Pam Jenoff, THE WOMAN WITH THE BLUE STAR: A Novel
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:32]and my website is www.ziviowens.com.
[0:35]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:38]Pam Jenoff is the author of The Woman with the Blue Star,
[0:41]and she and I had this conversation as part of the Peloton Mom's Book Club,
[0:46]which you should definitely check out if you haven't already.
[0:48]Pam is the author of several books of historical fiction,
[0:51]including The New York Times bestsellers,
[0:53]The Lost Girls of Paris, and The Orphans' Tale.
[0:55]She holds a degree in international affairs from George Washington University,
[0:59]and a degree in history from the University of Cambridge.
[1:01]She received her JD from University of Pennsylvania.
[1:04]Her novels are inspired by experiences working at the Pentagon,
[1:07]and as a diplomat for the State Department,
[1:09]handling Holocaust issues in Poland.
[1:12]She lives with her husband and three children near Philadelphia,
[1:15]where she teaches law.
[1:16]Her current bestseller is The Woman with the Blue Star,
[1:19]which is a riveting tale of courage and unlikely friendship
[1:22]during World War II.
[1:23]All right, well, it's seven o'clock,
[1:25]and I see some of the moms showing up,
[1:27]so I just wanted to welcome everybody
[1:30]to the Peloton Mom's Book Club virtual author chat with Pam Jeff,
[1:34]for The Woman with the Blue Star,
[1:36]and it is being a special guest hosted tonight by Zibi Owens.
[1:41]Thank you, ladies, for coming,
[1:42]and I'm going to take a quick moment to introduce Zibi,
[1:45]for those of you who don't know Zibi.
[1:48]She is the creator and host of the award-winning podcast.
[1:52]Moms don't have time to read books,
[1:54]and it's been one of Oprah's favorite podcasts
[1:57]for two years in a row.
[1:59]She's the CEO and founder of the moms don't have time to.
[2:03]She's formed her on media company and has multiple podcasts.
[2:07]She did an anthology about moms don't have time to during the quarantine of COVID.
[2:12]She had, I believe, another anthology coming out this November.
[2:17]She does all of the things.
[2:19]She has her hands and all of the pies,
[2:21]and she does a lot of things with Good for America
[2:24]and gives great book recommendations.
[2:26]So I hope that you guys will check out her podcast in the future.
[2:30]And with that, Zibi, welcome.
[2:33]Thank you.
[2:34]My hand in all the pies, you must have been in my kitchen earlier today.
[2:40]Like, were there secret cameras?
[2:41]Anyway, thank you for that,
[2:43]and thanks for having me at the Peloton Moms Book Club.
[2:46]I was much more active on my Peloton and have really gotten
[2:50]off the beaten path than I don't know.
[2:52]I noticed that my dog's water bowl was on there,
[2:55]you know, the other day.
[2:56]And I'm like, I wonder how long it's been there.
[2:58]Anyway, I am thrilled to be interviewing Pam Jenoff tonight,
[3:02]whose book was absolutely amazing.
[3:04]The woman with the blue star.
[3:06]And I'm so excited to talk to her about that tonight.
[3:08]And this will become a podcast on moms don't have time to read books,
[3:12]just letting you know that, but not the Q&A, just this part.
[3:16]So I will read Pam's bio from her website.
[3:18]Here, Pam say hi before I launch it to everything.
[3:20]There she is.
[3:23]Pam Jenoff was born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia.
[3:27]She attended George Washington University in Washington, T.C.
[3:30]and Cambridge University in England.
[3:32]Upon receiving her master's in history from Cambridge,
[3:34]she accepted an appointment, a special assistant
[3:37]to the secretary of the army.
[3:38]The physician provided a unique opportunity to witness
[3:41]and participate in operations at the most senior levels of government,
[3:44]including helping the families of the Pan Am Flight 103 victims
[3:48]secure their memorial at Arlington National Cemetery,
[3:51]observing recovery efforts at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing
[3:54]and attending ceremonies to commemorate the 50th anniversary
[3:57]of World War II at sites such as Bag, Bastone, and Cori Gador.
