Jenny Judson and Danielle Mahfood, THE LAST SEASON
[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:37]Hi, hello.
[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]Jenny Judson and Danielle Muffood are the co-authors of the last season.
[0:45]The last season is a collaboration between Jenny and Danielle who met at high school
[0:49]and shared a mutual love and historical fiction in romance novels.
[0:52]Instead of passing notes in class, Jenny and Danielle would write short excerpts from imaginary novels
[0:57]that featured themselves in their classmates.
[0:59]As characters caught up in tales of romance and adventure.
[1:02]Many years later, after cheering for opposite teams at Harvard Yale games, they came together in New York City
[1:07]to begin writing the last season, inspired both by the Victorian period and the financial crisis of 2008.
[1:12]And by the way, Danielle is one of my best friends from college, so there you go.
[1:17]Welcome, Jenny and Danielle to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Bex.
[1:21]I am mortified because, well, first of all, Jenny and Danielle I have known for decades at this point.
[1:29]I have been so looking forward to this podcast.
[1:32]I enthusiastically jumped in and realized after 10 minutes that I never pressed record,
[1:38]which has only happened to me once before in like 900 episodes.
[1:42]And I am mortified.
[1:43]So we had a really great conversation.
[1:45]So I'm going to summarize a few things and then we're going to like delve into it.
[1:50]And they're going to tell you more about their book.
[1:51]Their book is called the last season which I said in the bio.
[1:54]But well, okay, I'm going to ask the opening questions and then I'm going to summarize some of the stuff we talked about.
[2:01]Okay, Jenny and Danielle, tell me what this book is about and what inspired you to write it and tell us about the 11 years it took for you guys to write this together.
[2:11]Sure.
[2:13]It is so it's a work of historical fiction.
[2:17]It is a novel about two people from very different stations in life set in the 1860s and 1870s.
[2:27]It revolves around a financial crisis.
[2:30]And so it is a story of rising and falling fortunes.
[2:34]But at its core, it is a love story.
[2:38]Yeah, and so our inspiration began a very, very long time ago.
[2:42]Jenny and I went to high school together and we took a particular class called human physiology where we dissected hearts and, you know, took blood pressure.
[2:50]And in the class we might have gotten a little bit bored.
[2:53]And when we got bored, Jenny actually one day just decided to write me a note, but it wasn't a regular note.
[2:58]It was a little novella which featured me as the heroine and the guy I had a crush on the time as the hero.
[3:04]And there was a beach. There were horses. It was amazing. It ended up on the boys dorm eventually.
[3:10]And so that's kind of how it all began. That was the joke between us that we would write a romance novel together.
[3:15]And fast forward many, many years later, we went to go see the young Victoria.
[3:19]And when we walked out of the movie, I said we are doing it. We're writing our book. We might march right over to a bookstore.
[3:24]We took a look at the novels on the shelves and saw that the Victorian period wasn't well written about and decided that was the beginning of our journey. And that was, as you said, to be 11 years ago, which we can't believe.
[3:35]Oh my gosh. And I mentioned before, but just no matter what you guys were doing, you were so committed to the times that you blocked off with each other like, well now I'm going to do this.
[3:44]And now Jenny and I are going to work on this. And I was, I was saying I felt the sense of like pride because I've watched you guys.
[3:50]I've heard about it for so long, but now the fact that we can that you haven't and it's out and that it's good is like amazing. And I was joking with you earlier that like I was so afraid when I got the book that it wouldn't be good or I wouldn't like it.
[4:03]And like what would I do then, but thank God it's really good. So I mean, I wasn't really worried. I assumed it would be good, but you never know.
[4:10]So it was good. And one thing that I thought you did so well is obviously you guys are super smart to yell and Harvard and you just happen to be smart, amazing accomplished women and have other jobs and all this stuff.
[4:22]And so you have all the background and all the history.
[4:25]But you didn't overly share it. And so it didn't take the reader ever out of the narrative. So tell me a little bit about the research and how you got it to this point where, you know, nothing was thrown in gratuitously and there were no distractions.
[4:39]We did, we did a fair amount of research along the way. I mean, like there's great material for the Victorian era. Lots of documents are still out there and so much of it is online now that you can really access it.
