so there you go
[27:22]thank you thank you thank you thank you thanks Amy thank you thanks for listening to this episode of
[27:28]moms don't have time to read books don't forget to follow me on instagram at zuby Owens and at
[27:34]moms don't have time to read books also sign up for my newsletter at zubyowens.com and sign up for
[27:39]my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week thanks so much to Steve
[27:43]and Ryan back texture sound for the sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for
[27:48]providing this fantastic intro and out trim music