[4:01]Is that right?
[4:02]Very good, very good.
[4:03]Oh, thank you.
[4:04]That's like 10 years of French in school for nothing.
[4:07]Anyway, following her work at the Pentagon,
[4:09]Pam moved to the State Department.
[4:11]In 1996, she was assigned to the U.S. Consulate
[4:13]and Crackout Poland.
[4:14]It was during this period that Pam developed her expertise
[4:17]in Polish Jewish relations and the Holocaust,
[4:20]working on matters such as preservation of Auschwitz
[4:22]and the restitution of Jewish property in Poland.
[4:25]Pam developed close relations with the surviving Jewish community.
[4:28]Pam left the Foreign Service in 1998 to attend law school
[4:31]and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.
[4:33]She worked for several years as a labor and employment attorney
[4:35]both at a firm and in-house in Philadelphia
[4:38]and now teaches law school at Rutgers.
[4:40]Pam is the New York Times best-selling author
[4:42]of The Woman with the Blue Star, The Lost Girls of Paris,
[4:45]The Orphans Tale, The Commandant's Girl,
[4:48]The Diplomats Wife, The Ambassador's Daughter,
[4:50]The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach,
[4:52]The Winterguests, The Things We Charished,
[4:53]Almost Home and A Hidden Affair.
[4:55]She also authored a short story in the anthology
[4:58]Grand Central original post-war stories of love and reunion.
[5:01]She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband,
[5:03]three children, dog cat, lizard, and bird.
[5:06]So welcome, Pam.
[5:08]Thank you.
[5:08]Thank you for the warm introduction
[5:10]and I'm such a fan-zippy of your podcast
[5:12]and everything you do and all of your lists
[5:15]and everything, it's just a, you're a force
[5:17]and we're so grateful of all the authors.
[5:19]Oh, thank you so much.
[5:20]As well as a reader, I'm a consumer.
[5:22]Thank you.
[5:22]Thank you.
[5:23]Well, I am a fan of yours too and, you know,
[5:26]consumed this at rapid speed.
[5:28]I absolutely loved it.
[5:30]And I haven't really stopped thinking about some of the
[5:32]images in the book that have really served and haunting me
[5:36]that you described in such detail.
[5:38]But why don't you tell, I'm not sure who in the book club
[5:41]actually read the book and a lot of people have their,
[5:44]you know, their videos off.
[5:44]So I can't see a show of hands.
[5:46]All right, well, Sue read it.
[5:46]So that's good news for all of us.
[5:48]Sue and Lauren, all right, Barb, great.
[5:51]So for those who might not have read it,
[5:53]would you mind giving a brief overview of the book?
[5:56]And then I want to hear about what inspired you to write it.
[6:00]So can I do the second part by way of lead in?
[6:02]So let me tell you what inspired me to write it,
[6:04]which will set the stage for the story.
[6:06]Is that okay?
[6:07]You know what, you do however you want.
[6:08]I'll just be here.
[6:10]So the woman with the blue star came out May 4th.
[6:13]It's my 11th book.
[6:14]And I write a lot of books that around World War II
[6:17]and the Holocaust material that I've worked with for about 25 years
[6:21]from when I was a diplomat.
[6:23]And I'm happy to say more about that if folks want.
[6:25]But I have a deep love for the era.
[6:27]So about the stories I write,
[6:29]they don't come from my personal experiences
[6:32]or even really people that I met.
[6:34]They come from stories that I find when I'm researching.
[6:37]And I'm kind of looking for what am I going to write about next?
[6:41]And so when I'm looking for an idea,
[6:44]I'm looking for the gasp, I'm looking for the moment
[6:47]because if something will make me gasp
[6:50]after all these years of working with the war,
[6:52]then I'm hopeful I'm on to something
[6:55]that readers will feel the same way about
[6:57]that will illuminate that will teach and inspire
[7:00]that we really haven't heard about before.