[4:53]So we had maps, we had primary documents. Danielle found this prospectus for an investment and that investment kind of becomes the center of the sort of financial turn.
[5:09]The investment on which the plot pivots when Danielle found it. She was like, this, this, look at this. And I looked at it. I was like, this sounds like a great investment. And she was like, no, this is terrible.
[5:21]I'm in financial services. So I was like, can you believe the way they wrote this? I mean, it actually says you can't lose your money.
[5:30]And Jenny was like, I wouldn't be able to lose my money. This is awesome. I was like, yeah.
[5:36]Wow. That is crazy. Really fun to do all that research and bring the reader into the period.
[5:43]And how did you two work together so well to make the voice not seem like it was you or, you know, which one, I know you mentioned that it originally each took a piece and I was trying to guess at who, which characters you each wrote originally. How did you get it to this point where it's so seamless?
[5:59]So we originally conceived of the novel as a first person narrative from three perspectives. Right. So I was the governess, Miss Fairfax, which I think was in keeping with who I was at the time.
[6:10]And Jenny was Cassandra. And we both split Crispin's character.
[6:15]And it really helped. We kind of, you know, we assigned, you know, sections, assigned scenes went off. Did our homework wrote the scenes and brought it back together. And then we would use Skype or zoom.
[6:25]Eventually zoom first Skype, then zoom to talk it out and read it to each other. And by doing that, we were able to really smooth out the voice.
[6:33]And so, you know, many people, you know, even our first reader said, wow, it absolutely feels like it's the same person writing it. And that that's what that's what helped us that that reading it allowed.
[6:44]And so do you both read a lot of historical fiction. Have you always loved to circle fiction or like why this genre?
[6:51]I think we're so both of us are avid readers. We have slightly different tastes in our reading, although there, there are some major overlaps like we're huge Jane Austen fans, you know, like she's like heroin for both of us.
[7:04]But I think, like, I tend to read a lot of historical fiction. I'm very much a fiction reader. And if I'm at a bookstore, I always gravitate towards the fiction section.
[7:14]You know, and I also, like, I love the classics to, you know, Charles Dickens Anthony troll up those types of like book, you know, door stopper books.
[7:27]And then I think we love romance, but Danielle is a little bit more the romance expert.
[7:32]Yeah. I mean, I am the romance expert. So basically is on the high literary fiction literary fiction. Obviously love Jane Austen. I mean, I probably read, you know, rewatch, we read and rewatch the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice at least once or twice a year.
[7:46]It's phenomenal. But yes, I have definitely been known to read some of the bodice rippers as they're called in the past. I think that's what's what's interesting about our book is people kind of kind of can't really pin it down.
[8:00]Sometimes it feels like romance. Sometimes it feels like historical fiction, but we really feel that it is the kind of book we want to read. Right. So like we wrote the book we would want to read.
[8:11]Not too much of the bodice ripper and to me not to enough enough of a, you know, light read to be sitting on a beach and enjoying it.
[8:19]So that's that's really what we wrote. But yeah, I read a lot, although, you know, I think Jenny and I have slightly different tastes, but we're both big readers.
[8:28]And sometimes, and y'all will like try to, you know, like we'll try to persuade each other to read these books like there's this book, Catherine that Danielle has been trying to get me to read forever.
[8:37]It's the most romantic book. And yeah, so well, we'll have these conversations back and forth about you know, you should read this, no, you should read that.
[8:45]Yes, but she still won't read it, but it's okay. You know, I will eventually, I will.
[8:50]Maybe I'll listen to it one day.
[8:53]Oh my gosh. It's so funny. I feel like you should have your own podcast Danielle called I am the romance expert like that's so great. Right. I mean, you could.
[9:02]I don't know. You can talk about romance books, but you can really just like interview people or you could read. I don't know. I think you should think about it. It was hilarious. It's great.
[9:12]You have a great voice for it too. I don't know.
[9:15]And your spare time when you're not in your children and working your day job and selling a book and you know, so tell me a little bit about the publication like you talked about working with an editor to sort of fine tune the book.
[9:28]When did you know you were even ready to try to sell it and how do you feel now that you're on the other side of things.
[9:35]I think what's funny is when you start, when we started writing this book, it was just when digital publishing was even coming out. Right.
[9:42]Really people were finally like even looking at candles or even knowing what a Kindle was right when we started writing the book.
[9:48]And I think I had always thought to myself, they'll just probably eat published because you know, are we really ever going to get an agent and have to go through this process which is, you know, pretty overwhelming.
[9:58]You know, as you know, Zippy, as.
[10:00]We've discussed it's a really overwhelming process.
[10:02]So we finished the book and we were given the advice
[10:04]that since we were first time authors,
[10:05]we might want to look at getting an editor to read it
[10:08]at the book doctor.
[10:09]So we did, we worked with the book doctor
[10:11]to help us smooth it out.
[10:13]And then after that, we were ready to go for an agent.
[10:15]We were really lucky in finding an agent.
[10:17]Actually just through friends,
[10:19]we went out to four different people.
[10:21]And you know, one of them took a chance on us
[10:23]can really is amazing.
[10:25]And we worked with her a lot on the book
[10:27]and sort of getting it ready for publication.
[10:30]And then there was that process where, you know,
[10:32]it was completely out of our hands
[10:34]and she's shopping it around to whoever she's shopping it
[10:36]around to and Jenny and I joke that
[10:38]she definitely sent us some rejections.
[10:40]We think maybe there was a lot more
[10:42]but probably we didn't send out that.
[10:44]And we think she protected us a little bit
[10:48]from the back news, but she's so sweet.
[10:52]I mean, she has been amazing.
[10:53]She's been truly amazing.
[10:55]But it was, it's interesting to me
[10:57]in the process of writing a book.
[10:58]Like we had a full manuscript, you know,
[11:00]it's taken us essentially 11 years, as you said.
[11:02]But we had a full manuscript probably year six, you know,
[11:07]and then a lot of that is, you know,
[11:10]there's a huge editing process.
[11:12]There's a huge amount of time spent
[11:15]trying to figure out who you're, you know,
[11:18]can you get an editor?
[11:19]Can you get a publisher?
[11:20]And that took time.
[11:22]Absolutely.
[11:23]The moment we found out,
[11:24]Jenny and I will like never forget,
[11:27]Kimberly sent us this like cryptic email.
[11:29]And we were both in the end target for the summer.
[11:32]And it was just like,
[11:33]I might have good news for you.
[11:34]Wait until next week.
[11:36]And then that was when it all began.
[11:38]And then the following week she called us
[11:39]and was like, we have a book deal.
[11:41]And it was just absolutely so exciting.
[11:42]And I think I texted you like right then Zippy.
[11:45]Yeah.
[11:45]And we have a book deal.
[11:47]I was so excited.
[11:48]I'm like, I have been so excited about every step
[11:52]of your journey.
[11:53]And yeah, it's just been so neat.
[11:55]As I said, seeing all the hard work pay off
[11:58]and that you just didn't give up
[12:01]when you so easily could have.
[12:02]You so easily could have just said,
[12:04]that was really fun,
[12:05]but now life is gone in the way or whatever.
[12:08]And you just stayed so committed
[12:10]to your project together.
[12:12]I mean, don't you feel like it's enhanced your friendship too?
[12:14]Like, don't you feel like there's some ancillary benefits
[12:16]to it?
[12:17]Oh my God, absolutely.
[12:18]And we, so, you know, I think there were times
[12:22]that we both sort of fell away from it
[12:26]and then brought each other back to it.
[12:28]We probably more than Danielle.
[12:30]Like, I was like, oh, are we really gonna do this?
[12:33]And she was like, no, we're gonna do this.
[12:35]And here's the calendar and we're gonna,
[12:38]we're gonna stick to it.
[12:39]I actually remember at my wedding,
[12:40]Danielle mentioned this book in the toast.
[12:43]And I was sort of cringing
[12:45]because I thought, oh gosh, now she's announced it
[12:47]to all these people.
[12:49]We sort of have to do it.
[12:50]Are we really gonna do this?
[12:53]And then, you know, but she kept us going.
[12:56]And it's been great, it has been so much fun.
[12:59]It's been an escape from time to time,
[13:02]like a needed escape.
[13:04]And it's also, but it's also been just a pleasure.
[13:09]I think all in all, we have kept it as a fun thing to do.
[13:14]And I think that's really important.