[7:04]In this case for the woman with the blue star,
[7:06]the gasp was the discovery of a group of Jewish people
[7:10]in Lviv, Poland who survived World War II
[7:14]by hiding in a sewer.
[7:16]And I don't mean that they hid in that sewer
[7:19]on their way out of town.
[7:20]They hid and lived in that sewer for more than a year.
[7:25]And hearing this, I had so many questions
[7:28]who were these people and how had they survived
[7:32]and what were their lives like and who had helped them?
[7:35]And I was particularly taken from an anecdote
[7:37]from the true story.
[7:38]I don't write true stories.
[7:40]But an anecdote from the true story
[7:42]in which a young girl looked up through the sewer grate
[7:46]and she saw a girl her own age buying flowers.
[7:51]And she was so taken by the disparity
[7:54]between her life and the girl above.
[7:57]Her mother said to her someday there will be flowers
[8:02]for you.
[8:02]It was this kind of promise.
[8:04]And so when I heard that, I imagined what would it have been
[8:08]like if the girl below and the girl above
[8:11]had the chance to get to know one another
[8:14]and what would that have meant for both of their lives?
[8:17]So that's a very long introduction to say
[8:20]that the woman with the blue star is about Sadie.
[8:23]She's a young Jewish woman who is living in the sewer,
[8:26]hiding with her parents, although she increasingly
[8:29]becomes isolated.
[8:30]And one day she looks up and she sees Ella on the street.
[8:34]Now Ella is not Jewish.
[8:37]And at first glance Ella has it pretty good.
[8:40]She lives, she's from an affluent family.
[8:42]She's not being persecuted.
[8:44]But when we look closer, we see that Ella has lost
[8:48]all of her family except for her really horrible stepmother
[8:52]who is consorting with the Germans.
[8:55]And her ex-fiancee who hasn't even told her
[8:58]that he's back from the war.
[9:00]And so Ella has this really deep loneliness and need
[9:03]and when she sees Sadie through the sewer grate,
[9:06]there's a very powerful connection between them.
[9:09]Wow.
[9:10]Well, the image of the flowers and that moment,
[9:13]I mean, it was so, the whole thing was just so random.
[9:18]It's almost hard to comprehend,
[9:20]but that two people living on opposite sides of town
[9:24]could have such divergent paths
[9:26]and sort of have to face off with just this barrier
[9:29]between them and the lengths to which people will go.
[9:31]I mean, it was amazing.
[9:33]The stories of survival and the way that you put us
[9:35]sort of in that moment at the time and everything.
[9:39]And it's also such a great show of female friendship
[9:43]and what people are willing to do for each other.
[9:46]So tell me a little bit more about developing
[9:49]that relationship between the two girls
[9:51]and how you made that believable and how you treated that
[9:55]and how to get people who were to relate.
[10:00]And yet, have it worked so well on the page.
[10:03]One of the things I love best about historical fiction
[10:07]is taking women who, through normal history,
[10:10]would have walked on a very set path.
[10:13]And suddenly, through war or catastrophe,
[10:16]they are thrown off that path and they're tested and challenged
[10:19]in ways that they never thought possible.
[10:21]And it's really fun to see how they grow and respond
[10:25]in those situations.
[10:27]And one of those parts that's super fun
[10:29]is taking women who, through normal circumstances,
[10:32]never would have met, never would have crossed paths,
[10:34]but because of the war, they do
[10:37]and seeing what happens with them.
[10:39]Now, specifically with Bella and Sadie,
[10:42]I like to keep it very real.
[10:44]So if you read the author's note,
[10:47]for the one with the blue star,
[10:49]you will know that I turned in a clunker of a first draft.
[10:53]I mean, after 11 books,
[10:54]I handed in a book and my editor was like,
[10:57]no, I'm like, no, it's like, no.
[11:00]And so I had to rewrite this book in five months.
[11:03]And part of what changed was my first draft
[11:06]was only from Sadie's point of view.
[11:09]It was only the girl in the sewer.
[11:11]And it was my genius editor who's always right,
[11:14]who said we need to see Sadie's point of view
[11:18]and Ella's point of view.