[13:15]Like, it's a fun project.
[13:18]Yeah, I mean, I think absolutely,
[13:19]the escape factor for us has helped us keep it light
[13:22]and not take ourselves too seriously.
[13:24]And what's happened absolutely,
[13:26]our friendship has grown so much from this.
[13:28]But in addition, I think that, you know,
[13:31]the people that kept us going along the way
[13:33]were people like you used to be, right?
[13:34]People who were like, it's great.
[13:35]How's the project going, right?
[13:37]How's this going, right?
[13:38]Or you know, you're at a cocktail party
[13:39]and someone said, oh, I remember you told me last time,
[13:42]I saw you six months ago that you were working on a book.
[13:44]How's that going?
[13:45]Just the fact that we sort of talked about it
[13:47]and got people talking about it helped us keep going.
[13:51]And that's what's made it so much better
[13:53]to have these people, like, I don't know,
[13:54]probably mentioned earlier,
[13:55]like a friend sitting on a beach in Mexico,
[13:57]you know, sending us a photo,
[13:59]her reading the book and saying how much she's enjoying it.
[14:02]That's really what's, that's been such an amazing feeling
[14:06]to hear that and see that from our friends.
[14:09]Wow.
[14:09]It's been a little bit of like peer pressure
[14:11]and cheerleading kind of care leading.
[14:14]Kind of come together.
[14:15]Oh, I feel like you guys have,
[14:18]it's almost like you get a leg up
[14:20]when you work with me, when you do it together.
[14:23]Like I was just listening to what you're saying
[14:24]and how hard it is for people to stay committed to a project.
[14:28]Like when it's just something you're trying to do,
[14:31]it's so easy to put that aside, right?
[14:34]I feel like there's so many creative things
[14:36]we all want to do.
[14:37]Like, where we're just,
[14:38]it's hard to justify making the time
[14:41]for these intellectual creative pursuits
[14:44]when life is so busy.
[14:45]But I feel like, and I feel like from people listening
[14:48]if you're still, you know,
[14:49]if you're following what I'm saying,
[14:50]even though I'm not making any sense.
[14:51]Like, if the thing you need to do is the commitment level,
[14:55]if you get a friend that even if nothing happens with the book,
[14:59]you're going to have fun with your friend
[15:01]and you're going to be doing something with your mind.
[15:02]And there's like no downside to it, right?
[15:06]Absolutely no downside.
[15:07]So for years, Jenny and I would, you know,
[15:09]as you know, Zippy, we would do that.
[15:11]If you'd be writing, go off the next morning,
[15:12]we'd be out late one night,
[15:14]the next morning, oh,
[15:15]Jenny, I might gotta work with Jenny and do my writing.
[15:18]And we would actually for years
[15:20]just be, you know, a way together on a trip and take photos.
[15:22]Like, I mean, I'm talking five years ago,
[15:24]we take pictures of ourselves together,
[15:26]being like, one day we'll be published authors
[15:28]and we'll use this photo.
[15:31]And I mean, it was joke.
[15:33]And what I think is so funny is, you know,
[15:35]Jenny said earlier that she kind of was like,
[15:37]I don't believe this, are we really going to do this?
[15:38]And now, from it that I was pushing her in the whole way
[15:41]through and now I'm like, did we really do this?
[15:44]I think that for me, it's like when it's a reality,
[15:47]I can't believe it.
[15:47]But when it was just a dream, I get behind it.
[15:51]I mean, I'm still behind it.
[15:52]But now I just, I can't believe it
[15:53]in wrapping my own head around the fact
[15:55]that people, you know, we're the authors now.
[15:57]Like, of course the people,
[15:58]some people want to talk about about our content
[16:00]or about our book, about our story.
[16:02]So it's been really fun.
[16:03]That's so cool.
[16:04]It's just the coolest.
[16:05]So are you gonna keep going?
[16:06]Are you gonna write another book together?
[16:08]What are you thinking?
[16:10]I think we are.
[16:11]I mean, I think we've been bitten by this book
[16:13]and the writing bug, let's call it.
[16:16]But, you know, it is at about year four,
[16:21]we were writing and there was a character, Archie,
[16:25]who's kind of a side character friend
[16:28]and both of us kind of developed a crush on him.
[16:31]We write another one.