[11:20]So that's how it kind of evolved.
[11:22]And I wasn't sure, it was difficult to open up Bella.
[11:25]I know, I loved in your note how you were like,
[11:27]yeah, like we're gonna go there.
[11:29]You had something funny, he said like,
[11:30]yeah, not gonna lie.
[11:31]Like this is really what happened.
[11:33]Oh, it was so true, so true.
[11:35]So after 11 books, like take us back to the beginning
[11:39]of how did you start writing historical fiction?
[11:42]Like what appealed to you about this genre?
[11:44]And how did you sort of tackle the first book
[11:47]and keep getting better and better
[11:48]until we end up with these really vibrant characters today?
[11:53]Thank you.
[11:53]I was one of those little kids
[11:56]who always wanted to be a writer.
[11:58]And it was always novels, like never short stories,
[12:00]never poems.
[12:01]I was like, I'm gonna write a book.
[12:02]I'm gonna write a book.
[12:03]And then all through those many years
[12:05]when I lived in Europe and I went to school,
[12:08]had plenty of time to write, but I never got started.
[12:11]You know what I mean?
[12:12]Like you've got this project.
[12:13]You wanna get off the ground and you can't.
[12:15]And it was always the novel for me.
[12:16]I've lots of novels shoved in drawers.
[12:18]And the turning point in my life was actually 9-11.
[12:22]I had worked for the State Department
[12:24]and I came back from the State Department
[12:26]and I went to law school.
[12:28]And I graduated from law school in Philadelphia.
[12:30]And I started working at a big law firm
[12:33]on September 4th, 2001, right?
[12:38]So it's a big deal.
[12:39]It's coming up this week.
[12:40]And one week later, I started on a Tuesday,
[12:42]one Tuesday later, 9-11 happened.
[12:45]I was sitting at my desk at a law firm.
[12:46]And I love attorneys.
[12:49]I make baby lawyers.
[12:50]I teach law school.
[12:51]Like that's what I do.
[12:52]I think it's a wonderful profession.
[12:53]But that was the moment when I said,
[12:56]I have a deeper dream of being a novelist.
[12:59]And if I don't get started,
[13:01]like I could have been a 9-11 victim,
[13:03]it never would have happened.
[13:04]And so was that life mortality moment.
[13:07]And I took a course at Temple Night School in Philadelphia.
[13:11]And I teach at Rutgers, but this course was a temple.
[13:14]And the course was actually called
[13:15]Right Your Novel this year.
[13:17]And I started to work on a book.
[13:19]And I interestingly, I didn't set out
[13:20]to write historical fiction.
[13:21]So yeah, I started out with two first chapters in that workshop.
[13:25]One was a historical, and one was a present day.
[13:28]And people responded more to the historical.
[13:32]And so that became my first book, The Common Dance Girl.
[13:35]So I started in that writing workshop,
[13:38]which was a wonderful experience.
[13:39]But just because I joined a workshop,
[13:42]didn't mean I was like off to the races.
[13:44]It was five years and 39 publisher rejections.
[13:48]Before I got accepted on that first book.
[13:51]And bear in mind, I was a new attorney at a big law firm.
[13:55]I had $1,000 a month in student loan debt.
[13:58]So I couldn't just go be a writer.
[14:00]So I used to write the books from like five to seven
[14:03]in the morning before I went to the firm.
[14:05]So that was kind of how it all came together.
[14:08]But I will tell you, I always read a lot
[14:09]of historical fiction growing up.
[14:11]So maybe it was faded, you know?
[14:13]So wow.
[14:14]That's, I mean, people talk about how crazy it is
[14:18]to work at law firms and how you have no time to yourself.
[14:20]So, you know, that that is so all encompassing
[14:22]that the fact that you could do it simultaneously
[14:25]is particularly impressive.
[14:26]So why did you not give up after 48 rejections?
[14:30]Well, you know what happened?
[14:32]So we submitted my first book Common Dance Girl everywhere.
[14:34]We get all of these rejections.
[14:36]And then the agent I worked with at the time,
[14:39]he said, well, go write another book
[14:41]and we'll sell that one first.
[14:43]And then we'll kind of bootstrap this in.
[14:44]And I was like, as if it were that easy.
[14:46]But I was originally working on another book
[14:49]for 11 months.
[14:50]And on April 8th, 2005, I was at the firm.
[14:54]It was a Friday afternoon.
[14:55]And the caller ID pops up on my work phone.
[14:57]And you know, even then, people emailed,
[14:59]it wasn't all phone calls.
[15:00]So I picked up the phone, it was my agent.
[15:02]And I said, are you calling to fire me?
[15:05]Because this poor guy had not made a dime off of my work.
[15:09]And he said, no.
[15:10]And then I thought he was calling to yell at me
[15:11]for not finishing that second book.
[15:12]And he said, no, he said, I'm calling
[15:14]to tell you I sold the first book.
[15:15]And it turned out that one publisher
[15:19]that we didn't even know was still reading it
[15:21]made a tiny little offer for Common Dawn's girl
[15:23]and off we went.
[15:24]But I don't know.
[15:25]I just, I honestly believe that the only difference
[15:28]between me and anyone who's not published
[15:30]is largely just keeping going.
[15:32]Because in that original writer's workshop,
[15:35]there were many better writers than me.
[15:36]And that's not modesty.
[15:37]I'm being straight up.
[15:38]There were some great writers in that workshop.
[15:41]And I think sometimes that the only reason I'm here
[15:43]is just because I kept knocking.
[15:45]Well, I mean, if you're like a salesman trying to sell milk
[15:49]and it's spoiled milk, it doesn't matter.
[15:51]How many doors you knock on?
[15:52]No, I mean, you have to have something.
[15:54]No, it's true.
[15:55]I mean, I kept, I also, I didn't just keep knocking.
[15:57]I kept doing 5 a.m.
[15:58]But it was definitely that more perspiration
[16:02]than, you know, however Ben Franklin says it,
[16:04]more perspiration than inspiration, I don't know.
[16:06]Wow.
[16:07]So you started on your journey.
[16:09]You got that published.
[16:10]And then fast forward to today,
[16:12]when you wrote all those other books along the way,
[16:15]was it still those anecdotes every so often
[16:18]and just the stories that you happen to find in here.
[16:20]And you kept taking them and then all of a sudden,
[16:22]now we've written like, you know, two handful of books.
[16:26]It's amazing.
[16:28]You know, so I started with Common Don's Girl.
[16:31]And I actually wound up writing a sequel
[16:33]and a prequel to that book.
[16:34]And that was really fun.
[16:36]And then, you know, I sort of,
[16:37]I wrote a couple modern books.
[16:39]I wandered around a few different publishers.
[16:41]Like I sort of had a longer winding road,
[16:43]but I always came back to World War II and the stories.
[16:47]And there were always stories.
[16:48]And there are, there are moments like,
[16:49]look, there are moments when we've looked at it.
[16:51]And I've said, is World War II played out?
[16:54]You know what I mean?
[16:55]Like, I actually, I will tell you honestly,
[16:56]it was right after the Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
[16:59]and all the light and cannot see by Anthony Dittor.
[17:02]And those two, yeah.
[17:03]Both of those books were so so good, yeah.
[17:06]And I looked around and I'm like,
[17:07]well, it can't be done any better.
[17:09]Like, how do we do this?
[17:10]I looked around, but then there were still stories to be told.
[17:13]And a great appetite with readers.
[17:15]And so, you know, some of my books have been modern.
[17:18]I wrote one book that was set on the homefront
[17:20]during World War II, which I particularly love.
[17:22]It's called The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach.
[17:24]And then back to stories during the war.
[17:27]And it's always, you know, it's just that little nugget
[17:30]of history that sets me off.
[17:32]If I think it's amazing and I can do it respectfully,
[17:35]then that's kind of where I start.
[17:37]Did you ever think about this being YA or middle grade
[17:41]or anything?