[16:33]We're gonna write about Archie.
[16:34]And now that we've come to this point in the process,
[16:38]we have a number of people to ask, you know,
[16:40]are you gonna write another one?
[16:41]And so we'd been talking about it,
[16:43]but again, it now feels a little more real.
[16:45]Like, oh yeah, I think we can.
[16:47]I think we will.
[16:49]Yeah, and we have ideas for it.
[16:50]So actually last weekend, we were up in Kentucky
[16:52]doing a signing at Mitchell's bookstore
[16:54]and we were, if you know, having dinner,
[16:58]having a few glasses of wine,
[16:59]we started talking through exactly
[17:01]how Archie's story will begin.
[17:04]And so we've been talking about this for probably the last
[17:06]two months, but it started, for me,
[17:09]it became real in that moment.
[17:10]And I started to envision the scenes
[17:12]and that to me is actually the most fun part
[17:13]of the writing process is where you like have your idea
[17:16]and in your head, you start to think
[17:18]of the way the scene's gonna play out
[17:20]and then just sit down and write.
[17:22]It's like a tremendous escape,
[17:23]but it got me excited again because, you know,
[17:26]I'm sure you know, this would be like editing
[17:28]is not that fun, but writing is really fun.
[17:32]And it's just been this like great sort of moment
[17:37]for us to come to this, to this point to think,
[17:40]oh my gosh, we're gonna take this character
[17:41]and follow this story.
[17:43]Yesterday morning, I woke up to text messages
[17:46]from my, from two of my close college friends
[17:50]who had just finished the book and they were giving me ideas.
[17:54]They're like, oh, you should do this, you should do this,
[17:55]you should do this, they have, it is great to hear
[17:59]from readers, particularly friends who are readers
[18:02]saying like, oh, I want you to do, take this character.
[18:05]How about this storyline?
[18:07]You know how they say when people are cooking,
[18:09]you can tell the emotion that they have while they're cooking.
[18:12]Like if you learn a horrible mood trying to make you a meal
[18:14]and they serve it to you, like the food's just not
[18:16]gonna taste as good as if they're laughing and joking
[18:19]and in the best mood and they make you a meal,
[18:20]like in the food itself, it's gonna feel different.
[18:22]I feel like that's like with this book.
[18:25]Like YouTube had fun doing it and when you read it,
[18:28]you capture, you feel a little bit of that, right?
[18:31]You feel the fun and the playfulness and the joy.
[18:36]It's like contagious.
[18:37]So it's like you feel a part of something.
[18:39]So anyone, I'm glad you guys had fun doing it.
[18:41]I hope you have fun doing another book.
[18:43]I love it and I wanna watch the movie of this.
[18:46]I want this to be like a series, another down Navi-ish series.
[18:50]I'm very excited.
[18:51]I wanted more details on the accident.
[18:53]I wanted like a medical diagnosis
[18:55]and like the full on medical report.
[18:57]Like next, you know, in the movie, I want, you know,
[19:00]I want the medical lingo or something.
[19:03]You know, I need more.
[19:05]But yeah, I feel like that needs to happen as well.
[19:07]So congratulations.
[19:10]I'm so excited for you.
[19:11]I hope everybody reads the last season
[19:13]and takes it on vacation and uses it as a vacation
[19:16]no matter where you are in life
[19:17]because it's really great.
[19:19]And just so excited and to support you guys
[19:22]after all, you've gone through
[19:23]to get this out in the world.
[19:25]Thank you so much.
[19:25]Thank you so, yeah.
[19:28]I feel like we're talking over each other.
[19:29]Thank you so much.
[19:31]Thank you.
[19:32]You're welcome.
[19:33]All right.
[19:34]Bye, ladies.
[19:35]Bye.
[19:36]And sorry for being on professional
[19:38]and missing the first 10 minutes the first time.
[19:40]But you know, we got different places this time.
[19:42]So I'll get it.
[19:44]It was awesome.
[19:45]Thank you.
[19:46]OK.
[19:47]Bye, guys.
[19:49]Thanks for listening to this episode
[19:51]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[19:52]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[19:55]at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[19:58]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi.
[20:00]at Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club
[20:02]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[20:05]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[20:06]in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[20:08]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[20:10]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.