[17:41]Because you know how sometimes when you have a protagonist
[17:43]who's younger and now all of a sudden,
[17:45]that means you're like in the YA category.
[17:47]This is maybe to talking shop situation.
[17:49]But no, it's because I read part of this out loud
[17:53]to my daughter, who's eight,
[17:55]but she likes me to read whatever.
[17:56]I'm reading that, I tell her before we go to bed.
[17:58]And you know, not to say it's for an eight-year-old, obviously.
[18:01]It's like a lot of complex things and everything.
[18:03]But you know, she was really interested
[18:05]because it's someone close to her age
[18:07]going through something.
[18:08]So I don't know if you would consider that.
[18:10]No, no, it's a good point.
[18:12]So I actually, my favorite books are kids in YA
[18:14]because I think those authors are just deities.
[18:17]Like 25 years ago, I worked at Borders for a summer.
[18:20]And I was like, can I please work in the YA section?
[18:22]I love those books.
[18:24]I don't have the voice for kids in YA.
[18:26]And so for some reason, my protagonist tend to be younger.
[18:30]They tend to be that age of women.
[18:32]But I do, so I don't like genre.
[18:34]When comments on Scrawl came out,
[18:36]publishers Weekly called it historical romance
[18:38]that it's finest.
[18:39]And I was like, romance, like, I have a romance.
[18:42]So I don't really always love the genre thing.
[18:45]But for, these are, my books can be read by YA.
[18:50]It depends on the parent sensitivity.
[18:51]So one of my 11-year-old twins has read
[18:54]like three of my books already.
[18:55]And that's fine.
[18:57]They're very PG-13.
[18:58]Like there's not a lot of graphic anything.
[19:01]I write my books so that my mom can read them.
[19:03]So I think it's OK.
[19:04]Most of them are pretty OK for the younger set.
[19:08]But I'm happy if they read them.
[19:09]Yes.
[19:10]And did you, like, where was your family around World War II?
[19:14]Like, what's your personal story?
[19:16]So interestingly, all four of my grandparents
[19:19]are from that area, notice the pale,
[19:22]and that kind of pull-in could be pull-in, could be Ukraine,
[19:25]could be Russia based on what year it was, right?
[19:28]And when I lived in Poland, I was there
[19:30]for almost two and a half years.
[19:31]I would always try and take trains east
[19:33]to see where my family was from.
[19:34]It was very, very difficult.
[19:36]All of my grandparents, and I should say great-grandparents,
[19:39]in some cases, because three of my grandparents
[19:41]were born here.
[19:41]But all of my grandparents and great-grandparents
[19:44]were in America by the time the war happened.
[19:48]So I lost no blood family in the Holocaust.
[19:52]Now my one grandmother, whose story is fabulous,
[19:55]she grew up, her family fled Russia for China
[19:58]when she was two.
[20:00]And she lived in China for 20 years.
[20:02]And she came to America by way of Japan, Hawaii,
[20:06]San Francisco, and across.
[20:08]And I wrote about her story in the Grand Central anthology.
[20:11]I sort of borrowed her story.
[20:13]But I didn't lose family in the Holocaust.
[20:15]Now when I lived in Poland, I became extremely close
[20:18]to the elderly survivors who were still living
[20:22]in that part of the world.
[20:23]And so they were like grandparents to me as well.
[20:27]I was actually, I was chatting with a woman today,
[20:30]whose grandparents also, they were born around the time,
[20:34]let me see if I get the date, dates tried.
[20:36]Anyway, they were born there,
[20:38]and her parents were born in DP camps,
[20:40]both of her parents in different camps.
[20:42]And anyway, she actually also had really interesting stories
[20:45]about, and I don't want to give anything away,
[20:47]but babies and repur- you know, having families
[20:51]in the Holocaust time and era and all this stuff.
[20:54]So anyway, I should put you guys in touch.
[20:56]That would be amazing.
[20:57]That would be amazing.
[20:58]So having lived through these characters' eyes, right?
[21:02]And all of it, the mom, the dad, the lily,
[21:05]and I mean, everybody is Sadie.
[21:07]And what did you learn about the period
[21:09]that you, even though you've read eight million things
[21:12]about it, I'm sure, and written and all this stuff
[21:14]and researched and met people, like where did it take you
[21:17]that you hadn't expected?
[21:19]Well, obviously the sewer was kind of a revelation to me,
[21:23]but it wasn't just the sewer.
[21:25]It was first of all brought together people
[21:26]who were from really different backgrounds,
[21:28]who didn't know each other above ground, right?
[21:30]And they're suddenly kind of living in this very cramped space.
[21:33]The detail of their lives, you know,
[21:35]that there were books and, you know, how did they have light
[21:38]and, you know, how did they celebrate, you know,
[21:40]the Sabbath, observe the Sabbath and all of those things.
[21:44]But the other piece that I really took away from this
[21:46]was the man who helped them.
[21:48]So there was a fellow named, in real life,
[21:51]named Leopold, in my book, he's Pavel.
[21:53]And he was a sewer worker,
[21:55]and he was not a particularly honorable person.
[21:57]He had been a thief before the war,
[21:59]but he met this family,
[22:01]and originally he agreed to help for money.
[22:03]And then they ran out of money,
[22:04]and he still kept helping.
[22:06]And he in his wife would go to all these markets
[22:08]around the city to get food without attracting attention
[22:11]and just risk their own family.
[22:13]And he was a great hero.
[22:15]And after the war, he died not more than two years
[22:18]after the war, because he and his daughter were riding bikes
[22:21]and a truck came barreling toward them.
[22:23]And he pushed his young daughter out of the way
[22:26]to save her life.
[22:26]So even then, he was a hero.
[22:28]So it's these individual stories
[22:31]that are really so moving.
[22:32]Oh my gosh.
[22:34]Do you already know what story you're gonna work on next?
[22:37]I am working on a new, I'm always working.
[22:38]So here's my rule.
[22:39]I don't let myself start a new book
[22:41]into one is finished,
[22:42]because it's like you can't play with that shiny new toy
[22:45]in the corner until you clean up your toys, right?
[22:47]That's very important.
[22:49]But I never take a break.
[22:50]Pretty much right back into it.
[22:52]Once I've got that idea.
[22:53]So I am working on a book inspired by a true story
[22:57]of the only known train sabotage
[23:00]of a train on the way to Auschwitz.
[23:01]So there was a train going from Belgium to Auschwitz
[23:05]that was sabotaged to try and rescue people.
[23:08]And so that's what I'm looking at,
[23:09]factitiously in my new book.
[23:11]What happened in real life?
[23:12]They did get some people off,
[23:14]but obviously there's great cost.
[23:15]And so my book looks at both the people who were on the train
[23:19]and again, my characters are fictitious,
[23:20]but it's both people who are on the train
[23:22]and people who were engaged in the sabotage.
[23:24]Oh, Rachel and the chat is very excited about this.
[23:27]So it's not gonna be out to early 2023.
[23:30]And I'm gonna be honest,
[23:30]that sounds really far away to you.
[23:32]And it sounds too close to me.
[23:34]It's close, you got it.
[23:35]You have to step up.
[23:36]I'm starting off, I'm hustling.
[23:39]Five and I'm right at five am writing
[23:40]has become four am writing.
[23:42]That's not a place I like to go.
[23:44]Oh my gosh.
[23:45]Yeah, the four is or tough.
[23:46]Right, it's a crazy difference.
[23:48]Probably my kids like five is awesome, but four is terrible.
[23:51]Yeah.
[23:52]It's a fine line, it's a fine line.
[23:55]Did you know the ending of this book
[23:58]before at the beginning?
[23:59]Cause like I did not see the ending coming until the end.
[24:02]So let me say this.
[24:03]I'm sure you've heard this.
[24:04]Oh, someone just asked the question in the chat.
[24:06]I did not get that from the chat.
[24:07]I learned that's great minds.
[24:09]Great minds.
[24:10]So here's the thing.
[24:11]You know this probably from other writers.
[24:13]There's these two types of writers,
[24:14]the plotters and the panthers
[24:15]and the plotters are the deer souls
[24:17]that write everything sequentially
[24:19]and they make it look nice before they move on.
[24:21]That's not me.
[24:22]I'm a pantser.
[24:23]I write by the seat of my pants.
[24:24]So I like throw words at a screen in a random order.
[24:27]It's terrible.
[24:29]But the reason I'm telling you this is I'm never sure
[24:32]if you say like, did you know at the beginning
[24:34]what the ending is?
[24:35]There isn't really a beginning or ending for me.
[24:38]It kind of all happens at once.
[24:39]So it's very hard for me to go back chronologically
[24:42]and think about what I knew when.
[24:44]I often know an opening scene.
[24:47]And I often have some idea where I wind up at the end.
[24:49]And in between, there's like one or two scenes
[24:52]that I call high moments.
[24:54]And there are little light houses
[24:55]that kind of help me get along the way.
[24:58]So I probably knew how the book was going to end roughly,
[25:02]but maybe not who?
[25:04]Got it.
[25:05]Right?
[25:06]So did you go back and write the prologue later?
[25:08]I write a rough sketch of the prologue.
[25:10]I'll have like a rough sketch of the prologue.
[25:12]But if you read that prologue
[25:14]and you really don't know who is speaking per se,
[25:17]I don't necessarily know that either.
[25:19]I'm just throwing down those words.
[25:22]Someone said that the plotters you scaffolding to build,
[25:25]but the panzers, it's like an archaeological dig
[25:28]where you're picking up an object
[25:30]and like dusting it off and trying to see what's there.
[25:32]So that's how it works for me.
[25:33]It's sort of immersive in that way.
[25:35]Saying I like it.
[25:37]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[25:40]So I do, I think there's kind of three things
[25:43]that are really key.
[25:44]One is discipline, right?
[25:46]And this probably goes to the mom's not having time to read, right?
[25:48]So discipline is you thought,
[25:50]you know when your best writing time is
[25:52]and you really have to protect it very zealously
[25:54]because even after all these years,
[25:57]not my beloved mom or my sainted husband who's downstairs
[26:00]taking care of the puppy and the kids right now,
[26:03]nobody says, why don't you go take some writing time, right?
[26:06]People just don't say that to us in our lives.
[26:08]You have to like, and this is mine
[26:11]and you have to do that a little bit
[26:13]and be flexible and pivot like we all did with COVID, right?
[26:16]So that's one piece, be disciplined.
[26:18]Second piece, be tenacious.
[26:20]And that goes back to that writing workshop
[26:22]and me knocking on the door for, you know, till it opened.
[26:25]Because I think that makes a really huge difference.
[26:27]Even when lots of people said,
[26:29]why don't you give this up?
[26:30]It isn't going anywhere.
[26:32]The last piece is ability to revise.
[26:35]So this is where having been an attorney
[26:37]comes out in helpful because when you're an attorney,
[26:40]people like mark up your work
[26:41]and you have to fix it.
[26:43]And I think as a writer,
[26:44]if you can take that feedback from your editor,
[26:47]your agent, your trusted writers,
[26:49]you know, whoever you're getting feedback from
[26:51]and make the changes in your own way
[26:54]because often they don't give you solutions,
[26:56]they only give you problems
[26:58]and you have to figure out the solution.
[27:00]So think ability to revise.
[27:02]Oh, again, excellent.
[27:04]Amazing.
[27:05]Well, thank you Pam for chatting.
[27:07]We're gonna keep chatting with everybody here,
[27:09]but for the podcast portion,
[27:10]I'm gonna turn it off and free from that.
[27:14]So hold on, I'll say goodbye.
[27:17]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[27:19]Don't have time to read books.
[27:20]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[27:23]at Zebioans and at Moms.
[27:24]Don't have time to read books.
[27:25]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zebioans.com
[27:28]and sign up for my virtual book club
[27:30]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:32]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[27:34]in fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[27:36]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:38]for providing this fantastic intro
[27:40]and now trim music.